"Monotony" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bright side of the syce: perhaps I am not in a humour to see it. Looking back down a long avenue of Gunnoos, Tookarams, Raghoos, Mahadoos and others whose names even have grown dim, I discern only a monotony of provocation. The fine figure of old Bindaram stands out as an exception, but then he was a coachman, and the coachman is to the Ghorawalla, what cream is to skim milk. The unmitigated Ghorawalla is a sore disease, one of those forms of suffering which raise the question whether ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... monotony of life in the central streets of any great modern city, but especially in those of London, where every emotion intended to be derived by men from the sight of nature, or the sense of art, is forbidden for ever, leaves the craving of the heart for a sincere, yet changeful, interest, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... and the incessant toil to produce accomplishment of voice; and afterward do not be surprised that the pulpit, the senate, the bar, and the chair of the medical professorship are filled with such abominable drawlers, mouthers, mumblers, clutterers, squeakers, chanters, and mongers in monotony; nor that the schools of singing are constantly sending abroad those great instances of vocal wonder, who draw forth the intelligent curiosity and produce the crowning delight and approbation of ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... B. had been a dead monotony. On the foremast above Code's prison hung the bell that rang the watches, so that the passage of every half hour was dinged into his ears. Three times a day he was given food, and twice a day he was allowed to pace up and down ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... sick man. When a youth he began instructing the monarchs of Europe in the use of a government. One of his favorite pastimes was reading ultimatums. Fearless until a warship entered the harbor, and even then usually got rid of it with promises. Employed massacres to break the monotony of reigning. Acquired as fine a harem as ever sat on silk cushions. Some of H.'s younger subjects though he should be ostlerized (see Dr. Ostler). They gave him his harem and salary, and locked him up in a palace. Then the wise ones lost Tripoli and about everything but sleeping ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... broken only by lines that were vertical and by the lines of juts and recesses that were always right-angled, were as chaste as those of a monastery. The irregular roof-line, however, relieved the hint of monotony. ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... lady-like English girl gained by the contrast. There was rather too much tranquillity to-day, perhaps; so he exerted some tact to draw Cecil from her reserve, the cause of which he was unable to guess. He agreed with her in reviling the monotony and stupidity of sleighing picnics, having to follow one by one like a string of geese, long after one was perished with cold, though he failed to detect in her weariness that she was wishing for her father to stop at the ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... affairs. Not merely was each man in full possession of the color and number of every calf in his neighbor's herd, it seemed that nothing could happen in the most remote cabin and remain concealed. Any event which broke the monotony of their life loomed large, and in all matters of courtship curiosity was something more than keen, it ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... Geoffrey was coming. He was very pleased. He had reached that stage in the progress of exile where one is inordinately happy to see any old friend. In fact, he was beginning to be "fed up" with Japan, with its very limited distractions, and with the monotony of his ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... remodelled and let out by the floor to young men mainly of Staff's ilk: there was an artist on the upper story, a writer of ephemeral fiction on the third, an architect on the first. The janitor infested the basement, chiefly when bored by the monotony of holding up an imitation mahogany bar over on Third Avenue. His wife cooked abominably and served the results under the name of breakfast to the tenants, who foraged where they would for their other meals. ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... very young then—- not thirteen years old; but if I was young, I had travelled much, and had gained that knowledge which is to be obtained by the eye—perhaps the best education we can have in our earlier years. I shall pass over the monotony of the voyage of eternal sky and water. I have no recollection that we were in any imminent danger at any time, and the voyage might have ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... experience, but because it took him for granted as a kindly stranger, an outsider admitted to these mysteries, and warned him that his time on this holy ground was short; nay, that it was drawing swiftly to a close. And how could he go back to the old monotony, the old routine? ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Monotony had likewise marked my course— By that I mean that nothing rare Had happened at all, to cause recourse To friendly joy or ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... cherish grief, I rarely heave a sigh Before emotion takes relief In listless apathy; While from my pipe the vapours curl Towards the evening sky, And 'neath my feet the billows whirl In dull monotony! ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... indulgence, and unvarying tenderness, and though bitter sorrow had come upon me, and I had gone through severe suffering, it had not come in the form of discipline, or been turned to its salutary use. I dreaded the monotony, the associations of Elmsley, from which I saw, by this letter, that Henry was henceforward to be banished; and, altogether, when I walked into Mrs. Brandon's room, and announced to her my approaching departure, tears of vexation stood in ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... afternoon a small white-headed boy was seen revolving down the main street of Pattaquasset. I say revolving—for the slight suggestion of a small stone in the road—or a spot of particular dustiness—was enough to make the boy break the monotony of his walk with a somerset; by which style of progress he at last arrived at Mrs. Derrick's door, entered the gate and came up the steps. There he paused and ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... normal in its main features. It was, he said, one of those vitrified wildernesses of brick that have given the city the name of a place of homes; dreadful. Amazing in extent, it was without a single feature to vary the monotony of two-storied dwellings cut into exact parallelograms by paved streets; there was a perspective of continuous facades and unbroken tin roofs in every direction, with a grocery or drug-store and an occasional saloon ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... life means that the Lord Jesus lived His message, amid commonplace surroundings, in the midst of what is called the dull monotony of the daily round. That is, in the place where it is hardest to do it, He lived every bit of what He taught. And as we follow, simply, obediently, the Spirit will lead us along this same road. The same experience will ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... sensitive to this monotony as he was just then seeking change and novelty in order to write a new story. He was not looking for material,—his subjects were usually the same,—he was merely hoping for that relaxation and diversion which should freshen and fit him for later concentration. Still, he had often ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... River region intermarried, and spread out over middle Georgia. Those who were not akin were bound to each other by ties of long acquaintanceship; but the homogeneousness of the people, complete and thorough as it was, was not marked by any monotony. On the contrary, character and individuality ran riot, appearing in such strange and attractive shapes as to puzzle and bewilder even those who were familiar with the queer manifestations. Every settlement had its peculiarities, and every neighborhood boasted of its humorist,—its ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... once that change or variety is as much a necessity to the human heart and brain in buildings as in books; that there is no merit, though there is some occasional use, in monotony; and that we must no more expect to derive either pleasure or profit from an architecture whose ornaments are of one pattern, and whose pillars are of one proportion, than we should out of a universe in which the clouds were all of ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... the afternoon's ride, although the day was particularly fine, and their way was amid some bits of charming scenery. After going out into the country some five or six miles, the horse's head was turned, and they took their way homeward. Wishing to avoid the Monotony of a drive along the same road the young man struck across the country in order to reach another avenue leading into the city, but missed his way and bewildered in a maze of winding country roads. While ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... of their God-given functions. The treasures of life are not hidden; they are close at hand, so close that we overlook them. We cheat ourselves with a pitiful fear of ourselves. Men and women of the future will not seek happiness; they will have gone beyond it. Mere happiness would produce monotony. And their lives shall be lives of change and variety with the thrills produced by experiment ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... was distressed to find his two companions much indisposed. They set out from Mourzouk along with the caravan; the party consisted of 210 Arabs, commanded by their respective chiefs, who cheered the monotony of the way by tales and songs. The road lay along a sandy uneven soil highly impregnated with salt, the track being worn down by the footsteps of caravans. In these dreary regions no sound either of insect or of bird was heard. After ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... my position, only I am worse. You know how to behave in polite circles; I don't. You have a slightly tired look, as if this sort of thing wearied you by reason of its monotony." ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... banking house of Messrs. Barking Brothers & Barking. There his knowledge of modern languages, his industry, and a certain discreet aloofness commended him to his superiors. A minor clerkship fell vacant; it was offered to him. And from thenceforth, for Dominic Iglesias, the monotony of fixed routine and steady labour, until the day when, as a man of past fifty, restless and somewhat distrustful both of the present and the future, he watched the dying of the sullen sunset over Trimmer's Green from the windows of ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... that a legacy had been bequeathed to him, and that he was on his way to a distant city to claim it. He had stopped at the near-by port in order to break the monotony of the journey. "Before the disaster that befell me," continued he, "I lived in comparative comfort, but ever since I have been struggling. I was obliged to begin all over again and build a new house and start a new business. ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... The monotony of hospital life became intolerable. My recovery was slow and my impatience great. When I felt my strength begin to return, I wrote to Captain Haskell. No answer came. Before the end of February I had demanded my papers ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... a slight row to diversify the monotony of our military life. Young Premium, the son of the celebrated loan-monger, has bought in; and Dormer Stanhope, and one or two others equally fresh, immediately anticipated another Battier business; but, with the greatest desire to make a fool of myself, ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... perceive already in so large a sheet, and so small a hand, the promise of a long, a very long letter, longer, as I intend it, than all the letters which you send in a half-year together. I have again begun my life of sterile monotony, unvarying labour, the dull return of dull exercises in dull uniformity of tediousness. But do not think that ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... which rose to cluster about and literalize the romance of her youth which Sister Soulsby had so frankly outlined. He would think upon nothing but her as he knew her,—the kindly, quick-witted, capable and charming woman who had made such a brilliant break in the monotony of life at that dull parsonage of his. The only genuine happiness in life must consist in having bright, smart, attractive women ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... same if prolonged through eternity, unless we had God for our very own. Eternal is an awful word, even when the noun that goes with it is blessedness. And I know not how even the redeemed could be saved, as the long ages rolled on, from the oppression of monotony, and the feeling, 'I would not live always,' unless God was 'the strength of their hearts, and their portion for ever.' We must rise above everything that merely applies to changes in our own natures and in our relations to the external universe, and to other orders of creatures; and grasp, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... it might easily be bewildering, some revolting; but all is in harmony. The harmony is like that of Eastern music, not immediately conveying its charm, or even the secret of its measure, to Western ears; but a monotony coiling perpetually upon itself, after a severe law of its own. Or rather, it is like a fresco, painted gravely in hard, definite colours, firmly detached from a background of burning sky; a procession of Barbarians, each in the costume of his country, passes ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... and therefore in the excitement leading to the excretion of the digestive juices. If one ate salt pork and boiled potatoes always, eating would be a tiresome affair, and it is quite likely that such a sameness of food would fail to excite subsequent digestion, merely from the monotony of the affair. Salt, however, has a particular role in that the human body craves this mineral, and, while its exact value in the body is not clearly known, a certain amount of it must always be provided. The wild tribes of Africa, ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... is the only consolation I can get out of it. This movement has come into their lives like a new religion. It is a new religion—the religion of humanity. It does help them to forget mud and rain and cold and monotony." ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... very hard a day or night, so far as physical labour goes, is it? But, oh! the sameness, the deadly monotony, of repeating the same words to the same person at the same moment every night, sick or well, sad or happy—the ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... converted the Louisville goods into one panther, one deer, two bears, and a roll of "wildcat" money. It was not very good stock with which to begin life on a farm, but the monotony was relieved by a hooking, kicking cow, and a horse which ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... away on either side of the road. A windmill or two, the inevitable irrigation canals with their little sluices, and an occasional tree alone broke the monotony of the scene. But away to the right Robin noticed a clump of trees which, he surmised, might conceivably enclose ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... came over from the blacks' camp, where she had been holding a great palaver, and asked us if we should like to see a "corroborrie," or dance; and much pleased at getting a glimpse of the native customs, and glad of anything to break the monotony of our lives, we followed her to the group of palms, and there took up our positions to watch the proceedings. A tremendous fire was soon flaming on the beach, near it the gins and piccaninnies assembled, with bits of stick, clubs, ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... to our observations and reckonings, which I checked by those that I had taken upon my eastward journey. Our march, after the great adventure at the oasis, was singularly devoid of startling events. Indeed, it had been awful in its monotony, and yet, oddly enough, not without a certain charm—at any rate for Higgs and Orme, to whom ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... the facts, at least," said Katie. "If it's all true, I think it's hard on poor people like me, that never can find any pleasant excitement to break the monotony of life. ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... does not mean illumination that reveals every hidden corner of a room. We need shadows to betray form, relieve monotony and give depth to the ensemble. If in an illuminated area light is of a uniform intensity, we have a bad effect. The variation of tone in a fabric is due to the light reaching it from a given point. Differences in intensity make shadows ...
— Color Value • C. R. Clifford
... for this first employer Watteau made dozens and dozens of pictures of St. Nicholas; and when we think of the beautiful figures he was going to make, pictures that should delight all the world, there seems something tragic in the monotony and common-placeness of that first work he was forced by poverty to do. Certainly St. Nicholas brought one man bread and butter, even if he forgot ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... was the light of Tavistock Place, Bloomsbury. In the brown monotony of the street it stood out splendid, conspicuous. Its door and half its front were painted a beautiful, a remarkable pea-green, while its door knob and door-knocker were of polished brass. Mrs. Downey's boarding-house knew nothing of concealment or disguise. Every evening, at the hour of ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... perceive that this difficulty arose solely from the pre-assumption that the word was to be so continuously or monotonously spoken by a human being—I did not fail to perceive, in short, that the difficulty lay in the reconciliation of this monotony with the exercise of reason on the part of the creature repeating the word. Here, then, immediately arose the idea of a non-reasoning creature capable of speech; and very naturally, a parrot, in the first instance, suggested itself, but was superseded forthwith ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... States procured transfers to his command, and it frequently happened that men, the bulk of whose regiments were in prison, or who had become irregularly detached from them by some of the many accidents by which the volunteer, weary of monotony, is prompt to take advantage, would attach themselves to and serve temporarily with it. Probably every native citizen of Kentucky who will read these lines, will think of some relative or friend who at some time served with Morgan. Men of even the strictest "Union principles," ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... anticipations, expectations that went off on all sides, met each other, and rebounded, exploding in coruscations of sparks. Something had happened, something was going to happen, after months and months of eventless monotony. It warmed the thin blood in their veins like comet champagne, and quickened their faded appetites like some salt ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... warfare was not entirely devoid of interest, and several little incidents occurred to break the monotony. The first was a big "strafe" on the 25th of August, when for some unknown reason the enemy shelled Stansfield Road very vigorously, and obtained a direct hit on "C" Company Headquarters. Lieuts. Banwell and Edge were occupying the dug-out at the time, and were ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... brings to your mind such vivid memories, to your lips so lingering a smile, to your eye so ready a tear? True enough, "we could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it.... What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known and loved ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... sky; great estates, much of them in pasture or fallow; an extremely thin population; the entire labouring class under the yoke of serfage; stretches of land attached to solitary ill-built farmhouses; in short, a monotony, a dead stillness, spreading over the whole country, an absence of life and activity that quite overcame my spirits. The home of the Mecklenburg noble, who weighs like a load on his peasants instead of improving their condition, gives me the idea of the den of some wild beast, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... ladies, as foreign dress materials could no longer be purchased. Mrs. Wingfield made a point of always attending with her daughters at these entertainments, which to the young people afforded a cheerful break in the dullness and monotony of their usual life; for, owing to the absence of almost all the young men with the army, there had been a long cessation of the pleasant interchange of visits, impromptu parties, and social gatherings that had formed a feature in the life ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... greater (even three times greater) than the actuaries anticipated beforehand; while the Sick Insurance Societies of Germany, France, Austria, and Switzerland also report that women are ill oftener and for longer periods than men. Largely, no doubt, that is due to the special strain and the rigid monotony of our modern industrial system, but not entirely. Nearly two hundred years ago (in 1729) Swift wrote of women to Bolingbroke: "I protest I never knew a very deserving person of that sex who had not too much reason to complain of ill-health." The regulations ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... of the Native States of India, has also varied the monotony of inscriptions by the addition of a sort of jumping-jack figure. By some writers this is claimed to be a dancing dervish and by others a Nautch girl. As pictured on the stamp the figure does not present the sensuous outlines which have always ...
— What Philately Teaches • John N. Luff
... a giant red sun blazed mercilessly down upon a landscape from which every vestige of animal and plant life had apparently been stripped. Naked rocks and barren soil stretched illimitably to the far horizon in a vast monotony of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... made no protest and the two boys at once started up the track. Both were hungry and weary but the distance must be traversed, and there was no time or breath to waste in complaining. Steadily they trudged onward, the monotony of the walk increased by the deepening darkness. They had been gone from the station only about an hour when the shrill screech of the whistle from a locomotive approaching from behind them was heard, and in a ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... heard a steamer's long, rough whistle. The Pacific. Everyone jumps up in excitement, for the Pacific brings a taste of civilization, and her arrival marks the end of a busy week and breaks the monotony of daily life. We run to the shore and light strong lamps at fixed points, to indicate the anchorage, and then we rush back to finish dinner and put on clean clothes. Meanwhile, the boys have been roused, and they arrive, ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... worked hard—we have both worked hard. Our lives have not been altogether without pleasure. The occasional game of cards we have had together has always helped to relieve monotony, eh, Lablache? Yes—yes. No one can say we have not earned rest. But there—yes, you have been more fortunate than I. ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... children had no objection to being left, Mrs. Stone suffered herself to be persuaded. In fact, she went to her new duty with a certain zest, as a break in the monotony of her days. She had lent a hand often enough at the sugar-making to be familiar with the task awaiting her, and it was with an unwonted gaiety that she set out on what appeared to her almost in the light of ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... to learn that misery, as well as bliss, can swallow up the hours. She saw the monotony of cedar trees, but with blurred eyes; she saw the ground clearly enough, for she was always looking down, hoping for sandy places or rocky places where ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... little to vary the monotony of their life. A lion came one night, but did not molest horse or bullock. They had visits, too, from the jackals, but Tanta Sal was right—Jack came no more, and they saw nothing of the Kaffirs who had been his companions, though Dyke found a rough hut and traces of a fire in the patch of forest ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... running the words together and speaking with a parrot-like monotony in an unnaturally high-pitched key. Then his voice began to quaver a little till he stopped short with a cry of despair—"I cannot mind the words, I cannot say my prayers. Oh! will nobody say them for ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... monotony of the story. She discussed the subject with Ratcliffe, who told her frankly that the pleasure of politics lay in the possession of power. He agreed that the country would do very well without him. "But here I am," ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... introduction of slightly new elements into a method already established varies it beneficially; the new is soon fused with the old, and the monotony ceases to be oppressive. But if the new be too foreign, we cannot fuse the old and the new—nature seeming to hate equally too wide a deviation from ordinary practice and none at all. This fact reappears in heredity as the beneficial effects of occasional crossing on the one hand, and on the other, ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... the reader with the monotony of the mere rehearsal of difficulty and discouragement and despairful circumstance which I feel it needful to present in order to give faithful background to the story of the valley. I have by no means told all: of continued malevolence where there should have been help; ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... to large figures; and (2) certain figures clothed in vestments but little used at that time, whereby the minds of other artists were awakened and began to depart from that sameness which should rather be called obsolete monotony than antique simplicity. ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... simple play which delighted the minds of our forefathers, and helped to raise them from sordid cares and the dull monotony of continual toil. In our popular amusements the village folk do not take part, except as spectators, and therefore lose half the pleasure; whereas in the time of the Virgin Queen the rehearsals, the learning the speeches by heart, ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... lacked interest in same prior to my reading your first issue) same is described so plainly that I have no trouble in fully understanding exactly what the author conveys. I must thank you for this other interest in the monotony ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... whose obedience had restored what Eve's self-will had ruined, and the last threefold sob of endearment to the "kindly, loving, sweet, Virgin Mary." After the high agonisings and aspirations of the day's prayer, the awfulness of the holy Sacrifice, the tramping monotony of the Psalter, the sting of the discipline, the aches and sweats of the manual labour, the intent strain of the illuminating, this song to Mary was a running into Mother's arms and finding compensation there ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... a good subject for discourse, and the expounders of Heraclitus were not unnaturally blamed for monotony. All they could do was to iterate their master's maxim, and declare everything to be in flux. In suggesting laws of recurrence and a reason in which what is common to many might be expressed, Heraclitus had opened the door into another region: had ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... to the idea that his life could not have the tranquil monotony of a bourgeois existence, that it would experience shocks and storms, but that if he knew how to remain always master of his force and will, it would bring him ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... masterly force with which he grasps all his subjects—the measured fervour of his style—the precision and vivacity of his shorter sentences—the grand swell and sonorousness of his longer; on his frequent monotony—his sesguipedalia verba—the "timorous meaning" which sometimes lurks under his "boldest words;" or on the deep chiaroscuro which discolours all his pictures of man, nature, society, and human life. We have now only to speak of his poetry. That is, ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... stimulus or excitement to do it in any common way. But the idea of being actually married to another man while he was absent at a short distance from the city, would be something striking and new, which would vary, she thought, the dull monotony of ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... would have to surrender at last, if not at Genoa, certainly on the journey, when we would be thrown constantly in each other's society with nobody to spy upon our actions, and with nothing else to do but to make love. It is the weariness of a journey, the constant monotony, that makes one do something to make sure of one's existence; and when it comes to the reckoning there is usually more joy ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... said. Unless the will maintain a certain control over these movements, which it cannot stop, but can to some extent regulate, men are very apt to try to get at the machine by some indirect system of leverage or other. They clap on the brakes by means of opium; they change the maddening monotony of the rhythm by means of fermented liquors. It is because the brain is locked up and we cannot touch its movement directly, that we thrust these coarse tools in through any crevice, by which they may reach the interior, and so alter its rate ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... upon the monotony of the long, dark winter. The parishioners once more raised the discussion whether—the parish extending as it did—it was not absolutely necessary for Pastor Tappau to have help. This question had been mooted once before; and then ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... they hold up for the public's inspiration has on the obverse "More Births!" But on the reverse it bears "More Deaths!" It would be helpful to the public, and might even be wholesome for our enthusiasts' own enlightenment, if they would occasionally turn the medal round and slightly vary the monotony of their propaganda by changing its form and crying out for "More Deaths!" "It is a hard thing," said Johnny Dunn, "for a man that has a house full of children to be left to ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... They longed for the pleasures that pleased in the day of prosperity; the dance, the banquet, and those visits that won the momentary gratification of flattery and admiration were sighed for. So irksome was the monotony and so uncongenial the role forced upon them by disguise, they hailed with joy the least circumstance that might be the ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... ignorant. You will have to educate her . . . bring her up to your own level of intelligence and of learning. In the meanwhile, do sit down and drink with those who, like yourself, have come here for an hour or two to break the monotony of perpetual czigany ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... more we sped down that devious river, now swirling under the shadow of a steep bank, now steering around a sandspit. The scenery was hideous to me, bluffs of clay with pines peeping over their rims, willow-fringed flats, swamps of niggerhead, ugly drab hills in endless monotony. ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... carried something between them, a struggling writhing something which they stood erect at the crater's edge. It was a girl!—a slim, bronzed figure that swayed there an instant uncertainly as the throb of the drums rose high and the voices of the assembled savages swelled in a monotony of ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... you to write another confession." There was a deadly monotony in Jimmie Dale's voice, as he tapped the paper with the muzzle of his automatic. "This one ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... is often called, especially by well-fed, optimistic sightseers, who look over the surface of things and are merely shocked by the intolerable sameness and meanness of it all. If the East End is worthy of no worse title than The City of Dreadful Monotony, and if working people are unworthy of variety and beauty and surprise, it would not be such a bad place in which to live. But the East End does merit a worse title. It should be called The ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... Christina's marriage and marriage presents to talk about. The girl had many friends and relatives far and near, and every one remembered her. It was a set of china from an aunt in Crail, or napery from some cousins in Kirkcaldy, or quilts from her father's folk in Largo, and so on, in a very charming monotony. Now and then a bit of silver came, and once a very pretty American clock. And there was not a quilt or a tablecloth, a bit of china or silver, a petticoat or a ribbon, that the whole village did not examine, and discuss, and offer their ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... as the repudiation was, it struck a self-convicting, almost sympathetic note in Janet. She herself had revolted against the monotony and sordidness of that existence She herself! She dared not complete ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... balance between these various instincts. For some time past she had gathered about her a train of small artists, whom she mothered and patronised, and whose wild talk and pecuniary straits diversified the monotony of her own childless middle age. Montjoie, whose undoubted talent imposed upon a woman governed during all her later life by the traditions and the admirations of the artist world, had some time before established a hold upon her, partly dependent on a certain magnetism ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "Puffing Billy's" gunners, who had got the range from Bulwaan to a nicety, so that they could pitch shell after shell into the new encampment. Even their "Long Tom" also still pounded at them by way of varying the monotony of a daily duel with our naval guns. But the most annoying fire of all came from the newly-mounted 6-inch Creusot on Little Bulwaan, which, for the sake of distinction, is known officially as Gun Hill, in front of Lombard's Kop. Having an effective ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... found himself listening intently, for above the pounding of the old motor, with an occasional "miss" to break the monotony, he fancied he had caught the signal Jack was to give him when the time arrived for making a turn ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... been an ornament of our dingy office, and indulging in an easy, and careless overlook of the gossiping papers of the day, and in such chit chat with chance visitors, as keeps us informed of the drift of the towntalk, while it relieves greatly the monotony of our office hours." Here is the well remembered flavor of the "Reveries of a Bachelor" ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... structure, some fifty feet long by about twenty feet wide, with a door on the further side. In the red-brick wall nearer the house there was nothing to break the monotony except the small wicket through which the ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... "idyll" of Frog Farm, near London, and Frog Farm seemed to be a trifle less amusing than Hunter's Point, near New York. It introduced us to rural types of deadly monotony, among them being a "village patriarch," suggesting cheap melodrama; a veterinary surgeon, a postman, a village dressmaker and Jinny herself, who "ran" a wagon, and who subsequently fell in love with a rival who ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... tossing on a sick-bed. Then you find out very quickly the sort of stuff your man is made of. Those who fight are not the biggest heroes. Often the noblest and most helpful men are those who themselves are not only cheerful under monotony and dullness, but aid their comrades to be so. Therefore, Theo, when you took it upon yourself to bear your troubles in the Maine woods bravely you proved you had the first essential ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... hour to hour in this world where we live. Your morning paper, the new book from the library you have just got to read, the pipe you hope to smoke when you return from work, the very details of your work; a hundred and one petty things that make up the day of an ordinary man, breaking the monotony and breaking the prospect before ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... of the drawing-room of the sleeping car, life seemed as fantastic and unreal as the moss-hung Southern forest into which she stared. She was happy, as a child is happy who is taken on an excursion into the unknown. The monotony of existence was at last broken, and riven the circumscribing ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... monotony of khaki, if we looked forward to the glory and distinction of fur-lined caps and coats, Shackleton boots, huge snow-goggles and enormous gloves ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... a gallery, since she came to make her fortune in America; and as each day the heat pressed more heavily upon her with its leaden weight, she felt that she would collapse and "do something stupid" if she could not have a change. Anything—anything at all that was different and would break the monotony! ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... and elderly, and, as the girls added, "married and guaranteed not to flirt," but all the same he was jolly, had a hearty, affable manner, and a habit of making bad jokes and weak puns to break up the monotony of his lectures. It was decidedly the fashion to admire him, to snigger indulgently at his mild little pleasantries, and to call him "an old dear." Some of the girls even worked quite hard at their preparation for him. He had written his autograph in ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... hill had completely died away, and the stars were growing brighter and more luminous.... The mournfully monotonous chirping of the grasshoppers, the call of the landrail, and the cry of the quail did not destroy the stillness of the night, but, on the contrary, gave it an added monotony. It seemed as though the soft sounds that enchanted the ear came, not from birds or insects, but from the stars looking down upon us from ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... possible, leaving it to be inferred that she had enjoyed herself. The spring term was generally regarded at The Priory as a time of particularly close study and increased work. In the autumn there were lectures, concerts, or other little dissipations to break the monotony of school life; the summer term was arranged specially to allow extra time out-of-doors; but from January to April the girls were expected to put their shoulders to the wheel, and commit to memory such a number of pages in their textbooks, ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... was not all Eve's, it was probably shared by the majority of the women present. She was the object that conjured their minds from the dull monotony of their daily routine to realms of happy fancy. And the picture was drawn in a setting of Romance, with Love well in the foreground, and the guardian angel of Perfect Happiness hovering over all. No doubt somewhere in the picture a man was skulking, but even in the light of matrimonial ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... green grass bordering the "wheel-track" upon either side, shows that though the nearest, this road is not the most frequented way to the pond. Many reasons might be assigned for this. There is a wearisome monotony in the scenery along this plain. There are no hills, and but few trees to diversify the almost interminable prospect, stretching east, west, north, and south, like a broad ocean, without wave or ripple. The few trees scattered ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... the line—all of which reasons combine to limit the employment of minuscule for formal or monumental uses. On the other hand, the small letter form is excellently adapted for the printed page, where the occasional capitals but tend to break the monotony, while the ascenders and descenders strongly characterize and increase the legibility ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown
... not know how to think and cannot support the burden of trying to think. It springs at ideas and goes off with them in haste too great for reflection. He drops these ideas when he sees an excuse for another leap. Sequence to Lord Northcliffe is a synonym for monotony. He has no esprit de suite. But he has leaps of real genius. An admirable title for his biography would be, "The Fits and Starts of a Discontinuous Soul." There is something of St. Vitus in his psychology. You might call him the Spring-Heeled ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... to relieve the monotony and weariness of the Montreux life, was in her children; especially as, on the approach of spring, she wandered with them over the hill-sides in quest of flowers; then her delight knew no bounds. In a letter to Mrs. Washburn, dated ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... IN PLAIN DARNING STITCH (fig. 682).—The taste for ornamenting not only curtains but bed and table linen also, with lace and insertion of all kinds, to break the monotony of the large white surfaces, is becoming more and more general and the insertion here described will be welcome to such of our readers as have neither time nor patience for work of a ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... simple little building at its best. The sky makes a glorious background, with fleecy clouds delicately veiling its brilliancy. The bright light throws a shadow of the tower across the roof, breaking the monotony of its length. The bareness of the big barn-like end is softened by the shadow in which it is seen. The plain side is decorated with the shadows of the buttresses ...
— Jean Francois Millet • Estelle M. Hurll
... my life has been passed in all the vicissitudes of war and peace. The camp and the bivouac—the reckless gaiety of the mess-table —the comfortless solitude of a French prison—the exciting turmoils of active service—the wearisome monotony of garrison duty, I have alike partaken of, and experienced. A career of this kind, with a temperament ever ready to go with the humour of those about him will always be sure of its meed of adventure. Such has mine been; and with no greater pretension than to chronicle a few of the scenes in which ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... bright anticipations. He reminded himself of the glittering delights with which, during the past three Christmases, Lidey's kinsfolk in the Settlement had lovingly surrounded her. Now he, her father, could do nothing to make her Christmas different from all these other days of whose shut-in monotony she was wearying. Hope, now, and excited wonder were giving the little one new life. Dave Patton cringed within at the thought of the awakening, the disillusionment, the desolation of sorrow that would come to the ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... looked upon the white madness before; had seen men die from the deadly monotony of it all. It was conceivable that a book of bright pictures, anything with warm colors might penetrate the pall of white fog that clouded his brain and shatter the obsession, reinstating reason on its tottering throne. But there was only the howling of white ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... made a blur ahead of them. Now the 'pike sides faded from fresh green to a general dulness, and trees whispering to the rain lost their vistas and indentations of shade, and became a solid wall down which a steady pour hissed with settled monotony. Boswell and Johnson no longer foraged at the 'pike sides, or lagged behind or scampered ahead. They knew it was a rainy October night without lightning and thunder, slipped by mistake into the packet of June weather; and they trotted invisibly under the carriage, ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... of success in many a speaker who has both a good voice and good matter may be found in the fact that his voice, instead of being as flexible as a piece of whalebone, is as unbending as a bar of iron; or, worse still, perhaps he adopts the dreary monotony of the sing-song tone: the two unvarying notes so suggestive of the up and down movements of a pump-handle. This "cuckoo" tone would blight the best ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... prose idyll "My Winter Garden" tries to persuade himself that he was glad he had never travelled, "having never yet actually got to Paris." Monotony, he says, "is pleasant in itself; morally pleasant, and morally useful. Marriage is monotonous; but there is much, I trust, to be said in favour of holy wedlock. Living in the same house is monotonous; but three removes, say the wise, are as bad as ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... the clouds lifted and I enjoyed another wide view from the summit of the ridge of the vast grassy fountain region with smooth rolling features. A few patches of forest broke the monotony of color, and the many lakes, one of them about five miles long, were glowing like windows. Only the highest ridges were whitened with snow, while rifts in the clouds showed beautiful bits of yellow-green sky. The limit of tree growth ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... exercise, one can readily perceive that the days are not long and tiresome. Of course there are a few who yawn and complain of the monotony of frontier life, but these are the stay-at-homes who sit by their own fires day after day and let cobwebs gather in brain and lungs. And these, too, are the ones who have time to discover so many faults in others, and become our garrison gossips! If they ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... Island, and the performances on it he saw through no veils of illusion. Nothing is in general more gloomy and monotonous than declamations on the hollowness and transitoriness of human life and grandeur: but here, too, the great charm of Marcus Aurelius, his emotion, comes in to relieve the monotony and to break through the gloom; and even on this eternally used topic he is imaginative, fresh, ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... refreshing upland coolness of evening followed on the humid heat of a hot June day. Towards sunset Ann Penhallow, to her niece's surprise, drew on her shawl and said she would like to walk down to the little river. Any proposal to break the routine of a life unwholesome in its monotony was agreeable to Leila. No talk of the war was possible. When Ann Penhallow now more and more rarely and with effort went on her too frequently needed errands of relief or consolation, the village people understood her silence ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... Town? By degrees the old phrases, old catch-words, and old opinions have come to reign again. Troy's unchanged loveliness too, the daily round full of experiences familiar as old friends, the dear monotony of sight and sound in the little port—all have made for healing and oblivion. If you question us on a certain three months in our life, the chances are you will get no answer. We have agreed to forget, you see; and so we are beginning to persuade ourselves, almost, ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the question of food, a few words must be said on another requisite—variety. In this respect the dietary of the young is very faulty. If not, like our soldiers, condemned to "twenty years of boiled beef," our children have mostly to bear a monotony which, though less extreme and less lasting, is quite as clearly at variance with the laws of health. At dinner, it is true, they usually have food that is more or less mixed, and that is changed day by day. But week after week, ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... had been face to face with cruel conditions of life, had seen hardships and denials and injustices, and dreary monotony of days, and I wanted for a while to get away from it all, to breathe deep of that which would renew and reinforce and revitalize; wanted to be a child again, and, with Selwyn as my playmate, wander along the winding ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... wardrobe. Great was the bartering for old clothes, handkerchiefs, and hats; and great the number of useless and noisy animals we received in exchange. Great, too, was the merriment aboard, and the excitement when the canoes first came. The transition from the monotony of a sea-life to the loquacious bustle of barter with a half-civilized people is so sudden, that the mind at once feels in a strange land, and the commonest productions proclaim the luxuriant climes of ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... waters are; I could lie down like a tired child, And weep away the life of care Which I have borne, and yet must bear, Till death like sleep might steal on me, And I might feel in the warm air My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony. ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... will be to use hard wood in the first story and painted pine in the chambers, with various combinations and exceptions. The bath-rooms, halls and dressing-rooms of the second story should of course be without paint, and we may relieve the solid monotony of the hardwood finish with occasional fillets or bands of color, painted panels or any other irregularities we choose to invent. But this is invading the mighty and troublous realm of 'interior decoration,' from which I had resolved to keep at a respectful ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... more necessary, inasmuch as the material which our life and love offers to my spirit and to my pen is so incessantly progressive and so inflexibly systematic. If the form were also of that character, this, in its way, unique letter would then acquire an intolerable unity and monotony, and would no longer produce the desired effect, namely, to fashion and complete a most lovely chaos of sublime harmonies and interesting pleasures. So I use my incontestable right to a confused style by inserting here, in the wrong place, one ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... that, in the rank to which she belonged, she had few equals, and scarcely any superior. The variety of humours which is to be found in her novels is immense; and though the talk of each person separately is monotonous, the general effect is not monotony, but a very lively and agreeable diversity. Her plots are rudely constructed and improbable, if we consider them in themselves. But they are admirably framed for the purpose of exhibiting striking groups of eccentric characters, each governed ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... that the man was manoeuvring his cockleshell about, so as to get the cutter between it and the shore, and with pleasant visions in his mind of a lobster, crab, or some other fish to vary the monotony of the salt beef and pork, of which they had, in Hilary's thinking, far too much, he leaned over the side till the man allowed his boat ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... of watering places, the monotony of days that are all alike, proves hourly an incentive to ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... in sight after one week, it becomes tiresome. I am quick tempered, and get at it with all zeal when my interest is aroused, and would sit up all night to work it out, but I have never shone in endurance. However loyal a member of the heavenly-chastisement league I may be, I cannot escape monotony. On the sixth night I was a little tired, and on the seventh thought I would quit. Porcupine, however, stuck to it with bull-dog tenacity. From early in the evening up to past twelve, he would glue his eye to the shoji and keep steadily watching under ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... years after her marriage were spent almost without interruption in the still monotony of Nohant. "We live here as quietly as possible," she writes to her mother in June, 1825, "seeing very few people, and occupying ourselves with rural cares." That absolute dependence on each other's society that might have had its charm for a really well-assorted couple was, however, ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas |
