"Muted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... book is closed, With "It is finished!" And at the alley's end He turns, and soon on me his glances bend; And, as from earth, comes speech—small, muted, ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... blocked by a turbulent stream of Jewish boys pouring out of the primary school. They seemed to range in years between eight and twelve, but even the youngest face wore a stamp of age, and though the air vibrated with the multiplex chatter which accompanies the exodus of cramped and muted pupils, the normal elements of joyousness, of horse-play, of individual freakishness, were absent. It was a common agitation that loosed all these little tongues and set all these little ears listening to the passionate harangues ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... seem to hear me, but went on dreamily, "And the sounds it makes! My God, A W, a composer'd give half the years of his life to reproduce those sounds. High and piercing; soft and muted; creating tonepoems and etudes there in ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... the old man, in a peculiar voice that was quite low and yet strangely vibrant, like the note of a muted violin. "I have come to ask you if you could oblige me with a couple of pieces of sugar. I have run out, and somehow—one has one's foolish weaknesses—I dislike ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... undertone, The plaining wail of muted violin, The hushed oboe and the distant din, Of muffled drum or viol's raucous groan— Sudden arises one pure voice-like tone, A silver trumpet's tongue that stirs the soul To feel the theme, and the harmonious whole A sonant setting seems for that alone; So, high above earth's murmurous stir and ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... of the words and I think if Maitre Guedron, in that heaven where all music makers, good men or bad, should go, could have heard her, he would have bowed his admiration just to hear the tender graceful spirit that her softly muted whistle gave his quaint old song. It was a spirit never lagging, that tripped ahead of the faint strum of the ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... no other sounds were audible than that ceaseless dripping from frames and seams, with that muted, terrible mouthing ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... movement, with the sonatas and one or two of the "Woodland Sketches" and "Sea Pieces," as the choicest emanation of MacDowell's genius; and of these it is, I think, the most inspired and the most deeply felt. The extreme pathos of the opening section, with the wailing phrase in the muted strings under the reiterated G of the flutes (an inverted organ-point of sixteen adagio measures); the indescribable effect of the muted horn heard from behind the scenes, over an accompaniment of divided violas and 'cellos con sordini; the heart-shaking ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... The fire continued its muted roaring, but no other sound answered to the appeal. A horror of the companionship in which she found herself thereupon took possession of the girl. She must escape from these sleepers, whose spirits had been expelled by the potent necromancer, ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... About this time, too, the bluejays begin to be prophetic of autumn. Hardly through July and early August has a loud note been heard from these birds. Often the recesses of the pines have been full of a gentle tinkling whicker as of muted tin pans that practised in the hope of some day becoming real phonographs, voices of young and old bluejays holding family councils interspersed with quiet joviality, but there has been none of the strident clamor which is the autumn voice of the bird. Today, however, in the cool, refreshing ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... in the now shadowy rooms. He found the telephone. He lifted the receiver and heard the humming of the line. He tried to call an operator. He heard the muted buzz that said the call was sounding. But there was no answer. He found a telephone book and dialed one number after another. Sheriff. Preacher. Doctor. Garage. Operator again. General store.... He could tell that telephones rang dutifully in remote ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... ammunition to the muzzle. Had a stray sparrow been fluttering in the air, he would certainly have got a fright, and probably a fall—nor would there have been any hope for a tom-tit. But an eagle—an eagle ever so many thousand feet aloft—poo, poo!—he would merely have muted on the roaring multitude, and given Sardanapalus an additional epaulette. Why, had a string of wild-geese at the time been warping their way on the wind, they would merely have shot the wedge firmer and sharper into the air, and answered the earth-born shout with an air-born ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... as he saw them, they belonged in their fine sort to the great host of the Unemployed. No one else might have seen it, but he saw, with that inner eye of his, which compassion suffused but did not obscure, that they were out of a job, and he was not surprised when he heard the young girl fetch a muted sigh and then say: "No, they don't want us any more. I don't understand why; it is very strange; ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... which, I think, was the extraordinary silence of the whole place. Positively, the town was muffled. Although the streets were paved with cobbles the people moved about silently, softly, with padded feet, like cats. Nothing made noise. All was hushed, subdued, muted. The very voices were quiet, low-pitched like purring. Nothing clamorous, vehement or emphatic seemed able to live in the drowsy atmosphere of soft dreaming that soothed this little hill-town into its sleep. It was like the ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... unflinching at the right's behest, Grave Lincoln came, strong handed, from afar, The mighty Homer of the lyre of war. 'T was he who bade the raging tempest cease, Wrenched from his harp the harmony of peace, Muted the strings, that made the discord,—Wrong, And gave his spirit up in thund'rous song. Oh mighty Master of the mighty lyre, Earth heard and trembled at thy strains of fire: Earth learned of thee what Heav'n already knew, And wrote thee ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... our hanging upon the parapet of the bridge we found a somewhat reluctant cab and drove homeward through the muted Sunday streets. The roar of the city was still there, but it was subdued; the crowd was still abroad, but it was an aimless, idle, shuffling crowd. The air itself seemed more vacant than on week-days, ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... Her voice was muted as if more than a whisper would carry to the stars just coming into brilliance above them. "They will come ... tracking. I did not reach the ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... falls, And the yellow lights leap one by one Along high walls; And along black streets that glisten as if with rain, The muted city seems Like one in a restless sleep, who lies and dreams Of vague desires, and memories, and half-forgotten pain . . . Along dark veins, like lights the quick dreams run, Flash, are extinguished, flash again, To mingle and glow at last in the enormous brain And die away . . . As evening falls, ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... slipped from the keys and fell to her sides while she bowed her head and sat for a moment immovable. And then her shoulders moved slightly and a tiny smothered sound came from her throat. Suddenly her head bent and she fell forward on her arms upon the muted keys. ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... A low-muted hiss joined the sound of the whining pumps as Tom opened the valves. "Reactant feeding at D-9 rate, sir," ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... about my use of the flutes in connection with muted strings and the horns to give the ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... time he drew her down on the steps and they sat in silence through long minutes, listening to the muted calling of the crickets in the grasses, the rustle of the river current, all the soft noises of ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... Air Force brass, technicians, observers, enlisted men of indiscernible purpose. The room hummed with the muted buzz of ...
— Sound of Terror • Don Berry
... represents the Pantiles: the alleys fronting the spectators in parallel lines. At the back, a stand of musicians, from which the 'Gavotte' is repeated on muted strings. The music continues nearly through Scene I. Visitors walking to and fro beneath the lines. A ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... forget!" he said with a shrug. "Does Madame Cressida know we are to have the pleasure of your company for this voyage?" He spoke deliberate, grammatical English—he despised the American rendering of the language—but there was an indescribably foreign quality in his voice,—a something muted; and though he aspirated his "th's" with such conscientious thoroughness, there was always the thud of a "d" in them. Poppas stood before me in a short, tightly buttoned grey coat and cap, exactly the colour of his greyish skin and hair and waxed moustache; a monocle ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... close-veiled, of stature huge, Not like to one asleep, but as absorbed in thought! With accent of command I summon her to work, The stewardess in her surmising, who perchance My spouse, departing hence, with foresight there had placed; Yet, closely muted up, still sits she, motionless; At length, upon my threat, up-lifts she her right arm, As though from hearth and hall she motioned me away. Wrathful from her I turn, and forthwith hasten out, Toward the steps, whereon aloft the Thalamos Rises adorned, thereto the treasure-house ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... was about to call out, when prudence muted his voice. For the moment he could not recollect just what had happened or where he was; but a vast impending consciousness of evil and of danger weighed upon him. It warned him to keep still, to make no outcry. A burning thirst quickened ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... his own, the pilot's seat. Haney pushed a button. Through the fabric of the ship came the muted uproar of a pushpot engine starting. Haney pushed another button. Another. Another. More jet engines bellowed. The tumult in the Shed would be past ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... the judges examined and graded the lines and the scores were announced by Mr. Shrank, the foreman. The better scores prompted little flutters of restrained applause from the executives. This moist and muted sound had reminded Dewforth of a hippopotamus venting its wind under water, and in a moment of thoughtless exhilaration he had even thought of sharing this bizarre notion with his wife. He never ...
— In the Control Tower • Will Mohler
... of the procession was leaving the stage, and Elsa was sitting on the bed alone. Still no Lohengrin. The violins arrived at the muted chord of B flat, which is Lohengrin's cue. They hung on it for a second, and then the conductor dropped his baton. A bell rang. The curtain descended. The lights were turned up, and there was a swift loosing of tongues in the house. People were pointing to Sir Cyril in our box. ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... is poised for muted growth in the next several years, marking continued recovery from the severe 1999 recession when GDP fell by about 4%. President PASTRANA's well-respected economic team is working to keep the economy on track, maintaining low interest rates, for example. In accordance with its IMF loan agreement, ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency. |
