"Silhouette" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of Fra Giovanni, and it seems unreasonable to refuse to make any use of them because later intarsiatori abused these means of gaining effect. The earliest work, it is true, depends mainly upon silhouette for its beauty, but does not altogether disdain lines within the main outline, and the abandonment of these inner lines, whether made by graver or saw, so reduces the possibilities of choice of subject ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... open flap of the tent, a black silhouette of man and gun. When I had clutched my own rifle and reached his side I saw in the moonlight a score of huge white beasts, some tangled in a snarling heap over the remains of our supper, others crouching on their haunches in a ring, facing us. One of them sprang as Le Brunnec fired, and its hot ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... flowed the dark gray torrent as if propelled by an invisible, resistless force. Vacancies made by wounds and death were closed almost instantly. In the strange, luminous twilight made by the approaching storm, the impetuous advance was wonderfully distinct in the distance, like a vivid silhouette. ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... statuesque group the outline is important because this is seen against the background of wall, or sky, and frequently in silhouette. Any fault in its contour as a mass is therefore emphasized. This consideration applies pictorially to groups which are complete in themselves and have no incorporation with backgrounds, such for instance as the photographic group of a number of people. Here personality ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... of artistic creative reaction will be the cutting of free silhouette pictures. The child should attempt this with the simplest of the stories which are suited for drawing, painting, or crayon-sketching. He loves to represent the animals he sees every day; and the art work should direct this impulse and show him how to do it so that he ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... of a shadowy, graceful figure crossing the avenue—a lithe young silhouette against the gas-light—and his heart stood still for an instant but it was not she, and he swayed where he stood, under the agony of reaction, dazed by ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... tall black silhouette. I shuddered, but I did not let go of the rope on which I began to ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... portraits, and kettle-holders, and all kinds of beautiful things made out of wool; very comfortable it was indeed. The window was lead framed and diamond paned, and through it one saw the corner of the vicarage and a pleasant hill crest, in dusky silhouette against the twilight sky. And after the sausages had ceased to be, he lit a Red Herring cigarette and went swaggering out into the twilight street. All shadowy blue between its dark brick houses, was the street, with a bright yellow ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... this same screen, there can be no doubt that, not only is it a most admirable position for the instrument acoustically, but also that its presence here does not detract from the general effect of the interior. From the west end of the nave, as a dark silhouette against the eastern apsidal windows, or as an object in the middle distance, it helps the spectator to realise the length of the cathedral. A certain sense of mystery and something undiscerned adds to the charm of an interior, and the organ here helps, with the screen, to enshrine ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. H. B. Quennell
... dignity, staff in hand. Some, with military stalk, moved slowly to and fro—swords, epaulets, plumes—all distinctly traceable. Here sat one, with the likeness of a kingly crown upon his head; while not far off, incongruous, as it may seem, appeared the picturesque silhouette of an Indian warrior, moving onward with a majestic pace, scalp lock, plumed, bow ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... blue upon its white-marble surface, marked four o'clock, but its edge was broken by the irregular silhouette of an encroaching rose-bush. The sun-dial in the midst of the wide, sunny garden, the old red-brick house among the elms—these were the most sharply defined elements of Mark Faraday's picture of home. Born in Italy, for most of his young life a sojourner in foreign lands, he yet remembered ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... remembered the moon. How many times had he watched for its argent gleam on the sky line, the vivid, detailed silhouette of the spruce against it; and then its slow-spreading glory through the still, dark forests! The spires of the trees grew ensilvered, as always; immense nebulous patches lay between the trunks, shadows stole mysteriously, phantoms met, ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... her own race, who paused, across the street, and stood teetering from side to side in joyful agitation, as she watched the approach of Mrs. Silver with her woolly little companion beside her. When this smaller silhouette in ink suddenly walked upright, the observer's mouth fell open, and there was reason to hope that it might remain so, in silence, especially as several other pedestrians had stopped to watch the poodle's uncalled-for exhibition. But all at once the elderly ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... is a poem to some clever silhouette pictures of Fedor Flinzer's, which she freely adapted from the German. "The Snarling Princess" is a fairy tale also adapted from the German; but neither of these contributions was so well worth the trouble of translation as a fine dialogue from the French of Jean Mace called "War ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... mazurka of two lines, the seventh prelude, is a mere silhouette of the national dance. Yet in its measures is compressed all Mazovia. Klindworth makes a variant in the fourth bar from the last, a G sharp instead of an F sharp. It is a more piquant climax, perhaps not admissible to the Chopin purist. In the F sharp minor prelude No. 7, Chopin gives ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... to the left went up toward the little town of Bethlehem, with huddled roofs and walls in silhouette along the double-crested hill. It was dark and forbidding as a closed fortress. The sad shepherd looked at it with indifferent eyes; there was nothing there to ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... after brusquely slamming a door, glided along through the darkened town, where nothing lighted the fronts of the houses, save the hanging-lamps of the streets and the pink and green bottles of the pharmacy Bezuquet, which projected their reflections on the pavement, together with a silhouette of the apothecary himself resting his elbows on his desk and sound asleep on the Codex;—a little nap, which he took every evening from nine to ten, to make himself, so he said, the fresher at night for those who might need his services. That, between ourselves, ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... person was in the room, too, and by the silhouette on the blind I could see that he was industriously applying himself to some task, the nature of which I could not determine. The longer I watched the shadow on the blind, the more puzzled I grew. I could ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... to the water's edge. Back a few hundred feet the land rose abruptly, forming the foothills of the mountainous inland. The boys looked closely for some inlet or bay into which the Mariella might steam, but there seemed to be no break in the thick foliage so far as the eye could reach. In the silhouette formed by the rising hills two palms, taller than the others, stood out against the sky like lone sentinels guarding ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... that fits your finger, Lois," her companion said, sitting up, and handing her the little grass ring. She took it, smiling, and tried it on. Gifford watched her with an intentness which made him frown; her bending head was like a shadowy silhouette against the pale sky, and the little curls caught the light in soft ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... chain of low hills which is the street. Out of the deep dark the smithy window flames with vivid orange behind its black tracery. In the middle of that square-ruled page of light I see transparently outlined the smith's eccentric silhouette, now black and sharp, now softly huge. Spectrally through the glare, and in blundering frenzy, he strives and struggles and fumbles horribly on the anvil. Swaying, he seems to rush to right and to left, like a passenger on a hell-bound ferry. The more drunk he is, the more ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... mournful. The voice of a fisherman singing not far off came to them like the voice of Fate, issuing from the ocean to tell them of the sadness that was the doom of men. Behind them Naples sank away into the vaporous distance. Vesuvius was almost blotted out, Capri an ethereal silhouette. And their little island, even when they approached it, did not look like the solid land on which they had made a home, but like the vague shell of some substance that had been destroyed, ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... and down to the corral, where she paused, her ear arrested by the steady drone of milking. A lantern sitting on the black earth, cast a little circle of light, and threw a docile cow in dreadful silhouette against the barn. And by that dim light Beulah discerned the bent form of her ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... to place themselves below the landscape which they wished to construct, where all the outlines stand out most clearly defined. It had almost grown to be a rule that the foreground should be placed sharply in profile and often so deep in shadow that it contrasted like a silhouette with the more distant grounds. On the other hand, it is a favorite whim of the genuine pigtail age to draw bird's-eye landscapes and views of cities, in which every elevation of the earth seems flattened out as much as possible, every distinct ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... the same as that which they had travelled over since leaving Oodnadatta: masses of scanty mulga scrub standing out dark on a landscape of vast bare plains or rolling sand-hills. Far away, a pale-blue silhouette against the bright north-west sky, was a range ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... worn soft hat and ample cloak. His profile came out clearly against the light background of the lace curtain, and showed him to be a man of considerable refinement of feature. He did not make an actually solid black silhouette against the light, neither was the figure translucent, but was rather like an object seen through a vapor or through a sheet of thin ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... silence was so unexpected. The whole wind, not merely part of it, was in. It had come so gently, softly, delicately too! In the darkness the outline of the window- frame was visible; Uncle Felix's big figure blocked against the stars. Judy's head could be seen in silhouette against the other window, but Tim and Maria, being smaller, were merged in the pool of shadow below the level of the sill. A large, spread thing passed flutteringly up and down the room a moment, then came the rest. It settled over everything at once. A rustle was audible ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... stare out the window. When the fighters were below the transport, they could be seen in silhouette against the clouds. Above, their exhaust flames pin-pointed them. ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... watcher saw nothing save the incisive ray of light that cut like a knife thrust through the darkness; then as he followed the shaft of light to its source he made out the silhouette of a man in evening dress—a white shirt front, square shoulders that branched off into the nothingness of the cloaking shadows and a handsome, sharp profile that lost itself in the gloom ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... sharper peaks and sloped into broader valleys. The whole aspect of the scene is like a view in the English Lake country, say on Windermere or Ullswater; only there are no forests or thickets to shade and soften it. Every edge of the hills is like a silhouette against the sky; every curve of ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... string. At the door of the summer-house stood the blurred figure of a man, bareheaded and tall. The light being chiefly behind him, he showed only in thin silhouette, undistinguishable as to age, character, and personal pulchritude. Stares ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Brierley! She went on to the hall door, which was open, and where indeed she saw a tall figure against the summer glow which filled all out of doors. A tall figure, a tall, upright figure; at first Dolly could see only the silhouette of him against the warm outer light. She came doubtfully close up to the open door. Then she could see a little more besides the tallness; a peculiar uprightness of bearing, a manly, frank face, a head of close curling dark hair, ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... first village he came to, Flowering Mulberry perceived through a door the silhouette of a most graceful young woman, and struck upon the door by its copper knocker. The girl opened, and looked at him through eyes filled with fire. A needle-woman ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... see against the paler hue of the sky. the dark outlines of the boat's prow. It was bearing down on him. Above the bow's edge he could make out the vague silhouette of a head and ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... he muttered—"it must have been impossible for him to have led the mule through here;" and as he thought, this, the full light of day came streaming in, making Dale, a few yards before him, stand out like a silhouette clearly cut in black, while for a hundred yards the water now ran, rapidly widening and growing less like a torrent, till right away he could see it flowing smoothly between the towering rocks that were piled-up on either side of ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... reassuring was her sweet and darling presence! I returned to my task without concerning myself further about the noise of the maskers, and as I worked I glanced up now and again to look at her beautiful profile cut in silhouette, because of the darkness without, upon ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... as if trying to collect his thoughts. He had dragged a wine barrel to collect his thoughts. He had dragged a wine barrel close to the trestle table, and now sat astride upon it, facing Tinville and the group of Jacobins. The flickering tallow candle behind him threw into bold silhouette his square, massive head, crowned with its Phrygian cap, and the great breadth of his shoulders, with the shabby knitted spencer and ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... already read—buy Keats' Love-Letters to Fanny Brawne. One wishes she had another name; and had left some other Likeness of herself than the Silhouette (cut out by Scissors, I fancy) which dashes one's notion of such a Poet's worship. But one knows what misrepresentations such Scissors make. I had—perhaps have—one of Alfred Tennyson, done by an Artist on a Steamboat—some thirty years ago; which, ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... been upon the face of my uncle as he listened, but now as I turned them from him they fell once more upon the thin, wolfish face of Sir Lothian Hume. He stood near the window, his grey silhouette thrown up against the square of dusty glass; and I have never seen such a play of evil passions, of anger, of jealousy, of disappointed greed upon a ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... from the right of the avenue, crossing the shrubbery and encroaching upon the low wall of the loggia, now flooded its floor. Against the silvern light, Bristol appeared to me in black silhouette. The breeze, too, seemed now to blow from a slightly different direction. It came through the windows on my right, beyond which lay the unkempt bushes which extended on that side to the ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... overlapping one another in their fruitless bombardment of the smooth shelving sand, are filling the air with a ceaseless thunder. The sun, shining from a sky of burnished gold, throws into silhouette the twin lighthouses at the entrance to Whitby Harbour, and turns the foaming wave-tops into a dazzling white, accentuated by the long shadows of early day. Away to the north-west is Sandsend Ness, a bold headland ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... fountain is not equally continued in this exceedingly well-modeled horse and youth and those two smaller-scaled figures on his shoulders - I feel that the very clever hand of a most talented artist has not been well supported by a logical idea. Their decorative effect is very marked, taken mainly as a silhouette from a distance. They are no doubt effective in carrying upwards a vertical movement which is to some extent interfered with by the outstretched arms of the youth. Mr. Calder has given us so very many excellent things, alone and in collaboration with others throughout ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... of the harai is very simple. Each Shinto parish-temple furnishes to all its Ujiko, or parishioners, small paper-cuttings called hitogata ("mankind-shapes"), representing figures of men, women, and children as in silhouette,—only that the paper is white, and folded curiously. Each household receives a number of hitogata corresponding to the number of its members,—"men-shapes" for the men and boys, ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... a copper-colored silhouette of the island (the name Cyprus is derived from the Greek word for copper) above two green crossed olive branches in the center of the flag; the branches symbolize the hope for peace and reconciliation between the Greek and Turkish communities ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... even on a night as dark as this. Behind them, bordering the stretch of mud and puddles which they had just left, was the silhouette of a dilapidated picket fence; and in front loomed the shadowy shapes ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... north gable, he gazed with love in his eyes as he made his every round. He was a good soldier, was Mullins, but glad this night to get off post. Through the gap between the second and third quarters he saw the lights at the guard-house and could faintly see the black silhouette of armed men in front of them. The relief was forming sharp on time, and presently Corporal Donovan would be bringing Trooper Schultz, of "C" Troop, straight across the parade in search of him. The major ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... amaze; the blacksmith strode to the door and looked out, himself a massive, dark silhouette upon the shimmering neutrality of the background. There was no figure in sight; no faint foot-fall was audible, no rustle of the sere leaves; only the voice of the mountain torrent, far below, challenged the stillness with ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... safe when he at last stood before the great doorway, where he could not be seen from the parsonage. The front of the church, quite bare and worn by the sunshine and rain of years, was crowned by a narrow open stone belfry, in which a small bell showed its black silhouette, whilst its rope disappeared through the tiles. Six broken steps, on one side half buried in the earth, led up to the lofty arched door, now cracked, smothered with dust and rust and cobwebs, and so frailly hung ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... raising her glass and her moist eyes shining above it. The five daughters-in-law followed immediate suit. At Miss Meyerburg's left the Marquis Rosencrantz, with pointed features and a silhouette sharp as a knife edge, raised his glass and his waxed mustache and drank, but silently and over a ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... Talbott as we reached the cloud-bank. I saw him in dim silhouette as the mist, sunlight-filtered, closed around us. Emerging into the clear, fine air above it, we might have been looking at early morning ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... shepherdess's crook to Papavoine. Through the straw of the sabot one sees gossamer wings appearing on horrible heels. The miracle of the roses is performed for Goton. All fatalities combined have for result a flower. A vague Rambouillet Palace is superposed upon the forbidding silhouette of the Salpetriere. The leprous wall of evil, suddenly covered with blossoms, affords a pendant to the wreath of Juliet. The sonnets of Petrarch, that flight of the ideal which soars in the shadow of souls, venture through the twilight ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... the orchestra, his secretary by his side, while the orators stammer out fragments of would-be thunderbolts. Commissary of police yawns more wearily than before, secretary disdains to use his pen, seizes his penknife and pares his nails. Up rises a wild-haired, weak-limbed silhouette of a man, and affecting a solemnity of mien which might have become the virtuous Guizot, moves this resolution: 'The French people condemns Charles Louis Napoleon the Third to the penalty of perpetual hard labour.' Then up rises the commissary of police and says quietly, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... low-ceilinged, and lighted only upon the side of the street; so that a visitor, entering from the staircase, looked as from the bottom of a well of shadow across the tables where the month-old American newspapers were set forth to the silhouette of the vice-consul at his roll-top desk against his background of ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... standing in the doorway, a simple figure in his striped black and yellow vest and white apron, I wondered just what effect the war had had on him. Through the open window of the room, seen over the dark silhouette of the roofs of Nancy, shone the glowing red sky and rolling smoke of the vast munition works ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... listened with respectful intelligence to the birdlike chatter of Mrs. Gareth-Lawless. (What a pretty woman! The silhouette of ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... moon as well, and just as baffled Miss Mapp was turning away from the window, she saw that which made her positively glue her nose to the cold window-pane, and tuck the curtain in, so that her silhouette should not be visible from outside. Down the middle of the garden path came the two truants, Susan in her sables and Mr. Wyse close beside her with his coat-collar turned up. Her ample form with the small round head on the top looked like ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... then, you or you or you, And let us walk abroad on the solid air: Look how the organist's head, in silhouette, Leans to the lamplit music's orange square! . . . The dim-globed lamps illumine rows of faces, Rows of hands and arms and hungry eyes, They have hurried down from a myriad secret places, From windy chambers next to the skies. . . . The music comes upon us. . . ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... torch of light The tireless hand of science holds abroad. And may its growing blaze shine on all hidden ways Till man beholds the silhouette ...
— Poems of Progress • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... appeared as a massive silhouette under the lintel. St. Genis had the candle in his hand. He dropped it ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... Cameronians, the 3rd Rifles, the 1st Rifle Brigade, the Durhams, and the gallant Irishmen, so sorely stricken and yet so eager, were all pressing upwards and onwards. The Boer fire lulls, it ceases—they are running! Wild hat-waving men upon the Hlangwane uplands see the silhouette of the active figures of the stormers along the sky-line and know that the position is theirs. Exultant soldiers dance and cheer upon the ridge. The sun is setting in glory over the great Drakensberg mountains, and so also that night set for ever the ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... led to the veranda. Haig pulled her up quickly, flung his right arm around her waist, and fairly carried her up the steps. At that moment, just as they stood on the level floor, the door was opened, and Huntington's huge body appeared in silhouette against the lamplight. ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... you do, to a man like Markham. From the eyrie where his soul is wont to sit, John Markham has a fine perspective on life—yours and mine. But I imagine that you make the more conspicuous silhouette. To him you represent 'the New York Idea'—only more so. Besides that you're a vellum edition of the Feminist Movement with suffrage expurgated. In other words, darling, to a lonely and somewhat morbid philosopher like Markham ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... sweet cry that seemed to come from the sky, like the rushing harmony of the world's swift winds. Then the curtain of fog before us lighted up from behind; shadows moved on the misty screen, outlines of trees and grassy shores, and tiny birds flying. Thrown on the vapory curtain, in silhouette, a man and a woman passed under the lovely trees, arms about each other's necks; near them the shadows of five mules grazed peacefully; a dingue gambolled ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... her shoulders in graceful undulations. The window running quite down to the level of the floor concealed nothing of her person; she was visible from the crown of her head to the satin slipper that covered her pretty little foot; and the outline of her figure formed in a graceful silhouette against ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... sun sank, the shadows turned bluer, and all the snow gleamed like a lake. The silver tints slowly turned to gold; the greys grew darker. The distant lines of pines were almost black now, a silhouette against the golden sky. Near at hand the little inequalities in the snow loomed blue, like ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... elephant; yet, if so, one of greater proportions than any he had ever before seen, but as the dim outlines became less indistinct he saw on a line with his eyes and twenty feet above the ground the dim silhouette of a grotesquely serrated back that gave the impression of a creature whose each and every spinal vertebra grew a thick, heavy horn. Only a portion of the back was visible to the ape-man, the rest of the body being lost in the dense shadows beneath the tree, from whence there now arose the sound ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... little room in the hotel are pushed away; and the morning sun immediately paints upon my shoji, across squares of gold light, the perfect sharp shadow of a little peach-tree. No mortal artist—not even a Japanese—could surpass that silhouette! Limned in dark blue against the yellow glow, the marvelous image even shows stronger or fainter tones according to the varying distance of the unseen branches outside. it sets me thinking about the possible influence ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... two o'clock, and the afterglow had moved around to the north-east. In an hour it would be light again. The island objects loomed twice their size in this dusk of dusk. Sam kept close under the willows to avoid making a silhouette against the sky. As he drew close to Bela's camp he saw that her fire was out, from which he argued that she had ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... the upper class, are accompanied by receptions and feasts like our own, but differ greatly in the comparatively insignificant part played by the contracting parties. Whereas, in an American wedding, the whole object of calling all these people together seems to be a desire to silhouette the bride and groom against the festive background, one comes away from a Filipino celebration with a feeling that an excuse was needed for assembling a multitude and permitting them to enjoy themselves, and that the bridal ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... themselves, their giant crests pitched like mighty tents drowsing placidly between earth and heaven. Now their four o'clock veil of blue-purple mist lay filmed about their shoulders, but later they would stand out in bold silhouette cutting into the twilight sky. Everywhere was the soft smell of new-mown hay; everywhere the silences of the eternal, broken only by the muffled noises of Transley's outfit trailing ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... Arizona stars burned with darting radiance, in thin, unwavering shafts of splintered fire. The moon, coldly brilliant, sharp-edged and flat like a disk of silver paper, touched the twinkling aspens with a pallid glow and stamped a distorted silhouette of the low-roofed ranch-buildings on the hard-packed earth. In the corral the shadow of a restless pony drifted back and forth. Chance, chained to a post near the bunk-house, shook himself and sniffed the keen air, for just at that ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... of a lady's dress. Nearer it grew, and nearer yet. We could see a figure steal from patch to patch of moonlight, and even hear the soft fall of sandalled feet. Another second and I saw the black silhouette of the old Zulu raise its arm in mute salute, and ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... he beheld certain black lines in perpendicular silhouette against the foam. At first he was not certain just what they could be, and he observed them narrowly as the boat tossed ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... office rang with the name of Tonk that morning. Hardly had the industrious Sarah Brown finished turning the blot upon her card into the silhouette of a dromedary by a few ingenious strokes of the pen, when the lady representing the obstinate charity came in, her lips shaped ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... giving Jane a new dress,—she certainly won't rest till she has done so. As for Gabriel, he was so remarkably dusty and threadbare that I set him at table with his back to the light, in such a manner that his mere silhouette was exposed to Hopkinson's scrutiny. I must allow, however, that he behaved beautifully, and Jane was perfect; she made an excellent impression on grandmamma, who is very anxious I should invite ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... infected Lanyard's mind. Nothing so tiny, so insignificant, so make-believe as that silhouette of a ship could conceivably be that ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... they could start up behind us; and abandoned fireplaces, six feet deep in the masonry, as well as the tangle of communicating doors. Above all, they had the twilight for their helper in our game. I had caught one or two joyous chuckles of evasion, and once or twice had seen the silhouette of a child's frock against some darkening window at the end of a passage; but we returned empty-handed to the gallery, just as a middle-aged woman was setting a lamp in ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... the platform. The hazy silhouette of Pelusium was outlined three miles to the south. A torrent had carried us from one sea to the other. But although that tunnel was easy to descend, going back up must have ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... and drew the tip of one forefinger across the black polished wood of the writing-bed. It left a dark, heavy line. And beside it, clearly defined in the heavy layer of dust, was the silhouette of a hand; a woman's hand, small, delicate, unmistakably ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... gleaming from the booths in the garden. Young couples wandered about and had their fortunes told; they ventured themselves on the Wheel of Happiness, or had their portraits cut out by the silhouette artist. By the roundabout was a mingled whirl of cries and music and brightly colored petticoats. Now and again a tremendous outcry arose, curiously dreadful, over all other sounds, and from the concert-pavilion one heard the cracked, straining voices of one-time "stars." ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... see the Time Machine itself?' asked the Time Traveller. And therewith, taking the lamp in his hand, he led the way down the long, draughty corridor to his laboratory. I remember vividly the flickering light, his queer, broad head in silhouette, the dance of the shadows, how we all followed him, puzzled but incredulous, and how there in the laboratory we beheld a larger edition of the little mechanism which we had seen vanish from before our eyes. Parts were of nickel, parts of ivory, parts had certainly been filed ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... The black silhouette against the darkness shook its head. "The pleasures even of these contacts are much exaggerated," said the polite level voice. "It seems to me doubtful whether they are equal to the pleasures of private reading and contemplation. ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... Benedetto, seizing the major by the shoulder and shoving him to a corner of the closet. There stood an old wardrobe. Benedetto opened the door, and, by the flickering light of the torches, Bartolomeo saw the dim outlines of a human head, which stood out like a silhouette from the wall. ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... in the forest that surrounded the glade, the enchanted mountain was visible—its sombre silhouette outlined against the blue background of ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... house for them both, as the air had a touch of chill in it. She came down the lichened steps, crossed the lawn, and passed into the unlighted hall. As she entered, the door opposite opened, and for a moment she saw the silhouette of a man's figure against the bright passage beyond. Her heart suddenly leapt, ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... glimmer that seemed not so much to shine through the air as to be part of it, took all colour out of the woods and fields and the high slopes above me, leaving them planes of grey and deeper grey. The woods near me were a silhouette, black and motionless, emphasizing the east beyond. The river was white and dead, not even a steam rose from it, but out of the further pastures a gentle mist had lifted up and lay all even along the flanks of the hills, so that they rose out of it, indistinct at their bases, clear-cut above against ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... sky as on the luminous ground of a stained-glass window. Quite at the top, in the middle of the vast lawns whose green turf shines ironically under the scorching sun, a gigantic cedar uplifts its crested foliage, enveloped in black and floating shadows—an exotic silhouette, upright before this former dwelling of some Louis XIV farmer of revenue, which makes one think of a great negro carrying the sunshade of a gentleman of ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... affect the imagination with a peculiar suggestiveness. New-lit lamps, sickly yellow under the dying day, stretch in immense vistas, unobscured by fog, but exhibit no detail of the track they will presently illumine; one by one the shop-fronts grow radiant on deepening gloom, and show in silhouette the figures numberless that are hurrying past. By accentuating a pause between the life of daytime and that which will begin after dark, this grey hour excites to an unwonted perception of the city's vastness and of its multifarious ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... logs before us beat The frost-line back with tropic heat; And ever, when a louder blast Shook beam and rafter as it passed, The merrier up its roaring draught The great throat of the chimney laughed, The house-dog on his paws outspread Laid to the fire his drowsy head, The cat's dark silhouette on the wall A couchant tiger's seemed to fall; And, for the winter fireside meet, Between the andirons' straddling feet, The mug of cider simmered slow, The apples sputtered in a row, And, close at hand, the basket stood With nuts from ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... stolidly plodded round and round in a dull self-set routine. And now, just when the spirit had come for rebellion, the mood for a harmless truancy, there had fallen with them too this hideous enigma. He sat there with the dusky silhouette of the face that was now drenched with sunlight in his mind's eye. He set off again up ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... abrupt revelation of its change of plan. The whole cresting of the tower, and the perfectly natural way in which its lines continue easily into the graceful spire itself, are triumphs of successful design. The silhouette of the mass against the sky so precisely reaches the ideal effect that it is difficult to restrain oneself to sober criticism in describing it, yet the result is achieved so naturally that until we compare it with ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... atmosphere, in consequence of its refractive action upon the sunlight that strikes into it near the edge of the planet's globe. This illumination of Venus's atmosphere is witnessed both when she is nearly between the sun and the earth, and when, being exactly between them, she appears in silhouette against the solar disk. During a transit of this kind, in 1882, many observers, and the present writer was one, saw a bright atmospheric bow edging a part of the circumference of Venus when the planet was moving upon the face of the sun—a most ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... see a stunted human silhouette detach itself from the shadow of a doorway on the opposite walk, move to the curb, and wave an arm—evidently signaling another sentinel on a corner out of ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... itself was invisible to Winfried and his companions. A great throng of people were gathered around it in a half-circle, their backs to the open glade, their faces toward the oak. Seen against that glowing background, it was but the silhouette of a crowd, vague, ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... the Play-play. The Real-play figures are in darkness, visible only in silhouette. Will exchanges places with a substitute concealed on upstage side of the desk, and then slips below the level of the desk and exit Left, to make quick change for entrance into Play-play in the role ...
— The Pot Boiler • Upton Sinclair
... about her subtly changed. She felt a closeness and a tremor, a certain brooding terror in the languid sombre winds. The gold of the sunlight faded to a sickly green, and the earth was black and burned. A moment she paused and looked back; she caught the man's silhouette against the tall white pillars of the mansion and she fled deeper into the forest with the hush of death about her, and the silence which is one great Voice. Slowly, and mysteriously it loomed before her—that squat and darksome cabin which seemed to fitly set in the centre of the wilderness, ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... approaching whistle, an ever-loudening roar in that brooding silence out there aroused him to a sense of his surroundings. A telegraph pole that had stood black athwart the glow began to move backward. The silhouette of the baggageman rose in the doorway. The dog gathered himself together and leaped. He landed on shining rails, in front of a blinding headlight; the pilot just missed him as he sprang out of the way. A northbound passenger train roared past. From the other train ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... students used to go out into the court of the hospital after lectures were over, they would invariably catch sight of young Huxley's dark head at a certain window bent over a microscope while they amused themselves outside. The constant silhouette framed in the outlines of the window tickled the fancy of the young fellows, and a wag amongst them dubbed it with a name that stuck, "The Sign of the Head ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... queerly addressed. There is one envelope still in existence which bears Clemens's name in elaborate design and a very good silhouette likeness, the work of some talented artist. "Mark Twain, United States," was a common address; "Mark Twain, The World," was also used; "Mark Twain, Somewhere," mailed in a foreign country, reached him promptly, and "Mark Twain, Anywhere," found its way to Hartford in due season. Then ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... When his doubly dark silhouette had vanished, the others scrutinized once more the great truth that down here in the earth the cooks are the ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... recognized both the trotters and the drivers; and again knew them as well on summer evenings, when slim buggies whizzed by in renewals of the snow-time rivalry. For that matter, everybody knew everybody else's family horse-and-carriage, could identify such a silhouette half a mile down the street, and thereby was sure who was going to market, or to a reception, or coming home from office or store to noon ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... the outer surface of the lunar ground. The mountain wall surrounding the ring is by no means remarkable for elevation, its greatest height not exceeding 6,000 feet, but, owing to the broad sweep of the curved walls, the brightness of the plain they inclose, and the picturesque irregularity of the silhouette of shadow thrown upon the valley floor by the peaks encircling it, the effect produced upon the observer ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... silhouette of the island broke suddenly into bosky valleys soft with trees and bracken, and cliff-ringed bays, with wide-spread arms of tumbled rock whose outer ends were tiny islets ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... woman—a woman with a little child in hand. I did not see her face, for she was just on the point of turning away from the dizzy verge, but nothing could have been plainer than the silhouette which these two made against the flush of that early evening sky. I see it yet in troubled dreams and desperate musings. I shall see it always; for hard upon its view, fear entered my soul, horrible, belittling fear, torturing ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... lower, its reflection vivid and complete upon the waveless stream below it. Ten feet above the water. Five—and swift ripples from the rush of air disturbed the unbroken reflections behind. It was almost a silhouette against the mirrored appearance of the sunset sky. And then a clumsy-seeming boat body touched water with a vast hissing sound, and settled more and more heavily, while the speed of the plane checked markedly and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... extended trip, the Polaris unit rode the slidewalk through the grassy quadrangle and the cluster of Academy buildings, out toward the spaceport. In the distance they could see the rocket cruiser Polaris, poised on the launching ramp, her long silhouette outlined sharply against the blue sky. Resting on her four stabilizer fins, her nose pointed toward the stars, the ship looked like a giant projectile poised and ready to ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... was drawing on as they walked across the lawn, from which the russet glow of the sunset had almost faded; the commonplace villa before them was tinted with violet, and in the west the hedges and trees formed an intricate silhouette against a background of ruddy gold and pale lemon; one or two flamingo-coloured clouds still floated languidly higher up in a greenish blue sky; over everything the peace and calm had settled that mark the close of a perfect autumn day, with the additional stillness which ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... the park and cantered into the broad red highway, he turned in his saddle and looked towards the Chateau de Nesville. At first he could not see it, but as he rode over the bridge he caught a glimpse of the pointed roof and single turret, a dim silhouette through the mist. Then it vanished ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... from his mother. In complexion he was so dark as to have earned in some quarters the familiar nickname of "The Moor." His underlip was thick and hanging, his jaw massive. "The mouth and chin are Philistine," wrote Lavater under his silhouette, noting, at the same time, "something out of the common in the eyes and the nose." The eyes were dark gray. They are described as "beaming with benevolence," and he used to say himself: "Anyone can see by the look of me that I am a good-natured ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... love, and consequently very jealous of Ollendon, who was then supposed to be the favoured lover. In the evening of this day, M. de Formigny went to Mme. de Vaubadon's. He was told that she was not at home, but as he saw a light on the ground floor, and thought he could distinguish the silhouette of a man against the curtains, he watched the house and ascertained that its mistress was having an animated conversation with a visitor whose back only could be seen, and whom he believed to be his rival. Wishing to make sure of it, and determined to have ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... door was opened. Out through the moving curtain of fog shone the red glow from a stove. A grotesque silhouette appeared outlined ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... were always long, and people were always interrupting them because they had to or stay mute all night. Davidge was glad of her clatter, because it gave him a chance to revel in Mamise. She was presented to his eyes in a kind of mitigated silhouette against a bright-hued lamp-shade. She was seated sidewise on a black Chinese chair. On the back of it her upraised arm rested. Davidge's eyes followed the strange and marvelous outline described by the lines of that arm, running into the sharp ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... there was the fine, haughty silhouette of Prince Galitch. He had been invited by Annouchka, for she had consented to risk this supper only in company with three or four of her friends, officers who could not be further compromised by this affair, as they were already under the eye of the Okrana ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... sky, and that it is blue again and shining. But he listens to the farmer's middle-aged sister, who stands at the table by the window, and rolls out a pie-crust as she talks. (The farmer is a widower, and she keeps house for him.) She talks of a small picture—a silhouette executed in black and gold—that adorns the wall-space between the dresser and the tall clock, and directly above the side-table piled with the small library of the house. The portrait is a profile of a young man, somewhat ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... arrow-heads ran before. In his sleep as in his copy-book, he saw endless chains of V's. But not once could he catch up with the wheels that printed them. A week later, just at sunset as he passed below Round Hill, he saw the stranger on top of it. On the skyline, in silhouette against the sinking sun, he was as conspicuous as a flagstaff. But to approach him was impossible. For acres Round Hill offered no other cover than stubble. It was as bald as a skull. Until the stranger chose to descend, Jimmie must wait. And ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... efforts that did not succeed in bringing into being anything really new, really whole. Of what Mahler might have achieved had he not been the divided personality, his symphonies, even as they stand, leave no doubt. If Mahler is not a great man, he is at least the silhouette of one. The need of expression that drove him to composition was indubitably mighty. The passion with which he addressed himself to his labor despite all discouragement and lack of success, the loftiness and nobleness of the task which ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... up in stark silhouette, in the electronic "light" of the radar scope. Two perfect discs, joined by a fine filament. As we watched, their relative positions slowly shifted, one moving across, ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... warm evening, but at eight o'clock the dusk is already on the verge of darkness as Honoria emerges from the lift at her Chancery Lane Office (near the corner of Carey Street), puts her latch-key into the door of the partners' room, and finds herself confronting the silhouette of a young man against the western glow of ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... disquieting the eye, like the tower of Asinelli at Bologna, or the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Seen two or three miles away, these towers, drunk and staggering, with their pointed caps that seem to nod at the horizon, present a droll and hilarious silhouette. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... could grasp what he was about to do, Ned ran forward toward the light till he was half-way to the mouth of the cavern, when Jack saw the dark silhouette-like figure stoop down again and again, to pick up something each time, and he returned laughing, bearing quite a bundle of spears, ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... man who was about to die, a silhouette against the soft blue holding its own balance resolutely in the face of peril. She could not watch any longer; she could not wait on the catastrophe. She was living the part of the aviator more vividly than he, with his hand and mind occupied. She rushed down the terrace ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... effect was admirable, especially that of the great circular library, with its conical roof. In addition to the Legislative Chambers proper, two flanking buildings in the same style housed various Administrative departments. Seen from Rideau Hall in dark silhouette against the sunset sky, the bold outline of the conical roof of the library and the three tall towers flanking it gave a sort of picturesque Nuremberg effect to the distant view of Ottawa, The Parliament buildings proper were destroyed by ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... "all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time." There are no other buildings to cut off the view or tamper with perspective. The Dead Sea was growing dark. The Moab Hills beyond it looked lonely and savage in silhouette. ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... Stevenson's father's son; above Fife rise the twin breasts of the Lomonds. Or turn round and look across the Esk valley to the Moorfoots; or more westerly, where the back range of the Pentlands—Caernethy, the Scald, and the knife-edged Kips—draw a sharp silhouette of Arctic peaks against the sky. In the cloven hollow between is Glencarse Loch, an ancient chapel and burying ground hidden under its waters; on the slope above it, not a couple miles away, is Rullion Green, where, as Stevenson told in ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... to go? They stopped and wondered. The poor horse's bones stood out in strange projections, the round-shouldered little fly-man sat grinning on his box, showing three long yellow fangs. The vehicle, the horse, and the man, his arm raised in questioning gesture, appeared in strange silhouette upon the grey clouds, assuming portentous aspect in their tremulous and excited imaginations. 'Take you to Southwater in ten minutes!' The voice of the fly-man sounded hard, grating, and derisive in ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... it formed one of those sudden pictures which paint themselves on the brain and can never after be effaced. I recall yet the long shade cast by the man's gun, the grotesque shape of his flapping army overcoat, the quick change in the silhouette as he wheeled to retrace his beat. But there was no noise, not even the sound of his footsteps reaching us. Even as I gazed, lying nearly full length upon my horse, we had crossed the open, and a perfect tangle of low bushes hid us as completely ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... husband, startled. Sanderson said nothing. All three leaned forward, the men still sitting, but Mrs. Bittacy had rushed hurriedly to the window, placing herself of a purpose, as it seemed, between her husband and the lawn. She pointed. Her little hand made a silhouette against the sky, the yellow shawl hanging from the arm like ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... brown smoke became visible. The foremast of the Satsuma with its multicolored signal-flags appeared in the field of vision.... A final quick correction for elevation ... a slight pressure of the electric trigger. Fire! The gray silhouette of the Satsuma, across which quivered the flash from the gun, rose quickly in the round field; then came foaming, plunging waves, and columns of water that rose up as the ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... wood. He was going to take possession of the fire. Janet kept her eye to the knot-hole. When he had the fire burning better, he straightened up and wandered round to the other side of it. At this, the sinister silhouette, acting as a sort of dissolving view, came out in favor of the old maxim that "there is a bright side to everything." It was no less a person than Jonas Hicks. Little Jimmie Wanger's ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... almost immediately between itself and us. Luckily, the dazzling light itself was hidden from our eyes by the bulk of the ship upon which it rested, but it invested her with a sort of halo of radiance against which she stood out black and grim, a perfect silhouette. She was a big craft, evidently a battleship, with a lofty superstructure, three big funnels cased half-way up, a long overhanging bridge, and two stout military masts with fighting tops, and two yards across each. She was just ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... sitting up in bed, with an angry thumb on the bell, was electrified to see, on the glass door across, the silhouette of a young lady without a cap go into the arms of a very large, masculine silhouette in a dressing-gown. He heard, too, the ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... duet. A silhouette. A high brick wall, An awful squall. A moonlit night, A mortal fight. A man in bed, Sticks out his head. Gee Whiz! The man has riz. His arm draws back A big bootjack— A loud swish, Squish! "What's that?" A ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck
... the banisters: "Is that you, Jack?" met the two young men as they handed their hats to the noiseless Frederick. Both craned their necks and caught sight of the Wren's head framed by the hand-rail and in silhouette against the oval sky-light in ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... blue, with a white, five-pointed star superimposed on the gray silhouette of a latte stone (a traditional foundation stone used in building) in the center, surrounded ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... lane and walked up the Paseo de las Acacias. The rain came down harder; here and there a faint light shone in the distance; against the intense darkness of the sky loomed the vague silhouette ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... saying perhaps to itself:—"Shall I ever take a trick again?" there was still dust, dust of thought-baffling fineness! And it had fallen, fallen steadily, with immeasurable slowness and absolute impartiality, on all the card above had left unsheltered. There was the top-card's silhouette, quite recognisable as soon as the ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan |
