"Loudness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... realised more and more the general vulgarity and coarseness of the world about him, and his own detachment. The vulgarity and crudity of the things nearest him impressed him most; the dreadful insincerity of the Press, the meretriciousness of success, the loudness of the rich, the baseness of common people in his own land. The world overseas had by comparison a certain glamour. Except that when you said "United States" to him he would draw the air sharply between his teeth and beg you ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... every probability of the weather becoming. Dark green seas came rolling in crested with foam, and breaking with increasing loudness of sound on the rocky shore; the wind whistled ...
— Michael Penguyne - Fisher Life on the Cornish Coast • William H. G. Kingston
... of one of the pillars which supported it, and estimating the practicability of climbing it, when he heard a footstep. Some one dragged a chair out toward the railing, then seemed to change his mind and began to pace the veranda, his footfalls resounding on the dry boards with singular loudness. Little White drew a step backward, got the figure between himself and the sky, and at once recognized the short, broad-shouldered form of ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... I saw a monster like unto a thousand whales. It was one-eyed, and vomited smoke, and it snorted with exceeding loudness. I was afraid and ran with shaking legs along the path between the bars. But it came with the speed of the wind, this monster, and I leaped the iron bars with its breath ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... came, there was a sudden crash of musketry, volley after volley, and the incessant scattered firing of the defenders. Then, as I listened, a faint sound of cheering, increasing in loudness, reached my ears, and directly after I felt certain that ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... Strength or loudness of tone is determined primarily by the width or amplitude of the vibrations of the vocal membrane, and quality or timbre is determined by the form ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... insisted upon haste, for they had not gone far when the glacier broke abreast of the spot they had just left. There came a rending crack, terrifying in its loudness; a tremendous tower of ice separated itself from the main body, leaned slowly outward, then roared downward, falling in a solid piece like a sky-scraper undermined. Not until the arc described by its summit had ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... that were natural to him before he was called to command; his uniform begins to look like a masquerade dress hired for the occasion; of the hard and, perhaps, gallant service of months past, there is soon no other evidence, than an unnecessary loudness of speech, and a readiness to seize on any occasion to bluster or blaspheme. A friend of mine once remarked (by way of excuse for being detected in the most eccentric deshabille) that "the British dragoon, under any circumstances, was a ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... most numerous in the cochlea. We do not know for certain what the functions of the canals and the cochlea are; but it is probable that the former enables us to distinguish between the intensity or loudness of sounds and the direction from which they come, while the latter enables us to determine the pitch of a note. In the cochlea are about 2,800 tiny nerve-ends, called the rods of Corti. The normal ear has such a range as to give ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... and was also connected with Nature. "The sound of the flowing of streams," said one of their bardic clan, "is sweeter than any music of men." "The harp of the woods is playing music," said another. In Finn's Song to May, the waterfall is singing a welcome to the pool below, the loudness of music is around the hill, and in the green fields the stream is singing. The blackbird, the cuckoo, the heron and the lark are the musicians of the world. When Finn asks his men what music they thought the best, each says ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... objects in a painting, as in a nocturne of Whistler: these are simple illustrations of harmony. An almost equally simple case is gradation or lawful change of quality in space and time—the increase or decrease of loudness in music of saturation or brightness of hue in painting, the gentle change of direction of a curved line. In these cases there is, of course, a dynamic or dramatic effect, if you take the elements in sequence; but when taken simultaneously and ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... Scotland Yard a tense silence fell. For the first time we were all conscious of a tiny clock on the inspector's desk, for it ticked now with a loudness sudden and startling. I gazed at the faces about me. Bray's showed a momentary surprise—then the mask fell again. Lieutenant Fraser-Freer was plainly amazed. On the face of Colonel Hughes I saw what struck me ...
— The Agony Column • Earl Derr Biggers
... daring to look. When they did, they saw a gleaming black form that stood on queer shafts of wood come gliding with the speed of the wind from behind the hillock. It straightened out on a stretch of snow, bellowing with a loudness that hammered their eardrums into numbness, and sped lightly along till the queer shafts of wood left the surface and the sleek black object soared ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... sending up a tray to Lady Jane in her bed-room. Those were apt to be grave breakfasts; not like the merry mornings at home, when chatter used to go on in half whispers between the younger ones, with laughs, breaking out in sudden gusts, till a little over-loudness brought one of Mary's good-natured "Hushes," usually answered with, ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... became more violently agitated by the increased velocity of the descent, the noise more nearly resembled that produced by drawing the moistened fingers over glass. As it reached the base, the reverberations attained the loudness of distant thunder, causing the rock on which we were seated to vibrate; and our camels,—animals not easily frightened,—became so alarmed that it was with difficulty their drivers could ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... William Foster, with a picked party of his friends, had forced their way to the top of the hall, and were in the act of mounting the platform for the purpose of turning the vicar out of the chair, when a voice of unearthly loudness was heard to shout, "Forbear!"—upon which the meeting broke up in wild confusion, leaving Foster prostrated on the ground by some invisible and mysterious power, where he lay till brought back to consciousness by the joint efforts of Mr Maltby and Thomas Bradly; after which, at ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... to celebrate the birth-day of my son, and I invite you, my Pithacion, to the feast. But come not alone; bring with you your wife, children, and your brother. If you will bring also your bitch, who is a good guard, and by the loudness of her voice drives away the enemies of your flocks, she will not, I warrant, disdain to be partaker of our feast, &c." (Letter ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... the room above was shuttered. There was a hole in the shutter, however, where a knot of the wood had fallen out, and a thin shaft of light stretched across the blackness and buried itself in a ragged yew-tree at the end of the garden. From the loudness of the sounds I judged this to be the room where the flute-playing was going on. The crackling of my footsteps on the thin soil did not disturb the performer, so I gathered a handful of earth and ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... with those immediately subsequent. As their captivity may continue six days, it is possible that the bees in this space of time may forget which has emitted it first; but it is also possible, that the queens diversify the sounds, encreasing the loudness as they become older, and that the bees can distinguish these variations. We have even ourselves been able to distinguish differences in the sound, either with relation to the succession of notes, or their intensity; ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... crier of flounders in London, who arrived at so much fame for the loudness of his voice, that he had the honour to be mentioned upon that account, in a comedy. He hath disturbed me many a morning, before he came within fifty doors of my lodging. And although I were not in those days so fully apprized of the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... brought in and presented all together, but one after another by lot, and passed in order through the assembly without speaking a word. Those who were locked up had writing-tables with them, in which they recorded and marked each shout by its loudness, without knowing in favor of which candidate each of them was made, but merely that they came first, second, third, and so forth. He who was found to have the most and loudest acclamations ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... repeat to her the two words she had in the Park scarcely let him bring out. "See here—see here!"—the sound of these two words had been with her perpetually; but it was in her ears to-day without mercy, with a loudness that grew and grew. What was it they then expressed? what was it he had wanted her to see? She seemed, whatever it was, perfectly to see it now—to see that if she should just chuck the whole thing, should have a great and beautiful courage, he would somehow make everything up to her. When the clock ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... din of contending elements are heard the hoarse bellowings of the mountain itself, which, meanwhile, trembles to its very core. The detonations from the volcano far exceed in loudness any other earthly noise. Compared with these, the pealing of the loudest thunder is but as the report of a musket contrasted with the simultaneous discharge of a thousand pieces of heavy ordnance. ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... a self-educator in good behavior, as in everything else; he can be civil and kind, if he will, though he have not a cent in his pocket. Gentleness in society is like the silent influence of light, which gives color to all nature; it is far more powerful than loudness or force, and far more fruitful. It pushes its way quietly and persistently, like the tiniest daffodil in spring, which raises the clod and thrusts it aside by the ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... Sylvia would be still awake, would hear the violent words of Hine, and would therefore be an available witness afterward, Chayne found the reason both of the loudness of Garratt Skinner's tones and his early ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... Almayer, engaged her in earnest conversation. Through the long passage, closed at the further end by the red curtain, they could hear from time to time Almayer's voice mingling in conversation with an abrupt loudness that made Mrs. ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... the melancholy rising of the wind and the increasing loudness of the thunder, to the shrill cries of the distant night-birds hurrying to shelter, emotions of mournfulness and awe possessed themselves of his heart. He now wondered that any events, however startling, however appalling, should have had the power to turn his mind for a moment from the ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... heed it. Excitement compelled her to walk incessantly round and round the scanty space of floor. Already she had begun to rehearse the chief scenes of Laura Denton; she spoke the words with all appropriate loudness and emphasis; her gestures were those of the stage, as though an audience sat before her; she seemed to have grown taller. There came a double knock at the house-door, but it did not attract her attention; ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... string vibrate, and the louder will be the sound. Just so with these vocal bands or cords. The varying force with which the breath strikes them and their different tensions and lengths at different times, explain the different degrees of loudness and the ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... view of billows which mount to the very skies—of huge volumes of water, dashing down the dreadful precipice into a vast basin, which seemed large enough to be the tomb of the giant Chappewee; and their ears were saluted with sounds, whose loudness and violence were a thousand times beyond those of the tempest, or the thunder, or the earthquake. Onward they groped their desperate way beyond the fiercest fall, until all at once they came to a dreadful cavern shrouded in the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... of justice, a deliberate treading under foot of all the rights of man. The sans-culottes and the tricoteuses rivaled each other in the loudness and strength of ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... sounds echoing through the forest. I thus knew that the elephant had not yet fallen. A minute afterwards I heard the crashing of boughs and brushwood some way off. I guessed, as I listened, that the animal was coming towards where I lay. The sounds increased in loudness. Should it discover me it would probable revenge itself by crushing me to death, or tossing me in the air with its trunk. I had my rifle ready to fire. There was a chance that I might kill it or make ...
— Adventures in Africa - By an African Trader • W.H.G. Kingston
... his chin, and look important and insolent and come-to-stay; and assert his genuine simon-pure authenticity with a thundering bellow that will convince everybody because it is so loud. The thug is aware that loudness convinces sixty persons where reasoning convinces but one. I wouldn't be a thug, not even if—but never mind about that, it has nothing to do with the argument, and it is not noble in spirit besides. If I am better than a thug, ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... it to her all right. She hasn't found the letter yet," said Letty, trying to comfort, and astonished by the loudness of his grief. "It's all right—you wait a bit. She liked the ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... was repeated a third time, without any increase of loudness; and the old man, obeying an impulse for which to his dying hour he could never account, proceeded to remove, one by one, the three great oaken bars which secured the door. Time and damp had effectually corroded the iron chambers ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... governor-general's distaste for party in theory merely forced him to become in practice the unconscious leader of the Canadian conservatives, who, under men like MacNab and the leaders of the Orange Lodges, differed only from other parties in the loudness of their loyalist professions, and the paucity of their supporters among the people. Metcalfe complained that at times the whole colony must be regarded as a party opposed to her Majesty's Government.[8] He might have {168} seen ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... a peculiar condition. In the French it has very various significations, but has come to be adopted in music and acoustics to connote the quality of a musical sound independent of its pitch and loudness, a quality derived from the harmonics which the fundamental note intensifies, and that depends on the special form of the instrument. The article Clang in the Oxford Dictionary quotes Professor Tyndall regretting that we have no word for this meaning, and suggesting that we should imitate ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 3 (1920) - A Few Practical Suggestions • Society for Pure English
... in their shirt-sleeves, he would have been noticed anywhere as one evidently a scholarly thinker astray from the alcove or the study, which were his natural habitats. His voice was very sweet, and penetrating without any loudness or mark of effort. His enunciation was beautifully clear, but he often hesitated as if waiting for the right word to present itself. His manner was very quiet, his smile was pleasant, but he did ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... on subtlety. It may be that a great colorist will use his utmost force of color, as a singer his full power of voice; but, loud or low, the virtue is in both cases always in refinement, never in loudness. The west window of Chartres is bedropped with crimson deeper than blood; but it is as soft as it is deep, and as quiet as ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin
... The voices of his opponents were the most violent and prevailed, and made me apprehensive that they would proceed to greater length than speech. But Macer stood firm, nothing daunted by the uproar. One, who signalized himself by the loudness and fierceness of his cries, exclaimed, 'that he was nothing else than an atheist like all the rest of the Christians; they have no gods; they deny the gods of Rome, and they give us nothing ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... the south end of the Pont au Change, when a number of youths ran past me, pelting one another with snowballs, and shouting so lustily that I was at a loss which to admire more, the silence of their feet or the loudness of their voices. Aware that lads of that age are no respecters of persons, I was not surprised to see two or three of them rush on to the bridge before us, and even continue their Parthian warfare under the feet of the horses. The result, however, was ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... and rotated by handle. A heavy flywheel was attached to give it uniformity of motion. A sheet of tinfoil formed the record, and the delivery could be heard by a roomful of people. But articulation was sacrificed at the expense of loudness. It was as though a parrot or a punchinello spoke, and sentences which were unexpected could not be understood. Clearly, if the phonograph were to become a practical instrument, it required to be much improved. ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... some little imperfections of manner. It is a type which has grown more and more familiar to us, yet never less strange: the man in costly but severe costume, big, with a necessary great waistcoat, not noticing the loudness of his own voice; as ignorant of the thousand tiny things which we observe and feel as he would be careless of them (except for his wife) if he knew. We laugh at him, sometimes even to his face, and he does not perceive it. We are a little ...
— The Beautiful Lady • Booth Tarkington
... water alongside grew momentarily more confused; bulkheads began to creak, and cabin-doors to jar and rattle upon their hooks; the two people overhead began to pace the deck to and fro; the wind whistled and blustered with increasing loudness through the rigging; and as the craft plunged more sharply I caught the sound of an occasional clatter of spray upon the deck forward. This went on for some considerable time, and then I became aware ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... drew on, the night began to grow less quiet. From the distance some one began to blow on a horn or a shell, sending forth a harsh raucous note incessantly. The sound came nearer, as we could tell from its growing loudness, and the voices of those by the fires made themselves heard, railing at the blower for his disturbance. And presently it became stationary, and standing up we could see through the slits in the walls the people ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... speedily ensue. If the chain were removed, she might be easily thrown into the state of delirium; when she would sing at the request of her magnetiser; and, if the chain were then unrolled, her voice would be arrested in the most gradual manner; its loudness first diminishing — the tune then becoming confused, and finally lost altogether. The operations of her intellect could be checked, while the organs of sound would still continue to exert themselves. For instance, while her thoughts were occupied on the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... down,' said Darco, pacing and turning suddenly. 'No. Don't but that down. I don't vant that' He roamed off again, murmuring: 'No. Don't but it down. I don't vant it. I don't vant it. Nodes. Dake nodes.' Then with sudden loudness ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... shooting at us from the private houses. When they saw us take the barracks they had probably decided that the time had come to wipe off the powder-stains, and reappear as friends of the revolution. The only firing now was from where Garcia was engaged. Judging from the loudness of these volleys he had reached the outskirts of the town. I set half of my force to work piling up bags of meal behind the iron bars, and, in the event of fire, filling pails with water, and breaking what little glass still remained in the windows. ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... They took their places quite unaware of his proximity, and he listened with considerable interest to the tones and words of the fair stranger who had so unexpectedly taken possession of his thoughts. Were it not for a slight shrillness and loudness at times, and the fashionable affectation of the day, her voice would have been sweet and girlish enough. As it was, it suggested an instrument tuned to a false key and consequently discordant with all true and ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... a very effective report. The rockets in general had a slight advantage over the same quantities of material fired near the ground. The loudness of the sound was by no means proportional to the quantity of the material exploded, 8 oz. yielding very nearly as loud a report as 1 lb. The 'aerial echoes,' which invariably followed the explosion of the rockets, ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... they do not know, or do not remember, that audibility is not secured by mere loudness and bigness of voice, nor again by raising the voice to a high pitch. "People tell you to speak up," said that excellent elocutionist, Mr Simeon; "but I say, speak down," down as regards the musical scale. Again, the larger the building ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... was second tenor, and his pipes was kinder cracked, But Rube made up in loudness what in tune he might have lacked; But 'twas a leetle cur'us, though, for p'r'aps his voice would balk, And when he'd fetch a high note give a most outrageous squawk; And Uncle Elkanah was deef and kind er'd lose the run, And keep ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the number, limits, and definitions of the species into which he groups the very same things. In these islands, we are in the habit of regarding mankind as of one species, but a fortnight's steam will land us in a country where divines and savants, for once in agreement, vie with one another in loudness of assertion, if not in cogency of proof, that men are of different species; and, more particularly, that the species negro is so distinct from our own that the Ten Commandments have actually no reference to him. Even in the calm region of entomology, where, if anywhere ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... not so? Old gaffer dead?" And when the soldier was told how the feeble thread of life had been snapped by the shock of joy on his coming, a fit of compunction and sorrow seized him. He covered his face with his hands and wept with a loudness of grief that surprised and touched his hearers; and presently began to bemoan himself that he had hardly a mark in his purse to pay for a mass; but therewith he proceeded to erect before him the cross hilt of poor Abenali's sword, and ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... plainly. And so everybody to the park, and by and by the chapel done, the King and Duke into the bowling-green and upon the leads, whither I went, and there the guns were plain to be heard; though it was pretty to hear how confident some would be in the loudness of the guns, which it was as much as ever I could do ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... the helicopter came across the broken ground. Now louder, now momentarily muted, its moments of loudness grew steadily more strong. It was coming nearer. Thorn gripped his spear in an instinctive, utterly futile gesture of ...
— Invasion • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the loudness of the street noises, and the glare of the sunlight as he stepped to the sidewalk. He stood there blinking for a moment, until his eyes became accustomed to the light. The foot-procession of the ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... and a sign of lost control. In public places, especially, it is a sign of ill breeding and bad taste. Good breeding should always keep a woman from loud talk. We must remove the stigma of loudness and coarseness that now rests upon the race. The less a person knows, the bigger noise she generally makes. The big touring car never makes the noise that a motor cycle does, nor does a great steamer make the fuss that a tug boat does. The deep stream ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... loudness, of the voice is governed by the force with which the air is expelled from the lungs. The vibrations of the cords, however, are greatly reenforced by the peculiar structure of the upper air ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... know?" she repeated, as if to herself. Then she drew a long breath, which quivered through her, and, with it, voice and emotion and the power of expression returned. "I know?" she cried with a startling loudness. "Good God, you fool, do you think I'd be here with you, if I ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... should wish to be always thus dragged upwards, as little (or rather still less) is it desirable to be stunted downwards by your associates. The trumpet does not more stun you by its loudness, than a whisper teases you by ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... malignant passions will be let loose. To judge from the conduct of the opposite parties, we shall be led to conclude that they will mutually hope to evince the justness of their opinions, and to increase the number of their converts by the loudness of their declamations and the bitterness of their invectives. An enlightened zeal for the energy and efficiency of government will be stigmatized as the offspring of a temper fond of despotic power and hostile ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... unforgotten lord, The long self-exiled Chieftain, is restored: There be bright faces in the busy hall, Bowls on the board, and banners on the wall; Far checkering o'er the pictured window, plays The unwonted faggot's hospitable blaze; And gay retainers gather round the hearth, With tongues all loudness, and ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... an old and faithful retainer to this household, is now suffering from his annual cough. It is a terrific cough, capable of disputing supremacy with all other coughs of which the world has heard. The special points about this cough are (1) its loudness; (2) its combination of the noises made by all other coughs; (3) its depth; (4) its shriek of despair as it trembles and reverberates through the house; (5) its capacity to repel and annihilate sympathy. It is true that I have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156., March 5, 1919 • Various
... great: but he reads well.' JOHNSON. 'He reads well, but he reads low[642]; and you know it is much easier to read low than to read high; for when you read high, you are much more limited, your loudest note can be but one, and so the variety is less in proportion to the loudness. Now some people have occasion to speak to an extensive audience, and must speak loud to be heard.' WALKER. 'The art is to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... ought to be spoken of the Composition of Kennels, wherein I must appeal to the Affection of the Gentleman, the Lover of this Sport, and let him tell me the Reasons that induced him take pleasure in Hounds, whether it be he fancies Cunning in Hunting? Or Sweetness, Loudness, or Deepness of Cry? Or for the Training his Horses? Or for the Exercise ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... preached; but the sunshine was over—the glad and careless look, the joy of young life and mutual love. He was little with us, and, as I said, the house was still, except when he was mandating his sermons for Sabbath. This he always did, not only viva voce, but with as much energy and loudness as in the pulpit; we felt his voice was sharper, and rang ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... speaking or reading from private conversation, and no one can accomplish much, as a public speaker, without cultivating it. It must be carefully distinguished from the "high tone," which is an elevation of pitch, and from "loudness." or ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... gave surpassed in loudness that of all the others put together; and brought up several ferocious-looking Turks, bent on condignly punishing the outrageous conduct ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... her feet at my side with a loud cry, "No, George, no," which bewildered me completely. The suddenness, the loudness of it made the ensuing silence on both sides of the door perfectly awful. It seemed to me that if I didn't resist with all my might something in me would die on the instant. In the straight, falling folds of the night-dress she looked cold like a block of marble; ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... a very different thing from boldness or obtrusiveness. Courtesy and considerateness are cardinal qualities of the well-equipped salesman, but boastfulness, glibness, egotism, loudness, and self-assertion, are as distasteful as they ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... virtue; you cannot restore me untainted to the world-the world never forgives a fallen woman. Her own sex will be first to lacerate her heart with her shame." These words were spoken with such biting sarcasm, that the Judge, whose nap the loudness of Anna's voice had disturbed, protruded his flushed face and snowy locks from out the curtains of the alcove. "The gay Madame Montford, as I am a Christian," he exclaims in the eagerness of the moment, and the strange figure ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... overhead was rent asunder by a flash of lightning, steel-blue, keen, and dazzlingly vivid, that seemed to strike the water within a dozen fathoms of us, while simultaneously we were deafened by a crackling crash of thunder of such appalling loudness and violence that one might have been excused for believing that the very foundations of the earth had been riven asunder. So tremendous was the concussion of it that I quite distinctly felt the ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... the schools, legislatures and courts are drawn into this whirl of sexualized public opinion; the old-fashioned policy of silence has been crushed by a policy of thundering outcry, which is heard in every home and every nursery. This loudness of debate is surely an effect of the horror with which the appalling misery around us is suddenly discovered. All which was hidden by prudery is disclosed in its viciousness, and this outburst of indignation is ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... secondary circuit for adjustment to the wave length, turning it slowly from minimum to maximum until you come to the point where the desired station is heard. When this is found, you again readjust the primary until you find the point of maximum loudness. ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... cordially shaking hands with General Grant. A moment later he mounted his chunky gray horse, and lifting his hat as he passed out of the yard, rode off toward his army, his arrival there being announced to us by cheering, which, as it progressed, varying in loudness, told he was riding through the bivouac of ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... older residents still called Rodney Lane, was as still and deserted as a country road. The entry gate to Tory Hill clicked behind him with curious, lonely loudness. The gravel crunched in the same way beneath his tread. Looking up at the house, he saw neither light nor sign of living. There was something stricken and sinister about ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... for dear Agnes," she said with a natural loudness in that hushed room. "It even made me forget papa to ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... of sounds has a simple physical measure for its basis; and the rate of vibration is complicated by its sweep or loudness, and by concomitant sounds. What a rich note is to a pure and thin one, that a chord is to a note; nor is melody wholly different in principle, for it is a chord rendered piece-meal. Time intervenes, and the ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... with equal force. That landscape of his ideal world ever after takes its place in your memory by the side of the landscapes of your real world. Even the sounds which he has described linger in the ear as the types of harshness, or loudness, or sweetness, instantly coming back to you whenever you listen to the roaring of the sea, or the howling of the wind, or the carol of birds. He calls things by their names, never shrinking from a homely phrase where the occasion ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... and we knew that we were once again approachin' the edge of the hurricane. There happened to be a little food in the galley and a scrap was given to each man. If we were going under, there was no need to drown hungry. So, faintly, but with quickenin' loudness, the whirring roar of the hurricane rose into a shriek and the fury hit ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... Johnnie seemed interminable, while dusk thickened to darkness; then snores. The snoring continued all the while he was counting up to four hundred. Also it achieved a regularity and loudness that guaranteed it to be genuine. Still Johnnie did not open his eyes. There were little movements in Cis's room, and he felt sure she was not asleep. Soon he had proof of it. For peering up carefully ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... thought as little of the destruction of her garments, but kept on, on, on, she knew not whither, and cared not, so that she escaped from her dreaded pursuers. All would not do. Ever and increasing, nearer and nearer, came the dismal sound! How her heart died within her, as the increased loudness of the baying of the wolves told her they were fast overtaking her! In vain she exerted all her remaining strength, and taxed every nerve and muscle to its utmost capacity! There was no help! As unerring as mistakeless instinct, and as certain ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... I tackled the harbor. By day it was quite impossible, all toots and blares, the most frightful discords—but at night its vulgar loudness was toned down sufficiently so that a fellow with artist's ears could really stand listening to its life, especially if I did not go too close but listened from my window. Here with uglier sounds subdued I could ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... part, gentle or subdued sounds, and gentle or subdued colors, are more pleasing than either in their utmost force; nevertheless, in all the noblest compositions, this utmost power is permitted, but only for a short time, or over a small space. Music must rise to its utmost loudness, and fall from it; color must be gradated to its extreme brightness, and descend from it; and I believe that absolutely perfect treatment would, in either case, permit the intensest sound and purest color only for a ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... in a leaky punt with a long pole. Silas Foster represents the brutal, commonplace comments of the outside world, which jar so terribly on the more sensitive and closely interested actors in the tragedy. 'Heigho!' he soliloquises, with offensive loudness, 'life and death together make sad work for us all. Then I was a boy, bobbing for fish; and now I'm getting to be an old fellow, and here I be, groping for a dead body! I tell you what, lads, if I thought ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... rapidity, and drove the smoke in dense masses round us, so that, bright as were the flames, we could often see but a short distance ahead. The shouts and cries of the terrified settlers increased in loudness. All hope that the village would be preserved must by this time have been abandoned. The fire was coming up from the west and north-west, leaping at a bound, as it seemed, over the clearings; the burning branches, driven by the wind, quickly ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... on the princes, in which Mr. Fairly, with his usual but Most uncommon openness, protested there was something in the violence of their animal spirits that Would make him accept no post and no pay to live with them. Their very voices, he said, had a loudness and force ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... are probably few people who are so callous concerning the sufferings of the animal world. The owners of the donkeys have a cruel custom of slitting their nostrils, because it is supposed to moderate the loudness of their bray. ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... report was heard. It was loud enough to shake the walls of the apartment, and abrupt enough to throw me into tremors. I dropped the book and yielded for a moment to confusion and surprise. From what quarter it came, I was unable accurately to determine; but there could be no doubt, from its loudness, that it was near, and even in the house. It was no less manifest that the sound arose from the discharge of a pistol. Some hand must have drawn the trigger. I recollected the disappearance of the candle from the room below. Instantly a supposition darted into my mind ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... rushing of a mighty river, or from the muttering sound of distant thunder, by the sharp and angry notes which the clashing of the rider's arms mingled with the deep bass of the horses' rapid tread. From the long continuance of the sounds, their loudness, and the extent of horizon from which they seemed to come, all in the castle were satisfied that the approaching relief consisted of several very strong bodies of horse. [Footnote: Even the sharp and angry clang made by the iron ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... smile. Dead? Not I! The scorching sunlight streams through the open door of the inn—the thirsty flies buzz with persistent loudness—some voices are singing "La Fata di ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... spasmodic puffs, governed by a curious notion of the proper places for them to fit into the general performance. The flutes are a little unsteady and unreliable; the clarionet always squeaks in pathetic parts; and the cornet imagines that loudness is the chief thing to ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... moerens . . . produces an almost deafening sound from the numbers of the individuals in the hottest days and the loudness of their noise." "This species (Cyclochila Australasiae) is much less abundant than the C. moerens, and seems more confined to moist places, such as river banks and deep ravines ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... peculiar yapping howl which told us that a pack of wild dogs was in full cry somewhere in our rear. Being curious to learn what kind of animal they were hunting, we looked about us for a spot whence, ourselves unseen, we might witness the chase, which the increasing loudness of the cries told us was coming our way. Such a spot was found close at hand in the shadow of a big clump of thorn bush, within a few yards of the margin of a small stream, evidently a tributary of the river which flowed a mile or two farther to ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... should have suffered the good miller to proceed with his harangue without interruption, can only be accounted for on the score of the loudness of tone on which he piqued himself with so much justice. When she did take up the word, her reply made up in volubility and virulence for any deficiency in sound, concluding by a formal renunciation of her nephew, and a command to his zealous advocate ...
— Aunt Deborah • Mary Russell Mitford
... rider wheeled away I blurted out with anxious loudness in the general hubbub, "Isn't his ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... place upon which he stood was level, with huge serpentine cables lying athwart it in every direction. The circular wheels of a number of windmills loomed indistinct and gigantic through the darkness and snowfall, and roared with a varying loudness as the fitful wind rose and fell. Some way off an intermittent white light smote up from below, touched the snow eddies with a transient glitter, and made an evanescent spectre in the night; and here and there, low down, some vaguely ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... "Land! land!" was heard from the masthead, adding to the excitement of all on board. At length the high cliffs of the Chersonese appeared in sight; the thunder of the guns, as the ship advanced, increasing in loudness. Now the fleet could be seen coming forward from the roads off the Katcha River to the north; no sails were set, as the ships had either their own steam-power, or were moved by steamers ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... had no attention to spare: they remained on a plane with the dim pictures hanging at her back. She had expected a larger party; but she was relieved, on the whole, that it was small enough to permit of her dominating it. Not that she wished to do so by any loudness of assertion. Her quickness in noting external differences had already taught her to modulate and lower her voice, and to replace "The I-dea!" and "I wouldn't wonder" by more polished locutions; and she had not been ten minutes at table before ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... effect so new made with such world-old material! I cared nothing that I was the victim, and I joined them; but ceased, feeling suddenly somehow estranged or chilled. It was in their laughter. The loudness was too loud. And I caught the eyes of Trampas fixed upon the Virginian with exultant malevolence. Scipio's disgusted glance was upon me from ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... of so great anger, his ears listened not unto Beloved Doctor making to speak, but he tell with lengthiness and loudness of voice of meddlesome ...
— Seven Maids of Far Cathay • Bing Ding, Ed.
... folds, and the figure in front of him sometimes loomed up like a distorted shadow and then in a moment plunged into a yellow pocket of obscurity, and was lost. Then Stonehouse could only listen for his footfalls, quick and irregular, echoing with an uncanny loudness in the low vault ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... of melancholy in Almeria's countenance at this instant, for sympathy in their sorrows; and her silence, for acquiescence in the justice of their complaints. They were reiterating their opinions with something like plebeian loudness of voice, when their mother entered the room. The ease with which her daughters changed their countenances and the subject of conversation, when she entered, might have prevented all suspicion but for the blushes of Almeria, who, though of all the party she was the least guilty, looked by far ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... that this life of sea-bathing and sun-burning was for me but a holiday. In that year cannon were roaring for days together on French battle-fields; and I would sit in my isle (I call it mine, after the use of lovers) and think upon the war, and the loudness of these far-away battles, and the pain of the men's wounds, and the weariness of their marching. And I would think too of that other war which is as old as mankind, and is indeed the life of man; the unsparing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in detecting and defeating the chicanery of the advocates, who labored to disguise the truths of facts, and to pervert the sense of the laws. He sometimes forgot the gravity of his station, asked indiscreet or unseasonable questions, and betrayed, by the loudness of his voice, and the agitation of his body, the earnest vehemence with which he maintained his opinion against the judges, the advocates, and their clients. But his knowledge of his own temper prompted him to encourage, and even to solicit, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... extending to some distance along the foot of the mountain, and made their way with some difficulty through the closely planted trunks and thick brushwood. Presently the sound of falling water was audible, increasing in loudness as they proceeded, until its cause became visible in a cascade that splashed down the mountain side. A rocky pool received the foaming element, and fed a pellucid stream that soon disappeared amongst the trees, on its way to irrigate and fertilize the neighbouring ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... as if the work had been left hurriedly. The pink-crested cockatoo started, on his appearance, into clumsy activity and began to climb laboriously up and down his perch, calling "Joanna" with indistinct loudness and a persistent screech that prolonged the last syllable of the name as if in a peal of insane laughter. The screen in the doorway moved gently once or twice in the breeze, and each time Willems started slightly, expecting his wife, but he never lifted his eyes, although straining his ears ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... cigar here, the murmur of a fray came to me, borne upon the light breeze: my curiosity was excited by the indistinct sounds, and I walked along in the direction whence they came for a couple of minutes. As I neared it, the tumult grew in loudness and fierceness; men's hoarse and angry voices, mingled in hot dispute, came crashing upwards as from the deeps of hell. I bent anxiously over the cliff, as though articulate sounds might be caught three hundred feet above their source;—a louder burst ascended, then crack! ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... of evidence that we have entered into a period in which an especial emphasis will be laid on the too long neglected psychical factor. This new movement is probably only in its beginning and the loudness with which it presents itself to-day is one of the many indications of its immaturity. Whether it will be a blessing or a danger, whether it will really lead forward in a lasting way, or whether it will soon ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... off Albert and put it on himself, lest Albert might suspect, and then began to sing purposely, with loudness and levity, an old farm rhyme that had been familiar to the boys of ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... be avoided. As to manners, I think that to repeat a bit of scandal, and circulate backbiting stories, are worse offences than the actions that gave rise to them. If I mentally condemn a person, I feel guilty of moral lapse. I hate self-assertion; I am ashamed of self-advertisement. I dislike loudness of any kind. Probably I have too much tendency to negation of all sorts. Small-talk bores me to extinction, but I will discuss a point of ethics or psychology half the night. To make capital out of a person's weakness is repugnant to me. I want ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and for the most part legendary. The language is archaic and difficult for an outsider to understand. The singing is a kind of declamation, with long slurs, frequent staccatos, and abrupt endings. Of course, there are war songs that demand loudness and rapidity, but on the whole the song music is as weird and melancholy as the instrumental. Ceremonial chants do not differ from secular songs, except that they treat of the doings of a supernatural world, and ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... Indian officers, friends of his own, who had entered into the speculation on his recommendation. These rebukes Thomas Newcome bore with an affecting meekness, as his faithful F. B. described to me, striving with many oaths and much loudness to carry off bis own emotion. But what moved the Colonel most of all, was a letter which came at this time from Honeyman in India, saying that he was doing well—that of course he knew of his benefactor's ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... breezes. All this went on in the most ludicrous manner; and, as soon as one person was exhausted, he was immediately replaced by another, prayers at the same time being offered up to the spirits as well of the fires as of the wind. The loudness of these prayers, I may add, grew and decreased in intensity, according to the aspect which the fire took from moment to moment; if a flame rose up higher than usual, louder prayers were hurriedly offered, and if the fire at times almost went out, then the spirits ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... supposed to be there in the capacity of his servant. But the man, as it seemed, had a mission to fulfil, and was the captain's master as well as servant. "Mr. Hart," said Captain Scarborough, repressing the loudness of his words as far as his rage would admit him, but still speaking so as to attract the attention of some of those round him, "I do not know what good you propose to yourself by following me in this manner. You have my bonds, which are not even ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope |
