Quotes About Contrast

Compared to the dullest human being actually walking about on the face of the earth and casting his shadow there, the most brilliantly drawn character in a novel is but a bag of bones.

What at night had been perfect and ideal was by day the more or less defective real.

When yellow lights struggle with blue shades in hairlike lines.

God was palpably present in the country, and the devil had gone with the world to town.

She was in person full-limbed and somewhat heavy; without ruddiness, as without pallor; and soft to the touch as a cloud. To see her hair was to fancy that a whole winter did not contain darkness enough to form its shadow: it closed over her forehead like nightfall extinguishing the western glow.

The physiognomy of a deserted highway expresses solitude to a degree that is not reached by mere dales or downs, and bespeaks a tomb-like stillness more emphatic than that of glades and pools. The contrast of what is with what might be, probably accounts for this.

There is a loquacity that tells nothing, which was Bathsheba's; and there is a silence which says much: that was Gabriel's.

On older trees still than these huge lobes of fungi grew like lungs. Here, as everywhere, the Unfulfilled Intention, which makes life what it is, was as obvious as it could be among the depraved crowds of a city slum. The leaf was deformed....the taper was interrupted..and the ivy slowly strangled to death the promising sapling.

and to his eyes, casually glancing upward, the silver and black-stemmed birches, with their characteristic tufts, the pale grey boughs of beech, the dark-creviced elm all appeared now as black and flat outlines upon the sky, wherein the white stars twinkled so vehemently that their flickering seemed like the flapping of wings.

The gray half-tones of daybreak are not the gray half-tones of the day's close, though the degree of their shade may be the same. In the twilight of the morning, light seems active, darkness passive; in the twilight of evening it is the darkness which is active and crescent, and the light which is the drowsy reverse.

An Hour of Bliss and Many Hours of Sadness

And it was the touch of the imperfect upon the would-be perfect that gave the sweetness, because it was that which gave the humanity.

An Elizabeth in brain and a Mary Stuart in spirit.

though the whole troop wore white garments, no two whites were alike amoung them. Some approached pure blanching, some had a bluish pallor; some worn by the older characters (which has possibly lain by folded for many a year) inclined to a cadavourous tint, and to a georgian style.

The curious double strands in Farfrae's thread of life - the commercial and the romantic - were very distinct at times. Like the colours in a variegated cord those contrasts could be seen intertwisted, yet not mingling.

Her face too was fresh in colour, but it was of a totally different quality - soft and evanescent, like the light under a heap of rose-petals.

era quel tocco di imperfezione sopra la presunta perfezione che dava dolcezza, perché era esso ad impartire umanità.

The greater the sinner the greater the saint; it was not necessary to dive far into Christian history to discover that

in this attribute moral or æsthetic poverty contrasts plausibly with material, since those who suffer do not mind it, whilst those who mind it soon cease to suffer.

Perché dovremmo mettere fine a tutto ciò che è dolce e bello? - ella scongiurava - Quanto deve avvenire, avverrà - ...... - Tutto è angoscia laggiù, e qui dentro tutto è felicità. Anch'egli gettò un'occhiata fuori. Era proprio vero; dentro c'era affetto, unione, il perdono dell'errore; fuori stava l'inesorabile

It was the touch of the imperfect upon the would-be perfect which gave it the sweetness, because it was that which gave it the humanity.

a day which had a summer face and a winter constitution

While they sipped Sue went to the window and thoughtfully said, It is such a beautiful sunset, Richard. They are mostly beautiful from here, owing to the rays crossing the mist of the vale. But I lose them all, as they don't shine into this gloomy corner where I lie. Wouldn't you like to see this particular one? It is like heaven opened. Ah yes! But I can't.

The gray half-tones of daybreak are not the gray half-tones of the day's close, though the degree of their shade may be the same. In the twilight of the morning, light seems active, darkness passive; in the twilight of evening it is the darkness which is active and crescent, and the light which is the drowsy reverse.