"Monotonous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... What a monotonous narrow little life! He wanted to pity her, but somehow he could not. There was no suggestion in her manner that she was an object of pity. "What did Miss Burroughs say to you—if ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... them, and a low thick brush of eucalyptus to the north. The soil was, as usual, a mixture of clay and sand, with small rounded nodules of limestone. From this ground, the view to the south as a medium point, was over as dark and monotonous a country as could well be described. There was not a single break in its sombre hue, nor was there the slightest rise on the visible horizon; both to the eastward and westward we caught glimpses of the Murray glittering amidst the dark foliage beneath us, but it made ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... 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, but with great kindness. I was ill. Travelling, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... himself like a gorilla, and Eudore like a marmoset. Volpatte coughs, and says, "I'm kicking the bucket." Mesnil Andre has got out his mirror and comb and is tending his fine chestnut beard as though it were a rare plant. The monotonous calm is disturbed here and there by the outbreaks of ferocious resentment provoked by the presence of ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... you," said the Boy wearily, dropping on the grass beside the beast: "and don't, for goodness' sake, keep on saying 'Don't;' I hear so much of it, and it's monotonous, and makes me tired. I've simply looked in to ask you how you were and all that sort of thing; but if I'm in the way I can easily clear out. I've lots of friends, and no one can say I'm in the habit of shoving myself in where I'm ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... at him, but, still slipping her needle with the minute, monotonous gesture back and forth, ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... hiding for?" the monotonous tone jarred Jude more than any outbreak of temper could have done. His recent restraint, and his pent-up plans had worn his nerves to the raw edge. He was in the slow, consuming stage of emotions that was likely to lead him to a desperate move ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... against the daylight yet lingering outside, that the architect read the scheme of subarcuation and the tracery as easily as if he had been studying a plan. Sundown had brought no gleam to lift the pall of the dying day, but the monotonous grey of the sky was still sufficiently light to enable a practised eye to make out that the head of the window was filled with a broken medley of ancient glass, where translucent blues and yellows and reds mingled like the harmony of an old patchwork quilt. Of the lower divisions of the window, ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... to a certain covered piazza where they always read the lesson for the day; then Mr. Evringham suggested that they go promptly to the beach to see the splendid show before the rollers regained their usual monotonous dignity. ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... the hall had died into a silence threaded by one monotonous voice. Now suddenly, trampling on these last words, came a deafening tumult, a roaring and thundering, cheer crowded on cheer, voices hoarse and shrill, beating, overlapping, and while it lasted the people in the little room could ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... steamer passing, at weary intervals, over its dreary expanse, and some moldering remains of ancient cities on its eastern shore, it affords scarcely any indications of life. It does very little, therefore, to relieve the monotonous aspect of solitude and desolation which reigns over the region ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... to speak again, in a low, monotonous voice, almost as if she were talking to herself. She was looking past him, at the gulls that swooped and skimmed ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... the comic element. I really do not see how more of it could be got into the story, and I think Mr. Boucicault underrates the pleasant effect of his own part. The very notion of a sailor, whose life is not among those little courts and streets, and whose business does not lie with the monotonous machinery, but with the four wild winds, is a relief to me in reading the play. I am quite confident of its being an immense relief to the audience when they see the sailor before them, with an entirely different bearing, action, dress, complexion even, from the rest of the men. I would ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... whether Shakespeare's dictum in regard to music holds good when applied to the Eskimo, for they have but little music in their souls, and among no people is there such a noticeable absence of "treason, stratagem and spoil." A rude drum and a monotonous chant, consisting only of the fundamental note and minor third, are the only things in the way of music among the more remote settlements of which I have any knowledge. Mrs. Micawber's singing has been described as the table-beer of acoustics. Eskimo singing is something more. The beer ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... the power of expressing thought in the strongest, fullest, and most vivid manner, he must be classed with Shakespeare and Bacon— and with these writers when at their best. He indulges in repetitions; but the repetitions are never monotonous; they serve to place the subject in every possible point of view, and to enable us to see all sides of it. He possessed an enormous vocabulary, and had the fullest power over it; "never was a man under whose ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... disgust your Majesty by relating all the series of monotonous crimes or superstitious observances which I saw during the two years I remained ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... the Traveling Salesman edged over to the window and peered out through the deepening frost on the pane. Inquisitively the Youngish Girl followed his gaze. Already across the cold, white, monotonous, snow-smothered landscape the pale afternoon light was beginning to wane, and against the lowering red and purple streaks of the wintry sunset the Young Electrician's figure, with the little huddling pack on its shoulder, ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... the ship was kept on her course. The boys remained in the conning tower, gazing ahead. Not a single thing could be observed but a monotonous expanse of whiteness. Now and then they would run into a bank of clouds which obscured their vision as if there ...
— Through the Air to the North Pole - or The Wonderful Cruise of the Electric Monarch • Roy Rockwood
... so, if I know myself: I always thought the same of him, and was just as well satisfied with it as now. His poem I never did greatly affect: nor can I learn to do so: it is full of finest things, but it is monotonous, and has that air of being evolved by a Poetical Machine of the highest order. So it seems to be with him now, at least to me, the Impetus, the Lyrical oestrus, is gone. . . It is the cursed inactivity (very pleasant to me who am no Hero) of this ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... in their featherings and flyings. Even baby cuckoos were a joy to her, though, on their foster-mothers' accounts she resented the thriftlessness of their parents, and grew tired each year of their monotonous call which ceased not day or night. But of the larks never, for their songs seemed to her of heaven, while the cuckoos were of earth. The gulls, too, were somewhat difficult from the friendly point of view, but she lay for hours ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... I must have come mechanically, in a heavy dream; for I had no hope, no energy, no vivacity, no interest. For many weeks my mind had revolved round an awful possibility, as if hypnotized by it, and that monotonous revolution seemed alone to constitute my real life. Moreover, I was subject to recurring nausea, and to disconcerting ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... him at once. On the drive home, in the dark December afternoon, he was tense with apprehension; once or twice he ventured some questions about the Shakers, but she put them aside with a curious gentleness, her voice a little distant and monotonous; her words seemed to come only from the surface of her mind. When he lifted her out of the sleigh at their own door he felt a subtle resistance in her whole body; and when, in the hall, he put his arms about her and tried to kiss her, she drew ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... with Squire Pinner to see those new agricultural implements—or whatever it is. They are sure to be away as much as three days. I was thinking if we could but persuade mamma to come to us for the time papa is to be away, it would be a delightful little change for her—a break in her monotonous life." ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... verse runs easily and whose occasional sales are an encouragement, this last chapter is perhaps unnecessary. Yet there may come times in routine, monotonous production when even he loses in interest, and with this loss his work falls off in quality. It is only through interest and desire that anything has ever been accomplished, and if these are not sustained the work must stay at a low level. Even the seasoned writer must look forward ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... dare." Not so the woman, whose scene of action is her quiet home: her virtues must be passive ones; and with every qualification for successful activity, she is often compelled to chain down her vivid imagination to the most monotonous routine of domestic life. When she is entirely debarred from external activity, a restlessness of nature, that can find no other mode of indulgence, will often invent for itself imaginary trials and imaginary ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... there was a stir of awakening interest The travel-wearied passengers, laying aside books and magazines and cards, renewed conversations that, in the last monotonous hours of the desert part of the journey, had lagged painfully. Throughout the train, there was an air of eager expectancy; a bustling movement of preparation. The woman of the observation car platform had disappeared ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... conscience and its will. Independence and individuality are often said to be lacking in it, but the Old Believers show that firmness and conception of duty which are as needful as intelligence to a nation's strength. Beneath the dull, monotonous surface of political society these sects give us a glimpse of the hard rock which is the groundwork of this seemingly inert race: its originality and stern individuality are what are dear to it. One day Russia will display in other ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... melancholy Don, and she was to domestic eyes visibly cross, and her half-year at home had rendered her much less capable of concealing ill-humour. Something was owing to wear and suspense, together with the effects of the summer heat and confined monotonous life without change or luxury; but much was chargeable on the manifestations of temper to which she had given way in the home circle. She told Wilmet the trouble, which Ferdinand wished to have kept from open discussion till he had received a final statement of his means to lay before Felix. He ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have been formed in England. This opinion only proves that Pope (who, however, passes for a perfect judge of poetry,) had not even an idea of the first elements of Dramatic Art. Nothing can be more spiritless and inanimate, nor more drawling and monotonous in the language and the versification, than this Ferrex and Porrex; and although the Unities of Place and Time are in no way observed, and a number of events are crowded into it, yet the scene is wholly destitute of movement: all that happens is previously announced by ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... he stood, and he tried to move a few steps. On all sides curious looks were directed upon him, but no one offered to make way, and still the monotonous singing continued until he felt himself deafened, as he ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... all conceivable emotions, no matter how microscopic, endows them with life and a soul. By virtue of this power The Steppe, an uneventful record of peasants travelling day after day through flat, monotonous fields, becomes instinct with dramatic interest, and its 125 pages seem all too short. And by virtue of the same attribute we follow with breathless suspense the minute description of the declining days of a great scientist, who feels his physical and mental faculties gradually ebbing away. ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... This tranquil, even monotonous life was very much to my taste in my husband's absence, but after a few weeks it was disturbed by sad trials. First, the chaplain had a sunstroke, and fell out with the climate, the place, and some members of our little society; so ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... join the throng filing into the concert room, and bolt from the midst of it. The process of expulsion was always conducted with the greatest courtesy on either side; for his bolt had become an agreeable variety in the monotonous lives of the guardians; they never knew when or in what fashion ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... the widows and children of many of our eminent authors were collected, they would demonstrate the great fact, that the man who is a husband or a father ought not to be an author. They might weary with a monotonous cry, and usually would be dated from the gaol or the garret. I have seen an original letter from the widow of Ockley to the Earl of Oxford, in which she lays before him the deplorable situation of her affairs; the debts of the Professor being beyond what his effects ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... sat silent and immovable until the light in the valley had quite faded, and the twitter of the birds had been superseded by the monotonous, mournful plaint of a whip-poor-will in a distant tree. Then he stirred and looked up at Eleanor with ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... His voice was almost monotonous in its quietness. It was as though he told the story of something which had passed beyond chance or change. As it unfolded to her understanding, she had seated herself near to his bed. The door of the room was open, and in view outside on the landing sat Madame Bulteel reading. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... his rest until the next afternoon, when the heat and the monotonous rumble of the train, together with its restful swaying, sent him off into a delicious doze, from which he was awakened by a brakeman barely in time to escape discovery. Thereafter he maintained more regular ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... such a habit, I have more or less been led to speak before now; but I have not hitherto marked its definite tendency to increase the price of work, as such. When men are employed continually in carving the same ornaments, they get into a monotonous and methodical habit of labour—precisely correspondent to that in which they would break stones, or paint house-walls. Of course, what they do so constantly, they do easily; and if you excite them temporarily by an increase of wages, you may get much work ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... of appearing very monotonous, I must again tell you that the last pieces you were so kind as to send me to Rome appear to me admirable both in inspiration and composition. The "Fantaisie" dedicated to me is a work of the highest kind—and I am really proud of the honor you ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... adopted the familiarity, and Iredale had not troubled to show disapproval, probably he remembered the relationship between this man and Prudence,—"I'm sick of farming. It's too monotonous. Not only that; so long as mother lives I am little better than a hired man. Of course she's very good," he went on, as he noted a sudden lowering of his companion's eyelids; "does no end for me, and all that sort of thing; but my salary goes nowhere with a man who has—well—who has ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... prisoners; and while they were partaking of it a sudden clamour of drums and horns arose, and the laughing, chattering crowd seemed to dissolve as suddenly from the vicinity of the prison hut, leaving it plunged in an atmosphere of silence, save for the monotonous banging of the drums, the blare of the horns, and a low, humming murmur which might be that of a multitude of people conversing in low, ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... cornice. It almost seemed, as the light veered slowly round, as though they smiled and frowned at times, but never a word was there amongst those millions; the silence itself was audible, and save the dull low thunder of the fall, so monotonous the ear became accustomed to and soon disregarded it, there was not a sound anywhere, not a rustle, not a whisper broke the eternal calm of that ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... be remembered, is on the border between the low uplands and the Fens, and has one side open to soft, swelling hills. Fenmarket is entirely in the Fens, and all the roads that lead out of it are alike level, monotonous, straight, and flanked by deep and stagnant ditches. The river, also, here is broader and slower; more reluctant than it is even at Eastthorpe to hasten its journey to the inevitable sea. During the greater part of the year the ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... us by a sudden flash the thoughts of many hearts. Often the rapid transition from one image to another is pleasing to us: on the other hand, any single figure of speech if too often repeated, or worked out too much at length, becomes prosy and monotonous. In theology and philosophy we necessarily include both 'the moral law within and the starry heaven above,' and pass from one to the other (compare for examples Psalms xviii. and xix.). Whether such a use of language is puerile or noble depends ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... we run squarely against another oddity, in that native Japanese (as well as Chinese) music usually consists merely of monotonous twanging on one or two strings—so that I can now understand the old story of Li Hung Chang's musical experiences in America. His friends took him to hear grand opera singers, to listen to famous violinists, but these ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... quest and on the advice of a woman whose judgment he was inclined to trust. And his quest had failed. He was to see for himself. He would see nothing. And still far away the beating of that drum went on—monotonous, mournful, significant—the real call of the East made audible. Thresk leaned forward on his seat, listening, treasuring the sound. He rose reluctantly when his bearer came to tell him that dinner was ready. Thresk took ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... work to do and his dusky laborers had flagged under the unusual heat. There was now no touch of coolness in the stagnant air, and although the camp down the valley was very quiet a confused hum of insects came out of the jungle. It rose and fell with a monotonous regularity that jarred upon Dick's nerves as he forced ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... corner, like the muttering of one holding audible communion with his own spirit. De Poininges listened too, and he fancied it was a female voice. Presently he heard one of those wild and uncouth ditties, a sort of chant or monotonous song, which, to the terrified psalm-singer, sounded like the death-wail of some ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... the weather bow, I perceived that the ship swinging to her anchor with the flood-tide, was now obliquely pointing towards the open ocean. The prospect was unlimited, but exceedingly monotonous and forbidding; not the slightest ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... shout echoed oddly clear and solitary above the incessant booming of the breakers and the monotonous wash of the waves. ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... is not interesting. As time fled to the monotonous clink of coins over the bar he set up in the frame shack that faced the desert trail, Ladron's importance in Lamo ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... brilliant effect. Further, to enhance it, he would make free use of the knife on the various surroundings to give a contrast, and at the same time to produce a feeling of texture on the various surfaces, so as not to have a monotonous and flat appearance. This method of scraping up portions of the surface of the paper is clearly shown in Plucking the Fowl ...
— Masters of Water-Colour Painting • H. M. Cundall
... adequate idea of Miss Thusa's manner, so solemn and impressive, of the tones of her voice, monotonous and slightly nasal, yet full of intensity, and, above all, of the expression of her foreboding eye, while in the act of narration, it would be easy to account for the effect which she produced. Helen and Alice were bathed in tears before ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... scissors escaping from his hand, noted the perilous heave of his whole person over the edge of the bunk after them, and then, returning to my first purpose, pursued my course on the deck. The sparkle of the sea filled my eyes. It was gorgeous and barren, monotonous and without hope under the empty curve of the sky. The sails hung motionless and slack, the very folds of their sagging surfaces moved no more than carved granite. The impetuosity of my advent made the man at the helm start slightly. A block aloft squeaked incomprehensibly, for what on earth ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... comment had the couple been alone or standing still; but the movement and the 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 ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... queen of one of the finest domains in the land, surrounded by every luxury, spending as she pleased, beloved, adored, she was not content. Her life, so well regulated, so constantly smooth, without annoyances and disturbance, seemed to her insipid. There were always the same monotonous pleasures, always recurring each in its season. There were parties and receptions, horse rides, hunts, drives—and it was always thus! Alas, this was not the life she had dreamed of; she was born for more exciting pleasures. She yearned for ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... the Venetians were quite as happy and as well off without it. The games of the time were doubtless much more simple. But whatever they were, they proved to be so fascinating that they soon became an actual menace. Amusements were few in those dull, monotonous days, when there were neither theaters, books, moving pictures, railroads, or automobiles. One day was much like another. Therefore even the clergy welcomed a diversion and devoted so much time to cards that the recreation had to be forbidden them. Now and then ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... nothing monotonous in American weather, and you must get used to our sharp alternations," said Mr. Clifford. "This snow will do good rather than harm, and the lawn will actually look green after it has melted, as it will speedily. The thing we dread is a severe frost at a far later date than ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... 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
... during the long evenings when he was eternally playing bridge. Finally I promised it would make me more contented and able to bear the monotony of marriage better, if only he would let me go. He thought it was awfully wicked of me to call marriage monotonous, and said his mother would have been horrified at such a remark. I told him it was no good expecting a young wife to behave like one's mother, and he said he'd rather I didn't. Then we laughed, and the dear old boy gave in, and said that Everard was a white sort of man, and ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... grateful for the new interest which had come into her monotonous life. Affairs moved like clock work at Miss Hathaway's—breakfast at half past six, dinner at one, and supper at half past five. Each day was also set apart by its regular duties, from the washing on Monday ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... Alfred de Musset. He wrote "Parfums de Madeleine," 1839; "Odes et Poemes," 1843; "Poemes Evangeliques," 1852; "Idylles Heroiques," 1858, etc. etc.] has elevation, grandeur, nobility, and harmony. What is it, then, that he lacks? Ease, and perhaps humor. Hence the monotonous solemnity, the excess of emphasis, the over-intensity, the inspired air, the statue-like gait, which annoy one in him. His is a muse which never lays aside the cothurnus, and a royalty which never puts off its crown, even in sleep. The total absence in him ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... wood and worked—or played— with both hands. Dr. Baumann says it is customary on bright moonlight nights for two lines of men to sit facing each other and to clap—one can hardly call it ring—these bells vigorously, but in good time, accompanying this performance with a monotonous song, while the delighted women and children dance round. The learned doctor evidently sees the picturesqueness of this practice, but notes that the words of the songs are not "tiefsinnige" (profound), as he has heard men for hours singing "The shark ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... another, and still the little house on the cliff showed no signs of life. But one afternoon the monotonous watch came to a sudden end. Lew, in the attic gable, espied a fleet of transports coming down the bay. Instantly he spread ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... your time will be given endeavouring to make the lives of those around you smooth and happy, whilst you cheerfully spend your days in a somewhat monotonous manner. ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... Ladysmith and the outer world, was the first step in a preliminary process of attack and of defence; after which only the opponents settled down to the relatively permanent conditions that constitute the monotonous endurance of a siege. The British, prior to accepting the investment, struck out right and left from day to day, by skirmishing and reconnoitring parties; the Boers on the 9th of November delivered an assault described ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... simulation of romance. After all, marching to the divine drumbeat was simply to follow the precepts ingrained in me as a child, but it is much easier to make a quick charge amid the blare of bugles than to plod along day after day to the monotonous grumble of the drum. I wished that the Professor had been a little more explicit, and yet his last words were always with me. It was as though they were intended for me alone, and I coupled them with his admonition to me that day long ago in the cabin: "Get ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... making machines out of the men, standardization causes a mental state that leads to invention, for the reason that the worker's brain is in most intimate contact with the work, and yet has not been unnecessarily fatigued by the work itself. No more monotonous work could be cited than that of that boy whose sole duty was to operate by hand the valve to the engine, yet he invented the automatic control of the slide valve used throughout ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... not the charm of variety; they are painfully monotonous:—The Greek Church is "dead," and "non-missionary." Certainly non-missionary, if dead! To say of any organization, church or other, that it is dead and non-progressive, is to say the worst that could ...
— Hymns from the Morningland - Being Translations, Centos and Suggestions from the Service - Books of the Holy Eastern Church • Various
... announce some important tidings to the people who thronged around him between the Town Hall and the Franciscan monastery. Perhaps he might have succeeded in forcing a passage through the concourse, but when he heard the name "Ernst Ortlieb," in the monotonous speech of the city crier, he followed the remainder of his notice. It made known to the citizens of Nuremberg that, since the thunderstorm of the preceding night, a maid had been missing from the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... strength to the faint, but He crowns that restoration by making the restored weakling like Himself. 'He fainteth not, neither is weary.' They, too, 'shall ran and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.' In the long drawn out grind of monotonous marching along the common path of daily small duties and uneventful life, they shall not faint; in the rare occasional spurts, occurring in every man's experience, when extraordinary tax is laid on heart and limbs, they shall not be weary. And they ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... promiscuous dances once more begin. It is now after midnight, however, and things are not as they were before. The dancers are dull and heavy—most of them have been drinking hard, and have long ago passed the stage of exhilaration. They dance in monotonous measure, round after round, hour after hour, with eyes fixed upon vacancy, as if they were only half conscious, in a constantly growing stupor. The men grasp the women very tightly, but there will be half an hour together when neither will see ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... and grasp the heavy cane, saw the long arm rise and fall, heard a muffled groan, a sharp cry, a shout of agony; but the long arm rose and fell untiring, merciless, until all sounds were hushed save for a dull moaning and the monotonous sound of blows. ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... shrugged. "This area's getting so peaceful it's monotonous." He unsnapped his accumulator and ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole
... this piece in a monotonous style. Try to express the actual feeling of each quotation; and enter into ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... remembered the reverberation from the banks of the gorge and the perpetual accompaniment of shifting, jostling pebbles. And, moreover—? There was no breeze. That was it! What a vast, still place it was, a monotonous afternoon slumber. And the sky open and blank, except for a sombre veil of haze that had gathered in the ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... run away when I was surrounded by the snakes?" demanded Felix, when the worthy lady's discipline became somewhat monotonous to him. "If I had done what you say I should certainly have been bitten. I did better: I climbed the tree, and bagged the ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... itself. The community where the right spirit prevails will realize that they must make some sacrifices. If a thing is worth while, the proper means must be provided. One cannot have the benefit without paying the cost. It is a question as to which a community will choose: a monotonous, isolated life with the accumulation of some money, or an active, enthusiastic, educational, and social life without so many dollars. It is really a choice between money with little life on the one hand, and a little less money with more ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... them, already halfway across the great room. I saw then that its stature was that of ordinary men. The prolonged booming of the clock died away. I heard the footfall, shuffling upon the polished boards. I heard another sound—a voice, low and monotonous, droning as in prayer. The figure was speaking. It was a woman. And she carried in both hands before her a small object that faintly shimmered—a glass of water. And ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... things besides love-affairs," said Sylvia, in a strange, monotonous tone, almost as if she were deaf and dumb, and had no knowledge of inflections. "There are affairs between the soul and its Maker that are more important than love ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... playing on the piano as we entered. It was a curious composition—very rhythmic, with a peculiar thread of monotonous ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... worst, Scott's style may fairly be called ponderous, loose, monotonous: at its finest, the adequate instrument of a natural story-teller who is most at home when, emerging from his longueur, he writes of grand things ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... Nobility!" These words, the ordinary form of affirmation used by soldiers to their officers, were pronounced in a loud, metallic, monotonous tone, as if the speaker had been an automaton conversing with a brother automaton at a distance of twenty yards. As soon as the words were pronounced the mouth of the machine closed spasmodically, and the head, which had ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... and groom?" she asked, in a bored voice. Brides and grooms had come to be monotonous. She had seen all sorts since she had started on this journey and now loathed the thought of newly married fellow-creatures. She could not understand why John's interest had been ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... use of the distich is monotony; but Dryden avoided this. By a constant variation of cadence, he threw the natural pause now near the start, now near the close, and now in the midst of his verse, and in this way developed a rhythm that never wearies the ear with monotonous recurrence. He employed for this same purpose the hemistich or half-verse, the triplet or three consecutive verses with the same rhyme, and the Alexandrine with its six accents ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... country where the labor necessary to subsistence is, in some way, very disagreeable. In such cases every man and woman will seek to impose the task of production upon another. Among most primitive agricultural peoples, the labor necessary to maintenance is very monotonous and uninteresting, and no freeman will voluntarily perform it. On the contrary, among hunting and fishing peoples, the labor of maintenance is decidedly interesting. It partakes ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... at regular intervals. Articles of diet that experience shows do not agree with the patient should be rigidly excluded from the menu. A varied diet of nutritious character is essential during pregnancy in order to ensure good blood, health, and strength. A monotonous diet, or a diet composed largely of stale tea, coffee, and [78] cake, is not permissible, and may do untold harm. Pastries and desserts of all kinds should be excluded. In the later weeks of pregnancy, because of the large ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... river, between the green banks, the blue sky above, the warm sun shining on him. Had Charley been placed on that barge in health, he would have thought it the nastiest place he had ever seen—confined, dirty, monotonous. But waking to it from fever, when he did not care where he lay, so that he could only lie, he grew reconciled to it. Indeed, Charley began to like the boat; but he was none the less eager for the day that ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... day's march, all the adventurers were asleep—stretched here and there upon the ground. The sentinels alone were awake, and watching—now and then raising along the lines their monotonous cry of "Sentinela alerte!" It was the only sound that for a long time interrupted the ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... Southern Borneo, but has from four to ten rattan strings tied lengthwise on the back. In singing to call good spirits, antohs, especially in case somebody is ill, he constantly beats with a stick on one of the strings in a monotonous way without any change of time. Among the Penihings this shield is specially made for the blian's use, and unless it be new and unused he will not sell it, because the blood of sacrificial animals has been smeared on its surface and the patient would ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... ran away with the countess' first husband. The abandoned husband and wife decided out of spite to unite their fortunes, but found nothing but disappointment and ill-will in this second marriage. And you suffer the consequences. They lead a monotonous, narrow, lonely life for eleven months or more out of the year. One day, you met M. Rossigny, who fell in love with you and suggested an elopement. You did not care for him. But you were bored, your ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... It was a network of hopes; which at the announcement, 'Sept, Rouge, Impair, et Manque,' disappeared like magic gossamer, to be replaced in a moment by new. That all the people there, including himself, could be interested in what to the eye of perfect reason was a somewhat monotonous thing—the property of numbers to recur at certain longer or shorter intervals in a machine containing them—in other words, the blind groping after fractions of a result the whole of which was well known—was one testimony among many of the powerlessness of ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... a poor sailer; we thought it a good run if she made eight knots an hour, so no wonder we did not reach Singapore till May 23, 1848. It was a long monotonous voyage, but we were well occupied, and I do not remember ever finding it dull. The sea was all I ever fancied by way of a companion, and, like all one's best friends, made me happy or unhappy, but was never stupid. Then we had to learn Malay and its Arabic characters, ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... earns his money by ten hours of dull work and spends it in three hours of lurid and unprofitable pleasure in the evening. Both in the school and in the factory, in proportion as his work grows dull and monotonous, his recreation must become more exciting and stimulating. The hopelessness of adding evening classes and social entertainments as a mere frill to a day filled with monotonous and deadening drudgery constantly becomes more apparent to those who are endeavoring ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... people made in tramping over the stone pavements or hurriedly driving over the hard streets, possessed a strangely different quality from the monotonous and grinding roar of the daylight. They were sharp, clear, resonant and emphatic. A single footfall attracted the attention of a listener more than the previous shuffle of a thousand feet. David's,—soft ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... privilege of colouring some of the prettiest eyes in the world. Yellow has a chance only in cases of jaundice and liver complaint, and his colour scheme in such cases is seldom appreciated. Again, green has the contract for the greater bulk of the vegetable life of the globe; but his is a monotonous business, like the painting of miles and miles of palings: grass, grass, grass, trees, trees, trees, ad infinitum; whereas yellow leads a roving, versatile life, and is seldom called upon for such ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... formed by a succession of small hills and intervening valleys; and although the soil is very poor, being principally a mixture of quartzose sand and a large proportion of marine exuviae, yet this tree grows to a considerable size, but covering the surface of the island, gives it a monotonous appearance which is however occasionally relieved by a spreading undescribed species of melaleuca (allied to Melaleuca armillaris, Smith) and the more elegant pittosporum, an arborescent species, also undescribed. In fact, these three trees constitute the timber of the island. ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... their would-be masters confer upon them. I have known instances of attachment and fidelity on the part of Indians towards their masters, but these are exceptional cases. All the actions of the Indian show that his ruling desire is to be let alone; he is attached to his home, his quiet monotonous forest and river life; he likes to go to towns occasionally, to see the wonders introduced by the white man, but he has a great repugnance to living in the midst of the crowd; he prefers handicraft to field labour, and especially dislikes binding himself to regular ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... wysh to make A rackette, nor a fuss, And yet I fayne wolde hie awaye And cease from livyng thus; For it is moste too peaceful here, And sore monotonous." ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... drifted slow at the will of the current, And where the boatman listened, and knew not how, as he listened, Something touched through the years the old lost hopes of his childhood,— Only his sense was filled with low monotonous murmurs, As of a faint-heard prayer, that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... monotonous as one of the enormous American inland seas to a lover of the ocean, to whom the salt brine is as the breath of delight. The fatal facility of the heroic couplet to lapse into diffuseness, has, coupled with a warped anxiety for irreducible concision, been ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... of Judge Saxon's office low-keyed, monotonous voices were talking, and a secret conference was going on. Troubled times were here again for those deep in the Colonel's councils. They were never sure of a permanent place there, but always on the ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... passage?" she said, humming the air with soft modulations; "I have always regarded the monotonous repetition of this strain" (and she indicated it lightly by a few touches of the keys) "as rather a blemish of an otherwise perfect composition. But as you play it, it is anything but monotonous. ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... occasional shouts of the boatmen, Alroy, although he could observe nothing, was conscious that for some time their course lay through a principal thoroughfare of the city; but by degrees the sounds became less frequent, and in time entirely died away, and all that caught his ear was the regular and monotonous stroke of ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... monotonous as it was, fascinated her. There were adobe houses with brown youngsters playing in the scanty shade, much as one sees them in New Mexico and Arizona; there were uprooted rails and the ruins of burned cars—evidences of civil war unknown on our side of the line. There was ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... a burden, were heard approaching: other, and more hesitating steps, mingled with these. At length they reached the massive iron door, and the burden was put down. The thickness of the door was too great, to permit the words spoken without to be heard within; but for some time the monotonous sound of a voice continued—doubtless, a prayer of length and efficacy by the Franciscan. The voice ceased; the chains and bolts were one by one withdrawn; the door slowly swung back, and a glare of flambeaux flashed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 20, No. 567, Saturday, September 22, 1832. • Various
... They take the evidence of Harding and the five Frenchmen with him. Besides, they haven't had a hanging yet, and they're keen for it. You see, things have been pretty monotonous. They haven't located anything big, and they got tired of hunting for Surprise Lake. They did some stampeding the first part of the winter, but they've got over that now. Scurvy is beginning to show up amongst them, too, and they're just ripe ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... German planes. But they circled away from us. Perhaps the French drove them back. However, it was the excitement in the court that caused Henry's remark. For the young people did not deflect their monotonous course about the compound, when the sky-gazers had returned indoors. Around and around they went, talking, talking, talking, with the low insistent murmur of deeply interested people. Their nerves were taut; emotion was ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... his congregation, who were usually accustomed to the somewhat monotonous reading of his uncle, and to ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... sombre; another relieved by porticos with figured friezes resting on tall columns. The irregularities were pleasing; some of them were stately; and they were all helped not a little by domes and pavilions without which the roof lines would have been monotonous. ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... ye,' Teen said in her monotonous voice, and without a smile or brightening of her face. 'Fine dry nicht. We're ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... Jean had been taken, when a mere babe, after his parents had been killed and scalped by Indians. Madame Roussillon, a professed invalid, whose appetite never failed and whose motherly kindness expressed itself most often through strains of monotonous falsetto scolding, was a woman of little education and no refinement; while her husband clung tenaciously to his love of books, especially to the romances most in vogue when he ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... difficult method of discovery by comparative development. The word phrenology has become so identified with his incomplete discoveries, that it may be laid aside in the present stage of our progress. There is no monotonous repetition of function in nervous structures, and the possibility of subdivision of structure and function is limited only by our own ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... mounted so far above the level of the waters that they only make a distant murmur—when there is not a breath of wind stirring any thing—it is strange with how many mysterious voices the mountain yet speaks. Sometimes there is a monotonous and continuous rumble as if some huge stone, many miles off, were loosened from its position, and tumbling from rock to rock. Then comes a loud distinct report as if a rock had been split; and faint echoes of strange wailings touch the ear, as if this solemn desert ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... presenting all the points of a lesson on the same plane of emphasis, with a failure to distinguish between the important and the unimportant. Minor details and incidental aspects of the topic often receive the same degree of stress that is given to more important points. This results in a state of monotonous plodding through so much material without responding to its varying shades of meaning and value. Not only does this type of teaching fail to lodge in the mind of the pupil the larger and more important truths which ought to become a permanent part of his mental equipment, but it also ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... sense of the Big House was solidarity. It defied earthquakes. It was planted for a thousand years. The honest concrete was overlaid by a cream-stucco of honest cement. Again, this very sameness of color might have proved monotonous to the eye had it not been saved by the many flat roofs of ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... she and her mother were living, the mother acting as assistant to the manager, the young person occupied with enduring her monotonous existence and with watching the boarders, there were two actresses, a mother and daughter. The daughter, whose name was Blanche, was only a year or two older than the young person whose eyes followed her so eagerly, because Blanche was one of those marvelous creatures whose real ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... no contempt within his breast. The least of them interested him, and, too, there were those with whom he always made friends easily, and there were his hereditary enemies whose presence gave a spice to life that might otherwise have become humdrum and monotonous. ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... absolutely still except for the monotonous voice and the breathing of the crowd. Oh, yes, and the flies. It was not that I forgot the flies, only their buzzing was the ceaseless accompaniment to everything ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... pressure of the will driving a reluctant and protesting set of nerves and muscles to their daily tasks. The day labourer comes home from his work with his muscular strength exhausted, but he has to go back to the same monotonous task on the morrow: his family has to be fed and clothed and he cannot permit himself to say, "I am tired and will stay away from work to-day." The business or professional man comes back from his office with a wearied brain that makes any thought an effort, but he must ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... is not formidable in the flesh, the evil that he does lives after him. Freeman's view of Froude is not now held by any one whose opinion counts; yet still there seems to rise, as from a brazen head of Ananias, dismal and monotonous chaunt, "He was careless of the truth, he did not make history the business of his life." He did make history the business of his life, and he cared more for truth than for anything else in the world. Freeman's biographer has given no clue to his imperfect sympathy with Froude. Green, true ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... was quiet and monotonous until after we left Salt Lake City at dawn this morning. Nothing happened until we were about a hundred miles east of Reno. We had taken elevation to cross the Stillwater Mountains and were skimming low over ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... accustomed to this monotonous life by his first queen, and he did not care for any other. The new Queen, upon arriving, soon found this out, and found also that if she wished to rule him, she must keep him in the same room, confined as he had been kept by her predecessor. Alberoni was the only person ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... life. It proved to be, in one respect, a cruel sacrifice—her hair never grew plentifully again. When it did reappear, it had completely lost its charming mingled hues of deep red and brown; it was now of one monotonous light-brown color throughout. At first sight, Mary's Scotch friends hardly knew ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... need of it. The system pourtrayed in this book is intended to act on all the faculties of a child, especially the highest, and to strengthen them at the time the mere animal part of his nature is weak. The existing schools were not found fit to take our children when they left us. The dull, monotonous, sleepy, heavy system pursued, was quite unadapted to advance such pupils. At this point of the history much damage was done to our plans. The essence or kernel was omitted and the mere shell retained, to make infant schools harmonise with the existing ones, ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... an aged and wrinkled woman, in blue cotton and a white mutch, who was placidly smoking a short cutty. This creature, bowed and satiate with monotonous years, took the pipe from her indrawn lips, and asked ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... are crowned with a slight shrubby vegetation, the bright verdure of which, separated from the dark blue colour of the sea by their glittering sandy beaches, formed a pleasing contrast to the dull, monotonous appearance of the mainland. These islets are in fact only the dry parts of a shoal, on which the sand has accumulated, and formed a soil to receive and nourish the seeds of plants, which have either been drifted on shore by the tide, or been brought ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... still went on, the gentle voice growing a little weary and monotonous, and the white eyelids falling a little heavily ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... the Americans in particular, the British, when engaged in expeditions of this nature, always rest their hopes of success upon valor rather than on numbers." These comments read particularly well when it is remembered that the assailants outnumbered the assailed in the proportion of 5 to 1. It is monotonous work to have to supplement a history by a running commentary on James' mistakes and inventions; but it is worth while to prove once for all the utter unreliability of the author who is accepted in Great Britain as the great authority ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... set us free from sordidness, that teach our minds versatility and sympathy, that create for us hobbies and avocations of worth, that rest and refresh us. If we must be ocean liners all day, plodding between known and monotonous ports, at least we may be tramp ships at night, cargoed with strange stuffs and trafficking ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... and again, but there was no response, and he finally concluded that it was rather a monotonous manner of passing the time and ceased, and again gave himself ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... writing of these notes gets monotonous as there is nothing much doing. Artillery duels are constant, and during the last few days the naval guns have fired more than usual. Occasionally a Taube flies over us and drops bombs, but such things ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... however, to be quite undisturbed. I was awakened, at the first slight peep of dawn, by a sound from an apartment beneath our own—a plaintive, monotonous chant, rising and then falling in a sort of mournful cadence. It seemed to me a wail of something unearthly—so wild—so strange—so unaccountable. In terror I awoke my husband, who reassured me by telling me it was the morning salutation of the ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... table. But all this had ceased to satisfy her; she felt that there was a void somewhere or other, an empty place provocative of yawns. Her life dragged on, devoid of occupation, and successive days only brought back the same monotonous hours. Tomorrow had ceased to be; she lived like a bird: sure of her food and ready to perch and roost on any branch which she came to. This certainty of food and drink left her lolling effortless for whole ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... their lost freight, lay in long successive curves,—the fringes and overlappings of the sea. At high noon the shadow of a seagull's wing, or a sudden flurry and gray squall of sandpipers, themselves but shadows, was all that broke the monotonous glare ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte |
