"Monotony" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Well, of course I have a few. A man can't be at sea thirty years without seeing something; but, generally speaking, a sailor's life is one of terrible monotony. He is a seaman, and he sees the sea day after day—day after day; rough seas and smooth seas, stormy seas and sunny seas; and enough to do to keep his ship afloat and away from rocks and lee shores. Here, what are you opening your eyes and mouth for in that way, Mark? Do you expect I'm ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... waters of the Rajah and Roarer Falls. And then these sounds would gradually lose their predominance, and the more uniform sounds in which all the four falls joined would once more fill the air and charm the ear. And thus the attention could never be lulled to sleep, for here monotony was not, and the mind was always kept in an attitude of expectancy for the variations in the music which were sure to come, and, so far as they reached the ear, were never the same combinations of sounds that ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... day on a bright undercurrent made bearable the trying monotony of her life. Rachael did not at once recognize the rapid change that began to take place in her own feelings, but she did realize that Warren Gregory's attitude had altered everything in her world. He was flirting, of course, he was ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... the lower Mississippi. Though Cairo was then but a desolate swamp, Memphis a wood-landing, and Vicksburg a timbered ridge with a few stores at its base, even these were in striking contrast to the sombre monotony of the great woods. The rivers were enlivened by countless swift-speeding steamboats, dispensing smoke by day and flame by night; while New Orleans, though scarcely one fourth the city she now is, was the focus of a ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... Zobeide, reassured by the monotony of his voice, decided at last to come out of her shell. First she showed the point of her little horny nose, then her black eyes, her flat-pointed tail, and finally her strong little claw-tipped feet. Seeing the melon, she made a gesture ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... with that of any contemporary beauty, we arrive at the conclusion, strange as this may be, that the greater part of his love-poetry is a scholastic exercise upon emotions transmuted into metaphysical and mystical conceptions. Only two pieces in the long series break this monotony by a touch of realism. They are divided by a period of more than thirty years. The first seems to date from an early epoch of ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... direction, their eyes met. They were both above the average height, so they looked at one another over the heads of many people, and in both their faces was something of the same expression—the faint interest born of a relieved monotony. The girl deliberately turned towards him. He was an unknown guest and alone. There were times when her duties ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... is becoming tired of this small pleasant stream running along a mere declivity of the table-land of Ben Muich Dhui. But he will not be long distressed by its peaceful monotony. Presently, as he comes in sight of the valley below, and Loch Avon lying in a small pool at the base of the dizzy height, the stream leaps at once from the edge of the hill, and disappears for a time, reappearing again far down in a narrow thread, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... had their sea legs on. All had become acquainted, and settled down to a regular routine. But the time dragged, and as there were no morning or evening papers, something seemed necessary to break the monotony. ...
— Facing the World • Horatio Alger
... soldiers of the Lower Empire, which almost reproduces the high-flown rhetoric in which Corneille's and Racine's characters address each other. Such phrases as the "majesty of the throne," "the dignity of the purple," the "wisdom of the senate," recur with a rather jarring monotony, especially when the rest of the narrative is designed to show that there was no majesty nor dignity nor wisdom involved in the matter. We feel that the writer was thinking more of his sonorous sentence than of the real fact. On the other hand, nothing but a want of candour or taste can lead any ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... wheels affected his thought, kept it on the one subject, shaped it to a monotony of verbal suggestion. Not a novel suggestion, by any means; something that his fancy had often played with; very much, perhaps, as that ingenious criminal spoken of by Serena amused himself with the picture of a wrecked train long before he resolved ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... a tired child, And weep away this life of care, Which I have borne, and still must bear, Till death like sleep might seize on me, And I might feel in the warm air, My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony! ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... river than the stretch which immediately precedes that crowded fairway. It is bounded on each side by a low sea wall, behind which a dreary expanse of marsh and salting spreads away into the far distance. Here and there the level monotony is broken by a solitary hut or a disused fishing hulk, but except for the passing traffic and the cloud of gulls perpetually wheeling and screaming overhead there is little sign of life ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... does not lie in reaching the destination, but in the companions met with on the journey, the changing scenery through which the traveler passes, and even the inconveniences that break up the monotony of the ordinary routine life. It is so with our life- work. The cradle and the grave mark the beginning and the end of the journey, but the joy of living lies in the varied incident and effort to be ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... day; the shadows of reed and island seemed fixed for ever as in a magic mirror—a mirror that somebody had breathed upon, and, listening to the little gurgle of the water about the limestone shingle, one seemed to hear eternity murmuring its sad monotony. ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... of loss; for, henceforth, the Vier Marchi would lack a familiar interest; but mostly the people of Mattingley's world were wakeful through curiosity. Morbid expectation of the hanging had for them a gruesome diversion. The thing itself would break the daily monotony of life and provide hushed gossip for vraic gatherings and veilles for a long time to come. Thus Elie Mattingley would not die ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... was left alone at the cottage; and it happened by no means seldom that she was altogether alone, for the negro whom they called the gardener would go to her father's place at Hamilton, and the two black girls would crawl away up to the road, tired with the monotony of the sea at the cottage. Caleb had more than once told her that she was too much alone, but she had laughed at him, saying that solitude in Bermuda was not dangerous. Nor, indeed, was it; for the people are quiet and well-mannered, ...
— Aaron Trow • Anthony Trollope
... the loves of Father Zeus, and mother of no less a lady than the goddess Venus. The child was very near being called Maria, although there are already twenty-three other Marias, Mariettas, Mariuccias, and so forth at the convent. But the sister-bookkeeper, who apparently detests monotony, bethought her to look out Dionea first in the Calendar, which proved useless; and then in a big vellum-bound book, printed at Venice in 1625, called "Flos Sanctorum, or Lives of the Saints, by Father Ribadeneira, S.J., with the addition of such Saints as have no assigned place in the Almanack, ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... outsiders—which is called for want of a better term "sympathy between officers and men." It is a bond of mutual generosity and loyalty, strong as steel, more formidable to an enemy than armaments; strengthened by monotony and a common vigil, it thrives on hardships shared, and endures triumphant, as countless tales shall tell, down to the gates ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... western wall of the 'Arabah valley, whose name they assume (Jibl el-'Arabah). The scene abruptly shifts. A mottle of clouds sheds moving shadows over the hill-crests, and relieves them from the appalling monotony of yesterday. Brilliant rainbow hues, red, green, mauve, purple, yellow and white clays, gleam in the lowlands, and form dwarf bluffs; while inland, peering above the granites, the syenites, and the porphyries ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... something, but the battles had not begun, and his soldiers hardly knew what it promised. One or two observers claimed that he was ambitious, but these were chiefly laughed at. To the brigade at large he seemed prosaic, tedious, and strict enough, performing all duties with the exactitude, monotony, and expression of a clock, keeping all plans with the secrecy of the sepulchre, rarely sleeping, rising at dawn, and requiring his staff to do likewise, praying at all seasons, and demanding an implicity ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... ordered to report to Gen. W.T. Sherman, then in command of the Department of the Cumberland, and they at once received orders to proceed to Lebanon Junction, about thirty miles south of Louisville. The regiment remained at this camp about six weeks before anything occurred to relieve the monotony of camp life, although there were numerous rumors of night attacks by large bodies of Confederates. On the 15th of November, 1861, Gen. Buell assumed command of all the volunteers in the vicinity of ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... would compel her to eschew. As for the rising light in the legal profession, he began to find the weight she leant upon him oppressive, and his occupation, delightful at first, palling and growing monotonous. The monotony he somewhat relieved by frequently kissing her, now on one velvet cheek, now on the other, and again her lips; slowly, one two, three, in waltz measure; and rapidly, one, two three, four, in two-step measure, when all at once in the midst of a sustained half note there came ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... long a chap remains On sentry-go, to chase monotony He exercises of his brains, That is, assuming that he's got any. Though never nurtured in the lap Of luxury, yet I admonish you, I am an intellectual chap, And think of things that would astonish you. I often think it's comical—Fal, lal, la! ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... in the country; the eldest was womanly and refined, the second, with her Roman type of beauty and bronze-coloured head, lovely in a manner peculiarly her own; the youngest, as yet, was merely an amiable young girl. The girls would have liked to get away from the monotony of provincial life, and their release came when their father was appointed to a professorship at Copenhagen University. There was an ease of manner and a tone of mental distinction pervading the whole family. ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... different State societies were listened to the next morning. After the report from Massachusetts had been given by Mr. Blackwell, Miss LELIA PATRIDGE, of Pennsylvania, spoke as follows: To one advocating this matter of equal suffrage, one of the noticeable things is the monotony of the objections brought against it, although each one is brought forward as if just evolved from the inner consciousness of the objector and never thought of before. One of these most commonly heard is that women do ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... was the rueful answer. "We commence our toil at daybreak, and too often continue until midnight. There are times when the monotony jars upon a sensitive mind, as the camp cooking does upon a sensitive palate. But our chief never expects more from us than he will do himself, and is ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... the greatest joy among the Pioneers, when they received instructions to prepare for an advance to Khusalghar. Officers and men alike were in the highest spirits, and not the least pleased was Lisle, who had begun to tire of the monotony of camp life. The mention of the place at which they were to assemble put an end to the discussion, that had long taken place, as to route to be followed. Six days' easy march along a good road would take them to Shinawari ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... familiar with all that is umbrageous should receive their first impressions of our Scottish trees at Duneira and Dunkeld. Nor will those impressions be weakened as they proceed towards Blair Atholl. In that famous Pass, they will feel the power possessed by the sweet wild monotony of the universal birch woods—broken but by grey crags in every shape—grotesque, fantastical, majestic, magnificent, and sublime—on the many-ridged mountains, that are loth to lose the green light of their beloved forests, retain it as long as they can, and on the masses of ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... so that it was quite three weeks after the departure of the brothers Elgood before she was strong enough to face the journey home. In the meantime Edith remained in charge as nurse, while Mr Vane and Ron varied the monotony of life in the Glen by making short excursions of two or three days' duration to places ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... regularity of life. As if to make up for the dispersed and agitated years, with their "stand-up" lunches and dinners rattled down to the joltings of the dining-car, he cultivated the last refinements of punctuality and monotony, discouraging his wife's fancy for the unexpected; and declaring that to a delicate taste there were infinite gradations of pleasure in ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... all my delight and occupation; now he is even dearer to me than ever; but he no longer engrosses all my thoughts. I turn over the leaves of this journal; once it noted down the little occurrences of the day; it marks nothing now but the monotony of sadness. He is not here—he cannot come. What event then could ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to breakfast and to water the horses. Half-past eight found us in the saddle again, and we commenced to traverse a dreary plain of yellowish white pumice-stone, interspersed with huge blocks of obsidian, thrown from the mouth of the volcano. At first the monotony of the scene was relieved by large bushes of yellow broom in full flower, and still larger bushes of the beautiful Retama blanca, quite covered with lovely white bloom, scenting the air with its delicious fragrance, and resembling huge tufts of feathers, eight or nine feet high. As we proceeded, ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... in the monotony of sunshine and shade, of glade and dell, of crystal streams and tiny valleys, each the counterpart of the other, in dense woods and grassy savannahs; in the yesterday so like to-day, and the to-day so like to-morrow, there was no hint of the future. ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... seen going home in groups of three and four. And then the road again emptied, and the solitude became more and more complete, without a wayfarer or an animal appearing for miles and miles, whilst yonder, at the far end of the lifeless sea, so grandiose and mournful in its monotony, the sun continued to descend from the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... my power to give a narrative of the daily occurrences on the plantation. The history of one day was that of all. The gloomy monotony of our slavery, was only broken by the overseer's periodical fits of drunkenness, at which times neither life nor limb on the estate were secure from his caprice ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... a peaceful and most united family life goes on without monotony. But I cannot speak of the things which touch me most, except clumsily. So it is better to keep from doing so. The Princess writes to me from Rome that she shall be delighted to obtain possession of the two water-colors of Gleichen for the splendid portfolios of drawings ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... went about her household business, or sat in the chamber upstairs with Mistress Alice; and it was of these things that she talked with the few priests that came and went from time to time in their circuits about Derbyshire. It was a life of quietness and monotony inconceivable by those who live in towns. Its sole incident lay in that life ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... him, life's whole of happiness. And was Louise altogether content with the man of her choice? No, or she had not gathered Wimbledon about her to make merry the midnight hour. People do not give fetes to display their happiness. They give them too often to relieve a tedious monotony, to silence a gnawing discontent, and forget for the moment in hilarious excitement some uneasy foreboding of evil to come, or disquieting conviction that all, even now, is ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... so. Often the ground was uneven; sometimes we had hills to ascend, and precipitous elopes to slide down, not knowing what might be at the bottom; and then a wide plain to traverse, without a tree or a shrub to break its monotony or to assist us in directing our course. Soon after we set out in the morning our eyebrows became covered with frost, our caps froze to our brows, surrounded by a rim of icicles. The fronts of our coats were fringed with similar ornaments; even our eyelashes were ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... rubbish that the year has produced. I regret that I have not space to criticise the proceedings into which, however, Dr. Montgomery of Texas has injected some bright thoughts, and the displays of learning relieve the general monotony, while considerable intellectual energy is displayed in the discussions; but to see a conclave of learned professors devoting their time to the examination and discussion of Aristotle's writings is about as edifying as to see a geographical society devoting its time to discussing the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... their richness, which in a picture looks exaggerated, yet is after all within the truth. He would not tell, how that same delicate and brilliant atmosphere freshened up the pale olive, till the olive forgot its monotony, and its cheek glowed like the arbutus or beech of the Umbrian hills. He would say nothing of the thyme and thousand fragrant herbs which carpeted Hymettus; he would hear nothing of the hum of its bees; nor take much account of the rare ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... day and night, but stopped at many kampongs to take on more cargo, and an additional tonkang was attached, which relieved some of the congestion on ours. One afternoon the monotony was relieved by a fight in the kitchen of the little steamer, when a sudden thumping sound of nude feet against the floor was heard and boiled rice flew about. But it was very soon over, evidently only an outburst of dissatisfaction with the cook; somebody called for the Malay captain and ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... about the appearance of Methodist preachers, Phyllis; they all look alike. If you see a dozen of them together, the monotony is tiresome. The best of them are only larger specimens of the same type—are related to the others as a crown piece is related to a shilling. You know a Methodist minister as ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... have now had a long "spell'' of fine weather, without any incident to break the monotony of our lives, I may have no better place for a description of the duties, regulations, and customs of an American merchantman, of which ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... allowed to show. Then, according to the general plan of all these books, in which fierce wars and faithful loves alternate, there is more fighting, and though Artamene is victorious (as how should he not be, save now and then to prevent monotony?) he disappears and is thought dead. Of course Mandane cries, and confesses to the confidante, being entirely "finished" by a very exquisite letter which Artamene has written before going into the doubtful battle. However, he is (yet once more, of course) not dead at all. What (as that most ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... conspirators did not despair. The term before Christmas was in some ways rather a dull one, and they were glad of any excitement to break the monotony. As difficulties increased their ardor also deepened, and they were resolved not to leave a stone unturned to effect their object. Where there is a will there is a way. This is true as regards evil ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... weariness, defatigation|; lassitude &c. (fatigue) 688; drowsiness &c. 683. disgust, nausea, loathing, sickness; satiety &c. 869; taedium vitae &c. (dejection) 837; boredom, ennui. wearisomeness, tediousness &c. adj.; dull work, tedium, monotony, twice-told tale. bore, buttonholer, proser[obs3], wet blanket; pill*, stiff*; heavy hours, "the enemy" [time]. V. weary; tire &c. (fatigue) 688; bore; bore to death, weary to death, tire to death, bore out ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... just to trot back again in a few minutes. But Bondsman's unwavering loyalty to his master's every mood and every movement had become such a matter of course that the fine example was lost in the monotony of repetition. ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... of the mind induced by too much of one thing. Just as the body fed too long upon meat becomes a prey to that horrid disease called scurvy, so the mind fed too long upon monotony succumbs to the insidious mental ailment which the West calls "cabin fever." True, it parades under different names, according to circumstances and caste. You may be afflicted in a palace and call it ennui, and it may drive you to commit peccadillos and indiscretions ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... shop and that the curtains at the upper window had been pushed back again while the dim face of Mrs. Green looked down into the street. Was she watching for some one? Or was she merely relieving the monotony of life indoors by gazing down into Franklin Street at an hour when it was ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... repeat these lovely aerial effects in such widely different zones and seasons. I thought to find in the winter landscapes of the far North a sublimity of death and desolation—a wild, dark, dreary, monotony of expression—but I had, in reality, the constant enjoyment of the rarest, the tenderest, ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... been separated from the main column for about three hours, two incidents happened which served to relieve the monotony of the march, and caused them, for the time being, to forget how uncomfortably hot and dusty and thirsty they were. As they were riding silently along behind George Ackerman, whose fast-walking nag had carried him some distance in advance of the squad, they saw him draw rein all of ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... the moor was a personality with moods flecking the solid substance of its character, and even Miriam, who avowed her hatred of its monotony, had to admit an occasional difference. There were days when she thought it was full of secrets and capable of harbouring her own, and there were other days when she forgot its little hills and dales and hiding-places and saw it as a large plain, ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... paint the Madonna and Child a score of times, and Veronese his Marriages of Cana, and all of them Magdalenes and St. Sebastians by the dozen, without thinking of finding fresh subjects to excite fresh interest. Nor does this restricted range of subjects imply, under the hand of a master, monotony. There is more unlikeness in Raphael's Madonnas than in the figures of any modern artist, whatever their variety of name and action. Even a century later than Raphael, among the Flemings and Hollanders, the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... rash envy would allow No strain that shamed his country's creaking lyre, That whetstone of the teeth, monotony in wire." ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... he broke through the solitary monotony of his life was during the continuance of the racing season, and immediately subsequent to it; at which time he was to be seen among the busiest upon the course, betting deeply and unhesitatingly, and invariably with success. Sir Robert was, however, ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Mongolia, elevated about five thousand feet above the sea. The country opens into a series of plains and gentle swells, not unlike the rolling prairies of Kansas and Nebraska, with here and there a stretch of hills. Very often not a single tree is visible, and the only stationary objects that break the monotony of the scene are occasional yourts, or tents of the natives. All the way along the road there are numerous trains of ox-carts, and sometimes they form a continuous line of a mile or more. Those going southward are principally laden with logs of wood from the valley of the Tolla, about two ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... procured better water than they were able to get at first, and small pines were brought and set among the tents, by which some degree of protection was afforded against the burning sun. On the morning of the 8th of July, the monotony was broken by the arrival of President Lincoln. The booming of artillery announced his coming, and the heartfelt cheers of the soldiers assured him of ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... Conductor, all the instruments of the orchestra broke into the familiar chorus. The whole Press of France and England rang again with calumny and fairy-tale. Out they came again in regular sequence and with unvarying monotony: plots and secret letters, weird stories of German intrigue, constant repetition of names compromised or compromising; all ready, cut and dried, for burking any attempt at accommodation that did not include the return and domination of ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... ignorant of the intricacies of science (and lacked interest in same prior to my reading your first issue) same is described so plainly that I have no trouble in fully understanding exactly what the author conveys. I must thank you for this other interest in the monotony of life. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... after mile, were like teeth of gigantic rakes, black and bare. A wilderness of mountain-tops, desolate as eternity, arid, parched, baked by the awful heat, the silence never broken by the cry of a bird, a hut rarely breaking the barren monotony, only an infrequent spring to save from death. It was almost impossible to get food or fresh horses. Many a night De la Vega and his stoical guide slept beneath a cactus, or in the mocking bed of a creek. The mustangs ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... a difficult thing to describe without monotony, for it varies so little. It is like describing the course of the Thames from Oxford to Reading, or of the Severn from Deerhurst to Lydney, or of the Hudson from New York to Tarrytown. Whatever country the rivers pass they remain water, bordered by shore. So our front-line ...
— The Old Front Line • John Masefield
... Russia. She turned her attention to decorative painting, and her success in this may be seen in the facades of the Schmitz villa, the Schemboche establishment, and her own home. When we consider the usual monotony of this art, the charming effects which Mme. Fries has produced make ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... failings was an inability to estimate the true value of things. He possessed something of the spirit of adventure and a desire to escape from the drab monotony of his early life, but these found expression in betting on the exploits of others on the football field and the turf, a haunting of the music-halls, and the cultivation of acquaintances on the lowest rung of the dramatic profession. All this offered him some glimpses of ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... loved the young and cheerful prisoner; by his fresh and hopeful spirit, his gay laugh and merry jest, he had broken up the everlasting monotony of their garrison-life; by his powerful intellect and rich fancy he had, in some degree, dissipated their weariness and stupidity. They felt pity for his youth, his beauty, his geniality, his energetic self-confidence; his bold courage imposed upon them, and they were watching curiously and anxiously ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... part watered by the river Gila and its tributaries. This river, which takes its rise in the distant mountains of the Mimbres, passes under various names through an immense extent of sandy barren country, the arid monotony of which is interrupted only by the ravines hollowed by the waters, which in their erratic course, ravage ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... they laid in their weekly supply of hair ribbons and soda water and kodak films. Even had one acquired so many demerits that her weekly stipend was entirely eaten up by fines, still she marched to the village and watched the lucky ones disburse. It made a break in the monotony of six ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... eyes had for so many weary days gazed upon naught but sea and sky. It is true that Stukely had never tired of gazing upon that same sea and sky; with the spirit of the artist that dwelt within him he had been able to see ever-changing beauty where others had beheld only monotony; but to the crew at large that wedge of land, growing in bulk and importance as the ship rushed toward it, was more beautiful than the most glorious sunset that had ever presented itself ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... Hall the Oregon Trail and the trail for California divided. And at this point there began the terrible part of the journey—the arid, alkaline, thirsty desert, short of game, horrible in its monotony, deadly with its thirst. It is no wonder that, weakened by their sufferings in this inferno, so many of the immigrants looked upon the towering walls of the Sierras with a ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... the wanderers scrambled over the side it was very evident that they had a grievance, and not until they had been warmed by hot cocoa could they talk with ease of their experiences. They [Page 49] had been obliged to keep constantly on the move, and when they thought of smoking to relieve the monotony they found that they had pipes and tobacco, but no matches. While, however, they were dismally bemoaning this unfortunate state of affairs Wilson, who did not smoke, came to the rescue and succeeded in producing fire with a small pocket magnifying glass—a performance which testified not only to ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... some one in this talk at last to deny that there was this tiresome monotony in American life. And this put a new face on the discussion. Why should there be, with every race under the heavens represented here, and each one struggling to assert itself, and no homogeneity as yet ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... and everything went on in regular routine on board, without any incident of note occurring to break the monotony of the voyage, the English sailors keeping to themselves, and the Malays apart, without either mixing or speaking with the others save when the duties of the ship called ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... In that monotony of landscape, one mile exactly like the other, no landmarks to guide him, no trail to follow, however faintly worn, it was strange to see the cowpuncher strike out through the vast distances of the mountain-desert with as much confidence as if he were travelling on ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... features in the kind of life which was introduced by the queen and the consort into the habits of the court. Among these none were more marked than the breaking up of that monotony which the restrictions that hitherto prevailed as to the residence of the royal family in one or two state palaces entailed. We can well understand how the Empress Eugenie should have found the Tuileries, in ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... felt the monotony to be as maddening as ever. There were times when she rebelled passionately against the solitude of the place. There were moments to her when it seemed that her mind couldn't stand the strain ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... could never have been more eagerly scanned than was that of this island, for every man of the crew was longing for a run ashore in search of some little adventure to break the monotony of the life on board; and again and again, as a seal was seen to slip off the rocks after staring at them for a while with its peculiar, half human countenance, or a flock of sea-birds was passed, the men looked disappointed that no efforts were made to harpoon the one or shoot the other. But ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... for the leading fences of a great salmon wheel whose plunging buckets dived into the black currents and lifted with their gamble of fifty-pound salmon. Now and then a heavier fish would punctuate the monotony ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... over. Now no command, no power was left to them. The years went by, dragging their slow length of days, and bringing no change or brightness to the lives of these two men who lived in secret and alone. It was a melancholy life, the monotony only broken by visits from the minister, or a few other friends, who brought them all the gossip and news of the town. These were but small matters. But to the two men shut off from all other human beings ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... you land, and even after you have got your sea-legs on, there is a certain monotony in yachting, unless the weather is very bad, and unless there are women aboard. A party of lively women make even the sea fresh and entertaining. Otherwise, the game of poker is much what it is on land, and the constant consulting of charts and reckoning of speed evince the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... ever paint the sea only, without the addition of a ship, boat, wreck, or some such adjunct? Is the sea itself a more attractive, a more moral, a more poetical object, with or without a vessel, breaking its vast but fatiguing monotony? Is a storm more poetical without a ship? or, in the poem of the Shipwreck, is it the storm or the ship which most interests? both much undoubtedly; but without the vessel, what should we care for the tempest? It would sink into mere descriptive poetry, which in itself was never esteemed a high ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the distance from the country of the Mascoutins to the portage to be three leagues, and from the portage to the mouth of the Miscousing forty leagues. This distance they covered in a week. Drawing their canoes to the shore at night, they pitched camp, varying the monotony of their stores with fish and game. Perhaps they had learned that wild grapes then budding were not really fit to eat until touched by frost. Pierre Porteret said in Marquette's hearing, "the Indians could make good wine of grapes and plums ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... of his life centers in his play and games. Wise educators are using the play instinct as a medium for his education. Manual training is increasing, the formal work of the class-room is taking on the nature of competition and music, even music with its old-time monotony and routine of running scales in the practice period under parental persuasion, has ceased to be a thing of dread, and has become a delightful thing of play—a building of houses, a ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... over, and the imperial city disgorging its thousands along all the roads. Far over to the left lay the little hill of Kranoye Selo, the parade-ground of the Imperial Guards' summer camp, and the Imperial Dairy. In the middle distance nothing broke the flat monotony but a few walled monasteries and convents, some isolated factories, and several large buildings with unkempt grounds ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... said it, and add to it another wrong thing, and so on. With the decease of her husband the family tenacity, the family matter-of-factness, had gone sterile within her. A great talker, when allowed, she would converse without the faintest animation for hours together, relating, with epic monotony, the innumerable occasions on which Fortune had misused her; nor did she ever perceive that her hearers sympathized with Fortune, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of the stranger's appearance, nothing had happened to break the monotony of her long return journey towards Cloudy Mountain Camp. Far back in the distance now lay the Mission where the passengers of the stage had been hospitably entertained the night before; still further back the red-tiled roofs and whitewashed walls ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... shift her lights and shades to fall now upon the one and now upon the other, according as Scott's interest in one or other of them appeared to her to wane. Her quick-sighted mother love was prompt to warn her of that waning, prompt to make her understand that, to a boy like Scott, a hard and fast monotony would be ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... little. One of life's compensations is that there is always something ahead, some trifling event of interest or pleasure upon which one may fix one's eye and endeavour to forget the dreary tissue of monotony and commonplace between. Betty found herself acquiring the habit of casting her eye over the day as soon as she awoke in the morning, and if nothing distracting presented itself, she planned for something ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... took all the banter so good-temperedly, and returned it so smartly. There was always a delightful uncertainty also as to what she would do next, and the prospect of an exciting interlude by "Yankee Doodle", as she was nicknamed, was felt decidedly to relieve the monotony of the ordinary Briarcroft atmosphere. Not that Gipsy really ever meant to behave badly; but, accustomed as she was to the free-and-easy conduct of her up-country Colonial schools, she found it almost impossible to realize that what would have been tolerated there ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... unknown, and apparently an ordinary country doctor. The prince, however, soon perceived that he was far superior to his circumstances and position, and placed himself upon a very confidential footing with him. One day he complained of the desolation and monotony of his life and asked, in a tone between jest and earnest, what he should do ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... much of a good thing for us. There must have been a real love of the drama in those times. Fancy a fine gentleman, able to pay his shilling and sit with the wits upon the rush-strewn stage, listening for such a length of time to "Hamlet," with no change of scenes to help the illusion or break the monotony, beyond a curtain or two hung across the stage, a wooden gallery at the back whence the court of Denmark might view "The Mouse-Trap," and, perhaps, a wooden tomb pushed on or "discovered" in the graveyard-scene by pulling aside one of these curtains or "traverses." No pretty women, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... a late dinner in a room behind the show that evening. Amiable Madame Marve had prepared an excellent meal, in which the regulation beer and boiled leg of mutton course was relieved of monotony with vegetables and dumplings. There was soup before and pudding after, and in a burst of gratitude the Missing Link proposed the health of the Egyptian Mystic which was being drunk with enthusiasm in Chinese brandy, when suddenly a great racket arose in the ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... lighter divisions of poetry has been denied, and there are poets, such as Bowles and Charles Tennyson-Turner, who live by their sonnets alone. The practice of the sonnet has been so extended that all sense of monotony has been lost. A sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning differs from one by D. G. Rossetti or by Matthew Arnold to such excess as to make it difficult for us to realize that the form in each case is ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... lads that a whole day passed without a single thing to break the monotony, but Frank's watch insisted that it was only eleven o'clock. It was dark most of the time in the chamber, for the boys were ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson
... the unpleasant episodes of river travel, the worst by far is to be grounded in the daytime. The dreary monotony of bank and stream as you glide by increases ten-fold when lying, hour after hour, with nothing to do but gaze at it. Under this trial the jolliest faces grow long and dismal; quiet men become dreadfully blue and the saturnine look actually ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... was in most places over four miles an hour, and the navigation smooth and easy—so that our travellers rarely made less than fifty miles a-day. There was considerable monotony in the landscape, on account of the absence of mountains, as the Amazon, through most of its course, runs through a level plain. The numerous bends and sudden windings of the stream, however, continually opening out into new and charming vistas, and the ever-changing variety of vegetation, ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... embroidery, speechless and motionless as wax figures, until they shall have attracted the attention of some of the passers-by, who begin to throng the place. At Yokohama indeed, and at the other open ports, the women of the Yoshiwara are loud in their invitations to visitors, frequently relieving the monotony of their own language by some blasphemous term of endearment picked up from British and American seamen; but in the Flower District at Yedo, and wherever Japanese customs are untainted, the utmost decorum prevails. Although the shape which vice takes is ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... and as unsophisticated as a schoolgirl, and it made the little man's heart ache to hear the plaintive monotony of tone and see the ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... recommended sea air, and we had a yacht and cruised every summer. I owed his life to the Radiator. And when he began to grow stronger the habit was formed—the habit of luxury. He could not get on without the things he had always been used to. He pined in bad air; he drooped under monotony and discomfort; he throve on variety, amusement, travel, every kind of novelty and excitement. And all I wanted for him his inexhaustible foster-mother was ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... monkey-trick, grimace. monasterio monastery. moneda coin; monedilla (dim.). mono,-a monkey; mono, -a neat, pretty, charming. monolito monolith, column of stone. monologo monologue, soliloquy. monotonia monotony. monotono monotonous. monstruo monster. monta amount; de poca monta insignificant. montana mountain. montar to mount. monte m. mountain; wood. monton m. heap, mass. morabito hermitage. morador m. inhabitant. morder ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... Days of gloom and monotony came and went. We dug the snow away from our windows and tunneled a hole to the top which gave us ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... should like to have old land-owners married, in a certain sense, to the state through their family or profession, attached by some tie to the commonwealth. Such men would come to Paris annually, converse with the emperor in his own circle, and be contented with this little bit of vanity relieving the monotony of their existence." (Same date.)—Cf. Thibaudeau, "Memoires sur le Consulat," ch. XIII., and M. de Metternich, "Memoires," I., 120 (Words of Napoleon at Dresden, in the spring of 1812): "I shall give the senate and the council ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine |
