dismalness

These attempts at brightness, I'm afraid, only accentuate the dismalness of the hall itself, an ironic testament to its designer, Phillip Johnson, one of the great tastemakers of the 20th century.

Howard Kissel: Ravel et al. at the Philharmonic Howard Kissel 2011

These attempts at brightness, I'm afraid, only accentuate the dismalness of the hall itself, an ironic testament to its designer, Phillip Johnson, one of the great tastemakers of the 20th century.

Howard Kissel: Ravel et al. at the Philharmonic Howard Kissel 2011

SMITH: You know, I sometimes get the feeling that all the darkness and dismalness you write about and we hear in this album, that it's a little bit of a front.

Jesse Malin: Rock 'N' Roll From The Bowery 2010

SMITH: You know, I sometimes get the feeling that all the darkness and dismalness you write about and we hear in this album, that it's a little bit of a front.

Jesse Malin: Rock 'N' Roll From The Bowery 2010

The sight of a shiny wet road retained its life-long capacity to induce dismalness in Wollheim: "Even today," he writes, "when in actuality the sheen on a bright wet surface has more or less lost its terrors for me, I have only in imagination to take myself back in years, and recall it in the mind's eye, and, in such moments, once again understand the full dismal power that the experience had over me."

The Ordinary Sky: Wordsworth, Blanchot, and the Writing of Disaster 2008

Already the dismalness of a level land comes over me.

A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains 2007

Apart from the general air of dismalness, the place was as I had left it the night before.

The House on the Borderland 2007

And, indeed, each time that I cast the stone, the noise of the stone to make a little trouble and dismalness in mine ears; for all did be so quiet and desolate and lost in night, that it to make us to need to be likewise so quiet, and to desire that we might go upward so silent as shadows.

The Night Land 2007

He went through the big house by himself, and he admitted to me that it had an uncomfortable feeling about it; but, of course, that might be nothing more than the natural dismalness of a big, empty house, which has been long uninhabited, and through which you are wandering alone.

Carnacki, the Ghost Finder 2007

It was the look of them, partly: the skanky paper, the low-mirth smudginess of their production; but also the dismalness of the schoolyard world they portrayed: discipline versus cheekiness, small victories, practical jokes, jeering, every teacher undernourished, every kid drawn as though he had rickets.

Kalooki Nights Howard Jacobson 2006