"Iron-grey" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... world, the one from which it had been faithfully copied. It was originally meant for a handsome face, but the features were exaggerated until they became grotesque and coarse in the extreme, and the thick, bushy, iron-grey hair and whiskers, and clay-coloured complexion, put the finishing strokes to a portrait, which might be considered ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... person, as Leander now perceived, and he had a close-trimmed iron-grey beard, a high colour, quick eyes, and a stiff hard-lipped mouth—not at all the kind of man to trifle with. And yet Leander felt no inclination to tell him his story; the stranger might be a reporter, and his adventure would "get into ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... He had bushy iron-grey hair and moustache, and tufts of curly grey beard grew around his chin and ears. His nose was large and sun-burned; and every now and again he would stop in his caged-animal walk and sniff the air as though he ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... say, you know,' snorted Pancks, taking one of his dirty hands out of his rusty iron-grey pockets to bite his nails, if he could find any, and turning his beads of eyes upon his employer, 'whether they're poor or not. They say they are, but they all say that. When a man says he's rich, you're generally sure he isn't. Besides, if they ARE poor, you can't help it. You'd be poor ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... rushed on deck, and clung to rails and stays and whatever else afforded a hold. Among those who staggered from the companion way was a tall thin man, spectacled, with iron-grey hair and beard, and somewhat rounded shoulders. Linking arms with him was a young man of twenty-two or twenty-three: the likeness between them proclaimed them father and son. The older man was Dr. Thesiger ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... senora," he continued, baring his curly iron-grey head to Mrs. Gould in her landau—"and then, senora, we shall convert our swords into plough-shares and grow rich. Even I, myself, as soon as this little business is settled, shall open a fundacion on some land I have on the llanos and try to make ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... for lights, and his visitors closed the door of the study behind them. Dr. Blundell's backward glance showed him the tall and portly form silhouetted against the window; the last gleam of daylight illuminating the iron-grey hair; the face turned towards the hilltop, where the spires of the skeleton larches were sharply outlined against a clear ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... later Freckles had the elevator on the ground floor, and was sitting there reading a paper, when he heard a step that made him prick up his ears. The next minute Mr. Ludlow turned the corner. He was immaculately dressed, as usual, and his iron-grey moustache seemed to stand out just a little more pompously than ever. There was a sneering look in his eyes as he stepped into the car. It seemed to be saying: "They thought they could beat me, did they? Oh, ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... than a common seal. They have none of that long hair which distinguishes the lion. Theirs is all of an equal length, and finer than that of the lion, something like an otter's, and the general colour is that of an iron-grey. This is the kind which the French call sea-wolfs, and the English seals; they are, however, different from the seals we have in Europe and North America. The lions may, too, without any great impropriety, be called ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... Iron-grey hair hung in thick locks over his forehead, and, shining through their shadows, his eyes drew attention from the rest of his face, so that none noticed at first the small and firmly cut nose, nor the scanty growth of beard twisted to a point ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... agitation pervading the tout ensemble of the man, will not be dissembled. Nay; those acute promontories of the face, narrow and sharp, and that low, reclining forehead, and head covered with bristly iron-grey hair, standing erect in rugged tufts, are too strong an index of character for all the disguises ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... very small percentage of them had the least idea that this tall spare man, with the iron-grey hair and the thin, firm, resolute face, who wore his American-cut evening clothes with such careless ease, was the sole proprietor of the Grand Babylon, and possibly the richest man in Europe. As has already been stated, Racksole was not a ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... manners and conversation and her distinguished appearance. She was tall and stately and in her decorous garb of black silk that could have "stood alone," and an elegant cap of "real" lace with lavender ribbons softening the precise waves of her iron-grey hair, she made a most impressive figure—one that would have inspired with profound respect any male creature living saving that incorrigible non-respecter of persons and personages, especially of ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... ill, exceedingly low-spirited, and persuaded that death was not far distant, she appeared before him in a dark-coloured gown, which his bad sight, and worse apprehensions, made him mistake for an iron-grey. "'Why do you delight,' said he, 'thus to thicken the gloom of misery that surrounds me? is not here sufficient accumulation of horror without anticipated mourning?'—'This is not mourning, Sir!' said I, drawing ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... to account for his terror. He raced to the veranda and fell down, the blood spurting from his nose and his face iron-grey. Then he gurgled—"I have seen the Memsahib! ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... and shining of a sudden, roved over the grim ruins. Sparrows were chattering on the window ledges and swallows were diving into the black mouths of the towering chimneys. The memory of her father swelled her heart near to bursting. She could see his iron-grey head bending over the desk; she could hear his rough but kindly voice. Why, whenever he entered the house his splendid physical energy seemed to radiate health and cheerfulness, infecting all those ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... numerous, but not widely sitting diet had yet well opened its proceedings—"tramp, tramp, across the land," came, flying at full speed, boar-spear in hand, our madcap huntress; and without other note of preparation sounded than their own thunder, her iron-grey's hoofs were in the thick of the sage assembly, causing an indecorous trepidation, combined with devastation dire ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... mouth to protest and shut it resolutely, turned and walked down the room ruffling his hair, so that when he went back to Aymer, his iron-grey thatch was more picturesque ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... with all his native wildness, "hath a smooth aspect framed to make women" saints; his very unusual size and height are carried off and moulded into elegance by the most admirable symmetry of form and ease of gesture; his sable locks, his clear iron-grey complexion, and firm-set features, turn the raw, uncouth Scotchman into the likeness of a noble Italian picture; and even his distortion of sight only redeems the otherwise "faultless monster" within the bounds of humanity, and, when ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... in the station watching the throng emerging from the coaches of the train her cousin had given as hers. A tall, straight woman, large without being stout, her plain face, with large, irregular features, framed in plainly parted iron-grey hair, was singularly strong and fine, and her grey eyes betokened experience bravely met. As she scanned the face of every young girl in the procession, there was something so staunch and true in her appearance as to make it ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... remarkable appearance. Much older than Mr. Goodchild had expected, for he was at least two-and-fifty; but, that was nothing. What was startling in him was his remarkable paleness. His large black eyes, his sunken cheeks, his long and heavy iron-grey hair, his wasted hands, and even the attenuation of his figure, were at first forgotten in his extraordinary pallor. There was no vestige of colour in the man. When he turned his face, Francis Goodchild started as if a stone figure had ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... more brought her to 41, the corner house. The thin passage and the meagre staircase confirmed Esther in the impression she had received from the aspect of the street; and she felt that the place was more suitable to the gaunt woman with iron-grey hair who waited in the passage. This woman looked apprehensively at Esther, and when Esther said that she had come after the place a painful change of expression passed over her face, and ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... situated in other quarters. They mustered most thickly, however, about the castle, which stands to-day on the summit of its citadel hill—the Oshiroyama—solid as when first built long centuries ago, a vast and sinister shape, all iron-grey, rising against the sky from a cyclopean foundation of stone. Fantastically grim the thing is, and grotesquely complex in detail; looking somewhat like a huge pagoda, of which the second, third, and fourth stories ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... married my mother, a Miss Ferreira, whose name—like mine and her mother's—was Benita. She was one of two sisters, and her father, Andreas Ferreira, who married an English lady, was half Dutch and half Portuguese. I remember him well, a fine old man with dark eyes and an iron-grey beard. He was wealthy as things went in those days—that is to say, he had lots of land in Natal and the Transvaal, and great herds of stock. So you see I am half English, some Dutch, and more than a quarter Portuguese—quite a mixture of races. ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... intermingled cries of "He is coming again! Save me!" directed the eyes of all to a figure, who was now perceived slowly making his way through the crowd below the bar. It was the aged Evellin advancing with feeble steps; his majestic form clad in a loose, black, serge gown, and his iron-grey hair and beard waving neglected over his breast and shoulders; his arched brows were still more elevated by disdain, while, glancing his eyes from his screaming sister and her trembling husband, he fixed their unextinguished lustre ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... from the sun, and he was brought to terra firma by the breaking forth of the sunshine. On this he became aware that he was being watched attentively by a fellow-traveller opposite to him, an elderly gentleman with a large head and iron-grey hair. ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... excess of bustling readiness for anything, the dark brown hair of Mrs. William was carefully smoothed down, and waved away under a trim tidy cap, in the most exact and quiet manner imaginable. Whereas Mr. William's very trousers hitched themselves up at the ankles, as if it were not in their iron-grey nature to rest without looking about them, Mrs. William's neatly-flowered skirts—red and white, like her own pretty face—were as composed and orderly, as if the very wind that blew so hard out of doors could not disturb one of their folds. Whereas his coat ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... service and accompany me to the uttermost parts of the earth, if so it might please me. The dogs, Thunder and Juno, also formed part of my train, having found a home with Piet during my absence at the war. Also, in addition to Prince, there were two other horses, one being a fine, sturdy iron-grey Basuto cob named Tempest, and the other a very useful chestnut named Punch, which I had purchased chiefly for Piet's use when we should arrive in the elephant country. The remaining member of my retinue was a Bantu boy named ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... a look of scorn on his hard, iron-grey face, and of such settled fierceness as made me quite believe the tales I had heard of his deadly fights in the mines at the coast. Before any reply could be made, the minister drove up and called out in a cheery voice, ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... excellent Faido beer can be had. The old lady who keeps the house would make a perfect Fate; I saw her sitting at her window spinning, and looking down over the Ticino valley as though it were the world and she were spinning its destiny. She had a somewhat stern expression, thin lips, iron-grey eyes, and an aquiline nose; her scanty locks straggled from under the handkerchief which she wore round her head. Her employment and the wistful far-away look she cast upon the expanse below made a very fine ensemble. "She would have afforded," ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... chin sunk on his breast, the clumsy folds of his coat, his clasped hands, his motionless pose, so curiously suggestive of his having been simply left there. Time had passed indeed: it had overtaken him and gone ahead. It had left him hopelessly behind with a few poor gifts: the iron-grey hair, the heavy fatigue of the tanned face, two scars, a pair of tarnished shoulder-straps; one of those steady, reliable men who are the raw material of great reputations, one of those uncounted lives that are buried without drums and trumpets under the foundations ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... while he knocked. The door was opened by a wee feeble old man, about sixty, with a sharp clever face, and an iron-grey rough head ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... to him in reply, I glanced (I need not say with how much interest) at his face. It was a handsome, lively, quick face, full of change and motion; and his hair was a silvered iron-grey. I took him to be nearer sixty than fifty, but he was upright, hearty, and robust. From the moment of his first speaking to us his voice had connected itself with an association in my mind that I could not define; but now, all at once, a something ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... broad-shouldered man was he, with iron-grey hair, and a very prominent nose that was too strongly curved to be called aquiline, and which, with his angular face, equally tanned to a brick-dust hue from exposure to wind and weather, gave him a sort ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... man, of middle height, with very respectable iron-grey hair that stood almost upright upon his head, but with a poor, inexpressive, thin face below it. He was given to bowing a good deal, rubbing his hands together, smiling courteously, and to the making of many civil little speeches; but his strength ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... to see an old gentleman advance to the door of the pew in front of them—a formidable-looking old gentleman, with a sallow face, long iron-grey locks, full grey eyes, a hook-nose, and prominent teeth under a yellowish-grey moustache ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... with head erect facing it. His eyes for the nonce seemed little to peruse his outer features; the grey gathered brows, and the wrinkles much action of them had traced over the circles half up his high straight forehead; the iron-grey hair that rose over his forehead and fell away in the fashion of Richard's plume. His general appearance showed the tints of years; but none of their weight, and nothing of the dignity of his youth, was gone. It was so far satisfactory, but his eyes were ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was about the last person one would have thought of associating with fish-catching—an exceedingly towny- looking person indeed, one who from his conversation appeared to know nothing outside of his business. He was past middle age—oldish-looking for a traveller—his iron-grey hair brushed well up to hide the baldness on top, disclosing a pair of large ears which stood out like handles; a hatchet face with parchment skin, antique side whiskers, and gold-rimmed glasses ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... pointed grey beard, and a complexion the colour of the red hematites on which Bilbao, his native town, is built, and which Bilbao ruthlessly plucks from its very body to exchange for gold in the markets of England—and in the deep sockets under the high aggressive forehead prolonged by short iron-grey hair, two eyes like gimlets eagerly watching the world through spectacles which seem to be purposely pointed at the object like microscopes; a fighting expression, but of noble fighting, above the prizes of the passing world, ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... if you have," replied the older priest, leaning back in his chair and looking at him keenly from under his thick, iron-grey eyebrows. "You only said what has been in the hearts and souls of a good many of us for a long time, but it was given to you to say it and, let us hope, also the inspiration to say it ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... The poor Cardinal de Bourbon languished sadly in his palace, devoting his revenues to works in the Cathedral, till he died in 1823 at the beginning of the reaction, leaving his place to Inguanzo, the tribune of absolutism, a prelate with iron-grey whiskers, who had made his career as deputy in the Cortes at Cadiz, attacking as deputy every sort of reform, and advocating a return to the times of the Austrians as the surest means of saving ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... side the officers did their duty nobly; but General Fraser was the most eminent of them all, restoring order wherever the line began to waver, and infusing fresh courage into his men by voice and example. Mounted on an iron-grey charger, and dressed in the full uniform of a general officer, he was conspicuous to foes as well as to friends. The American Colonel Morgan thought that the fate of the battle rested on this gallant man's life, and calling several of his best marksman round him, pointed ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... still, tired though they looked; there was sweetness and firmness about her lined mouth. Heaven knows who had dressed her. She wore a skimpy tweed skirt and a cheap nun's veiling blouse, and on her iron-grey hair was perched rakishly a forlorn broken picture-hat of faded green, chiffon with a knot of bright red ribbon to give the bizarre touch of colour she had learned ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... know," said Mrs. Covill, an iron-grey haired lady of decided presence and possessing a hooked nose. "I can't understand it in a man of Mr. Grey's business-like ways. Now he's just the sort of man whom I should have expected would have been here at least an hour before ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... himself away, though he had promised not to interfere with the girl. He stayed on at the hotel over night. He saw the other fellow at the evening meal: a small, middle-aged man with iron-grey hair and a curious face, like a monkey's, but interesting, in its way almost beautiful. Brangwen guessed that he was a foreigner. He was in company with another, an Englishman, dry and hard. The four sat at table, two men and two women. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... at the tea-table. She was tall and thin, with something of her brother's good looks, but none of his over-flowing vitality. Her iron-grey hair was rolled back from her forehead; she wore a black dress with a high collar of white lawn, and long white cuffs. Little Mrs. Amberley, the Rector's wife, sitting beside her, envied her hostess her figure, and her long slender neck. She herself had long since parted with any semblance ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of this conclusion, indeed, is beyond doubt—for not only does the 'Enge-ena' agree with Battell's "greater monster" in its hollow eyes, its great stature, and its dun or iron-grey colour, but the only other man-like Ape which inhabits these latitudes—the Chimpanzee—is at once identified, by its smaller size, as the "lesser monster," and is excluded from any possibility of being the 'Pongo,' by the fact that ...
— Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... peculiarly vicious face that he saw, corrugated about the brows, and with stiff iron-grey hair untrimmed about the ears. It shocked Romarin a little; he had hardly looked to see certain things so accentuated by the passage of time. Romarin's own brow was high and bald and benign, and his beard was like ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions |
