"Monotonous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... people, invited her to dinner or tea. But on weekdays, especially in winter, when the streets were sloppy, and the atmosphere grey and damp, there was no inducement to take her out. In such conditions Marylebone is as depressing a district as any in London. The streets have a dull monotonous appearance, and the ancient unvenerable houses are grimy to blackness with the accumulation of soot on them. The inhabitants, especially in that portion of Marylebone where Fan lived, form a strange ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... turbulent vociferations, produce an appalling discord, such as might well be expected to proceed from a company of infernal spirits at their fiendish revels; and exhibit a striking contrast to the low, monotonous tones used by ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... explorers take branding irons, and use them to mark each of their camping-places with its number. This is especially useful in Australian travel, where the country is monotonous, and there are few natives to tell ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... in good spirits, for rowing was more pleasurable than tramping in that dismal monotonous primeval forest that rose on either side, therefore against the broad, slowly-flowing waters our carriers bent to their paddles, ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... wandering eye like basking snakes. Where this thick brush displays its emerald tent, I stretch my wearied frame, for solitude To steal within my heart. How hushed the scene At first, and then, to the accustomed ear, How full of sounds, so tuned to harmony They seemed but silence; the monotonous purl Of yon small water-break—the transient hum Swung past me by the bee—the low meek burst Of bubbles, as the trout leaps up to seize The skipping spider—the light lashing sound Of cattle, mid-leg in the shady pool, Whisking the flies away—the ceaseless chirp Of crickets, and the tree-frog's ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... song of its engine came down to the men as Blake swept in a great circle about the big ship. He was looking it over, but he began his inspection at a distance, and the orbit of his plane made a tightening spiral as he edged for a closer look. He was still swinging in the monotonous round when the ship made ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... but delicate structure of airy stories, hanging galleries, fragile colonnades, gilded cornices, and resplendent frescoes—was throbbing throughout its whole perilous length with the pulse of high pressure and the strong monotonous beat of a powerful piston. Floods of foam pouring from the high paddle-boxes on either side and reuniting in the wake of the boat left behind a track of dazzling whiteness, over which trailed two dense black banners flung from ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... of favours, yes. And even in matter of visits, to a certain degree,—their life is so monotonous that novelty has a great charm. Reuben used to go and read to them almost every day on his way from school, but I found it best to make ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... narrow canals, the banks of which were covered with high reeds and heavy, tropical, confused, untidy vegetation. The air was still and stifling—absolutely unmoved, screened as it was on all sides by vegetation. The sailors sang a monotonous cadence, and the boat glided along for some three hours until we arrived at the mouth of the Piri river, hardly wide enough for a couple of boats to go through simultaneously, and so shallow that rowing was ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... that youthful companionship, and Marius' admiration for his friend's poetry?... that delightful language of the third century—a new Latin, a season of dependency, an Indian summer full of strange and varied cadences, so different from the monotonous sing-song of the Augustan age; the school of which Fronto was the head. Indeed, it was Pater's book that first suggested to me the idea of the book I am writing. But perhaps you do not know I am writing a book.... Did my mother ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... sake let up on that cayuse!" Rowdy cried petulantly. "I wish I'd never got sight of the little buzzard-head; I've had him crammed down my throat the last day or two till it's getting plumb monotonous. Pink, that cayuse never saw Oregon. He was raised right on this flat, and he belongs to old Rodway. I've got to lead him back there and turn him ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... Hilo was as dull and monotonous as our upward journey had been. At last we reached the pier, where we found the usual little crowd waiting to see us off. The girls who had followed us when we first landed came forward shyly when they thought they were unobserved, and again encircled me with leis of gay and fragrant ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... proposed was somewhat like that of the Quakers, but less respectable,—a rustic cousin to it, or rather a caricature; namely, a close coatee, with stand-up collar, and very short skirts,—skirtees, they might be called,—the color gray; pantaloons and vest the same;—making the wearer a monotonous gray man throughout, invisible at twilight. The proposers of this metamorphosis, to make it go, selected an individual of small and agreeable figure, and procuring a suit of fine material, and a good fit, placed him on a platform ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... of the needles had an effect of commonplace which helped to restore Bertha to her self-possession, and in a little time her tears ceased, and moving to the window she stood there looking out upon the landscape. The monotonous click of the needles ceased, and she knew that her mother had laid down her work in her lap and was regarding her. She turned, with a ghost ...
— Bulldog And Butterfly - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... musical clang from the bucket under the van which struck against something now and then. The Professor was sitting in front, with a lighted lantern hanging from the peak of the van roof. He was humming some outlandish song to himself, with a queer, monotonous refrain: ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... dismay. He had about given up when, in the last quarter of the horizon he saw, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, what looked like a fine trickle of blackish smoke that appeared to rise from a shapeless mound that bulged above the monotonous level. ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... tantamount to saying that never do the broad tendency and the general scope of a work become immediately apparent. Similarly does the entry to every town—the entry even to the Capital itself—convey to the traveller such an impression of vagueness that at first everything looks grey and monotonous, and the lines of smoky factories and workshops seem never to be coming to an end; but in time there will begin also to stand out the outlines of six-storied mansions, and of shops and balconies, and wide perspectives of streets, and a medley of steeples, columns, statues, and ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... energetic language and unfamiliar conceptions would have presented insuperable difficulties. Between Dante and Alfieri no Italian poet except Michael Angelo expressed so much deep thought and feeling in phrases so terse, and with originality of style so daring; and even Michael Angelo is monotonous in the range of his ideas and uniform in his diction, when compared with the indescribable violence and vigour of Campanella. Campanella borrows little by way of simile or illustration from the outer world, and he never falls into the commonplaces of poetic phraseology. ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... Art's mighty means and perfect rudiment," the place where the divine in man "defied the invincible gesture of necessity." And nothing can so glorify the classics as to bring them into the field and into the shop and let them become woven into the tasks that might else seem monotonous or menial. ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... son-in-law. He brought little gifts to the young lady, artificial flowers, bonbons on New-Year's day and pretty boxes for her birthday. Twenty-six years of age, a worker working without purpose, steady as a girl, monotonous and apathetic, holding cafes, cigars, and horsemanship in detestation, going to bed regularly at ten o'clock and rising at seven, gifted with some social talents, such as playing quadrille music on the flute, which first brought him into favor with the Saillards and the Baudoyers. He was moreover ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... iii. 1; in Ovid's Metamorphoses, xv. 871 seq.; and in Martial, x. 27 seq. Among French sonnetteers Ronsard attacked the theme most boldly. His odes and sonnets promise immortality to the persons to whom they are addressed with an extravagant and a monotonous liberality. The following lines from Ronsard's Ode (livre i. No. vii.) 'Au Seigneur Carnavalet,' illustrate his habitual treatment of ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... except fall off his pony, and knock chips out of gate posts with his trap. Even that became monotonous after a time. He objected to whist, cut the cloth at billiards, sang out of tune, kept very much to himself, and wrote to his Mamma and sisters at Home. Four of these five things were vices which the "Shikarris" objected to and ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... were so ardent in religion that they spent day and night in teaching their son the story of the gospel and the psalms. They desired first of all that he should be a good Christian and a bearer of the faith—but they wearied the growing boy with long hours of study and monotonous recitals of religious hymns and proverbs when he was eager to be ranging the hills or playing with his fellows. At that time he had no particular desire to be a priest, and, like most boys, was far more interested in the stories of ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... first day the dance was slow and funereal, in honor of the Yo-kai-a chief who died a short time before. The music was mournful and simple, being a monotonous chant in which only two tones were used, accompanied with a rattling of split sticks and stamping on a hollow slab. The second day the dance was more lively on the part of the men, the music was better, employing airs which had a greater range of tune, and ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... Dewey did not suspect it, was at that moment in a very uncomfortable position indeed, and he himself was menaced by a peril already near at hand against which his helpless condition allowed of no defence. His lonely and monotonous life was destined to be varied that evening ...
— Ben's Nugget - A Boy's Search For Fortune • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... which tell most on the character, are unmarked by any notable events. A steady, orderly routine, a gradual progression, perseverance in hard work, often do more to educate and form than a varied and eventful life. Erica's two years of exile were as monotonous and quiet as the life of the secularist's daughter could possibly be. There came to her, of course, from the distance the echoes of her father's strife; but she was far removed from it all, and there was little to disturb her mind in the quiet Parisian school. There ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... then clinging by the mane of his horse, he scrambled for the bridle, which was under the other horse's feet—reached it, and, well satisfied with himself, looked round at Paddy, who looked back to the chaise-door at my angry servants, "secure in the last event of things." In vain the Englishman in monotonous anger, and the Frenchman in every note of the gamut, abused Paddy: necessity and wit were on Paddy's side; he parried all that was said against his chaise, his horses, himself, and his country, with invincible comic dexterity, till at last, both ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... grows monotonous, even when you know it will be printed, and this I did not know; my prose was very faulty, and my ideas were unsettled, I could not go to the tap and draw them off, the liquor was still fermenting; and partly because my articles were not very easily disposed ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... towards Garrat, my attention was attracted by a pretty mansion, which pleased my eye, though the monotonous blows of its adjoining oil-mill annoyed my ear. The owner, Mr. Were, politely exhibited its details; and more mechanical ingenuity than is here displayed could not well be applied to aid the simple operation ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... upon the land. One may almost hear the roar of the continual fires, the throb of the engines, the heavy beat of the trip-hammers, and the rattle of the spindles, by which the work of the world is done; and their noises, blended by the distance into one monotonous sound, seem like the voice of the restless, hard-working, unsettled spirit of gain. Manchester is built and is worked for profit, not for pleasure; beauty is driven away from her as a thing at variance with practical life; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... by and the monotonous rainy season had just began. Then a swelling the size of a peach developed in young Kung's breast, which increased over night until it was as large as a tea-cup. He lay on his couch groaning with pain, and unable to eat or to sleep. ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... always observed," continues Mr. Finlay, "that he adopted a very simple and even monotonous tone, when he had to say any thing not quite in the ordinary style of conversation. Whenever he had begun a sentence which showed that the subject interested him, and which contained sublime thought, he would check himself suddenly, and come to ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... properties only small quantities may be eaten. No tree lover will ever forget his first meeting with the sugar pine. In most pine trees there is the sameness of expression which to most people is apt to become monotonous, for the typical spiral form of conifers, however beautiful, affords little scope for appreciable individual character. The sugar pine is as free from conventionalities as the most picturesque oaks. No two are alike, and though they toss out their immense arms ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... are coming into my valley every day, and, while they increase the danger of fires, I welcome them. They are all advocates of the forest. As one man said: 'The mountains supplement the plains. They give color and charm to the otherwise monotonous West.' I confess I couldn't live on the prairies—not even on the plains—if out of sight of the mountains. If I should ever settle down to a home it would be in a canon like this, with a great peak at ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... yet it could hardly be called monotonous. Whenever wearied of their darksome waiting, the young men would steal again into the hollow image of Huitzil', there to utilise the cunningly arranged peepholes, now looking out upon the priests, or listening ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... argumentative. Their constant discussions were a strong link in the chain of esteem; for they had a tendency to enliven their solitude, and to give a zest to lives that, without them, would have been exceedingly monotonous. Their ordinary subjects were theology and war; the chaplain having some practical knowledge of the last, and the captain a lively disposition to the first. In these discussions, the clergyman was good-natured and the soldier polite; circumstances that tended ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... monotonous gallop of the animals the youths were startled by the sound of a laugh, which suddenly rang out on the still air. It was brief and hearty, such as a man emits who is highly pleased over something ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... mind was analytical, and he loved to take a theme and unfold it, peeling it like an onion, layer by layer. For Douglas, an oration was a pile of ideas, three hours high. Lincoln's voice was a high dusty tenor, with small range, and monotonous; Douglas's voice was a magnificent vocal instrument, extending from the flute-like tone to the deepest roar. Lincoln lacked every grace of the great orator; Douglas had every art that makes the ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... the opposite inlets he saw people struggling into the piazza, while above them paper lanterns, held aloft on sticks, were waving uncertainly to and fro. A rude monotonous chant made a distinctly traceable strand of noise, across which screams, whistles, gibing chants in piping boyish voices, the beating of drums, and the ringing of little bells, met each other in confused din. Every now and then one of the dim floating ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... A monotonous key; but it's about the same as fetching a breath after a run; only, true, it lasts too long—not healthy! Skepsey will bring me my letters. I was down in the country early this morning, looking over the house, with Taplow, my architect; and he speaks fairly well of the contractors. Yes, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... it, and only one solitary bush standing out on the hill-top against the sky-line, on the summit of what was then a very steep hill through which the cutting has since been made. The hills on the Newmarket Road, which have also since been cut through, were equally bare and monotonous in colour, at least during most of the year; and the Heath was then destitute of those graceful patches of charming spring and autumn natural tints which the plantations of to-day give to the neighbourhood ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... want to tell it to you and see if you all approve and think me equal to it. It used to come to me in flashes, after this Fairy Godmother of mine opened an avenue for my surplus energy by sending me out as a story-teller; but lately I have n't had any heart for it. Work grew monotonous and disagreeable and hopeless, and I 'm afraid I had no wish to be useful or helpful to myself or to anybody else. But now everything is different. I am not so rich as I was (I wish, Mr. Bird, you would not smile so provokingly ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... awful dasher plunges and creaks. Above all the winds howl, and the waves roll, and sometimes slap the ship till she shivers and leaps, and then the "Wreck of the Hesperus" recommences. Things get gloomy, the variations of storm grow monotonous, nothing delights us, no wish arises for beef tea, nothing makes gruel palatable. Neither sun nor stars have been visible for some days; the only sunshine we see is the passing smile of the ship's boys, who are almost constantly employed baling ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... She lay down and slept, awoke, moved her body for more comfort, slept again. And through her sleep and dreams and wakeful moments she heard the quiet voices of the men who had no beds to go to; that monotonous sound and an occasional clink of glass and bottle neck or the rustling of shuffled cards. Once she got up and looked through a hole in the canvas; she had taken off her shoes and made no noise to draw attention to her spying. It must have been chance, therefore, which ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... tack, coffee, canned baked-beans, canned tomatoes, and canned "roast beef." Before we arrived at Key West the baked-beans had all been eaten and the water in the tanks had gone rotten—we carried no condenser—so that we were reduced to the rather monotonous diet of tomatoes for breakfast, tomatoes and canned roast beef for dinner, and tomatoes again for supper; with a full allowance of coffee and hard tack ...
— From Yauco to Las Marias • Karl Stephen Herrman
... voice of the girl was singularly compelling; there was something vividly impressive about her just now, though her pallid, prematurely mature face and the thin figure in the regulation black dress and white apron showed ordinarily only insignificant. "Tell me now," she repeated, with a monotonous emphasis that somehow moved Sarah to obedience against her will, greatly to her ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... mend! to mend! to mend!" The monotonous calls of London hawkers are a strange mixture of sounds—at one moment attractive, at another repelling; they are, perhaps, more like the cry of a bird in distress ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... to have more enjoyment,' she pursued courageously. 'Think of the numbers of people who live a dull, monotonous life just because they can't help it. How they would envy us, with so much money to spend, free to do just what we like! Doesn't it seem a pity to sit ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... camp was pitched in a grey wilderness of rock and forest, far from any house; as he sat with his mates about the evening fire, the trains passing on the track were their next, and indeed their only, neighbours, except the wild things of the wood. Lovely weather, light and monotonous employment, long hours of somnolent camp-fire talk, long sleepless nights, when he reviewed his foolish and fruitless career as he rose and walked in the moonlit forest, an occasional paper of which he would ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in the verdant woods, in the coppice, and even on the lonely moors. He flits from one stunted tree to another and utters his notes in company with the wild song of the Ring Ousel and the harsh calls of the Grouse and Plover. Though his notes are monotonous, still no one gives them this appellation. No! this little wanderer is held too dear by us all as the harbinger of spring for aught but praise to be bestowed on his mellow notes, which, though full and soft, are powerful, and may on a calm morning, before ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... feels the influence of any woman, purifying, chastening, abashing, strengthening him against temptation, shielding him from evil, ministering to his self-respect, medicining his weariness, peopling his solitude, winning him from sordid prizes, enlivening his monotonous days with mirth, or fancy, or wit, flashing heaven upon his earth, and mellowing it for all spiritual fertility,—there is the element of marriage. Wherever woman pays reverence to man,—wherever any woman rejoices in the strength of any man, feels it to be God's agent, upholding her weakness, ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... no resistance but sank down limply where Jarrold left her and watched him as he slouched over to the fire. She sought to hear their words, to read the looks on their faces. But she caught only a monotonous mutter, unintelligible but evil, and saw only the bottle passing from one to the other. Brodie finished it and hurled it from him so that it broke noisily. A few times she heard them laugh; she could distinguish ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... his son she was oracular. Consequently, Pownal only laughed at her, when she spoke of himself, as well, indeed, he might, but when she referred to his father, the case was altered. Not that any clear, well-defined danger presented itself, but as in low, monotonous tones the squaw proceeded, darkly hinting at what she would not explain, an oppression fell upon his spirits as strange as it was painful. We can liken it to nothing with more propriety than to that dim sense of terror and discomfort which is sometimes observed in the inferior animals at the approach ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... are very handsome, with elegant fountains which relieve the somewhat monotonous regularity. Some of the squares are of immense size. There is a very large lazaretto, which is said to be one of the best managed in the world. The cafes are like small palaces, and the shops rival the ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... continued to pour down on the roofs and on the tombs with a monotonous plash. "But what is to be ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... said, by great simplicity, natural and pleasing metaphor, and extremely soft and melodious rhyme. They sing their poems to certain popular airs, which are committed to memory. Malay music, though plaintive and less excruciating than Chinese and Japanese, is very monotonous and dirge-like, and not pleasing to a European ear. The pentatonic scale is employed. The violin stands first among musical instruments in their estimation. They have also the guitar, the flageolet, the aeolian flute, a bamboo in which holes are cut, which ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... whole landscape. In this volume there is so much gloom! Suffering and death have met us so often! Can you wonder, my dear reader, that the historian of such an epoch longs to escape, when he can, from the gloom of the tragedy, and paint those scenes of comedy which occasionally broke the monotonous drama? To write this book is not agreeable to me. I wear out a part of my life in composing it. To sum up, in cold historic generalities that great epoch would be little—but to enter again into the hot atmosphere; to live once more that life of the past; to feel the ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... respects, the time at "The Briars" was dull and monotonous, and he complained bitterly to Cockburn of the inadequate accommodation. The most exciting times were on the arrival of newspapers from Europe. The reports just to hand of riots in England and royalist excesses in France fed his hopes of general ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... to have no kind of worship, and their sports are few. The children swing, bathe, and sail small canoes. The grown-up people have their dance—a very poor sort of thing. A band of youths, with drums, stand close together, and in a most monotonous tone sing whilst they beat the drums. The dancers dance round the men once or twice, and all stop to rest a bit. I have been twice present when only the women danced. They bury their dead, and place houses over the graves, which they fence round, planting crotons, bananas, etc., ...
— Adventures in New Guinea • James Chalmers
... feeling happy, in a still, unreasoning way. She had not had an easy youth. It had been full of poverty and fears, and her later life had been lived on one monotonous level of satisfying her own bare wants and finding nothing left for luxury. But something, some singing inner voice, was always, in these later days, bidding her take hope. She was not expectant of definite delights; she only cherished an irresponsible certainty. When the door opened ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... gloomy, savage-looking country, and seemed to me well suited to be the home of so dreadful an animal. There were few animals to be seen here. Even birds were scarce, and a few chattering monkeys were almost the only creatures that broke the monotonous silence and ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... grass and bordered with acacia-bushes covered with feathery leaves and a profusion of yellow ball-shaped flowers that perfumed the air with their fragrance. The view up and down these winding flower-bordered streams was lovely. We rode for miles over this monotonous country, gradually rising to higher ground. Suddenly, almost at our very feet, a little bowl-shaped valley about half a mile in circumference opened to view. The upper rim all around was covered with smooth green grass, and the sides ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... calm the opening of the door of the salon, with the sudden uplifting of voices in the hall, told Paul that Yerba's guests were leaving. He heard Dona Anna's arch accents—arch even to Colonel Pendleton's monotonous baritone!—Milly's high, rapid utterances, the suave falsetto of Don Caesar, and HER voice, he thought a trifle wearied,—the sound of retiring footsteps, and all was ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... be pleasant to those who make nature a study. There is a vast book open before us and every one who chooses can open a page. The study will never grow monotonous, for nature is constantly changing and with lavish hand showers upon her children from her great store house innumerable blessings, to those who "see books in running brooks, sermons in stones ...
— Bohemian Society • Lydia Leavitt
... doing its every-day work; and in the reading, the lessons for the previous day were to be those of the examination day. By an evil fortune, the reading for the day was the dramatic "Marco Bozzaris." The master shivered inwardly as he thought of the possibility of Thomas Finch, with his stolidly monotonous voice, being called upon to read the thrilling lines recording the panic-stricken death-cry of the Turk: "To arms! They come! The Greek! The Greek!" But Thomas, by careful plodding, had climbed to fourth place, and the danger ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... difference between the week behind him, with all its ups and downs, its quarrels, its ennuis, its moments of delightful intimity, of artistic freedom and pleasure, and those threadbare monotonous weeks into which he was to slip back on the morrow, awoke in him a mad inconsequent sting of ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... into Third Avenue, a long street, which, commencing just below the Cooper Institute, runs out to Harlem. A man came out of a side street, uttering at intervals a monotonous cry which sounded like ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... and beset with a homicidal mania for the past three years, reduced to one idea through mental impoverishment, that of murder, having lost the faculty for even the lowest order of reasoning, the poorest of journalists, save for pikemen and Billingsgate market-women, so monotonous in his constant paroxysms that the regular reading of his journal is like listening to hoarse cries from the cells of a madhouse.[3146] From the 19th of August he excites people to attack the prisons. "The wisest and best course to pursue," he says, "is to go armed to the Abbaye, drag out the traitors, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... an hour a day in exercise. In an hour one can, without making too great haste, walk three miles. At this rate, a year's walking represents over a thousand miles. Relaxation is essential to keep up the spirit and prevent life from becoming monotonous, as if one were sentenced to perpetual treadmill. Recreation is necessary, and the pursuit of pleasure is sometimes ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... day from his early childhood, living all the time under the conditions forced upon the English proletarian? It is still the same thing since the introduction of steam. The worker's activity is made easy, muscular effort is saved, but the work itself becomes unmeaning and monotonous to the last degree. It offers no field for mental activity, and claims just enough of his attention to keep him from thinking of anything else. And a sentence to such work, to work which takes his whole time ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... house was such a house, but it was more. It was mysterious, uncommunicative. In the midst of the commonplace residence block, with its white cottages, its monotonous lawns and uninteresting gardens, the contrast was startling, secretive, contemptuous. The tall grass waved ironically at the neat grassplots which flanked it. The great untrimmed elms sent branches to beat against the decaying shingles, or downward into the faces of passers-by, with patrician ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... moments when the camels halted there could not be felt the slightest breeze, so that the air as well as the sands seemed to slumber in the warmth, in the light, and in the stillness. The caravan had just ridden upon a great monotonous level ground, unbroken by khors, when suddenly a wonderful spectacle presented itself to the eyes of the children. Groups of slender palms and pepper trees, plantations of mandarins, white houses, a small mosque with ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... expensive estates of the mill-owners, the wealthiest class in the community. Between the villages, in fact, upon all the roads, every turn brings in sight pleasing views which never repeat themselves or become monotonous. The cemetery is itself one of the most beautiful spots in the neighborhood. A massive granite gateway is being put up, the gift of the late Thomas Allen. For a long distance the road leads through a thick forest of maple, pine and oak trees. A swiftly-running ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... the weird spot as the noise of their spades became monotonous, relieved only by the throwing aside of the great lumps of moist earth; a mist was rising from the river flowing near, of which in the first stillness of our coming I could just catch the ripple of the water. It seemed to me that ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... races working side by side should possess so many opposite traits of character. The white man has strong will and convictions and is set in his ways. He lives an indoor, monotonous life, restrains himself like a Puritan, and is inclined to melancholy. The prevalence of Populism throughout the South is nothing but the outcome of this morbid tendency. Farmers and merchants are entirely absorbed in their business, ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... flames, above the drawing and sighing of the wind, there now came a strange sound which seemed to proceed from the fire-tinted clouds above. Now and then branches of the nearby trees stirred mysteriously, and at times a wild shriek rose above the monotonous chattering. ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson
... a sickly child, who dreads its mother's departure, was the only sound to which I could compare that wretched man's voice. He held me with a force almost supernatural; but his tongue uttered supplications in a feeble monotonous tone, and with the most humble and beseeching manner. 'Leave him,' exclaimed he, 'leave him a little while longer. He will forgive me; I know he will. He spoke that horrible word to rouse my conscience. But I heard him and came back to him. I would have toiled and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... his lower jaw and jumping on his bare feet. He bowed again as if saluting a fetish, and again and again. Ceaselessly he bowed to the tomtoms, always jumping softly from the pavement. His long hair fell over his face and back upon his shoulders with a monotonous regularity that imitated the tomtoms, as if he strove to mould his life in accord with the fetish to which he offered adoration. Flecks of foam appeared upon his lips, and the asceticism in his eyes changed to a bestial glare. His whole ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... economic statesman. The existing system works very badly in respect to supplying the farmer with necessary labor. In every period of prosperity the tendency is for agricultural laborers to rush off to the towns and cities for the sake of the larger wages and the less monotonous life; and when a period of depression follows, their competition lowers the standard of living in all organized trades. If the supply of labor were regulated, and its efficiency increased as it would be under the proposed system, agricultural laborers would not ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... to time, then disappearing through a partition beyond. She would emerge again presently carrying an embroidered reticule, and would wander round among the crowd, holding out the bag by its chain, and repeating in tones of somewhat monotonous appeal: "For the starving poor of Paris, ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... in the palace of truth from all of you gentlemen here, would be countless in their differences. I hear explanations of the present state of things all day long. I like to hear them. You think it may become monotonous. No: not at all; because there is so much, I will not say of random variety, but there is so much independent use of mind upon the facts that we have to deal with, that I listen with endless edification and instruction. But, I think, and I wish I could think otherwise with all my heart—that ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... I," she answered; "the terror to me was that you had learned in the Quartier lessons to make your after-life monotonous. I ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... this apparition of the supermon i' the air-r," continued Tam in the monotonous tone he adopted when he was evolving one of his romances, "the enemy fled, emittin' spairks an' vapair to hide them from the veegilant ee o' young Mr. Lasky, the Boy Avenger, oor the Terror o' the Fairmament. They darted heether and theether wi' their remorseless pairsuer on their heels an' the ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... between two thousand years before Christ and two thousand years afterward. Still disasters fall upon our lives, sometimes as swift in their assault as wild beasts leaping from an unsuspected ambush. Still troubles come, long drawn out and wearying, like the monotonous dripping of water with which old torturers used to drive their victims mad. Still sins bring shame to the conscience and tragic consequence to the life, and tiresome work, losing the buoyancy of its first inspiration, drags itself out into purposeless effort and bores us with ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... sombre hues of the earth. The forest trees appear with their foliage freshly expanded—some; as the tulip-tree, the dogwood, and the white magnolia, already in the act of inflorescence. The woods no longer maintain that monotonous silence which they have preserved throughout the winter. The red cardinal chatters among the cane; the blue jay screams in the pawpaw thicket, perhaps disturbed by the gliding of some slippery snake; while the mock-bird, regardless of such danger, from the top of the tall ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... known what fires he was recklessly stirring up he might have held his peace. Winterborne was silent a long time. The darkness had closed in round them, and the monotonous drip of the fog from the branches quickened as ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... days life on the trail was monotonous. Whenever Ted could be spared from the herd he and Stella and Hallie Croffut, and sometimes Ben or Kit, took long rides off the trail with their rifles, after a pronghorn or black-tail deer, and frequently ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... The rhythms are joyously, barbarically, at times almost frenetically, free. They are finely various and depart almost entirely from the one-two, one-two, the one-two-three, one-two-three that makes monotonous so much of Chopin. At moments, the tones of the piano march with some of the now festive, now majestic, now solemn, movement of the orchestral processionals of a Moussorgsky and a Borodin. And one has the sense of having encountered only in sumptuous Eastern ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... sun's heat poured down in floods. A monotonous locust was chirr-chirr-chirring from a nearby cottonwood ... and in the long hedge of Osage oranges moaned ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... every minute of the day, and the harder Fran tried to fill her place, the more he resented it. He divined that Fran hated the routine, the monotonous forms of charity, the duplicated copies of kind acts, the rows of figures representing so many unfortunates. Instead of acknowledging to himself that his daughter did the work from a yearning for his love, from a resolution to save him from the Grace-infatuation ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... wrapped in a commissary blanket and covered by a cast-off tall hat, crouched against the wall of the station looking stolidly at nothing. The station itself, a long, rambling building containing its entire accommodation for man and beast under one monotonous, shed-like roof, offered nothing to attract the eye. Still less the prospect, on the one side two miles of arid waste to the stunted, far-spaced pines in the distance, known as the "Barrens;" on the other an apparently limitless level with darker patches of sage brush, ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... country so dangerous as this, to which I came through pure obedience and against my own inclination. Here duplicity passes for wit, and frankness is looked upon as folly. I am neither cunning nor mysterious. I am often told I lead too monotonous a life, and am asked why I do not take a part in certain affairs. This is frankly the reason: I am old; I stand more in need of repose than of agitation, and I will begin nothing that I cannot, easily finish. I have never ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... and windows, and shouting "Merry Christmas!" to one another across the street as they hurried to get home. The drays ran over the pavement with muffled sounds; winter had set in with a heavy snow-storm. In the big hall the monotonous click of checkers on the board kept step with the clock. The smothered exclamations of the boys at some unexpected, bold stroke, and the scratching of a little fellow's pencil on a slate, trying to figure out how long it was yet till ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... change be too often repeated, it ceases to be delightful, for then change itself becomes monotonous, and we are driven to seek delight in extreme and fantastic degrees of it. This is the diseased love of change of which we ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... and went breaking bread, pouring wine, and so on, with quiet mechanical precision. His head and body above the tablecloth had a rigid immobility. This firebrand, this great agitator, exhibited the least possible amount of warmth and animation. His voice was rasping, cold, and monotonous in a low key. He could not be called a talkative personality; but with his detached calm manner he appeared as ready to keep the conversation going as to drop it at ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... were filled to suffocation, the neighboring streets were jammed with people clamoring for admittance and hungry for news from within. Then began the long, tedious task of selecting a jury. Public opinion had run so high that this was no easy undertaking. As day after day went by in the monotonous examination and challenge of talesmen, as panel after panel was exhausted with no result, not only did the ridiculous shortcomings of our jury system become apparent, but also the fact that the Mafia had, as usual, ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... last gazing on the sea, which seemed to mock his hopes and fears with its monotonous roll and roar, and fixed his eyes on the dim outline of the Heogue, which his sister had named "Boden's purple crown;" and he wondered if Signy could see the dear old hill from her place amid the waves. He would not think that the Osprey ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... us. Our heartbeats, the taste of water, the rising and setting of the sun, or, in the case of a child, milk, or the presence of its mother, or of its brothers, do not seem to become, in sound health, distressingly monotonous. But 'artificial' things, however pleasant at first—a tune on the piano, the pattern of a garment, the greeting of an acquaintance—are likely to become unbearable if often exactly repeated. A newspaper is an artificial thing in this sense, and one of the arts of the newspaper-writer ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... with what an endless number of monotonous jokes the goldfinches that fairly overran the Heuscheuer Mountains used to furnish us? When we approached a bare bush or tree, it would suddenly sway to and fro and scatter gold leaves. We interpreted that as meaning mountains of gold. In the evening we dined on goldfinches, ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... midnight; and you still sat by my side. All others had departed from the chamber of Death. They had deposited me in the coffin. The lamps burned flickeringly; for this I knew by the tremulousness of the monotonous strains. But suddenly these strains diminished in distinctness and in volume. Finally they ceased. The perfume in my nostrils died away. Forms affected my vision no longer. The oppression of the Darkness uplifted itself from my bosom. A dull shot like that of electricity pervaded ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... one do if one happens to be a sea serpent?" Anko inquired. "There is nothing in the sea that can hurt me, and I cannot commit suicide because we have no carbolic acid or firearms or gas to turn on. So it isn't a matter of choice, and I'd about as soon be alive as dead. It does not seem quite so monotonous, you know. But I guess I've stayed about long enough, so I'll go home to dinner. Come and see me when ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... canal business. He plodded along wearily upon the bank, driving his still wearier horse before him, and carrying ore down to Pittsburg with such grace as he best might; but it didn't somehow quite come up to his fancy picture of the seaman's life. It was dull and monotonous, and he didn't care for it much. In genuine American language, "he didn't find it up to sample." The sea might be very well in its way; but a canal was a very different matter indeed. So after a fair trial, James finally gave the business up, and returned to his mother on the little homestead, ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... and as if her ears had been opened to the voices of the world, she heard, beyond the rampart of sea-wall, the swell of yesterday's gale breaking on the beach with monotonous and solemn vibrations, as if all the earth had been a ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad
... be indecorous, nothing grotesque: The personages were to speak, not as men, but as heroes; to whom, as statuaries have assigned a superiority of stature, so these poets have given an uniform grandeur of feeling and of expression. It may be thought, that this monotonous splendour of diction would have palled upon an English audience, less pleased generally with refinement, however elegant, than with bursts of passion, and flights of novelty. But Dryden felt his force in the line which he chose to ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... bright and joyous holiday."[37] It was a delight to him to work under Phayre, whose noble and lovable character he had already learned to appreciate two years before in Pegu. Then, too, Yule has spoken of the intense relief it was to escape from the monotonous scenery and depressing conditions of official life in Bengal (Resort to Simla was the exception, not the rule, in these days!) to the cheerfulness and unconstraint of Burma, with its fine landscapes and merry-hearted ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... went wisely and quickly, although life at Drumloch was far from being monotonous. Mary had the quick, nervous temperament which is eager for change and movement. She went frequently into Glasgow to give and to attend entertainments, for Drumloch was yet in the hands of painters and upholsterers. But she always went alone. She had fully made up her mind that it would not be well ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... and mumbled. Fontenoy, undaunted, began to harangue on certain minutiae of factory law with a monotonous zest of voice and gesture which seemed to Tressady nothing ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... though a little nervous. She had often longed to go to Baronmead, and she was already thoroughly at her ease with the master thereof, who sat and conversed beside her in that rather monotonous, tired drawl of his. It was only the thought of Anne that made her nervous. Warmly as she admired her, she was ever so slightly afraid of the stately lady of the Manor, who made friends with so few and for all her queenly ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... conscientious objector from Tennessee, a big, scared Pole, and the disdainful Celt whom he had sat beside on the train—the two former spent the evenings in writing eternal letters home, while the Irishman sat in the tent door whistling over and over to himself half a dozen shrill and monotonous bird-calls. It was rather to avoid an hour of their company than with any hope of diversion that, when the quarantine was lifted at the end of the week, he went into town. He caught one of the swarm of jitneys that overran the camp each evening, and in half an hour was set down in front ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... standing beside the dripping rail outside the pilot-house. Far below them, in the spacious depths of the steamer, a bugle sounded long-drawn notes and the monotonous calls of stewards warned ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... times was essentially dun-colored and monotonous in tint, learned the means of irradiating its smoky atmosphere through its political vicissitudes, which brought it under the successive dominion of Burgundy, Spain, and France, and threw it into fraternal relations with Germany ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... treachery." But this was only a facon de parler with him: the idea of secret perfidy, that was constantly moving under ground, gave an interest to the progress of the war, which else tended to the monotonous. It was a dramatic artifice for sustaining the interest, where the incidents might happen to be too slightly diversified. But that he did not believe his own charges was clear, because he never repeated them in his "General History of the Campaigns," which was a resume, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... chin and upper lip were shaven, and his snow-white, close-cropped whiskers ran in two straight lines from his jaw up to a level with his piercing, hawk-like eyes. He would probably have been about seventy-five years of age, but he did not carry it well. In a low, monotonous voice he bade me welcome, and pointed to a ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... often alone, and for the most part on small river boats where there is no deck space for exercise. Mail arrives irregularly and there were no newspapers. After one or two days the unceasing panorama of tropical forests, native villages, and naked savages becomes monotonous. Even the hippopotami which you see in large numbers, the omnipresent crocodile, and the occasional wild elephant, cease to amuse. You are forced to fall back on that unfailing friend ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... short-lived and factitious passion, the descent of the unique male to the ordinary level of males, the births of her three girls and their rearing and training: all these things seemed as trifles to her, mere excrescences and depressions in the vast tableland of her monotonous and placid career. She had had no career. Her strength of will, of courage, of love, had never been taxed; only her patience. 'And my life is over!' she told herself, insisting that her life was over without being able ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... many are unable to move their elbows. Take away the friar, gentlemen, and you will see how the Philippine edifice will totter; lacking robust shoulders and hairy limbs to sustain it, Philippine life will again become monotonous, without the merry note of the playful and gracious friar, without the booklets and sermons that split our sides with laughter, without the amusing contrast between grand pretensions and small brains, without the actual, daily representations of the tales of Boccaccio ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... was quiet and monotonous until after we left Salt Lake City at dawn this morning. Nothing happened until we were about a hundred miles east of Reno. We had taken elevation to cross the Stillwater Mountains and were skimming low over them, my plane trailing the T. A. C. plane by about half a mile. I was not ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... more of monotonous patience, and Miss Hyde was thirty-six. Her hair had thinned, and was full of silver threads; a wrinkle invaded either cheek, and she was angular and bony; but something painfully sweet lingered in her face, and a certain childlike innocence of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... be quite right. But if he drew the conclusion that the clock was not contrived for a purpose, he would be quite wrong. On the other hand, imagine another death-watch of a different turn of mind. He, listening to the monotonous "tick! tick!" so exactly like his own, might arrive at the conclusion that the clock was itself a monstrous sort of death-watch, and that its final cause and purpose was to tick. How easy to point to the clear relation of the whole mechanism to the pendulum, to the fact that ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... been proved by his colleagues. In addition, any speaker except the last one on each side, may, if he thinks best, give an outline of the argument to follow. In making these summaries, a debater must always avoid stating them in so bald and crude a form as to make them monotonous and offensive. He ought rather to use all the ingenuity at his command in an attempt to ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... that this renders the language too monotonous, it may be observed, on the other hand, that it prevents ambiguities and obscurities in rapid speaking, as the accent marks the initial syllable of polysyllables. Declaimers, of either sex, have often found their ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart
... it. Moreover the jealousy expressed by Don Garcia is neither sufficiently terrible to frighten, nor ridiculous enough to amuse the audience; he always speaks and acts as a prince, and hence, he sometimes becomes royally monotonous. ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... question stood within a few yards of that on which Karl, Caspar, and Ossaroo were perched. It was just before their eyes, whenever they looked in a horizontal direction; and occasionally, when tired with watching the monotonous movements of the elephant, one or other of them did look horizontally. The scanty foliage upon the sycamore enabled them to see its trunk and most of its larger limbs, without any obstruction of ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... brightened upon us some change appeared in the loved royal sufferer, and though it was not actually for the better in itself, yet any change was pronounced to be salutary, as, for some days pas'' there had been a monotonous continuation of the same bad symptoms, that had doubly depressed us all. My spirits rose immediately ; indeed, I thank God, I never desponded, though many times I stood nearly alone in ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... thought sufficed to occupy her mind, and under its influence she would live her whole life over again, from the birth of her son, whom she had pictured rising amid glory to the highest rank, till she came down to mean and narrow garrison life, the dull, monotonous existence of nowadays, that stranding in the post of a quartermaster, from which Burle would never rise and in which he seemed to sink more and more heavily. And yet his first efforts had filled ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola |
