"Monotonously" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... necessary to erect the ordinary Chinese civil administration. Thirty or forty miles due west of the town cultivation practically ceases; and then nothing meets the eye but the rolling grasslands of Mongolia, with their sparse encampments of nomad horsemen and shepherds which stretch so monotonously into the infinities of ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... not do—he had made himself a moderately rich man entirely by writing poetry. No theme recurs more insistently and suggestively in Popiana than Pope's wealth. Faced with the nasty fact that if one wrote well enough, there was a public to support one, they could only accuse Pope monotonously of venality ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... wonder—in a phrase, that "soberness of mind" which William Lyon Phelps sees as the hallmark of Conrad and Hardy, and which even the most stupid cannot escape in Dreiser. The normal American novel, even in its most serious forms, takes colour from the national cocksureness and superficiality. It runs monotonously to ready explanations, a somewhat infantile smugness and hopefulness, a habit of reducing the unknowable to terms of the not worth knowing. What it cannot explain away with ready formulae, as in the later Winston Churchill, it ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... fourteen miles to the Coast-guardsman (kit and all), who was coming to his spell of duty there, and had we not just now parted company? So it was; but the journey seemed to glide down into the placid sea, with other chafe and trouble, and for the moment nothing was so calmly and monotonously real under the sunlight as the gentle rising and falling of the water with its freight, the regular turning of the windlass aboard the Lighter, and the slight obstruction ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... roof between my head and the sky sence I left this house," the old man's big voice rumbled on monotonously, hollowly. "I tromped the ridges over to'ds Yeller Old Bald. I left mankind and their works behind me, and I have done a power of thinking; but I can't make this thing ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... and compel the runner to stop the train at some lonely spot on the road. She made me tell her all the details of such robberies as I knew about, and, though I had never been concerned in any, I was able to describe several, which, as they were monotonously alike, I confess I colored up a bit here and there, in an attempt to make them interesting to her. I seemed to succeed, for she kept the subject going even after we had left the table and were smoking our cigars in the observation saloon. Lord Ralles had a lot to say ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... would engage, like the schoolboy, in active sports, thereby giving to their limbs, which, in rural occupation and mechanical labour, are somewhat too monotonously employed, and contract the stiffness and experience the waste of a premature old age, the activity and freedom of an athlete, a cricketer, or a hunter. Nor do these occupations only conduce to the health of the body, they ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... great plain, we had to wade monotonously through an ocean of wheat. How I longed to have with me some of the blasphemers of the Holy Land, who tell us that it is now a blighted and cursed land, and who quote Scripture amiss to show that this is a fulfilment ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... age has rewritten the annals of the world, and set its own impress on the traditions of humanity. In no period has the burden of the past weighed so heavily upon the present, or the interpretation of its speculative import troubled the heart so profoundly, so intimately, so monotonously. ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... had vanished to the north, to perilous adventures in the unknown; and the mounted men were grieved to the very depths of their souls to be left thus behind to stagnate on this sun-baked Sahara. The days passed monotonously, with perpetual grooming and exercising, and the noonday hours spent beneath the ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... prompt breakfast at 7:15 to the long hours with his books in the evening. In short, Doctor Queerington was a sort of well- regulated human clock, announcing his opinions as irrevocably as the striker announces the hours, and ticking along so monotonously between times that one almost forgot he ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... monotonously enough. The Etheling is now able to leave his room, but the stormy weather, with its torrents of rain, makes it impossible for him to leave the house. The river has overflowed its banks; all the country around is like a lake. ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... women had uncovered their faces and gone inside the lodge. But old Jim Bridger sat down, back against a cottonwood, and watched the lopping figure of his friend jog slowly out into the desert. He himself was singing now, chanting monotonously an old Indian refrain that lingered in his soul from the days ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... have discovered that there is some one sore to be healed, one defect to be repaired; and you have rubbed your spectacles, and got your hand fairly into that recess between your frill and your waistcoat. But to go to you cut and dry, monotonously, regularly, book and exercise in hand; to see the mournful patience with which you tear yourself from that great volume of Cardan in the very honeymoon of possession; and then to note those mild eyebrows gradually distend themselves into perplexed diagonals over some false quantity or some barbarous ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... her, that she looked frail and worn, as if she had been ill. His first words he scarcely heard and never remembered. He had not come to make a defense, but a naked, bitter confession. As he made it low and monotonously, in brief, harsh words, holding no sparing for himself, Rebecca stood with her hand upon the mantle looking at him with simple directness. There was no rebuke in her look, but there was weariness. It ...
— Lodusky • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of her monotonously comfortable place on the hearthrug, goes out into the world, and gets nothing more than experience for her pains. She finds the other animals occupied with their own concerns, and enjoying life because they do not go beyond them. Not a very elevating paper, perhaps, but better ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... But he was going mad with fever and thirst. He plodded on uncomplaining. He did not want to speak, not to anybody. There were two gulls, like flakes of water and snow, over the river. The scent of green rye soaked in sunshine came like a sickness. And the march continued, monotonously, ...
— The Prussian Officer • D. H. Lawrence
... the theatres are thickest. It was on a Saturday afternoon and the walk was crowded with amusement seekers. Presently in the press I observed a queer old fellow carrying on his back a monstrous pack of umbrellas. He rang a bell monotonously and professed himself a mender of umbrellas. He can hardly have expected to find a customer in the crowd. Even a blinking eye—and these street merchants are shrewd in these matters—must have told him that in all this hurrying mass of people, the thoughts of no one ran toward umbrellas. ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... proposition it seems to be. They appear, to judge from the excerpts collected in this book, to have had a vague but sincere apprehension that in some quite undefined way economic equality would really tend to make people monotonously alike, tediously similar, not merely as to bank accounts, but as to qualities in general, with the result of obscuring the differences in natural endowments, the interaction of which lends all the zest to social intercourse. It seems almost incredible that the obvious ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... like ribbons into grey folds of buildings; rows of lamps, scattered at first, drew into a single point of dancing flame; towers and chimneys seemed to jump from place to place as though they were trying to keep in time with the train; a bell rang monotonously; wreaths of smoke rose lazily against ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... orderly,—and more, - "The Waves behind impel the Waves before;" Monotonously musical they glide, Till Couplet unto Couplet hath replied. But turn to Homer! How his Verses sweep! Surge answers Surge and Deep doth call on Deep; This Line in Foam and Thunder issues forth, ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... and endurance. The work in which he most delighted was precisely that which most labourers hated, before threshing machines came in despite the action of the "mobs"—threshing out corn with the flail. From earliest dawn till after dark he would sit or stand in a dim, dusty barn, monotonously pounding away, without an interval to rest, and without dinner, and with no food but a piece of bread and a pinch of salt. Without the salt he would not eat the bread. An hour after all others had ceased from work he ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... to take up his quarters here, as he could live on his pension in one place as well as another. My proposition was eagerly accepted, and I took the command, as he expresses it, whilst he did his best to cheer up the General, and the winter has passed less monotonously than I anticipated. ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... sincerest thinkers. Carlyle was the loadstar who drew men of renown from all quarters of the civilized globe to this somewhat narrow, dark little street in Chelsea. The houses are extraordinarily dull, of dark brick, monotonously alike; they face a row of small trees on the west side, and Carlyle's house is about the middle, numbered 24 (formerly 5). A medallion portrait was put up by his admirers on the wall; inscribed beneath it is: "Thomas Carlyle lived at 24, Cheyne Row, 1834-81." The house ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... see that her father was watching the gathering group with a serious look in his eyes, but he glanced down somewhat hastily at his papers when he met her gaze. Then the voices grew less distinct, and that of the man dictating broke monotonously through them until a steward approached her father with an ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... progress solely determined by Ahab's level log and line; the Pequod held on her path towards the Equator. Making so long a passage through such unfrequented waters, descrying no ships, and ere long, sideways impelled by unvarying trade winds, over waves monotonously mild; all these seemed the strange calm things preluding some riotous and desperate scene. At last, when the ship drew near to the outskirts, as it were, of the Equatorial fishing-ground, and in the deep darkness that goes before the dawn, was sailing by a cluster of rocky islets; the watch —then ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... handsome suite, but they were like three mourners. Ma and Pa were soberly discussing the news about Buddy, Allegheny was staring in somber meditation at nothing. The girl was bitter, rebellious, for never had she felt so utterly alone as at this moment. To that question which monotonously repeated itself, she could form no answer. Did he care, or was it all ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... and the croupier monotonously raked in the winnings of the bank, Paul suddenly divined the motive which had induced the lady to come there. Undoubtedly it was the hope that she might win enough to satisfy the cruel demands of those who ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... enough—without discord anyhow, however monotonously—until Maisie and Phoebe began to look a little like women; which happened, to say the truth, at least a year before their father consented to recognise the fact, and permit them to appear in the robes of maturity. About that time the young males of the ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... sky was covered with clouds, and there was beginning to be quite some wind—indeed, it may have been a corner of the tent which was whipping monotonously in each rising gust ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... cared for anything, and was only eager to get to work, to enter the field of action as soon as possible. He spoke harshly, angrily, but straight to the point like the blow of an axe, his words falling from his pale lips monotonously, ponderously, like the savage bark of a grim old watch dog. He said that he was well acquainted with both the peasants and factory men of the neighbourhood, and that there were possible people among them. Instanced a certain Eremy, who, he declared, was prepared to go anywhere at a moment's notice. ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... my own French Canadian experiences, and so I must confess that once installed in my little room chez Delle Josephine Boulanger, nothing whatever of any interest took place until I had been there quite a week. I lived most regularly and monotonously; rising at eight I partook of coffee made by my landlady, accompanied by tinned fruit for which I formed a great taste. Then I went out, getting my mid-day meal where I could, eggs and bacon at a farmhouse, or tough steak at the hotel, and ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... dragged on monotonously. The noise of the crowd in the courtyard was drowned by the loud strains of the massed bands of the regiments in Ludwigsburg, who had been commanded to play before the windows of the banqueting-hall. The Landhofmeisterin's musicians with their harps, violins, and flutes were ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... remote from the river and the roofs. From the window—and from the love in the room—the boy looked out upon an alien world, heard the distant murmur, monotonously proceeding, night ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... asleep, worn out with the fatigue of hurrying from place to place during the last two days; but his slumber was not a heavy one, and he heard the disconsolate moaning of the wind upon the sandy wastes, and the long waves rolling in monotonously upon the flat shore. Mingling with these dismal sounds, the melancholy thoughts engendered by his joyless journey repeated themselves in never-varying succession in the chaos of his slumbering brain, and made themselves into visions of things that never had been and never could be upon ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... And she replied slowly, monotonously, for now she seemed to have lost even the power of suffering pain. It was all so hopeless, ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... field mouse where the ground birds made their nests, and there the piping of birds joined with the song of the bullets. Except for occasional snipers' shots at the sight of anything moving on the enemy's parapet, the day wore monotonously on—when to expose the head for half a minute ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... speak—taking no notice of me when I asked him if he felt better now—to talk in that strange, absent, far-away tone that awes one. He told his story mechanically, monotonously—in set words, as I believe now, as he had often told it before; if not to others, then to the loneliness of the bush. And he used the names of people and places that I had never heard of—just as if I knew them ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... the Mediterranean. This gigantic work, created by the genius and perseverance of LESSEPS, which is unsurpassed by the many marvels of construction in the land of the Pharaohs, has not a very striking appearance, for the famous canal runs, like a small river with low banks, through the monotonously yellow plain of the desert. There are no sluices. No bold rock-blastings stand as monuments of difficulties overcome. But proud must every child of our century be when he gazes on this proof that private enterprise can in our day accomplish what world-empires in former times were unable to ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... the white cabin and began betting on the throws. The game was listless. The master of the launch pointed out places along the shores where wildcat stills were located. The crap-shooters, negro and white, squatted in a circle on the cabin floor, snapping their fingers and calling their points monotonously. One of the negro girls in the negro cabin took an apple out of her lunch sack and began eating it, holding it in her palm after the fashion of negroes rather than in her fingers, as is the custom of ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... monotonously easy. It could not be otherwise, for there was no landscape to vary the stages of ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... a hard and dry, but not unkind voice. In fact, the rigidity of her aspect, the hardness of her voice, and the singular blackness of her costume, seemed to be too monotonously uniform and resolute not to indicate something willful or unhealthy in the woman's condition, as if the whole had been rather ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... of extensive habitation equatorial Africa is the worst. The climate is not only monotonously hot, but for the greater part of each year is excessively moist. Periodic rains bring deluge and periodic tornadoes play havoc. The dry seasons give partial relief, but they bring occasional blasts from the ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... hills and forests and everything. She was not used to driving, and this was the first time she had driven in state and looked down on things. All those dreary hills that on other days stretched so heavily and monotonously in front of her, and had often been too much for her small feet, today lay down and said: "Yes, Ditte, you may drive over us with pleasure!" Granny did not share in all this, but she could feel the sun on her old back and ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... of Okar there was no suggestion of sound. It must have been in the ghostly hours between midnight and the dawn—though a cold terror that had gripped Maison would not let him get up to look at the clock that ticked monotonously on ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... assembly had been held, as I have suggested, of the young men from the eastern waters, there would have been no such uniformity of costume as now makes an audience of men in America, or in Europe, so monotonously black ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... at each other, unable to realise what had happened to them. One of the windows of the drawing-room was open, and the subdued buzz of women's voices came through it to the terrace. Monotonously, exasperatingly, one querulous voice sent a fretful question through the bewildered speeches of the women ... "But what's it about? That's what I want to know. I've asked everybody, but nobody seems to know!" Some one made ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... instead of accompanying the Column as I usually do. The result was that I was able to join up with the Veterinary section attached to the brigade. We moved at our own pace, resting our horses where we wanted to and giving them a good drink and feed en route, instead of jogging on monotonously with the Column. Our horses were thoroughly fit and full of life when we reached our destination, and good for another twenty-five miles if necessary. You would not believe how much horses benefit from care and attention as ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... came hurriedly out of the door and entered a closed carriage. It drove off instantly. Then everything went on as usual. The two men stood there, watchful, expectant. The town seemed unusually still. A flag on a two-story building flapped monotonously. Then a man across the street ran out of his store and pointed upward. A rope was thrown from an upper window of the Montgomery Block. Someone picked it up and carried it to The Bulletin Building, pulled it taut. On a strip of linen had been hastily inscribed the following announcement, ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... the untidy, noisy room behind him, of his sister Dorothy who, now a Squaw of a quite genuine and realistic kind, was crying at the top of her voice: "I don't care. I will have it if I want to. You're not to, Roger," and of Timothy, his baby brother, who, moved by his sister's cries, howled monotonously, ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... Maran-atha, the Lord cometh, seems hardly called for, seeing that marrano is Spanish for pig. The 'old Christians' learned to use the word as a term of contempt for the 'new Christians,' or converted Jews and their descendants; but not too monotonously, for they often interchanged it with the fine old crusted opprobrium of the name Jew. Still, many Marranos held the highest secular and ecclesiastical prizes in Spain, and ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... proceeded monotonously, each party repeating over and over again the phrases of his own argument. I was very glad that Jos did not know me to be a witness of the making of the bet; otherwise I should assuredly have been ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... on the ground—with carved ceilings, rich candelabra, heavily framed pictures, mighty furniture, statuary, and superb and nonchalant menials engaged in the pleasant task of shutting away those interiors from the vulgar gaze. The spectacle continued furlong upon furlong, monotonously. There was no end to the succession of palaces of the wealthy. Then it would be interrupted while Mr. Prohack crossed a main thoroughfare, where scores of young women struggled against a few men for ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... sleeping under the hand of death. Her bosom moved regularly, her parted lips disclosed the even white of her teeth; she was safe from fears and immune from sorrows now at least, and I thanked God. I got up and pushed my way through the bushes towards the beach on which the high tide rumbled monotonously. Each moment the light grew stronger, and I had walked only a little way before I was enabled to make out the loom of the yacht some half-mile or more away. I mounted the rise behind our sleeping-place, and now perceived that the land ran upwards ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... the great tiger-owls yelped and hallooed across the valley; all night the spectral whip-poor-will whispered its husky, frightened warning. And long after midnight a tiny bird awoke and sang monotonously for ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... halves he examined carefully and let fall to the floor. At first he sampled from the different cases, then deliberately emptied one case at a time. The heap on the floor grew larger. The coffee boiled over and the smoke of the burning beefsteak filled the cabin. He chopped steadfastly and monotonously till the last case ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... Kernan, disclaiming any lot or part in Ohio's motion, declared that others than the New York delegation must overcome the sensitiveness of the chairman. Still, he said, Horatio Seymour ought to abide the action of the convention. These speeches over, the roll-call monotonously continued, each State voting as before until Wisconsin changed from Doolittle to Seymour. In an instant the chairman of each State delegation, jumping to his feet, changed its vote to the New Yorker. The pandemonium was greater than before, in the midst of ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... bulb of the thermometer, these anxious and loving housewives feed the lamp and keep the fire burning on the hearth. Dressing the skins of the deer, they keep their husbands well shod and clothed. The long winter of eight months passes monotonously away; the men, accustomed to a life of excitement, chafe and grow surly under their enforced imprisonment; but the women, by their kind offices and sweet words, act as a constant sedative upon these morose outbreaks. The hunters, it is ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... late to select. Mr. and Mrs. Budlong with their lengthy list in hand sprinted up one aisle and down another, pointing, prodding, rarely pausing to say "How much?" but monotonously chanting: "Gimme this! Gimme that! Gimme two of these! Gimme six of them! Gimme that! Gimme this! ...
— Mrs. Budlong's Chrismas Presents • Rupert Hughes
... caresses. As this last lady's part had not yet been assigned to anyone, Father Cossard had got up to read it, and he was now figuring away in Bosc's arms and emphasizing it despite himself. At this point, while the rehearsal was dragging monotonously on, Fauchery suddenly jumped from his chair. He had restrained himself up to that moment, but now his nerves got the better ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... slope of middle age. She was really a "gentlewoman," in the self-pitying and self-praising sense in which those who advertise themselves as such use that word. She was all the social forms, all the proprieties. She was deferentially autocratic; her voice was monotonously dignified and cultured; and she was tired, which she had a right to be, for she had been in this business of being a gentlewomanly hired aunt to raw young girls for over a quarter ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... in the silence of the Central Alps amongst the savage wilderness of rock and snow. Another characteristic effect of the High Alps often presents itself when one has been climbing for two or three hours, with nothing in sight but the varying wreaths of mist that chased each other monotonously along the rocky ribs up whose snow-covered backbone we were laboriously fighting our way. Suddenly there is a puff of wind, and looking round we find that we have in an instant pierced the clouds, and emerged, as it were, on the surface of the ocean of vapour. Beneath ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... scanty gowns of plain blue cotton, heavy copper bracelets, and nose ornaments of brass, which held in place the veils that covered the lower part of their faces but did not conceal the beauty spots tattooed on their foreheads. A funeral procession, with professional mourners chanting monotonously a hymn to Allah, followed a casket borne on the shoulders of men. And these curious scenes, which we tried to catch with the camera, formed but unimportant parts in an ever-moving picture in which were intermingled the costumes, colors, and facial characteristics of ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... droned on monotonously. Once Mr. Magee interrupted to engage Lou Max in spirited conversation. For, through the squares of light outside the windows, he had seen the girl of the station pass hurriedly down the balcony, the snowflakes falling white ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... beyond the shallow bed of reeds to the westward, in which Oxley lost the Macquarie; but as suddenly and as mysteriously the river ran out, and they were as completely baffled as Oxley had been. Dry on all sides, nothing was found but stony ridges or open forest, the country was monotonously level, and no sign of a river. Creek after creek they followed, only to lose it in a marsh. Suddenly they found themselves on the banks of a noble river, and from its size and saltness, Sturt conjectured ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... unheard-of innovation in this direction, the first movement of his Sinfonia eroica: how does this movement appear if played in the strict tempo of one of the Allegros of Mozart's overtures? But do our conductors ever dream of taking it otherwise? Do they not always proceed monotonously from the first bar to the last? With the members of the "elegant" tribe of Capellmeisters the "conception" of the tempo consists of an application of the Mendelssohnian maxim "chi va presto ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... through which it had many miles to travel before reaching civilization again. The view was shut in. The trees waved overhead and stretched along the road endlessly, too thick for the eye to penetrate far. The coach rumbled on monotonously. The smell of pines and other green things came sweet and odorous, but the day was hot, and everything was dry; the dust rose and the sunbeams poured down. Wych Hazel languished for a change. Only a red squirrel now and then reminded her ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... language. He has so cut down, shorn, and trimmed the broad old oak of Shakspeare's speech, that it seems another tree altogether. Everything is so terse, so clear, so pointed, so elaborately easy, so monotonously brilliant, that you must pause to remember. "These are the very copulatives, diphthongs, and adjectives of Hooker, Milton, and Jeremy Taylor." The change at first is pleasant, and has been generally popular; but those who know and love our early ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... romantic careers illuminate the monotonously sordid annals of the Latin Empire, threatened from within by the feuds of the rival baronial houses, from without by the Bulgarians, the Greek despots of Epirus, and the Greek Emperors of Nicaea. Henry ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... pathological details of their ancestral history on both sides of the hearth. His patients, indeed, were not individuals, but families. There were cleverer doctors in the place, doctors of more refined appearance and manners, doctors less monotonously and loudly gay; but old Hawley, with his knowledge of pedigrees and his unique instinctive sympathy with the idiosyncrasies of local character, could hold his own against the most assertive young M.D. that ever came out of Edinburgh to monopolise ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... Crawfish Creek ran near Thompson City. Thompson City was in a Western State, but now is in a Middle one. It was always in the midst of a great country—accepting local testimony and a rank growth of corn and politicians as the tests of greatness. The earth there was monotonously parched in summer, and monotonously muddy at all other times. The forests were gigantic, the air carbonic, and when the citizens wished to give Thompson City the highest commendation, they did so by saying that "fevernagur" was worse in ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... back room, and said comprehensively, "Burning Daylight's on the tear." And the men who entered remained, and kept the barkeepers busy. The gamblers took heart of life, and soon the tables were filled, the click of chips and whir of the roulette-ball rising monotonously and imperiously above the hoarse rumble of men's voices and their oaths and ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... by their relation to Him. In particular I venture to say, do not let occasional, temporal, local topics, even very important ones, dislodge Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ of the whole Bible, from His royal place in your preaching; and do not forget continually (though not monotonously) to keep to the front the fact that He is the sinner's Saviour. More will be said later about that point of view, but I state it at once. Speak indeed of Christ as Exemplar, Ideal, Friend, Man of Men; but do not let your brethren forget that, "first ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... long and tiresome journey in a second-class compartment from the farther end of Brittany to Paris, even under the best of circumstances. To Jack Bragdon and Milly, with the vivid memory of their personal wreck on that rocky coast, it was monotonously painful. They dared not ask each other,—"What next?" At first Milly thought there could be no next, though she was really glad not to be making this journey alone with her child, as she had expected to do. To the man who sat in the opposite corner with closed ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... up and walked around the office. A typewriter was clacking monotonously, the telephone bell was constantly ringing. ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... and from the villages in the plain the Egyptians came pouring out to visit their dead in the desert cemeteries as I passed by to visit the dead in the tombs far off on the horizon. Women, swathed in black, gathered in groups and jumped monotonously up and down, to the accompaniment of stained hands clapping, and strange and weary songs. Tiny children blew furiously into tin trumpets, emitting sounds that were terribly European. Men strode seriously by, or ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... nomad shepherd, now by the sumpter mule of the itinerant merchant, now by the wagon-trains of over-mountain settlers, now by the steam engine panting up the steep grade. Nowhere does history repeat itself so monotonously, yet so interestingly as in these mountain gates. In the Pass of Roncesvalles, notching the western Pyrenees between Pamplona in Spain and St. Etienne in France, fell the army of Charlemagne surprised and beset by the mountain tribes in ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... society but a drinking and crime-haunted husband, and the ignorant negroes who served him,—society varied now and then by one or two men revolting enough in speech and aspect to drive Hitty to her own room, where, in a creaking chair, she rocked monotonously back and forth, watching the snapping fire, and dreaming dreams of a past that seemed now ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... slowly and monotonously. We were visited from time to time by Jarette or one of his men, but always with a strong guard outside, in which I noted Blane and Dumlow, but they were not allowed to enter the cabin or hold any communication with us, for they had not ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... to look for the depressed waiter, whom he dispatched in quest of a vehicle, and then returned to the rustic shelter, where Clarissa sat like a statue, watching the rain pouring down monotonously in a perpetual drizzle. They heard the wheels of the carriage almost immediately. Mr. Fairfax offered his arm to Clarissa, and led her out of the garden; the obsequious waiter on the other side holding an umbrella over ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... the central fire; then falling back in a half-circle, torches lifted, while the masked figures banked solidly behind, chanted monotonously: ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... spoke, he casually tapped the barometer at the hall-door, as was his habit. To his surprise, the dial gave a great leap downward. Something was wrong with it evidently, for the sky was as monotonously blue as it had been all day, and not a leaf stirred in the trees. However, Mr Armstrong took the precaution to return to his own room for a moment to consult the barometer there. It, too, answered him with ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... conjunction with her sister Sophia (1797-1805). Byron read it when he was fourteen, was profoundly impressed by it, and made it the basis of "Werner," the only drama of his which had any stage success. "Kruitzner" is conceived with some power, but monotonously and ponderously written. The historic period is the close of the Thirty Years' War. It does not depend mainly for its effect upon the time-honored "Gothic" machinery, though it makes a moderate use of the sliding panel and ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... a large open fireplace, the household cooking-pots swinging from an iron crane. A sturdy table occupied the centre of the floor, and benches or blocks of wood were ranged as chairs around the walls. The inevitable cradle, consecrated to the service of two, three, or four generations, pounded monotonously to and fro upon the uneven floor, and by the low-set window the thrifty housewife wove her flaxen homespun in a venerable loom. Saints, in pictures of fervid tints, looked down serenely from low, unplastered walls, while from ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... stops had been pushed back, the musical echoes vibrated no longer; and the bare room, filled with garish sunshine, was so still that the drowsy droning of a bee high up on the dusty sash of the barred window, became monotonously audible. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... down the ladder, and disappeared into the sea. A few bubbles rose where he sank. Some of the other slaves peered curiously over the side. At the prow of the galley sat a shark-charmer, beating monotonously upon a drum. ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... left to drown," he added. But they went on trying to keep the brig afloat as long as possible, and working the pumps constantly on insufficient food, mostly raw, till "yesterday evening," he continued monotonously, "just as the sun went down, the men's ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... remarkable to notice that this romance of history, so far from making him more partial or untrustworthy, was the only thing that made him moderately just. His reason was entirely one-sided and fanatical. It was his imagination that was well-balanced and broad. He was monotonously certain that only Whigs were right; but it was necessary that Tories should at least be great, that his heroes might have foemen worthy of their steel. If there was one thing in the world he hated it was a High Church Royalist parson; yet when ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... voice, Quintana cursed monotonously as he gazed into the fire. In Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, he cursed Clinch. After a little while he remembered Clinch's daughter, and he cursed her, elaborately, thoroughly, wishing her black mischance awake ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... down her cheeks. She no longer had difficulty in breathing, and one thing recalled another, and fell easily in one long tone from her lips. She probably did not now know what she was saying, but could not stop talking. She began at the beginning and repeated the words, evenly and monotonously, like one who is carried away and ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... doubt their verity, and opened his eyes slowly, half expecting to see the cool, green campus, and the big college buildings. The slanting sunlight met him full in the face, and the black pendant swung monotonously, from side to side, as before. He wearily closed his ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... devotion by subdued squeals from under their masters' regardless heels. A brindle-brown pig wriggled its way among the crowd, grunting with persistent uneasiness; while a couple of wandering cows, unmolested by the strangely restless dogs, passed and repassed the railroad crossing, bellowing monotonously. The horses at the station exhibited curious discomfort; and Donny de Mone's venerable nag "Ben Bow" astonished the community by pulling at ...
— A Lost Hero • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward and Herbert D. Ward
... I ever reached home alive, I would never go to sea again. If I just got home, alive, I would be willing even to tie up brown parcels in grocery cord, for the rest of my life, to sweep out a store day after day, regularly and monotonously, ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... since I saw you has passed as monotonously and unbroken as ever; nothing but teach, teach, teach, from morning till night. The greatest variety I ever have is afforded by a letter from you, or by meeting with a pleasant new book. The 'Life of Oberlin,' and ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... passed monotonously enough that second day, yet not unpleasantly: there were a thousand things to observe in the woods and marshes around, ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... sentence, which contain changes of thought, cannot possibly be given effectively in the same key. Let us repeat, every big change of thought requires a big change of pitch. What the beginning student will think are big changes of pitch will be monotonously alike. Learn to speak some thoughts in a very high tone—others in a very, very low tone. DEVELOP RANGE. It is almost impossible to use ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... the space they could see, full speed ahead. The water below them began to move more rapidly. It began to pass by with the speed of ground past an express train. And continually, monotonously, there were roarings which climaxed and ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... Fedya spent four whole years. Often he would sit in the corner with his "Emblems"; he sat there endlessly; there was a scent of geranium in the low pitched room, the solitary candle burnt dim, the cricket chirped monotonously, as though it were weary, the little clock ticked away hurriedly on the wall, a mouse scratched stealthily and gnawed at the wall-paper, and the three old women, like the Fates, swiftly and silently plied their knitting needles, the shadows raced after their hands and quivered strangely ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... was bowing to his men, and they were responding with strange raucous cries compounded of the roars of wild beasts and the pants of locomotives. Hu! Hu! they roared in savage unison, Hu! Hu! monotonously, endlessly, making strange motions. Hoarser and more bestial grew the frightful roars, wilder and wilder grew the movements, the head-gear falling off, faces growing black, the chief standing silent with his hand on his breast, but in his pale face a tense look of ever-gathering excitement. And ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... again the young engineer tried to side-track business in the interests of something a little less banal to the two women; but the president was implacable and refused to be pulled out of the narrow rut of details; was still running monotonously and raspingly in it when Kenneth glanced at his watch and suggested that the time for action ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... excitement and hurry and the weariness of sorrow were beginning to tell upon the two travellers. The road was heavy with dust and the horse plodded monotonously through it. With the drone of the insects and the glare of the afternoon sun, it was not strange that little by little a great drowsiness came over Marcia and her head began to droop like a poor wilted flower until ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... make marbles," Mr. Czenki repeated monotonously. "Yes, it had to come, but—but imagine the insuperable difficulties that one brain had to surmount!" He passed a thin hand across his flushed brow, and was ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... rays streaming from the vestibules; Cafes glittering like jeweled teeth; High-flung signs Blinking yellow phosphorescent eyes; Girls in black Circling monotonously About ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... by the side of Mentone, San Remo is sadly prosaic. The valleys seem to sprawl, and the universal olives are monotonously grey upon their thick clay soil. Yet the wealth of flowers in the fat earth is wonderful. One might fancy oneself in a weedy farm flower-bed invaded by stray oats and beans and cabbages and garlic from the kitchen-garden. The country does not suggest a single Greek idea. It has no form ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... on the hillside at the head of the gulf the great pumping-engine clacked monotonously "Never! ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... how the darkness of the night-black steeple changed to shining light; when and how the solitary tower was peopled with a myriad figures; when and how the whispered 'Haunt and hunt him,' breathing monotonously through his sleep or swoon, became a voice exclaiming in the waking ears of Trotty, 'Break his slumbers;' when and how he ceased to have a sluggish and confused idea that such things were, companioning a host of others that were not; there ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... send a minister, and in due time Mr. George Hammond arrived in that capacity, and opened a long and somewhat fruitless correspondence with the Secretary of State on the various matters of difference existing between the two countries. This interchange of letters went on peaceably and somewhat monotonously for many months, and then suddenly became very vivid and animated. This was the effect of the arrival of Genet; and at this point begins the long series of mistakes made by Great Britain in her dealings ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... of holiness and peace, but heavy and disturbed was the current of his thoughts. He sat near a projecting angle of the turret, his head bent over the parapet. A female voice was heard beneath, chanting monotonously a low and melancholy psalm. Soon the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... to be any the worse off for he took a slight lead of Jim, going through the water swiftly and easily, with as pretty a side-stroke as any fellow's at the school. In point of style there was no comparison between the two. Jim pounded along monotonously, but steadily, with a square front, preserving all along the same regular stroke, the same pace, and the same dogged expression of countenance with which he had entered the water. His rival, on the other hand, delighted the spectators by all kinds of graceful variety. Now he darted forward ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... he began to walk monotonously to and fro the length of the corridor, like a man timing his steps to the heavy ache of body or mind. Once he went as far as his own door, entered, and stepping to the wash-basin, let the icy water run over hands and wrists. This sometimes helped to stimulate and soothe him; it did ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... outpost, and so tarried here in the Farthest East, "the Land of the Rising Sun." He hardly thought of the existence of a West, but if his Buddha-like composure had been ruffled by such a thought, he might have droned monotonously: ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... said, 'I do not think the danger is very great to ourselves if you will keep silence and not attract attention. But our hope is in Heaven. My brother, will you lead our prayers? Recite our office.' Obediently the Abbe fell on his knees, and his example was followed by the others. His voice went monotonously on throughout with the Latin. The lady, no doubt, followed in her heart, and she made the responses as did the others, fitfully; but her hands and eyes were busy, looking to the priming of two small pistols, which she took out of her jewel case, and the ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... by, monotonously hot, languidly humid. And it was on these hot and humid days that Mary felt the grind of her new occupation. She grew to dread her entrance into the square close office room, with its gaunt desks and its unchanging occupants. She waxed restless through the hours ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... had gone away permanently, from Newbury, and the winter passed slowly and monotonously to Bart. He knew, although he would not admit to himself, that the principal reason of his discontent was the absence of Julia. What was she to him? What could she ever be? and yet, how dreary was Newbury—the only place he had ever loved—-when ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... and there fell the deep shining peace of a spring afternoon. Somewhere in the distance a cuckoo was calling softly, monotonously, seductively. A thrush was warbling in the terraced garden, and from her window Maud could see old Chops the setter curled up in a warm corner asleep. The children were all out on the downs, and the house was ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... words to cover up the real thought behind Antipathy of the lesser to the greater nature Antipathy of the man in the wrong to the man in the right Friendship means a giving and a getting He's a barber-shop philosopher Monotonously intelligent No virtue in not falling, when you're not tempted Of course I've hated, or I wouldn't be worth a button Only the supremely wise or the deeply ignorant who never alter Passion to forget ...
— Quotations From Gilbert Parker • David Widger
... Munich, Salzburg, and others,—all meant for the real Roxbury in London, but sent to a fictitious being in Great Russell Street, the same having been agreed upon by at least two of the conspirators. It mattered little that she repeated herself monotonously in regard to the state of health of herself and Tootles. Roxbury would doubtless enjoy the protracted happiness brought on by these despatches, even though they got him out of bed or missed him altogether until they reached him in a bunch the next day. He may also ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... been a murder in Searchlight a dark night or so before his coming, and three suspects were being discussed and championed by their friends. Searchlight was not in the mood for aimless gossip of Indians. Killings had been monotonously frequent, but they usually had daylight and an audience to rob them of mystery. A murder done on a dark night, in the black shadow of an empty dance hall, and accompanied by a piercing scream and the sound of running ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... monotonously specialized and unnatural work, which confines a large proportion of our men, women, and youths today, promotes restlessness and the craving for excitement. The normal all-round occupations of primitive men tended ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... an eager listener. And finally being confined and unable to get out he is presumably an empty vessel waiting to be filled. And with this inviting prospect the News Gatherer moves his machine up to the side of the bed and monotonously pumps, pumps, pumps. It is well for that kindly hearted man that the patient is not only stretched out on his bed, but also unarmed. Ah! how many men earn sudden death and yet in the mystery of Providence escape it! I have often wondered ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... fiercely, as if he were at a drinking-bout of the lads come home from the Caithness fishing, nor yet gayly and proudly, as if he were marching at the head of a bridal-procession, but slowly, mournfully, monotonously, as though he were having the pipes talk ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various |
