"Low-toned" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I tell you?" Jane Blair stopped suddenly in their progress to the door and turned to her husband in low-toned triumph. "She's with him. ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... And one smoothed his head and poured oil upon it; one brought him garments of gold and silk inwoven; one fetched him slippers like the sun's beam in brightness; others stood together in clusters, and with lutes and wood-instruments, low-toned, singing odes to him; and lo! one took a needle and threaded it, and gave the thread into the hands of Shibli Bagarag, and with the point of the needle she pricked certain letters on his right wrist, and afterwards pricked the same letters on a door in the wall. Then she said to him, 'Is ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... soon dispersed. But no sooner had Mrs. Sarrasin got into her room than she hastily mounted a dressing-gown and sought out Dolores, and the two settled down to low-toned earnest talk as though they were a pair of conspirators—which for a noble ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... were fixed in eager questioning on the face of her father, and though her ears were strained to catch his low-toned words, yet did not seem to gather ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... did not exist! What do I care for them? What do they care for me? They do not know me; I shall shock them. I miss you, I hate them, already. Non! Personne ne m'aime, et je n'aime personne!" she exclaimed, with low-toned vehemence. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... enrapture and electrify his countrymen. He addressed the meeting on one of the passing topics of the day; something in his manner savouring of affectation, something in the semi-Saxon lisp that struggled through his low-toned utterances, something in the total lack of suitable gesture, gave his listeners at the outset an unfavourable impression of the young speaker. He was boyish, and some did not scruple to hint conceited; he had too ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... study when she recognized him, but before Miss Hale could begin any introductions Madeline greeted him enthusiastically and got him into a corner, where they exchanged low-toned confidences for a moment. ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... Their low-toned talk and the glimmering light of the hall made them seem oddly intimate. Lydia expressed this feeling while Rankin stood looking doubtfully at her, a little daunted by the pretty relentlessness of her ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... themselves with the gentlemen of the household in games or dancing in the hall; but the Lady Margaret strictly forbade any such frivolous doings in her maidens. They were still confined to their own sitting-room, except on some extraordinary occasion, and the only amusements allowed them were low-toned conversation, chess, draughts, or illumination. Music, dancing (even by the girls alone), noisy games of all kinds, and laughter, the Countess strictly forbade. The practical result was that the young ladies ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... even know that we ought to live in a world of overflowing loveliness; and that our contribution to it should be the loveliest of all. We are so sodden in the dull ugliness of our interiors, so used to calling a tame weary low-toned color scheme "good taste," that only children dare frankly yearn for Beauty—and they are speedily educated ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... sect soon fell into the disrepute to which these principles were likely to lead it, and wholly ceased when Epicurus taught the same opinions more philosophically, Anniceris of Cyrene, though a follower of Aristippus, somewhat improved upon the low-toned philosophy of his master. He granted that there were many things worth our aim, which could not be brought within the narrow bounds of what is useful. He did not overlook friendship, kindness, honouring our parents, and serving our country; ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... said Miss White, in that low-toned, gravely sincere voice of hers, while a faint shell-like pink suffused her face. "It was only that we were talking of the highlands, because we understood you were coming; and Mrs. Ross was trying to make out"—and here a spice of proud mischief came into her ordinarily calm eyes—"she was ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... morning after his reaching Denver. Mr. Anthony had put him through to the Springs, and then to Chimney Switch, where he was to wait for 705 and Toomey. And even now as they stood there, he and Toomey, exchanging at intervals some low-toned words at the switch, the eastward skies were slowly taking on their early morning garb of pink and violet, the eastward fronts of the snow-sifted peaks and domes far to the north and south were lighting up with wondrous hues of gold and crimson; the stars aloft ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... vain for a song; only a lisping "Twee-twee-ze," or "a dreary whisper," as Minot calls their low-toned communications with each other, reaches our ears from their high perches in the cedar trees, where they sit, almost motionless hours at a time, digesting the enormous quantities of juniper and whortleberries, wild cherries, worms, and insects ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... was carried by a simple wave of the executive officer's hand. The petty officer in command behind the bow gun, looking for the signal, saw it and gave a low-toned order. ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham
... She saw them gathering in the horrible emptiness and silence of the house Mother had kept so warm and bright, she saw her father's stooped shoulders and trembling hands, she saw Julie and Beck, red eyed, white-cheeked, in fresh black,—she seemed to hear the low-toned voices that would break over and over again so cruelly into sobs. What could they do—who could take up the work she laid down,—who would watch and plan and work for them all, now? Margaret thought of the empty place at the table, of the room that, after all these ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... Kelly could certainly be "a terror," and wrongdoers there were, I believe, in the service in the early days of his chairmanship. He was a mild-mannered man, tall, rather pale, with refined features and a low-toned pleasant voice. But beneath this smooth and gentle exterior resided great firmness. He would smile and smile with wonderful imperturbability and, in the quietest tones and the blandest way, say severe and cutting things. Economy was his strong point and he observed it in his public and private ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... Calypso borealis, the first I had seen on this side of the continent, one of my darlings, worth any amount of hardship; and I saw one of my Douglas squirrels on the margin of a grassy pool. The drip of the rain on the various leaves was pleasant to hear. More especially marked were the flat low-toned bumps and splashes of large drops from the trees on the broad horizontal leaves of Echinopanax horridum, like the drumming of thundershower drops on veratrum and palm leaves, while the mosses were indescribably beautiful, ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... a sleepless night. Mr. Rigby was out, but Miss Keating was "at home." She was scathingly polite to her delinquent admirer. Eddie's visits of late to the office had not been of a social character. He devoted much of his time to low-toned conversations with Rigby; few were the occasions when he lounged affably upon her typewriting desk as ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... all my letters from the honored three came with counsel to "respect myself and keep up the dignity of the family." Growing-up man forgets good counsel. The Arcadia of respectability is apt to give place to the levity of football and other low-toned accomplishments. The book of life, at that period, opens readily at fun and frolic, and the insignia of greatness give the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... Then the muzzles of two high-angle guns rose up from the well-deck and superstructure of the armed patrol, and in response to a low-toned order from the C.O., giving the height, time and deflection, they quickly covered the great black body of their objective. Tongues of livid flame leapt from their mouths and were followed by sharp reports. A few minutes of heavy firing and the nose of the monster ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... terrible scorching heat which seemed to envelop my body I realized that Lillian, as always, was dominating the situation. I could hear the snip of her scissors as she cut away the pieces of burned cloth, and the low-toned directions to Mrs. Durkee, which told me that Lillian already had secured our first aid kit and was giving me the treatment necessary to alleviate my pain until ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... friends about six o'clock, and Hans followed him to the door. On the steps there was a short, low-toned conversation. ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... who had overheard Miriam's low-toned remark, "as though I had been unjustly and unkindly treated. I was cheated of over half my Christmas gifts by those unblushing miscreants known as David Nesbit, Reddy Brooks and Tom Gray. Nora O'Malley helped ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... monotonous cadence of the dance. Of what her heart had felt then, she need now no longer be ashamed: all that should shame her now were her thoughts in the past, the belief that the hand which had held hers on that evening—long ago—in Brestalou could possibly have been the hand of a traitor: that the low-toned voice that spoke to her so earnestly of friendship then could ever be raised for the ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... their way down the hall. The girls looked and nudged each other as they recognized them. The younger of the two foremost had a face that can not easily be mistaken, and Eurie, having seen it once, did not need Marion's low-toned, "That is Mr. Vincent." And Ruth herself, thrown off her guard, recognized ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... dropped from quivering branches and tossed them high, as Fate wantons with human hopes before she blows her icy breath upon them. They shrieked among the naked spars of the Cossack, drifting with her restless master far out upon the white-capped waves. They moaned in low-toned agony among the marble pillars of the Crowles mausoleum, where lay in pitying sleep the misguided woman whose gods of gold and tinsel had ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... awful much," repeated Jinnie, still standing. Her voice was low-toned and pleading, her blue eyes questioningly ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... Buddha that I was very glad to have this opportunity offered me. Our auto soon drew up at the gate of the red and white striped wall surrounding the palace of the god. Two hundred Lamas in yellow and red robes rushed to greet the arriving "Chiang Chun," General, with the low-toned, respectful whisper "Khan! God of War!" As a regiment of formal ushers they led us to a spacious great hall softened by its semi-darkness. Heavy carved doors opened to the interior parts of the palace. In the depths ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... frown swept over Agnes's face, but vanished as she said, with that low-toned laugh that never seemed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... intensity, a subdued runnel of talk. The colonel, who had sat down by the library window with a book he was not reading, as if he needed to soothe some inner turmoil of his own by the touch of leathern covers, apparently did not hear this low-toned interchange. He glanced into the orchard from time to time, and once drummed on the window when a dog dashed across and ran distractedly back and forth along the brick wall. When Anne heard the front door close she ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... in low-toned conference around the governor's writing-table, and if any one of them had looked up the silent witness must have been discovered. Kent marked them down one by one: the governor; Hendricks, the secretary of State; Rumford, the oil man; and Senator Duvall. For five pregnant minutes ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... hand the young man pushed aside the glass which was offered him; then, in a low-toned but distinct voice he made, with several interruptions, the ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... left their bivouac, for there was her brother talking as usual in his dreams; some one seemed restless and turned often with decided motion, that was Warwick, she thought, while the quietest sleeper of the three betrayed his presence by laughing once with the low-toned merriment she recognized as Moor's. These discoveries left her a prey to visions of grimy strollers, maudlin farm-servants, and infectious emigrants in dismal array. A strong desire to cry out possessed her for a moment, but was checked; for with all her sensitiveness Sylvia had much ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... no thought of saying any other thing to her, because there was nothing left to say. She had said nothing to Dr. Redcliff; she had only sat listening to him and feeling her eyes widening as she tried to follow and understand what he was saying in such a grave, low-toned cautious way—as if he himself were almost afraid as he went on. What he said would once have been strange and wonderful, but now it was not, because wonder had gone out of the world. She only seemed to sit stunned before the feeling that now the dream ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... prevent the stranger from going through his wonted routine. His long strides, and extreme eagerness to get again into the heart of his former extravagant jollity, brought him very soon to the threshold of his old tosspot, Will Pearson, who, with his wife Betty, was sitting at the fire, engaged in a low-toned conversation, on the very subject of him of the red cravat. The door was burst open—the stranger entered with a ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... "No," was the low-toned reply; "that could not have happened, if there were any fear of such a thing, without one or more rifle-shots, which, in this calm evening, and this favorable locality for conveying sounds to a great distance, we must have heard, even down to the tavern. No, ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... India ink. V. be black &c adj.; render black &c adj.. blacken, infuscate^, denigrate; blot, blotch; smutch^; smirch; darken &c 421. black, sable, swarthy, somber, dark, inky, ebony, ebon, atramentous^, jetty; coal-black, jet-black; fuliginous^, pitchy, sooty, swart, dusky, dingy, murky, Ethiopic; low-toned, low in tone; of the deepest dye. black as jet &c n., black as my hat, black as a shoe, black as a tinker's pot, black as November, black as thunder, black as midnight; nocturnal &c (dark) 421; nigrescent^; gray &c 432; obscure &c 421. Adv. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... began feeling carefully along the higher side for some sort of door or opening. They had gone a good thirty feet, their nerves tingling with the hope of next-instant discovery, when Phil broke the silence with a low-toned sentence. ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... flung a glance towards Mrs. Hemphill, whose watchful eyes were gloating over the scene, then with a beckoning look towards Joyce walked to the back door. Joyce instantly followed her, leaving her escort in low-toned talk ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... by,—a laughing, capricious, slow, unequal tide, flowing onwards, however, steadily in the same direction, towards the same goal. There arises therefrom an immense but light murmur in which dominate the sounds of laughter, and the low-toned interchange of polite speeches. Then follow lanterns upon lanterns. Never in my life have I seen so many, so variegated, so complicated, and ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... as yet nothing outside the car windows which they had not known of old,—the marsh-meadows of the Lower Sacramento, tide-rivers reflecting the sky, cattle and wild fowl, with an occasional windmill or a duck-hunter's lodge breaking the long sweeps of low-toned color. The morning sun was drinking up the fog, the temperature in the Pullman steadily rising. Jackets were coming off and shirt-waists blooming out in summer colors, giving the ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... circumstances were perpetually throwing them together. Every day they met at luncheon; she must still keep her seat between him and her father, but how differently that hour passed now! Instead of that eager, low-toned talk, that merry interchange of daily news and plans, Cyril would be absorbed in his carving, in his supervision of the boys; he seemed to have no leisure to talk to Audrey. A grave remark upon the weather, ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... measure by the inattention of his servants, was about to rise from his chair to go and learn the reason, and to punish them, when suddenly a low-toned laugh struck on his ears. It startled him, for it was the familiar laughter of his sister—his sister, whom he believed to be far away, hopelessly imprisoned in the deepest recesses of his cavern. ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... of the table sit the father and mother, and Alexander, Jean, and Donald, with the missionary and myself, make up the company. The children take their tea in silence but for a whispered request now and then, or a reply to some low-toned direction from the mother. They listen interested in their elders' talk, and hugely amused at the jokes. There is no pert interjection of smart sayings, so awful in ill-trained children of ill-bred parents. They have learned that ancient and almost ...
— Beyond the Marshes • Ralph Connor
... Probably the low-toned softness of the voice, so utterly different from the shrill wrangling notes of all the other women he had known, took him by surprise. He was still sober enough to be subdued, almost cowed, by resistance of a description unlike all he had ever seen; his alarm at Christina's superior power ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mere impertinence to say 'thank you,'" he murmured with low-toned vehemence. But his eyes, that sought her own, shamed the futility of speech. "The sun was blinding me; and if I'd missed ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... charger would rear the firm and sturdy figure of a soldier suddenly head and shoulders above his comrades. Over the noise of the scudding hoofs could be heard the creaking of leather trappings, the jingle and clank of steel, and the tense, low-toned commands or appeals of the men to their horses. And the horses were mad with the headlong sweep of this movement. Powerful under jaws bent back and straightened so that the bits were clamped as rigidly as vices upon ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... we have plenty of that," is Hazon's reply to a rapid, low-toned query on the part of Laurence. "But it's time they turned tail. Isandhlwana ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... drew near, and as she approached a long bitter sigh broke from Isabel and, following it, low-toned entreaties that pierced her anew with the utter ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... it never does come except in the evening. In the sun-time, when the world is bounding forward full of life, we cannot stay to sigh and sulk. The roar of the working day drowns the voices of the elfin sprites that are ever singing their low-toned miserere in our ears. In the day we are angry, disappointed, or indignant, but never "in the blues" and never melancholy. When things go wrong at ten o'clock in the morning we—or rather you—swear and knock the ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... man on the desk who finally broke that quiet, but when he spoke his voice had lost its easily intimate good-fellowship. He spoke instead in a low-toned directness. ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... to-day. Once upon a time—but no matter. Bridges are peculiarly liable to change in troubled times. The Rue St. Gingolphe is situated between the Boulevard St. Germain and Quai Voltaire. One hears with equal facility the low-toned boom of the steamers' whistle upon the river, and the crack of whips in the boulevard. Once across the bridge, turn to the right, and go along the Quay, between the lime-trees and the bookstalls. You will probably go slowly because of the bookstalls. No one worth ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... whose eyes a light of hope had dawned during Weir's low-toned statement, began nervously to bite ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... preoccupation and talked confidentially with my captain. I could catch only snatches of mumbled sentences. Then one morning as I came along the deck to take my place at the breakfast table Almayer checked himself in his low-toned discourse. My captain's face was perfectly impenetrable. There was a moment of profound silence and then as if unable to contain himself Almayer burst out in a loud ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... and here and there a boat was plying. Deronda had been rowing fast to get over this spot, when, becoming aware of a great barge advancing toward him, he guided his boat aside, and rested on his oar within a couple of yards of the river-brink. He was all the while unconsciously continuing the low-toned chant which had haunted his throat all the way up the river—the gondolier's song in the "Otello," where Rossini has worthily set to music the immortal words ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... The civil service is managed on English principles, there being no elective offices; and nothing resembling what is called the "caucus system" seems to have grown up. There are in the Cape Legislature some few members supposed to be "low-toned" and open to influence by the prospect of material gain, but, though I heard of occasional jobbing, I heard of little or nothing amounting to corruption. Elections were said to be free from bribery, but as they had seldom excited keen interest, this point of ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... "Thief! you low-toned rascal!" cried Mr. Bowdoin. "Thief yourself! He's just told me Mercedes is in Havana. Of course he ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... who are capable of making that boast," he answered. "Even you, comrade, are unequal to it. Here now is something that is worth a hearing." Leaning from his saddle, he poured into Sigurd's ear a stream of low-toned words that caused the Silver-Tongued to stop short and stare at him incredulously, and then look back at the anchored ship and pound his knee in a fury ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... me, we heard them talking at the back of the machine, as the jack quickly lifted us and Worth went to it with Capehart to unbolt the rim; a low-toned steady stream from the wide man, punctuated now and then by a word ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... the evening we pause at the little office in the hall, behind whose window sits Madame, busy with her knitting yet watchfully supervising all the details of the household. She chats with us freely, speaking slowly in her clear, low-toned French,—that southern French which sounds the vowels and the final e so lingeringly,—telling us of the village and its surroundings, of the people, of herself; questioning us about America, (where, she tells us, lives one of her daughters;) ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... persons of her class in those rough and uncultured times. Paul, who was a shrewd observer, detected at once that this was no ordinary woman before him, and saw from whom Joan had inherited her graceful, refined bearing and sweet, low-toned voice. She was a much taller and finer woman than her mother had ever been, for she had something of her father's strength and stature; but for all that she owed much of her charm to her mother, and plainly regarded her ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... was saying now to Templeton, speaking abruptly although his voice was as gentle and low-toned and pleasant as when he had spoken with the cashier, "three days ahead of time. It won't take me a minute to get through. And if you and the young lady will excuse me I'll say my little speech and drift, giving you a free swing for your ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... all the objects that have struck me, I believe it is this which has always given most contentment to myself."[128] This moderate conception of felicity, which was always so characteristic with him, as an even, durable, and rather low-toned state of the feelings, accounts for his prolonged acquiescence in a companion whom men with more elation in their ideal would assuredly have found hostile even ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... as suddenly as it began. Darkness descended upon the valley and every vestige of the Apache was gone with the twilight. Long before time for tattoo the eager watchers in the down-stream posts could hear muffled hoofbeats and low-toned words of command along the still cautious skirmish line, and Turner came but slowly, first because he could see that there was no occasion for hurry; second, because, with his wounded to protect, there was every objection ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King |
