"Intonation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... precious un," said Silas, "there isn't enough stones to go all round; and as for you carrying, why, wi' your little arms you couldn't carry a stone no bigger than a turnip. You're dillicate made, my dear," he added, with a tender intonation—"that's what Mrs. Winthrop says." ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... softly and with a strange intonation. "I am Anitra. I am both Georgian and Anitra. There have never been two of us since I came ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... who went to work for him for a while, opened or closed every second sentence, on an average, with the mild expletive, "By damn!" It was also his invariable way of expressing surprise, disappointment, consternation, or all the rest of the tribe of sudden emotions. By pitch and stress and intonation, the protean oath was made to perform every function of ordinary speech. At first it was a constant source of irritation and disgust to Corliss, but erelong he grew not only to tolerate it, but ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... the celebrated Countess's Chamber!" she exclaimed with a peculiar intonation when they reached ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... the life of me, comprehend the drift of this question, but there was no mistaking the insolent intonation of it. I therefore ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... peculiar intonation in her voice which told me that in her own queer little way she was trying to punish me for my failure to come to see her oftener with inquiries about Jack. She evidently thought that my vanity would ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... ease of my husband's women-folk filled me with admiration and despair. I felt guilty of something. I was queer. Their voices, the intonation, even the tilt of their chins, seemed to stamp these new "in-laws" as aristocrats of another race. Yet the same old New England stock that sired their ancestors produced my ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown
... meaning. She opened the door leading from the sitting-room into the hall. She paused a moment to ascertain the reason for the bell's ringing. A murmur of voices came from the several rooms below. They were beautifully modulated with the intonation of those who have been trained to ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... on the swans, watching them through the bending reeds. Now one uttered its note, and she listened, seeming to vibrate to the deep, plaintive cry; then she raised to her lips a flute that she held in her hands, and answered it with a perfect intonation,—an intonation that breathed the very spirit of the swan. So successful was the mimicry that the swans replied, thinking it the cry of a hidden mate; and again she softly, ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... everything. They thought that every one in England who did not miss out aspirates where they should be, and put them in where they should not be, talked of "the rivah," "ma brothar," and so on. Their conclusion was, after all, quite as well founded as ours about their accent. The American intonation, with its freedom from violent emphasis, is, I think, rather pretty when the quality of the voice ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... low chair to his side, and placed herself where he could see her. He would lie for hours contentedly watching her as she worked or read to him. Sometimes the thin hand would touch a fold of her dress caressingly, as though even that were sacred to him, and not a change of the speaking face or an intonation of her voice would ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... nibbling of Passover bread, while four cups of red wine are drunk. Mournfully merry, seriously gay, and mysteriously secret as some old dark legend, is the character of this nocturnal festival, and the traditional singing intonation with which the Agade is read by the father, and now and then reechoed in chorus by the hearers, first thrills the inmost soul as with a shudder, then calms it as mother's lullaby, and again startles it so suddenly into waking that even those Jews who ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... you hear? Dr. Cumberledge's uncle commanded in Burma." A faint intonation on the word commanded drew unobtrusive attention to its social importance. "May I ask what was his name?—my cousin was there, you see." An insipid smile. "We may have friends ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... said Edie, with a sneering intonation which escaped Guest in his infatuation over his new idea for serving two people whom he esteemed. Then, unable to control herself, she burst out with: "Oh, how can people be so stupid? As if it were possible that Myra could ever speak ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... in his own intonation, "Well?" and was exasperated to find that I was twisting my own knuckles in the nervous gesture of Allison's painful decision. I jerked them apart ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... hidden in masks and their tones mechanically magnified, must have relied for their effects not upon facial play, or rapid and subtle variations of voice and gesture, but upon a certain statuesque beauty of pose, and a chanting intonation of that majestic iambic verse whose measure would have been obscured by a rapid and conversational delivery. The representation would thus become moving sculpture to the eye, and to the ear, as it were, a sleep of music between the intenser interludes of the chorus; and the spectator without being ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... boy-sailor was acquainted with the cries of all three, and of many other sea-birds besides. It was not the call of a bird that had fallen so unexpectedly on his ear, but a note of far different intonation. It more resembled a voice,—a human voice,—the voice of a child! Not of a very young child,—an infant,—but more like that of a girl of eight or ten ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... indescribable intonation, 'ask Mr. Falkirk that, Dr. Maryland. Poor Mr. Falkirk! he is learning every day of his life what it is to know me "a ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... where the loser wants to make it appear that the winner was only run away with. But if you did not notice Volvox's self-contradiction you would not see the point," added Vorticella, with rather a chilling intonation. "Or perhaps you did not read the 'Medley Pie' notice? That is a pity. Do take up the book again. Vibrio is a poor little tippling creature, but, as Mr Carlyle would say, he has an eye, and he is ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... doubt. A. B. Bach, in "Principles of Singing," p. 142, says: "If children are allowed to sing their higher notes forte, before the voice is properly equalized, it will become hard, harsh and hoarse, and they will fail in correct intonation. A mistake in this direction not only ruins the middle register but destroys the voice altogether. The consequence of encouraging forte singing is to change a soprano rapidly to an alto; and they will generally sing alto equally forte because their ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... dancing from the river natives. They are painted or decorated with feathers in a similar way; but each dancer ties bunches of green boughs round the leg, above the knees, whilst the mode of dancing consists in stamping with the foot and uttering at each motion a deep ventral intonation, the boughs round the knees making a loud rustling noise in keeping with the time of the music. One person, who directs the others in the movements of this dance, holds in his hands an instrument in the form of a diamond, made of two slight ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... after the playwright left, Hedger heard an ominous murmur of voices through the bolted double doors: the lady-like intonation of the nurse—doubtless exhibiting her treasures—and another voice, also a woman's, but very different; young, fresh, unguarded, confident. All the same, it would be very annoying to have a woman in there. The only bath-room on the floor was at the top ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... loved it, whose Parisian life and world-wide success did not destroy in him the love of his native Provence, who loved the very food of the Midi above all others, and jumped up in joy when a southern intonation struck his ear, and who was continually beset with longings to return to the beloved region, has well defined it. He was the friend of Mistral and followed the poet's efforts and achievements with deep and affectionate interest. ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... been speaking with such evident sincerity that one forgot the tricks of his voice and manner— the falling eyelids, the rising intonation, and the poised finger and thumb—which were at other times a little comic. It was not so much that he was cleverer than Warner; perhaps he was not so clever, though he was more celebrated. But he had what ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... to you." He did not change the level intonation of his voice, nor even look my way. "You are ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... "Bist du Deutsch?" That much German I understood. We flattened. As it happened, we were at the foot of a tree at the base of which grew brush. We lay motionless. Again the voice, with its demand in intonation. ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... said the girl with an intonation of delight, as she drew a tea-towel she had been washing through her shapely hands and wrung ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... region in Europe, the costly dresses, repeated by a host of mirrors, all this combined, which the eye conveys to the brain at a single glance, utterly fails in description. As with the eye, so it is with the ear; at every step a new language falls upon it, and every tongue with different intonation, for the high and the low, the prince, peer, vassal, and tradesman, the proud beauty, the decrepit crone, some fresh budding into the world, some standing near the grave, the gentle and the stern, the sombre and the gay, in short, every possible ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... when he had uttered that word, with deep but low intonation. Presently Mr. Wood said, "I cannot proceed without some investigation into what has been asserted, and evidence of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... machine-made music is its unhuman accuracy. The phonograph companies seldom give out a record which is not practically perfect in technic and intonation. As for the mechanical piano, there is no escape from the certainty of just what notes are coming next—that is, if little Johnnie has not been editing the paper record with his father's leather-punch. Therefore one grows after a while to long for a few of those ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... gracefully spoken, with just the faintest trace of kindly reproach in their intonation. Simple as they were, they managed to deprive John of all power to frame a suitable reply. He bowed over the little white hand extended to him, and murmured something which was inaudible even to himself, ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... it—this is poetry. The musical in sound is the sustained and continuous; the musical in thought is the sustained and continuous also. There is a near connection between music and deep-rooted passion. Mad people sing. As often as articulation passes naturally into intonation, there poetry begins. Where one idea gives a tone and colour to others, where one feeling melts others into it, there can be no reason why the same principle should not be extended to the sounds by which the voice utters these emotions of the soul, and blends syllables ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... that the Spaniard was as destitute of English as Master William Bascomb was of Spanish; but there is a language of intonation and gesture as well as of words, and doubtless that of the Englishman was intelligible enough, for the Spaniard, by way of reply, grasped his sword by the point and offered it to the sturdy Devonshire seaman who confronted him, and who accepted it ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... up in the young man beside him. There was something almost insulting in Shaw's manner as he uttered the harmless words, and in the reassuring yet doubtful intonation of ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... fingers and uttering most unearthly sounds. Finally, incense was brought, of charcoal with juniper-sprigs; it was swung about, and concluded the morning service to our great relief, for the noises were quite intolerable. Fervid as the devotions appeared, to judge by their intonation, I fear the Lama felt more curious about us than was proper under the circumstances; and when I tried to sketch him, his excitement knew no bounds; he fairly turned round on the settee, and, continuing his prayers and bell-accompaniment, appeared to be exorcising ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... that you might like to see, Miss Bart." She spoke the name with an unpleasant emphasis, as though her knowing it made a part of her reason for being there. To Lily the intonation sounded like ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... in fluent Canadian French by a soldier of Quebec. I came on a man who must have been a full-blooded Indian standing by himself, staring straight in front of him with wholly emotionless eyes. On every side of me I heard the curious Canadian intonation ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... had nothing to say. Perhaps the expression of my countenance betrayed me. Several held me tight while the others spoke. Though I did not understand a word of their language, I could not fail to comprehend the tenor of their speeches. Their action, the intonation of their voices, their angry glances, showed it. "Our friends came here, and this man killed them. We came to look for them, and by the same arts with which he destroyed them he had endeavoured to destroy us. There are the proofs of his guilt. How else did he become possessed of those arrows?" ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... said No—it was the scream of water-fowl or the shrill call of an eagle far above dropping down from the blue zenith; and they sailed on. Again he heard the distant cry, and was told of the panther in the bush and wild birds that drummed and called with almost human intonation; and they sailed on again. But again the mysterious, troubled cry arose from the labyrinth of green, and the traveler entreated them to go in quest of it. The fishers had their freight for the market—-delay would deteriorate its value; but the anxious traveler bade them put about ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... eternities—I have taxed my memory to an alarming extent. I have recalled everything that I have said for the last two weeks, word by word, syllable for syllable, endeavoring to give to each expression its intonation, its inflection, its sharps and flats. Every different signification that the music of the voice could give to a thought, I have analyzed, debated, commented upon twenty times a day. Not a word, accent nor gesture has enlightened me. I defy the most embittered and envious spirit ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... heard the hoarse murmur of their voices and knew by their very intonation (since I could hear no words as yet) that they were speaking English. Reaching the summit, and mighty cautious, I came where I might ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... forty-two years old, a burgess of the town of Koloma; by occupation a servant—in the same Hotel Mauritania. Was never arrested before, and had received a copy of the indictment. She gave the answers very boldly and with an intonation which seemed to add ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... first thing I fell in with that recruiting officer in the white suit. I can see just how that fellow looked. Get every intonation as he drew the glowing picture of ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... plate, to receive the contributions of the people that came in. Mr. George stopped to get some money out of his pocket. The man then seemed to perceive that he was a stranger; so he said to him, speaking with a broad Scotch accent and intonation,— ...
— Rollo in Scotland • Jacob Abbott
... a pilot!" broke in the other, with an intonation that suggested scorn of Ed's ignorance. "A pilot an' a guide be th' same thing. A pilot be a guide, an' a guide ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... Mr. St. John answered, using the ship's nickname, and holding out his cigarette between his finger and thumb as he spoke, his fluent patrician English losing in significance what it gained in melody compared with the slow dry staccato intonation of the American. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... came dully, in grudging intonation through the panels—the door was locked. "Sure, but it's de hangin' 'round waitin' to get busy ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... "muoio di fame" because he knew they would be familiar to her ears; and he had uttered them playfully, with the intonation of a mendicant. This time he was understood; the corner of the mantle was dropped, and in a few moments a large cup of fragrant milk was held out to him. He paid no further compliments before raising it to his lips, and while ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... and broken and hollow; but the hideous whole is indescribable, for the simple reason that no similar sounds have ever jarred upon the ear of humanity. There were two particulars, nevertheless, which I thought then, and still think, might fairly be stated as characteristic of the intonation—as well adapted to convey some idea of its unearthly peculiarity. In the first place, the voice seemed to reach our ears—at least mine—from a vast distance, or from some deep cavern within the earth. In the second place, it impressed me (I fear, indeed, that it will be impossible ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... rich lace of a Mexican general officer; his trousers white, his scarf crimson, his hair long and frizzed like that of Murat; he wears a long sabre, and his complexion is copper-hued. He stutters like the Spaniards of Mexico, and his accent resembles Provencal, plus the guttural intonation ...
— Vautrin • Honore de Balzac
... the store half-rose from his chair, then threw himself back with an exclamation of disgust. He again ejaculated the words with which he had greeted his son's unexpected kisses, but now there was a vast difference in the intonation. ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... well by sight; and her appearance and manner were alike extremely prepossessing. Nan had heard her sing, but never speak; and she was surprised by the correct way in which she spoke; she had scarcely anything of the Sussex intonation. ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... Meldrum, smiling at the other's nasal intonation, which was more marked than usual, even for a citizen of the ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... mon neveu,' said he, 'the best wit—the wit of silence. Many might have deafened me with their gratitude. Gratitude!' he repeated, with a peculiar intonation, and lay and smiled to himself. 'But to approach what is more important. As a prisoner of war, will it be possible for you to be served heir to English estates? I have no idea: long as I have dwelt in England, I have ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... been thought necessary to prefix to the present Volume any instructions in the art of Elocution, or to direct the accent or intonation of the student by the abundant use of italics or of large capitals. The principal, if not the only secrets of good reading are, to speak slowly, to articulate distinctly, to pause judiciously, and to feel the subject so as, if possible, "to make all that passed in the mind of the ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... look something akin to admiration, and she felt she had not been wholly wrong in her estimate of the girl's character; she said, and in a different intonation— ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... beauty of life and nature found in his poems, give him his great charm. Archbishop Wallin (1779- 1839) is the great religious poet of Sweden. In his hymns there is a strength and majesty, a solemn splendor and harmony of intonation, that have no parallel in ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... perform'd with such neatness: Grassini herself never sang with such sweetness. The favor was next of the PARROT requested, Who, clearing his throat, was quite hoarse, he protested: Yet gave "Pretty Poll,"[1] with such fine intonation, SIR ARGUS ...
— The Peacock and Parrot, on their Tour to Discover the Author of "The Peacock At Home" • Unknown
... I feel safer then. A time since and I felt as if I never wanted to see it again from any place. To think of me, a decent God-fearing, seafaring man, at my time of life, turning soldier!" It is not in the power of written language to express the peculiar intonation of contempt which the old man laid upon that inoffensive word, "soldier." No one venturing to interrupt him, after staring at his particular aversion for a few moments, he went on more mildly, and in a ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... to explain why he was playing with soldiers, nor with what passionate sorrow he was recalling every fleeting expression on his mother's face, every slight intonation of her voice when she was able to share in his game; he hated his uncle and aunt so profoundly that he revelled in their incapacity to understand him, and he would have accounted it a desecration of her memory to share his grief ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... flights of thought so common in dreams I heard the hoarse falsetto of the bric-a-brac dealer, repeating like a monotonous refrain the phrase he had uttered in his shop with so enigmatical an intonation: ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... hearts each solemn cadence falling Through twilight's misty veil, An echo seemed of spirit-voices calling With sad, beseeching wail; And thus outspake the mournful intonation: "Plead for us, brethren, plead!" From the drear depths of woe and desolation Our cry of bitter need Floats upward in the swell Of De Profundis bell. Then bowed each knee, the plaintive summons heeding, And rose the blended sigh. As incense-breath of fond, ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... comical effects of which he was perfectly conscious. He would often try to talk; laying his paw on my knee, he would fix on me that earnest gaze of his and begin a series of murmurs, sighs, and grunts, so varied in intonation that it was hard not to recognise them as language. Sometimes in the course of a conversation of this sort, Dash would break out into a bark or a yelp, and then I would look sternly at him and say: "That is barking, ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... methods and procedure arose naturally from their special needs. Their senses had become marvellously acute; they could hear and judge the slightest gesture of a man a dozen paces away—could hear the very beating of his heart. Intonation had long replaced expression with them, and touches gesture, and their work with hoe and spade and fork was as free and confident as garden work can be. Their sense of smell was extraordinarily fine; they could distinguish ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... if she had stroked his cheek, and her manner was responsive even to tenderness. She called him "Dear master" again and again, and still often "Cher maitre," and appeared to express gratitude and reverence by every intonation. ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... words and may believe them? No, that would be a cowardice unworthy of our love and the true lives we hope to lead together. Sirs!" and each man there held his breath to catch the words which came in faint and fainter intonation from her lips, "I know my husband to be innocent, because the hand that held the dagger was mine. ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... man must enthrone his will to rule over his thought, his feelings, and all his physical powers, so that the outer self may give perfect, unhampered expression to the inner. It is futile, we assert, to lay down systems of rules for voice culture, intonation, gesture, and what not, unless these two principles of having something to say and making the will sovereign have at least begun to make themselves felt in ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... was a pleasant, high-bred looking gentleman, brown-complexioned, and dark-eyed, with a brisk and resolute cast of countenance, that, Ethel thought, might have suited the Norman of Glenbracken, who died on the ruddy Lion of Scotland, and speaking with the very same slight degree of Scottish intonation as she remembered in her mother, making a most home-like sound ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... called up to the living-room for prayers. Grandfather put on silver-rimmed spectacles and read several Psalms. His voice was so sympathetic and he read so interestingly that I wished he had chosen one of my favorite chapters in the Book of Kings. I was awed by his intonation of the word "Selah." "He shall choose our inheritance for us, the excellency of Jacob whom He loved. Selah." I had no idea what the word meant; perhaps he had not. But, as he uttered it, it became oracular, the most sacred ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... a loss, and whispered in my ear; "What are his politics?" "Don't know," answered I. Uncle Jack intuitively took down from his memory the phrase most readily at hand, and added, with a nasal intonation, "the rights of our ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the master isn't in?" she said with an intonation which is much more frequently heard by the hands on a farm, on a mas in her province, than by the impertinent lackeys of a great ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... deeply moved, he felt at one moment as if he could have sworn at me for not having asked him to prompt me. It happened in this way: I began my speech in a clear and full voice, but suddenly the sound of my own words, and their particular intonation, affected me to such an extent that, carried away as I was by my own thoughts, I imagined I SAW as well as HEARD myself before the breathless multitude. While I thus appeared objectively to myself I remained in a sort of trance, during which I seemed to be waiting ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... Miller. He was a naturalized German, who had anglicised his name, and he had lived many years in England. Philip had heard him speak, and, though his English was fluent and natural, it had not quite the intonation of the native. Philip knew that he was flirting with Mildred, and he was horribly jealous of him; but he took comfort in the coldness of her temperament, which otherwise distressed him; and, thinking her incapable of passion, he looked upon his rival as no better ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... that quiet, well-bred air of his which seemed to take everything for granted. Having satisfied himself that all were assembled, he cleared his throat and began to read. His manner and intonation suggested family prayers; and Myra, not doubting that this must be some kind of postscript to the burial service for the private consolation of the family, let her mind wander. The word 'testament' in the first sentence seemed to make this certain, ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... beauty of the scene, the fresh verdure of the turf, and the soft rich masses of foliage." From remarks on the different character of the landscape in the South to what it was in the North, she was led to speak of the softness and varied intonation of the voices of those with whom she conversed in London, which seem to have made a strong impression on both sisters. All this time those who came in contact with the "Miss Browns" (another pseudonym, also beginning with B), seem only to have regarded ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the actors any better, although the little plays were tolerable. But Madame de Feucheres wishing to play Alzire and to take the principal part, which she doled out with sad monotony, without change of intonation from the first line to the last, and with a strongly pronounced English accent, it was utterly ridiculous, and Voltaire would have flown into a fine passion had he seen one of his chefs-d'oeuvres mangled in that way. ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... had crept in amongst the uniforms of the college Miss Cavendish could not comprehend; it must form the subject of an after enquiry, and in the meantime, stilling with a reproachful glance a faint whisper in her vicinity, she joined in the singing of a psalm with her usual clear intonation. When the service was over, however, and the girls began to file away in orderly line, she spoke a few, rapid words to a monitress, who at once passed quickly ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... said Mr. Morgan, with the mechanical intonation of an interpreter translating, "the loss of Mr. Elderson's ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... said this, with that curious gypsy intonation that turns English into a foreign tongue if you forget the words and listen only to the voice. He was squatting in the sunshine, with his back against an oak sapling, a black cutty under his nose, and Meg, my small ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... he had a tuneful tongue, Such happy intonation, Wherever he sat down and sung He left a small plantation; Whenever in a lonely grove He set up his forlorn pipes, The gouty oak began to move And flounder ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... with feeling and expression is good, however accompanied. Otherwise, the pianoforte is not much to my mind. All its intervals are false, and temperament is a poor substitute for natural intonation. Then its incapability of sustaining a note has led, as the only means of producing effect, to those infinitesimal subdivisions of sound, in which all sentiment and expression are ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... selection by four players belonging to St. Ignace and to the choir of Father Rielle's big church, St. Jean-Baptiste-on-the-Hill. A cornet, two fiddles and a flute rendered the music with good time and fair intonation, and as it was lighthearted, even gay in character, melodious and tripping, Ringfield thought it must be of operatic origin, but found later on to his intense surprise that it was a transcription of Mozart's ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... her head and looked at him, her whole face transfigured. She was no longer a fat old woman on her deathbed. Before his very eyes she grew again to be the girl among the currant bushes, and with the same amazed intonation of incredulous joy she cried his name aloud. "Oh, Nathaniel!" she said, and with the word the longed for Finis ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... work, intending to go to bed, a proceeding in which she was always much the earlier, Dorothea, who was seated on a low stool, unable to occupy herself except in meditation, said, with the musical intonation which in moments of deep but quiet feeling made her speech like ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... threatened her. She motioned Feodor to her side, and with a touch of triumphant pride, said to him, "It is Bertram, the friend of my youth. He has risked his life to save me from dishonor." Feodor felt the reproof which lay in the intonation of these words, and his brow grew dark. But he overcame this momentary irritation, and turning to Bertram, who was approaching him with a firm and determined step, asked him, "Well, sir, ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... Her intonation, the tilt of her head, gave Wade such a pang that he could not answer. And to hide his momentary restraint he turned back to the hounds. Then she came out ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... and Algy, in either of which I can at once detect each fine inflection of anger, contest, or pain; but, comparatively unversed as I am in it, there sounds to me a slight, carefully smothered, yet still perceptible, intonation of disappointment—mortification. I wish that the air would give me back my words; but that it never yet was known ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... his courtesies only by carrying his hand to his heart and then to his forehead, in the recognized Mussulman manner. He did not speak one word of French, and yet, when Carmen passed, he said "Beautiful!" with a guttural intonation. ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... too, with bleak rehearsals, hours of listless waiting for his little scenes; with his powerlessness to get into his simple words the particular intonation required by an overdriven producer. Familiar, too, with long and hungry Sunday railway journeys when pious refreshment rooms are shut; with little mean towns like Bludston, where he and three or four of the company shared the same mean theatrical lodgings; with the ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... soever they may be to poetic beauty.—A literal translation in the plainest prose, will always shew the precise quantity of real poetic matter, contained in any Production, independent of the music of its intonation, and numbers, and the elegance of its style.—The prose translations of Horace' Odes evince that their merit does not consist in the plenitude of poetic matter, or essence, constituted by circumstances of startling interest, by exalted sentiment, impassioned complaint, or appeal, ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... eyes met hers steadily. "I can padlock my mouth when it is necessary," he answered, the suggestion of a Southern drawl in his intonation. ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... Shere Ali had taken his long walk from Kohara up the valley in the drawing-room of his house-master at Eton. And those ten years had had their due effect. He betrayed his race nowadays by little more than his colour, a certain high-pitched intonation of his voice and an extraordinary skill in the game of polo. There had been a time of revolt against discipline, of inability to understand the points of view of his masters and their companions, and of difficulty to discover much sense ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... repeat the name of Anthony with greater effect. A short lady in grey emerged from among the encircling megaliths, and one or two other feminine personalities produced effects of movement rather than of individuality as they flitted among the stones. "Well," said the lady in grey, with that rising intonation of humorous conclusion which is so distinctively American, "those ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... was all terribly disheartening," Pulcheria Alexandrovna hastened to declare with peculiar intonation, "and if Dmitri Prokofitch had not been sent us, I really believe by God Himself, we should have been utterly lost. Here, he is! Dmitri Prokofitch Razumihin," she added, introducing ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... anything—my life any day—if only she would look for two minutes as if she liked me a little—as if she didn't utterly despise me"; and the poor fellow burst into a hysterical laugh, which was almost a sob. Then he suddenly began to laugh outright, exclaiming, with a sort of vulgarity of intonation which was extremely ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... host took him up with an intonation that often comes back to him. "That's what I want you to go in for. I mean the real thing. ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... inconveniences, and continues to be universally accepted with unqualified satisfaction by the most eminent vocalists; and equally so by the most renowned and accomplished performers on stringed instruments, although these instruments are capable of an indefinite variety of intonation. The high development of modern instrumental music would not have been possible, and could not have been acquired, without the manifold advantages of the tempered intonation by equal semitones, and it has, in consequence, long become ...
— Piano Tuning - A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs • J. Cree Fischer
... swiftly in her cheeks, not so much because of the mocking words as the intonation of the voice in which they were uttered—the most wonderfully musical speaking voice she ever had heard. The angry resentment of the child's foster-father had left her unmoved but this was different. The sneering, cutting insolence came from no ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... him graciously, as a mask receives a mask, and the two fell to talking, as people do who—have nothing to say to each other and possess the art of saying it. Presently something in his voice struck on her ear, a new note, an intonation sweet and strange, that made her curious. Who was it? It could not be Valentine, nor Anselmo; he was too tall for Signior Placentio, not stout enough for Lucio; it was not her cousin Tybalt. Could it be that rash Montague who—Would he dare? Here, on the very ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... pardon his faults, MOLE contrives to find accents so tender, so affecting; he envelops his voice, as it were, with sounds so soft, so mellow, and at the same time so delicate, that the audience, fearing to lose the most trifling intonation, dare not draw their breath. Mademoiselle CONTAT replies, and, although she has to express the same degree of feeling, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... it to you?" Her tones had a tinge of uncertainty in the question,—half imperious, as demanding an answer, half persuading, as though not sure the answer would be given. Zoroaster remembered that intonation of her sweet voice, and ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... hear it again! I could not believe that it could be so awful! A high, squeaky, nasal sound; I was ashamed of it. And the faster the man turned the crank the higher and squeakier the voice became. The intonation—the pronunciation—I could recognize as my own, but the voice!... ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... prediction as aforetime, with a deep, solemn intonation:—the maiden's blood seemed to curdle with horror. A pause of bewildering and mysterious terror followed. One brief minute in the lapse of time,—but an age in the records of thought! Constance, fearful of looking ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... and this time with an intonation so fine that it attracted Josephine's notice, but not the doctor's. It was followed by a glance ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... des Vaches, the celebrated national air of the Swiss, does not consist in articulated sounds, nor is it accompanied by words; but is a simple melody formed by a kind of guttural intonation very closely resembling the tones of a flute. Two of these voices at a short distance produce the most pleasing effect, the echoes of the surrounding rocks reverberating the music till it seems like enchantment; but sometimes the illusion is dissipated by the appearance of the singers, in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... to-day. It had an operative strength of its own that was independent of the intentions of the officiating priest. The efficacy of prayer depended not on the inner disposition of the believer, but on the correctness of the words, gestures and intonation. Religion was not clearly differentiated from magic. If a divinity was invoked according to the correct forms, especially if one knew how to pronounce its real name, it was compelled to act in conformity to the will of its priest. The sacred words were an incantation that compelled the superior ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... Marshall, in return, while he scanned the other's face closely to see what his precise meaning might be. Bingham's remark had been uttered with an even intonation; it was difficult to determine whether, after all, he had emphasized "younger" more than "generation," or "their" more than "end," or, indeed, whether he had given an undue ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... handsome, spreading, and with a mixed European and indigenous arrangement and furnishing that was very attractive. I met his sons and daughters, and had luncheon with them. Tati, of course, spoke English fluently, yet with the soft intonation of the Tahitian. Some of the dishes and knives and forks had belonged to Robert Louis Stevenson, who, said Tati, had given them to him when he was departing from Tahiti. Tati's sister, a widow, was of the party, and ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... part, started up with his club, and dealt a sound douse or two on each side of him; and then, like a coach-horse pricked by the spur, started off at once into the full career of his address, and by dint of active prompting on the part of Dickie Sludge, delivered, in sounds of gigantic intonation, a speech which may be thus abridged—the reader being to suppose that the first lines were addressed to the throng who approached the gateway; the conclusion, at the approach of the Queen, upon sight of whom, as struck by some heavenly vision, the gigantic warder dropped ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... prefers a woodland of pine, being very fond of scampering about on the cones, clinging to them with his strong claws, and extracting the seeds with his stout little bill. His call, though much like the "yank" of the white-breast, is pitched to a higher key, and has even a more pronounced nasal intonation, sounding as if he had taken a severe cold. Besides, he gives expression to some cheery notes that seem to be reserved for his own family or exclusive social circles. I found these pretty nuthatches in the pine woods on Mackinac Island in midsummer, and have ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... my friend," returned Aramis, with the same intonation on the word friend that he had applied to it the first time—"I mean that if there has been any confusion, scandal, and even effort in the substitution of the prisoner for the king, I ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... credulous disciple, writing out of sight his invented science or theology, and writing too often with the blood of some innocent victim. The poor patient student is meanwhile gazing on the moon in dreamy devotion; until as the writing on the mirror is read with solemn intonation, it all appears before his moon-struck gaze as a heavenly revelation. Woe to the truth-loving critic who breaks the enchantment and the mirror, crying out in the vernacular tongue, Your mysteries are myths, ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... understand," he said. "You have just been talking to him himself. I long to hear his every word and intonation. There is the personality, which to us means so much, in which is summed up all Germany. It is as if I had spoken to Rule Britannia herself. Would you not be interested? There is no one in the world who is to his country ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... it to them; and so beautifully that they were all but melted to tears—especially the monsieur, who was evidently very sentimental and very much in love. Besides, there was that ineffable charm of the pure French intonation, so caressing to the Belgian ear, so dear to the Belgian soul, so unattainable by Flemish lips. It was one of Barty's most successful ditties—and if I were a middle-aged burgher of Mechelen, I shouldn't much like to have a young ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... you how miserably poor my people and I have been. Thanks to Mr. Selincourt, things are easier with me now; but there is a streak of modesty in me somewhere, and I have been afraid to ask for what I wanted," he said, with a certain wistfulness of intonation which brought Katherine's ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... But presently she took the initiative in conversation, at first slowly and abstractedly, and then, as if appreciating his sympathetic reticence, or mayhap finding some relief in monotonous expression, talked mechanically, deliberately, but unostentatiously about herself. So colorless was her intonation that at times it did not seem as if she was talking to him, but repeating some conversation she had held ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... deep melancholy in the intonation which caused the reporter to look at his companion a little sharply. For a moment Dryden stirred in his chair as though about to make some comment, and twisted the morsel of bread at his fingers' ends into a small pellet. But he poured out another glass of ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... sitting there and telling me these things in a gentle, throaty and rather thick voice with a cockney accent and a sort of tenor ring in it and a queer, humorous intonation that was like an audible twinkle, as if he saw himself as he thought I must see him, mainly in the light of absurdity. You should have seen his face, its thin cheeks, its vivid flush, its queer, ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... all care to Cleotos, the poet leaned back with eyes closed in delicious revery, now and then arousing himself to correct some defective emphasis or unsatisfactory intonation, the tolerance of which, he imagined, would mar the proper effect of the production, or, with persistent desire for praise, momentarily calling closer attention to such passages as appeared to him deserving of especial commendation—and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... magic dark river from off the pavement into the horse-way, to give her room as she approached. And the men who knew her well enough to salute her, by calling her name "Miss Frost!" giving it the proper intonation of salute, were fussy men indeed. "She's a lady if ever there was one," they said. And they meant it. Hearing her name, poor Miss Frost would flash a smile and a nod from behind her spectacles, but whose black face she smiled ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... the back of the bed, and then, as if he saw something there worse than all the rest, faced about again quickly, saying, with some pathetic intonation of his lost childhood, "There is no need for them to point so at me, is there? I ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... he said, with the intonation of a preaching minister. "But I cannot stop the machinery set ...
— A World is Born • Leigh Douglass Brackett
... enumerated diphthongs, and numerous difficult combinations of sounds. Sixteen keys were sufficient to produce all the sounds. In enunciating the simple sounds, the movements of the mouth could be seen. The parts were made of gum elastic. The figure was made to say, with a peculiar intonation, but surprising distinctness, 'Mr. Patterson, I am glad to see you.' It sang, 'God save Victoria,' and 'Hail Columbia,'—the words and air combined. Dr. Patterson had determined to visit the maker of the machine, Mr. Faber, in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... matter of the book is more of a descriptive than conversational style, as it is presumed that the pupil, after having finished the previous books of the series, will have formed the habit of easy intonation ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... coarse and largely sensual, but each movement of his fat hands was protective, every word he uttered was kind, the very intonation of his voice was comforting. He was, in a word, human, and this attracted all that ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... began to shout a long string of further directions, to which the canoe men replied from time to time by waving their hands. Finally Oahika brought his communication to an end with a few words which, from the intonation of his voice, might have been an injunction to the men to hurry up; and away the ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... complaints, and with rapt attention, should recite the text without too much slowness, without a labouring voice, without being fast or quick, quietly, with sufficient energy, without confusing the letters and words together, in a sweet intonation and with such accent and emphasis as would indicate the sense giving full utterance to the three and sixty letters of the alphabet from the eight places of their formation. Bowing unto Narayana, and to Nara, that foremost of men, as also to the goddess Sarasvati, should ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... came from Hampton!" with an intonation of surprise, of incredulity even, that soothed and even amused while it did not deceive her. Not that the superior intelligence of which she had begun to suspect him had been put to any real test by the discovery of her home, and she was quite sure her modest ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... assistants,—exchange recognition with friends in the audience, arrange the objects he had brought to show,—fling off his long sleeved Master's gown, and plunge into his discourse. His manner of delivery had not altered much since the time of the Edinburgh Lectures. He used to begin by reading, in his curious intonation, the carefully-written passages of rhetoric, which usually occupied only about the half of his hour. By-and-by he would break off, and with quite another air extemporise the liveliest interpolations, describing his ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... I ought to have concluded that the misfortune had been consummated, but a certain hesitation in the intonation of his voice warned me that implicit reliance was not to be placed upon Engineer ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... distinctness, than the "My Lords and Gentlemen" which broke the breathless silence of the illustrious assembly, whose gaze was riveted upon that fair flower of royalty. The enunciation was as perfect as the intonation was melodious, and I think it is impossible to hear a more excellent utterance than that of the queen's English, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... were obviously intended to hurry up a brother officer with whom he was to take the morning ride to the firing line. Sticking his curly, sunburnt head around the corner he drawled in inimitable British intonation:- ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... she agreed, with an intonation of astonishment that he should be guilty of an utterance so obvious and banal. "Did you ever know anything that wasn't? Did you ever even conceive anything that wasn't? If you can show me how to conceive spirit except in terms of matter, I'd like ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... ambiguously) and his mother, with an insatiable curiosity for anything that was rare (filially humorous accent here and a softer flash of teeth), was very anxious to have me presented to her (courteous intonation, but no teeth). He hoped I wouldn't mind if she treated me a little as an "interesting young man." His mother had never got over her seventeenth year, and the manner of the spoilt beauty of at least three counties at the back of the Carolinas. That again got overlaid by ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... and German like a native; he could imitate an Englishman's intonation to perfection; and yet he came to manhood with his own honest Ohio accent untouched. And where had he learned it? Not in Ohio, surely. He had been about as much in Ohio as I have in the moon. It was in his red blood, I suppose, to speak as the men of his family spoke—less so, ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... as surprised as if a voice from heaven had spoken with this perfect society intonation, and by the puzzled profundity of his blue eyes fluttered the wax-flower of refined womanhood. She continued. "For—I can speak to you openly on this tiresome subject—only think what a terrible strain this hope deferred must be for ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... were always imbued with a fine intelligence which brought all the details into harmony and kept the attention fixed on the conception of the character. Thus in Macbeth, which was perhaps, on the whole, his most perfect impersonation, every look and gesture, every intonation, conveyed the idea of one who lived on the border-line of an invisible world, to whom all shapes and actions were half phantasmal, for whom clear vision and sober contemplation were impossible. All his utterances were abrupt, all his movements hurried; a certain wildness, not of mere ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... triumphs. It does not indicate the love, the grief, the triumph of this man and no other. It possesses the pathos and the beauty of countless human lives prolonged through inarticulate generations, finding utterance at last in it. It is deficient in that particular intonation which makes a Shelley's voice differ from a Leopardi's, Petrarch's sonnets for Laura differ from Sidney's sonnets for Stella. It has always less of perceptible artistic effect, more enduring human quality. Some ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... small mouth. I should call him of medium height, about five feet eight and a half to nine inches, and inclined to be a trifle stout. There was no peculiarity about his voice; but it was pleasant and had a good intonation. His smile was exceedingly genial, lighting up his whole face and rendering it very attractive; while, if he were about to say anything humorous, it would beam forth from his eyes even before the words were spoken. As a young man his face was exceedingly ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... his intonation, in the sounds of the long sentences he used, that startled the two whites. It was like a reminiscence of something not exactly familiar, and yet resembling the speech of civilized men. It sounded like one of those impossible ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... a somewhat long pause, and with a sarcastic intonation, "is that you should resist the very natural temptation of exhibiting me to the world as a penitent and reformed character. In that document you have just read you suggest to me—first, that I should retire from three lawsuits in which, whatever other people may ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is," he said, with a soothing intonation Raven despairingly recognized as the note of strength pitting itself against weakness, "we can work it out together, you and I. We can do it better than anybody else. I suppose if I went back you'd send for Nan. But that won't do, Jack. ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown |
