"Monotonous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that? No woman on earth loved him as she did? What if he should show her the contrary? He must no longer love, only permit himself to be loved! This advice did not displease him. In fact perhaps it was sensible to direct a wild life full of adventures which, in reality, were meaningless, monotonous, and profoundly unsatisfying, into the channels of a regulation domestic existence. But if he himself decided to bring it to a close, it should not be the end which Else ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... we turned southward into the great Porsanger Fjord, which stretches nearly a hundred miles into the heart of Lapland, dividing Western from Eastern Finmark. Its shores are high monotonous hills, half covered with snow, and barren of vegetation except patches of grass and moss. If once wooded, like the hills of the Alten Fjord, the trees have long since disappeared, and now nothing can be more bleak and desolate. ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... An ugly, straight-edged, monotonous fir-plantation? Well, I like it, outside and inside. I need no saw-edge of mountain peaks to stir up my imagination with the sense of the sublime, while I can watch the saw-edge of those fir peaks against ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... satirical that it might seem to have been given to the "fashionable" quarter of the dead city by the united sneers of all the ghosts who haunt the undistinguished graves below. In this aristocratic quarter there is of course no monotonous uniformity. The monuments, some of freestone and some of marble, are of every conceivable form and degree of splendor, and death is made to look pretty and coquettish by the introduction of numerous weeping willows and other ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... village had hushed—the strident call of voices had ceased. Somewhere a woman was pounding grain in a wooden mortar—a dull monotonous "thud, thud, swish, thud" carrying on the dead air. Night-jars were circling above the trees, their plaintive call, "chy-eece, chy-e-ece!" filtering downward like the weird cry of spirits. Once the deep sonorous bugling note of a saurus, like the bass pipe of an organ, smote the stillness ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... one individual over others apparently of the same class. Political history is wont to tell this chapter of Rome's story under the title of the "Rise of the Plebeians," but the presence of the Plebeians was only the outward symbol of an inward change. This change was the breaking up of the monotonous one-class society of the primitive community with its one—agricultural—interest, and the formation of a variegated many-class society with manifold interests, such as trade, handicraft, and politics. It was the awakening ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... she wished, or believed that she wished, that Lady Ingleton had gone. Then this matter which tormented her would be settled, finished with. There would be nothing to be done, and she could take up her monotonous life again and forget this strange intrusion from the outside world, forget this voice from the near East which had told such ugly tidings. Till now she had not even known where Dion was. She knew he had given up his business in London and had left ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... observation decided me, and in a few days we were at Cheltenham; and having made our appearance at the rooms, were soon in the vortex of society. "Newland," said Carbonnell, "I dare say you find time hang rather heavy in this monotonous place." ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... the defenders was becoming monotonous, mounting guard, firing a little, and drilling a great deal; for Ben gave the men no rest in the way of practising them in the management of ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... participation in the tumults of 1825, on the accession to the throne of Nicholas I. He spreads a thick bear-skin rug, puts in down-pillows, hangs up a holy image (ikona) in the corner, grieving the while. After this prologue, the journey of the devoted wife is described; the monotonous way being spent in great part by the noble woman in vision-like memories of her happy childhood, girlhood, and married life. On arriving at Irkutsk she receives a visit from the governor, an old subordinate of her father, who endeavors by every possible means to deter her from pursuing ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... colour which had made her so easy to delude. How strong the need is, how seductive the proposal to supply it, Celia knew well. She knew it from the experience of her life when the Great Fortinbras was at the climax of his fortunes. She had travelled much amongst monotonous, drab towns without character or amusements. She had kept her eyes open. She had seen that it was from the denizens of the dull streets in these towns that the quack religions won their recruits. Mme. Dauvray's life had ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... rhyming,[FN4] in a few cases in the "Boar of Mac Datho" these rhymes are alternate, and in the extract from the Glenn Masain version of the "Sons of Usnach" there is a more complicated rhyme system. It has not been thought necessary to reproduce this metre in all cases, as to do so would sound too monotonous in English; the metre is, however, reproduced once at least in each tale except in that of the "Death of the Sons of Usnach." The eight-lined metre that occurs in five of the verse passages in the "Combat at the Ford" has in one case been ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... could not be transformed, even in imagination, into snow, nor heat into frost, any more easily than we could turn dried apples into roast beef and plum-pudding. Excellent food as dried fruit is, yet it is apt to become monotonous when it must do duty for breakfast, dinner, and tea! Such was our scanty fare; nevertheless we managed to keen up the appearance of being quite ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... window, from the Grand Canal and the lesser canals, rose the manifold noises of Venetian life. All other sounds were dominated by the monotonous shouts of the gondoliers. Somewhere close at hand, perhaps in the opposite palace (was it not the Fogazzari palace?), a woman with a fine soprano voice was practising; the singer was young—someone who could not have been born at the time when ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... the character, are unmarked by any notable events. A steady, orderly routine, a gradual progression, perseverance in hard work, often do more to educate and form than a varied and eventful life. Erica's two years of exile were as monotonous and quiet as the life of the secularist's daughter could possibly be. There came to her, of course, from the distance the echoes of her father's strife; but she was far removed from it all, and there was little to disturb her mind in the quiet Parisian school. There is no need to ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... middle-aged servant, grave in his address, with eyes always a bit lowered. He is argumentative and loves to read sermons directed at his master. His voice is usually monotonous. To his master his tone is blunt and sharp, with even a touch of rudeness. He is the cleverer of the two and grasps a situation more quickly. But he does not like to talk. He is a silent, uncommunicative rascal. He wears a shabby ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol
... have blushed in former times. In spite of herself, however, she took a passionate interest in the game that was being played between her mother and herself, and of which her secret was the stake. It was an ever-palpitating interest in her hitherto monotonous life, and ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... monotonous chant rose high, Nazu was rushed to the edge of the pit. The ghastly, shimmering heat-ghost drifted hungrily to await the flinging of the slight form into its consuming embrace. Carr was glad to see that ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... religion was left as an empty shell. Yet the word ritual does not, as normally used, convey to our minds this notion of intense vitalism. Rather we associate ritual with something cut and dried, a matter of prescribed form and monotonous repetition. The association is correct; ritual tends to become less and less informed by the life-impulse, more and more externalised. Dr Beck ("Die Nachahmung und ihre Bedeutung fur Psychologie und Volkerkunde", Leipzig, 1904.) in his brilliant monograph on "Imitation" has ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... woman grew better very slowly. The doctor was surprised, and charged her with coddling herself when she related that she now felt a dreadful weight in her legs. She always kept up her monotonous moaning, lying on her back and rolling her head to and fro; but she closed her eyes, as though to give her visitors an opportunity for unrestrained talk. One day she was to all appearance sound asleep, but beneath their lids her little black eyes continued watching. ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... October or November. There are, however, certain fallacies in dealing with institutions like Normal schools, where the conditions are not perfectly regular throughout the year, owing to vacations, etc. It is, therefore, instructive to find that under the monotonous conditions of prison-life precisely the same spring and autumn rises are found. Binet takes the consumption of bread in the women's prison at Clermont, where some four hundred prisoners, chiefly between the ages of thirty and forty, are confined, and he presents two curves for the years 1895 ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the machinery again, and there was no sign that anything out of the monotonous round had happened, except in the excited way that people talked. Several men we knew paid a visit to the steerage, and came back with stories which flew about from group to group in the first-class cabin, and no doubt the ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... ground; the women gathered, the men bound it into sheaves, and the children, who now were at liberty to pass by the closed door of the schoolhouse, ran about over the stubble and collected the stray ears. The hammering of scythes after the day's work was done, this monotonous village music, had ceased; in its stead could now be heard by day the creaking of ox carts over the hardened clayey road, while cries of "gee," "haw" and the cracking of whips woke the echoes in the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... getting decidedly monotonous!" he exclaimed, still speaking French. Then rapidly recovering his consciousness as the full horror of the situation began to break on his mind, he went on muttering audibly: "Have they really hopped the twig? Bah! Fudge! what has not been able to knock the ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... the thousands of islands that stud the bosom of the North Pacific, from the Paumotus to the Pelews, the Kingsmill and Gilbert Islands are the most uninviting and monotonous in appearance. ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... swiftly on in that tireless Apache running walk. Once there again, he kept his broncho at the trot to hold his own, and a broncho trot, after a mile or two of warming up, becomes something besides monotonous. Away to the far front, the north-east, flickered the tiny blazes; guiding lights, as Willett would have it; bale fires, as Harris began to believe—fires set by confederates to blind the eye of the pursuit, or lure pursuers ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... originality was regarded as a mark of bad taste and insufficient culture. Fourthly, the submission to a very limited and very arbitrary system of versification, adapted only to the production of tragic alexandrines, and limiting even that form of verse to one monotonous model. Lastly, the limitation of the subject to be treated to a very few classes and kinds." If to this description be added a paragraph from Gautier's "Histoire du Romantisme," we shall have a sufficient idea of the condition of French literature and art before the appearance of ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... steadily thickened on the roads. More than once I got down and ran on ahead, calling out with monotonous refrain to the drivers of civilian carts to keep well over to the right of the road, so as to let the guns pass. They all did their best to obey, poor brutes, and we gained some useful ground in ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... it, perhaps so much the better. We are apt to be rounded by being rubbed against each other, like the stones on the beach, till there is not a sharp corner or a point that can prick anywhere. So society becomes utterly monotonous, and is insipid and profitless because of that. You Christian people, be yourselves, after your own pattern. And whilst you accept all help from surrounding suggestions and hints, make it 'a very small thing that you be judged of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... all; and to the extent to which you fit yourself for it, it will come to you. So, if you content yourself with always speaking in your Thought the Creative Word of "Being" from day to day, you will find it the Way of Peace and the Secret of a Happy Life—by no means monotonous, for all sorts of unexpected interests will be continually opening out to you, giving you scope for all the activities of which your present degree of "being" renders you capable. You will always find plenty to do, and find pleasure in doing it, so you need never be afraid ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... meant to or not, you would—so long as we are struggling with poverty. However self-willed I am, I am not selfish; and to see you living a monotonous, imprisoned life would be a serious hindrance to me in my own living and working. Of course the fact is so at present, and I often enough think in a troubled way about you; but you are out of my sight, and that enables me to keep you out of mind. If I ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... Their reports were monotonous to weariness: The high priests and some of the nomarchs, under the leadership of Herhor and Mefres, had shut themselves up in the temple of Ptah. The army was full of hope, and the people excited. All were blessing ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... to await the car which contained the image of the Virgin. Preceding this car were some people dressed in a fantastic manner which made children cry and babies scream. In the midst of that dark mass of habits, hoods and girdles, to the sound of that monotonous and nasal prayer, one could see, like white jessamine, like fresh pansies among old rags, twelve young lassies dressed in white, crowned with flowers, with hair curled and eyes bright as the necklaces they wore. Seizing hold of two wide blue bands ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... I have no right to this," she began abruptly, "and I beg your pardon for keeping it." The words were spoken in a low, monotonous voice, as if they were a lesson. "I am sorry I was so rude, and I trust you ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... had gone on for some time, the chief seized a drinking-cup, or cuja, which he gravely dipped into the pot and took a sip. Then the shaking of the rattle and the monotonous song began again. The chief next took a good pull at the cup and emptied it; after which he presented it to his companions, who helped themselves at pleasure; and the dance and monotonous music became more furious and noisy the ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... to make the grounds that surrounded the building devoted to games of chance the handsomest in the world. In its great halls one sees every sort and variety of people. Lords and Ladies, Princes and Princesses, Dukes and Duchesses, gamblers and courtesans, all find place at the table where the monotonous voices of the croupiers and the clinking of the little ivory ball are about the only sounds that ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... the morning with a sullen lowered countenance, his gaze on the monotonous road. He made no reply to the blind man's infrequent remarks, and the latter, except for an occasional murmur, fell silent. At last Harry Baggs saw a group of men about the fence that divided a small lawn and neatly painted frame house from the public road. A porch was ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... That must have been a very pathetic scene in the church at East Barnet which few of those present could have witnessed without emotion. The clerk was a man of advanced age. He always conducted the singing, which must have been somewhat monotonous, as the 95th and the 100th Psalm (Old Version) were invariably sung. On one occasion, after several vain attempts to begin the accustomed melody, the poor old man exclaimed, "Well, my friends, it's no use. I'm too old. ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... Harding, Marcia Arnold and half a dozen girls who were worshipful admirers of the French girl, soon found flower gathering decidedly monotonous. ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... daylight to-morrow morning, to return next day, when I shall know definitely the result of the sale, which, indeed, is the object of the journey. On my return I passed a day with M. A. Monsieur is cold, formal, monotonous, repulsive. Gods! what a mansion is that bosom for the sensitive heart of poor M. Lovely victim! I wish she would break her pretty little neck. Yet, on second thought, would it not be better that he break ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... higher, the heat became greater than during the previous days. At moments when the camels halted there could not be felt the slightest breeze, so that the air as well as the sands seemed to slumber in the warmth, in the light, and in the stillness. The caravan had just ridden upon a great monotonous level ground, unbroken by khors, when suddenly a wonderful spectacle presented itself to the eyes of the children. Groups of slender palms and pepper trees, plantations of mandarins, white houses, a small mosque with projecting minaret, and, lower, walls surrounding gardens, ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... exception of the spectacle of an English steamer passing, at weary intervals, over its dreary expanse, and some moldering remains of ancient cities on its eastern shore, it affords scarcely any indications of life. It does very little, therefore, to relieve the monotonous aspect of solitude and desolation which reigns over the region into which it ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... happened that first evening on the river. Soon after nightfall they entered a shoal crossing. Clemens, standing alone on the hurricane-deck, heard the big bell forward boom out the call for leads. Then came the leadsman's long-drawn chant, once so familiar, the monotonous repeating in river parlance of the depths of water. Presently the lead had found that depth of water signified by his nom de plume and the call of "Mark Twain, Mark Twain" floated up to him like a summons from the past. All at once a little ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Boat" Crane again gains his effects by keeping down the tone where another writer might have attempted "fine writing" and have been lost. In it perhaps is most strikingly evident the poetic cadences of his prose: its rhythmic, monotonous flow is the flow of the gray water that laps at the sides of the boat, that rises and recedes in cruel waves, "like little pointed rocks." It is a desolate picture, and the tale is one of our greatest ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... melancholy and religious. They advanced by the baleful light of the conflagration, which was consuming the centre of their commerce, the sanctuary of their religion, the cradle of their empire! Filled with horror and indignation, they all kept a sullen silence, which was unbroken save by the dull and monotonous sound of their footsteps, the roaring of the flames, and the howling of the tempest. The dismal light was frequently interrupted by livid and sudden flashes. The brows of these warriors might then be seen ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... stimulus to commercial intercourse. But, on the other hand, the artistic possibilities of brick structures were soon exhausted. The house could be indefinitely extended in length and even height, but such an extension only added to the monotonous effect. With clay as a building material, so readily moulded into any desired shape, and that could be baked, if need be, by the action of the sun without the use of fire, it was almost as easy to build a large house as a small one. But ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... in the dome of the sky. From a high, sandy neck their path surmounted, he beheld the minarets of the town, seeming to cut the sky above the sharp sea-line. The timbre of his mother's voice made for inattention like the monotonous shrill note of the cicada; and he had at all times a trick of projecting his wits into the scene around him, whence it needed a shout to re-collect them, as she knew to her grievance. She shouted now, and ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... commenced to work again, and her head swung round in a wide circle, pointing to the land. Evidently they had passed over the rock and were once more in deep water, through which they travelled at a good speed but with a heavy list to starboard. The pumps got to work also with a monotonous, clanging beat, throwing out great columns of foaming water on to the oily sea. Men began to cut the covers off the boats, and to swing some of them outboard. Such were the things that went ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... but one sufficiently elegant to satisfy the advancing standards of taste and refinement. Among the marked features of the building are several small casements, lighting closets and staircases, which give variety to the monotonous symmetry of windows all of a size, one on top of another, and where all the openings for egress or light are in straight lines and of equal dimensions. It is many years since my visit, and I hope you will see it, for much that was peculiar, and made a weird impression at the time, ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... he gave no sign. He was not one who wore his emotions where they could be read by all who ran, or even by those who sat and openly studied him with malice and amusement. His face was as serene as usual, and his envied gift of turning events of the monotonous everyday veld life into interesting topics of conversation remained unimpaired. He had even risen, as always, with his air of careless courtesy, to open the door for the woman ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... mind up to the dominion of these day-dreams, with whose intoxicating power every heart is more or less familiar. She loved to retire to the solitude of the cloisters, when the twilight was deepening into darkness, and alone, with measured steps, to pace to and fro, listening to the monotonous echoes of her own footfall, which alone disturbed the solemn silence. At the tomb of a departed sister she would often linger, and, indulging in those melancholy meditations which had for her so many charms, long for her own departure to the bosom of her heavenly Father, where she might enjoy ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... its lines, but utterly absurd in meaning. Arrows have had nothing to do with eggs (at least since Leda's time), neither are the so-called arrows like arrows, nor the eggs like eggs, nor the honeysuckles like honeysuckles; they are all conventionalised into a monotonous successiveness of nothing,—pleasant to the eye, useless to the thought. But those Christian cornices are, as far as may be, suggestive; there is not the tenth of the work in them that there is in the Greek arrows, but, as far as that work will go, it has consistent ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... at Medellin in Estramadura in 1485, of an ancient, but slenderly-endowed family; after studying at Salamanca for some time, he returned to his native town, but the quiet monotonous life there was little suited to his restless and capricious temper, and he soon started for America, reckoning upon the protection of his relation Ovando, the Governor ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... on. I wanted to earn a little money. I could then send some to my old aunt who had brought me up. She always waited for me in the low-ceilinged room, where her sewing-machine, afternoons, whirred, monotonous and tiresome as a clock, and where, evenings, there was a lamp beside her which somehow ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... loveliness was so old to her, so familiar, that it was scarcely lovely, only monotonous. With all a child's usual ignorant impatience of the joys of the present—joys so little valued at the time, so futilely regretted in the after-years—she was heedless of the hour's pleasure, she was longing for what ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... well the habits of a university life, need not be told how singularly monotonous and contemplative it may be made to a lonely man. The first year I was there, I mixed, as you may remember, in none of the many circles into which that curious and motley society is split. My only recreation was in long and companionless ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... the shadows of the summer night. From a veranda chair he looked at the stars. He wore a white beard, and his eyes, grown small with age, watered continually as if he were weeping. Half-hidden under his beard his emaciated lips kept the monotonous grimace of a smile ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... was in a few minutes adjusted to my neck. I felt its pressure, and I heard the confused sounds of the monotonous voice of the clergyman, as he muttered some prayers, that I must confess sounded to me at the time like a mockery ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... underground world of the dead, as the Hebrews did. We no longer believe in a heaven just above the blue, as Christendom has believed for so long. We no longer believe in a heaven where all struggle and thought and study and growth are left out, where there is to be only a monotonous enjoyment that would pall upon any living rational soul. The form of it is passing away; but there never was a time when there was such a great and inspiring hope, not simply for myself and my friends, ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... droned a dirgeful song that had a half Oriental, half negro suggestion in its monotonous pitch, while from afar, like an echo over the mountainside, came faintly the wailing cadence of the caramella of some shepherd boy, and the tinkle of goat bells, interrupted by the hoot of little owls crying through ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... dialogue about the alarming change in the captain, the sallow steward looking down with a sinister frown, Franklin rolling upwards his eyes, sentimental in a red face. Young Powell had heard a lot of that sort of thing by that time. It was growing monotonous; it had always sounded to him a little absurd. He struck in impatiently with the remark that such lamentations over a man merely because he had taken a wife ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... to thank her, he rushed thither. Noko had the reputation of being a sort of seer, though she seldom used her gift. She sat on the stone beside her door, and a woman knelt before her, to whom she was talking in a low monotonous tone. His step startled the listener, ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... perception of the cloud which lowered upon his house, the dwarf was in his ordinary state of cheerfulness; and, when he found he was becoming too much engrossed by business with a due regard to his health and spirits, he varied its monotonous routine with a little screeching, or howling, or some other innocent ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... worked—or played— with both hands. Dr. Baumann says it is customary on bright moonlight nights for two lines of men to sit facing each other and to clap—one can hardly call it ring—these bells vigorously, but in good time, accompanying this performance with a monotonous song, while the delighted women and children dance round. The learned doctor evidently sees the picturesqueness of this practice, but notes that the words of the songs are not "tiefsinnige" (profound), as ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... man turned feverishly to the task of snow-shoe making on which he had been engaged. Through his mind with monotonous reiteration beat a phrase that he had read long ago, where, he had forgotten. "My salvation is in work, my salvation is in work!" He worked like a man possessed, without looking up, whilst the girl busied herself with unnecessary tasks. She also knew what he knew, and she held him in ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... wings, though aptly form'd for flight, From cowardice are seldom spread; Who folds the arms, and droops the head; Stealing, in pilgrim guise along, With needless staff, and vestment grey, It scarcely trills a vesper song Monotonous at close of day. Cross but its path, demanding aught, E'en what its pensive mistress sought, Though forward welcoming she hied, And its quick ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... shocked by the wanton display of immorality, but practicing the license of political usage; sometimes bitter, often genial, always intelligent — Lodge had the singular merit of interesting. The usual statesmen flocked in swarms like crows, black and monotonous. Lodge's plumage was varied, and, like his flight, harked back to race. He betrayed the consciousness that he and his people had a past, if they dared but avow it, and might have a future, if they could but ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... a monotonous tune, while Morton, bending towards the girl, listened to her gurgling moans with growing heartache. "She seems in great pain, Mrs. Lambert. Don't you think we'd better release her? I do not care to purchase sensation so clearly ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... walked across an open space, passed beneath the remnant of a gateway into a court and, crossing the court, threaded his way through a network of narrow alleys between crumbling mud walls. As he advanced the sound of a voice reached his ears—a deep monotonous voice, which spoke with a kind of rhythm. The words Phillips could not distinguish, but there was no need that he should. The intonation, the flow of the sentences, told him clearly enough that somewhere ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... drawn for the next poem is 'Sunrise,' about which I know very little. K. and I continue to learn twenty lines of poetry a day, and I do not find it unpleasant, though the 'Deserted Village' is rather monotonous. ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... content Abel drew in his line, unhooked a flapping cod, returned the jigger to the water, and, as he resumed the monotonous tightening and slackening of line, turned his eyes again to the peaceful ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... impressionable state than ever before. The day was dark and lowering, showing every sign of an approaching storm; outside there had been the noisy bustle of active business life, while within the limits of Lucille's mystic chamber all was hushed in a deathly silence. The monotonous swinging of the lamps, the perfume-laden air, the ghastly skeletons, and the imperious bearing and powerful will of Lucille—all struck upon her imagination with resistless force. As she sank into the seat which Lucille pointed out, she felt like a criminal entering the prisoner's ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... conventions have gone, or are changed, and we are all glad of it. Wordsworth effected a wholesome deliverance when he attacked the artificial diction, the personifications, the allegories, the antitheses, the barren rhymes and monotonous metres, which the reigning taste had approved. But while welcoming the new freshness, sincerity, and direct and fertile return on nature, that is a very bad reason why we should disparage poetry so genial, so simple, so humane, ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... Everything became monotonous—the country, the absence of an enemy. They found Prussia and especially Poland, ugly, dirty, miserable, all the houses were full of dirt and vermin, domestic animals of all kinds were the intimate syntrophoi of the peasants in their living rooms. The ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... boat continued its course, the musicians made a great noise, and the courtiers began, like them, to be out of breath. Besides, the excursion became doubtless monotonous to the princess, for all at once, shaking her head with an air of impatience,—"Come, gentlemen,—enough of this;—let ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... from Tennessee, a big, scared Pole, and the disdainful Celt whom he had sat beside on the train—the two former spent the evenings in writing eternal letters home, while the Irishman sat in the tent door whistling over and over to himself half a dozen shrill and monotonous bird-calls. It was rather to avoid an hour of their company than with any hope of diversion that, when the quarantine was lifted at the end of the week, he went into town. He caught one of the swarm of ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... in Lincoln Park it became evident that luck was not with the two golf-killing Nobles of the Mysterious Mecca, because about all these two gentlemen did was to continue the monotonous business of knocking a couple of innocent looking white balls across the landscape. Every now and then they would come upon a grass lawn with an iron cup in the centre of it, and then each Potent Noble would waste a lot of time urging his ball into the cup with the short ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... the rites of Adonis. "During the whole of Good Friday a waxen effigy of the dead Christ is exposed to view in the middle of the Greek churches and is covered with fervent kisses by the thronging crowd, while the whole church rings with melancholy, monotonous dirges. Late in the evening, when it has grown quite dark, this waxen image is carried by the priests into the street on a bier adorned with lemons, roses, jessamine, and other flowers, and there begins a grand procession of the multitude, who move in serried ranks, with ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... have seen, was not without influence over her husband. No woman is; she can always incline him to do either what she wishes, or the reverse; and on the composite impulses that were threatening to hurry Mr. Tulliver into "law," Mrs. Tulliver's monotonous pleading had doubtless its share of force; it might even be comparable to that proverbial feather which has the credit or discredit of breaking the camel's back; though, on a strictly impartial view, the blame ought rather ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... cane, saw the long arm rise and fall, heard a muffled groan, a sharp cry, a shout of agony; but the long arm rose and fell untiring, merciless, until all sounds were hushed save for a dull moaning and the monotonous sound of blows. ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... there are various degrees of skill in playing, I have never yet learned to be critical. I can only see a difference in style. Some are dramatic, some classical, some furious and others buffo. The song is a monotonous, drawling wail, with which the drumming has no sort of connection, for it increases and diminishes in rapidity according to the pleasure or strength of the player. I am sure a concert, such as I witnessed nightly, would cause a sensation in New York, though I do not believe it would prove ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... it in that light, and did not bless the blessing. Slowly and heavily he went on, without much heed of anything, swinging his clouded cane now and then, as some slashing reviews occurred to him, yet becoming more peaceful and impartial of mind under the long monotonous cadence and quiet repetitions of the soothing sea. For now he was beyond the Haven head—the bulwark that makes the bay a pond in all common westerly weather—and waves that were worthy of the name flowed towards him, with a gentle breeze stepping ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... There was not a tree even. The awful loneliness filled him with dismay. He had about given up when, in the last quarter of the horizon he saw, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, what looked like a fine trickle of blackish smoke that appeared to rise from a shapeless mound that bulged above the monotonous level. ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... half-raised, was leaning on his hand, But, when again beside him sat the maid, His eyes for one slow minute having scanned Her moonlit face, he laid him down, and said, Monotonous, like solemn-read command: "For Love is of the earth, earthy, and is laid Lifeless at length back in the mother-tomb." Strange moanings from ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... looking with some interest and regret at the beautiful spot in which we had spent the last few weeks. "All on board?" cried Domingos. "On, boys, on!" and giving a shove with his pole, we left the bank and glided down the stream, our dark-skinned crew keeping time with their paddles to the monotonous song which they struck up. Although the wet season was commencing, the weather promised to be fair for a time; and we hoped soon to have Arthur on board, and to continue our voyage without interruption till we should at length fall in with those dear ones ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... enthusiasm," Harry admitted, "but I should like to do some actual work. I ride out on the sands every day and sit looking on while the real work is being done. This problem of conquering the Man-killer is growing monotonous. I'm tired of pegging away at the same old task day in and ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... could I hear but the sighing Of winds, in the Valley of Pines; And the heavy, monotonous dropping Of dew from the shivering vines. But all day, 'mid the clashing of Labour, And the city's unmusical notes, With thoughts that went seeking the hidden, I pondered that ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... from them, though we were now in daily expectation of the arrival of a messenger whom they had promised if possible to send back to us, with an account of their progress. Our days were beginning to grow somewhat monotonous, from the fact that we had no great difficulty in supplying ourselves with food, and were unwilling to go out and kill creatures merely for the sake of amusement. Stanley made a second excursion to assist our friends in the northern village, and succeeded in killing two more ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... meal every one at the table goes and shakes hands with the host and hostess and says "tack" (thank you); certainly a pretty little courtesy on the part of strangers, but rather monotonous from children, when there are many of them, as there often are in Finland, especially when the little ones cluster round the parents or grandparents as a sort of joke, and prolong the "tack" ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... was out there, but in what way bad it was impossible to judge, even from the knowledge we had of life in less remote regions. Who would venture to draw conclusions from the little we knew as to the thousand small details which made up that grey, monotonous existence? Who could clearly bring them before the imagination? Only experience could reveal them in their appalling nakedness. Of one thing we were certain, that was that in a measure as the populousness decreases, and you ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... the chamber, and, passing through Alfgar's little room, beheld, by the light of many torches, Edmund bathed in his own blood, which still dripped with monotonous but terrible sound on ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... did; but Tuesday's work was "meaner" than Monday's. There did not seem to be even so much as a variation. It was all one dull, monotonous, miserable hunt for something he could not find. It was just so on Wednesday, and all the while, as he said, "Money will just melt away; and somehow ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... air—and smell the Bazaars! But Egypt is ugly a pin's prick beneath its beauty. It is so old and covered with bones and decayed ideas. The Nile is associated with Moses, and it is long it is true, but it is also very narrow and shallow, and its banks are monotonous to a degree; a mile or so of green crop on either side, then stones, sand, bits of crockery, human bones and rags, then desert sand—a cross between a cemetery and a kitchen garden. The ruins are awfully ugly! "Think of their age!" people say, and you look at the exquisite spirals of shells in ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... in Cincinnati, Ohio.] I found in the bar-room three respectable-looking men. I told them my story. One said to the others, 'He is always the same old fellow!' I stared at him in amazement. He held out one hand and moved the other as if fiddling. Monotonous creaking sounds followed, and I gradually awoke. The same sounds continued, but they were caused by the grasshoppers and tree-toads, who pipe monotonously all night long ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... created to receive impressions of the bleak vastness of space, how easily the mountains might have been made to breathe terror from their cliffs and walls, how easily the general effect of extended landscapes might have been monotonous and gloomy! If religion is, as it has so often been conceived to be, hostile to the natural good and joy which the heart seeks instinctively,—if sadness, if melancholy, be the soul of its inspiration, and misery for myriads the burden of its prophecy,—I do not believe that the vast deeps of ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... The monotonous service at the batteries had tried the patience of all who were attached to them; and we rejoiced at the prospect of more active duty. The reverses sustained by the Confederate arms were not to be disguised, nor were our convictions of great danger ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... the huge plane high above them gave little thought to what passed below, engrossed with their papers or books, or engaged in casual conversation. This monotonous trip was boring to most of them. It seemed a waste of time to spend six good hours in a short 3,500 mile trip. There was nothing to do, nothing to see, except a slowly passing landscape ten miles below. ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... is skeptical as to the reality of what is called mind. So far as his clients are concerned, it is notable for its absence. To be confronted day after day by the absent-minded, and to listen to their monotonous tale of woe, is disenchanting. It is difficult to observe all the amenities of life when one is dealing with ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... however, it will appear that the physical structure of the southern parts of the colony is as varied, as that of the western interior is monotonous, and we may now pursue our original observations on the soil of the colony with ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... out good Englishmen, who may continue worthily and even develop further a glorious national tradition. To do this, we must appeal constantly to the imagination, which Wordsworth has boldly called "reason in her most exalted mood." We may thus bring a little poetry and romance into the monotonous lives of our hand-workers. It may well be that their discontent has more to do with the starving of their spiritual nature than we suppose. For the intellectual life, like divine philosophy, is not dull and crabbed, as fools suppose, but musical as ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... that live under a solemn sense of eternal danger, one inch only of plank (often worm-eaten) between themselves and the grave; and, also, that see for ever one wilderness of waters—sublime, but (like the wilderness on shore) monotonous. All sublime people, being monotonous, have a tendency to be dull, and sublime things also. Milton and Aeschylus, the sublimest of men, are crossed at times by a shade of dulness. It is their weak side. But as to a sea captain, a regular nor'-nor'-wester, and sou'-sou'-easter, ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... barren and monotonous as Augusta's—a life in which the small external events were so firmly interwoven with the subtler threads of yearnings, wants, and desires—the introduction of so large and novel a fact as Marcus Strand would naturally produce ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... beautify her flat for Gilbert, but in the first place she did not wish to spend money on it, in the second place she was too indolent to buckle to the enterprise, and in the third place if she beautified it she would be doing so not for Gilbert, but for the monotonous procession of her clients. Her flat was a public resort, and so she would do nothing to it. Besides, she did not care a fig about the look of furniture; the feel of furniture alone interested her; she wanted softness and warmth ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... several ensuing years present nothing of sufficient interest to induce us to record them in detail. A perpetual succession of sieges and skirmishes afford a monotonous picture of isolated courage and skill; but we see none of those great conflicts which bring out the genius of opposing generals, and show war in its grand results, as the decisive means of enslaving or emancipating mankind. The prince-cardinal, one of the many who ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... a listener, was a vocal quartet by Cherubini, performed under his direction. Later in the evening, the whole party armed itself with larger or smaller 'mirlitons' (reed-pipe whistles), and on these small monotonous instruments, sometimes made of sugar, they played, after the fashion of Russian horn music, the overture to 'Demophon,' two frying-pans representing the drums." On the 27th of March this "mirliton" concert ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... it while the talk about degrees and latitudes has been going on, here strikes in again; he will use his influence. Perhaps the good man, living up here among the pine trees and the sea winds, and involved in the monotonous round of Prime, Lauds, Nones, Vespers, has a regretful thought or two of the time when he moved in the splendid intricacy of Court life; at any rate he is not sorry to have an opportunity of recalling himself to the attention ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... about forty-five miles in length and from four to twelve in breadth. Drained successively by Roman, by Goth, and by pope, they successively relapsed into their natural state, until the perseverance of Pius VI. completed the work. It is now largely cultivated, but the scenery is monotonous and the journey tedious. The few inhabitants found here get their living by hunting and by robbery, and are distinguished by their pale and sickly appearance. At this time the disturbed state of Italy, ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... hours she had been alone with her dismal thoughts, no sound broke the stillness, save the monotonous ticking of the clock or an occasional sob and moan from the half spent ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... cross, and her half-year at home had rendered her much less capable of concealing ill-humour. Something was owing to wear and suspense, together with the effects of the summer heat and confined monotonous life without change or luxury; but much was chargeable on the manifestations of temper to which she had given way in the home circle. She told Wilmet the trouble, which Ferdinand wished to have kept from open discussion till he ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... discovery of a vein of coal or other combustible matter, which could be turned to account in warming some erection which they might hope to put up? A prolonged existence in their underground quarters was felt to be monotonous and depressing, and although it might be all very well for a man like Professor Rosette, absorbed in astronomical studies, it was ill suited to the temperaments of any of themselves for any longer ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... all the time under the conditions forced upon the English proletarian? It is still the same thing since the introduction of steam. The worker's activity is made easy, muscular effort is saved, but the work itself becomes unmeaning and monotonous to the last degree. It offers no field for mental activity, and claims just enough of his attention to keep him from thinking of anything else. And a sentence to such work, to work which takes his whole time for itself, ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... wondering if here—here in Corsica—I had really heard that inappropriate sound, soon across the hillside on my left echoed an even stranger one—yet one I recognised at once as having mingled with my dreams; a woman's voice pitched at first in a long monotonous wail and then undulating in semitones above and below the keynote—a voice which seemed to call from miles away—a sound as dismal as ever fell ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... this is almost always attended by pain. Hence it is that existence is essentially painful, and that many persons for whose wants full provision is made arrange their day in accordance with extremely regular, monotonous, and definite habits. By this means they avoid all the pain which the movement of the will produces; but, on the other hand, their whole existence becomes a series of scenes and pictures that mean nothing. They are ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... Islands are formed by the intersection of the creeks and arms of the sea. They have a uniform level, are without any stones, and present a rather monotonous and uninteresting scenery, spite of the raptures of French explorers. The creeks run up into the islands at numerous points, affording facilities for transportation by flats and boats to the buildings which are usually near them. The soil is of a light, sandy mould, and yields in the best ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... The work is monotonous, but it must be done, or there'll be the mischief to pay. Now, ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... cold. I walked most of the day, leading my horse, upon whom I had packed a part of the outfit to relieve the other horses. There was no fun in the day, only worry and trouble. My feet were wet, my joints stiff, and my brain weary of the monotonous black, ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... voice continued, "I feel it here," pointing to her breast. She was quiet for a while, then went on in the low, monotonous voice of the desperate poor. "This winter ver had. My man no work. Sometime go wood yard, but only fifty cents one day. He walk, walk, walk, looka for work. We must eat, we must pay rent. We all work maka da flower, ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... cramming received in the lecture-rooms, the arduous drill and the somewhat monotonous work on the slow-moving tenders, the runs seaward on these new and trim little vessels, the manoeuvring at nineteen knots, the breeze of passage and the feeling of controlled power acted as an elixir on both mind and body. ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... "this is getting monotonous, and I'm growing tired of it. If they do shoot us both, they'll have had to pay for it. Why, they must have used a couple of hundred cartridges. Not very good work for such crack shots as they are said to be. If they spend a hundred cartridges to shoot ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... time, sir," the man interrupted me, speaking in the emotionless, monotonous voice ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... heights of philosophy already? Then, perhaps, I shall not seem to be talking nonsense, when I tell you that there is nothing in the world of which you would not tire after the first joy of possession was over, no position which would not seem monotonous. You do not believe me? Of course not. We all buy our own experience in life; on one of two rocks we split: either we do not want a thing after we have got it, or we do not get it till we no longer want it. Some of us ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... the clowns at a fair, and the men round the basement steps laughed aloud and bowed in imitation, and then began to call to them; but the bailiff came out again to the cart, and they quickly disappeared down the steps. From the house itself there came a far-off, monotonous sound that never left off, and insensibly added ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... of the poor horses hanging out of their mouths. Day dawned, and there were no signs of the caravan. A thick vapor was rising from every quarter, and they hoped that when it cleared up they would be more fortunate; but no, there was the same monotonous landscape, the same carpet of flowers without perfume. The sun was now three hours high, and the heat was intense; their tongues clove to the roofs of their mouths, while still they went on over flowery ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... self and the world are alike forgotten, the subject knows himself to be in possession of the highest and fullest truth; but this truth is only possessed in the quite undeveloped, simple, and bare form of monotonous feeling; what truth the subject possesses is not filled up by any determination in which the simple unity might unfold itself, and it lacks therefore the clearness of knowledge, which is only attained when thought harmonises differences ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... last gazing on the sea, which seemed to mock his hopes and fears with its monotonous roll and roar, and fixed his eyes on the dim outline of the Heogue, which his sister had named "Boden's purple crown;" and he wondered if Signy could see the dear old hill from her place amid the waves. He would not think that the Osprey had capsized ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... towards the end of November, 1793. The rain was beating down in a monotonous drip, drip, drip on to the roof of a derelict house in the Rue Berthier. The wan light of a cold winter's morning peeped in through the curtainless window and touched with its weird grey brush the pallid face of a young girl—a mere child—who sat in a dejected attitude on ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... rustic cousin to it, or rather a caricature; namely, a close coatee, with stand-up collar, and very short skirts,—skirtees, they might be called,—the color gray; pantaloons and vest the same;—making the wearer a monotonous gray man throughout, invisible at twilight. The proposers of this metamorphosis, to make it go, selected an individual of small and agreeable figure, and procuring a suit of fine material, and a good fit, placed him on a platform ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... its name the bird suddenly ceased its monotonous beak and claw gymnastics for a space, becoming on the instant alertly attentive. There came a preliminary craning of neck and winking of white-parchment-lidded eyes, and then, in shockingly human fashion it proceeded to give voluble utterance to some ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... to ascertain what time the Company's boats may be expected, or when certain sledges of meat may come to the Fort. Another man is sick and the medicine-man is summoned, and a drum is beaten during the night with solemn monotonous 'tum, tum, tum', and certain confidential communications take place between the Doctor and his patient, during which the sick man is supposed to divulge every secret he may possess, and on the perfect sincerity of his ...
— Owindia • Charlotte Selina Bompas
... funeral was over, and she was once more at home, that she expressed the slightest concern. Then she laid her hand in Peter's and threw back her heavy crepe veil: "You have saved me from disgrace, Mr. Grayson," she said, in a low, monotonous voice, "and my little boy as well. I try to think that Garry must have been out of his mind when he took the money. He would not listen to me, and he would not tell me the truth. Jack is going to pay it back to-morrow, ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... time, the female relations of each of the consecrated company, after having bathed, anointed, and drest themselves in their finest apparel, stood, in two lines opposite the door, and facing each other. This observance they kept up through the night, uttering a peculiar, monotonous song, in a shrill voice for a minute; then intermitting it about ten minutes, and resuming it again. When not singing their silence ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... every age of variation without end, from the poet, the rhetorician, the fabulist, the moralist, the divine, and the philosopher. All, amidst the sad vanity of their sighs and groans, labor to put on record and to establish this monotonous complaint, which needs not other record or evidence than those very sighs and groans. What is life? Darkness and formless vacancy for a beginning, or something beyond all beginning—then next a dim lotos ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... chaplain belonged to that class of friends, which may be termed argumentative. Their constant discussions were a strong link in the chain of esteem; for they had a tendency to enliven their solitude, and to give a zest to lives that, without them, would have been exceedingly monotonous. Their ordinary subjects were theology and war; the chaplain having some practical knowledge of the last, and the captain a lively disposition to the first. In these discussions, the clergyman was good-natured and the soldier ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... jubilant shout echoed oddly clear and solitary above the incessant booming of the breakers and the monotonous ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... longings and desires with His own great fulness. Other food palls upon man's appetite, and we wish for change; and physiologists tell us that a less wholesome and nutritious diet, if varied, is better for a man's health than a more nutritious one if uniform and monotonous. But in Christ there are all constituents that are needed for the building up of the human spirit, and so we never weary of Him if we only know His sweetness. After a world of hungry men have fed upon Him, He remains ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... was to keep her appointment. But the step she was about to take had difficulties and terrors in her own eyes, though she had no reason to apprehend her father's interference. Her life had been spent in the quiet, uniform, and regular seclusion of their peaceful and monotonous household. The very hour which some damsels of the present day, as well of her own as of higher degree, would consider as the natural period of commencing an evening of pleasure, brought, in her opinion, ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... as he stood, and he tried to move a few steps. On all sides curious looks were directed upon him, but no one offered to make way, and still the monotonous singing continued until he felt himself deafened, as he faced ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... light, but now she was always in a gloom where all objects about her were dim and spectral; she was used to the thousand various sounds which are the cheer and music of a busy life, but now she heard only the monotonous footfall of the sentry pacing his watch; she had been fond of talking with her mates, but now there was no one to talk to; she had had an easy laugh, but it was gone dumb now; she had been born for comradeship, and blithe and busy work, and all manner of joyous ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... voice in man—the human larynx. He says of singing: "The habits of savages give no indication of how this faculty could have been developed by Natural Selection, because it is never required or used by them. The singing of savages is a more or less monotonous howling, and the females seldom sing at all. Savages certainly never choose their wives for fine voices, but for rude health, and strength, and physical beauty. Sexual selection could not therefore have developed ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... few countries which present a more lovely appearance than Ceylon. There is a diversity in the scenery which refreshes the eye; and although the evergreen appearance might appear monotonous to some persons, still, were they residents, they would observe that the colour of the foliage is undergoing a constant change by the varying tints of the leaves in the different stages of their growth. These tints are far more lovely than the autumnal shades of England, and their ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... that across the vast and vacant sea! Now and then a distant sail glimmered upon the horizon, but disappeared like a vanishing snowflake. The equator was crossed; the air grew colder; storm and calm followed each other; the daily entry now becomes monotonous. ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... is that so, but this same communion with God, which is the opening of the heart for the influx of the divine power, brings to bear upon all our work new motives which redeem it from being oppressive, tedious, monotonous, trivial, too great for our endurance, or too little for our effort. All work that is not done in fellowship with Jesus Christ tends to become either too heavy to be tackled successfully, or too trivial to demand our best energies, and in either case will be done ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... long I might have continued to rhapsodize in this strain, had not my wandering thoughts been suddenly recalled to my own immediate neighbourhood by the monotonous clatter of a horse's hoofs upon the road, evidently moving, at that peculiar pace which is neither a walk nor a trot, and yet partakes of both, so much in vogue ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... was now falling more steadily, with a low, monotonous susurration, interrupted at long intervals by the sudden slashing of the boughs of the trees as the wind rose and failed. The night was well advanced, but both sympathy and curiosity held me a willing listener to my friend's monologue, which I did not interrupt ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce |
