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More "Monotonous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at him, but, still slipping her needle with the minute, monotonous gesture back and forth, ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... hiding for?" the monotonous tone jarred Jude more than any outbreak of temper could have done. His recent restraint, and his pent-up plans had worn his nerves to the raw edge. He was in the slow, consuming stage of emotions that was likely to lead him to a desperate move ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... against the daylight yet lingering outside, that the architect read the scheme of subarcuation and the tracery as easily as if he had been studying a plan. Sundown had brought no gleam to lift the pall of the dying day, but the monotonous grey of the sky was still sufficiently light to enable a practised eye to make out that the head of the window was filled with a broken medley of ancient glass, where translucent blues and yellows and reds mingled like the harmony of an old patchwork quilt. Of the lower divisions of the window, ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... to a certain covered piazza where they always read the lesson for the day; then Mr. Evringham suggested that they go promptly to the beach to see the splendid show before the rollers regained their usual monotonous dignity. ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... the hall had died into a silence threaded by one monotonous voice. Now suddenly, trampling on these last words, came a deafening tumult, a roaring and thundering, cheer crowded on cheer, voices hoarse and shrill, beating, overlapping, and while it lasted the people in the little room could ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... steamer passing, at weary intervals, over its dreary expanse, and some moldering remains of ancient cities on its eastern shore, it affords scarcely any indications of life. It does very little, therefore, to relieve the monotonous aspect of solitude and desolation which reigns over the region ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... to speak again, in a low, monotonous voice, almost as if she were talking to herself. She was looking past him, at the gulls that swooped and skimmed ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... the comic element. I really do not see how more of it could be got into the story, and I think Mr. Boucicault underrates the pleasant effect of his own part. The very notion of a sailor, whose life is not among those little courts and streets, and whose business does not lie with the monotonous machinery, but with the four wild winds, is a relief to me in reading the play. I am quite confident of its being an immense relief to the audience when they see the sailor before them, with an entirely different bearing, action, dress, complexion even, from the rest of the men. I would ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... whether Shakespeare's dictum in regard to music holds good when applied to the Eskimo, for they have but little music in their souls, and among no people is there such a noticeable absence of "treason, stratagem and spoil." A rude drum and a monotonous chant, consisting only of the fundamental note and minor third, are the only things in the way of music among the more remote settlements of which I have any knowledge. Mrs. Micawber's singing has been described as the table-beer of acoustics. Eskimo singing is something more. The beer ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... the power of expressing thought in the strongest, fullest, and most vivid manner, he must be classed with Shakespeare and Bacon— and with these writers when at their best. He indulges in repetitions; but the repetitions are never monotonous; they serve to place the subject in every possible point of view, and to enable us to see all sides of it. He possessed an enormous vocabulary, and had the fullest power over it; "never was a man under whose ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... disgust your Majesty by relating all the series of monotonous crimes or superstitious observances which I saw during the two years I remained ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... the Traveling Salesman edged over to the window and peered out through the deepening frost on the pane. Inquisitively the Youngish Girl followed his gaze. Already across the cold, white, monotonous, snow-smothered landscape the pale afternoon light was beginning to wane, and against the lowering red and purple streaks of the wintry sunset the Young Electrician's figure, with the little huddling pack on its shoulder, ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... the ship was kept on her course. The boys remained in the conning tower, gazing ahead. Not a single thing could be observed but a monotonous expanse of whiteness. Now and then they would run into a bank of clouds which obscured their vision as if there ...
— Through the Air to the North Pole - or The Wonderful Cruise of the Electric Monarch • Roy Rockwood
... so, if I know myself: I always thought the same of him, and was just as well satisfied with it as now. His poem I never did greatly affect: nor can I learn to do so: it is full of finest things, but it is monotonous, and has that air of being evolved by a Poetical Machine of the highest order. So it seems to be with him now, at least to me, the Impetus, the Lyrical oestrus, is gone. . . It is the cursed inactivity (very pleasant to me who am no Hero) of this ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... in their featherings and flyings. Even baby cuckoos were a joy to her, though, on their foster-mothers' accounts she resented the thriftlessness of their parents, and grew tired each year of their monotonous call which ceased not day or night. But of the larks never, for their songs seemed to her of heaven, while the cuckoos were of earth. The gulls, too, were somewhat difficult from the friendly point of view, but she lay for hours ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... I must have come mechanically, in a heavy dream; for I had no hope, no energy, no vivacity, no interest. For many weeks my mind had revolved round an awful possibility, as if hypnotized by it, and that monotonous revolution seemed alone to constitute my real life. Moreover, I was subject to recurring nausea, and to disconcerting ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... him at once. On the drive home, in the dark December afternoon, he was tense with apprehension; once or twice he ventured some questions about the Shakers, but she put them aside with a curious gentleness, her voice a little distant and monotonous; her words seemed to come only from the surface of her mind. When he lifted her out of the sleigh at their own door he felt a subtle resistance in her whole body; and when, in the hall, he put his arms about her and tried to kiss her, she drew ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... with Squire Pinner to see those new agricultural implements—or whatever it is. They are sure to be away as much as three days. I was thinking if we could but persuade mamma to come to us for the time papa is to be away, it would be a delightful little change for her—a break in her monotonous life." ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... verse runs easily and whose occasional sales are an encouragement, this last chapter is perhaps unnecessary. Yet there may come times in routine, monotonous production when even he loses in interest, and with this loss his work falls off in quality. It is only through interest and desire that anything has ever been accomplished, and if these are not sustained the work must stay at a low level. Even the seasoned writer must look forward ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... dare." Not so the woman, whose scene of action is her quiet home: her virtues must be passive ones; and with every qualification for successful activity, she is often compelled to chain down her vivid imagination to the most monotonous routine of domestic life. When she is entirely debarred from external activity, a restlessness of nature, that can find no other mode of indulgence, will often invent for itself imaginary trials and imaginary ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... there was a stir of awakening interest The travel-wearied passengers, laying aside books and magazines and cards, renewed conversations that, in the last monotonous hours of the desert part of the journey, had lagged painfully. Throughout the train, there was an air of eager expectancy; a bustling movement of preparation. The woman of the observation car platform had disappeared ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... conscience and its will. Independence and individuality are often said to be lacking in it, but the Old Believers show that firmness and conception of duty which are as needful as intelligence to a nation's strength. Beneath the dull, monotonous surface of political society these sects give us a glimpse of the hard rock which is the groundwork of this seemingly inert race: its originality and stern individuality are what are dear to it. One day Russia will display in other ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... melancholy Don, and she was to domestic eyes visibly cross, and her half-year at home had rendered her much less capable of concealing ill-humour. Something was owing to wear and suspense, together with the effects of the summer heat and confined monotonous life without change or luxury; but much was chargeable on the manifestations of temper to which she had given way in the home circle. She told Wilmet the trouble, which Ferdinand wished to have kept from open discussion till he had received a final statement of his means to lay before Felix. He ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have been formed in England. This opinion only proves that Pope (who, however, passes for a perfect judge of poetry,) had not even an idea of the first elements of Dramatic Art. Nothing can be more spiritless and inanimate, nor more drawling and monotonous in the language and the versification, than this Ferrex and Porrex; and although the Unities of Place and Time are in no way observed, and a number of events are crowded into it, yet the scene is wholly destitute of movement: all that happens is previously announced by ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... he stood, and he tried to move a few steps. On all sides curious looks were directed upon him, but no one offered to make way, and still the monotonous singing continued until he felt himself deafened, as he ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... all conceivable emotions, no matter how microscopic, endows them with life and a soul. By virtue of this power The Steppe, an uneventful record of peasants travelling day after day through flat, monotonous fields, becomes instinct with dramatic interest, and its 125 pages seem all too short. And by virtue of the same attribute we follow with breathless suspense the minute description of the declining days of a great scientist, who feels his physical and mental faculties gradually ebbing away. ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... This tranquil, even monotonous life was very much to my taste in my husband's absence, but after a few weeks it was disturbed by sad trials. First, the chaplain had a sunstroke, and fell out with the climate, the place, and some members of our little society; so ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... join the throng filing into the concert room, and bolt from the midst of it. The process of expulsion was always conducted with the greatest courtesy on either side; for his bolt had become an agreeable variety in the monotonous lives of the guardians; they never knew when or in what fashion ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... the widows and children of many of our eminent authors were collected, they would demonstrate the great fact, that the man who is a husband or a father ought not to be an author. They might weary with a monotonous cry, and usually would be dated from the gaol or the garret. I have seen an original letter from the widow of Ockley to the Earl of Oxford, in which she lays before him the deplorable situation of her affairs; the debts of the Professor being beyond what his effects ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... sat silent and immovable until the light in the valley had quite faded, and the twitter of the birds had been superseded by the monotonous, mournful plaint of a whip-poor-will in a distant tree. Then he stirred and looked up at Eleanor with ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... His voice was almost monotonous in its quietness. It was as though he told the story of something which had passed beyond chance or change. As it unfolded to her understanding, she had seated herself near to his bed. The door of the room was open, and in view outside on the landing sat Madame Bulteel reading. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... his rest until the next afternoon, when the heat and the monotonous rumble of the train, together with its restful swaying, sent him off into a delicious doze, from which he was awakened by a brakeman barely in time to escape discovery. Thereafter he maintained more regular ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... such a habit, I have more or less been led to speak before now; but I have not hitherto marked its definite tendency to increase the price of work, as such. When men are employed continually in carving the same ornaments, they get into a monotonous and methodical habit of labour—precisely correspondent to that in which they would break stones, or paint house-walls. Of course, what they do so constantly, they do easily; and if you excite them temporarily by an increase of wages, you may get much work ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... of appearing very monotonous, I must again tell you that the last pieces you were so kind as to send me to Rome appear to me admirable both in inspiration and composition. The "Fantaisie" dedicated to me is a work of the highest kind—and I am really proud of the honor you ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... adopted the familiarity, and Iredale had not troubled to show disapproval, probably he remembered the relationship between this man and Prudence,—"I'm sick of farming. It's too monotonous. Not only that; so long as mother lives I am little better than a hired man. Of course she's very good," he went on, as he noted a sudden lowering of his companion's eyelids; "does no end for me, and all that sort of thing; but my salary goes nowhere with a man who has—well—who has ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... prisoners; and while they were partaking of it a sudden clamour of drums and horns arose, and the laughing, chattering crowd seemed to dissolve as suddenly from the vicinity of the prison hut, leaving it plunged in an atmosphere of silence, save for the monotonous banging of the drums, the blare of the horns, and a low, humming murmur which might be that of a multitude of people conversing in low, ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... cornice. It almost seemed, as the light veered slowly round, as though they smiled and frowned at times, but never a word was there amongst those millions; the silence itself was audible, and save the dull low thunder of the fall, so monotonous the ear became accustomed to and soon disregarded it, there was not a sound anywhere, not a rustle, not a whisper broke the eternal calm of that ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... be remembered, is on the border between the low uplands and the Fens, and has one side open to soft, swelling hills. Fenmarket is entirely in the Fens, and all the roads that lead out of it are alike level, monotonous, straight, and flanked by deep and stagnant ditches. The river, also, here is broader and slower; more reluctant than it is even at Eastthorpe to hasten its journey to the inevitable sea. During the greater part of the year the ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... us by a sudden flash the thoughts of many hearts. Often the rapid transition from one image to another is pleasing to us: on the other hand, any single figure of speech if too often repeated, or worked out too much at length, becomes prosy and monotonous. In theology and philosophy we necessarily include both 'the moral law within and the starry heaven above,' and pass from one to the other (compare for examples Psalms xviii. and xix.). Whether such a use of language is puerile or noble depends ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... we run squarely against another oddity, in that native Japanese (as well as Chinese) music usually consists merely of monotonous twanging on one or two strings—so that I can now understand the old story of Li Hung Chang's musical experiences in America. His friends took him to hear grand opera singers, to listen to famous violinists, but these ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... quest and on the advice of a woman whose judgment he was inclined to trust. And his quest had failed. He was to see for himself. He would see nothing. And still far away the beating of that drum went on—monotonous, mournful, significant—the real call of the East made audible. Thresk leaned forward on his seat, listening, treasuring the sound. He rose reluctantly when his bearer came to tell him that dinner was ready. Thresk took ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... work to do and his dusky laborers had flagged under the unusual heat. There was now no touch of coolness in the stagnant air, and although the camp down the valley was very quiet a confused hum of insects came out of the jungle. It rose and fell with a monotonous regularity that jarred upon Dick's nerves as he forced ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... corner, like the muttering of one holding audible communion with his own spirit. De Poininges listened too, and he fancied it was a female voice. Presently he heard one of those wild and uncouth ditties, a sort of chant or monotonous song, which, to the terrified psalm-singer, sounded like the death-wail of some ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... the weather bow, I perceived that the ship swinging to her anchor with the flood-tide, was now obliquely pointing towards the open ocean. The prospect was unlimited, but exceedingly monotonous and forbidding; not the slightest ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... shout echoed oddly clear and solitary above the incessant booming of the breakers and the monotonous wash of the waves. ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... is not interesting. As time fled to the monotonous clink of coins over the bar he set up in the frame shack that faced the desert trail, Ladron's importance in Lamo ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... brilliant effect. Further, to enhance it, he would make free use of the knife on the various surroundings to give a contrast, and at the same time to produce a feeling of texture on the various surfaces, so as not to have a monotonous and flat appearance. This method of scraping up portions of the surface of the paper is clearly shown in Plucking the Fowl ...
— Masters of Water-Colour Painting • H. M. Cundall
... adequate idea of Miss Thusa's manner, so solemn and impressive, of the tones of her voice, monotonous and slightly nasal, yet full of intensity, and, above all, of the expression of her foreboding eye, while in the act of narration, it would be easy to account for the effect which she produced. Helen and Alice were bathed in tears before ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... scissors escaping from his hand, noted the perilous heave of his whole person over the edge of the bunk after them, and then, returning to my first purpose, pursued my course on the deck. The sparkle of the sea filled my eyes. It was gorgeous and barren, monotonous and without hope under the empty curve of the sky. The sails hung motionless and slack, the very folds of their sagging surfaces moved no more than carved granite. The impetuosity of my advent made the man at the helm start slightly. A block aloft squeaked incomprehensibly, for what on earth ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... comment had the couple been alone or standing still; but the movement and the association of couples seemed mysteriously to lift the whole operation above criticism and to endow it with a perfect propriety. The motion of the couples, and their manner of moving, over the earth's surface were extremely monotonous; some couples indeed only walked stiffly to and fro; on the other hand a few exhibited variety, lightness and grace, in manoeuvres which involved a high degree of mutual trust and comprehension. While ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... queen of one of the finest domains in the land, surrounded by every luxury, spending as she pleased, beloved, adored, she was not content. Her life, so well regulated, so constantly smooth, without annoyances and disturbance, seemed to her insipid. There were always the same monotonous pleasures, always recurring each in its season. There were parties and receptions, horse rides, hunts, drives—and it was always thus! Alas, this was not the life she had dreamed of; she was born for more exciting pleasures. She yearned for ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... the Venetians were quite as happy and as well off without it. The games of the time were doubtless much more simple. But whatever they were, they proved to be so fascinating that they soon became an actual menace. Amusements were few in those dull, monotonous days, when there were neither theaters, books, moving pictures, railroads, or automobiles. One day was much like another. Therefore even the clergy welcomed a diversion and devoted so much time to cards that the recreation had to be forbidden them. Now and then ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... nothing monotonous in American weather, and you must get used to our sharp alternations," said Mr. Clifford. "This snow will do good rather than harm, and the lawn will actually look green after it has melted, as it will speedily. The thing we dread is a severe frost at a far later date than ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... is, a fragment of landscape with its due variety of chiaro-oscuro, but a mere profile against the sky, serrated with the outlines of graves and a very few memorial stones. Not a tree could exist up there: nothing but the monotonous ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... during the long evenings when he was eternally playing bridge. Finally I promised it would make me more contented and able to bear the monotony of marriage better, if only he would let me go. He thought it was awfully wicked of me to call marriage monotonous, and said his mother would have been horrified at such a remark. I told him it was no good expecting a young wife to behave like one's mother, and he said he'd rather I didn't. Then we laughed, and the dear old boy gave in, and said that Everard was a white sort of man, and ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... grateful for the new interest which had come into her monotonous life. Affairs moved like clock work at Miss Hathaway's—breakfast at half past six, dinner at one, and supper at half past five. Each day was also set apart by its regular duties, from the washing on Monday ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... Alfred de Musset. He wrote "Parfums de Madeleine," 1839; "Odes et Poemes," 1843; "Poemes Evangeliques," 1852; "Idylles Heroiques," 1858, etc. etc.] has elevation, grandeur, nobility, and harmony. What is it, then, that he lacks? Ease, and perhaps humor. Hence the monotonous solemnity, the excess of emphasis, the over-intensity, the inspired air, the statue-like gait, which annoy one in him. His is a muse which never lays aside the cothurnus, and a royalty which never puts off its crown, even in sleep. The total absence in him ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... wood and worked—or played— with both hands. Dr. Baumann says it is customary on bright moonlight nights for two lines of men to sit facing each other and to clap—one can hardly call it ring—these bells vigorously, but in good time, accompanying this performance with a monotonous song, while the delighted women and children dance round. The learned doctor evidently sees the picturesqueness of this practice, but notes that the words of the songs are not "tiefsinnige" (profound), as he has heard men for hours singing "The shark ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... another, and still the little house on the cliff showed no signs of life. But one afternoon the monotonous watch came to a sudden end. Lew, in the attic gable, espied a fleet of transports coming down the bay. Instantly he spread ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... your time will be given endeavouring to make the lives of those around you smooth and happy, whilst you cheerfully spend your days in a somewhat monotonous manner. ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... Ladysmith and the outer world, was the first step in a preliminary process of attack and of defence; after which only the opponents settled down to the relatively permanent conditions that constitute the monotonous endurance of a siege. The British, prior to accepting the investment, struck out right and left from day to day, by skirmishing and reconnoitring parties; the Boers on the 9th of November delivered an assault described ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... simulation of romance. After all, marching to the divine drumbeat was simply to follow the precepts ingrained in me as a child, but it is much easier to make a quick charge amid the blare of bugles than to plod along day after day to the monotonous grumble of the drum. I wished that the Professor had been a little more explicit, and yet his last words were always with me. It was as though they were intended for me alone, and I coupled them with his admonition to me that day long ago in the cabin: "Get ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... making machines out of the men, standardization causes a mental state that leads to invention, for the reason that the worker's brain is in most intimate contact with the work, and yet has not been unnecessarily fatigued by the work itself. No more monotonous work could be cited than that of that boy whose sole duty was to operate by hand the valve to the engine, yet he invented the automatic control of the slide valve used throughout ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... not the charm of variety; they are painfully monotonous:—The Greek Church is "dead," and "non-missionary." Certainly non-missionary, if dead! To say of any organization, church or other, that it is dead and non-progressive, is to say the worst that could ...
— Hymns from the Morningland - Being Translations, Centos and Suggestions from the Service - Books of the Holy Eastern Church • Various
... announce some important tidings to the people who thronged around him between the Town Hall and the Franciscan monastery. Perhaps he might have succeeded in forcing a passage through the concourse, but when he heard the name "Ernst Ortlieb," in the monotonous speech of the city crier, he followed the remainder of his notice. It made known to the citizens of Nuremberg that, since the thunderstorm of the preceding night, a maid had been missing from the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... strength to the faint, but He crowns that restoration by making the restored weakling like Himself. 'He fainteth not, neither is weary.' They, too, 'shall ran and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.' In the long drawn out grind of monotonous marching along the common path of daily small duties and uneventful life, they shall not faint; in the rare occasional spurts, occurring in every man's experience, when extraordinary tax is laid on heart and limbs, they shall not be weary. And they ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... promiscuous dances once more begin. It is now after midnight, however, and things are not as they were before. The dancers are dull and heavy—most of them have been drinking hard, and have long ago passed the stage of exhilaration. They dance in monotonous measure, round after round, hour after hour, with eyes fixed upon vacancy, as if they were only half conscious, in a constantly growing stupor. The men grasp the women very tightly, but there will be half an hour together when neither will see ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... and grasp the heavy cane, saw the long arm rise and fall, heard a muffled groan, a sharp cry, a shout of agony; but the long arm rose and fell untiring, merciless, until all sounds were hushed save for a dull moaning and the monotonous sound of blows. ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... shrugged. "This area's getting so peaceful it's monotonous." He unsnapped his accumulator and ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole
... this piece in a monotonous style. Try to express the actual feeling of each quotation; and enter into ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... remembered the reverberation from the banks of the gorge and the perpetual accompaniment of shifting, jostling pebbles. And, moreover—? There was no breeze. That was it! What a vast, still place it was, a monotonous afternoon slumber. And the sky open and blank, except for a sombre veil of haze that had gathered in the ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... run away when I was surrounded by the snakes?" demanded Felix, when the worthy lady's discipline became somewhat monotonous to him. "If I had done what you say I should certainly have been bitten. I did better: I climbed the tree, and bagged the ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... itself. The community where the right spirit prevails will realize that they must make some sacrifices. If a thing is worth while, the proper means must be provided. One cannot have the benefit without paying the cost. It is a question as to which a community will choose: a monotonous, isolated life with the accumulation of some money, or an active, enthusiastic, educational, and social life without so many dollars. It is really a choice between money with little life on the one hand, and a little less money with more ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... them, already halfway across the great room. I saw then that its stature was that of ordinary men. The prolonged booming of the clock died away. I heard the footfall, shuffling upon the polished boards. I heard another sound—a voice, low and monotonous, droning as in prayer. The figure was speaking. It was a woman. And she carried in both hands before her a small object that faintly shimmered—a glass of water. And ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... things besides love-affairs," said Sylvia, in a strange, monotonous tone, almost as if she were deaf and dumb, and had no knowledge of inflections. "There are affairs between the soul and its Maker that are more important than love ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... playing on the piano as we entered. It was a curious composition—very rhythmic, with a peculiar thread of monotonous ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... worst, Scott's style may fairly be called ponderous, loose, monotonous: at its finest, the adequate instrument of a natural story-teller who is most at home when, emerging from his longueur, he writes of grand things ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... Nobility!" These words, the ordinary form of affirmation used by soldiers to their officers, were pronounced in a loud, metallic, monotonous tone, as if the speaker had been an automaton conversing with a brother automaton at a distance of twenty yards. As soon as the words were pronounced the mouth of the machine closed spasmodically, and the head, which had ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... and groom?" she asked, in a bored voice. Brides and grooms had come to be monotonous. She had seen all sorts since she had started on this journey and now loathed the thought of newly married fellow-creatures. She could not understand why John's interest had been ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... use of the distich is monotony; but Dryden avoided this. By a constant variation of cadence, he threw the natural pause now near the start, now near the close, and now in the midst of his verse, and in this way developed a rhythm that never wearies the ear with monotonous recurrence. He employed for this same purpose the hemistich or half-verse, the triplet or three consecutive verses with the same rhyme, and the Alexandrine with its six accents ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... country where the labor necessary to subsistence is, in some way, very disagreeable. In such cases every man and woman will seek to impose the task of production upon another. Among most primitive agricultural peoples, the labor necessary to maintenance is very monotonous and uninteresting, and no freeman will voluntarily perform it. On the contrary, among hunting and fishing peoples, the labor of maintenance is decidedly interesting. It partakes ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... at regular intervals. Articles of diet that experience shows do not agree with the patient should be rigidly excluded from the menu. A varied diet of nutritious character is essential during pregnancy in order to ensure good blood, health, and strength. A monotonous diet, or a diet composed largely of stale tea, coffee, and [78] cake, is not permissible, and may do untold harm. Pastries and desserts of all kinds should be excluded. In the later weeks of pregnancy, because of the large ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... river, between the green banks, the blue sky above, the warm sun shining on him. Had Charley been placed on that barge in health, he would have thought it the nastiest place he had ever seen—confined, dirty, monotonous. But waking to it from fever, when he did not care where he lay, so that he could only lie, he grew reconciled to it. Indeed, Charley began to like the boat; but he was none the less eager for the day that ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... day's march, all the adventurers were asleep—stretched here and there upon the ground. The sentinels alone were awake, and watching—now and then raising along the lines their monotonous cry of "Sentinela alerte!" It was the only sound that for a long time interrupted the ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... Southern Borneo, but has from four to ten rattan strings tied lengthwise on the back. In singing to call good spirits, antohs, especially in case somebody is ill, he constantly beats with a stick on one of the strings in a monotonous way without any change of time. Among the Penihings this shield is specially made for the blian's use, and unless it be new and unused he will not sell it, because the blood of sacrificial animals has been smeared on its surface and the patient would ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... ran away with the countess' first husband. The abandoned husband and wife decided out of spite to unite their fortunes, but found nothing but disappointment and ill-will in this second marriage. And you suffer the consequences. They lead a monotonous, narrow, lonely life for eleven months or more out of the year. One day, you met M. Rossigny, who fell in love with you and suggested an elopement. You did not care for him. But you were bored, your ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... It was a network of hopes; which at the announcement, 'Sept, Rouge, Impair, et Manque,' disappeared like magic gossamer, to be replaced in a moment by new. That all the people there, including himself, could be interested in what to the eye of perfect reason was a somewhat monotonous thing—the property of numbers to recur at certain longer or shorter intervals in a machine containing them—in other words, the blind groping after fractions of a result the whole of which was well known—was one testimony among many of the powerlessness of ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... a poor sailer; we thought it a good run if she made eight knots an hour, so no wonder we did not reach Singapore till May 23, 1848. It was a long monotonous voyage, but we were well occupied, and I do not remember ever finding it dull. The sea was all I ever fancied by way of a companion, and, like all one's best friends, made me happy or unhappy, but was never stupid. Then we had to learn Malay and its Arabic characters, ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... earns his money by ten hours of dull work and spends it in three hours of lurid and unprofitable pleasure in the evening. Both in the school and in the factory, in proportion as his work grows dull and monotonous, his recreation must become more exciting and stimulating. The hopelessness of adding evening classes and social entertainments as a mere frill to a day filled with monotonous and deadening drudgery constantly becomes more apparent to those who are endeavoring ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... people made in tramping over the stone pavements or hurriedly driving over the hard streets, possessed a strangely different quality from the monotonous and grinding roar of the daylight. They were sharp, clear, resonant and emphatic. A single footfall attracted the attention of a listener more than the previous shuffle of a thousand feet. David's,—soft ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... privilege of colouring some of the prettiest eyes in the world. Yellow has a chance only in cases of jaundice and liver complaint, and his colour scheme in such cases is seldom appreciated. Again, green has the contract for the greater bulk of the vegetable life of the globe; but his is a monotonous business, like the painting of miles and miles of palings: grass, grass, grass, trees, trees, trees, ad infinitum; whereas yellow leads a roving, versatile life, and is seldom called upon for such ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... formed by a succession of small hills and intervening valleys; and although the soil is very poor, being principally a mixture of quartzose sand and a large proportion of marine exuviae, yet this tree grows to a considerable size, but covering the surface of the island, gives it a monotonous appearance which is however occasionally relieved by a spreading undescribed species of melaleuca (allied to Melaleuca armillaris, Smith) and the more elegant pittosporum, an arborescent species, also undescribed. In fact, these three trees constitute the timber of the island. ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... their would-be masters confer upon them. I have known instances of attachment and fidelity on the part of Indians towards their masters, but these are exceptional cases. All the actions of the Indian show that his ruling desire is to be let alone; he is attached to his home, his quiet monotonous forest and river life; he likes to go to towns occasionally, to see the wonders introduced by the white man, but he has a great repugnance to living in the midst of the crowd; he prefers handicraft to field labour, and especially dislikes binding himself to regular ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... wysh to make A rackette, nor a fuss, And yet I fayne wolde hie awaye And cease from livyng thus; For it is moste too peaceful here, And sore monotonous." ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... drifted slow at the will of the current, And where the boatman listened, and knew not how, as he listened, Something touched through the years the old lost hopes of his childhood,— Only his sense was filled with low monotonous murmurs, As of a faint-heard prayer, that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... monotonous as one of the enormous American inland seas to a lover of the ocean, to whom the salt brine is as the breath of delight. The fatal facility of the heroic couplet to lapse into diffuseness, has, coupled with a warped anxiety for irreducible concision, been ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... of Judge Saxon's office low-keyed, monotonous voices were talking, and a secret conference was going on. Troubled times were here again for those deep in the Colonel's councils. They were never sure of a permanent place there, but always on the ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... passage?" she said, humming the air with soft modulations; "I have always regarded the monotonous repetition of this strain" (and she indicated it lightly by a few touches of the keys) "as rather a blemish of an otherwise perfect composition. But as you play it, it is anything but monotonous. ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... occasional shouts of the boatmen, Alroy, although he could observe nothing, was conscious that for some time their course lay through a principal thoroughfare of the city; but by degrees the sounds became less frequent, and in time entirely died away, and all that caught his ear was the regular and monotonous stroke of ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... a burden, were heard approaching: other, and more hesitating steps, mingled with these. At length they reached the massive iron door, and the burden was put down. The thickness of the door was too great, to permit the words spoken without to be heard within; but for some time the monotonous sound of a voice continued—doubtless, a prayer of length and efficacy by the Franciscan. The voice ceased; the chains and bolts were one by one withdrawn; the door slowly swung back, and a glare of flambeaux flashed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 20, No. 567, Saturday, September 22, 1832. • Various
... They take the evidence of Harding and the five Frenchmen with him. Besides, they haven't had a hanging yet, and they're keen for it. You see, things have been pretty monotonous. They haven't located anything big, and they got tired of hunting for Surprise Lake. They did some stampeding the first part of the winter, but they've got over that now. Scurvy is beginning to show up amongst them, too, and they're just ripe ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... German planes. But they circled away from us. Perhaps the French drove them back. However, it was the excitement in the court that caused Henry's remark. For the young people did not deflect their monotonous course about the compound, when the sky-gazers had returned indoors. Around and around they went, talking, talking, talking, with the low insistent murmur of deeply interested people. Their nerves were taut; emotion was ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... his congregation, who were usually accustomed to the somewhat monotonous reading of his uncle, and to ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... sombre; another relieved by porticos with figured friezes resting on tall columns. The irregularities were pleasing; some of them were stately; and they were all helped not a little by domes and pavilions without which the roof lines would have been monotonous. ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... ye,' Teen said in her monotonous voice, and without a smile or brightening of her face. 'Fine dry nicht. We're ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... Jean had been taken, when a mere babe, after his parents had been killed and scalped by Indians. Madame Roussillon, a professed invalid, whose appetite never failed and whose motherly kindness expressed itself most often through strains of monotonous falsetto scolding, was a woman of little education and no refinement; while her husband clung tenaciously to his love of books, especially to the romances most in vogue when he ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... difficult method of discovery by comparative development. The word phrenology has become so identified with his incomplete discoveries, that it may be laid aside in the present stage of our progress. There is no monotonous repetition of function in nervous structures, and the possibility of subdivision of structure and function is limited only by our own ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... mounted so far above the level of the waters that they only make a distant murmur—when there is not a breath of wind stirring any thing—it is strange with how many mysterious voices the mountain yet speaks. Sometimes there is a monotonous and continuous rumble as if some huge stone, many miles off, were loosened from its position, and tumbling from rock to rock. Then comes a loud distinct report as if a rock had been split; and faint echoes of strange wailings touch the ear, as if this solemn desert ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... presenting all the points of a lesson on the same plane of emphasis, with a failure to distinguish between the important and the unimportant. Minor details and incidental aspects of the topic often receive the same degree of stress that is given to more important points. This results in a state of monotonous plodding through so much material without responding to its varying shades of meaning and value. Not only does this type of teaching fail to lodge in the mind of the pupil the larger and more important truths which ought to become a permanent part of his mental equipment, but it also ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... sense of the Big House was solidarity. It defied earthquakes. It was planted for a thousand years. The honest concrete was overlaid by a cream-stucco of honest cement. Again, this very sameness of color might have proved monotonous to the eye had it not been saved by the many flat roofs of ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... she and her mother were living, the mother acting as assistant to the manager, the young person occupied with enduring her monotonous existence and with watching the boarders, there were two actresses, a mother and daughter. The daughter, whose name was Blanche, was only a year or two older than the young person whose eyes followed her so eagerly, because Blanche was one of those marvelous creatures whose real ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... no contempt within his breast. The least of them interested him, and, too, there were those with whom he always made friends easily, and there were his hereditary enemies whose presence gave a spice to life that might otherwise have become humdrum and monotonous. ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... absolutely still except for the monotonous voice and the breathing of the crowd. Oh, yes, and the flies. It was not that I forgot the flies, only their buzzing was the ceaseless accompaniment to everything ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... pressure of the will driving a reluctant and protesting set of nerves and muscles to their daily tasks. The day labourer comes home from his work with his muscular strength exhausted, but he has to go back to the same monotonous task on the morrow: his family has to be fed and clothed and he cannot permit himself to say, "I am tired and will stay away from work to-day." The business or professional man comes back from his office with a wearied brain that makes any thought an effort, but he must ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... is not formidable in the flesh, the evil that he does lives after him. Freeman's view of Froude is not now held by any one whose opinion counts; yet still there seems to rise, as from a brazen head of Ananias, dismal and monotonous chaunt, "He was careless of the truth, he did not make history the business of his life." He did make history the business of his life, and he cared more for truth than for anything else in the world. Freeman's biographer has given no clue to his imperfect sympathy with Froude. Green, true ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... was quiet and monotonous until after we left Salt Lake City at dawn this morning. Nothing happened until we were about a hundred miles east of Reno. We had taken elevation to cross the Stillwater Mountains and were skimming low over ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... accustomed to this monotonous life by his first queen, and he did not care for any other. The new Queen, upon arriving, soon found this out, and found also that if she wished to rule him, she must keep him in the same room, confined as he had been kept by her predecessor. Alberoni was the only person ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... life. It proved to be, in one respect, a cruel sacrifice—her hair never grew plentifully again. When it did reappear, it had completely lost its charming mingled hues of deep red and brown; it was now of one monotonous light-brown color throughout. At first sight, Mary's Scotch friends hardly knew ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... need of it. The system pourtrayed in this book is intended to act on all the faculties of a child, especially the highest, and to strengthen them at the time the mere animal part of his nature is weak. The existing schools were not found fit to take our children when they left us. The dull, monotonous, sleepy, heavy system pursued, was quite unadapted to advance such pupils. At this point of the history much damage was done to our plans. The essence or kernel was omitted and the mere shell retained, to make infant schools harmonise with the existing ones, ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... an aged and wrinkled woman, in blue cotton and a white mutch, who was placidly smoking a short cutty. This creature, bowed and satiate with monotonous years, took the pipe from her indrawn lips, and asked ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... are crowned with a slight shrubby vegetation, the bright verdure of which, separated from the dark blue colour of the sea by their glittering sandy beaches, formed a pleasing contrast to the dull, monotonous appearance of the mainland. These islets are in fact only the dry parts of a shoal, on which the sand has accumulated, and formed a soil to receive and nourish the seeds of plants, which have either been drifted on shore by the tide, or been brought ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... still went on, the gentle voice growing a little weary and monotonous, and the white eyelids falling a little heavily ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... the Americans in particular, the British, when engaged in expeditions of this nature, always rest their hopes of success upon valor rather than on numbers." These comments read particularly well when it is remembered that the assailants outnumbered the assailed in the proportion of 5 to 1. It is monotonous work to have to supplement a history by a running commentary on James' mistakes and inventions; but it is worth while to prove once for all the utter unreliability of the author who is accepted in Great Britain as the great authority ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... set us free from sordidness, that teach our minds versatility and sympathy, that create for us hobbies and avocations of worth, that rest and refresh us. If we must be ocean liners all day, plodding between known and monotonous ports, at least we may be tramp ships at night, cargoed with strange stuffs and trafficking ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... and again, but there was no response, and he finally concluded that it was rather a monotonous manner of passing the time and ceased, and again gave himself ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... writing of these notes gets monotonous as there is nothing much doing. Artillery duels are constant, and during the last few days the naval guns have fired more than usual. Occasionally a Taube flies over us and drops bombs, but such things ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... however, to be quite undisturbed. I was awakened, at the first slight peep of dawn, by a sound from an apartment beneath our own—a plaintive, monotonous chant, rising and then falling in a sort of mournful cadence. It seemed to me a wail of something unearthly—so wild—so strange—so unaccountable. In terror I awoke my husband, who reassured me by telling me it was the morning salutation of the ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... table. But all this had ceased to satisfy her; she felt that there was a void somewhere or other, an empty place provocative of yawns. Her life dragged on, devoid of occupation, and successive days only brought back the same monotonous hours. Tomorrow had ceased to be; she lived like a bird: sure of her food and ready to perch and roost on any branch which she came to. This certainty of food and drink left her lolling effortless for whole ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... their lost freight, lay in long successive curves,—the fringes and overlappings of the sea. At high noon the shadow of a seagull's wing, or a sudden flurry and gray squall of sandpipers, themselves but shadows, was all that broke the monotonous glare ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... the end, is a trio on the chamecen, long and monotonous, that the guechas perform as a rapid pizzicato on the highest strings, very sharply struck. It sounds like the very quintescence, the paraphrase, the exasperation if I may so call it, of the eternal ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... a short cut to the village, and I still stood there. It must have been after eleven, and the monotonous tick of the big clock on the stairs behind me was the ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... measure of respect. Our desire to embellish its importance is absurd, and the hysteria of the dailies is calculated to place a dignified gentleman in a ridiculous light. Mrs. Reid's name and cultivation will doubtless enable her to support a monotonous role with grace; but, in consideration of British proficiency in matters ceremonial, their money will not be called upon to add a jot to the dignity of their reception. Their early departure has ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... and an occasional construction train, formed the only break in the monotonous life which I led. It was a dreadfully solitary existence. I was alone in the station, and as December began to wane, and the dread blizzards commenced their wild revelry, heaping the snow into such ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... let us see what this vaunted ease really is. Tell me, is it not another name for ennui? This state of quiescence, this objectless, dreamless torpor, this transition du lit a la table, de la table au lit,—what more dreary and monotonous existence can you devise? Is it pleasure in this inglorious existence to think that you are serving pleasure? Is it freedom to be the slave to self? For I hold," continued Trevylyan, "that this jargon of 'consulting happiness,' this ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... upon her knees, and her face, averted from the light of an iron lamp beside her, was bent upon that of the dying person. She moistened his mouth from time to time with some liquid, and between whiles sung, in a low monotonous cadence, one of those prayers, or rather spells, which, in some parts of Scotland and the north of England, are used by the vulgar and ignorant to speed the passage of a parting spirit, like the tolling ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... for the relations of Orient and Occident. The swelling volume of Mediterranean trade which accompanied the crusading movement depended upon the growing demand in the West for the products of the East. Europe could provide the necessities for a simple and monotonous life, without adornment or display. But the rise of a burgher aristocracy, the growth of an elaborate and symbolic ritualism in religious worship, the desire for that pomp and display which is half the ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... wearily by the roadside, the gleaming surface of the snow stretched in a monotonous sheet of white between the trunks of the trees, the tops of the dark rocks beside the way bore smooth white caps of loose snow, the forest stream was frozen along the edges, only in the centre did the water ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... thirst, and it was pitiable to see the tongues of the poor horses hanging out of their mouths. Day dawned, and there were no signs of the caravan. A thick vapor was rising from every quarter, and they hoped that when it cleared up they would be more fortunate; but no, there was the same monotonous landscape, the same carpet of flowers without perfume. The sun was now three hours high, and the heat was intense; their tongues clove to the roofs of their mouths, while still they went on over flowery meads; ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... way from Cape St. Roque to the Amazon, the wind which had been blowing hard for two days, from E.S.E., and raising lively waves all about, increased to a gale that knocked up seas, washing over the little craft more than ever. The thing was becoming monotonous and tiresome; for a change, therefore, I ran in toward the land, so as to avoid the ugly cross sea farther out in the current. This course was a mistaken one; we had not sailed far on it when a sudden rise of the canoe, followed ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... chattering with the stones; but as soon as the stream was allowed to gather all its force and run free its loquacity was such that it would prevent a traveller from suspecting his approach to the mill, until, very near, the monotonous hum of its saw could be heard. This was a place Fleda dearly loved. The wild sound of the waters and the lonely keeping of the scene, with the delicious smell of the new-sawn boards, and the fascination ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... occasionally through narrow canals, the banks of which were covered with high reeds and heavy, tropical, confused, untidy vegetation. The air was still and stifling—absolutely unmoved, screened as it was on all sides by vegetation. The sailors sang a monotonous cadence, and the boat glided along for some three hours until we arrived at the mouth of the Piri river, hardly wide enough for a couple of boats to go through simultaneously, and so shallow that ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... in the ravine behind me. My last glimpse of them showed me that her ball had fallen into a stone-studded cavity in the side of the hill, and she was drawing her niblick from her bag as I passed out of sight. George's voice, blurred by distance to a monotonous murmur, followed me until ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... the Silurian age, when there were no elevations higher than the Canadian hills, when water covered the face of the earth with the exception of a few isolated portions lifted above the almost universal ocean, how monotonous must have been the conditions of life! And what should we expect to find on those first shores? If we are walking on a sea-beach to-day, we do not look for animals that haunt the forests or roam over the open plains, or for those that live in sheltered ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... me well suited to be the home of so dreadful an animal. There were few animals to be seen here. Even birds were scarce, and a few chattering monkeys were almost the only creatures that broke the monotonous silence ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... very long in the Service. I found it pleasant work but monotonous, and receiving shortly after I went out a legacy bequeathed by a widowed aunt I had almost forgotten, determined to leave it and devote myself to study and travel. Like many Englishmen, I had taken no ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... small square blocks of the same rock, giving it a neat and clean appearance. There are few windows on the street; the houses are one story high, with diminutive doors, not more than four feet high; and the low dull walls stretching along the streets, give the city a dismal and monotonous appearance. The reason of building the doors so low, is to prevent the quartering of Turkish government horsemen on their families, as well as to prevent the Bedawin Arabs from plundering them. On the southwest corner of the city stands an ancient castle in ruins, built on an artificial ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... and the monotonous, piteous plaint of the wailing women, which ever and anon rose into a loud, shrill, tremulous shriek, echoed through the silent rooms within to this hall, announcing that death had claimed a victim ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the pledge of Janice, the life at Greenwood became as healthily monotonous as of yore. Both Mr. and Mrs. Meredith spoke so sharply to both Sukey and Charles of his loitering about the kitchen that his visits, save at meal times, entirely ceased. The squire went further and ordered him to put an end to his ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... and it is, of course, devoted to strictly practical objects. Consequently, everything is arranged in such a manner as to make the most of the space. All the paths are at right angles or parallel to each other, and the garden generally is laid out with monotonous regularity. Yet no small part of the success of the Government gardens as an institution depends upon the produce of this department. It has for many years enabled the Government to distribute gratuitously the seeds and ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... stems, will all be too minute to be rendered consistently with his artistical feeling of breadth, or with the amount of labor which he considers it dexterous and legitimate to bestow upon the work: but, above all, the rounded and monotonous form of the head of the tree will be at variance with his ideas of "composition;" he will assuredly disguise or break it, and the main points of the olive-tree will ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... then deserted warehouse, Almayer putting away his papers before driving home with Mr. Vinck, in whose household he lived, would pause listening to the noise of a hot discussion in the private office, would hear the deep and monotonous growl of the Master, and the roared-out interruptions of Lingard—two mastiffs fighting over a marrowy bone. But to Almayer's ears it sounded like a quarrel of Titans—a battle ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... moon shall light her bright lamp in the star-spangled heavens, and shed her silvery rays across the plain, the hunter may lead forth the village belle, and foot it merrily on the mossy greensward, to the sound of the bagpipe and the rustic flute, by fountains which never cease their monotonous but soothing plaint, and under the long shadows of the ancient oaks ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... holy exercises with admirable perseverance, that I must tell. This occurred towards the latter end of the winter, when Wilkinson and Bertram had nearly completed their sojourn in Cairo. Not but what the dervishes had roared out their monotonous prayer to Allah, duly every Friday, at 1 P.M., with as much precision as a service in one of your own cathedrals; but our friends had put the thing off, as hardly being of much interest, and at last went there when they had only one Friday left ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... either up or down, or to any portion of the frightful aspect around, I fixed my eye entirely on each individual step before me, as if there had been no other object in the world besides. To encourage me by diverting my attention, the Arabs chanted their monotonous songs, mainly in their own language, interspersed with expressions about buckshish, "Englese good to Arabs," and making signs to me every now and then how near we were getting to the top. After a second dwam, a rest and a draught of water prepared me for another ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... other hand, is essential to the progress of civilization. The tendency of city life is toward imitation and reducing life to a dead level. Eccentricity may be objectionable, but without individuality of persons and communities life would be stupid and monotonous. There is probably no greater need for strengthening rural life than a community loyalty which will prevent the unthinking imitation of urban life and will take justifiable pride in local ideals and achievements. The need of a larger ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... cement has crumbled off, their waving weeds and grasses and flowers, now sparsely fringing their top, now thickly protruding from their sides, or clinging and making a home in the clefts and crevices of decay, were to be smoothed to a complete level, and whitewashed over into one uniform and monotonous tint. What a gain in cleanliness! what a loss in beauty! One old wall like this I remember on the road from Grotta Ferrata to Frascati, which was to my eyes a constant delight. One day the owner took ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... as having a "worn, weary, discontented look"; usually kindly and courteous, but shy, reserved, and exceedingly sensitive; an extraordinary reader, but noted for carping criticism. Although a good student, he seemed galled beyond endurance by the monotonous routine of military duties, which he deliberately neglected and thus procured his dismissal from the Academy. He left, alone and ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... decoration, that the designer was afraid to leave his walls plain, lest the whole should appear lean and cold. He has, therefore, spun his tracery and panelling over the whole surface. Nowhere can the eye rest on a plain piece of wall; everywhere it is fidgeted by monotonous rows of niches and mouldings. In fact, it may be compared to an etching so full of unnecessary details that composition, balance of mass, and beauty of line are all smothered in them. And yet there is much to be said on the other side. The mere size—the ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock
... window, from the Grand Canal and the lesser canals, rose the manifold noises of Venetian life. All other sounds were dominated by the monotonous shouts of the gondoliers. Somewhere close at hand, perhaps in the opposite palace (was it not the Fogazzari palace?), a woman with a fine soprano voice was practising; the singer was young—someone who could not ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... swelling roar from either touch-line greeted the school's advantage. A feature of a big match was always the shouting. It rarely ceased throughout the whole course of the game, the monotonous but impressive sound of five hundred voices all shouting the same word. It was worth hearing. Sometimes the evenness of the noise would change to an excited crescendo as a school three-quarter got off, or the school back pulled up the attack with a fine piece of defence. Sometimes the ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... arctic regions which had so held and enthralled them day by day had, after a time, ceased. Mr. Gibbs was engaged in making experiments, observations, and explorations, the result of which he would embody in carefully prepared reports, and Sammy's daily message promised to be rather monotonous. Roland Clewe felt the great importance of a thorough exploration and examination of the polar sea. The vessel he had sent out had reached this hitherto inaccessible region, but it was not at all certain that another voyage, even of the same kind, would be successful. ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... to find Fairyland upon earth, have transferred it to the kingdom of Death; and it has become the hope for the future. Each Sunday in church the congregation of business men and hard-worked women set aside the things of their monotonous life, and sing the songs of the endless search. To the rolling notes of the organ they tell the tale of the Elysian Fields: they take their unfilled desire for Fairyland and adjust it to their deathless hope of Heaven. They sing of crystal fountains, of ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... countenance, who as he came up said in a voice far hoarser and more devilish, "I am the enchanter Archelaus, the mortal enemy of Amadis of Gaul and all his kindred," and then passed on. Having gone a short distance the three carts halted and the monotonous noise of their wheels ceased, and soon after they heard another, not noise, but sound of sweet, harmonious music, of which Sancho was very glad, taking it to be a good sign; and said he to the duchess, from whom he did not stir a step, or for a single instant, "Senora, where there's music ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... sparrows hunched up on the leafless branches of the hedges, or chasing the shy young rabbits that scuttered frightened to their burrows in the mossy bank by the roadside, as the piebalds plodded sedately on their monotonous way. The bear snarled behind his iron bars, the children crouched silently in a corner of the caravan, while Joe and Moll smoked and lounged, and discussed their plans concerning their captives and the company generally during the approaching winter. Bambo occupied his accustomed ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... this portrait, your wish is that I should furnish a few brief chronological memoranda of my own life. That would be hard for me to do, and when done, might not be very interesting for others to read. Nothing makes such dreary and monotonous reading as the old hackneyed roll-call, chronologically arrayed, of inevitable facts in a man's life. One is so certain of the man's having been born, and also of his having died, that it is dismal to lie under the necessity ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... contrasting so finely with the next line where the pause is also after the fifth syllable, but with a totally different effect. Note again the variety of rhythm which distinguishes the last two lines. Neither has any strong pause in it: and they might so easily have been a monotonous repetition. Is it fanciful to think that, perhaps half unconsciously, Milton has suggested the quick stab of pain or sorrow in the swift movement of the first: and that the long-drawn rhythm of the second is meant to convey something of the dull years of misery ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... arises from the sharp separation of the processes of production and consumption in the individual life of the worker. Industry which is purely monotonous, burdensome, uninteresting, uneducative, which contains within itself no elements of enjoyment, cannot be fully compensated by alternate periods of consumption or relaxation. The painful effort involved in all labour or exertion should have ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... walk was to the grey convent where she now passed her monotonous days. Every evening I returned, and often I stood gazing at her prison and thinking of Flaminia as I used to know her. One evening Fabiani found me thus, and made me follow him home. He spoke to me with unusual solemnity in his voice, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... precision is everywhere obvious. The omission of the cumbersome auxiliary, wherever permissible, already characteristically employed in his tale, is conspicuous, as in all his writings and letters. The words are arranged in rhythmical groups without falling into a monotonous sing song. Participial constructions, tending toward brevity, are more in evidence than in ordinary German prose. Sparingly, but with good reason and excellent handling, periodic structure is employed. Still another point is significant, showing the writer to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... over stony roads, across that green and monotonous plain, the vehicle entered one of those orchard farmyards and drew up before in old structure falling into decay, where an old maid-servant stood waiting beside a young fellow, who took ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... also took place. Indeed, things were conducted with such high spirit and in so convivial a manner that it might have been imagined that the Boers were commissioned to supply the fireworks, and that a species of "Brock's benefit" was got up whenever events were inclined to wax monotonous. Reports computed the investing force at 4000, and it was further stated that General Cronje's commando would be reinforced by the arrival of some 1500 more. Yet the gallant little town smiled within itself and said "The more the merrier." Colonel Scott Turner made a reconnaissance ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... "An excellent narrator, capitano, and writeth exquisite Italian. But in spirit a thought too monotonous. Monks and nuns were never all unchaste: one or two such stories were right pleasant and diverting; but five score paint his time falsely, and sadden the heart of such as love mankind. Moreover, he hath no skill at characters. Now this Greek is supreme in that great art: he carveth them with pen; ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... ripens beneath the long, hot days, the melody gradually ceases. The young are out of the nest and must be cared for, and the moulting season is at hand. After the cricket has commenced to drone his monotonous refrain beneath your window, you will not, till another season, hear the wood thrush in all his matchless eloquence. The bobolink has become careworn and fretful, and blurts out snatches of his song between his scolding and upbraiding, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... and clear and burning, the desert sunsets, plaintive and peaceful and unvaried—one lovely diffusion, in which day dies without splendour and in a glow of pain. The long velvety tread of the camel, the song of the camel-driver, the monotonous chant of the river-man, with fingers mechanically falling on his little drum, the cry of the eagle of the Libyan Hills, the lap of the heavy waters of the Dead Sea down by Jericho, the battle-call of the Druses beyond Damascus, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... she had been alone with her dismal thoughts, no sound broke the stillness, save the monotonous ticking of the clock or an occasional sob and moan from the half spent ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... conversation, which is, says our author, "a prodigious labor of improvising," a "chef-d'oeuvre," a "strange and singular thing, in which monotony is unknown," seems to be, if correctly reported, a "strange and singular thing" indeed; but somewhat monotonous at least to an English reader, and "prodigious" only, if we may take leave to say so, for the wonderful rascality which all the conversationists betray. Miss Neverout and the Colonel, in Swift's famous dialogue, are a thousand times more entertaining and moral; and, besides, we can ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... tell the little chap, Bob," said old Joe, speaking with one eye shut, "that we're only a-feeding of him up so as to get more satisfaction out of his hexecution to-morrow morning. You can say that sailoring is a rather monotonous life, and that if he'll die game we shall all feel obliged for ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... reading in a monotonous voice. She read literally and without understanding, using initials and abbreviations as they came. But the shrewd old man followed her easily. Once, however, ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... in spite of himself; he should watch himself so as to avoid that blunder. A picture in which there were no colors but blue and red would be untrue to nature, and fatigue the eye. And thus the constantly recurring rhythm in the score of Robert le Diable makes the work, as a whole, appear monotonous. As to the effect of the long trumpets, of which you speak, it has long been known in Germany; and what Meyerbeer offers us as a novelty was constantly used by Mozart, who gives just such a chorus to ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... trust: by-and-by come the subtle but well-known signs of deceit; so doubt is forced on me; and then I am all suspicion, and so darkly vigilant that soon all is certainty; for 'les fourberies des femmes' are diabolically subtle, but monotonous. They seem to vary only on the surface. One looks too gentle and sweet to give any creature pain; I cherish her like a tender plant; she deceives me for the coarsest fellow she can find. Another comes the frank and candid dodge; she is ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... other,—had been left seated by the side of Philibert, on the twisted roots of a gigantic oak forming a rude but simple chair fit to enthrone the king of the forest and his dryad queen. No sound came to break the quiet of the evening hour save the monotonous plaint of a whippoorwill in a distant brake, and the ceaseless chirm of insects among the leafy boughs and down in the ferns that clustered ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... consider that the matter of rhythmic accent is one which affects every bar of each line, while the four tests just now applied affect only the LAST bar of each line; and when we consider further that the real result of this freedom in using the rhythmic accent is to vary the monotonous regularity of the regular system with the charm of those subtle rhythms which we employ in familiar discourse, so that the habit of such freedom might grow with the greatest uniformity upon a poet, and might thus present us with a test of such uniform development as to be reliable ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... that two races working side by side should possess so many opposite traits of character. The white man has strong will and convictions and is set in his ways. He lives an indoor, monotonous life, restrains himself like a Puritan, and is inclined to melancholy. The prevalence of Populism throughout the South is nothing but the outcome of this morbid tendency. Farmers and merchants are entirely absorbed in their business, and the women, especially ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... as regular in its flow as the Bull-dogs, and the monotonous bass of these latter sounded through the music, like life behind the murmur of pleasure, if you will. The Countess had a not unfeminine weakness for champagne, and old Mr. Bonner's cellar was well and choicely stocked. But was this enjoyment to the Countess?—this dreary ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... she began, in a monotonous voice, as if it were a recitation addressed to the public, "first began to take notice of me a year ago. ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... thousand feet above on the right a gigantic example of the natural arches. Beyond this the walls began to grow somewhat lower. Our life through this gorge, as well as through some others, might be described by the monotonous phrase, "Got up, ran rapids, went to bed." There was no time to do anything else. At night we were always sleepy and tired. Fortunately there were here fine places to camp—plenty of room, with smooth sand to sleep ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... as I loved him he would never have sent me into a country so dangerous as this, to which I came through pure obedience and against my own inclination. Here duplicity passes for wit, and frankness is looked upon as folly. I am neither cunning nor mysterious. I am often told I lead too monotonous a life, and am asked why I do not take a part in certain affairs. This is frankly the reason: I am old; I stand more in need of repose than of agitation, and I will begin nothing that I cannot, easily finish. I have never learned to govern; I am not conversant with politics, nor with state ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... they approach the coast. It is a pleasant sight to see the noisy band animating the monotonous splendour of the ocean; they arrive as soon as a vessel is one or two days' journey from land. Henceforth they do not leave her, flying behind and plunging in her wake; they profit by the disturbance produced by the gigantic machine ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... and continued murmuring, his body drawing closer and closer to Jim's body, while in the deep silence, broken only by the chanting of his low, monotonous voice, the others pressed Jim's hands and head and feet and legs—six men under the command ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... early childhood roamed those dark, solemn woods, or sat at night on the lowly cottage stile, gazing on the wild, grotesque shadows cast by the moonbeams from the huge, forest trees; or how she listened to the solemn hootings of the lonesome owl, the monotonous cuckoo, and sudden whippoorwill; or laughed at the glowworm's light in the dark swamps, and asked her aunty if they were not a group of stars come down to ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... time after he had reached his room, and had had his bath and change, Griswold sat at his writing-table with his head in his hands, thinking in monotonous circles. As in those other stressful moments, the importunate devil was at his ear; now mocking him for not having left the drowned enemy as he was; now whispering the dreadful hope that age and the shock and the drowning might still re-erect ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... the huge clock on the wall, with a lilac rose on its white face, seemed in its monotonous, sleepy tick, to repeat his words: 'Ve-ry! ve-ry!' it ticked. 'No concerts, nor theatres,' pursued Ardalion (he had travelled abroad with his master, and had all but stayed in Paris; he knew much better than to mispronounce this last word, as the peasants do)—'nor dances, ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... some brief patches of river scenery on the Nore and the Blackwater, and a part of Lough Erne, the assertion is not devoid of truth. The dreary expanse called the Bog of Allen, which occupies a tableland in the centre of the island, stretches away for miles—flat, sad-coloured, and monotonous, fissured in every direction by channels of dark-tinted water, in which the very fish take the same sad colour. This tract is almost without trace of habitation, save where, at distant intervals, utter destitution has raised a mud-hovel, undistinguishable ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... Earth, there were others who found in it a source of power and who took possession of it. Then it happened that the autocrats at the gates of Heaven joined forces with the powers that had taken possession of the Earth; and humanity began its aimless, monotonous march. But the good mother sees the bleeding feet of her children, she hears their moans, and she is ever calling to ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... During the monotonous days that followed, the Honorable Percival Hascombe discovered that the satisfaction of being exclusive is usually tempered by the discomfort of being bored. So lofty and forbidding had been his manner that no one had ventured to intrude even a ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... bushes in their second blossoming, and the moor, stretched before her, was as her life promised to be: it was monotonous in its bright colouring, quiet and serene, broad-bosomed for its children. Old sheep looked up at her as she went by, and she saw herself in some relationship to them. They were the sport of men, and so was she, yet perhaps God had some care ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... hear," said Mr. Brimberly modestly, as, having placed bottle and glass upon the piano within convenient reach, he seated himself upon the stool, struck three or four stumbling chords and then, vamping an accompaniment a trifle monotonous as to ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... aloud, getting up and walking the floor with something of the old restless energy, "I intend to live while I live, and crowd into life's brief day all that I can. I thank Mr. Fleet for a few sensations in what would otherwise have been a monotonous, dreary afternoon." ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... melody and music of a graceful edifice. We are able to understand what Michelangelo meant when he remarked that all subsequent designers, by departing from it, had gone wrong. Raffaello's plan, if carried out, would have been monotonous and tame inside ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... complaints against Aziru and his father Abd-Ashera come from Rib-Addi of Gebal. His utterances rival the Lamentations of Jeremiah both in volume and in monotonous pathos. One of these many letters, the contents of which are often stereotyped enough, is also noticeable for its revelation of the connection of Rib-Addi, who must already have been an ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr
... lingered slowly along while the captives were perishing in monotonous misery. The severity of their imprisonment was continually increased by new deprivations. No communications from the world without were permitted to reach their ears. Shutters were so arranged that even the sky was scarcely visible, ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... with the same despatch and ease as in the post-office of the country town where I had learned it, and from which I had been promoted by the influence of the surveyor of the district, Mr. Huntingdon. In fact, the work soon fell into a monotonous routine, which, night after night, was pursued in an unbroken course by myself and the junior clerk, who was my only assistant: the railway post-office work not having then attained the importance ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... against its very walls, a neat water-mill in full work. By the mill flows a large river, with a weir all across it. The weir has not been made for the mill, (for that receives its water from the hills by a trough carried over the temple,) but it is particularly ugly and monotonous in its line of fall, and the water below forms a dead-looking pond, on which some people are fishing in punts. The banks of this river resemble in contour the later geological formations around London, ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... latter, to hasten into blow, and so to share the month between them. Just below, on the turn of the hill, was a big thicket of furze bushes, more golden than gold, sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. From Larry's woods across the Ownashee, the cuckoo's voice came, as melodiously monotonous and as full of associations as the bell of a village church. Silvery clouds were sailing very high in a sky of thinnest, sweetest blue; little jets of sparkling sound, rising and falling in it, bespoke the invisible, rapturous larks, tireless as a playing fountain; ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... me, not without long digressions, the opinions of the deep politicians of both sexes whose judgments are law in Vendome. But these opinions were so contradictory, so diffuse, that I was near falling asleep in spite of the interest I felt in this authentic history. The notary's ponderous voice and monotonous accent, accustomed no doubt to listen to himself and to make himself listened to by his clients or fellow-townsmen, were too much for my curiosity. ...
— La Grande Breteche • Honore de Balzac
... bright Burgundian vineyards. Close at her father's side was the gentle Evangeline seated, Spinning flax for the loom, that stood in the corner behind her. Silent awhile were its treadles, at rest was its diligent shuttle, While the monotonous drone of the wheel, like the drone of a bagpipe, Followed the old man's songs and united the fragments together. As in a church, when the chant of the choir at intervals ceases, Footfalls are heard in the aisles, or words of the priest at the altar, So, in each pause of the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... heart beating fast, I rang the bell of his flat, and as I waited for someone to come, I wondered at a strange noise that was going on within—a deep, monotonous recitation, interrupted by occasional explosions of rage in a higher voice. I rang for the third time, and as a door opened within, the mysterious sounds doubled in volume. Then the outer door opened, and the Baron's old servant hurried me in. "Come in, sir," she said, "come ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... on the desolate Border hills on a drear November evening of 1715. Throughout a melancholy day, clinging mist had blurred the outline of even the nearest hills; distance was blotted out. Thin rain fell chillingly and persistently, drip, dripping with monotonous plash from the old inn's thatched eaves; a light wind sobbed fitfully around the building, moaning at every chink and cranny of the ill-fitting window-frames. "A dismal night for any who must travel," thought the stableman ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... are located in easy proximity to the town, so-called restaurants are attached, but the patronage being intermittent and uncertain, the choice of plats is limited, and the service is slow and bad. The Sauveniere Spring is nearest to the town, but the drive there is all up-hill, monotonous, and dusty. The Geronstere is more prettily situated, and is a favourite resort for luncheon during the summer season; but unless the meal is specially ordered beforehand, the visitor will, as a rule, have to be content with ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... document which came from the very hand of their adored leader, that they had eyes and ears only for that. They lost count of the sounds around them, of the dropping of the crisp ash from the grate, of the monotonous ticking of the clock, of the soft, almost imperceptible rustle of something on the floor close beside them. A figure had emerged from under one of the benches; with snake-like, noiseless movements it crept closer ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... written in ten- or twelve- syllable verses grouped, at first in assonanced, later in rhymed, "tirades" of unequal length. It was intended for a society which was still homogeneous, and to it at the outset doubtless all classes of the population listened with equal interest. As poetry it is monotonous, without sense of proportion, padded to facilitate memorisation by professional reciters, and unadorned by figure, fancy, or imagination. Its pretention to historic accuracy begot prosaicness in ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... again I heard a thumping at the hall door, which arose from the buttings of the goat when the food was not forthcoming, and the mother's example was followed by her two little kids. After a while this grew monotonous, and no attention was paid to their knocking! but one day the area bell—used by the delivery men and callers generally, the wire of which passed by the side of one of the railings—was sounded. The cook answered the bell, but no one was there save the goat and ...
— Fun And Frolic • Various
... Teheran, I was heartily tired of it and of Persia altogether. The manner of living is fearfully monotonous. A stranger, debarred from female society, and deprived of all the diversions of European cities, can scarcely find employment for his day. I had hired for six toumans a month (the touman is worth about ten ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... he turned his eyes toward her and saw a sort of frozen look in her dull white face that he had never seen in it before. Her intonation was monotonous, her voice ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... forts a line of sangars extended, the position of each being marked even now by a glare of light above it, which struck up from the fire which the insurgents had lit behind the walls of stone. And from one and another of the sangars the monotonous beat of a ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... lake was piled deep with clouds. Beyond the oak trees, in the southern sky, great tongues of flame shot up into the dark heavens out of the blast furnaces of the steel works. Deep-toned, full-throated frogs had begun their monotonous chant. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... of us in the usual dispirited, dull way. Our talk became daily more prosaic and superficial. We had not the energy to express our deepest sentiments, and things which were formerly pleasant were strange to us now. We had no spur to enliven our thoughts in our monotonous life. To the careless there was nothing startling in this moral numbness, but the more sensitive among us grieved over it, and were humiliated by the shallowness that had come ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... those lyrics, of which there are many in Gaelic poetry, that are intended to imitate pipe music. They consist of three parts, called Urlar, Siubhal, and Crunluath. The first is a slow, monotonous measure, usually, indeed, a mere repetition of the same words or tones; the second, a livelier or brisker melody, striking into description or narrative; the third, a rapid finale, taxing the reciter's or performer's powers ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... wolds seem dreary and monotonous; but if change is wanted, a long walk or an easy drive will take us from Somersby, as it often took the Tennyson brothers, to the coast at Mablethorpe, where the long rollers of the North Sea beat upon the sandhills that ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... forefathers would have seemed unutterably dull. No books, no newspapers, no change of scene by cheap excursions, no village school, no politics. The very cultivation of the soil by the old three-course system was monotonous. But there were bright spots in his existence: the village church not only afforded him the consolations of religion but also entertainments and society. Religion in the Middle Ages was a part of the people's daily life, and its influence ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... unusual sense of direction, would be continually astray in it. The Button Boy, obeying the laws of human nature, is lost in two minutes, but requires two hours in which to find himself. Benella suspects that he prefers this wandering to and fro to the more monotonous task of weeding, and it is no uncommon thing for her to pursue the recalcitrant page through the mazes and labyrinths for an hour at a time, and perhaps lose herself in the end. Salemina and I were sitting this morning in the ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... short and closely cut, falling upon the ear more like the broken rattling of hailstones than the full flowing music of a strong deep river. Such a style, introduced at proper intervals and in appropriate positions, is frequently very effective; but, when long continued, it grows wearisome and monotonous. As our late writers are much given to it, they should be on their guard lest ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... surface presents a somewhat monotonous aspect, though it is not so everywhere. Here and there it is pleasantly interspersed with trees, some standing solitary, but mostly in groves, copses, or belts; these looking, for all the world, like islands in the ocean. So perfect is the resemblance, that ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... dynamite, while signalling, had killed another boat's crew; of night attacks; ports fled from between the dawns; attacks by bushmen in mangrove swamps and by fleets of salt-water men in the larger passages. One item that occurred with monotonous frequency was death by dysentery. He noticed with alarm that two white men had so died—guests, like ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... conventions of the day to the truths of life and nature behind them. The conventions have gone, or are changed, and we are all glad of it. Wordsworth effected a wholesome deliverance when he attacked the artificial diction, the personifications, the allegories, the antitheses, the barren rhymes and monotonous metres, which the reigning taste had approved. But while welcoming the new freshness, sincerity, and direct and fertile return on nature, that is a very bad reason why we should disparage poetry so genial, so simple, so humane, and so perpetually ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... more impressionable state than ever before. The day was dark and lowering, showing every sign of an approaching storm; outside there had been the noisy bustle of active business life, while within the limits of Lucille's mystic chamber all was hushed in a deathly silence. The monotonous swinging of the lamps, the perfume-laden air, the ghastly skeletons, and the imperious bearing and powerful will of Lucille—all struck upon her imagination with resistless force. As she sank into the seat which Lucille pointed out, she felt like a criminal entering the prisoner's ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... for a man named Andrea Cavalcanti," said the detective, in the well-known monotonous way which never fails to make an impression even upon those who ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... nurtured. But the style of Mr. DAVIS was indigenous and strongly marked by his individuality. Although he doubtless admired, and perhaps imitated, the condensation and dignity of Gibbon, yet it is certain that he carefully avoided the monotonous stateliness and the elaborate and ostentatious art of that most erudite historian. I look in vain for his model in the skeptical Gibbon, the cynical Bolingbroke, or the gorgeous Burke. These were all to him intellectual giants; but giants ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell
... years, and were to be there another fifteen years yet. Now they are gone, with the archbishop's red coach, and the complaisant grocer, and the young man of twenty-seven in Via del Gambero, and the rest of the things that the sun looked on and will look on the like of again, no doubt, in our monotonous round of him. ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... was in the small hours of a night of misty moonlight that our eyes, stretched wide with the new wonder of beholding classic ground, first caught sight of this smooth expanse gleaming pallidly amid the dark, blurred outlines of the landscape and trees. The monotonous noise and motion of the train had put our fellow-travelers to sleep, and when it gradually ceased they did not stir. There was no bustle at the little station where we stopped; a few drowsy figures stole silently ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... tyranny of Pisistratus, a skilful and ingenious native of Icaria, an Attic village in which the Eleutheria, or Bacchic rites, were celebrated with peculiar care, surpassed all competitors in the exhibition of these rustic entertainments. He relieved the monotonous pleasantries of the satyric chorus by introducing, usually in his own person, a histrionic tale-teller, who, from an elevated platform, and with the lively gesticulations common still to the popular narrators of romance on the Mole of Naples, or in the bazars of the East, entertain ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the need for regularity of movement is less. At first sight it will thus seem to follow that every displacement of labour by machinery will bring an elevation in the quality of labour, that is, will increase the proportion of labour in employments which tax the muscles less and are less monotonous. This is in the main the conclusion towards which Professor ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... the Courant, "It was a most extraordinary sheet. Of all the colonial newspapers, it was the most spirited, witty, and daring. The Bostonians, accustomed to the monotonous dullness of the News-letter, received, some with delight, more with horror, all with amazement, this weekly budget of impudence and fun. A knot of liberals gathered around James Franklin, physicians most of them, able, audacious men, who kept him well ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... be inferred that I entertained any affection for my friendly keeper. I continued to regard him as an enemy; and my life at his home became a monotonous round of displeasure. I took my three meals a day. I would sit listlessly for hours at a time in the house. Daily I went out—accompanied, of course—for short walks about the town. These were not enjoyable. I believed everybody was familiar with my black ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... association of couples seemed mysteriously to lift the whole operation above criticism and to endow it with a perfect propriety. The motion of the couples, and their manner of moving, over the earth's surface were extremely monotonous; some couples indeed only walked stiffly to and fro; on the other hand a few exhibited variety, lightness and grace, in manoeuvres which involved a high degree of mutual trust and comprehension. While only some of the faces were ecstatic, all were rapt. The ordinary world was shut ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... life that knows not, patient waits, nor longs:— I know, and would be patient, yet would long. I can be patient for all coming songs, But let me sing my one monotonous song. To me the time is slow my mould among; To quicker life I fain would spur and start The aching ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... Tuscan revolution, the nine days' fight for Milan, the heroic adventure of Savoy, and the apparently final collapse of all these high endeavours on the field of Novara. Ten years of petty despotism on the one side, of "a unanimity of despair" on the other, followed; and then the monotonous tragedy seemed to break suddenly into romance, as the Emperor, "deep and cold," marched his armies over the Alps for the ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... the Missouri River and the Pacific Ocean, for in the early days of the hazardous passage across the plains, the whole region with rare exceptions was conspicuous for the entire absence of trees. There was one monotonous blaze of sunshine, day after day, as the caravans and overland coaches plodded through the alkali dust of the desert. The weary traveller gazed upon nothing but seemingly interminable prairies and naked elevations, ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... memories are keen but monotonous,—a strong smell of stable, arising from the laprobe which had evidently been recently used as a horse blanket; the sound of hoofs, in an interminable "jog, jog—splash, splash," never hurrying; a series ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
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