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24a978f The full moon, well risen in a cloudless eastern sky, covered the high solitude with its light. We are not conscious of daylight as that which displaces darkness. Daylight, even when the sun is clear of clouds, seems to us simply the natural condition of the earth and air. When we think of the downs, we think of the downs in daylight, as with think of a rabbit with its fur on. Stubbs may have envisaged the skeleton inside the horse, but most of us do not: and we do not usually envisage the downs without daylight, even though the light is not a part of the down itself as the hide is part of the horse itself. We take daylight for granted. But moonlight is another matter. It is inconstant. The full moon wanes and returns again. Clouds may obscure it to an extent to which they cannot obscure daylight. Water is necessary to us, but a waterfall is not. Where it is to be found it is something extra, a beautiful ornament. We need daylight and to that extent it us utilitarian, but moonlight we do not need. When it comes, it serves no necessity. It transforms. It falls upon the banks and the grass, separating one long blade from another; turning a drift of brown, frosted leaves from a single heap to innumerable flashing fragments; or glimmering lengthways along wet twigs as though light itself were ductile. Its long beams pour, white and sharp, between the trunks of trees, their clarity fading as they recede into the powdery, misty distance of beech woods at night. In moonlight, two acres of coarse bent grass, undulant and ankle deep, tumbled and rough as a horse's mane, appear like a bay of waves, all shadowy troughs and hollows. The growth is so thick and matted that event the wind does not move it, but it is the moonlight that seems to confer stillness upon it. We do not take moonlight for granted. It is like snow, or like the dew on a July morning. It does not reveal but changes what it covers. And its low intensity---so much lower than that of daylight---makes us conscious that it is something added to the down, to give it, for only a little time, a singular and marvelous quality that we should admire while we can, for soon it will be gone again. lyrical description Richard Adams
670b7b9 This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow. owl tower purple ruin gothic description Mervyn Peake
f801002 However gross a man may be, the minute he expresses a strong and genuine affection, some inner secretion alters his features, animates his gestures, and colors his voice. The stupidest man will often, under the stress of passion, achieve heights of eloquence, in thought if not in language, and seem to move in some luminous sphere. Goriot's voice and gesture had at this moment the power of communication that characterizes the great actor. Are not our finer feelings the poems of the human will? personality passion emotion people ugliness observation description sincerity psychology Honoré de Balzac
c3ec2c6 Admirable, however, as the Paris of the present day appears to you, build up and put together again in imagination the Paris of the fifteenth century; look at the light through that surprising host of steeples, towers, and belfries; pour forth amid the immense city, break against the points of its islands, compress within the arches of the bridges, the current of the Seine, with its large patches of green and yellow, more changeable than a serpent's skin; define clearly the Gothic profile of this old Paris upon an horizon of azure, make its contour float in a wintry fog which clings to its innumerable chimneys; drown it in deep night, and observe the extraordinary play of darkness and light in this sombre labyrinth of buildings; throw into it a ray of moonlight, which shall show its faint outline and cause the huge heads of the towers to stand forth from amid the mist; or revert to that dark picture, touch up with shade the thousand acute angles of the spires and gables, and make them stand out, more jagged than a shark's jaw, upon the copper-coloured sky of evening. Now compare the two. scenery houses description paris Victor Hugo
4739929 Hot weather opens the skull of a city, exposing its white brain, and its heart of nerves, which sizzle like the wires inside a lightbulb. And there exudes a sour extra-human smell that makes the very stone seem flesh-alive, webbed and pulsing. human life description summer city Truman Capote
e08126f You could sometimes see her twelfth year in her cheeks, or her ninth sparkling from her eyes; and even her fifth would flit over the curves of her mouth now and then. description Thomas Hardy
be7630b The house was very quiet, and the fog--we are in November now--pressed against the windows like an excluded ghost. e-m-forster howards-end autumnal november fall autumn description quiet E.M. Forster
3fdac30 The bowler approached the wicket at a lope, a trot, and then a run. He suddenly exploded in a flurry of arms and legs, out of which flew a ball. cricket description play game Douglas Adams
1a4013e No one needed to say it, but the room overflowed with that sort of blessing. The combination of loss and abundance. The abundance that has no guilt. The loss that has no fix. The simple tiredness that is not weary. The hope not built on blindness. ineffable wordless hope hymn blessing blindness mood description beautiful guilt Aimee Bender
d478eee Tonight the sun has died like an Emperor ... great scarlet arcs of silk ... saffron ... green ... crimson ... and the blaze of Venus to remind one of the absolute and the infinite ... and along the lower rim of beauty lay the hard harsh line of the hills ... natural-world imagery sunset silk description John Coldstream
d52d056 His eyes reflected the open grey of the autumnal sky. grey-eyes open sky autumn description him eyes Juliet Marillier
ac36920 I became simply a pair of eyes, staring through my mask at Char. I needed no ears because I was too far off to hear his voice, no words because I was too distant for speech, and no thoughts - those I saved for later. He bent his head. I loved the hairs on the nape of his neck. He moved his lips. I admired their changing shape. He clasped his hand. I blessed his fingers. Once, the power of my gaze drew his eyes... love description Gail Carson Levine
8110548 "It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the expression "as pretty as an airport". Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort. This ugliness arises because airports are full of people who are tired, cross, and have just discovered that their luggage has landed in Murmansk (...) and the architects have on the whole tried to reflect this in their designs. They have sought to highlight the tiredness and crossness motif with brutal shapes and nerve jangling colours, to make effortless the business of separating the traveller from his or her luggage or loved ones, to confuse the traveller with arrows that appear to point at the windows, distant tie racks, or the current position of the Ursa Minor in the night sky, and wherever possible to expose the plumbing on the grounds that it is functional, and conceal the location of the departure gates, presumably on the grounds that they are not"." funny description Douglas Adams
34167bf Some boys walk by and you cry, seeing them. They feel good, they look good, they are good. Oh, they're not above peeing off a bridge, or stealing an occasional dime-store pencil sharpener; it's not that. It's just, you know, seeing them pass, that's how they'll be all their life; they'll get hit, hurt, cut, bruised, and always wonder why, why does it happen? how can it happen to pain good goodness people-will-hurt-you hurt cry description innocence vulnerable sad Ray Bradbury
f69b291 Dark-bright fire lit eyes metaphor brown-eyes dark-eyes description Audre Lorde
e5189bb He looked as if he had been beaten to death with a wine bottle, but by doing it with the contents of the bottle. wine-bottle description wine Richard Brautigan
cfc13b6 The evening sky was awash with peach, apricot, cream: tender little ice-cream clouds in a wide orange sky. sunset sky description Philip Pullman
84d4012 Night was fading over the fields as if the rain had washed the darkness out of the hem of its garment. rain description night Cornelia Funke
2a7a0fa She had something that is gone from the world, from the female world. A sweetness without sentimentality, a limpidity without naivety. She was so easy to hurt, to tease. And when she teased, it was like a caress. description uniqueness John Fowles
9771960 He was too many things at once - a boy, a man, and everything in between - and the differing parts of himself seldom came into balance. She found him attractive in that way. Yet the perception saddened her: she herself wasn't too many things, but too few. people self-perception description Stephen R. Donaldson
20d5532 As I lay there, listening to the soft slap of the sea, and thinking these sad and strange thoughts, more and more and more stars had gathered, obliterating the separateness of the Milky Way and filling up the whole sky. And far far away in that ocean of gold, stars were silently shooting and falling and finding their fates, among these billions and billions of merging golden lights. And curtain after curtain of gauze was quietly removed, and I saw stars behind stars behind stars, as in the magical Odeons of my youth. And I saw into the vast soft interior of the universe which was slowly and gently turning itself inside out. I went to sleep, and in my sleep I seemed to hear a sound of singing. universe stars milky-way the-sea-the-sea iris-murdoch galaxy descriptive magical description Iris Murdoch
738c5f0 Among all the methods by which love is brought into being, among all the agents which disseminate that blessed bane, there are few so efficacious as the great gust of agitation which, now and then, sweeps over the human spirit. For then the creature in whose company we are seeking amusement at the moment, her lot is cast, her fate and ours decided, that is the creature whom we shall henceforward love. It is not necessary that she should have pleased us, up till then, any more, or even as much as others. All that is necessary is that our taste for her should become exclusive. And that condition is fulfilled so soon as - in the moment when she has failed to meet us - for the pleasure which we were on the point of enjoying in her charming company is abruptly substituted an anxious torturing desire, whose object is the creature herself, an irrational, absurd desire, which the laws of civilised society make it impossible to satisfy and difficult to assuage - the insensate, agonising desire to possess her. love exclusivity description possession desire Marcel Proust
a433d71 The child-like, gum-chewing naivete , the glamour rooted in despair, the self admiring carelessness, the perfected otherness, the wispiness, the shadowy, voyeuristic, vaguely sinister aura, the pale, soft-spoken magical presence, the skin and bones... philosophical quote warhol description Andy Warhol
1746e58 The crow flew closer, as if to hear its praises. nature description Emma Donoghue
29e925a "At last he said, "Did you come out of the big mountains?" Gitano shook his head slowly. "No, I walked down the Salinas Valley." The afternoon thought would not let Joey go. "Did you ever go into the big mountains back there?" The old dark eyes grew fixed, and their light turned inward on the years that were living in Gitano's head." description John Steinbeck
ae7e1d3 And across the water, you would swear you could sniff it all; the cinnamon and the cloves, the frankincense and the honey and the licorice, the nutmeg and citrons, the myrrh and the rosewater from Persia in keg upon keg. You would think you could glimpse, heaped and glimmering, the sapphires and the emeralds and the gauzes woven with gold, the ostrich feathers and the elephant tusks, the gums and the ginger and the coral buttons mynheer Goswin the clerk of the Hanse might be wearing on his jacket next week. . . . The Flanders galleys put into harbor every night in their highly paid voyage from Venice, fanned down the Adriatic by the thick summer airs, drifting into Corfu and Otranto, nosing into and out of Sicily and round the heel of Italy as far as Naples; blowing handsomely across the western gulf to Majorca, and then to the north African coast, and up and round Spain and Portugal, dropping off the small, lucrative loads which were not needed for Bruges; taking on board a little olive oil, some candied orange peel, some scented leather, a trifle of plate and a parrot, some sugar loaves. flanders description Dorothy Dunnett
82d51d0 Trinity Park lies directly across from the library, Trinity Church rising like a midieval thought amidst the glass and steel towers. ethereal boston description Nick Flynn
28c8493 The color palette is confined to that of a Gustave Dore' engraving, greys and blacks, and subtle shadings of these rendered in harrowing crosshatches and highlighted with sudden glaring areas of nothingness, like splotches of vitiligo sent to haunt the dead with memories of what real light did to the eyes. light great-prose description Kevin Hearne
8e83002 She was a thin, sickly, bony child, like an eft, with fine hair like sunlit smoke. imagery hair description A.S. Byatt
f650fab The room was not impressively large, even by Manhattan apartment-house standards, but its accumulated furnishings might have lent a snug appearance to a banquet hall in Valhalla. description J.D. Salinger
45a93f8 She grew up in the ordinary paradise of the English countryside. When she was five she walked to school, two miles, across meadows covered with cowslips, buttercups, daisies, vetch, rimmed by hedges full of blossom and then berries, blackthorn, hawthorn, dog-roses, the odd ash tree with its sooty buds. nature english-garden flowers description england A.S. Byatt
37ebfdb He was a compact, clearcut man, with precise features, a lot of very soft black hair, and thoughtful dark brown eyes. He had a look of wariness, which could change when he felt relaxed or happy, which was not often in these difficult days, into a smile of amused friendliness and pleasure which aroused feelings of warmth, and something more, in many women. character-development characteristics prose description A.S. Byatt
667461c All this happened in much less time than it takes to tell, since I am trying to interpret for you into slow speech the instantaneous effect of visual impressions. writer love overly-descriptive retell retold show-and-tell boring exposition witness explanation testimony why retelling description creativity Joseph Conrad
37cc520 No human metal had gone into the forging of that blade. It was alive with moonlight, translucent, a shard of crystal so thin that it seemed to almost vanish when seen edge on. There was a faint blue shimmer to the thing and a ghost light that played around its edges, and somehow Will knew that it was sharper than any razor. descriptive imagery cool the-other description George R.R. Martin
be0cb22 A solitary finger of light fell upon it, illuminating motes of golden dust floating in the air. lovely description sunlight Christopher Paolini
5513350 London was beginning to illuminate herself against the night. Electric lights sizzled and jagged in the main thoroughfares, gas-lamps in the side streets glimmered a canary gold or green. The sky was a crimson battlefield of spring, but London was not afraid. Her smoke mitigated the splendour, and the clouds down Oxford Street were a delicately painted ceiling, which adorned while it did not distract. She has never known the clear-cut armies of the purer air. Leonard hurried through her tinted wonders, very much part of the picture. His was a grey life, and to brighten it he had ruled off a few corners for romance. romance nightfall e-m-forster howards-end colors description london E.M. Forster
4e7bc00 Lady Moon rose an' gazed o'er my busted'n'beautsome Valleys with silv'ry'n'sorryin' eyes, an' the dingos mourned for the died uns. mourning death moon personification description destruction David Mitchell
6211c2c The room had the rather sinister tedium which some bedrooms have, a sort of weary banality which is a reminder of death. A dressing table can be a terrible thing. humor the-black-prince iris-murdoch morbid description Iris Murdoch
c593622 There was a shadowy light, not exactly twilight, but an uncertain vivid yet hazy illumination, wherein people walked like spirits, bathed in light and not revealed. light the-black-prince iris-murdoch description Iris Murdoch
f3d2625 Callahan dried his big meaty hands on his apron and cleared his throat with a sound like a bulldozer in pain. description Spider Robinson
ab189fa But whatever she was I loved her and was committed to her and had always been, here and out beyond the stars, those stars behind stars behind stars which I had seen that night when I lay on the rocks and the golden sky slowly turned the universe inside out. stars love commitment the-sea-the-sea iris-murdoch unconditional-love description Iris Murdoch
825b5b4 She told him that he had the most beautiful voice she'd ever heard, that it sounded like whiskey and wood smoke. man mystic-river smoke description voice Dennis Lehane
018d439 Then she turned westward, to gaze at the swirling gold. Just where the river rounded the hill the sun caught it. Fairyland must lie above the bend, and its precious liquid was pouring towards them past Charles's bathing shed. lovely nature e-m-forster howards-end description sunlight fairyland E.M. Forster
575d100 Tulips were a tray of jewels. metaphor e-m-forster howards-end figurative-language tulips flowers description E.M. Forster
d34b183 The immense accretion of flesh which had descended on her in middle life like a flood of lava on a doomed city had changed her from a plump active little woman with a neatly-turned foot and ankle into something as vast and august as a natural phenomenon. She had accepted this submergence as philosophically as all her other trials, and now, in extreme old age, was rewarded by presenting to her mirror an almost unwrinkled expanse of firm pink and white flesh, in the centre of which the traces of a small face survived as if awaiting excavation. A flight of smooth double chins led down to the dizzy depths of a still-snowy bosom veiled in snowy muslins that were held in place by a miniature portrait of the late Mr. Mingott; and around and below, wave after wave of black silk surged away over the edges of a capacious armchair, with two tiny white hands poised like gulls on the surface of the billows. description Edith Wharton
154b2bd Something had shifted between us, faintly, but the change was almost palpable. Our friendship had sat lightly between us, an ephemeral thing, without weight or gravity. Once, in the Boboli Gardens, under the shadow of a cypress tree on an achingly beautiful October afternoon, he had kissed me, a solemnly sweet and respectful kiss. But weeks had passed and we had not spoken of it. I had attributed it to the sunlight, shimmering gold like Danae's shower, and had pressed it into the scrapbook of memory, to be taken out and admired now and then, but not to be dwelled upon too seriously. Perhaps I had been mistaken. kiss romantic relationship friendship silent-in-the-sanctuary deanna-raybourn lady-julia-grey friends-to-lovers description Deanna Raybourn
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