"Unmusical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... These last are said to have a tone; the others are not allowed to have any. If we wish to give nonelastic bodies a tone, it will be necessary to make them continue their sound, by repeating our blows quickly upon them. This will effectually give them a tone; and an unmusical instrument has often by this means a fine effect in concerts. The effects of a drum depend upon this principle. Gold, silver, copper, and iron, which are elastic metals, are sonorous; but lead, which possesses scarcely any elasticity, produces little or no tone. Tin, which ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... these things was as conducive to thankfulness of heart as David's recital of the travails and triumphs of ancient Israel. Certain it is that profound gratitude to God and devotion to duty characterized the lives of most of these men and women who sang the praises of their Maker in this halting and unmusical fashion. ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... everything about it was fresh and spontaneous. Its sentiment was relieved by the most delicate vein of humour. It was everywhere tender and human. The dialogue, to which Matravers had devoted his usual fastidious care, was polished and sprightly; there was not anywhere a single dull or unmusical line. It was a classic, the critics declared,—the first literary play by a living author which London had witnessed for many years. The bookings for months ahead were altogether phenomenal. Fergusson saw a certain fortune within his hands, and Matravers, sharing also in the golden ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... its advice, and form in an orderly line. But the quartette is as unmusical as ever. Louder than before there arose among them squabbling and wrangling as to how they ought to be seated. It happened that a Nightingale came flying that way, attracted by their noise. At once they all entreated ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... presently could be heard sounds as of a number of people approaching through the jungle. A few others appeared sleepily at the doors of some of the huts, and crawled out, yawning and blinking, into the fire-light. Here they remained, talking in their harsh, unmusical tongue, and chuckling at some suggestion put forward by the tall man, until the arrival of a party of men, all armed with spears and krises and, in some instances, bows and arrows, or blowpipes, who had ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... come out here to see me off," he said, with a not unmusical laugh that was very infectious, "but Ned there, who carried me downstairs, wanted to tote me round the house in his arms like a baby to say ta-ta to you all. Excuse my not rising, but I feel as uncertain below as a mermaid, and as out of my element," he added, with a mischievous glance at ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... to be unmusical; but without dwelling on the patronage extended to the organ-grinder, without seeking to found any argument on the prevalence of the jew's trump, there is surely one instrument that may be said to be national ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... babies, washed and put away her few dishes, then took the children out on the porch. Violet wanted to be "wocked," so she sat beside her in the big porch chair. Pansy ran up and down uttering queer unmusical noises. The piano in the other part of the house was ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... desire to please; and the attendance, if not good, was, at all events, ample: two of the waiting-maids were extremely handsome—- with dark eyes and fine features, and their handkerchiefs put on very gracefully; but the voices of all the inhabitants of Bedous were cracked and hoarse, and so unmusical, that it was difficult to imagine oneself in ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... and gloomy bazaar the din of hundreds of wooden hammers on as many pieces of copper being made into jugs, trays, pots or pans, is simply deafening, echoed as it is under the vaulted roofs, the sound waves clashing in such an unmusical and confused way as to be absolutely diabolical. A few of these copper vessels are gracefully ornamented and inlaid, but the majority are coarse in their manufacture. They are exported all over the country. The manufactured silk, the other important product of Kashan, finds its way ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Diocean tables, tepid historic parallels, artificially concocted legends, could not create Greek poetry again beneath the ribs of death. The age was destined to be saved by music. License was its only liberty, as the Adone taught. Unmusical Chiabrera, buckram'd up by old mythologies and sterling precepts, left its life untouched. His antique virtues stood, like stucco gods and goddesses, on pedestals in garden groves, and moldered. His Pindaric flights were such as a sparrow, gazing upward at a hawk, might venture on. Those abrupt ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... Appleton followed the unfeeling, unmusical, penurious old ladies and gentlemen back into the lounge, glaring at them as belligerently and offensively as a gentleman could and maintain his self-respect. Then he went into the waiting-room and embarked upon a positive orgy of letter-writing. Looking up from ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... cleared his throat and began at once. The tune was so dolorous, and the voice so unmusical, that in any other circumstances it would have been intolerable, but there were lines in it touching upon "good fellowship," which partially redeemed it, and in the last verse there was reference made to "home," and "absent friends," which rendered it a complete ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne |
