"Murky" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the pair had started forth in the murky twilight of the autumn evening; but the moon was rising and the mists were dispersing. Before they had left the houses behind they could see the road clear before them, and were able to give their impatient steeds their heads, and travel at a steady ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... is a marsh on a mountain top, the great, wet, and soggy plain of the Pocono and Broad mountains. When the fugitives from Wyoming entered it, it was covered with a dense growth of pines, growing mostly out of dark, murky water, which in its turn was thick with a growth of moss and aquatic plants. Snakes and all kinds of creeping things swarmed in the ooze. ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... then he thought he was not at the right point of view; then he was compelled to confess to himself that darkness was assuredly where before had been a bright spot like one of the stars that shine in murky heavens in the midst of storms to prove that God ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... third-class railway station in which the sign "First Class Waiting Room" glared an outrage and a mockery, and were marshalled into the waiting train. The wonderful experience of which Paul had dreamed for weeks—he had never ridden in a train before—began; and soon the murky environs of the town were left behind and the train ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... murky air, Dank lurid meteors shoot a livid gleam; From the dark storm-clouds flashes a fearful glare, It shows the bending oak, the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... yonder to the East," said the old man, as he began to lead the way across the murky and still smoking plain; "little fear of cold feet in journeying such a path as this: but look you off to the East, and if you see a sheet of shining white, glistening like a plate of beaten silver through the openings of the smoke, why that is water. A noble stream is running ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... became a hurricane, which it did later. We were warmly welcomed by Mrs. R-; and here I am in my old room, looking over the beautiful bay, quite at home again. It blew all yesterday, and having rather a sore-throat I stayed in bed, and to-day is all bright and beautiful. But Capetown looks murky after Caledon and Worcester; there is, to my eyes, quite a haze over the mountains, and they look far off and indistinct. All is comparative in this world, even African skies. At Caledon, the most distant ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... 'The great murky Thames,' he said, 'wearies, but it is very wonderful. Ah, Landor's "Hellenics" in the original Latin: how did that book ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... boat could venture to leave the shore, much less encounter the seething billows on the Eddystone. As each night drew on, one by one the lights glimmered out above the rock, until the bright beams of the fully illuminated lantern poured like a flood through the murky air, and then men went home to their firesides, relieved to know that, whatever might be wrong, the keepers were at all events able to attend to ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne
... policeman at the corner, the "bar-keep'" in the dive, the ward politician in the corner grocery. The general verdict of Dunstable was that the Point would have been hell without the priest. It was perhaps not precisely heaven with him; but such light of the upper sky as pierced its murky atmosphere was reflected from Don Egidio's countenance. It is hardly possible for any one to exercise such influence without taking pleasure in it; and on the whole the priest was probably a contented man; though it does not follow that he was a happy one. On this point the first ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... vision is the symptom of success. The next step is indicated by a change in the atmosphere of the field. Instead of reflecting or remaining translucent, the agent will appear to cloud over. This will appear to become milky, then to be diffused with colour which changes to black or murky brown, and finally the screen appears to be drawn away, revealing a picture, a scene, figures in ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial
... the dome is murky, the cross tarnished, the outline dim, the red brick dull, the whiteness gone. In summer there is occasionally a bluish haze about the distant buildings. These are the same changes presented by the Downs in the country, and betoken the state of the atmosphere as clearly. ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... Spanish and the French, succeeded in winter by Americans, Germans, and English—with a sprinkling of Russians at all times. Biarritz, like Pau, aside from being a really delightful winter resort, where one may escape the rigors of murky November to March in London, is becoming afflicted with a bad case of "sport fever." There are all kinds of sports, some of them reputable enough in their place, but the comic-opera fox-hunting which takes place at Pau and Biarritz is not ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... under his feet glowed with brilliant gas-light. The next moment, and a few smoky street lamps failed to reveal the broken flagging on which he trod. Now and then the gleam of a coarse tallow candle swaling gloomily away by some sick bed, threw its murky light across his path. Still, but for the cold moonlight, Chester would have found much difficulty in making his rounds in the poor man's district. Yet here he remained longest; here his step always grew heavy and his ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... Leander," she said; "for, goddess as I am, I am drooping under this persistent obduracy. Somewhere beyond this murky labyrinth, it may be that I shall find a shrine where I am yet honoured. I will go forth, and never rest till I have found it, and my troubled spirits are revived by the incense for which I have languished so long. I am weary of abasing ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... lamps were but misty splotches of diffused light which threw a feeble circular glimmer upon the slimy pavement. The yellow glare from the shop-windows streamed out into the steamy, vaporous air, and threw a murky, shifting radiance across the crowded thoroughfare. There was, to my mind, something eerie and ghost-like in the endless procession of faces which flitted across these narrow bars of light,—sad faces and glad, haggard and merry. Like all human kind, they ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... double stratum of murky clouds generally observed over the surface of the Mediterranean previous to a violent storm or an earthquake. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... with dense, murky vapours, which totally hid the sun, and the air was excessively hot, moist, and sultry as before a thunderstorm—an unusual phenomenon in Womla. Black boulders and crags, speckled with lichens, and carpeted with coarse herbage, shut out the prospect on every side but one, where the edge of ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... expects those hymns for shrimp and prawn, Or the mellifluous chaunt from the black gorge Of Orpheus inside a murky skin, Who looked the gold sun in the eye While garden mists grew ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... Aphrodite—the adoration of all Venice—the gayest of the gay—the most lovely where all were beautiful—but still the young wife of the old and intriguing Mentoni, and the mother of that fair child, her first and only one, who now, deep beneath the murky water, was thinking in bitterness of heart upon her sweet caresses, and exhausting its little life in struggles to call ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the sunlessness, as the old Fate woman at Ronco can do when she sits in winter at her window; or again, I should like to see how things would look from this same window on a leaden morning in midwinter after snow has fallen heavily and the sky is murky and much darker than the earth. When the storm is at its height, the snow must search and search and search even through the double windows with which the houses are protected. It must rest upon the frames of the pictures of saints, and of the sisters ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... heavily, persistently, provokingly. Now and then came a crash of thunder which seemed to shake the earth; vivid lightning cut zigzags in the murky sky. The little islands of the Babuyan group in the Balintang channel seemed to rock in the arms ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... once the swamp changed and chilled to a dull grayness; tall, dull trees started down upon the murky waters; and long pendent streamings of moss-like tears dripped from tree to earth. Slowly and warily ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... his hat to look up at the Bell tower when he came to the old church on his return. He halted there a moment, from habit: and knew that it was growing dark, and that the steeple rose above him, indistinct and faint, in the murky air. He knew, too, that the Chimes would ring immediately; and that they sounded to his fancy, at such a time, like voices in the clouds. But he only made the more haste to deliver the Alderman's letter, ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... from his slumber starts; Reckless of toil and danger, if he win The tributary meed of grateful hearts. From pavement rough, or frozen ground, His engine's rattling wheels resound, And soon before his eyes The lurid flames, with horrid glare, Mingled with murky vapors rise, In wreathy folds upon the air, And ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... that! But what's civil liberty to religious liberty, and emancipated disenthraldom from the dark despotism of yonder terrific prince of darkness! whose broad, black, piniony wings spread wide o'er the aerial concave like a dense cloud upon a murky sky?—(A-a-men!)—And ain't it, ye men of yards and measures, philosophical to make a noise about this?—(Amen!—yes!) Yes! yes! and I ain't ashamed to rejoice and shout aloud. Ay! as long as the prophet was ordered to stamp with his foot, I will stamp with my foot;—(here ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... the noisome chasm a sound did at last rise to our ears out of its murky depths. High, clear, and throbbing, it tinkled for an instant out of the abyss, to be succeeded by the same deadly stillness ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of Wessel rent Thy murky sky! Then champions to thine arms were sent; Terror and Death glared where he went; From the waves was heard a wail, that rent Thy murky sky! From Denmark, thunders Tordenskiold, Let each to Heaven ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... fellow, my dear Kate; I recognized it first at St. George's dinner to Mr. Poe, and if I may say so, a much-abused young man whose only sin is that he, like many another about us, has been born under a waning star in a sky full of murky clouds; one that the fresh breeze of a new civilization will some day clear away"—a deduction which Kate could not quite grasp, but which comforted ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... and slowly, grumbling and murmuring among themselves. The captain's manner, as he urged them on with oaths and threats, convinced me we were in danger. I looked again to windward. The one little cloud had enlarged to a great bank of murky vapor, and the sea at the horizon had changed ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... was very comfortable to sit before the fire, which protested, in a fire's cheery, human way, against the depression of the murky world ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... with an industrial war plainly threatened and partially commenced, the doctrine of Association appears as a mediator and reconciler. Its bow of promise shines broadly in the lurid sky; it irradiates the murky visage of the gathering, muttering tempest. It awakens a hope, and the only well grounded hope, of averting the miseries of an insane struggle between those who ought to be the closest allies, to see which can the more injure the other. Need I urge that in this crisis the ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... the horse with his whip, and we dashed away through the endless succession of sombre and deserted streets, which widened gradually, until we were flying across a broad balustraded bridge, with the murky river flowing sluggishly beneath us. Beyond lay another dull wilderness of bricks and mortar, its silence broken only by the heavy, regular footfall of the policeman, or the songs and shouts of some belated party of revellers. A dull wrack was drifting slowly across ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... as it rose, shone with blinding glory upon peaceful miles. Nowhere was a sign of wallow, path or road, and the coulee yawned, white-lipped. Even the Missouri was not unchanged. For, away to the northwest, there had been a mighty rainstorm, and the murky river tumbled by in waves that were angry ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... blow must have been to her, sat silent and motionless, having already learnt by her misfortunes the awful necessity for suppressing under an impassive exterior her affections and sorrows, her hopes and fears. In the dead of night, amid storms and murky rain, which were thought to indicate the wrath of heaven, the last of the Claudii was hastily and meanly hurried into ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... plank was swept from under him, and he was buried in an overwhelming rush of water. Over and over he was rolled along the bottom of the flume. Then he was tossed to the surface. For an instant he had a glimpse of Nat also struggling in the murky flood, on which the moon ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... cigarettes and the ends glowed in the darkness, each one illuminating a face as the smoke was drawn in. Someone lit a candle and the bright flame dazzled us at first. Another man got up and threw immense black shadows. The recesses of the tent were full of murky gloom. ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... looked westwards up toward the slopes of Chatterley Wood, where as a child she used to go with other children to pick the sparse bluebells that thrived on smoke. The bailiwick of Turnhill lay behind her; and all the murky district of the Five Towns, of which Turnhill is the northern outpost, lay to the south. At the foot of Chatterley Wood the canal wound in large curves on its way towards the undefiled plains of Cheshire and the sea. On the canal-side, exactly opposite ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... Jurgen, "to deal directly with your principal, especially if he can explain the polity of this insane and murky country. Do some of you conduct me to him in such state as ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... ami," exclaimed our friend JULES, during the recent murky weather in Town, "you ask me the difference between our Paris and your London. Tenez, I will tell you. Paris is always tres gai, veritablement gai; but London is toujours faux gai—you see it is always fo-gay." ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, Jan. 2, 1892 • Various
... now the grass exhales a murky dew, The humid pall of life-extinguished clay, In sainted fame the sacred fathers grew, Nor raised their pious voices but to pray. Where now the bats their wavering wings extend, Soon as the gloaming spreads her warning shade, The choir did oft their mingling vespers blend, Or matin ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... was attracted to him in very repulsion, and could not help wandering in and out every half-hour or so, and taking another look at him. Still, the long, long night seemed heavy and hopeless as ever, and no promise of day was in the murky sky. ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... enter the precincts of the Palais Royal, that place of perdition where he had spent fifty francs at Very's in a single day, and nearly five hundred francs on his clothes; and when he yielded to temptation, and saw Fleury, Talma, the two Baptistes, or Michot, he went no further than the murky passage where theatre-goers used to stand in a string from half-past five in the afternoon till the hour when the doors opened, and belated comers were compelled to pay ten sous for a place near the ticket-office. ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... time for action has arrived. The dark cloud comes driving on, and is soon around the ship, lapping her in its damp murky embrace. It clings to her bulwarks, pours over her canvas still spread, wetting it till big drops clout down upon ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... true no leaden coffin enclosed his relics, nor did the murky vault of his ancestors, open with creaking hinge to receive another of the race. No escutcheon darkened the porch whence they bore him; and no long train of mourners followed his remains to ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... where the waves Loud thundered, and the streams of ocean beat Against the shore. Full glad was that brave saint To see upon the sands a galley fair 240 Wide-bosomed. Then, behold, resplendent dawn, Brightest of beacons, came upon her way, Hasting from out the murky gloom of night, And heaven's candle shone across the floods. Three seamen saw he there, a glorious band, Courageous men, upon their ocean-bark Sitting all ready to depart, like men Just come across the deep. ...
— Andreas: The Legend of St. Andrew • Unknown
... made no reply, and we went out, passing down to the breakwater and boarding the waiting launch. With her crew of three, the party numbered seven that swung out into the Pool, and, clearing the pier, drew in again and hugged the murky shore. ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... McKenna, an inseparable friend. Sir Charles's speech, which he counted to have been the best of his life, dealt briefly with the leading political topics of the day—Home Rule and the Radical programme—but soon passed to the personal issue. He recalled the change from the murky dreariness of March to the height of summer loveliness which reigned about them, and the change no less great in the moral atmosphere. He reviewed the history of the attacks that had been made, the avowed determination to prevent his being their member; ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... nameless flowers, Culled in cold and rawky hours For my Mary's happy home. They grew in murky blea, Rush fields and naked lea, But suns will shine and pleasing Spring ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... 'Red Lion,' or whatever they call it." He put a hand, rather timidly, on her sleeve, and Toni allowed him to lead her towards the entrance of the hotel, whose lamps shone bravely through the fog, making blurred splashes of yellow light in the murky ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... cellars and wait for their own walls to tumble in on them and crush the life from their bodies. The voice of one in sore straits came up, it seemed to him, from the Rue des Voyards, shouting: "Help! murder!" amid the clash of arms. He bent over the terrace to look, then remained aloft there in the murky thickness of the night where there was not a star to cheer him, wrapped in such an ecstasy of terror that the hairs of his ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... for Turkey, Lord knows when we shall come back! Breezes foul and tempests murky May unship us in a crack. But, since life at most a jest is, As philosophers allow, Still to laugh by far the best is, Then laugh on—as I do now. Laugh at all things, Great and small things, Sick or well, at sea or shore; While we're quaffing, Let's have laughing— Who the devil cares for ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... last: too late, though, to flush out the gutters. We needed it a month ago.—I say, Hackh, if you don't mind, you might as well cheer up. From now on, it's pure heads and tails. We're all under fire together." Glancing out of window at the murky sky, he added thoughtfully, "One excellent side to living without hope, maskee fashion: one isn't specially afraid. I'll take you to your office, and you can make a start. Nothing ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... they had felt came back to their memories as they gazed down at the murky stream, rushing furiously along, now evidently many feet deeper than when they had passed that way; and Melchior drew their attention to the fact that it must have been much higher up the rocks on the ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... went all alone to meet the band. The moon was shining, clock-like, full i' th' sky, When, suddenly, some careful clockwright passed A cloud of cotton-wool across the case That held this silver watch. And, presto! heigh! The night was inky black, and all the quays Were hidden in the murky dark. Gadsooks! One could see ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... bleed with pain, As murky clouds drip down the rain! O God, heal me of this heart ache, For thy ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones
... yet shows him, in a ghastly way, the example of murder. Is she very weak, or very trustful in him, or infirm, or old? It gives a hideous courage to what would be mere slaughter otherwise; for there it is, a presence always about her, darkly menacing him with that penalty whose murky secret has a fascination for all secret and unwholesome thoughts. And when he struggles with his victim at the last, "though he should be hanged for it", it is a merciless wrestle, not with one weak life only, but with ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... should have). And as they were somewhat down-hearted, so it seemed by the aspect of all things that afternoon. It was not yet the evening, as is aforesaid, but the day was worn and worsened, and all things looked weary. The sky was a little clouded, but not much; yet was it murky down in the south-east, and there was a threat of storm in it, and in the air close round each man's head, and in the very waving of the leafy boughs. There was by this time little doing in field and fold (for the kine were milked), and the women were coming ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... its murky disk as the miles streamed past, breeding a legion of shadows welcome to the fabric-clad monster skimming through them and to the creatures who blinked and stirred as night approached. The stream broadened into shallow pockets; ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore
... foreargued cause, Any aggrievance, any allegation, Didst, like a coward traitor, run from me? Thou man of snow! thou art assailed by this— Be sure of it—thou art begrimed as black As if thou hadst been hanged a thousand years Under the murky cope of Pluto's den. Oh agony! but thou shalt know my soul, Which gropes for daggers at the thought of this. Yea, from the day-beams of adoring love, Goes headlong to as vast a reprobation. Thou, Theseus, wast a cloud, and I a cloud, Quickened from thee with such pervading flame, As that ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... return, by Absence crown'd, 15 And scatter livelier roses round. The Sun who ne'er remits his fires On heedless eyes may pour the day: The Moon, that oft from Heaven retires, Endears her renovated ray. 20 What though she leave the sky unblest To mourn awhile in murky vest? When she relumes her lovely light, We bless the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... looked up and beheld a sickly radiance overhead—it was the sun, ever so far away; it shone as when seen through thickly smoked glasses. Then a veil seemed to be withdrawn. The light grew clearer—the song of the penitents jubilant with hope. Sullen gleams, now, pierced the murky air. Outlines of trees and houses crept furtively into their old places. The fall of ashes had almost ceased. With a wrench, as it seemed, the final covering was drawn away. The land lay flooded ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... resolve that to-morrow should see him on the road to Amalfi. He had slept well—an exception in the past week—and his mind was open to the influences of sunlight and reason. Before going forth for breakfast he had a letter to write, a brief account of himself addressed to the murky little town of Sowerby Bridge, in Yorkshire. This finished, he threw open the big windows, stepped out on to the balcony, and drank deep draughts of air from the sea. In the street below was passing a flock of ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... family of Sakya. He possessed, so the believers said, the highest enlightenment, he remembered his previous lives, he had reached the nirvana and never returned into the cycle, was never again submerged in the murky river of physical forms. Many wonderful and unbelievable things were reported of him, he had performed miracles, had overcome the devil, had spoken to the gods. But his enemies and disbelievers said, this Gotama was a vain seducer, he would spent his days in luxury, ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... the bare planking, and my outstretched hand touched a wall from which the paper was hanging in ribbons. Holmes's cold, thin fingers closed round my wrist and led me forward down a long hall, until I dimly saw the murky fanlight over the door. Here Holmes turned suddenly to the right and we found ourselves in a large, square, empty room, heavily shadowed in the corners, but faintly lit in the centre from the lights of the street beyond. There was no lamp near, and the ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... built sections of bulkhead, and he went down and groped in the murky water, and spiked the braces and set those sections and calked the spaces ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... of autumn in London had not only laid down its wearied head under the dark canopy of a murky atmosphere, lit with dimmed street-lamps to its slumbers, but its expected refreshment in the country did not offer much more agreeable materials for repose and vernal renovation. There were blustering ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... never see. God willed, no doubt, to open to this elect the treasures of eternal beatitude, at the hour when other men tremble with the idea of being severely received by the Lord, and cling to this life they know, in the dread of the other life of which they get a glimpse by the dismal, murky torches of death. Athos was guided by the pure and serene soul of his son, which aspired to be like the paternal soul. Everything for this just man was melody and perfume in the rough road which souls take to return to the ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... the imperial sway of dull maroons, sullen Pompeiian reds, and sombre murky olives had never cast encroaching shadows upon the dainty brightness of tender rose and blue, nor toned down the silvery reflection of the great sea of waters that flashed under the sunshine like some ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... yards or so of comparatively easy progress, the shafts of twilight from the loopholes ceased to permeate the murky darkness in which she walked, and she was obliged to go more slowly, and to feel her way dubiously by the touch of hands ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... lighted by the will-o'-the-wisp alone: no breath of spring cheers the murky solitude in which I dwell. The ox and the barb herd together in one stall: the rooster and the phoenix feed together from one dish. Exposed to mist and dew, I had many times thought to die; and yet, through ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... lolling aisles of comrades In and out of sleep, Troops of faces To and fro of happy feet, They haunt my eyes. Their murky faces beckon me From the spaces of the coolness of the sea Their fitful bodies away against ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... the smokers dimly recognised the distraction. Then, as he moved on, they sank down again upon their wooden pillows, and with slow, infinite pains, set themselves to roll their bits of opium, to cook it over the dim lamps that dotted the murky atmosphere with glints of light, and ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... wrong. At the Imperial, said Mr. Shaw, the curtain rose on profound gloom. When you could see anything you saw eld and severity—old men with white hair impersonating the gallant young sons of Ornulf—everywhere murky ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... the semi-darkness. They were away in the country before the faintest gleam of daylight broke through the eastern clouds. Even then the way was still obscured. It was a stormy morning, and banks of murky clouds were piled up where the sun should have risen. The rain still fell. Soon they commenced to ascend a range of hills. At the ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... or gloom, corresponding to the sentiment which pervades them. How, for instance, in Les Orientales, that exquisite little gem, Sarah la Baigneuse, flashes and sparkles with light! How striking in La Fin de Satan is the contrast between the murky atmosphere in which the maker of crosses works and the bright sunshine in which Christ's triumphant entry into Jerusalem is bathed! With what consummate art the darkness of the Crucifixion is made to accentuate ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... man are not theirs.—This world is for them no home, but a dingy prison-house, of reckless unthrift, rebellion, rancour, indignation against themselves and against all men. Is it a green, flowery world, with azure everlasting sky stretched over it, the work and government of a God; or a murky, simmering Tophet, of copperas fumes, cotton fuz, gin riot, wrath and toil, created by a Demon, ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... It goes, like murky bird or buccaneer That shapes its lawless figure on the main, And each new impulse tends to make outflee The unseemly instinct that had lodgment here; Yet, comrade old, can bitterer knowledge be Than that, though banned, such instinct ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... chemise, but race was race, and vestiges of native French chivalry stayed the gross simile on the lips of the degenerate. Fleda's eyes, however, took on a dark and brooding look which, more than anything else, showed the Romany in her. With a murky flood of resentment rising in her veins, she strove to fight back the half-savage instincts of a bygone life. She felt as though she could willingly sentence this man to death as her father had done Jethro Fawe that very morning. Another thought, however, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... murky gloom of Gothic vaults resulted in a poem so crude that even "Monk" Lewis, who was no connoisseur, would have declined it regretfully as a contribution to his Tales of Terror, but Fair Elenor is worthy of remembrance as an early indication of Walpole's influence, which was to become so ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... small dugout a dingy oil lamp shed its murky rays upon squalid surroundings. The place was reeking with the offensive odours exhaled from the burning oil. The atmosphere ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... had finished his business at the Bank, he went to the offices of Dobson & Barlow, the great ironworkers, whose four-hundred-and-ten-foot chimney towers into the murky sky so far above all other structures in Bolton that if you are approaching the town by road you see it and its crest of smoke long before ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... of a curtain, that was now entirely raised to give air to our dear invalid, and to amuse my children, who were watching the storm. The mighty waves that broke against the rocks, the vivid lightning bursting through the castles of murky clouds, the majestic and incessant rolling of the thunder, formed one of those enchanting spectacles to which they had been from infancy accustomed. As in the Swiss mountains we are liable to frightful storms, to which it is necessary to familiarize oneself, as one cannot avoid them, ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... heart that it was there to guide him; so he struck out towards it, with long silent strokes. He swam for a long time, the light shining softly over the water, and seeming to rise higher over his head, while the glimmering of the ship's lights grew fainter and more murky behind him. Then he became aware that he was drawing near to the land; great dark shapes loomed up over his head, and he heard the soft beating of waves before him. Then he could see too, as he ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... fists, Sammy tumbled down the ladder again. There was just enough light around the hatch to make the gloom where the boy and girl stood a sort of murky brown instead of the oppressive blackness of ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... lapsed confusedly down the opposite descent. The dark end of the room presented a cloud of gloomily fantastic shapes, swerved from the main stream, and becoming darker and more formless the farther they receded, till at the last they were lost in a murky shadow. Not entirely lost, however; for as Balder gazed awfully thitherward, the shadow seemed to resolve itself into a mass of intertwined and struggling beings, neither animal nor human, but combining the more unholy traits ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... of the advantage of a low horizon, he says:—"What gives sublimity to Rembrandt's Ecce Homo more than this principle? a composition which, though complete, hides in its grandeur the limits of its scenery. Its form is a pyramid, whose top is lost in the sky, as its base in tumultuous murky waves. From the fluctuating crowds who inundate the base of the tribunal, we rise to Pilate, surrounded and perplexed by the varied ferocity of the sanguinary synod to whose remorseless gripe he surrenders his wand, and from him we ascend to ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... the infirmary, with swollen and bandaged face, and eyes that still seemed to see everything in the murky light of his own blood, Clarence felt the soft weight of the father's hand ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... Jollity before. And the blacker things get the earlier we rise. It seems to me that no sooner have I fitted myself compactly into my doll's-size bed and closed my eyes than I hear her mournful summons to another day. Oh, the inky gloom of these murky mornings! I know that the young woman who said so lyrically, "If you're waking, call me early, call me early, Mother dear!" is popularly supposed to have died without issue, but that is a misconception. I shrink from putting a Spoon River scandal on her mossy tombstone, ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... of maniacs, or, oftentimes, like a pageant of phantoms. The great length of the streets in many quarters of London; the continual opening of transient glimpses into other vistas equally far stretching, going off at right angles to the one which you are traversing; and the murky atmosphere which, settling upon the remoter end of every long avenue, wraps its termination in gloom and uncertainty,—all these are circumstances aiding that sense of vastness and illimitable proportions which forever brood over the aspect of London in its interior. Much of ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... he slid off into the night. From somewhere in the murky middle distance came a scornful 'Hawg!' and he was gone, leaving me with a settled conviction that, while I had frequently had occasion, since my expedition to Sanstead began, to describe affairs as complex, their complexity had now reached its height. With a watchful ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... have some of the most beautiful features of landscape gardening: they abound with what artists consider bits of the picturesque. The quadrupeds and birds must surely rejoice at their removal from the murky dens of Exeter 'Change to so delightful a region as the present, even slightly as it assimilates with the luxuriance and vastness of their native ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 528, Saturday, January 7, 1832 • Various
... the fairest region in the world. We had exchanged the bleak regions of perpetual snow and of impenetrable barriers of ice for those of brightness and 'the rich hues of all glorious things.' We had left over our heads the murky sky and cold fogs of the frigid zone to revel under the azure ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... eleven o'clock, dismissed his hansom at the entrance to the square and walked thereinto through the thick mist, trusting to find his way home by reason of two years' familiarity with the precincts. As it was impossible to see even the glare of the near gas lamp in the murky air, Lucian felt his way cautiously along the railings. The square was filled with fog, dense to the eye and cold to the feel, so that Lucian shivered with the chill, in spite of the fur coat over ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... from the murky sink Many a disembodied ghost; And Peisander reached the coast To raise the spirit that he lost; With conviction strange and new, A gawky camel which he slew, Like ...
— The Symposium • Xenophon
... in London, fogs of murky yellow or of sheer black, such as have often made all work impossible to me, and held me, a sort of dyspeptic owl, in moping and blinking idleness. On such a day, I remember, I once found myself at an end both of coal and of lamp-oil, with no money to purchase ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... imagination which is usually exercised over those who behold Chance presented to them with spectacular piquancy without advancing far enough in its acquaintance to suffer from its ghastly reprisals and impish tricks. He beheld a hundred diametrically opposed wishes issuing from the murky intelligences around a table, and spreading down across each other upon the figured diagram in their midst, each to its own number. It was a network of hopes; which at the announcement, 'Sept, Rouge, Impair, et Manque,' disappeared like magic gossamer, to be replaced in a ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... shining brightly when Derrick stepped out into the street later in the evening, and though the air was somewhat chill it was by no means unpleasant. He had rather a long walk before him. He disliked the smoke and dust of the murky little town, and chose to live on its outskirts; but he was fond of sharp exercise, and regarded the distance between his lodging and the field of his ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... wilderness was melancholy, and there was a sound of casting-out, in the rattling of the iron-links, and the grating of the bolts and staples under Miss Abbey's hand. As she came beneath the lowering sky, a sense of being involved in a murky shade of Murder dropped upon her; and, as the tidal swell of the river broke at her feet without her seeing how it gathered, so, her thoughts startled her by rushing out of an unseen void ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... when he thought himself sure of him, the animal would gallop off in another direction. Out of all patience, he at length exclaimed, "What does possess that critter to act so to-day?" then glancing at the sky, which at the time happened to be overcast by dull murky clouds, he said: "It must be the weather." I chanced one day to be present when Uncle Ephraim was busily occupied in making some arithmetical calculations regarding his farm-products. The result not proving satisfactory he handed his slate to a ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... Graces, warm with May; Fling roses o'er her dewy way. The murmuring billows of the deep Have languished into silent sleep; And mark! the flitting sea-birds lave Their plumes in the reflecting wave; While cranes from hoary winter fly To flutter in a kinder sky. Now the genial star of day Dissolves the murky clouds away; And cultured field, and winding stream, Are ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... purple in the fields, A mocking bird sings gaily in the oaks, White fluffy clouds rest in the murky sky. It is yet cool, the maples scarcely stir, But noon will burn the grasses by the way And give the girl there at the soda fount A welcome trade. The heat will parch the earth, So that flowers will wilt and droop their charm. But night will come and bring ...
— Some Broken Twigs • Clara M. Beede
... those that desire the Day of God! Wherefore would ye have the Day of God? It is darkness and not light. It is when one flees from a lion, And a bear meets him; Or goes into a house and leans his hand upon a wall, And a serpent bites him. Shall not the Day of God be darkness and not light, Yea, murky darkness, ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... murky monopoly, Madam, is ended. Come down, my dear love, to my subterrene hall! I think you'll admit it is sparkling and splendid, As clean as a palace, not black as a pall. Electrical traction with sheer stupefaction Strikes Steam, the old buffer, and spoils his small game. You're off with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... pass, the height of the rocks, and the superadded towering of the trees above, but a small portion of the heavens was to be seen, and this was not blue, but of a misty murky grey. The first sensation was that of dizziness and confusion, from the unusual absence of the sky above, and the dashing frantic speed of the angry boiling waters. The rocks on each side have been blasted so as to form a path ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... syringa bush flaunted its cloying sweetness into his senses. Close at his left a riotous bloom of phlox clamored red-blue-purple-lavender-pink into his dazzled vision. Multi-colored pansies tiptoed velvet-footed across the grass. In soft murky mystery a flame-tinted smoke tree loomed up here and there like a faintly rouged ghost. Over everything, under everything, through everything, lurked a certain strange, novel, vibrating consciousness of occupancy. Bees in the rose ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... which, added to some maple sugar, a block of chocolate, and a few crackers, furnished a delightful repast. We had reached the top of the mountain about nine o'clock. By eleven the clouds again began to thicken, and grew so dark upon their under edges that we feared rain. McIntire had collected a murky company that threatened with the rumble of heavenly artillery. Wishing to descend the slide before a coming rain should render it slippery, we took a last look, and hastened away down the rocky slope, through the shrubby spruces, to the top of the slide, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... bombast, and, by its gentle influence, softens asperities and wins a smile from the face of sorrow, or discouragement, or anger. Its presence transforms discord into harmony, irradiates gloom, and evokes rare flowers from the murky soil of discontent. Whatever storms may rage elsewhere and whatever darkness may enshroud, it ever keeps its place as the center of a circle of calm and light. It is Venus of Milo come to life, silently distilling the beauty and ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... a moon behind the night. No suggestion of it showed through the clouds, yet from the pond surface itself came a weird twilight, filtered no doubt through a mile of flying scud a mile above, reflected from the wind-swept surface and showing these distant pines lifting heads of murk against the murky sky. But their antiphonal shout was no pine-voiced song of the sea, it was the sea itself. Again and again I listened in successive lulls. I could not believe it the pines. I heard so surely the rush of waves, the deep boom of beating surges, all the ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... a stone building—one of a small group of mine houses which stood in a cauldron depression above excavations. Rounded domes of rock towered above them. The sun, even at this tri-noon hour, was gone behind the heights above us. The murky shadows of night were gathering, the mists of the Lowlands settling. The tube-lights of the mine, strung between small metal poles, winked ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... his commander on the winter hunting-grounds of his Huron allies. As we turn the ancient, worm-eaten page which preserves the simple record of his fortunes, a wild and dreary scene rises before the mind,—a chill November air, a murky sky, a cold lake, bare and shivering forests, the earth strewn with crisp brown leaves, and, by the water-side, the bark sheds and smoking camp-fires of a band of Indian hunters. Champlain was of the party. There was ample occupation for his gun, for ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... see. God willed, no doubt, to open to this elect the treasures of eternal beatitude, at this hour when other men tremble with the idea of being severely received by the Lord, and cling to this life they know, in the dread of the other life of which they get but merest glimpses by the dismal murky torch of death. Athos was spirit-guided by the pure serene soul of his son, which aspired to be like the paternal soul. Everything for this just man was melody and perfume in the rough road souls ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... were shining. A cool, murky mantle lay over the land. He did not know how long he had been standing there when his ear caught the sound of a gently-closing door. A moment later a dim, shadowy figure appeared at the corner of the house, stood motionless for a few seconds, and then came directly toward him. The blood rushed ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... itself, became clamourous. I saw through the steamy window huge electric fights glaring down from tall masts upon a fog, saw rows of stationary empty carriages passing by, and then a signal-box hoisting its constellation of green and red into the murky London twilight, marched after them. I looked again at his ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... was its appearance, that Don Ferdinand paused in involuntary awe. The blackness closed gradually round it; but much decreased, and still decreasing in size, it floated onwards—preserving its blood-red hue, in appalling contrast with the murky sky. Slowly Morales turned in the direction of the castle, glancing up at times, and unable to suppress a thrill of supernatural horror, as he observed this remarkable appearance floating just before him wherever he turned. Denser and denser became the atmosphere, and blacker the sky, till ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... descended, and in the middle of the pouring rain and the murky obscurity the noble British dead were counted. The wounded were also tended as well as it was possible to tend them when water and restoratives were wanting, and the only relieving moisture had to be sucked from the storm-drenched grass. Finally, the General, ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... and even the succeeding winter and spring,—scarcely able to hear the far-off noises of the great struggle in which he had hitherto borne so rugged a part, and of which the victorious issue was then to be seen by him, though dimly, through many a murky rack ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... saint, e'en if you call * Seraph or Sovran [FN493] he with all may rate! The poorest supplicant rich from him returns, * All words to praise him were inadequate. He to the day of peace is saffron Morn, * And murky Night in furious warfare's bate. Bow 'neath his gifts our necks, and by his deeds * As King of freeborn [FN494] souls he 'joys his state: Allah increase for us his term of years, * And from his lot ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... to him that he woke almost immediately; the fire still burned, though low and fitfully on the hearth. Otto was sleeping, breathing quietly and regularly; the shadows had gathered close around him, thick and murky; with every passing moment the light died in the fireplace; he felt stiff with cold. In the utter silence he heard the clock in the village strike two. He shivered with a sudden and irresistible feeling of fear, ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... 40 grains, or 1/8 part. Instantaneously, and as if by magic, the cloud of profoundest melancholy which rested on my brain, like some black vapors that I have seen roll away from the summits of the mountains, drew off in one day,—passed off with its murky banners as simultaneously as a ship that has been stranded and is floated off ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... dreadful pork-pies and other deadly inventions displayed there—for to him these were dainties fit for the angels; that is, judging by the smell, they were—for it had never been his good luck to own and eat one. There was a cold drizzle of rain; the atmosphere was murky; it was a melancholy day. At night Tom reached home so wet and tired and hungry that it was not possible for his father and grandmother to observe his forlorn condition and not be moved—after their fashion; wherefore they gave him a brisk cuffing at once and sent him ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of Britain, Celt and Roman in succession had built their camps and reared their watch-towers. And presently from all quarters of the great horizon sprang the answering flames from mountain peaks that were themselves invisible in the murky night, while they sent forward yet, without fail or break, the great torch-race of victory, leaping on, invincible by rain or dark, far into the ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... at Walloong, the weather was bitterly cold: as heretofore, the nights and mornings were cloudless, but by noon the whole sky became murky, the highest temperature (50 degrees) occurring at 10 a.m. At this season the prospect from this elevation (10,385 feet), was dreary in the extreme; and the quantity of snow on the mountains, which was continually increasing, held out a dismal promise for my chance of exploring lofty ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... alone in infinite space. Above, below, on all sides, was a leaden atmosphere. Neither sun, nor moon, nor stars illumined it, but only some dull, phosphorescent light, which seemed to be born of the murky, stagnant air. It was such a strange, sickly, wavering gleam as she had seen above decaying wood, fish, and other substances. All around was absolute stillness. Not a swallow waved his wing nor an insect hummed in that barren immensity. Nature ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... lines of crimson lightning belched from the German trenches as the explosives broke about them. To this lurid picture was added the spectacle of burning oil, which the British threw on the enemy lines. Great clouds of pinkish colored smoke rolled across the country from the flaming liquid and the murky sky threw back myriad colors from the ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... and soon came to a turning. Just at this moment a gleam of sunshine shone out, dispersing the murky haze. ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... Cloud, scurrying in his flitter through that murky, radiation-riddled atmosphere, setting up equations from the readings of his various meters and gauges and solving those equations almost instantaneously in his mathematical-prodigy's mind, sat appalled. For the activity level was, and even in its lowest dips remained, far ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... dark morning; the wind is fresh from the north-west; flakes of snow are seen wafting here and there by the wind, the avant-couriers of a heavy fall; the whole sky is of one murky grey, and the sun is hidden behind a dense bank. The deck of the cutter is wet and slippery, and Dick Short has the morning watch. He is wrapt up in a Flushing pea-jacket, with thick mittens on his hands; he looks about him, ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... clouds, rolling in fold after fold, as though some demon were flinging them out across the sky as one flings a carpet, piled up and up, each one darker than the last. The light vanished; the conservatory was filled with a thick, murky glow, and far across the fields, from the heart of the black wood, came the low rumble of thunder. But Jeremy did not hear that; he was busy with his thoughts. He stared at the dog, who was lying stretched out on the dirty floor, his nose between ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... there that are unobtainable without the combustion of soft coal. Talk, for example, as much as you please about the electric sky-signs of Broadway—not all of them together will write as much poetry on the sky as the single word "Illinois" that hangs without a clue to its suspension in the murky dusk over Michigan Avenue. The visionary ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... should have found it almost impossible to give it, so languid had grown the soul that was melted within me. The west wind had slackened the springs of my intelligence. A cold gray light poured down from the heavens, and the murky clouds that passed overhead gave a boding look to the land; all these things, together with the immensity of the sea, said to me, "Die to-day or die to-morrow, still must we not die?" And then—I wandered on, musing on the doubtful ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac
... way upon deck once more, and crept aft under the shadow of the bulwarks. They were almost there when De Catinat stopped suddenly and ground out an oath through his clenched teeth. Between them and the rope ladder there was standing in a dim patch of murky light the grim figure of a Franciscan friar. He was peering through the darkness, his heavy cowl shadowing his face, and he advanced slowly as if he had caught a glimpse of them. A lantern hung from the mizzen ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... seemed to see the smirch left upon him by his surroundings. She had never seen him unshaven, and the three days' growth of beard on his face was repulsive to her. Not alone did it give him the same dark and murky aspect of the Silva house, inside and out, but it seemed to emphasize that animal-like strength of his which she detested. And here he was, being confirmed in his madness by the two acceptances he took such pride in telling her about. A little longer and he would have surrendered and gone ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... the parallel ends. The life purpose of the one culminated in his death; with the other, it only began. In the case of John, death was a martyrdom, which shines brilliantly amid the murky darkness of his time; in the case of Jesus, death was a sacrifice which put away the sin of the world. For John there was no immediate resurrection, save that which all good men have of their words and influence; but his Master saw no corruption—it was not possible ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... mysterious. I don't know what you are talking about—perhaps you are deluding yourself with an absurdly chivalrous notion about being her guardian—but I tell you this. A normal girl, who is as full of life as Rose, can't be expected to be like the wishy-washy heroines of some murky novel, remain faithful unto death to her first unrequited love, and turn into a sweetly spiritual old maid, waiting for the hero to come and claim her. ''Tain't accordin' ter huming nater,' as Captain Jim says. The mating call is too strong, and she is sure to respond to the love note of ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson |
