"Inflexion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... something tells me that I shall have great difficulty in wresting from you a sincere declaration. I beseech you, then, not for love of me, for subjects should never weigh as anything in the balance which princes hold, but for love of yourself, to retain every syllable, every inflexion which, under the present most grave circumstances, will all have a sense and value as important as any every uttered in ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of the inflexions of nouns and adjectives have in this period— between the middle of the thirteenth and the end of the fifteenth century— completely disappeared. The inflexions of verbs are also greatly reduced in number. The strong[1] mode of inflexion has ceased to be employed for verbs that are new-comers, and the weak mode has been adopted in its place. During the earlier part of this period, even country-people tried to speak French, and in this and other ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... of Sydney Smith inquired, "What is Puseyism!" To which the witty canon replied: "Puseyism, sir, is inflexion and genuflexion; posture and imposture; bowing to the east, and curtseying to ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... the lucky partners. His partners, as I have said, had their photographs published in the papers the next day. Even those who were not so lucky urged their cavaliers to keep as close to him as possible on the ball-room floor, so every inflexion of the Prince could be watched, though not all were so far gone as an adoring young thing in one town (NOT Toronto), who hung on every movement, and who cried to her partner in accents ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... of the two opening similes, making the eagle the subject of the sentence in the first, the kid in the second, an awkwardness which the Latin is able to avoid by its power of distinguishing cases by inflexion. I trust, however, that it will not offend ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... utterance as Falstaff of "A shirt—and a half!" Incidentally it is remarked by the biographer of Henderson that the qualifications requisite to constitute a reader of especial excellence seem to be these, "a good ear, a voice capable of inflexion, an understanding of, and taste for, the beauties of the author." Added to this, there must be, of course, a feeling, an ardour, an enthusiasm sufficient at all times to ensure their rapid and vivid manifestation. Richly endowed in this way, however, ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... floor to ceiling. What the syllables actually uttered may have been he was too dazed to realize, for no degree of concentration was possible to his mind at all; he only knew that, before his smarting eyes, with this rising of the voice to its old dominant inflexion, the figure of Mr. Philip Skale grew likewise, indescribably; swelled, rose, spread upwards and outwards, but with the parts ever passing slowly in consistent inter-relation, from minute to minute. He became, always in perfect proportion, magnified ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... avyta, "being;" avnyta, "having been;" avmyta, "about to be." These are declined like nouns, of which latter there are six forms, the masculine in a, o, and y, the feminine in a, oo, and e; the plurals being formed exactly as in the pronominal suffixes of the verb. The root-word, without inflexion, alone is used where the name is employed in no connection with a verb, where in every terrestrial language the nominative would be employed. Thus, my guide had named the squirrel-monkeys ambau (sing. amba); but the ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... for familiar or vulgar ones. But this distinction is not so much with them, as with us, marked by a difference of words, but of terminations. Thus, when they are treating of solemn, or weighty matters, they terminate the verb and the noun by another inflexion, than what is used ...
— An Account Of The Customs And Manners Of The Micmakis And Maricheets Savage Nations, Now Dependent On The Government Of Cape-Breton • Antoine Simon Maillard
... is copious, we were not sufficiently acquainted with it to know; but it is certainly very imperfect, for it is almost totally without inflexion, both of nouns and verbs. Few of the nouns have more than one case, and few of the verbs more than one tense; yet we found no great difficulty in making ourselves mutually understood, however strange it ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... with now and then a subtle intonation, a persuasive inflexion or a half-melancholy smile in the course of the argument. What encouraged him most was the changed aspect of his white friend. The fierce power of his personality seemed to have turned into a dream. Lingard listened, growing gradually inscrutable in his continued silence, but remaining gentle ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... inflexion. "Well, that's no organisation that can't, in necessity, run by itself. This can. You know, quite well, this will. You know, quite well, that you will not ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... headstrong?" asked she, with as indifferent a tone as she could assume, but which yet had a touch of pique in it. His quick ear detected the inflexion. ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... way that Kate was completely above her surroundings, and capable of becoming as absolute a lady as ever lived on the island, without a sign of her origin in look or speech, except perhaps the rising inflexion in her voice which made the talk of the true Manxwoman the sweetest thing in the ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... spellbound, and so were we all for that matter. The mere memory feat was amazing enough. Few men could listen in hiding to a stranger's words, and report them exactly after an interval of more than an hour; but Narayan Singh did better than that, for he reproduced the speaker's gesture and inflexion, so that we had a mental picture of the scene that he described. Mabel offered him stewed tannic acid in the name of tea, and Ticknor suggested a chair, but he waved both offers aside and continued as if the picture before his mind and the words he was remembering might ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... adieu," she said, without the soul communicating one single intelligent inflexion to ...
— Adieu • Honore de Balzac
... her lips. She felt herself speak with ease, authority, conviction. She said to herself: "He doesn't care what I say—it's enough that I say it—even if it's stupid he'll like me better for it..." She knew that every inflexion of her voice, every gesture, every characteristic of her person—its very defects, the fact that her forehead was too high, that her eyes were not large enough, that her hands, though slender, were not small, and that the fingers did not taper—she knew that ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... All I can say is that I listened to her conscientiously, and I didn't perceive in what she did a single nuance, a single inflexion or intention. But not one, mon cher. I don't ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... profusion; and they are necessarily the only kind of lines which can be felt or enjoyed by persons who have been educated without reference to natural forms; their instincts being blunt, and their eyes actually incapable of perceiving the inflexion of noble curves. But the moment the perceptions have been refined by reference to natural form, the eye requires perpetual variation and transgression of the formal law. Take the simplest possible condition of thirteenth-century scroll-work, Fig. 98. The law or cadence established is ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... "I will send over the first thing to-morrow morning;" and from the inflexion of his mother's voice, Jim gathered that his programme for the morrow had, at all events, not met altogether with ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... that the delivery of their dialogue resembled the modern recitative. For such a conjecture there is no other foundation than the fact that the Greek, like almost all southern languages, was pronounced with a greater musical inflexion than ours of the North. In other respects their tragic declamation must, I conceive, have been altogether unlike recitative, being both much more measured, and also far removed from ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... crowded the galleries, remember his tones as, turning to the dissenters who usually supported him, and pointing over the table to his opponents, he uttered that well-worn quotation, Quod minime reris,—then he paused, and began again; Quod minime reris,—Graia pandetur ab urbe. The power and inflexion of his voice at the word Graia were certainly very wonderful. He ended by moving an amendment to the Address, and asking for support equally from one side of the House ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... of the "cloudless sky," used to express a state of prosperity. He does not mean, by the phrase, the serenity of mind which prosperity produces, nor any other abstract inflexion or suggestion of the figure. He is constantly exposed to the storms of heaven, in the chase, and on the war path; and, even in his best "lodge," he finds but little shelter from their fury. Clear weather is, therefore, grateful to him—bright sunshine associates ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... at different times.] Change — N. change, alteration, mutation, permutation, variation, modification, modulation, inflexion, mood, qualification, innovation, metastasis, deviation, turn, evolution, revolution; diversion; break. transformation, transfiguration; metamorphosis; transmutation; deoxidization [Chem]; transubstantiation; [Genetics], mutagenesis ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... currente calamo, has thrown the contents of these two sentences together, and somewhat strengthened the expressions of his author, who does not call the Coptic system of inflexion rude, nor assert that it is totally different from the Syro-Arabian system, but quotes the opinion of Benfey, that they differ so much that neither can have originated from the other, but both from a parent language. The distinction between ...
— Notes and Queries, 1850.12.21 - A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, - Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. • Various
... he was going to halve Mrs. Truslove's allowance. You were bent on marrying a woman with money. You took this way of ensuring that she had money, forged the letter, and murdered Lord Loudwater," said Mr. Flexen on a rising inflexion. ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... apron of white stuff could not be better; there is a trifle of luxury in her ornament; but then it is a wedding-day. You should note how true are the folds and creases in her dress, and in those of the rest. The charming girl is not quite straight; but there is a light and gentle inflexion in all her figure and her limbs that fills her with grace and truth. Indeed she is pretty and very pretty. If she had leaned more towards her lover, it would have been unbecoming; more to her mother ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... banging of the bauble. The form of phrase, the inflexion of voice, the dancing light of humour, make up the motley which is the true jester's 'only wear'; and under his flashes of merriment is a sober, sound philosophy. This, after all, is the only kind of humour that lasts ... it is easy to appreciate, difficult to acquire; and Mr. Owen Seaman, ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... sharp visions of modernity. Degas observes here, with the tenacious perfection of his talent, the slightest shiver of the flesh refreshed by cold water. His masterly drawing follows the most delicate inflexion of the muscles and suggests the nervous system under the skin. He observes with extraordinary subtlety the awkwardness of the nude being at a time when nudity is no longer accustomed to show itself, and this true nudity is in strong contrast to that of the academicians. One might say of Degas ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... tells me I shall have great difficulty in wresting from you a sincere declaration. I beseech you, then, not for love of me, for subjects should never weigh as anything in the balance which princes hold, but for love of yourself, to retain every syllable, every inflexion which, under our present grave circumstances, will all have a sense and value as important as any ever uttered ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... dream of hers; each loved the other, but they would never breathe a word of their love, they were content with knowing its existence. They spent delicious hours, in which, without their tongues giving evidence of their passion, they displayed it constantly; a gesture, an inflexion of the voice sufficed, ay, even a silence. Everything insensibly tended towards their love, plunged them more and more deeply into a passion which they bore away with them whenever they parted, which was ever with them, ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... his arms a kimbo, to keep them asunder."—ARBUTHNOT: Joh. Dict. "To set the arms a kimbo, is to set the hands on the hips, with the elbows projecting outward."—Webster's Dict. "We almost uniformly confine the inflexion to the last or the latter noun."—Maunder's Gram., p. 2. "This is all souls day, fellows! Is it not?"—SHAK.: in Joh. Dict. "The english physicians make use of troy-weight."—Johnson's Dict. "There is a certain number of ranks allowed to dukes, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... des montagnes calcaires etoit encore recouvert de sable et de gres vitrescibles: et continuant a marcher, sans aucune inflexion sensible, nous nous trouvames subitement sur les schistes; d'ou nous montames plus rapidement. Puis traversant quelques petites vallees nous arrivames sur les montagnes qui appartiennent au prolongement du Brocken ou Blocksberg. La matiere dominante est alors ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton |
