"Monotonous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the end, is a trio on the chamecen, long and monotonous, that the guechas perform as a rapid pizzicato on the highest strings, very sharply struck. It sounds like the very quintescence, the paraphrase, the exasperation if I may so call it, of the eternal ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... a short cut to the village, and I still stood there. It must have been after eleven, and the monotonous tick of the big clock on the stairs behind me was the ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... measure of respect. Our desire to embellish its importance is absurd, and the hysteria of the dailies is calculated to place a dignified gentleman in a ridiculous light. Mrs. Reid's name and cultivation will doubtless enable her to support a monotonous role with grace; but, in consideration of British proficiency in matters ceremonial, their money will not be called upon to add a jot to the dignity of their reception. Their early departure has ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... and an occasional construction train, formed the only break in the monotonous life which I led. It was a dreadfully solitary existence. I was alone in the station, and as December began to wane, and the dread blizzards commenced their wild revelry, heaping the snow into such ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... let us see what this vaunted ease really is. Tell me, is it not another name for ennui? This state of quiescence, this objectless, dreamless torpor, this transition du lit a la table, de la table au lit,—what more dreary and monotonous existence can you devise? Is it pleasure in this inglorious existence to think that you are serving pleasure? Is it freedom to be the slave to self? For I hold," continued Trevylyan, "that this jargon of 'consulting happiness,' this ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... upon her knees, and her face, averted from the light of an iron lamp beside her, was bent upon that of the dying person. She moistened his mouth from time to time with some liquid, and between whiles sung, in a low monotonous cadence, one of those prayers, or rather spells, which, in some parts of Scotland and the north of England, are used by the vulgar and ignorant to speed the passage of a parting spirit, like the tolling ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... for the relations of Orient and Occident. The swelling volume of Mediterranean trade which accompanied the crusading movement depended upon the growing demand in the West for the products of the East. Europe could provide the necessities for a simple and monotonous life, without adornment or display. But the rise of a burgher aristocracy, the growth of an elaborate and symbolic ritualism in religious worship, the desire for that pomp and display which is half the ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... wearily by the roadside, the gleaming surface of the snow stretched in a monotonous sheet of white between the trunks of the trees, the tops of the dark rocks beside the way bore smooth white caps of loose snow, the forest stream was frozen along the edges, only in the centre did the water ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... thirst, and it was pitiable to see the tongues of the poor horses hanging out of their mouths. Day dawned, and there were no signs of the caravan. A thick vapor was rising from every quarter, and they hoped that when it cleared up they would be more fortunate; but no, there was the same monotonous landscape, the same carpet of flowers without perfume. The sun was now three hours high, and the heat was intense; their tongues clove to the roofs of their mouths, while still they went on over flowery meads; ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... way from Cape St. Roque to the Amazon, the wind which had been blowing hard for two days, from E.S.E., and raising lively waves all about, increased to a gale that knocked up seas, washing over the little craft more than ever. The thing was becoming monotonous and tiresome; for a change, therefore, I ran in toward the land, so as to avoid the ugly cross sea farther out in the current. This course was a mistaken one; we had not sailed far on it when a sudden rise of the canoe, followed ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... chattering with the stones; but as soon as the stream was allowed to gather all its force and run free its loquacity was such that it would prevent a traveller from suspecting his approach to the mill, until, very near, the monotonous hum of its saw could be heard. This was a place Fleda dearly loved. The wild sound of the waters and the lonely keeping of the scene, with the delicious smell of the new-sawn boards, and the fascination ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... occasionally through 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 ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... in the ravine behind me. My last glimpse of them showed me that her ball had fallen into a stone-studded cavity in the side of the hill, and she was drawing her niblick from her bag as I passed out of sight. George's voice, blurred by distance to a monotonous murmur, followed me until ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... the Silurian age, when there were no elevations higher than the Canadian hills, when water covered the face of the earth with the exception of a few isolated portions lifted above the almost universal ocean, how monotonous must have been the conditions of life! And what should we expect to find on those first shores? If we are walking on a sea-beach to-day, we do not look for animals that haunt the forests or roam over the open plains, or for those that live in sheltered ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... very long in the Service. I found it pleasant work but monotonous, and receiving shortly after I went out a legacy bequeathed by a widowed aunt I had almost forgotten, determined to leave it and devote myself to study and travel. Like many Englishmen, I had taken no ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... small square blocks of the same rock, giving it a neat and clean appearance. There are few windows on the street; the houses are one story high, with diminutive doors, not more than four feet high; and the low dull walls stretching along the streets, give the city a dismal and monotonous appearance. The reason of building the doors so low, is to prevent the quartering of Turkish government horsemen on their families, as well as to prevent the Bedawin Arabs from plundering them. On the southwest corner of the city stands an ancient castle in ruins, built on an artificial ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... and the monotonous, piteous plaint of the wailing women, which ever and anon rose into a loud, shrill, tremulous shriek, echoed through the silent rooms within to this hall, announcing that death had claimed a victim ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the pledge of Janice, the life at Greenwood became as healthily monotonous as of yore. Both Mr. and Mrs. Meredith spoke so sharply to both Sukey and Charles of his loitering about the kitchen that his visits, save at meal times, entirely ceased. The squire went further and ordered him to put an end to his ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... and it is, of course, devoted to strictly practical objects. Consequently, everything is arranged in such a manner as to make the most of the space. All the paths are at right angles or parallel to each other, and the garden generally is laid out with monotonous regularity. Yet no small part of the success of the Government gardens as an institution depends upon the produce of this department. It has for many years enabled the Government to distribute gratuitously the seeds and ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... stems, will all be too minute to be rendered consistently with his artistical feeling of breadth, or with the amount of labor which he considers it dexterous and legitimate to bestow upon the work: but, above all, the rounded and monotonous form of the head of the tree will be at variance with his ideas of "composition;" he will assuredly disguise or break it, and the main points of the olive-tree will ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... then deserted warehouse, Almayer putting away his papers before driving home with Mr. Vinck, in whose household he lived, would pause listening to the noise of a hot discussion in the private office, would hear the deep and monotonous growl of the Master, and the roared-out interruptions of Lingard—two mastiffs fighting over a marrowy bone. But to Almayer's ears it sounded like a quarrel of Titans—a battle ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... moon shall light her bright lamp in the star-spangled heavens, and shed her silvery rays across the plain, the hunter may lead forth the village belle, and foot it merrily on the mossy greensward, to the sound of the bagpipe and the rustic flute, by fountains which never cease their monotonous but soothing plaint, and under the long shadows of the ancient oaks ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... holy exercises with admirable perseverance, that I must tell. This occurred towards the latter end of the winter, when Wilkinson and Bertram had nearly completed their sojourn in Cairo. Not but what the dervishes had roared out their monotonous prayer to Allah, duly every Friday, at 1 P.M., with as much precision as a service in one of your own cathedrals; but our friends had put the thing off, as hardly being of much interest, and at last went there when they had only one Friday left ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... either up or down, or to any portion of the frightful aspect around, I fixed my eye entirely on each individual step before me, as if there had been no other object in the world besides. To encourage me by diverting my attention, the Arabs chanted their monotonous songs, mainly in their own language, interspersed with expressions about buckshish, "Englese good to Arabs," and making signs to me every now and then how near we were getting to the top. After a second dwam, a rest and a draught of water prepared me for another ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... other hand, is essential to the progress of civilization. The tendency of city life is toward imitation and reducing life to a dead level. Eccentricity may be objectionable, but without individuality of persons and communities life would be stupid and monotonous. There is probably no greater need for strengthening rural life than a community loyalty which will prevent the unthinking imitation of urban life and will take justifiable pride in local ideals and achievements. The need of a larger ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... cement has crumbled off, their waving weeds and grasses and flowers, now sparsely fringing their top, now thickly protruding from their sides, or clinging and making a home in the clefts and crevices of decay, were to be smoothed to a complete level, and whitewashed over into one uniform and monotonous tint. What a gain in cleanliness! what a loss in beauty! One old wall like this I remember on the road from Grotta Ferrata to Frascati, which was to my eyes a constant delight. One day the owner took ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... as having a "worn, weary, discontented look"; usually kindly and courteous, but shy, reserved, and exceedingly sensitive; an extraordinary reader, but noted for carping criticism. Although a good student, he seemed galled beyond endurance by the monotonous routine of military duties, which he deliberately neglected and thus procured his dismissal from the Academy. He left, alone and ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... decoration, that the designer was afraid to leave his walls plain, lest the whole should appear lean and cold. He has, therefore, spun his tracery and panelling over the whole surface. Nowhere can the eye rest on a plain piece of wall; everywhere it is fidgeted by monotonous rows of niches and mouldings. In fact, it may be compared to an etching so full of unnecessary details that composition, balance of mass, and beauty of line are all smothered in them. And yet there is much to be said on the other side. The mere size—the ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock
... window, from the Grand Canal and the lesser canals, rose the manifold noises of Venetian life. All other sounds were dominated by the monotonous shouts of the gondoliers. Somewhere close at hand, perhaps in the opposite palace (was it not the Fogazzari palace?), a woman with a fine soprano voice was practising; the singer was young—someone who could not ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... swelling roar from either touch-line greeted the school's advantage. A feature of a big match was always the shouting. It rarely ceased throughout the whole course of the game, the monotonous but impressive sound of five hundred voices all shouting the same word. It was worth hearing. Sometimes the evenness of the noise would change to an excited crescendo as a school three-quarter got off, or the school back pulled up the attack with a fine piece of defence. Sometimes the ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... arctic regions which had so held and enthralled them day by day had, after a time, ceased. Mr. Gibbs was engaged in making experiments, observations, and explorations, the result of which he would embody in carefully prepared reports, and Sammy's daily message promised to be rather monotonous. Roland Clewe felt the great importance of a thorough exploration and examination of the polar sea. The vessel he had sent out had reached this hitherto inaccessible region, but it was not at all certain that another voyage, even of the same kind, would be successful. ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... to find Fairyland upon earth, have transferred it to the kingdom of Death; and it has become the hope for the future. Each Sunday in church the congregation of business men and hard-worked women set aside the things of their monotonous life, and sing the songs of the endless search. To the rolling notes of the organ they tell the tale of the Elysian Fields: they take their unfilled desire for Fairyland and adjust it to their deathless hope of Heaven. They sing of crystal fountains, of ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... countenance, who as he came up said in a voice far hoarser and more devilish, "I am the enchanter Archelaus, the mortal enemy of Amadis of Gaul and all his kindred," and then passed on. Having gone a short distance the three carts halted and the monotonous noise of their wheels ceased, and soon after they heard another, not noise, but sound of sweet, harmonious music, of which Sancho was very glad, taking it to be a good sign; and said he to the duchess, from whom he did not stir a step, or for a single instant, "Senora, where there's music ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... sparrows hunched up on the leafless branches of the hedges, or chasing the shy young rabbits that scuttered frightened to their burrows in the mossy bank by the roadside, as the piebalds plodded sedately on their monotonous way. The bear snarled behind his iron bars, the children crouched silently in a corner of the caravan, while Joe and Moll smoked and lounged, and discussed their plans concerning their captives and the company generally during the approaching winter. Bambo occupied his accustomed ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... this portrait, your wish is that I should furnish a few brief chronological memoranda of my own life. That would be hard for me to do, and when done, might not be very interesting for others to read. Nothing makes such dreary and monotonous reading as the old hackneyed roll-call, chronologically arrayed, of inevitable facts in a man's life. One is so certain of the man's having been born, and also of his having died, that it is dismal to lie under the necessity ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... contrasting so finely with the next line where the pause is also after the fifth syllable, but with a totally different effect. Note again the variety of rhythm which distinguishes the last two lines. Neither has any strong pause in it: and they might so easily have been a monotonous repetition. Is it fanciful to think that, perhaps half unconsciously, Milton has suggested the quick stab of pain or sorrow in the swift movement of the first: and that the long-drawn rhythm of the second is meant to convey something of the dull years of misery ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... arises from the sharp separation of the processes of production and consumption in the individual life of the worker. Industry which is purely monotonous, burdensome, uninteresting, uneducative, which contains within itself no elements of enjoyment, cannot be fully compensated by alternate periods of consumption or relaxation. The painful effort involved in all labour or exertion should have ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... walk was to the grey convent where she now passed her monotonous days. Every evening I returned, and often I stood gazing at her prison and thinking of Flaminia as I used to know her. One evening Fabiani found me thus, and made me follow him home. He spoke to me with unusual solemnity in his voice, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... precision is everywhere obvious. The omission of the cumbersome auxiliary, wherever permissible, already characteristically employed in his tale, is conspicuous, as in all his writings and letters. The words are arranged in rhythmical groups without falling into a monotonous sing song. Participial constructions, tending toward brevity, are more in evidence than in ordinary German prose. Sparingly, but with good reason and excellent handling, periodic structure is employed. Still another point is significant, showing the writer to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... over stony roads, across that green and monotonous plain, the vehicle entered one of those orchard farmyards and drew up before in old structure falling into decay, where an old maid-servant stood waiting beside a young fellow, who took ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... also took place. Indeed, things were conducted with such high spirit and in so convivial a manner that it might have been imagined that the Boers were commissioned to supply the fireworks, and that a species of "Brock's benefit" was got up whenever events were inclined to wax monotonous. Reports computed the investing force at 4000, and it was further stated that General Cronje's commando would be reinforced by the arrival of some 1500 more. Yet the gallant little town smiled within itself and said "The more the merrier." Colonel Scott Turner made a reconnaissance ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... "An excellent narrator, capitano, and writeth exquisite Italian. But in spirit a thought too monotonous. Monks and nuns were never all unchaste: one or two such stories were right pleasant and diverting; but five score paint his time falsely, and sadden the heart of such as love mankind. Moreover, he hath no skill at characters. Now this Greek is supreme in that great art: he carveth them with pen; ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... ripens beneath the long, hot days, the melody gradually ceases. The young are out of the nest and must be cared for, and the moulting season is at hand. After the cricket has commenced to drone his monotonous refrain beneath your window, you will not, till another season, hear the wood thrush in all his matchless eloquence. The bobolink has become careworn and fretful, and blurts out snatches of his song between his scolding and upbraiding, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... and clear and burning, the desert sunsets, plaintive and peaceful and unvaried—one lovely diffusion, in which day dies without splendour and in a glow of pain. The long velvety tread of the camel, the song of the camel-driver, the monotonous chant of the river-man, with fingers mechanically falling on his little drum, the cry of the eagle of the Libyan Hills, the lap of the heavy waters of the Dead Sea down by Jericho, the battle-call of the Druses beyond Damascus, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... she had been alone with her dismal thoughts, no sound broke the stillness, save the monotonous ticking of the clock or an occasional sob and moan from the half spent ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... conversation, which is, says our author, "a prodigious labor of improvising," a "chef-d'oeuvre," a "strange and singular thing, in which monotony is unknown," seems to be, if correctly reported, a "strange and singular thing" indeed; but somewhat monotonous at least to an English reader, and "prodigious" only, if we may take leave to say so, for the wonderful rascality which all the conversationists betray. Miss Neverout and the Colonel, in Swift's famous dialogue, are a thousand times more entertaining and moral; and, besides, we can ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... tell the little chap, Bob," said old Joe, speaking with one eye shut, "that we're only a-feeding of him up so as to get more satisfaction out of his hexecution to-morrow morning. You can say that sailoring is a rather monotonous life, and that if he'll die game we shall all feel obliged for ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... reading in a monotonous voice. She read literally and without understanding, using initials and abbreviations as they came. But the shrewd old man followed her easily. Once, however, ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... in spite of himself; he should watch himself so as to avoid that blunder. A picture in which there were no colors but blue and red would be untrue to nature, and fatigue the eye. And thus the constantly recurring rhythm in the score of Robert le Diable makes the work, as a whole, appear monotonous. As to the effect of the long trumpets, of which you speak, it has long been known in Germany; and what Meyerbeer offers us as a novelty was constantly used by Mozart, who gives just such a chorus to ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... trust: by-and-by come the subtle but well-known signs of deceit; so doubt is forced on me; and then I am all suspicion, and so darkly vigilant that soon all is certainty; for 'les fourberies des femmes' are diabolically subtle, but monotonous. They seem to vary only on the surface. One looks too gentle and sweet to give any creature pain; I cherish her like a tender plant; she deceives me for the coarsest fellow she can find. Another comes the frank and candid dodge; she is ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... other,—had been left seated by the side of Philibert, on the twisted roots of a gigantic oak forming a rude but simple chair fit to enthrone the king of the forest and his dryad queen. No sound came to break the quiet of the evening hour save the monotonous plaint of a whippoorwill in a distant brake, and the ceaseless chirm of insects among the leafy boughs and down in the ferns that clustered ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... consider that the matter of rhythmic accent is one which affects every bar of each line, while the four tests just now applied affect only the LAST bar of each line; and when we consider further that the real result of this freedom in using the rhythmic accent is to vary the monotonous regularity of the regular system with the charm of those subtle rhythms which we employ in familiar discourse, so that the habit of such freedom might grow with the greatest uniformity upon a poet, and might thus present us with a test of such uniform development as to be reliable ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... that two 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, and the women, especially ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... as regular in its flow as the Bull-dogs, and the monotonous bass of these latter sounded through the music, like life behind the murmur of pleasure, if you will. The Countess had a not unfeminine weakness for champagne, and old Mr. Bonner's cellar was well and choicely stocked. But was this enjoyment to the Countess?—this dreary ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... she began, in a monotonous voice, as if it were a recitation addressed to the public, "first began to take notice of me a year ago. ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... thousand feet above on the right a gigantic example of the natural arches. Beyond this the walls began to grow somewhat lower. Our life through this gorge, as well as through some others, might be described by the monotonous phrase, "Got up, ran rapids, went to bed." There was no time to do anything else. At night we were always sleepy and tired. Fortunately there were here fine places to camp—plenty of room, with smooth sand to sleep ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... as I loved him he would never have sent me into a 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 learned to govern; I am not conversant with politics, nor with state ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... they approach the coast. It is a pleasant sight to see the noisy band animating the monotonous splendour of the ocean; they arrive as soon as a vessel is one or two days' journey from land. Henceforth they do not leave her, flying behind and plunging in her wake; they profit by the disturbance produced by the gigantic machine ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... and continued murmuring, his body drawing closer and closer to Jim's body, while in the deep silence, broken only by the chanting of his low, monotonous voice, the others pressed Jim's hands and head and feet and legs—six men under the command ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... early childhood roamed those dark, solemn woods, or sat at night on the lowly cottage stile, gazing on the wild, grotesque shadows cast by the moonbeams from the huge, forest trees; or how she listened to the solemn hootings of the lonesome owl, the monotonous cuckoo, and sudden whippoorwill; or laughed at the glowworm's light in the dark swamps, and asked her aunty if they were not a group of stars come down to ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... time after he had reached his room, and had had his bath and change, Griswold sat at his writing-table with his head in his hands, thinking in monotonous circles. As in those other stressful moments, the importunate devil was at his ear; now mocking him for not having left the drowned enemy as he was; now whispering the dreadful hope that age and the shock and the drowning might still re-erect ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... the huge clock on the wall, with a lilac rose on its white face, seemed in its monotonous, sleepy tick, to repeat his words: 'Ve-ry! ve-ry!' it ticked. 'No concerts, nor theatres,' pursued Ardalion (he had travelled abroad with his master, and had all but stayed in Paris; he knew much better than to mispronounce this last word, as the peasants do)—'nor dances, ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... some brief patches of river scenery on the Nore and the Blackwater, and a part of Lough Erne, the assertion is not devoid of truth. The dreary expanse called the Bog of Allen, which occupies a tableland in the centre of the island, stretches away for miles—flat, sad-coloured, and monotonous, fissured in every direction by channels of dark-tinted water, in which the very fish take the same sad colour. This tract is almost without trace of habitation, save where, at distant intervals, utter destitution has raised a mud-hovel, undistinguishable ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... Earth, there were others who found in it a source of power and who took possession of it. Then it happened that the autocrats at the gates of Heaven joined forces with the powers that had taken possession of the Earth; and humanity began its aimless, monotonous march. But the good mother sees the bleeding feet of her children, she hears their moans, and she is ever calling to ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... During the monotonous days that followed, the Honorable Percival Hascombe discovered that the satisfaction of being exclusive is usually tempered by the discomfort of being bored. So lofty and forbidding had been his manner that no one had ventured to intrude even a ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... bushes in their second blossoming, and the moor, stretched before her, was as her life promised to be: it was monotonous in its bright colouring, quiet and serene, broad-bosomed for its children. Old sheep looked up at her as she went by, and she saw herself in some relationship to them. They were the sport of men, and so was she, yet perhaps God had some care ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... hear," said Mr. Brimberly modestly, as, having placed bottle and glass upon the piano within convenient reach, he seated himself upon the stool, struck three or four stumbling chords and then, vamping an accompaniment a trifle monotonous as to ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... aloud, getting up and walking the floor with something of the old restless energy, "I intend to live while I live, and crowd into life's brief day all that I can. I thank Mr. Fleet for a few sensations in what would otherwise have been a monotonous, dreary afternoon." ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... melody and music of a graceful edifice. We are able to understand what Michelangelo meant when he remarked that all subsequent designers, by departing from it, had gone wrong. Raffaello's plan, if carried out, would have been monotonous and tame inside ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... complaints against Aziru and his father Abd-Ashera come from Rib-Addi of Gebal. His utterances rival the Lamentations of Jeremiah both in volume and in monotonous pathos. One of these many letters, the contents of which are often stereotyped enough, is also noticeable for its revelation of the connection of Rib-Addi, who must already have been an ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr
... lingered slowly along while the captives were perishing in monotonous misery. The severity of their imprisonment was continually increased by new deprivations. No communications from the world without were permitted to reach their ears. Shutters were so arranged that even the sky was scarcely visible, ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... with the same despatch and ease as in the post-office of the country town where I had learned it, and from which I had been promoted by the influence of the surveyor of the district, Mr. Huntingdon. In fact, the work soon fell into a monotonous routine, which, night after night, was pursued in an unbroken course by myself and the junior clerk, who was my only assistant: the railway post-office work not having then attained the importance ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... against its very walls, a neat water-mill in full work. By the mill flows a large river, with a weir all across it. The weir has not been made for the mill, (for that receives its water from the hills by a trough carried over the temple,) but it is particularly ugly and monotonous in its line of fall, and the water below forms a dead-looking pond, on which some people are fishing in punts. The banks of this river resemble in contour the later geological formations around London, ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... latter, to hasten into blow, and so to share the month between them. Just below, on the turn of the hill, was a big thicket of furze bushes, more golden than gold, sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. From Larry's woods across the Ownashee, the cuckoo's voice came, as melodiously monotonous and as full of associations as the bell of a village church. Silvery clouds were sailing very high in a sky of thinnest, sweetest blue; little jets of sparkling sound, rising and falling in it, bespoke the invisible, rapturous larks, tireless as a playing fountain; ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... me, not without long digressions, the opinions of the deep politicians of both sexes whose judgments are law in Vendome. But these opinions were so contradictory, so diffuse, that I was near falling asleep in spite of the interest I felt in this authentic history. The notary's ponderous voice and monotonous accent, accustomed no doubt to listen to himself and to make himself listened to by his clients or fellow-townsmen, were too much for my curiosity. ...
— La Grande Breteche • Honore de Balzac
... bright Burgundian vineyards. Close at her father's side was the gentle Evangeline seated, Spinning flax for the loom, that stood in the corner behind her. Silent awhile were its treadles, at rest was its diligent shuttle, While the monotonous drone of the wheel, like the drone of a bagpipe, Followed the old man's songs and united the fragments together. As in a church, when the chant of the choir at intervals ceases, Footfalls are heard in the aisles, or words of the priest at the altar, So, in each pause of the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... heart beating fast, I rang the bell of his flat, and as I waited for someone to come, I wondered at a strange noise that was going on within—a deep, monotonous recitation, interrupted by occasional explosions of rage in a higher voice. I rang for the third time, and as a door opened within, the mysterious sounds doubled in volume. Then the outer door opened, and the Baron's old servant hurried me in. "Come in, sir," she said, "come ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... on the desolate Border hills on a drear November evening of 1715. Throughout a melancholy day, clinging mist had blurred the outline of even the nearest hills; distance was blotted out. Thin rain fell chillingly and persistently, drip, dripping with monotonous plash from the old inn's thatched eaves; a light wind sobbed fitfully around the building, moaning at every chink and cranny of the ill-fitting window-frames. "A dismal night for any who must travel," thought the stableman ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... are located in easy proximity to the town, so-called restaurants are attached, but the patronage being intermittent and uncertain, the choice of plats is limited, and the service is slow and bad. The Sauveniere Spring is nearest to the town, but the drive there is all up-hill, monotonous, and dusty. The Geronstere is more prettily situated, and is a favourite resort for luncheon during the summer season; but unless the meal is specially ordered beforehand, the visitor will, as a rule, have to be content with ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... document which came from the very hand of their adored leader, that they had eyes and ears only for that. They lost count of the sounds around them, of the dropping of the crisp ash from the grate, of the monotonous ticking of the clock, of the soft, almost imperceptible rustle of something on the floor close beside them. A figure had emerged from under one of the benches; with snake-like, noiseless movements it crept closer ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... written in ten- or twelve- syllable verses grouped, at first in assonanced, later in rhymed, "tirades" of unequal length. It was intended for a society which was still homogeneous, and to it at the outset doubtless all classes of the population listened with equal interest. As poetry it is monotonous, without sense of proportion, padded to facilitate memorisation by professional reciters, and unadorned by figure, fancy, or imagination. Its pretention to historic accuracy begot prosaicness in ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... again I heard a thumping at the hall door, which arose from the buttings of the goat when the food was not forthcoming, and the mother's example was followed by her two little kids. After a while this grew monotonous, and no attention was paid to their knocking! but one day the area bell—used by the delivery men and callers generally, the wire of which passed by the side of one of the railings—was sounded. The cook answered the bell, but no one was there save the goat and ...
— Fun And Frolic • Various
... Teheran, I was heartily tired of it and of Persia altogether. The manner of living is fearfully monotonous. A stranger, debarred from female society, and deprived of all the diversions of European cities, can scarcely find employment for his day. I had hired for six toumans a month (the touman is worth about ten ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... he turned his eyes toward her and saw a sort of frozen look in her dull white face that he had never seen in it before. Her intonation was monotonous, her voice ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... over-topping the wall in general level was the graveyard; not as a graveyard usually is, a fragment of landscape with its due variety of chiaro-oscuro, but a mere profile against the sky, serrated with the outlines of graves and a very few memorial stones. Not a tree could exist up there: nothing but the monotonous ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... forts a line of sangars extended, the position of each being marked even now by a glare of light above it, which struck up from the fire which the insurgents had lit behind the walls of stone. And from one and another of the sangars the monotonous beat of a ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... lake was piled deep with clouds. Beyond the oak trees, in the southern sky, great tongues of flame shot up into the dark heavens out of the blast furnaces of the steel works. Deep-toned, full-throated frogs had begun their monotonous chant. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... of us in the usual dispirited, dull way. Our talk became daily more prosaic and superficial. We had not the energy to express our deepest sentiments, and things which were formerly pleasant were strange to us now. We had no spur to enliven our thoughts in our monotonous life. To the careless there was nothing startling in this moral numbness, but the more sensitive among us grieved over it, and were humiliated by the shallowness that had come ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... those lyrics, of which there are many in Gaelic poetry, that are intended to imitate pipe music. They consist of three parts, called Urlar, Siubhal, and Crunluath. The first is a slow, monotonous measure, usually, indeed, a mere repetition of the same words or tones; the second, a livelier or brisker melody, striking into description or narrative; the third, a rapid finale, taxing the reciter's or performer's powers ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... wolds seem dreary and monotonous; but if change is wanted, a long walk or an easy drive will take us from Somersby, as it often took the Tennyson brothers, to the coast at Mablethorpe, where the long rollers of the North Sea beat upon the sandhills that ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... forefathers would have seemed unutterably dull. No books, no newspapers, no change of scene by cheap excursions, no village school, no politics. The very cultivation of the soil by the old three-course system was monotonous. But there were bright spots in his existence: the village church not only afforded him the consolations of religion but also entertainments and society. Religion in the Middle Ages was a part of the people's daily life, and its influence ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... unusual sense of direction, would be continually astray in it. The Button Boy, obeying the laws of human nature, is lost in two minutes, but requires two hours in which to find himself. Benella suspects that he prefers this wandering to and fro to the more monotonous task of weeding, and it is no uncommon thing for her to pursue the recalcitrant page through the mazes and labyrinths for an hour at a time, and perhaps lose herself in the end. Salemina and I were sitting this morning in the ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... short and closely cut, falling upon the ear more like the broken rattling of hailstones than the full flowing music of a strong deep river. Such a style, introduced at proper intervals and in appropriate positions, is frequently very effective; but, when long continued, it grows wearisome and monotonous. As our late writers are much given to it, they should be on their guard lest ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... surface presents a somewhat monotonous aspect, though it is not so everywhere. Here and there it is pleasantly interspersed with trees, some standing solitary, but mostly in groves, copses, or belts; these looking, for all the world, like islands in the ocean. So perfect is the resemblance, that ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... dynamite, while signalling, had killed another boat's crew; of night attacks; ports fled from between the dawns; attacks by bushmen in mangrove swamps and by fleets of salt-water men in the larger passages. One item that occurred with monotonous frequency was death by dysentery. He noticed with alarm that two white men had so died—guests, like ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... conventions of the day to the truths of life and nature behind them. The conventions have gone, or are changed, and we are all glad of it. Wordsworth effected a wholesome deliverance when he attacked the artificial diction, the personifications, the allegories, the antitheses, the barren rhymes and monotonous metres, which the reigning taste had approved. But while welcoming the new freshness, sincerity, and direct and fertile return on nature, that is a very bad reason why we should disparage poetry so genial, so simple, so humane, and so perpetually ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... more impressionable state than ever before. The day was dark and lowering, showing every sign of an approaching storm; outside there had been the noisy bustle of active business life, while within the limits of Lucille's mystic chamber all was hushed in a deathly silence. The monotonous swinging of the lamps, the perfume-laden air, the ghastly skeletons, and the imperious bearing and powerful will of Lucille—all struck upon her imagination with resistless force. As she sank into the seat which Lucille pointed out, she felt like a criminal entering the prisoner's ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... for a man named Andrea Cavalcanti," said the detective, in the well-known monotonous way which never fails to make an impression even upon those who ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... nurtured. But the style of Mr. DAVIS was indigenous and strongly marked by his individuality. Although he doubtless admired, and perhaps imitated, the condensation and dignity of Gibbon, yet it is certain that he carefully avoided the monotonous stateliness and the elaborate and ostentatious art of that most erudite historian. I look in vain for his model in the skeptical Gibbon, the cynical Bolingbroke, or the gorgeous Burke. These were all to him intellectual giants; but giants ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell
... years, and were to be there another fifteen years yet. Now they are gone, with the archbishop's red coach, and the complaisant grocer, and the young man of twenty-seven in Via del Gambero, and the rest of the things that the sun looked on and will look on the like of again, no doubt, in our monotonous round of him. ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... was in the small hours of a night of misty moonlight that our eyes, stretched wide with the new wonder of beholding classic ground, first caught sight of this smooth expanse gleaming pallidly amid the dark, blurred outlines of the landscape and trees. The monotonous noise and motion of the train had put our fellow-travelers to sleep, and when it gradually ceased they did not stir. There was no bustle at the little station where we stopped; a few drowsy figures stole silently ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... tyranny of Pisistratus, a skilful and ingenious native of Icaria, an Attic village in which the Eleutheria, or Bacchic rites, were celebrated with peculiar care, surpassed all competitors in the exhibition of these rustic entertainments. He relieved the monotonous pleasantries of the satyric chorus by introducing, usually in his own person, a histrionic tale-teller, who, from an elevated platform, and with the lively gesticulations common still to the popular narrators of romance on the Mole of Naples, or in the bazars of the East, entertain ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the need for regularity of movement is less. At first sight it will thus seem to follow that every displacement of labour by machinery will bring an elevation in the quality of labour, that is, will increase the proportion of labour in employments which tax the muscles less and are less monotonous. This is in the main the conclusion towards which Professor ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... the Courant, "It was a most extraordinary sheet. Of all the colonial newspapers, it was the most spirited, witty, and daring. The Bostonians, accustomed to the monotonous dullness of the News-letter, received, some with delight, more with horror, all with amazement, this weekly budget of impudence and fun. A knot of liberals gathered around James Franklin, physicians most of them, able, audacious men, who kept him well ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... be inferred that I entertained any affection for my friendly keeper. I continued to regard him as an enemy; and my life at his home became a monotonous round of displeasure. I took my three meals a day. I would sit listlessly for hours at a time in the house. Daily I went out—accompanied, of course—for short walks about the town. These were not enjoyable. I believed everybody was familiar with my black ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... association of couples seemed mysteriously to lift the whole operation above criticism and to endow it with a perfect propriety. The motion of the couples, and their manner of moving, over the earth's surface were extremely monotonous; some couples indeed only walked stiffly to and fro; on the other hand a few exhibited variety, lightness and grace, in manoeuvres which involved a high degree of mutual trust and comprehension. While only some of the faces were ecstatic, all were rapt. The ordinary world was shut ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... life that knows not, patient waits, nor longs:— I know, and would be patient, yet would long. I can be patient for all coming songs, But let me sing my one monotonous song. To me the time is slow my mould among; To quicker life I fain would spur and start The aching ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... Tuscan revolution, the nine days' fight for Milan, the heroic adventure of Savoy, and the apparently final collapse of all these high endeavours on the field of Novara. Ten years of petty despotism on the one side, of "a unanimity of despair" on the other, followed; and then the monotonous tragedy seemed to break suddenly into romance, as the Emperor, "deep and cold," marched his armies over the Alps for the ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... the Missouri River and the Pacific Ocean, for in the early days of the hazardous passage across the plains, the whole region with rare exceptions was conspicuous for the entire absence of trees. There was one monotonous blaze of sunshine, day after day, as the caravans and overland coaches plodded through the alkali dust of the desert. The weary traveller gazed upon nothing but seemingly interminable prairies and naked elevations, ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... memories are keen but monotonous,—a strong smell of stable, arising from the laprobe which had evidently been recently used as a horse blanket; the sound of hoofs, in an interminable "jog, jog—splash, splash," never hurrying; a series ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln |
