"Sonorous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with a variety and effect that never tire upon the eye. Her voice is naturally plaintive, and a tender melancholy in her level speaking denotes a being devoted to tragedy; yet this seemingly settled quality of voice becomes at will sonorous or piercing, overwhelms with rage, or in its wild shriek absolutely harrows up the soul. Her sorrow, too, is never childish—her lamentation has a dignity which belongs, I think, to no other woman: it claims your respect along with your tears. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... when he pleased, he imitated the whistling of the air, the creaking of the branches dashing against one another, and the particular noise produced by dead leaves when accumulated in compact masses on the ground. By degrees the rollings of the drum became more frequent and louder, the chants more sonorous and shrill; and at last our Indian shrieked, howled, and roared in the most frightful manner; he struggled and struck his instrument with extraordinary rapidity; it was a real tempest, to which nothing was wanting, not even the distant howling ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... Mr. Muntz says we have more coaches than there are in half France. Mrs. Pritchard has bought Ragman's Castle, for which my Lord Litchfield could not agree. We shall be as celebrated as Baiae or Tivoli; and, if we have not such sonorous names as they boast, we have very famous people: Clive and Pritchard, actresses; Scott and Hudson, painters; my Lady Suffolk, famous in her time; Mr. H * * *, the impudent lawyer, that Tom Hervey wrote against; Whitehead, the poet—and Cambridge, the every thing. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... or movements of any consequence. Sally became uncomfortably susceptible to the undercurrent of high nervous tension, conscious of a slight dew on her hands and forehead, and surprisingly conscious of the sonorous thumping of her heart. Unaccountably, nobody else seemed to ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... unconscious of what I was about, for my mind was not with my fish. I was thinking of my earlier years—of the Scottish crags and the heaths of Ireland—and sometimes my mind would dwell on my studies—on the sonorous stanzas of Dante, rising and falling like the waves of the sea—or would strive to remember a couplet or ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... the ground in front of the testing shed and the wanderers leaped out, to be greeted by the half-hysterical Jap. Shiro's ready vocabulary of peculiar but sonorous words failed him completely, and he bent himself double in a bow, his yellow face wreathed in the widest possible smile. Crane, one arm around his wife, seized Shiro's hand and wrung it in silence. Seaton swept Dorothy off her ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... his thanks in sonorous Castilian, protested that my courage and devotion would earn me the eternal gratitude of every patriot, and promised to have everything ready for me in the course of the week, a promise ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... emotion, recalled to me the patter, learned by heart, of the powdered clown on the stage. The superb air which the orator assumed under the rain of reproaches and insults singularly resembled the indifference of the clown to the loud slaps on his face. Those sonorous phrases, whose echoes had just died away, sounded as false as a strolling band. The word "liberty" rolled like the bass-drum, "public interests" and "welfare of the State" clanged discordantly like the cymbals, and when the comedian spoke of his "patriotism" ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... a sonorous voice, "the Scripture saith, 'except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.' Let us pray, then, to the God of battles to ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... threw in the clutch for the third speed—and the fourth. The car leaped forward like a startled race-horse. The motor lilted merrily into its deep-throated song of the open road, its contented, silken humming passing into a sonorous ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... more appropriate welcome to this remote dwelling of a devoted band; and when the dog, after gazing gravely at the newcomers, vanished into darkness, I knew that he had gone in to tell of our arrival. I was right, too, for once within, he uttered a deep bell-note, more sonorous and more musical than lies in the throats of common dogs, and was answered by a distant baying. One could not say that these majestic animals "barked." There was as indisputable a difference between an ordinary bark, and the sound they made, as between the barrel instrument played in ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... language of emotion. On the contrary, most of what is so called proves the absence of all passionate excitement. It is a cold-blooded, haggard, anxious, worrying hunt after rhymes which can be made serviceable, after images which will be effective, after phrases which are sonorous; all this under limitations which restrict the natural movements of fancy and imagination. There is a secondary excitement in overcoming the difficulties of rhythm and rhyme, no doubt, but this is not the emotional heat ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... all its movements, and embodying in himself, more than any other man (except, perhaps, Mr. Yancey), the fierceness of its spirit, stood Mr. Toombs, of Georgia. He was now invited to speak in Montgomery. As a man of large political experience, some statesmanship, and master of a grave and sonorous eloquence, it was expected that he would influence a class of men who had hitherto held themselves studiously aloof from the insurrectionary ranks—that calm, conservative class, which is recognized by ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... it into ecstasies. It would have suffered anything for a fine tirade. Virtue or vice, heroics hobnobbing with the basest prurience, there was no pill that it would not swallow if it were gilded with sonorous rhymes and redundant words. Anything that came to hand was ground into couplets, antitheses, arguments: love, suffering, death. And when that was done, they thought they had felt love, suffering, and death. Nothing ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... on either beam seemed to show that the Excelsior was entering some land-locked passage. The movement of the vessel slackened, the tide was beginning to ebb. Suddenly a wave of far-off clamor, faint but sonorous, broke across the ship. There was an interval of breathless silence, and then it broke again, and more distinctly. It was ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... that bore the date of 1746. His fishing was done in the river Yare, which flowed through the estate of John Joseph Gurney, the Quaker-banker of Earlham Hall, two miles out of Norwich. It was here that he was reproached by the voice, "clear and sonorous as a bell," of the banker himself; not for trespassing, but "for pulling all those fish out of the water, and leaving them to ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... softer than any other excepting lead, more elastic, and more sonorous. Though tin is the lightest of all metals, its ore is, when rich, the heaviest of all metallic ores. It has both smell and taste; is less ductile than some harder metals, though it may be beaten into very thin leaves; and it fuses so quickly, that ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... and hoarse, are in great use, and we hear in the streets their plaintive and sonorous denunciations of men and manners. The donkey here seems to take the place of the dog, which in Holland and Scandinavia is taught the ways of constant and praiseworthy usefulness. There, with a voluble ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... a little late to dinner. Some dozen of us were already assembled on a flight of steps at the bottom of the garden when he appeared. He spied me at once [a woman speaks!] across the green lawn and a vase of tall fuchsias, and called out in his sonorous voice: ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... threw down his pen so that it stood quivering in the table. "For surely it was of me that Heine was thinking when he wrote: 'Yes, a third man will come'"—and Lassalle's accent became dramatically sonorous—"'and he will conclude what Luther began, what Lessing continued, a man of whom the Fatherland stands in such ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... feet, And fastening by its clasps his purple cloak Around him, double and of shaggy pile, Seized, next, his sturdy spear headed with brass, And issued first into the Grecian fleet. 160 There, Nestor, brave Gerenian, with a voice Sonorous roused the godlike counsellor From sleep, Ulysses; the alarm came o'er His startled ear, forth from his tent he sprang Sudden, and of their coming, quick, inquired. 165 Why roam ye thus the camp and fleet alone ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... day had been a package of rat poison and a bottle of painkiller, looked like a lemon that has lain too long in the window, when he arose and diffidently offered his suggestion for the relief of Prouty. The doctor's voice when he was frightened had the rich sonorous tones of a mouse squeaking in the wall, and now as he ventured the suggestion that Prouty's hope lay in raising peppermint, his voice was inaudible beyond the fifth row of chairs. In the rear of the room they caught the words "mint" and "still," and were under the impression ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... of Miltonic sweep and dignity in which he summons the clans of the California herbs and shrubs; an enumeration as stately as the Homeric catalogue of the ships, and, to such as lack technical knowledge of botany, imposing respect rather by sonorous appeal to the ear than by visual suggestion to the memory. That herbs should be marshalled in so impressive an array fills one with admiration and with somewhat of awe for these representatives of the vegetable kingdom. As Muir pronounces their full-sounding ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... moment. Beyond the church, in the thicker shadows, lay its dead beneath a colony of staggering gray stones. Upon one grave, I remember, where the clay was freshly turned, there was a bouquet of flowers—love's protest against the sonorous sentence—"earth to earth and dust to dust"—which the other graves confirmed. The pine needles lay thick above them, and not a flower distinguished them from the common sod. They had the look ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... repeated in sonorous tones by a stern-looking person who sat at the foot of the long table, and whom Hester had not before noticed. Instantly the girls rose from their seats, and began to file in orderly procession out of the tea-room. Hester looked round in terror ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... of Cap'n Sproul, buzzing with his emotions, caught only a few words, nor grasped any part of the meaning. But the sonorous "United States of America" chilled his blood, and the word ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... mastodon (nipple-toothed) twists and untwists his trunk, and brays and pounds with his huge tusks the fragments of rock that cover the shore; whilst the megatherium (huge beast), buttressed upon his enormous hinder paws, grubs in the soil, awaking the sonorous echoes of the granite rocks with his tremendous roarings. Higher up, the protopitheca - the first monkey that appeared on the globe - is climbing up the steep ascents. Higher yet, the pterodactyle (wing-fingered) darts in irregular zigzags to and fro in the heavy air. In the uppermost ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... eyes half closed. In his ears was the sonorous roar of Piccadilly, the hooting of motor-cars, close at hand the rustling of a faint wind in the elm trees. It was a wonderful moment. The nightmare with which he had grappled so fiercely, which he had overthrown, ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... choking, is mercifully delivered by beneficent nature from a sudden death. He gives way to a loud and sonorous sneeze. ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... it was harsh and strident; but this evening the hills, and the trees, and the wide open spaces, Nature's mighty modulator, subdued the harshness, so that the voice rolled up to the people clear, full, and sonorous. Nor was the preacher possessed of great learning nor endued with the gift of eloquence. He had, however, a shrewd knowledge of his people and of their ways and of their needs, and he had a kindly heart, and, more than all, he had the preacher's gift, the divine ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... or interest him, and fixing jealously on all that fed his fancy. Such books as Grimm's Fairy Tales and Masterman Ready were wells of delight, enacted as they were in a strange and exciting world; and he was sensitive, too, to the beauty of metre and sonorous phrases, learning poetry so easily that it was supposed to be a species of wilfulness in him that the Collects and texts, and the very Psalms—that seemed to him so unreal and husk-like then, and that later became to him like fruits full of ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and greatly refreshed. Presently we filed into the theatre, under a very satisfactory hurrah, and waited in a crimson column, dividing the crowded pit through the middle, until each of us in his turn should be called to stand before the Chancellor and hear our merits set forth in sonorous Latin. Meantime, Kipling and I wrote autographs until some good kind soul interfered in our behalf and procured ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... clear, still evening air the words rang out over the desert, sonorous, imposing, peaceful. As the notes of the verse died away the answer came from other ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in a rippling flood. He spun the dials. The sound ceased, and the pointing rods glowed with an aura of amber light at their tips. Swift and startling answer came from deep within the heart of the cliff, a mighty note of sonorous beauty like the violent plucking of a string on some colossal bass viol. So powerful was the timbre of the pulsing sound that the entire side of the mountain seemed to vibrate ...
— The Cavern of the Shining Ones • Hal K. Wells
... The basaltic rocks had cooled down into the same regular concentric prisms; there was the same dark canopied roof with its in- terstices filled up with its yellow lutings; the same precision of outline in the prismatic angles, sharp as though chiseled by a sculptor's hand; the same sonorous vibration of the air across the basaltic rocks, of which the Gaelic poets have feigned that the harps of the Fingal minstrelsy were made. But whereas at Staffa the floor of the cave is always covered with a sheet of water, here the grotto was beyond the reach ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... told to this Fisherman by a certain Grand Old Voice, vague but sonorous, and voluble exceedingly, that if he would only make a complete change in his nets, and in the fashion of his fishing, miraculous draughts would become as common as minnows in a brook. This Voice visited our Fisherman often in his visions. And, behold, the Fisherman essayed the schemes suggested ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, February 4, 1893 • Various
... awaken an interest for which I was not prepared. I was just thinking how well my name had sounded uttered in the sonorous tones of the Coroner, and how grateful I ought to be for the courage I had displayed in substituting the genteel name of Amelia for the weak and sentimental one of Araminta, when I became conscious that the eyes directed towards me were filled with an expression not easy to understand. ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... the general muscular health and development; so that the average voice in Italy has a much wider compass than in most other countries; and an unctuous ease of execution is readily acquired. Their language, again, favors Italian singers quite as much as their climate. It abounds in the most sonorous of the vowels, while generally avoiding the difficult U, and the mixed vowels Oe and Ue, as well as the harsh consonants, which are almost always sacrificed to euphony. And where the language hesitates to make this sacrifice, the vocalists come ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... rules, will speedily be made aware that the English language "super-abounds in short syllables." Why then should we rigidly adhere to rules repugnant to the genius of our language, if they can be modified so as to adapt the sonorous Hexameter to the structure of our mother-tongue? Can they be so modified? I have attempted it. I venture to ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... arrived from the Holy Land, being two of the saintly men who kept vigil over the sepulchre of our Blessed Lord at Jerusalem. He of the tall and portly form and commanding presence was Fray Antonio Millan, prior of the Franciscan convent in the Holy City. He had a full and florid countenance, a sonorous voice, and was round and swelling and copious in his periods, like one accustomed to harangue and to be listened to with deference. His companion was small and spare in form, pale of visage, and soft and silken and almost whispering in speech. "He had a humble and lowly way," says ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... of all eyes, made pompous preparation; he pulled down his vest, arranged his sleeves and, in sonorous, cadenced voice began to recite his alexandrines, ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... too youthful for a general, and his body too corpulent for the expressive and delicate features. As he passed by the poor, unpretending carriage, where Wilhelmine sat with her children, she heard distinctly his beautiful, sonorous voice, and merry laugh. "Oh Heaven, it is he!—it is he!" she murmured, drawing herself farther back into the wagon with her children. Just then, out of an opening in the linen cover, Louisa peeped, whispering, "Mamselle, it is the Prince ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... by the Bras d'Or was fringed with Gaelic. Now I have heard many languages in my time, and know how to appreciate the luxurious Greek, the stately Latin, the mellifluous Chinese, the epithetical Sclavic, the soft Italian, the rich Castilian, the sprightly French, sonorous German, and good old English, but candor compels me to say, that I do not think much of the Gaelic. It is not pleasing ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... about to pass from one house into another. He was seated in his little bed—he used a small and very narrow one—and, at its side, was his wife, Veronica, almost his equal in years. In a clear and sonorous voice he told me why he would be able to leave this life with a valiant soul.... Feeling a little later the failure of vital force, he exclaimed, 'Glad and full of hope will I go with you, my good God!' He then composed himself; and having closed his eyes, as ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... were fishing off the south end of the island, and in a few minutes their loud cries reached other natives on shore, and by them was passed on from house to house along the beach till it reached the town itself. From there, presently, came a deep sonorous shout, "Evaka! Evaka!" ("A ship! A ship!"), and then they swarmed out of their thatched dwellings like bees from a hive and ran, laughing and shouting together, down to the beach ...
— The Tapu Of Banderah - 1901 • Louis Becke
... purpose no one could be so well fitted as Cassiodorus, Senator by name and by office, descendant of many generations of Roman nobles, and master of such exuberant rhetoric that it was difficult then, as it is often impossible now, to extract any definite meaning from his sonorous periods. ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... the balance incline to the side on which he should cast the weight of his daring and his genius. Marseilles contended with Aix for the great plebeian; his two elections, the discourses he then delivered, the addresses he drew up, the energy he employed commanded the attention of all France. His sonorous phrases became the proverbs of the Revolution. Comparing himself, in his lofty language, to the men of antiquity, he placed himself already in the public estimation in the elevated position he aspired to reach. Men became accustomed to identify him with the names he cited; he made a loud ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... that the forest was bathed in golden sunlight. The earth sent forth fragrant exhalations. A gentle breeze lent a tonic quality to the atmosphere. The leaves sparkled with dew, and the stream in the bottom flashed in the sunlight, filling the woods with its sonorous babble. So inviting was the scene that despite their haste, the boys could not resist the temptation to drop their hooks in promising pools as they moved along. Without half trying, they accumulated a dozen fine trout. The smaller ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... deserted that night; Duane dined there alone, then wandered into the great empty room facing Fifth Avenue, his steps echoing sharply across the carpetless floor. The big windows were open; there was thunder in the air—the sonorous stillness in which voices and footsteps in ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... the uncouth music of sixteen iron-shod hoofs beating hard from the earth rhythmic notes which presently grew hollow and sonorous as they came rattling over the wooden bridge that spanned ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... gave sonorous notice of the progress during the ascent. Now they were passing along the first terrace; still the divisions were incessant down by the gate—still the chanting continued, a dismal dissonance in the distance, a horrible discord near by. If it be true that the ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... particularly, so, tired of doing nothing, he plucked up courage, and leaning forward whispered, "Do lend me your Cesar for a few minutes." The boy at once handed it to him with a pleasant smile, and as the lesson was marked, Eric had time to hurry over a few sentences, when Mr. Gordon's sonorous voice exclaimed, ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... said he, and strolled back to where the voices of the contending men of science rose in a prolonged duet, the high, strident note of Summerlee rising and falling to the sonorous bass of Challenger. I should have thought no more of Lord John's remark were it not that once again that night I heard him mutter to himself: "Blue clay—clay in a volcanic tube!" They were the last words I heard before I dropped ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... two hundred feet from the intersection of those lofty and massive piers which divide transept from choir and nave; what effect of magnitude after the eye gets accustomed to the vast proportions! Oh, what silence reigns around! How difficult, even for the sonorous chants of choristers and priests to disturb that silence,—to be more than echoes of a distant music which seems to come from the very courts of heaven itself: to some a holy sanctuary, where one may meditate among crowds and feel alone; where one breathes an atmosphere ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... that critics are becoming better, that they have learned what impostors they have been, and that their philosophy has been merely the skilful manipulation of sonorous words, and that on the whole, they must lay aside their magisterial role and cease to suppose they are persons enforcing judicial decisions or experts who can speak with authority about chemical analysis. ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... majesty's fifth foot," said Tom, with a very sonorous emphasis on each word—"the bearer of a flag of truce and an amicable proposition from Major-General Allen, commanding the ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... there was none. Statesmanship in the higher sense of the word was absent from every decision the delegates took and from every suggestion they proffered. Nor was it only by omission that they sinned. Their invincible turn for circuitous methods, to which severer critics give a less sonorous name, was manifested ad nauseam. They worked out cunning little schemes which it was hard to distinguish from intrigues, and which, if they had not been foiled in time, would have made matters even worse than they are. From the outset the British government was for summoning Bolshevist delegates ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... ex-President heeded him not. After a moment of placid scrutiny of his enraged countenance by those bright, watchful eyes, Coke might have been non-existent so far as recognition of his outburst was apparent during the sonorous discussion that ensued between Dom Corria Antonio De Sylva and the Senor Capitano Salvador ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... creates by its own movement. Low and loud, base and treble, they clang together with unequal intervals, but each in time and tune. They could not work in silence, and nature demands that from one end of heaven to the other they shall be sonorous with a deep diapason. The far off give a loud treble twang. Those nearest to the moon sound low and base. The earth, the ninth in order, immovable upon its lowest seat, occupies the centre of the system. From the eight there come seven sounds, distinct among themselves, Venus and Mercury ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... which we have already referred in the course of this narrative, that the secondary charm of the History of the World resides. It is to these that we turn when we have exhausted our first surprise and delight at the great bursts of poetic eloquence, the long sonorous sentences which break like waves on the shore, when the spirit of the historian is roused by some occasional tempest of reflection. In either case, the book is essentially one to glean from, not to read with consecutive patience. Real historical ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... this clock. It was of the good old-fashioned "grandfather" type. It stood eight feet high, in a carved-oak case, and had a deep, sonorous, solemn tick, that made a pleasant accompaniment to the after-dinner chat, and seemed to fill the room with ...
— Clocks - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... turned to the agent and whispered, "Now," and coolly and indifferently as he knew how, that official reined his broncho around and headed him for the twinkling lights of the distant buildings. Red Dog began in sonorous Dakota, with magnificent sweep of his bare, silver-banded arm, and Boynton touched up his charger impatiently and rode a length closer, his two troopers sitting like statues with the butts of their carbines resting on the thigh, ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... slender Italian ladies, dressed fantastically and in bright colours, quite up to the latest fashion, meeting my uncle with the freedom of professional artistes, and yet with considerable charms of manner, and addressing him in firm and sonorous voices. What the deuce of a strange tongue they speak! Only now and then does it sound at all like German. My uncle doesn't understand a word; embarrassed, mute as a maggot, he steps back and points to the sofa. They sit down, talk together—it ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... had lain in it so long before, when I became aware of a peculiar sound that it yielded to the tread, as my companions paced over it. I struck it obliquely with my foot, where the surface lay dry and incoherent in the sun, and the sound elicited was a shrill, sonorous note, somewhat resembling that produced by a waxed thread, when tightened between the teeth and the hand, and tipped by the nail of the forefinger. I walked over it, striking it obliquely at each step, and with every blow the shrill note was repeated. My companions ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... rhymes were of the chiming, rhythmic kind, Jeannette learned rapidly, catching the verses as one catches a tune, and repeating them with a spirit and dramatic gesture all her own. Her favorite was Macaulay's 'Ivry.' Beautiful she looked, as, standing in the centre of the room, she rolled out the sonorous lines, her French accent giving a charming foreign coloring to the ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... Standard; that proud honour claim'd Azazel as his right, a Cherube tall: Who forthwith from the glittering Staff unfurld Th' Imperial Ensign, which full high advanc't Shon like a Meteor streaming to the Wind With Gemms and Golden lustre rich imblaz'd, Seraphic arms and Trophies: all the while Sonorous mettal blowing Martial sounds: 540 At which the universal Host upsent A shout that tore Hells Concave, and beyond Frighted the Reign of Chaos and old Night. All in a moment through the gloom were seen Ten thousand ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... 'Tis far across the Platte, a good hundred miles away. Plainsmen to this day call it Larmie in that iconoclastic slaughter of every poetic title that is their proud characteristic. All over our grand continent it is the same. The names, musical, sonorous, or descriptive, handed down as the heritage of the French missionaries, the Spanish explorers, or the aboriginal owners, are all giving way to that democratic intolerance of foreign title which is the birthright of the free-born American. What name more ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... God!" said Bagration, in a resolute, sonorous voice, turning for a moment to the front line, and slightly swinging his arms, he went forward uneasily over the rough field with the awkward gait of a cavalryman. Prince Andrew felt that an invisible power was leading him ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... provokes a witty repartee, with a special sting in it for Horace himself, at which the little man winces—for have there not been certain love-passages of old between Neaera and himself? The wine circulates freely. Maecenas warms, and drops, with the deliberation of a rich sonorous voice, now some sharp sarcasm, now some aphorism heavy with meaning, which sticks to the memory, like a saying of Talleyrand's. His umbrae, who have put but little of allaying Tiber in their cups, grow boisterous and abusive, and having insulted nearly everybody at the table by coarse personal ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... who perpetrate them are monsters, who violate the primitive condition on which the earth was given to man; they are guilty by the general verdict of human-kind." Sheridan concluded his speech by an appeal to British justice, which, as it is preserved to us, is a mere sonorous roll of words, with a common-place meaning; after which he acted a stage-trick; as if fainting, he fell back into the arms of his ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... brandy, my dear." Tresco's voice sounded as sonorous as a parson's. "Now he's talkin'. And what will you do with the town when you've bought it, ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... him, and when they saw by his plumed hat and laced cloak that he was an officer of mousquetaires, they insisted upon his crying out, "Down with Mazarine." This he did with so good a grace, and in so sonorous a voice, that the most difficult were fully satisfied. He then walked down the Rue Richelieu, reflecting how he should manage the escape of the queen, for it would be impossible to take her away in one of the royal carriages, with the arms of France painted upon it. On passing before the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... with which Stobo always dwells on himself and his belongings, the description of his person given in the "Memorial" coincides very well with that of the figure which the novelist makes to descend in the yard of the Durham inn. One circumstance further may be noted. We are told of "the noble and sonorous names" which Miss Tabitha Bramble so much admired: "that Obadiah was an adventitious appellation, derived from his great-grandfather, who had been one of the original Covenanters; but Lismahago was the family surname, taken from a place ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... warbled without the others. Almost always the fresh and matinal song of one awoke the song of the others, who, more lazy, did not leave their nests at so early an hour. Then it was a challenge, a contest of clear, sonorous, brilliant, silvery notes, in which the birds did not ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... of the representative. The painter was glad to see and hear so great a man in the hour of his glory, though so much as a fragment of the oration does not now remain in his memory. In size, in figure, in expression, in the sonorous tones of his voice, Mr. Sutton was everything that a congressman should be. "The people," said Isaac D. Worthington in presenting him, "should indeed be proud of such an able and high-minded representative." We shall have cause to recall ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... his father heard the clear, sonorous tones of his fine voice calling to his attendants, and yet a few seconds later the lively clatter of his horse's hoofs on ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... curious fact is the transposition of sonorous sensations or images of sound, and like them without form or figure, into visual and motor images: "The ruffles of sound that the fifer cuts out; the flute goes up to alto like a frail capital on a column." This ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... high-lying plateau reached, leagues of open country are disclosed north and west, far as the eye carries, to the fine bare outline of the Wiltshire Downs. She asked for wide prospects, for air and ample space; but as floored by stable earth rather than by the eternal unrest and "fruitless, sonorous ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... grew hazy; the pretty face in its golden curls joined the other floating visions,—Rigi slopes, cascades like plumes of feathers,—and soon the heroic breathing of the great man, sonorous and rhythmical, filled the little room and the greater part of ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... four years in life, and with all the enthusiasm of a college student I raved of poetry and romance. We read German together, and we talked of love in French; and the musical tongue of Italy, it seemed to me, befitted her mouth better than her own sonorous native language, and when in conversation she would look me one of those dreamy glances which had at the first set my heart in agitation, it perfectly bewildered me. You needn't smile, Langley, (poor Bill's face was guilty of no such distortion,) but if your ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... Tetzel. He was a friar of the Dominicans, apostolical commissioner, inquisitor, and bachelor of theology. He united profligate morals with great pretensions to sanctity; was somewhat eloquent, so far as a sonorous voice was concerned, and was very bold and haughty, as vulgar men, raised to eminence and power, are apt to be. But his peculiarity consisted in the audacity of his pretensions, and his readiness in inventing ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... answers to the black cap in England), and pronounced the sentence of the law in the usual terms: "To be hanged by the neck until you be dead; and may the Lord have {p.036} mercy upon your unhappy soul!" Having concluded this awful formula in his most sonorous cadence, the Judge, dismounting his formidable beaver, gave a familiar nod to his unfortunate acquaintance, and said to him in a sort of chuckling whisper, "And now, Donald, my man, I think I've checkmated you for ance." The Regent laughed heartily at this specimen of judicial humor; ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... I. (GRAMPUS).—Though this fish, whose loud sonorous breathing, or rather blowing, has furnished a proverb to landsmen, is so well known a denizen of the deep, yet is he not popularly classed among whales. But possessing all the grand distinctive features of the leviathan, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... familiar, servile, and very fond of the position of umbrella-bearer in ordinary to your person: therefore, transfer him to the personal staff of some native dignitary, where he will be appreciated. If my model does not suit you, there are many types to choose from. We have the lofty and sonorous Purdaisee, the Rajpoot, son of kings, the Bhundaree, or hereditary climber of palm trees, the Israelite, the low caste, useful, intelligent Mahar, and many more. Even the Brahmin in this iron age becomes ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... bank was crowded with its rows of human beings, all listening with intense interest to a pale, dark man, who stood on the front of the platform at the bottom of the field, and with sonorous voice delivered a short opening prayer, followed by an impassioned address. In the clear, pure air every word was distinctly heard all over the field, the surging multitude keeping a breathless silence, broken only by the singing of the birds ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... sometimes will lead to insubordination on the part of the crew, followed by the free use of handspikes, rope's ends, and manacles, on the part of the officers, could repress the spirits of Jonas Silvernail, spoil his jokes, or lessen the volume of his hearty and sonorous laugh. Jonas was a native of Hudson, in New York; a young, active, intelligent sailor, who, always good-humored, was never more happy than when singing a sea song, spinning a merry yarn, or playing off a practical joke. Jonas was ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... one could manage to follow him, was always coherent. His sentences would parse, and went on uniform principles—namely, the repeating every phrase in finer words, with all possible qualifications; whereas Eustace never accomplished more than catching up some sonorous period; but as his manners were at their best when he was overawed, and nine months in England had so far improved his taste that he did not once refer to his presentation at Government House, he made such an excellent impression that Lord ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dissonances are absolutely enthralling. Charles Boner, in his work on Transylvania, says that even the aged find it impossible to resist the dance when a gypsy band invites them to it. Their prelude is slow and sonorous, the music quickens, there is a rush of tones, the fantastic melody hastens on at a head-long pace—every one, old and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... After dinner the King made him a ridiculous speech, with abundant flourishes about the Sultan and his friendship for him, which is the more droll from his having been High Admiral at the time of the battle of Navarino, to which the Pacha replied in a sonorous voice. He admired everything, and conversed with great ease. All the stupid, vulgar Englishwomen followed him about as a lion ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... the breath that stirred the loch where Tom Stoddart lay and mused in his boat, soon became to him merely the curl on the waters of lone St. Mary's or Loch Skene, and he began casting over the great uneducated trout of a happier time, forgetful of the Muse. He wrote another piece, with a sonorous and delightful title, "Ajalon of the Winds." Where is "Ajalon of the Winds"? Miss Stoddart knows nothing of it, but I fancy that the thrice-loathed Betty ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... struck off, as it were, upon a steadily moving scroll. The music of the unfamiliar names that occurred in his recital was a stimulant to the poet's imagination. Presley had the poet's passion for expressive, sonorous names. As these came and went in Vanamee's monotonous undertones, like little notes of harmony in a musical progression, he listened, delighted with their resonance.—Navajo, Quijotoa, Uintah, Sonora, Laredo, Uncompahgre—to him they were so many ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... 1880, I directed attention to the fact that thin disks or diaphragms of various materials become sonorous when exposed to the action of an intermittent beam of sunlight, and I stated my belief that the sounds were due to molecular disturbances produced in the substance composing the diaphragm.[1] Shortly afterwards Lord ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... of our great poet are the prism of the universe; all its wonders are there reflected, divided, and recomposed; sounds imitate colours, and colours are blended in harmony; rhyme, sonorous or bizarre, rapid or prolonged, is inspired by this poetical divination; supreme beauty of art! triumph of genius! which discovers in nature every secret in affinity with the ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... ceremonial dances; such were the dances of war and of triumph, when the warriors, painted red and black, returned, carrying the scalps of their slain foes on branches of evergreen pine, while they chanted the sonorous song of victory; and such was the Dance of the Serpent, the dance of lawless love, where the women and young girls were allowed to ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... notice; and soon after, repeating the mistake, he was interrupted by a general cry of "The last war but one,—the last war but one."—"I mean, sir," said Mr. Pitt, turning to the speaker, and raising his sonorous voice,—"I mean, sir, the last war that Britons would wish to remember." Whereupon the cry was instantly changed into an ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... two weeks after this, when he was coming in from a trip alone on part of the line, when his ear caught some strange sounds in the woods ahead; deep, sonorous, semi-human they were. Strange and weird wood-notes in winter are nearly sure to be those of a raven or a jay; if deep, they are likely ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... strength. What he most affected was the Ionic, which has a peculiar sweetness, from its never using contractions, and from its custom of resolving the diphthongs into two syllables, so as to make the words open themselves with a more spreading and sonorous fluency. With this he mingled the Attic contractions, the broader Doric, and the feebler AEolic, which often rejects its aspirate, or takes off its accent, and completed this variety by altering some letters with the licence of poetry. Thus his ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... adventures on the trail, up the Pass precipice, crossing the snow slide and in the desert, where the Ranger had refused to save his own life by abandoning his companion; and the narrative lost nothing in Matthews' recital with his Scottish-Canadian R's rolling out sonorous and strong, where he was moved to admiration or anger. The sheep rancher sat silent through the stirring story with only an occasional glint of fire from his black eyes ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... add," said Becker, "that bodies striking the air excite sonorous vibrations in this fluid; thus it rings under the lash that strikes it with violence, and whistles under the rapid impulsion of a switch: it likewise becomes sonorous when it strikes itself with force against any solid body, as the wind when it blows against the cordage ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... bell is never tolled but upon the death of some of the Royal Family, of the Bishop of London, or of the Dean of St. Paul's, and then the clapper is moved and not the bell. In the stillness of night, the indication of the hour by the deeply sonorous tone of this bell may be heard, not merely over the immense Metropolis, but in distant parts of the country. The fact is well known of the sentry at Windsor, who, when accused of having been asleep one night on his post, denied the charge, saying, "That he had been listening to St. Paul's ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... help wishing I were an orator to jaw back at you. A preacher has such an easy thing, with no back talk except the sonorous echo of ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... sonorous verse; but it is not Dante's verse, unless all detached means on every side is open to visitation, and impassive air means living air. Beneath its sway, also, is not Dante's; nor can we accept umbrageous wood, with its unmeaning epithet, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... subdivided into three genera, of which the Howlers form one. They are so denominated from their habit of assembling in troops, and uttering the most terrible howlings, so loud that the forest is filled with their sonorous voices. Their cries can be heard at a half-league's distance, and produce upon a stranger unaccustomed to such sounds a very disagreeable impression. The unusual strength of voice is accounted for by a peculiar drum-like construction of the os hyoides, common to all the genera of Sapajous, but ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid
... that this power, when lost through disuse, can be regained with little difficulty. In Mr. X's case this process was particularly speedy, with the result of increasing his breathing power in two lessons by 60 cubic inches. In one additional week I could dismiss him with a full sonorous man's voice, in place of the uncertain child's squeak with which he came to me. It is no exaggeration to say that this young man left me with a new voice, and if people had heard him when he first came to me, behind a screen, and again after the last lesson, they would certainly not have ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... not understand you, Mr. Saddletree," said Butler, thus pushed hard for an answer. His faint and exhausted tone of voice was instantly drowned in the sonorous bray of Bartoline. ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Marche, clean as a new pin and in his merriest mood, sat erect as the King of Yvetot in the bow of the long canoe which held the Lady de Tilly and her family. His sonorous violin was coquettishly fixed in its place of honor under his wagging chin, as it accompanied his voice while he chanted an old boat-song which had lightened the labor of many a weary oar on lake and river, from the St. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... the sight, such as the waking eye never beheld; and the ear is ravished with music which no earthly skill could produce. The dreaming sense magnifies all sounds and sights which exist in nature. The thunder deepens its sonorous tone, ocean sends up a louder voice, and the whirlwind shakes the bending forest with ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... also occupied. Arthur, standing or kneeling at his mother's side, appeared to be properly engrossed in the service. Singing the psalms beside him she became aware how much of a man he was now, for his voice, that had been cracking for several years, had now sunk to a deep and sonorous bass. ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... liquid prelude all the time, then swelled her chest and sung the old Venetian cauzonet, "Il pescatore de'll' onda." It is a small thing, but there is no limit to the genius of song. The Klosking sung this trifle with a voice so grand, sonorous, and sweet, and, above all, with such feeling, taste, and purity, that somehow she transported her hearers to Venetian waters, moonlit, and thrilled them to the heart, while the great glass chandelier kept ringing very audibly, so true, massive, and vibrating were her tones in that ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... the chief seated when the sonorous sounds of the trumpet, well supported by the larger drum, replaced the shriller notes of fife and small drum, and Governor Carver in full armor and wearing a plumed hat, made his appearance, followed by six more musketeers, the two guards exhausting pretty nearly the whole available ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... for my preferences. With some, I was caught by a melodious echo, or a sonorous ring; with others by the hint of a picture, or a story, or by some sacred suggestion that attracted me, I knew not why. Of some I was fond just because I misunderstood them; and of these I made a free version in my mind, as I murmured them ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... the legend of the Alpine seer, recounted with much gesticulation and rugged dramatic force by his grandsons, the younger occasionally interpolating details which the elder forgot, confirming the data, and echoing with a sonorous interjection the exclamations of the listeners. Augustin Franz Raoul, the grandfather of the men who addressed us, originally differed in no respect, save that of blindness, from ordinary people. One Christmas Eve, as the day drew towards twilight, and a driving storm of frozen snow ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... the driver to reverse the engine, or, as we have already stated, to expand the steam by cutting it off before the end of the stroke. The engine answers to the appeal like a living thing, and seems, with its steady beat and sonorous blast, to settle down to its work. It is pleasant from our seat in the corner of the screen to see this preparation for the work ahead—the absolute calm of driver and stoker, who exchange no word, but go steadfastly and quietly about their business; to feel the vibrations from the rails beneath ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... its way through the bushes. The birds flew up from the thicket, terrified and screaming—the horse neighed wildly—the dogs sent forth their impatient yelps, and our children shrieked in affright! Again rose, the deep and sonorous roar, filling the valley with its agonising tones. The cane rattled as it yielded to the crushing hoof. We saw the leaves of the thick underwood shaking at a distance—then nearer—then up to the edge of the glade—and the next moment a bright ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... after an Amen that lasted five minutes; and the priest, in an unctuous voice, murmured some Latin words, of which one could hear only the sonorous endings. He then walked round the boat, sprinkling it with holy water, and next began to murmur the "Oremus," standing alongside the boat opposite the sponsors, who remained ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... intelligible language for the expression of his ironic spirit. Being forbidden visits in and out of season to certain staterooms whose inmates feigned a wish to sleep, he represented in what grotesque attitudes of sonorous slumber they passed their day, and he spared neither age nor sex in these graphic shows. When age refused one day to go up on deck with him and pleaded in such Spanish as it could pluck up from its past studies that it was too ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... But certain feminine trinkets had come with her journeying across the desert, and a freshly laundered wash dress and a bit of bright ribbon work wonders. When she heard voices in the patio, that of Alan Howard and of another man, this a sonorous bass, she was ready. She went to her father's door; Longstreet was in the final stages of his own toilet-making, his face red and shiny from his towelling, his sparse hair on end, his whole being in that condition of bewildering untidiness which comes just before the ultimate desired ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... better fitted for controversy and narrative. In these changes it is impossible not to recognise the influence of French precept and of French example. Great masters of our language, in their most dignified compositions, affected to use French words, when English words, quite as expressive and sonorous, were at hand: [173] and from France was imported the tragedy in rhyme, an exotic which, in our soil, drooped, and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... little more of the curb, Fraeulein Lenore," cried a sonorous voice near her. Lenore looked round in amazement. A tall slight figure leaned against the tree, arms crossed, and a satirical smile playing over the fine features. The stranger advanced and took off his hat. "Hard work for the old gentleman," said he, pointing ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... three years before and in behalf of the people of the new commonwealth which had been carried at last triumphantly into the Union, to bid his excellency welcome in an address conceived in the most sonorous English of the period; and afterwards for many years author of the now famous "Notes," which will perhaps make his name immortal among American historians. On this evening of the ball at the home of General James Wilkinson, the great Mr. Bradford ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... thoughts in few sounds. This indeed takes off from the elegance of our tongue, but at the same time expresses our ideas in the readiest manner, and consequently answers the first design of speech better than the multitude of syllables, which make the words of other languages more tunable and sonorous. ...
— An Apology For The Study of Northern Antiquities • Elizabeth Elstob
... down, his eyes rested with withering scorn upon Alec Forbes, who instantly started to his feet amidst a confusion of plaudits and hisses, but, finding it absolutely impossible to speak so as to be heard, contented himself with uttering a sonorous ba-a-a-a, and instant dropped into his seat, all the other outcries dissolving in shouts of laughter. In a moment he received a candle full in the face; its companions went flying in all directions, and the room was in utter darkness. A scramble for the ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... fancifully adorned with little bells fastened by rings of leather. These made a jingling and dissonant music as it flew, being generally tuned one semitone below another, that they might be the more sonorous considering their small size. The bearer wore a pair of stout leathern mittens, and he carried a long pole to aid him, as it might seem, in the chase. His manner bespoke him above the ordinary rank; and his garb, from the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... their feet along the pavement; the long robes gather in harmonious folds; busy merchants hurry to the Chalcidicum; the statues look proudly down from their re-peopled pedestals; the noble language of the Romans resounds on all sides in scanned, sonorous measure; and the temple of Jupiter, seated at the end of the vista, as on a throne, and richly adorned with Corinthian elegance, glitters in all its ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... Denyven promptly replied, with a fine sonorous English accent, "a mug of 'alf an' 'alf,—with a ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... novelties, a scheme bearing the sonorous title of Simiti Development Company, I am told by ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking |
