"Mellifluous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... But ere the mellifluous pleonast had done oiling his paradox with fresh polysyllables, to make it slip into the banker's narrow understanding, he met with a curious interruption. Jane Hardie fluttered in to say a man was at the door accusing himself of ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... beauty in that University! Think of that rich round-up of creamy dreams! Consider that mellifluous marmalade! And—we can't have any—because you are slightly bald and near-sighted and I am thin and scholarly!" He ran at ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... its murmur, when daintily falling, Sweet as its plaintive, mellifluous song, Voices of absent ones seem to be calling:— "Come to us! Come! thou hast ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... brow we read display'd The constant virtues of the Nut Brown Maid; Mellifluous sounds on Clara's tongue we hear, Notes that once lured a Seraph from his sphere; Cecilia's eyes such winning beauties crown As without song might ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... and named her Thomasina. Mrs. Tucker did not like the name, but she died before the baby was three days old. The baby hated it herself when she reached years of discretion, and when she found that she possessed a voice and had a possible career before her, she saw plainly that something more mellifluous must be substituted if programmes should ever be in question. Meantime she was Tommy to her friends, and the gay little name suited her to a T. The gay little rhyme suited her, too, for like the Tommy Tucker in Mother Goose, she had to "sing for ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and even the appearance, of the Board Room. It was almost as if the apartment itself was becoming historic, like those chambers they pointed out to the tourist wherein crowned heads had slept. The manner of the Marquis lent itself charmingly to this illusion. He spoke in a facile, mellifluous voice, and as fluently as if he had been at work for a long time preparing a dissertation on this subject, instead of taking it up now by chance. In his tone, in his gestures, in the sustained friendliness ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweete wittie soule of Ovid lives in mellifluous and hony-tongued Shakespeare; witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred Sonnets among his private friends &c. As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for comedy and Tragedy among the Latines, so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage; ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... sometimes he could find the voice, to hurl abuse, curses, and imprecations from the mouth of the cave. Great shouts of laughter exploded above, and they seemed to hold their breath to hear more; or Manuel, hanging over, would praise in mocking, mellifluous accents the energy of his denunciations. I tried to pull him away from there, but he turned upon me fiercely; and from prudence—for all hope was not dead in ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... the observant and the lax, the purse-proud and the lowly, the coarse and the genteel, the wonderful chapmen and the luckless Schlemihls, Rabbi and Dayan and Shochet, the scribes who wrote the sacred scroll and the cantors who trolled it off mellifluous tongues, and the betting-men who never listened to it; the grimy Russians of the capotes and the earlocks, and the blue-blooded Dons, "the gentlemen of the Mahamad," who ruffled it with swords and knee-breeches in the best Christian ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... I would speak of is to cast out the demagogue. They are the fellows that are the curse of both and of all political parties. We have had them from the days of Julius Caesar and Marc Antony down to date. [Laughter.] These smooth, sleek, mellifluous-tongued fellows that always have the same blood-stained garment to hold up before the populace, and some forged will to read, whereby the people were to get great legacies which they never could collect, let us cast them out. Let us frown upon them in both parties, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... and ill-proportioned, that his countenance had little of that flexibility which anticipates the tongue, that his eye had scarcely anything of that language which, by preparing the spectator for the coming sentence, enchains the attention, that his voice was neither silvery nor mellifluous. Nevertheless, by a subtlety of discrimination, that seemed almost intuitive, by a force of judgment and a fervency of mind, that were simply exquisite and irresistible, this was the very man who could at any moment, by an inflection of his voice or by the syncope of a chuckle, ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... sound of Clarke's mellifluous voice. He was, indeed, a master of the spoken word, and possessed a miraculous power of giving to the wildest fancies an air ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... walked slowly to the box, and the glance she threw at the Coroner was almost appealing. But the Coroner was looking at his notes, and Zillah was obliged to turn to Mr. Parminter, whose accents became more mellifluous than ever as he addressed her; Mr. Parminter, indeed, confronting Zillah might have been taken for a kindly benevolent gentleman whose sole object was to administer condolence and comfort. Few people in court, however, failed ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... not live on seal alone in the North, for there is a bewildering bill-of-fare. Reindeer have a parasite living on the back between the skin and the flesh, a mellifluous maggot an inch long. Raw or cooked it is a great delicacy, and if you shut your eyes it tastes like a sweet shrimp. Don't be disgusted. If you have scooped shrimps from their native heath, you have discovered the shrimp, too, ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... offended, sir—you mean, of course, sir, that you would like me to state exACTly what your father said, proceeding as if I was under oath." It is indescribable how soft and mellifluous his voice ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... of Jerusalem, with other divers works and books, I ne wist what work to begin and put forth after the said works to-fore made. And forasmuch as idleness is so much blamed, as saith Saint Bernard, the mellifluous doctor, that she is mother of lies and step-dame of virtues, and it is she that overthroweth strong men into sin, quencheth virtue, nourisheth pride, and maketh the way ready to go to hell; and John Cassiodorus saith that the thought ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... stir the emotion, freely and liberally, in flowing phrases, without being brought to a stop by the severe fences of poetical form! The melody, the cadence, the rise and fall of the sentence, antithesis, contrast, mellifluous energy—these are the joys of prose; but there is nothing like the writing of verse to make them ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... convey such an effect. But if not only their proper names of men and places, but many of their phrases and a majority of their words, be simply and unconnectedly considered, they will be found to abound with vowels and to produce sounds sometimes mellifluous and sometimes sonorous. What ear can object to the names of Colbee, (pronounced exactly as Colby is with us) Bereewan, Bondel, Imeerawanyee, Deedora, Wolarawaree, or Baneelon, among the men; or to Wereeweea, Gooreedeeana, Milba*, or Matilba, among the women. Parramatta, Gweea, ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... about; thrice one of them, load and all, goes down with a squidge and a crash into the side grass, and says "damn!" with quite the European accent; as a rule, however, we go on in single file, my shoes giving out a mellifluous squidge, and their naked feet a squish, squash. The men take it very good temperedly, and sing in between accidents; I do not feel much like singing myself, particularly at one awful spot, which was the exception to the rule that ground at acute angles forms ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... myself a prey to some misgivings. It was not difficult for me to imagine that the frank nature of Jerry's visits to Una might have given the girl a false notion of the state of Jerry's mind, for it was like the boy to have told her of Marcia's mellifluous contrition which, as I knew, was no more genuine than any other of her carefully planned emotional crises. I did not know what Marcia thought of Una's approaching visit or whether Jerry had even told her of it, but I had no fancy to see Una Habberton again placed in a false position. ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... poems many comparatively unknown words,—not indeed of his own creation, but merely the result of his patient and long-continued investigation of the Gascon dialect. Yet they found the language, as written and spoken by him, full of harmony—rich, mellifluous, and sonorous. Gascon resembles the Spanish, to which it is strongly allied, more than the Provencal, the language of the Troubadours, which is more allied ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... moved the Count's persuasive hand was laid on his shoulder, and the Count's mellifluous voice interposed to ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... satisfactory than the annual report summarised by Principal Nares, whose mellifluous voice and daintily pedantic utterance fell upon expectant hearing with the impressiveness of personal compliment. So delivered, statistics partook of the grace of culture; details of academic organisation acquired something ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... wake her more! And thou, bright sun, shalt ne'er again, On inland mead, or sea-girt shore, Salute the darling of the plain. Maiden! they bade me o'er thy fate Numbers and strains mellifluous swell, They knew the love I bore thee great,— They knew not what I ne'er ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... Od's bodkins! Hast turned liar on top of everything else, Good Saint? Good to see me, indeed! 'From such a face and form as mine, the noblest sentiments sound like the black utterances of a depraved imagination.' No, dear old holy pillar-sitter, no indeed! It may be a pleasure to hear my mellifluous voice—a pleasure I often indulge in, myself—but it couldn't possibly be a pleasure to see me!" And all the while, St. Simon was being pummeled heartily on the shoulder, while his hand was pumped as though the other man was ...
— Anchorite • Randall Garrett
... recall him as he stood before his audience. There was but little animation; his theme did not seem to stir him into life; even the usual repose of his countenance was rarely broken up; he used little or no action; and his voice, though mellifluous, was monotonous: he lacked, indeed, that earnestness without which no ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... because of the shape of its flowers, has a most mellifluous and pleasing botanical name, Liriodendron Tulipifera—is not that euphonious? Just plain "liriodendron"—how much better that sounds as a designation for one of the noblest of American forest trees than the misleading "common" names! "Tulip-tree," for a resemblance ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... her millionaire soul—in the great drawing-room, with its bow-windows looking on to a clump of old trees powdered with snow, Christophe would find Colette sitting at her piano, repeating the same passage over and over again, delighting her ear with mellifluous dissonance. ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... philosophy, when SHALLA-BA-LA, that demon with the bell, besets him at every turn, almost teasing the sap out of him! The moment that his tormentor quits the scene, PUNCH seems to forget the existence of his annoyance, and, carolling the mellifluous numbers of Jim Crow, or some other strain of equal beauty, makes the most of the present, regardless of the past or future; and when SHALLA-BA-LA renews his persecutions, PUNCH boldly faces his enemy, and ultimately becomes the victor. All have a SHALLA-BA-LA ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... him it was a kind of transcendental business, the profits of which supported his inner man rather than his family. Apparently his deep interest in spiritual physics, rather than metaphysics, gave a kind of hypnotic mellifluous effect to his voice when he sang his oracles; a manner something of a cross between an inside pompous self-assertion and an outside serious benevolence. But he was sincere and kindly intentioned in his eagerness to extend what he could of the better influence of the philosophic world as he saw ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... a specimen of really mellifluous Dutch. "How would you like," is the timely question of a daily paper this morning, as I finish this chapter, "to be hit by a 'snellpaardelooszoondeerspoorwegpitroolrijtung?' That is what would happen to you if you were run down by ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... ease, well-read, too, and one that could talk to her lovers, when they had the time or the inclination for talking, of the ancient authors of Rome, and of Greece, too, for that matter—did I not say her mother was a Greek?—and could say you or sing you the stanzas of mellifluous poets, most ravishingly to the ear. She knew all the verses of Guido Guinicelli by root of heart, and to hear her repeat that poem of ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the country the hedge-schoolmaster was often also a poet who wrote mellifluous songs in Irish, which were sung throughout the entire district and sometimes earned him enduring fame. Eoghan Ruadh O'Sullivan and Andrew MacGrath, called An Mangaire Sugach or "the Jolly Pedlar," are well-known ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... disappeared from Symford as suddenly as she had appeared; and Mrs. Morrison, coming into Creeper Cottage on Monday afternoon to unload her conscience yet more, found only a pleasant gentleman, a stranger of mellifluous manners, writing out cheques. She had ten minutes talk with him, and went home very sad and wise. Indeed from that day, her spirit being the spirit of the true snob, the hectorer of the humble, the devout groveller in the courtyards of the great, she was a much-changed woman. ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... Strangeways modified her tone, discarding mellifluous tenderness, yet not going quite so far as Alma in neglect of appearances. She was an older woman, and had learnt the injudiciousness of ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... philosophy next lend thine ear. From Heaven descended to the low roof'd house Of Socrates; see there his tenement, Whom, well inspired, the oracle pronounced Wisest of men; from whose mouth issued forth Mellifluous streams that water'd all the schools Of Academics old and new, with those Surnamed Peripatetics, and the sect Epicurean, and the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... their leaves, and which dissolve and mix with the fluid, serve for aliment or support to these kind of plants is doubtful," he thinks, but he should be credited with the suggestion. In one sentence he speaks of the quantities of insects which, "being invited down to sip the mellifluous exuvia from the interior surface of the tube, where they inevitably perish," being prevented from returning by the stiff hairs all pointing downward. This, if it refers to the sweet secretion, would place it below, and not, as it is, above the bristly surface, while ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... and she drowsily closed her eyes. At the same moment the door of the room below opened, and the captain's mellifluous bass notes floated upstairs, charged with the customary stimulant ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... before the British public, O many-sided, ambidextrous Goethe, as thine own Thomas Carlyle might, or could, or would, or should have termed thee, and let us hear how the mellifluous Teutonic verse will sound when adapted to another tongue. And, first of all—for we yearn to know it—tell us how thy inspiration came? A plain answer, of course, we cannot expect—that were impossible from a German; but such explanation as we can draw ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... A smooth, mellifluous voice suddenly intervened. Otto Schmidt thought fit to assume a role for which Lord Valletort ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... rhetorical exercises on set themes; cf. Section 17. (5) Came from Egypt; cf. Section 24; Xois and Thmuis were in that country. (6) Is said to have been appointed professor of rhetoric at Athens by Commodus purely on account of his mellifluous voice; cf. Section 19. ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... and figure that completely fill up that ideal which exaggerated fancies have wrought out of the Grecian heaven. The vision steals upon you at all hours,—now rounding its flowing outline to the mellifluous metre of Epic hexameter, and again with its bounding life pulsating with the glorious ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... Melt, most mellifluous melody, 'Midst Murcia's misty mounts marine; Meet me 'mid moonlight; marry me, Madonna mia! ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... emblem of Ireland, despised and rejected though she be, is the sweetest-tongued of all music-making things in this vale of tears. For her, no lion, tempest-crowned, for her no prowling bear, for her no screaming eagle—but the harp, mellifluous and tender. And although its liquid strain hath for centuries been touched by sorrow, yet there hath been music in its voice for all the happier listening world, and the day draweth near, please God, when its unfleeting joy shall descend and rest on her own fields ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... what Dr. Johnson was like, he could have found him in Forster. There was the same social intolerance; the same "dispersion of humbug"; the same loud voice, attuned to a mellifluous softness on occasion, especially with ladies or persons of rank; the love of "talk" in which he assumed the lead—and kept it too; and the contemptuous scorn of what he did not approve. But then all this was backed by admirable ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... Simon Stylites, we already know; him and others, raised aloft. The mere sample, these, of what is coming, of what continues coming, upwards from the realm of Night!—Chaumette, by and by Anaxagoras Chaumette, one already descries: mellifluous in street-groups; not now a sea-boy on the high and giddy mast: a mellifluous tribune of the common people, with long curling locks, on bourne-stone of the thoroughfares; able sub-editor too; who shall rise—to the very ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... the house looked as he came to it by a path through water-meadows. What gardens and green shades and coolness of comfort, he remembered, and linked with that time and that place. He dreamed a dream with the smell of new-turned hay in it, then awoke to find himself repeating that mellifluous tag of his about man's airy notions. The ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps |
