Overcast Quotes

No end of blessings from heaven and earth. As we climb up out of the Moab valley and reach the high tableland stretching northward, traces of snow flying across the road, the sun emerges clear of the overcast, burning free on the very edge of the horizon. For a few minutes the whole region from the canyon of the Colorado to the Book Cliffs - crag, mesa, turret, dome, canyon wall, plain, swale and dune - glows with a vivid amber light against the darkness on the east. At the same time I see a mountain peak rising clear of the clouds, old Tukuhnikivats fierce as the Matterhorn, snowy as Everest, invincible. "Ferris, stop this car. Let's go back." But he only steps harder on the gas. "No," he says, "you've got a train to catch." He sees me craning my neck to stare backward. "Don't worry," he adds, "it'll all still be here next spring." The ~ Edward Abbey

As I leave my car, snowflakes begin to fall. Light, airy reminders of past winters. I pull up my hood, shivering. The park is empty. No other fool would come here on this kind of day - dreary and overcast. But I'm here because I need to clear my head. I steer toward the overgrown path that leads up the hillside. My shoulders bend into the increasing wind. ~ Terri Tiffany

Logan glanced at the clock on the cooker: nearly five minutes fast. The room was bathed in the pale orange glow of the overcast sky, the back garden a jungle of silhouettes and shadows through the window. He filled the kettle, then poured half of it out, before sticking it on to boil. The growing rumble drowned out the babble on his Airwave handset as DI Bell got his firearms team into place. ~ Stuart MacBride

Night came. The moon was entering her first quarter, and her insufficient light would soon die out in the mist on the horizon. Clouds were rising from the east, and already overcast a part of the heavens. ~ Jules Verne

It was not without a certain wild pleasure I ran before the wind, delivering my trouble of mind to the measureless air-torrent thundering through space. Descending the laurel walk, I faced the wreck of a chestnut-tree; it stood up, black and riven: the trunk, split down the centere, gasped ghastly. The cloven halves were not broken for each other, for the firm base and strong roots kept them unsundered below; through communtiy of vitality was destroyed -- the sap could flow no more: their great boughs on each side were dead, and next winter's tempests would be sure to fell one or both to earth: as yet, however, they might be said to form one tree -- a ruin, but and entire ruin.

'You did right to hold fast to each other,' I said: as if the monster splinters were living things, and could hear me. 'I think, scathed as you look, and charred and scorched, there must be a little sense of life in you yet, rising out of that adhesion at the faithful, honest roots: you will never have green leaves more -- never more see birds making nests and singing idylls in your boughs; the time of pleasure and love is over with you; but you are not desolate: each of you has a comrade to sympathize with him in his decay.' As I looked up at them, the moon appeared momentarily in that part of the sky which filled their fissure; her disc was blood-red and half overcast; she seemed to throw on me one bewildered, dreary glance, and buried herself again instantly in the deep drift of cloud. T ~ Charlotte Bronte

It's obvious which one you are,' Jimmy Hailler tells me as we walk through Hyde Park. 'If it's so obvious why can't I see it.' 'Because you live in your own world and can't see anything.' 'Then which one am I?' 'You're all four. You're constantly bitching things under your breath, you come across bloody stupid because you don't speak, on a particular angle in that uniform on an overcast day with your hair up, you've got that stocky butch thing happening, plus you're pashing other girl's boyfriends which makes you a slut. ~ Melina Marchetta

. . . overcast afternoons when it seemed possible the whole world had run out of things to say. ~ Catherine Lacey

And give me some coffee. Black as midnight on a moonless night."
Harga looked surprised. That wasn't like Vimes.
"How black's that, then?" he said.
"Oh, pretty damn black, I should think."
"Not necessarily."
"What?"
"You get more stars on a moonless night. Stands to reason. They show up more. It can be quite bright on a moonless night."
Vimes sighed.
"An overcast moonless night?" he said.
Harga looked carefully at his coffee pot.
"Cumulus or cirro-nimbus?"
"I'm sorry? What did you say?"
"You get city lights reflected off cumulus, because it's low lying, see. Mind you, you can get high-altitude scatter off the ice crystals in
"
"A moonless night," said Vimes, in a hollow voice, "that is as black as coffee. ~ Terry Pratchett

The sky was overcast with thick, grey clouds drifting in the direction of Idasa. That meant rain. It would come, as long as the clouds drifted in that direction. Lightening flashes momentarily parted the clouds...Shango, the god of lightening and thunder, was registering his anger as this strange talk of a new God is taking hold of simple folk who were once unquestioning votaries of his order. The new malady must be nipped in the bud. ~ T.M. Aluko

The skies were overcast. As the carriage rumbled along, Rafe watched the shadows weave in and out, dance over and around her as she gazed out the window. And blast it all if he didn't envy their ability to touch her so lightly. ~ Lorraine Heath

In prosperity you may count on many friends; if the sky becomes overcast you will be alone. ~ Ovid

He didn't notice the fist clad in a black silver-studded glove as it flew towards the side of his face. But although the night was dark, the moon was new and the sky overcast, he suddenly saw ten thousand dazzlingly bright stars. ~ Andrzej Sapkowski

Sometimes, like a shaft of sunlight suddenly showing itself from an overcast sky, an insight that has waited behind the curtain for its moment on stage appears suddenly. Perhaps such insights, like crust on toast, egg white turning milky, are transformations of what is already there, brought out by the heat, or perhaps they simply appear from unknown places like swallows of spring. ~ Dennis Vickers

It was an overcast day, but the cloudy weather did not detract from the signs of spring that were evident all around them. It was the second week in March, and the official start of the season was just a couple of weeks away. The magnolia trees had already bloomed, and tulips, daffodils, and wildflowers were shooting up all around the convent's gardens. ~ Rosanna Chiofalo

The soul makes its own horizons; your soul is overcast, and that is why the sky seems stormy to you. ~ Alexandre Dumas

Ah, dream too bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out the Future cries,
"On! on!" - but o'er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
Mute, motionless, aghast. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

In September 1999, the Department of Justice succeeded in denaturalizing 63 participants in Nazi acts of persecution; and in removing 52 such individuals from this country. This appears to be but a small portion of those who actually were brought here by our own government. A 1999 report to the Senate and the House said "that between 1945 and 1955, 765 scientists, engineers, and technicians were brought to the United States under Overcast, Paperclip, and similar programs. It has been estimated that at least half, and perhaps as many as 80 percent of all the imported specialists were former Nazi Party members."

A number of these scientists were recruited to work for the Air Force's School of Aviation Medicine (SAM) at Brooks Air Force Base in Texas, where dozens of human radiation experiments were conducted during the Cold War. Among them were flash-blindness studies in connection with atomic weapons tests and data gathering for total-body irradiation studies conducted in Houston. The experiments for which Nazi investigators were tried included many related to aviation research. Hubertus Strughold, called "the father of space medicine," had a long career at the SAM, including the recruitment of other Paperclip scientists in Germany. On September 24, 1995 the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that as head of Nazi Germany's Air Force Institute for Aviation Medicine, Strughold particpated in a 1942 conference that discussed "experiments" on human beings. The experimen ~ Carol Rutz

I remember staying to look at it for a long time, as one would linger within reach of a consoling whisper. The sky was pearly grey. It was one of those overcast days so rare in the tropics, in which memories crowd upon one, memories of other shores, of other faces. ~ Joseph Conrad

The girl at her music sits in another sort of light,the fitful,overcast light of lie,by which we see ourselves and others only imprefectly, and seldom..-Girl,Interrupted ~ Susanna Kaysen

Back at my parents', Mum was waiting with a muffin for me. 'Banana and pecan. I know it's the wrong colour but would you try it? Are you okay?' she asked. 'You look a bit …'
'Grand,' I said. 'It's just the clouds. When it's overcast like this, it does my head in.'
A strange expression passed over her face. 'The sky is blue.'
I took a look out of the window; the sky was blue. 'When did that happen?'
'It's been blue all morning.'
But it didn't make things any better. I was still uneasy, just in a different way. The empty sky looked hard and cold and merciless. Couldn't they have put in some clouds to soften it up a bit? ~ Marian Keyes

London is actually a beautiful place when the weather's good; the mood is lighter and everybody's smiling. But for the other 350 days a year, it's miserable. You're standing there waiting for the bus in the rain or you're waiting for a train on a platform and it's freezing. Always a persistent drizzle - or if it's not drizzling, it's overcast and cold. ~ Craig Taylor

No jealousy their dawn of love overcast, nor blasted were their wedded days with strife; each season looked delightful as it past, to the fond husband and the faithful wife. ~ James Beattie

Either woe or well-being, sometimes I have a craving to be engulfed. This morning (in the country), the weather is mild, overcast. I am suffering (from some incident). The notion of suicide occurs to me…Another day, in the rain, we're waiting for the boat at the lake; from happiness, this time, the same outburst of annihilation sweeps through me. ~ Robert Barthes

they say we're losing centimetres
every year; as if we were
a beach that's losing
ground with every salt advance

the night is overcast
but why not try, at least,
to touch the things our orbits
cannot hold, while there's time
while we can. ~ Andrew McMillan

I saw our golden years on a black gale,
our time of love spilt in the furious dust.
"O we are winter-caught, and we must fail,"
said the dark dream, "and time is overcast."
-And woke into the night; but you were there,
and small as seed in the wild dark we lay.
Small as seed under the gulfs of air
is set the stubborn heart that waits for day.
I saw our love the root that holds the vine
in the enduring earth, that can reply,
"Nothing shall die unless for me it die.
Murder and hate and love alike are mine";
and therefore fear no winter and no storm
while in the knot of earth that root lies warm. ~ Judith A. Wright

The woods, the vines, the very stones, were at one with the brightness of the sun and the unblemished sky, and even when the sky grew overcast, the multitude of leaves, as in a sudden change of tone, the earth of the roads, the roofs of the town, seemed as though caught up in the unity of a brand-new world. And all that Jean was feeling seemed without effort to chime with the surrounding oneness, and he was conscious of the perfect joy which is the gift of harmony. ~ Marcel Proust

Imagine a vast and glittering ocean seen from a great height. It stretches to the clear curved limit of every angle of horizon, the sun burning on a billion tiny wavelets. Now imagine a smooth blanket of cloud above the ocean, a shell of black velvet suspended high above the water and also extending to the horizon, but keep the sparkle of the sea despite the lack of sun. Add to the cloud many sharp and tiny lights, scattered on the base of the inky overcast like glinting eyes: singly, in pairs or in larger groups, each positioned far, far away from any other set. ~ Iain M. Banks

It was an overcast late November morning, the grass splintered by hoarfrost, and winter grinning through the gaps in the clouds like a bad clown peering through the curtains before the show begins. ~ John Connolly

Human beings say, "It never rains but it pours." This is not very apt, for it frequently does rain without pouring. The rabbits' proverb is better expressed. They say, "One cloud feels lonely": and indeed it is true that the sky will soon be overcast. ~ Richard Adams

Overcast does not always forecast rain neither does difficulty always forecast failure. ~ Kevin A. McKoy

It's a shiny tin can of a day, bright but gray. Welcome to one of Florida's two overcast days per year. A Florida winter can last a brutally long 48 hours, and in that time the state's residents don't know how to cope. Probably there are more suicides on these two days in Florida than in a whole year of Seattle's drizzly existence. ~ Jarod Kintz

Only a few leaves of deep red remain on the otherwise bare limbs of the maples; the oak leaves are russet and wrinkled; briefly through the trees is the glimpse of the bay, flat and steel-gray today with the overcast November sky. ~ Elizabeth Strout

you?" "Jealousy. It's toxic." "How about lying, which is all you ever do. Over and over again." "You need to start putting this on every time you go out, even on overcast days in the dead of winter." The viscous translucent lotion Carrie dribbles into her palm looks like semen. "And ~ Patricia Cornwell

I eat overcast skies for breakfast, because sunlight isn't filling enough. As a lover, I'm a bring-my-own-umbrella kind of guy, because a soup bowl doesn't offer enough space or protection. ~ Jarod Kintz

an overcast luminance, a subdued warmth ~ Janet Watts

She noted, more than once, that the meteor shower was happening, beyond the overcast sky, even if we could not see it. Who cares if she can kiss? She can see through the clouds. ~ John Green

It amazes him that life never offers completely smooth sailing, even for one day, a sinister cloud manages to creep its way over the horizon. And, what makes life even more mysterious, what truly probes the depth and complexity of the psyche, is that on an overcast day that one cloud would pass entirely unnoticed. ~ Jacob M. Appel

Even as a boy Jack had loved the smell of the ground softening in the thaw and coming back to life. Not this spring. A damp, moldy dreariness, something like loneliness, had settled over the homestead. At first Jack did not know its source. Maybe it was only his own mood. Perhaps it was the spring weather, with overcast skies and freezing rain that soaked through the cabin walls. Mabel, too, seemed beset by a morose restlessness. ~ Eowyn Ivey

The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil water-way leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky--seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness. ~ Joseph Conrad

Knowing how easily even the smallest things torture me, I deliberately avoid contact with them. A cloud passing in front of the sun is enough to make me suffer, how then should I not suffer in the darkness of the endlessly overcast sky of my own life? ~ Fernando Pessoa

I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley near the frozen creek. That was a long time ago, but it's wrong what they say about the past, I've learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out. Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years. ~ Khaled Hosseini

Shouldn't a catastrophe like this be met with rain? An overcast sky? It didn't seem right that things were so quiet, so calm, the day so tranquil when so many people had died, lost loved ones or suffered serious injury. ~ Wildbow

The dawn is overcast, the morning lowers, And heavily in clouds brings on the day, The great, the important day, big with the fate Of Cato and of Rome. ~ Joseph Addison

The perfume that her body exhaled was of the quality of that earth-flesh, fungi, which smells of captured dampness and yet is so dry, overcast with the odour of oil of amber, which is an inner malady of the sea, making her seem as if she had invaded a sleep incautious and entire. Her flesh was the texture of plant life, and beneath it one sensed a frame, broad, porous and sleep-worn, as if sleep were a decay fishing her beneath the visible surface. About her head there was an effulgence as of phosphorous glowing about the circumference of a body of water - as if her life lay through her in ungainly luminous deteriorations - the troubling structure of the born somnambule. ~ Djuna Barnes

Memory is like patches of sunlight in an overcast valley, shifting with the movement of the clouds. Now and then the light will fall on a particular point in time, illuminating it for a moment before the wind seals up the gap, and the world is in shadows again. ~ Tan Twan Eng

Instead of living in the sunshine of God's forgiveness through Christ, we tend to live under an overcast sky of guilt most of the time. ~ Jerry Bridges

Only on the third class tourist class passengers' deck was it a sultry overcast morning, but then if you do things on the cheap you must expect these things. ~ Spike Milligan

His face was like the autumn sky, overcast one moment and bright the next. ~ Joseph Conrad

At the time that he had seriously begun to consolidate his organization, Parker was working in a custom photo lab. The reader who is not much taken by audiovisual pastimes may have a deficient picture of that place where Parker was employed; or perhaps not so much a deficient picture--the dyes faded, shoddily spotted, brutishly burned in and doltishly dodged by subhuman technicians under the glare of the enlargers--as an image which had been misfiled in the archives of the memory, representing instead one of those bleak Photo Drive-Ups and Presto Printses located nowadays on the corner of almost every large parking lot, in which the clerks wait sadly behind their glass counters, but no one comes in, and the air becomes darker and darker over the course of the morning as a result of exhaust fumes (there goes another brain cell; ping! - THAT thought will never be completed now); and the pink chubby tots smiling at your from the walls in sample enlargements become steadily more grimy, and by the lunch break they are brown; and the day ticks off on the loud digital clock; and then finally a car creeps into the lot, and a popeyed couple locks that vehicle doors listlessly; they request a reprint of a washed-out snapshot of their son who was killed in the Indian Wars, and they go away; and after a long time here comes a slick-haired teenager who once took a few pix of his girlfriend holding a balloon at the zoo in front of the monkey cage on a dirty overcast day, and the clerk can ~ William T. Vollmann

Our mind is like a cloudy sky: in essence clear and pure, but overcast by clouds of delusions. Just as the thickest clouds can disperse, so, too, even the heaviest delusions can be removed from our mind. ~ Kelsang Gyatso

I went to an audition the other day, they were casting 13 people to be clouds, 14 people showed up, it was overcast. ~ Jay London

Five minutes later, the girls stood at the open kitchen door, blinking in the brilliant overcast light. The smell of lilacs, roses, sweet peas, and honeysuckle mixed with the scent of crisp late summer leaves. None of them had been in the gradens for nine months, and the bright saturated greens, reds, and violets overwhelmed them. It reminded Azalea of Mother, beautiful and bright, thick with scents and excitement. And the King-he was like the palace behind them, all straights and grays, stiff and symmetrical and orderly.
"It's really allowed?" said Flora, her eyes alight at the colors.
"Allowed allowed?" said Goldenrod.
"For the last time," said the King, pushing them gently out the kitchen door and onto the path. "It is Royal Business! Go On. Get some color in your cheeks. ~ Heather Dixon

I always assumed everybody shared my love for overcast skies. It came as a shock to find out that some people prefer sunshine. ~ Glenn Gould

There was nothing to do about him. It was Easter Sunday and the Fascists were advancing toward the Ebro. It was a gray overcast day with a low ceiling so their planes were not up. That and the fact that cats know how to look after themselves was all the good luck that old man would ever have. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

You'll be angry, but I'm going to ask anyway. Will you marry me?' The unsupported voice, the one that happened when he couldn't breathe, but had to speak.
I nudged his hands apart to see his face, and found it faintly overcast by tension. 'No,' I said gently,
He blinked again and asked, his voice unaltered, 'May I ask you once a year, every seventh of December, in case the answer changes?'
'Yes. I don't think it will.'
'Oh. I only ask because I hate the thought of not having breakfast with you for the rest of my life.'
'My dear,' I said. 'Jamie. That's a different question.'
'Oh. Will you have breakfast with me for the rest of my life?'
'Probably. ~ Steven Brust

You might imagine that the magic stopped at the airport, and to a great extent it did. When we arrived back in London, the skies were overcast and heavy. The bus driver from the airport was morose and unkempt; the streets seemed run-down and dirty, the people sour-faced. But that, I suspect, is how coming home is for everyone; Parisians probably felt the same when they returned from somewhere else. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

Now the peak of summer's past, the sky is overcast And the love we swore would last for an age seems deceit. ~ Cecil Day-Lewis

A Night Piece

The sky is overcast
With a continuous cloud of texture close,
Heavy and wan, all whitened by the Moon,
Which through that veil is indistinctly seen,
A dull, contracted circle, yielding light
So feebly spread, that not a shadow falls,
Chequering the ground--from rock, plant, tree, or tower.
At length a pleasant instantaneous gleam
Startles the pensive traveller while he treads
His lonesome path, with unobserving eye
Bent earthwards; he looks up--the clouds are split
Asunder,--and above his head he sees
The clear Moon, and the glory of the heavens.
There, in a black-blue vault she sails along,
Followed by multitudes of stars, that, small
And sharp, and bright, along the dark abyss
Drive as she drives: how fast they wheel away,
Yet vanish not!--the wind is in the tree,
But they are silent;--still they roll along
Immeasurably distant; and the vault,
Built round by those white clouds, enormous clouds,
Still deepens its unfathomable depth.
At length the Vision closes; and the mind,
Not undisturbed by the delight it feels,
Which slowly settles into peaceful calm,
Is left to muse upon the solemn scene ~ William Wordsworth

The sun glowed behind the monotonous, gray January sky, a tease of light through the heavy hazy. Noah gazed out the window. He hated when the sun shined against the overcast sky creating a white, blinding glare while the ball of yellow remained hidden, a tantalizing possibility without a promise. Maybe it would poke through; maybe it wouldn't. That type of sun was a capricious as a woman. ~ Jacqueline Simon Gunn

It may then seem that you had something very precious, and lost it, or your mind may convince you that it was all an illusion anyway. The truth is that it wasn't an illusion, and you cannot lose it. It is part of your natural state, which can be obscured but can never be destroyed by the mind. Even when the sky is heavily overcast, the sun hasn't disappeared. It's still there on the other side of the clouds. ~ Eckhart Tolle

And I sat there at the patio,
while the whole of universe,
was getting engulfed,
in the whitest whiteness of snow.

Down, near my rough paw,
is soft snow,
mannering a fidgeting embryo.

I monitored the snow that plunged,
on the soil of my backyard,
and realized it melting fast.
Was that the temperature or,
my eyes on it overcast?

While I think of this melted exalt,
I am obliged to ask,
What ought happens to the thoughts?
Where do they get tossed?
When they are forgot?

Scorched?
Scoffed?
Deformed?
Unadorned? ~ Jasleen Kaur Gumber

1944 - Exploring London in wartime, a city with stiff upper lip, gritted teeth, clenched fists, makes you realize that Paris is a bit of whore.

Every day and every night for weeks now, London has been bleeding and hiding its wounds with impressive dignity. A 'don't show off' attitude prevails. From time to time a sputtering doodle-bug (a VI) shatters the torpor of the overcast sky. One second, sometimes two ... at most three ... of silence. Visualizing that fat cigar with shark fins as it stops dead, sways, idiotically tips over, then goes into a vertical dive. And explodes. Usually it's an entire building that's destroyed.

Apparently the Civil Defense rescue teams observe a very strict rule of discretion and restraint. You never see any panic. In this impassive city detachment is the expression of panic. ~ Jacques Yonnet

In February, the overcast sky isn't gloomy so much as neutral and vague. It's a significant factor in the common experience of depression among the locals. The snow crunches under your boots and clings to your trousers, to the cuffs, and once you're inside, the snow clings to you psyche, and eventually you have to go to the doctor. The past soaks into you in this weather because the present is missing almost entirely. ~ Charles Baxter

So we navigate mostly by dead reckoning, and deduction from what clues we find. I keep a compass in one pocket for overcast days when the sun doesn't show directions and have the map mounted in a special carrier on top of the gas tank where I can keep track of miles from the last junction and know what to look for. With those tools and a lack of pressure to 'get somewhere' it works out fine and we just about have America all to ourselves. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

Joanie and I weren't able to Sungaze really, it was too overcast.
I did explain it to her though and we did a barefoot walkabout, so she has all the ideas. It only takes about 5 mins to explain it, it's so simple and easy.
It's mainly in the doing. Like most things I suppose.
I was able to walk barefoot in the bright Sun earlier in the day. The Sun was far too bright to look at 4 p.m., but I absorbed it through my Crown and Third Eye, as I do when I try to start Sungazing a little too early during the Sunset and I have to wait a few mins. ~ Sienna McQuillen

Openings come quickly, sometimes, like blue space in running clouds. A complete overcast, then a blaze of light ... ~ Tennessee Williams

Hemlock's attentions had not only healed Aelfric's body of its wounds but also given him curious sensitivity. Aside from the voice in his mind, he felt things in the natural surroundings: the presence of beasts, the whispers of trees to the overcast skies, anger in the earth and sea. Ravens followed him around as they did wolves. And he had developed a rough ability to see in the dark. ~ F.T. McKinstry

The dance grew into a colorful flower bouquet which caught and contained the glow of sun-happy summer days, the secret of star-studded nights, and the wistful sweetness of overcast and rainy hours. ~ Mary Wigman

What a strange thing it is to wake up to a milk-white overcast June morning! The sun is hidden by a thick cotton blanket of clouds, and the air is vapor-filled and hazy with a concentration of blooming scent.
The world is somnolent and cool, in a temporary reprieve from the normal heat and radiance.
But the sensation of illusion is strong. Because the sun can break through the clouds at any moment ...
What a soft thoughtful time.
In this illusory gloom, like a night-blooming flower, let your imagination bloom in a riot of color. ~ Vera Nazarian