"Lustreless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... awakened by the laughter and shouts of children. When I looked out I saw brooding above the hollow a still gray day, in whose light the woodlands of the park were all in sombre brown, and the trout stream between its sedgy banks glided dark and lustreless. ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... rises, Eileen is discovered lying in the bed on the porch, propped up into a half-sitting position by pillows under her back and head. She seems to have grown much thinner. Her face is pale and drawn, with deep hollows under her cheek-bones. Her eyes are dull and lustreless. She gazes straight before her into the wood with the unseeing stare of apathetic indifference. The door from the hall in the room behind her is opened, and Miss Howard enters, followed by Bill Carmody, Mrs. Brennan, and Mary. Carmody's manner ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... sailor's knot of pale green Liberty silk. His long hair, of a faded, dusty brown, was brushed straight back from his forehead, and plastered down upon his scalp, in such wise as to lend him a misleading effect of baldness. He wore a drooping brown moustache, and a lustreless brown beard, trimmed to an Elizabethan point. His skin was sallow; his eyes were big, wide apart, of an untransparent buttony brilliancy, and in colour dully blue. Taken for all in all, his face, deprived of the adventitious aids of long hair and Elizabethan ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... you that I cannot interfere?" Still he kept that horrid position of his upon the chair, staring at her with his large, open, lustreless eyes. "Mr. Greenwood, I must ask you to leave me. As a gentleman you must ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... on her errand, and Nagendra to Kunda's room alone. He found Kunda's face darkened, her eyes lustreless, her body relaxed. ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... now all round. By degrees the light, which was dim even overground that rainy day, died out in the well, till all was black as night but for my candle, and far overhead I could see the well-mouth, white and round like a lustreless full-moon. ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... tarnished brass fender. Cobwebs depended from the ceiling, and hung in loose threads from the mantel; dust was upon everything, thick and motionless; a single ghostly ray of light that filtered in through a crevice in one of the shutters was weighted with gray lustreless motes. The room was empty and silent. The visitors, who had come so stealthily, had as stealthily departed, leaving no ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... nigh bodaciously changed ter cinders!" exclaimed Birt, staring in amaze at the lustreless contents of the shovel from which every suggestion of golden glimmer had faded. "What do it be, ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... sympathetic, and that we must not only admit but welcome an immense variety of interest. We must above all things be just, and we must be ready to be both interested and amused by people whom we do not like. The point is that minds should be fresh and clear, rather than stagnant and lustreless. Enthusiastic people, who feel very strongly and eagerly the beauty of one particular kind of delight, are sadly apt to wish to impose their own preferences upon other minds, and not to believe in the worth of others' preferences. ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... her in the orchard. She was to remember that it was a cloudy morning, and that mist-tatters trailed from the more distant trees. In the slaty twilight the garden's verdure was lustreless, the grass and foliage were uniformly sombre save where dewdrops showed like beryls. Nowhere in the orchard was there absolute shadow, nowhere a vista unblurred; in the east, half-way between horizon and zenith, two belts of coppery ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... lying at the point of death. He found her occupying the garret of an old, crazy tenement in Orange street; she was stretched upon a miserable bed, covered only by a few rags, and her short breathings, sunken cheeks, and lustreless eyes, proclaimed that the hand of death was upon her. Though young in years, her appearance indicated that she had passed through ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... I desire to do, and cannot. It is as though some creeper that had enfolded and enringed a house with its tendrils, creeping under window-ledges and across mellow brickwork, had been suddenly cut off at the root, and hung faded and lustreless, not even daring to be torn away. Yet I am alive and well, my mind is alert and vigorous, I have no cares or anxieties, except that my heart seems hollow ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... apartment, propped up in a large easy chair by a number of pillows, sat poor Mr. Ellis, gazing vacantly about the room and muttering to himself. His hair had grown quite white, and his form was emaciated in the extreme; there was a broad scar across his forehead, and his dull, lustreless eyes were deeply sunken in his head. He took no notice of them as they approached, but continued muttering and ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... Eckhof. No sooner had they alighted from their travelling carriage, than they proceeded arm-in-arm to Eckhof's lodging. They found him at home and alone, and Fredersdorf saw from his pale countenance and lustreless eyes that his sensitive, easily excited nature had been deeply wounded ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... pet poet of gilded salons, whose sparkling sallies could once delight the fastidious circles in which he moved. His once bright eyes, glazed and lustreless, his cheeks sunken and pale, seeming only conscious of the presence of those around him when offered champagne, the excitement of which for a few brief moments produced some flashing bon mot a propos de rien passing at the time, after which ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... limbs in old trees gray or blackish, lustreless, deep-seamed, split into thick plates, standing out at all sorts of angles; in trees 6-8 inches in diameter, scarf-bark lustrous, parted in ribbon-like strips, detached at one end and running up the trunk in delicate, tattered fringes; season's shoots light yellowish-green, minutely ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... regret to say, behaved like the spoilt child she really was. She buried her head under the bedclothes, and at first utterly refused to submit to any examination. Miss Todd coaxed, wheedled, stormed, and finally pulled the clothes away by force and displayed the rash to the dark, lustreless eyes of Dr. Jinaradasa. He asked a few questions—which Diana answered sulkily—took her temperature, felt her pulse, and retired downstairs to talk over the case with Miss Todd, leaving a very cross and indignant patient behind him. Ten minutes afterwards ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... fingers can execute or Eastern imaginations devise. A band of the same embroidery confined the robe around her slender, supple waist, and showed to advantage the perfection of her figure. A brooch and long ear-pendants of lustreless yellow gold, and a fan of azure silk with gilded sticks, were the adjuncts to this costume, whose rich hues and gorgeous effects would have crushed a less brilliant and stylish-looking woman, but which were wonderfully becoming to ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... Sabbath brooded like an embodied peace over the earth, and under its wings they grew sevenfold peaceful—with a peace that might be felt, like the hand of a mother pressed upon the half sleeping child. The rusted iron cross on the eastern gable of the old church stood glowing lustreless in the westering sun; while the gilded vane, whose business was the wind, creaked radiantly this way and that, in the flaws from the region of the sunset: its shadow flickered soft on the new grave, where the grass of the wounded sod was drooping. Again seated on a neighbour ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... and was so large that a couple of trees had easily been moved into it, and quite a large cairn was piled up in there. Notwithstanding all this, the birds were unhappy. They sat motionless on the same spot nearly all day. Their pretty, dark feather dresses became rough and lustreless, and their eyes were riveted with hopeless longing on the ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... on eagerly to tell about the plain, lustreless man whose one homely gift had fascinated him. The Doctor was entertained. The narrator sparkled and glowed as he told of Ristofalo's appearance, and reproduced his speeches ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... toward him. A late Winter sunset shimmered in the west like some pale, transparent cloth of gold hung from the walls of heaven, but the kindly light lent no beauty to her face. Rosemary's eyes were grey and lustreless, her hair ashen, and almost without colour. Her features were irregular and her skin dull and lifeless. She had not even the indefinable freshness that is the divine right of youth. Her mouth drooped wistfully at the corners, and even the ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... were not pierced, or crushed, or mangled, but their deaths were not less terrible, because more lingering. They seemed to wither and shrivel away; their eyes became at first very bright, and afterward lustreless; their skins grew hard and sallow; their lips faded to a dry whiteness; all the fluids of the body were consumed; and they crumbled to corruption before life had ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... where a credible ghost pulls bridle to view that bare Corpse of a field still reddening cloud, and alive in its throes Beneath her Purgatorial Saint's evocative stare: Brand on his name, the gulf of his glory, his Legend's close. A lustreless Phosphor heading for daybeam Night's dead-born, His underworld eyeballs grip the cast of the land for a fray Expugnant; swift up the heights, with the Victor's instinctive scorn Of the trapped below, he rides; he beholds, and a two-fold grey, Even as the misty sun growing moon that a frost enrings, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... not spring upon his foster-brother. Even as they looked, the fire went out in his eyes, spark by spark, until they were lustreless as ashes, and at last he put up his hand and wiped great drops from his forehead. "Never had you the keenness to father that judgment," he said in a strangely dull voice. "It must be that a god spoke through ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... hesitated, but his voice broke and he was unable to complete his sentence. In responsive inquiry, she turned from the window and looked up at him. The deep dejection of her attitude depicted her despondency and despair. The brown eyes, dull and lustreless, staring out of the drawn white face, expressed the hopeless wonderment the man had seen in the glazing orbs of a stricken deer. A great wave of pity welled up in him. How could he break this frozen composure and bring to the overwrought heart the ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... poet and eccentric, and Charles Colnaghi, the hero of a hundred tea-fights, and young Brookfield, the comedian, and many another good fellow. My Lord of Dudley, the virtuoso, came there, leaning for support upon the arm of his fair young wife. Disraeli, with his lustreless eyes and face like some seamed Hebraic parchment, came also, and whispered behind his hand to the faithful Corry. And Walter Sickert spread the latest mot of 'the Master,' who, with monocle, cane and tilted hat, flashed through the ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... warrior rise, who sinks forever, although it may be into a bed of glory! And if the setting of the sun leave all here lustreless and dark and gloomy, although that must arise again to-morrow, what must the setting do of one who shall arise no more for ever; whose light of life was to one heart, what the sunbeam was to the streamlet, but which, unlike that sunbeam, shall ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... (Maria Longworth) Storer, named from her father's home near the city, the first American pottery to devote exclusive attention to art ware. The earlier wares were yellow, brown and red; then came deep greens and blues, followed by mat glazes and by "vellum" ware (first exhibited in 1904), a lustreless pottery, resembling old parchment, with its decoration painted or modelled or both. The clays used are exclusively American, much being obtained in Missouri. Among the more important manufactures of the city in 1905 were the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... continued, his heavy, lustreless eyes coming to a stand-still upon her, "that though I accept in all reverence the position of woman as the equal of man, as promulgated in The Princess, by our lion-hearted Laureate, nevertheless ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... haste, yet with great care and attention to effects. Her gown was a lustreless black silk, trimmed with gold and made as plain as her modiste would—and the styles permitted. Her hair was piled high, with an elongated twist; her dead-white complexion was unmarred by powder or rouge, and beneath the transparent skin the ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... influence he could not tell, and meanwhile it gained ever stronger and deeper hold upon him. Was it from the eyes, a-sparkle with the essence of youth and health? or from the mouth, with its red warmth of full yet delicate curves? the gates of what sweetness of breath! or from the crisp, dark, lustreless luxuriance of the hair? or from the curved shadows melting on the cheeks, and nestling beneath the chin? He could trace it to no single one of these various elements—yet how lovely all were! Whence, then, was it? In a bottle of wine there ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... I shall have to run you through," said his friend gloomily. Indeed, the Doctor stood in instant fear of this catastrophe; for Captain Runacles' temper was a byword, and not even his customary dark flush looked so dangerous as the lustreless, sullen eyes now sunk in a face that was drawn and pinched and absolutely wax-like in colour. To the Doctor's astonishment, however, it was the little hunchback who now jumped up and whipped out ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... beauty, to grow longer than was fitting for a boy, curled damply about his brow, his small, dark, delicately aquiline features were like the pretty Deleah's. The elder boy and girl, fair of skin, with straight hair of a pale, lustreless gold, resembled their father; Mrs. William Day was not so far blinded by love of her husband as not to rejoice in secret that at least two of her ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... quick pang how all her father's violent blackness of hair, and violent red of colouring, and violent glint of eye and violent energy of gesture were faded, greyed, dimmed, devitalized to a hue and to an air that was all one and lustreless, as if he had gone in a pond covered, not with duckweed but with lichen, and had come out, not dripping, but limp and shrouded head to foot in scaly grey. Was it possible that all this had been so when she was last here? She had not noticed it. She noticed that both her ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... as a prisoner; thin, haggard, sick unto death, with no sparkle in his lustreless eyes, no motion in his swollen joints, no pretty retort on his lips as of old, and with a sigh we turn from the ghastly sight to the pages of French history where we again read in detail the accounts of his life and death, and then it is for us to decide upon our answer to this ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... seemingly in haste and suddenness, since on the previous evening there had been no talk of his departing. Her father was abed with a wound that made him feverish. Their grooms were all sick, and wandered in a dazed and witless fashion about the castle, their faces deadly pale and their eyes lustreless. In the hall she had found a chaotic disorder upon descending, and one of the panels of the wainscot ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... from his interlocutor, the conversation dropped dead. Then M. de Bargeton mutely implored his visitor to come to his assistance. Turning westward his old asthmatic pug-dog countenance, he gazed at you with big, lustreless eyes, in a way that said, ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... newcomer with eyes that seemed lustreless in spite of their tiny gold flames. Having a shrewd idea of what she would mean to her visitor she felt it unnecessary to express gratitude. In a certain sense she hated her at sight. She hated her ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... there sat yet another form, lean, with a white face and pale, lustreless eyes; she acted as if she were paying no heed to anything, but had a pretty box before her, and was winding blue silk from one ball to another. Joggeli was telling about the time he had had with the last overseer, and what he had had to stand ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... of the others in that crowded place. But Manuela stuck to her colours nobly. She kept awake until her pretty black eyes became lustreless, until her pretty brown face became expressionless, until the effort to continue awake became hopeless. Then her little head fell back on the cushion of the chair, the little mouth opened, and the ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... seemed interlacing in endless tangling crisscross before one's eyes; then suddenly again everything around was faintly bluish; the glaring tints died away instantaneously, the birch-trees stood all white and lustreless, white as fresh-fallen snow, before the cold rays of the winter sun have caressed it; and slily, stealthily there began drizzling and whispering through the wood the finest rain. The leaves on the birches were still almost all green, though perceptibly ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... emperor, leading his consort by the hand, entered the tribune. He looked pale; his form was bent, and trembling as if shaken by an inward fever; and even more singular appeared his down-hanging under-lip and the gloomy, morose expression of his lustreless blue eyes. But the people did not see this; they saw only that their emperor had arrived—their emperor, who had resolved to deliver Austria from the ignominious foreign yoke; who would die with his subjects rather than longer ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... beads were trying to her complexion, or her dress was perhaps unbecoming: her face looked lustreless and almost ugly, and he had never loved it as he did at that minute. Their hands met, and he thought he heard her say: "Yes, we're sailing tomorrow in the Russia—"; then there was an unmeaning noise of opening doors, ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... sat patiently by her mother's couch. The change in the proud woman during these weeks of illness was only too apparent. It seemed as if the ardor of her hatred had burned out her strength. Her lovely eyes were lustreless. The neck on which Sahira had hung a splendid cord of sapphires from Persia, linked together with milky pearls from India, was thin and haggard. Her skin, fair and beautiful on that day when she sat so proudly by her husband and daughter in the Circus, watching the gladiatorial ...
— Virgilia - or, Out of the Lion's Mouth • Felicia Buttz Clark
... affectionate appreciation. The little old lady seemed like a bit of Dresden china; she was so dainty and so frail. Her hair was lustreless, snowy white, and beautifully, though simply, dressed in a bygone fashion. Her blue eyes were so deep in colour as to seem almost purple in certain lights, and the years had been kind to her, leaving few lines. Her hands, resting on the arms of her chair, had not lost their ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... Dull, yellow, heavy, lustreless— With less of radiance than the burnished tress, Crumpled on Beauty's forehead: cloddish, cold, Kneaded together with the common mold! Worn by sharp contact with the fretted edges Of ancient drifts, or prisoned in deep ledges; Hidden within some mountain's rugged breast From ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... almost inarticulate. She got up as she uttered them and moved away. Mrs. Merston looked after her, and very strangely her face altered. Something of that mother-love in her which had so long been cheated showed in her lustreless eyes. ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... buckled slipper, the other was carefully laced into a tan walking boot. Just now she could see nothing but the face, for the greatest shock was there. It did not look like Mary's face at all—it was strange, old, yellow and repulsive. Her unbrushed, lustreless hair hung about it in a dull mat, one of her hands was clutched ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... carried himself with dignity, but was rather depressed. His habitual hardness had toned down somewhat, not from any cowardice; a nobler element had been at work. He did not defend himself, did not regret what he had done, blamed no one, and mentioned no names. His emaciated face with the lustreless eyes retained but one expression: submission to his fate and firmness. His brief, direct, truthful answers aroused in his very judges a feeling akin to pity. Even the peasants who had seized him and were giving evidence ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... that sent the alternate flush and pallor up her cheek. She sat down, leaning her head back against the bulwark, as if to look at the stars, and suffering the light, fine hair to blow about her temples before the steady breeze. He bent over to look into her eyes, and found them fixed and lustreless. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... A lustreless sun stood in the sky like a moon, and its shadows were ghostly. Terrified rooks and bats flew around, and hovered about the cross in this horrible twilight. Rocks on the hills broke away, and skulls ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... Edward's cap, another drew blood from the lawyer's hand. The fisherman was a tall and wiry man; as he ran he swayed like a mast in storm. The three reached the courier, dragged him from beneath the horse, and found both legs crushed. He looked at them with lustreless eyes. "You can't do anything for me, boys. The general says please try to take those three guns up there. He's going to charge the line beyond, and they are ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... as the dead, looked at his benefactress with a lustreless eye, which plainly spoke his thoughts. He stood ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... and gold—lustreless black of coke, lurid crimson of fresh blood, bright glaring yellow of gold new-minted—were the predominant notes in a colour scheme at once sombre and violent. The walls were hung with scarlet tapestries whereon gold dragons crawled and fought or strove to swallow dead black planets, ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... Charles Stuart remarks, compassionately, glancing at the wan cheeks and lustreless eyes, as he lights his after-breakfast cigar, "you do look most awfully used up. What a pity for their peace of mind, some of your frantic adorers of last night can't see you now. Let me recommend you to go back to bed and try an ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... we were about to put on a show of some kind," he told himself, "and I am cast for a leading role." He watched as best he could from his bound position while a tall figure in robes of lustreless black appeared to stand ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... the baroness's days. Tunisians sojourning in Paris never failed to call upon the wife of the great banker, who was in favor at home, and old Colonel Brahim, the bey's charge d'affaires, with his drooping lips and his lustreless eyes, took his nap every Saturday in the corner ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... the dark eyes which looked straight at his own. They were dull and lustreless, but, even as he gazed, a little shifting sparkle came into them, and ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... withdrawing himself again from a muse over the records of victory. And then he bent a lustreless eye upon his own portrait, so sombre and gallant upon the wall, with the gold of the lace and epaulettes ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... her eyes, from which the colour had gone, wide open and lustreless, her face pallid and ashen, her mouth hanging open. The Queen was moving ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... nicer way would have been to do the housework together and then go to the fields together; but she was a good soul, so she worked alone and brooded in silence, and watched up the road for a glimpse of Henry Peters, who liked to hear her talk, and to whom it mattered not a mite that her hair was lustreless, her eyes steel coloured, and her nose like that of a woman he never had seen. In her way, Polly admired her mother, loved her, and worked until she was almost dropping for Kate's scant, infrequent ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... handling the ponies, but in spite of their efforts their animals were quite done up by February 12, as also was poor old Blossom. It would have been cruel to continue with them, they were so wasted, and even their eyes were dull and lustreless. Accordingly, Scott decided to send Bluecher, James Pigg, and Blossom back with Forde, Keohane, and myself. A reorganisation was made near the 79th parallel, and whilst the main party proceeded southward, Forde, Keohane, and I took our feeble ponies northward ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... herself when she came down. She had taken off her widow's cap and coiled her heavy hair low in her neck, and she always looked like a queen in that lustreless black silk. I do not know why these little things should have made such an impression on me then. They are priceless to me now. I remember how she looked, framed there in the doorway, while we were watching for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... arched: the lips have that permanent meaning of imagination and sensibility which suffering has not repressed and which it seems as if death scarcely could extinguish. Her forehead is large and clear; her eyes, which we are told were remarkable for their vivacity, are swollen with weeping and lustreless, but beautifully tender and serene. In the whole mien there is a simplicity and dignity which, united with her exquisite loveliness and deep sorrow, are inexpressibly pathetic. Beatrice Cenci appears to have been one of those rare persons in whom energy ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... white fingers twined round each other more desperately, for Sister Giovanna's face was turned full to her now, and their eyes were meeting; the young nun's were fierce with pain, but the Mother's were strangely lustreless ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... no longer quite lustreless. At the last moment he talked with animation of 'two years hence', and there was vigour in the waving of his hand as the vessel ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... the way the policeman put his stiff, frozen fingers to his cap, looking at his nose, his lustreless eyes, and his hood covered with white frost near the mouth, they all for some reason felt that this policeman's heart must be aching, that his stomach must feel pinched, and his ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... do not kill everything hung on the walls with them, make even a brilliant canvas look comparatively lustreless. Yet the first poem of Mr. Brownell's which ever attracted our attention, "The Fall of Al Accoub," is of great force, and shows much of the same red light and black shadow, much of the same Vulcanic power over words, as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... was the face that was specially unattractive. It was a sallow, flat face, and the strange eyes did nothing to lighten it. They were dead, lustreless eyes. They had a coldness in them that reminded me of the icicle eyes of the crocodile, and, curiously, I associated that reptile's notions of fair warfare with Leith as I looked at him. That sullen face, ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... woman—Bhima's daughter—side by side With young Sunanda. Little praise had now That beauty which in old days shone so bright; Marred with much grief it was, like sunlight dimmed By fold on fold of wreathed and creeping mists. But when Sudeva marked the great dark eyes— Lustreless though they were, and she so worn, So listless—"Lo, the Princess!" whispered he;— "'Tis the King's daughter," quoth he to himself; And thus mused on:— "Yea! as I used to see, 'Tis she! no other woman hath such grace! My task is done; ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... aside the curtain; the light fell full upon her face. What a sight! Her beautiful hair cut close, a ghastly white handkerchief round her head, those bright eyes sunk and lustreless, those ripe lips baked, and black and drawn; her thin hand fingering uneasily the coverlid.—It was too much for him. He shuddered and turned his face away. Quick-sighted that love is, even to the last! slight as the gesture was, she saw it ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... features, and as he did so he called to mind the face of the young girl whose heart he had won a quarter of a century before. Yes, she was beautiful still, even although her face was drawn and haggard and the hair which he remembered so well was lustreless. It needed but happiness to bring back all the winsomeness of her girlish days—happiness! Yes, he had loved her, and he had promised to cherish her. He knew he had taken her to wife as truly as if ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... himself in a looking-glass at a shop-window, he had been deeply shocked at his own appearance. His face was white as a sheet, the fair hair matted and tangled, the eyes sunken and surrounded with a dark color, and dead and lustreless. No! he could not meet Wildney as a sick and ragged sailor-boy; perhaps even he might not be recognised if he did. He drew back, and hid himself till the merry-hearted pair had passed, and it was almost with a pang of jealousy that he saw how happy Wildney could ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... generousness, and everything about it partook of the asymmetrical crudeness of the elemental. The hair, rank of growth, thick and unkempt, matted itself here and there into curious splotches of gray; and again, grinning at age, twisted itself into curling locks of lustreless black—locks of unusual thickness, like crooked fingers, heavy and solid. The shaggy whiskers, almost bare in places, and in others massing into bunchgrass-like clumps, were plentifully splashed with gray. They rioted monstrously over his face and fell raggedly to his ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... apartment was by no means obscure. Ferdinand was sitting in an easy-chair, supported by pillows. A black handkerchief was just twined round his forehead, for his head had been shaved, except a few curls on the side and front, which looked stark and lustreless. He was so thin and pale, and his eyes and cheeks were so wan and hollow, that it was scarcely credible that in so short a space of time a man could have become such a wreck. When he saw Katherine he involuntarily dropped his eyes, but extended his hand to her with some effort of ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... gleaming statue. Bracelets glittered on her white wrists, gems of fire sparkled among her long, white fingers, a network of pearls was all her head-dress. Her eyes had strange depths of passion, perfumes breathed from her skin, lustreless like dead ivory. Not thus came the maidens of Israel to wedlock, demure, spotless, spiritless, with shorn hair, priestesses of the ritual of ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... strange soft-handed depth subdues Drowned colour there, but black to hues, As death to living, decomposes— Red darkness of the heart of roses, Blue brilliant from dead starless skies, And gold that lies behind the eyes, The unknown unnameable sightless white That is the essential flame of night, Lustreless purple, hooded green, The myriad hues that lie between Darkness and ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... to a full stop in the middle of the road and stared up at the windows. He realised for the first time that he was alone, and that it was possible for brilliant sunshine, even on a cloudless day, to become somehow lustreless and dull. The walls showed a deep red in the sunset light. The house was still as the grave. His feet were rooted to the ground, and it seemed as if he could not move a single muscle; and as he stood there, the blood ebbing quickly from his heart, the words ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... altogether destitute of fibrous structure, drying to earth-like masses which break with more or less difficulty, giving lustreless surfaces of fracture; sp. gr. 0.41 to 0.90, the full cubic foot weighing, accordingly, ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson
... in the lamp which the lawyer had lighted, and left standing on the table between the windows. She could see distinctly for a while the stately pieces of old furniture standing in their places against the walls. Just opposite where she sat was one of lustreless old mahogany, extending the width of the wall between two doors, rearing itself upon slender legs, set with multitudinous drawers, and surmounted by a clock. A piece of furniture for which she knew no name, an evidence ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... are soft, thin and brittle, splitting easily, and are often opaque and lustreless, and may have a worm-eaten appearance. Several or more ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... things, and then treating them very humanly. Use your lovely vases for your flowers. Hang your modern painting; but let its link with the faded tapestry be the dull, old frame. To be explicit, use lustreless frames and faded colours with old furniture and tapestry. Your grandmother wears mauves ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... collections are apt to be preserved, the red brick tiles, the diffused light, the musty odour, the mementos around you of dead fashions, the snuffy custodian in a black skull-cap, who pulls aside a faded curtain to show you the lustreless gem of the museum—these things have a mild historical quality, and the sallow canvases after all illustrate something. Many of those in the museum of Nantes illustrate the taste of a successful warrior, having been bequeathed ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... Holbein was not one to give up the costume of her youth simply because she would have been well advised to do so; and the cut and fashion of her dress remains almost identical with the drawing in the Louvre. Her lustreless light-brown hair is covered with a gauzy veil and a reddish-brown cap. Her brown stuff upper garment, trimmed with thin fur, shows a dark-green dress beneath it. The baby wears a gown of undyed woollen material, and the boy a jacket of ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... round the fence that guarded the Stotts' garden from the little lane—it was hardly more than a footpath. He had a great shapeless head that waggled heavily on his shoulders, his eyes were lustreless, and his mouth hung open, frequently his tongue lagged out. He made strange, inhuman noises. "A-ba-ba," was his ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... it. She turned her lustreless eyes on him and said, "Magdalen did not make me come this time. I have come myself. Do you think, is there any chance, Uncle John, that God will have mercy on me ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... on the veranda and watched Miss Webster drive away to market. The carriage and horses were unsurpassed in California. The coachman and footman were in livery. The heiress was attired in lustreless black silk elaborately trimmed with jet. A large hat covered with plumes was kept in place above her painted face and red wig by a heavily dotted veil—that crier of departed charms. She held a black lace parasol in one carefully gloved hand. Her pretty foot was encased ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... sleet-like spray Flashed, all unheeded, on her tawny skin. As oft she brought her food and flung it far, Reserving scarce a morsel for her need— Flung it—with naked arms, and streaming hair Floating like sea-weed on the tide of wind, Coal-black and lustreless—to feed the sea. But after each poor sacrifice, despair, Like the returning wave that bore it far, Rushed surging back upon her sickening heart; While evermore she moaned, low-voiced, between— Half-muttered and half-moaned: "Ye'll hae me yet; Ye'll ne'er be saired, ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald |
