"Unmusical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... some excuse to be offered for the extraordinary course of policy pursued by Sir James Craig; and an apology even can be made for the crooked policy of those voluntary advisers who had hedged him in. Great Britain was at war with France. The name of a Frenchman was unmusical in the ears of any Englishman of that period, and it sounded harshly in the ears of the British soldier. It was France that had prostituted liberty to lust. It was France that had dragged public opinion to the ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... being addressed had seemed to be one of terror. Then he recognised the uniform and hesitated. The light which streamed out from the building seemed warm and pleasant. The rain was coming down in sheets. They were singing a hymn, unmusical, unaccompanied, yet something in the unison of those human voices, one quality—the quality of earnestness, of faith—seemed to make an irresistible appeal to the terrified wanderer. Slowly he moved towards the steps. The man took him by the arm ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... lean in unison first to the right and then to the left, striking first one end, then the other of their instruments, which they held in the middle by a bejuco string from a hole made for the purpose. The note was not unmusical. Many of the men had their head-baskets on their backs, and one or two of them the palm-leaf rain-coat. I had never imagined that it was possible for human beings to advance as slowly as did these warriors; in respect of speed, our most dignified funerals would suffer by comparison. The truth ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... true, and not unmusical, and what he lacked of finer qualities he made up in volume and force. His visitors joined in the singing, Kalman following the air in a low ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... making them appear far greater sharers in it than they really were. What was in truth a monologue seemed to be a brilliantly sustained conversation, in which Maddison himself was at once the promoter and the background. On his part there was not a single faulty phrase or unmusical expression. Every idea he sprang upon them was clothed in picturesque garb, and artistically conceived. It was the outpouring of a richly stored, cultured mind—the perfect expression ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... strong. Obedience, ever of vital importance in the training of the forest folk, was impartially exacted by the mother from her offspring. It was also taught by a system of immediate reward. The old badger invariably uttered a low but not unmusical greeting when she returned to her family at dawn. Almost before their eyes were open, the sucklings learned to connect this sound with food and comfort, and at once turned to the spot from which it proceeded. Later, when the ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... we brought from Mourzuk are now nearly all gone—I have only eight or ten left. Friend Sidi Jalef Waled Sakertaf—how unmusical the name sounds!—will get little money from us, and must content himself with our baggage, if he will play the robber. For the cousin of ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... complete misunderstanding of the case. Because you neither play nor sing, it by no means follows that you are unmusical. If you love music and appreciate it, you may be more musical than many pianists and singers; or latent within you and only awaiting the touchstone of music there may be a deeper love and appreciation of the art than can be attributed ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... older American names were not unmusical. In a Genealogical Register open before us we frequently find Dulcena, Eusena, Sabra, and Norman; 'Czarina' also occurs. Rather peculiar at the present day are Puah and Azoa (girls), Albion, Ardelia, Philomelia, Serepta, Persis, Electa, Typhenia, Lois, Selim, Damarias, Thankful, Sephemia, Zena, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... started, chatty, full of gossip and incident. She writes, October 30th: "A ballad-singer was this morning singing beneath my window in a strain most unmusical and melancholy. My own name caught my ear, and I sent Thomas out to buy the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... is a beauty in the grey twilight, Which minds unmusical can never know, A holy quietude, that yields to woe A pulseless pleasure, fraught with pure delight: The aspect of the mountains huge, that brave And bear upon their breasts the rolling storms; And the soft twinkling of the stars, that pave ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... said a man had a rough voice, as though the voice were like a cactus in its prickly irregularities. By rough he meant what his fellows meant when they spoke of the voice as harsh, grating, jarring, discordant, inharmonious, strident, raucous, or unmusical. Going farther, that early poet said the weather was rough. He thought of clement weather as being smooth and even, but of inclement, severe, stormy, tempestuous, or violent weather as being full of projections to rend and harass one. Thus an everyday use of the term today was once wrenched ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... went away with as much quiet dignity as they had exhibited when they approached us. The number in sight had meantime increased to nearly 2,000 men, who were arranged in tolerably good military order. When they received our answer, they raised a not unmusical war-cry and, extending their lances, hurried forward with a quick step. We sat still by the side of our cooking-vessels as if the affair did not concern us, until the foremost of the el-moran had reached the specified bush. Johnston then caused the signal to be blown; ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... allowed to have any. If we wish to give nonelastic bodies a tone, it will be necessary to make them continue their sound, by repeating our blows quickly upon them. This will effectually give them a tone; and an unmusical instrument has often by this means a fine effect in concerts. The effects of a drum depend upon this principle. Gold, silver, copper, and iron, which are elastic metals, are sonorous; but lead, which possesses scarcely any elasticity, produces little or no tone. Tin, which in itself has very ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... problem of the morning came to him. These sounds—he realized now how he loved them. Verily they were a part of his life. Mid them he had been bred; of them as of food he had grown. That whistle, thin and unmusical; that elusive, indescribable call of prairie male; all these homely sounds that meant so much to ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... tavern ditty, and not too nice in its sentiments, as, indeed, why should it be, to please its hearers? There was a lilt in its chorus which even Stefan's unmusical voice could not hide, and it set the men's heads nodding in time as they roared it out together, waking the echoes with the declaration that—"The eye of a maid may sparkle, And the fools may for love repine, But the wise ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... peculiarity became identified with him in every particular of his life. Everything belonging to him moved with a certain jar, except, indeed, his household, which went on noiseless wheels, thanks to Lucy and love. As he came along the garden path, the gravel started all round his unmusical foot. Miss Wodehouse alone turned round to hail her father's approach, but both the young people looked up at her instinctively, and saw her little start, the falling of her knitting-needles, the little flutter of colour which surprise brought to her maidenly, middle-aged cheek. How ...
— The Rector • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... front of it there was a gentle declivity (up which I had clambered) terminating in the broad, level road leading to Worthing. Here, on this broad expanse of the Downs, was a fairyland of soft sea air, sunshine and rest—rest from mankind, from the shrill, unmusical voices of the crude and rude product of the County ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... dusky clouds, and the great trees without, and the dismal perspective beyond, gradually became one with the darkness. Uncle Remus had thoughtfully placed a tin pan under a leak in the roof, and the drip-drip-drip of the water, as it fell in the resonant vessel, made a not unmusical accompaniment to the storm. ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... unfeeling, unmusical, penurious old ladies and gentlemen back into the lounge, glaring at them as belligerently and offensively as a gentleman could and maintain his self-respect. Then he went into the waiting-room and embarked upon a positive orgy of letter-writing. Looking up from the last of his pile a half-hour ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and unfrequent toss of the head. Behind this horseman, and partially thrown into the dark shadow of the trees, another man, similarly clad, was busied in tightening the girths of a horse, of great strength and size. As he did so, he hummed, with no unmusical murmur, the air ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... indeed, as if he had worn it for some seasons without a change, and had been out in much rough weather. His dark eyes were relieved by no merry twinkle; then there were small bare patches (which were not over beautiful) on his neck; and his voice was exceedingly hoarse and unmusical. But notwithstanding all this, there was a certain quiet dignity, and an air of ripe wisdom about the old bird which much impressed our hero, and made him listen with respect to whatever words of wisdom fell from the blue beak, although they were uttered in ...
— What the Blackbird said - A story in four chirps • Mrs. Frederick Locker
... was who began, for from no other man, I was confident, could have issued so sepulchral a plaint. It was unmusical, unbeautiful, unlively, and indescribably doleful. Yet the words showed that it should have ripped and crackled with high spirits and lawlessness, for the words poor Nancy ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... When we first open Dante or Milton, we miss the flowers and the birds and the human glow of the more sensuous and earth-dwelling poets. But after awhile, after our first rather bleak introduction to them, we grow aware that these apparently undecorated and unmusical masterpieces are radiant and resounding with a beauty and a music which "eye hath not seen nor ear heard." For flowers we are given stars, for the song of birds the music of the spheres, and for that ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... different the voice of the common duck or goose from that of the wild species, or of the tame dove from that of the turtle of the fields and groves! Where could the English house sparrow have acquired that unmusical voice but amid the sounds of hoofs and wheels, and the discords of the street? And the ordinary notes and calls of so many of the British birds, according to their biographers, are harsh and disagreeable; even the nightingale has an ugly, guttural "chuck." The missel-thrush ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... brilliant northern lights flashing up the sky, and that either this appearance or some of the whaling narrations of Kinraid had stirred up Daniel Robson's recollections of a sea ditty, which he kept singing to himself in a low, unmusical voice, the burden of which was, 'for I loves the tossin' say!' Bell met them ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... you, continue to play; never awaken her," said Gerfaut; and, as if he were afraid his wish would not be granted, he began to pound in the bass without being disturbed by the unmusical sounds. ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... species of birds of paradise, as well as a great variety of sun birds flitting from flower to flower like living gems. It is to be admitted that the cries of those birds were not always in accord with the splendour of their plumage, being for the most part distinctly harsh and unmusical; but there was one exception that startled us not a little when we first heard it. Its cry was an exact reproduction of the sound of a sweet-toned bell, so exact, indeed, that for the moment I felt fully persuaded that, hidden somewhere in the heart of that vast ocean of greenery, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... TRIANGLE (The), Lord Castlereagh; afterwards marquis of Londonderry; so called by William Hone. The first word is a pun on the title, the second refers to his lordship's oratory, a triangle being the most feeble, monotonous, and unmusical of all musical instruments. Tom Moore compares the oratory of Lord Castlereagh to "water spouting from ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... cry, unmusical, insistent. She glanced nervously around, but met only the bright eyes of a squirrel on a ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... valley, and up the wild, picturesque ravine, rang the strange but not unmusical call. It awoke the slumbering echoes of the still place, and a hundred voices seemed to take up the cry, and pass it on as from mouth to mouth. But the boy's quick ears were not to be deceived by the mocking voices of the spirits of solitude, and presently the ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... a bee boomed somnolently among the red and yellow flowers, and somewhere near at hand a church bell jerked its unmusical ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... he had left Harvard, had been learning the textile industry, of Miss Ottway, and Janet. Miss Ottway was the agent's private stenographer, a strongly built, capable woman with immense reserves seemingly inexhaustible. She had a deep, masculine voice, not unmusical, the hint of a masculine moustache, a masculine manner of taking to any job that came to hand. Nerves were things unknown to her: she was granite, Janet tempered steel. Janet was the second stenographer, and performed, besides, any odd tasks that ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of the Government buildings; and squatting upon mats on the ground were the musicians, three or four in number, beating away vigorously at their very unmusical drums—just the size and shape of a flat cheese, their drumsticks being shaped like a crook. Soon the war-dancers appeared upon the scene, each with a whoop and a flourish of his knife or tomahawk. Conspicuous among them was Blackstone—no longer in European ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... decayed artists can retire when their day of glory is past and they have become poor and lonely. Each city has one theatre, the largest and most magnificent, reserved exclusively for operatic performances, and where the unmusical drama is scarcely ever tolerated. I once saw Ristori act in Metastasio's Dido at the Scala for the benefit of the wounded during the war for Italian independence; but this was the only occasion in fifty years on which an actress ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... "Though unmusical, German is the most expressive of all languages," he observed when Von Bork had stopped from pure exhaustion. "Hullo! Hullo!" he added as he looked hard at the corner of a tracing before putting it in the box. "This should ...
— His Last Bow - An Epilogue of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... But unless some member of the family has decided musical ability, the best use of a piano or organ in a home is to sustain the uncertain voices in singing. Home singing is almost a necessity even where no one sings very well. I should not wish to encourage the unmusical to display their voices outside their own doors; but if half a dozen members of a family are able to "carry a tune," and one of them can play a simple accompaniment correctly, I think the singing of fine hymns and pleasant ballads at home will prove most delightful to them all, besides bearing ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... in a not unmusical tone, but what they were intended to express it was impossible to say, nor could we be certain that he had mentioned his own name; but, as may be supposed, Paddy at once dubbed him Pullingo, which cognomen he was likely to retain ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... second birthday, Bryce divined that his father was closer to him than motherly Mrs. Tully or the half-breed girl, albeit the housekeeper sang to him the lullabys that mothers know while the Digger girl, improvising blank verse paeans of praise and prophecy, crooned them to her charge in the unmusical monotone of her tribal tongue. His father, on the contrary, wasted no time in singing, but would toss him to the ceiling or set him astride his foot and swing him until he screamed in ecstasy. Moreover, his father took ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... with a side-anthem glance at Lord Reggie which spoke volumes. "They understand the value of aestheticism in religion. They recognise the fact that a beautiful vestment uplifts the soul far more than a dozen bad chants by Stainer, or Barnby, or any other unmusical Christian. The average Anglican chant is one of the most unimaginative, unpoetical things in the world. It always reminds me of the cart-horse parade on Whit Monday. A brown Gregorian is so much ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... rustling of paper and the scratch of pens. From the sunny world out-of-doors came a pleasant blending of many noises, passing wagons, the low talk of chickens, the slamming of gates, and now and then the not unmusical note of a fish-horn. Footsteps and laughing voices went by, and died into silence. The clock from Town Hall Square struck ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... bazaar the din of hundreds of wooden hammers on as many pieces of copper being made into jugs, trays, pots or pans, is simply deafening, echoed as it is under the vaulted roofs, the sound waves clashing in such an unmusical and confused way as to be absolutely diabolical. A few of these copper vessels are gracefully ornamented and inlaid, but the majority are coarse in their manufacture. They are exported all over the country. The manufactured silk, the other important ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... completely ceased and the whole city lay bathed in a refreshing silence. It was very heavenly to stand there and feel the cool, soft air—unaccompanied, for the first time during the day, by the rattling rumbling sounds of locomotion and the jarring discordant murmurs of unmusical ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... laughter, the clear tears, the call Of love to love on ways where shadows fall, Through doors of dim division and disguise, And music made of doubts unmusical; ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... in the environs of Asquam, by a preposterously small wagon,—more like a longitudinal slice of a milk-cart than anything else,—drawn by two thin, rangy horses that seemed all out of proportion to their load. Their rhythmic and leisurely trot jangled a loud but not unmusical bell which hung from some hidden part of the wagon's anatomy, and warned all dwellers on Rural Route No. 1 that the United States mail, ably piloted by Mr. Truman Hobart, was on ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... up and echoed by all the chowkeydars of the neighbouring villages. It is a weird, strange sound, cry after cry echoing far away, distance beyond distance, till it fades into faintness. At times it is not an unmusical cry, but when he howls out close to your tent, waking you from your first dreamless sleep, you do not feel it to be so. The chowkeydar has to see that no thieves enter the village by night. He protects the herds ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... submitted to the Committee. But, perhaps by its tenor, by its allusions to the fire, to Garrick, to Siddons, and to Sheridan, it was thought most applicable to the occasion, notwithstanding its being in parts unmusical, and in ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... Max Adeler The Lost Expression Marshall Steele A Night Scene Robert B. Brough Karl the Martyr Frances Whiteside The Romance of Tenachelle Hercules Ellis Michael Flynn William Thomson A Night with a Stork William G. Wilcox An Unmusical Neighbour William Thomson The Chalice David Christie Murray Livingstone Henry Lloyd In Swanage Bay Mrs. Craik Ballad of Sir John Franklin G. H. Boker Phadrig Crohoore J. S. Le Fanu Cupid's Arrows Eliza Cook The Crocodile's Dinner Party E. Vinton Blake "Two Souls with but a Single ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... poetry does not justify or explain all the unmusical passages in his works. He felt, as every poet must, the difficulty of articulation—the disparity between his ideas and the verbal form he was able to give them. Browning had his trials in composition, and he placed in the mouth of the Pope his own ardent hope that in the next world there will be ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... noisy and rather inconsequential effort. The preacher had little to say, but he roared that little out in a harsh, unmusical voice accompanied by much slapping of his hands and pounding of the table. Towards the end he lowered his voice and began to play upon the feelings of his willing hearers, and when he had won his meed of sobs and tears, when he had ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... ascending, put their toes into holes and niches in the rocks and kept talking all the while. Every now and then they would stop, sway their heads about and sing a kind of low chant in not unmusical tones. As we crept up slowly behind, with difficulty finding the rude steps in the uncertain light, the last of the string of dwarfs kept turning to us bowing and crooning. I confess I began to be anxious, fearing that we might be going into ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... these?" he asked in a high voice that yet was not unmusical, "and why do you bring them ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... exception to the treatment of the dead, amounts to that. We say, argument with such a man is worse than nothing; it would be fallacious as the Eolian experiment of whistling the most inspiriting jigs to an inanimate, and consequently unmusical, milestone, opposing a transatlantic thunder-storm with "a more paper than powder" "penny cracker," or setting an owl to outstare ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 25, 1841 • Various
... speaking, but her eye wandered away the moment he had finished and rested searchingly on the other gentlemen. Evidently she missed a face she had expected to find there, for her colour changed and she drew back behind the other ladies with the light, unmusical laugh women sometimes use to hide a ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... from the half hour to the hour, and from the hour to the half. Out of doors there was nothing stirring, unless the owl stirred between his unmusical notes, or Mr. Skip's dog did something but howl. Hardly a wagon passed, hardly a breath moved the leaves. Cindy, on her part, was lost in the fascination ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... has often been raised as to the reason of Paderewski's remarkable hold on an audience; wherein lay his power over the musical and unmusical alike. Whenever he played there was always the same intense hush over the listeners, the same absorbed attention, the same spell. The superficial attributed these largely to his appearance and manner; the more thoughtful looked ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... cling to one's bones as it clung to the ship's gear. The deck was slippery and cold, everything, except the funnel, was sticky and cold, and the fog-horn made day and night hideous with noises like some unmusical giant trying in vain to hit the note Fa. The density of the fog varied. Sometimes we could not see each other a few feet off, at others we could see pretty well what we were about on the vessel, but could see ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Petrea. The father was quite pleased with his Petrea, who, quite electrified, sang too with all her might, although not with a most harmonious voice, which, however, did not annoy her father's somewhat unmusical ear. ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... repeat, we would fain bow in reverence. But it may not be; we cannot receive him as a true poet—as in any poetic quality the peer of his matchless wife. We hear much of his subtile psychology—we deem it psychological unintelligibility. His rhythm is rough and unmusical, his style harsh and inverted, his imagery cold, his invective bitter, and his verbiage immense. His illustrations are sometimes coarse, his comparisons diminish rather than increase the importance of the ideas to which they are applied. His pages are frequently ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... was wholly unmusical, but, having married an accomplished violinist, he was inclined to lay down ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... attenuated fingers." He made money and that was useful to him, for doctors' bills and living had taken up his savings. There was talk of his settling in London, but the climate, not to speak of the unmusical atmosphere, would have been fatal to him. Wagner succumbed to both, ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... adjusted, Mr. Sikes proceeded to drink brandy at a furious rate, and to flourish the crowbar in an alarming manner; yelling forth, at the same time, most unmusical snatches of song, mingled with wild execrations. At length, in a fit of professional enthusiasm, he insisted upon producing his box of housebreaking tools: which he had no sooner stumbled in with, and opened for the purpose of explaining the nature and properties of the various ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... we have always with us, and on windy days even the large-sized rook is blown about the murkiness which does duty for sky over London; and on such occasions its coarse, corvine dronings seem not unmusical, nor without something of a tonic effect on our jarred nerves. And here the ordinary Londoner has got to the end of his ornithological list—that is to say, his winter list. He knows nothing about those wind-worn waifs, the "occasional ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... unforgettable moment for Francis Ledsam, who seemed by some curious trick of the imagination to have been carried away into an impossible and grotesque world. The hum of eager conversation, the popping of corks, the little trills of feminine laughter, all blended into one sensual and not unmusical chorus, seemed to fade from his ears. He fancied himself in some subterranean place of vast dimensions, through the grim galleries of which men and women with evil faces crept like animals. And towering above them, unreal in size, his scornful face an epitome ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... again realized his surroundings he was cramped and cold, and hungry as a wolf. From below two deep, unmusical snores rose comfortingly. There was but one thing to do—and Billy must ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... poetic merit of the piece is, except for these lines, slight, while the songs and lyrical passages, which are rather freely interspersed, are almost all wooden and unmusical. Such interest as the play possesses is dependent on the plot. We have the conventional four characters: Arismena, the careless shepherdess, her lover Philaritus, and Castarina, whose affections lean towards the last, though she does not object to hold out some ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... have given up some of my human dignity for the privilege of creeping into a shell of my own. To any one who has been accustomed in travelling, to be addressed with, "Do sit here, you will find it more comfortable," the "You must go there, I made for this place first," sounds very unmusical. ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... enveloped, not concealed; but, at the same time, is it possible to be blind to the fact, that he has degraded himself to the habits of the flat-billed bird—that he waddles most unmercifully when by chance he leaves the lake?—that he hisses and croaks most unmusical, most melancholy?—and that he gathers all unclean garbage for his food—newts, and frogs, and crawling worms? In short, that though, in his pride, and grandeur, and passionate energy, he is the Tyrant of Olympus, he is, in many other respects, an animal not greatly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... produced. The former, although it is now acknowledged to be an exquisitely poetic treatment of the weird legend, was voted sombre and dull, and "Tannhaeuser" was simply a puzzle. After listening to "Tannhaeuser," Schumann declared that Wagner was unmusical! Unless a person is familiar with Wagner's life, it is impossible to believe how bitter was the opposition to his theories and to his music. Does it seem possible now that he had to struggle for twenty-five years before he could secure the production ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... the life of the town; and indeed as the whole place is dependent on the railway, so is the railway held in favor and beloved. The noise of the engines is not disliked, nor are its puffings and groanings held to be unmusical. With us a locomotive steam-engine is still, as it were, a beast of prey, against which one has to be on one's guard—in respect to which one specially warns the children. But there, in the Western ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... sensations. Professor Whitney, in quoting this paragraph, leaves out the sentence where I say that I want to explain the difficulty of pronouncing initial vowels without some spiritus lenis, and charges me with comparing all consonants with the unmusical noises of musical instruments. This was in 1866, whereas in 1854 I had said: "If we regard the human voice as a continuous stream of air, emitted as breath from the lungs and changed by the vibration of the chord vocales into vocal sound, as it leaves the larynx, ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... one—she's a fright! I hate that one—she's so affected. Those two look common; I won't have anything to do with them. The big one with spectacles looks horribly learned. The one with the violin has a most unmusical face. She looks fit for stratagems if you like! The little one in brown is a cunning fox, I can see it in her eyes. Of all the plain, uninteresting, ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... argument bear no unmusical sound, Nor jars interpose, sacred friendship to grieve. For generous lovers let a corner be found, Where they in soft sighs ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... use, is elegantly designated "a jumper;" and heavy knee riding boots with spurs. The name in which he seemed to be recognised, from its frequent mention by the company, was Smith. Adding to his uncouth appearance and wild gesticulation, he had a voice decidedly unmusical; while his conversation was copiously interlarded with expletives, anathematizing some portion of his anatomy. This was the presiding spirit ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... reveals genuine poetic imagination. Silius is free from many of the faults of his contemporaries, the faults that spring from aspirations towards originality. He is content to be an imitator. In his style, as in his composition, Vergil is an obsession. But the echoes are muffled or unmusical. Gifted with ease and fluency and—for his age—comparative lucidity of diction, Silius has no true ear for music, nor true eye for beauty. His verse moves naturally but heavily. He is the most spondaic poet[621] of his age, and the spondaic ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... and our flesh creeped. In our present mood it all seemed too strange, too mysterious for earth. We felt as if we had joined the land of shadows in very truth. But the verger's voice awoke us to realities: a very earthly voice, unmusical and pronounced, not at all in harmony with the moment. It grated upon us; nevertheless, under the circumstances, it was ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... one ineffectual jab at the brake, I left the machine hurriedly, and as I sat down on the sposhy lawn I heard a tremendous but not unmusical sound of falling glass—— ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... grew longer and warmer; the snow melted. Large flocks of wild geese passing northward over our heads assured us, with their unmusical but most welcome notes, that the long winter of '56 and '57 was over and gone. The ground was broken up, crops were planted, and everything gave promise of a favorable season. Our home, in its lovely, fresh robes of green, was enchanting, and we felt that the lines had indeed fallen unto us in ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... also, how vast the difference we may observe in men's degrees of power! To you and me, and many another like us, many things are impossible which are quite easy to others. For those who are unmusical, to play on the flute; to read or write, for those who have not yet learned; is no easier than to make birds of women, or women of birds. From the dumb and lifeless egg Nature moulds her swarms ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... full seven thousand pieces. In short, he plays every piece that he has ever heard. How almost godlike (it cannot be brought to human comparison) is this retentive, this perfect memory, as relating to all that is musical, or even unmusical, ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... would be universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so engaged? But alas! we do like cowbirds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which other birds have built, and cheer no traveller with their chattering and unmusical notes. Shall we forever resign the pleasure of construction to the carpenter? What does architecture amount to in the experience of the mass of men? I never in all my walks came across a man engaged in so simple and natural an occupation as building his house. ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... Perhaps you don't know what a bush piano is? It consists of a number of strings arranged on a board, tightened up and tuned, upon which the player beats with a padded hammer, bringing out sounds by no means unmusical. At all events, the bush piano served to eke out the ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... answered the other, betraying what might have proved two very fatal shibboleths, in the ears of those who were practised in the finesse of our very unmusical language, by ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... unmusical people to express themselves when they are glad? People with an ear and a voice can sing, but what is to become of those who have not? Must they whoop inarticulately? For myself, I do not know one tune from another. I am like the man who said that he knew two tunes, one was "God ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... intemperances that degraded the Messer Simone. Messer Griffo and his levy of lances lived in a castle that he held in the hills some half-way between Florence and Arezzo. He was, as I believe, by his birth an Englishman, with some harsh, unmusical, outlandish name of his own that had been softened and sweetened into the name by which he was known and esteemed in all the cities of Italy. He had been so long a-soldiering in our country that he spoke the vulgar tongue very neatly and swiftly, ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... many singular habits and tastes. Whenever he experienced any vexation, or when any unpleasant thought occupied his mind, he would hum something which was far from resembling a tune, for his voice was very unmusical. He would, at the same time, seat himself before the writing-table, and swing back in his chair so far that I have often been ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... stepped into view, and, making a trumpet of his two hands, sent across the water a long, weird, and not unmusical cry. The men at once began slowly to drift in the direction of the camp. There, when the tin plates had all been filled, and each had found a place to his liking, Orde addressed them. His manner ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... couples, came and passed down the fairy-land vistas of the Quadrangle; the 'busses deposited the elite of Palo Alto at the door of the Alpha Nus who had said that they would be at home; noises of all kinds, from not unmusical singing to plainly unmusical whoops, exhaled from every pore of the Hall. The piano on the lobby was groaning out a waltz from its few attuned keys and the little space between the big rug and the rail overlooking the dining-room was packed ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... was in his heart but I should wish to get into mine. So let me have the Book as fast as may be. And do others like it if you will take circumbendibuses for sound's sake! And excuse the Critic who seems to you so unmusical; and say, It is the nature of beast! Adieu, dear Friend: write ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... my adopted country of her rights without one word being spoken in behalf of her feathered vocalists. Nay, I consider her very frogs have been belied: if it were not for the monotony of their notes, I really consider they are not quite unmusical. The green frogs are very handsome, being marked over with brown oval shields on the most vivid green coat: they are larger in size than the biggest of our English frogs, and certainly much handsomer in every respect. Their note resembles that of a bird, ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... should not ride through the whole of the Prussian army; but though I understood German, for I had many friends among the German ladies during the pleasant years that I fought all over that country, still I spoke it with a pretty Parisian accent which could not be confounded with their rough, unmusical speech. I knew that this quality of my accent would attract attention, but I could only hope and pray that I would be permitted to ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle |
