"Intonation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with that quiet, well-bred air of his which seemed to take everything for granted. Having satisfied himself that all were assembled, he cleared his throat and began to read. His manner and intonation suggested family prayers; and Myra, not doubting that this must be some kind of postscript to the burial service for the private consolation of the family, let her mind wander. The word 'testament' in the first sentence seemed to make this certain, and the sentence or two that followed had a ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... earnest intonation of voice in these words, and such a simple innocence of manner, that Wilkins couldn't ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... leash, we awaited the signal—at last it came—the shrill notes of the war whistle pierced the air, and it was instantly followed by the wild intonation of the Camanche war whoop as we burst forth from the timber and charged with headlong fury upon the foe. For a moment I thought that the surprise would be complete, for our sudden appearance seemed likely to completely ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... Sharp, and bearing the faithful stamp of cottage grouping, which distinguished the pencil of a Morland,—in the natural paintings of Crabbe. We have Catullus stealing from his couch, to breathe a new intonation into the harp of Moore; and last of all, we have the votaress of virtue and moral feeling, the Cambrian minstrel, Mrs. Hemans, making melancholy appear ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 559, July 28, 1832 • Various
... irony of the words. But to the district attorney they did not seem to be a mere poetic aspiration, nor a catch phrase with which to adorn his speech; they voiced a real idea, still pulsating with passionate truth. From this moment Isabelle forgot the lawyer's nasal intonation, his ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... one in England who did not miss out aspirates where they should be, and put them in where they should not be, talked of "the rivah," "ma brothar," and so on. Their conclusion was, after all, quite as well founded as ours about their accent. The American intonation, with its freedom from violent emphasis, is, I think, rather pretty when the quality of ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... dark eyebrows rose, and her brown eyes grew round and big; in a moment all the faint glow of color had left her pale cheeks, and her intonation expressed alarm and regret. ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... explained that it was a sort of Argot-English. When I gave him some phrases he was astonished—"It sounds like English!" he cried, and retailed his stock of English phrases for my approval. I tried hard to get his intonation of the Arabian, and he helped me on the difficult sounds. America must be a strange ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... presented them to Bobby. And Bobby, who was already learning to prattle Eskimo words, received the gift with unfeigned delight. Then he must learn the name of each, which Abel patiently taught him to pronounce with proper accent and intonation: inuit—man; ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... in Europe, the costly dresses, repeated by a host of mirrors, all this combined, which the eye conveys to the brain at a single glance, utterly fails in description. As with the eye, so it is with the ear; at every step a new language falls upon it, and every tongue with different intonation, for the high and the low, the prince, peer, vassal, and tradesman, the proud beauty, the decrepit crone, some fresh budding into the world, some standing near the grave, the gentle and the stern, the sombre and the gay, in short, every possible antithesis that the eye, ear, ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... require the peculiar intonation she threw into her voice to make the matter clear to him. He was well aware that no such sum ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... gravity and an even intonation, but his voice rose with pride at the last. Nothing of the white man's training was left to him but the slow, precise English. It was the Indian, the pride of his Indian race, that spoke. Dick recognized ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... sitting there and telling me these things in a gentle, throaty and rather thick voice with a cockney accent and a sort of tenor ring in it and a queer, humorous intonation that was like an audible twinkle, as if he saw himself as he thought I must see him, mainly in the light of absurdity. You should have seen his face, its thin cheeks, its vivid flush, its queer, inquisitive, contradictory nose that had a slender, high bridge and a tilted, pointed end in ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... bowed gracefully and reached out and silently shook hands. When he spoke, instead of the perfectly enunciated, picturesquely profane rebuke which the silk-shirted boy was waiting to hear, his voice was even smoother and softer, and choicer of intonation than usual. ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... with that strained attention with which one unacquainted with a language will sometimes hang upon its sounds, as if by a concentration of the faculties to wring a sense out of it; and if he was unable to make out the meaning of the words, he at least satisfied himself, both from the intonation of the voices and expression of the faces, that no immediate injury was designed. To the appealing looks which Arundel from time to time directed to him, the Knight at ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... divest words of their meaning by false intonation; and prisoners in general receive this bit of singsong in dead silence. For why? the chant conveys no idea to their ears, and they would as soon think of replying to the notes ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... unmatched, and with no cause of existence beyond himself—an intoxicating whiff of the peculiar essence of Francois le Champi. Beneath the everyday incidents, the commonplace thoughts and hackneyed words, I could hear, or overhear, an intonation, a rhythmic utterance fine and strange. The 'action' began: to me it seemed all the more obscure because in those days, when I read to myself, I used often, while I turned the pages, to dream of something quite different. And to the gaps which this habit made in my knowledge of the ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... dining-room, but it was impossible not to catch the tremor in her voice over the last words. In her ready English there was a slight foreign intonation, as well as that trace of an Irish accent which quickly yields to emotion. Standing at the table in the dining-room where refreshments had been laid, she poured out a glass of wine, and Mrs. Eveleth could see from the threshold that she drank it thirstily, ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... punishment for their daring to thwart the will of Venice, if betrayed, caused a deeper feeling than that which usually pervades a marriage ceremony, to preside at nuptials thus celebrated. The youthful Violetta trembled at every intonation of the solemn voice of the monk, and towards the close she leaned in helplessness on the arm of the man to whom she had just plighted her vows. The eye of the Carmelite kindled as he proceeded with the office, however; and long ere he had done, he had obtained such a ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... his breast with his clenched, gauntleted hand as his eyes followed with the vivacity of actual sight the course of the march of the squadron of horse to the point of their triumphant vanishment. Despite the vehemence of the phrase the intonation was a very bleat of desperation. For it was a rich and rare opportunity thus wrested from him by an untoward fate. In all the chaotic chances of the Civil War he could hardly hope for its repetition. It was part of a crack body of regulars—Tolhurst's ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... rites have a character really striking and romantic. When the offices commence, the altar is entirely covered with a black veil, the church is in darkness, and not a single light to be seen in the whole space. But on the intonation of the Gloria in excelsis Deo, the veil divides itself into two parts, and is drawn to the sides, which operation, suddenly performed, discloses hundreds of lights and a most splendid profusion of ornaments. Then the bells, ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... before four yesterday morning, and passed two delightful hours in the kitchen waiting for the mail. There was an enormous fire, and a whole household of smoke. The waiter was snoring with great vehemency upon one of the dressers, and the deep regular intonation had a very solemn effect, I can assure you, in the obscurity of that Tartarean region, and the melancholy silence of the morning. An innumerable number of rats were trottin and gibberin in one end of the place, and the rain clattered freshly on the windows. The dawn heavily in clouds ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... — N. sound, noise, strain; accent, twang, intonation, tone; cadence; sonorousness &c. adj.; audibility; resonance &c. 408; voice &c. 580; aspirate; ideophone[obs3]; rough breathing. [Science, of sound] acoustics; phonics, phonetics, phonology, phonography[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... exclaimed, amazed; for beyond doubt his was the voice. I could tell his intonation of a penitential psalm among a thousand. I had heard it in ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... was remarkable for the number of her ways of smiling.' Other observers say that the smallness of her stature was quite forgotten in the gracefulness of her demeanour. Fanny Kemble thought the Queen's voice exquisite, when dissolving parliament in July 1837: her enunciation was as perfect as the intonation was melodious. Charles Sumner was also delighted, and thought he ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous
... evening, yet when Celia put by her work, intending to go to bed, a proceeding in which she was always much the earlier, Dorothea, who was seated on a low stool, unable to occupy herself except in meditation, said, with the musical intonation which in moments of deep but quiet feeling made her speech like a fine bit ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... said slowly, in her soft, breathless voice, with an intonation almost like a foreigner's, her listener decided suddenly, "a gulf so wide that unless you can cross it with some bridge of honest accomplishment, it will swallow you all very ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... manner of speech, Selwyn could detect a faint intonation which bespoke a man of breeding. He tried to discern the features, but they were completely hidden beneath ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... fellow in his way, was strangely affected. It is to be noted that he knew very little of Heyst. He was one of those whom Heyst's finished courtesy of attitude and intonation most strongly disconcerted. He himself was a fellow of fine feeling, I think, though of course he had no more polish than the rest of us. We were naturally a hail-fellow-well-met crowd, with standards of our own—no worse, I daresay, than other people's; but ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... as the company filed into barracks identical to those they had left two days before, "is an embarkation camp, but I'd like to know where the hell we embark at." He twisted his face into a smile, and then shouted with lugubrious intonation: "Fall ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... the giddy girl, and giving to his voice an intonation, the gravity of which contrasted with that of Montalais; "forgive me, but may I inquire the name of the protector you speak of; for if protection be extended towards you, Mademoiselle Montalais,—for which, indeed, so many reasons exist," added Raoul, bowing, "I do not see that the same ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... which she had promised to tell Prince Andras if she would consent to become his wife or not. It was a yes, almost as curt as another refusal, which fell at last from the lips of the Tzigana. But the Prince was not cool enough to analyze an intonation. ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... the beans," he said with the deliberate intonation of a man who does not expect that his request ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... my senses, I should have considered him, personally, as being rather a suspicious specimen of an old soldier. He had goggling, bloodshot eyes, mangy moustaches, and a broken nose. His voice betrayed a barrack-room intonation of the worst order, and he had the dirtiest pair of hands I ever saw—even in France. These little personal peculiarities exercised, however, no repelling influence on me. In the mad excitement, the reckless triumph of that ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... with which the lads were treating the crisis. It was to them no com- mon scrimmage at Washurst, of course, but it flashed through Coleman's mind that they had not the slightegt sense of the size of the thing. He expected every instant to see the flash of knives or to hear the deafening intonation of a rifle fired against hst ear. It seemed to him miraculous that the tragedy was so ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... her a source of puzzling surprises. While she was from the South, she was not Southern in speech, sentiments, ideas, or ideals. Her voice was not Southern and, while she elided final consonants, her intonation was not of the South. Indeed she would startle him every now and then by dropping some archaic word or old form of expression that made him think of Chaucer. Her feeling toward the negro was precisely what his was, and once when ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... was seldom ungrammatical, and her intonation was not flagrantly vulgar, but the accent of the London poor, which brands as with hereditary baseness, still clung to her words, rendering futile such propriety of phrase as she owed to years of association with educated people. In the same ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... fell to a deep, solemn tone; there was no emphasis on one word more than on another; all was a dead level; yet the meaning was as full and the involved purpose as fixed as if her voice had run through the whole range of passionate intonation—"Father, I have come back to Ivy Cliff and to you, after having suffered shipwreck on the voyage of life. I went out rich, as I supposed, in heart-treasures; I come back poor. My gold was dross, and the sea has swallowed up even that miserable substitute for wealth. Hartley and I never ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... coarse and largely sensual, but each movement of his fat hands was protective, every word he uttered was kind, the very intonation of his voice was comforting. He was, in a word, human, and this attracted all ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... was ordinary enough, but there was a peculiar intonation in Artois' voice as he asked it, an intonation that awakened surprise ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... come across a word he understood, still the being in church and worshipping with others—even though it was in an unknown tongue—the sound of the chants and hymns and responses, and the mild austerity and reverent intonation of the good old Vicar, all induced a Sabbath feeling in him, and made a welcome change from the rougher routine of the week, which he ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... arriving at a small village, affect their wildest and most grotesque appearance and proceed to walk with stately, majestic tread through the streets, gracefully brandishing their clubs or battle- axes, gazing fixedly at vacancy and reciting aloud from the Koran with a peculiar and impressive intonation; they then walk about the village holding out their alms-receiver and shouting "huk yah huk! huk yah huk " Half afraid of incurring their displeasure, few of the villagers refuse to contribute a copper or portable cooked provisions. Most dervishes are addicted to the intemperate use of opium, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... by an unfamiliar voice, a voice which had a queer, guttural intonation. It was the sort of voice he ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... with an intonation which interrupts his work for a minute while he looks at me. I profit by this moment, and, changing from tragedy to ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... 'un, Mester Machin!" murmured the old woman as he left. He never knew precisely what she meant. Fifteen—twenty—years later in his career her intonation of that phrase would recur to ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... incense was brought, of charcoal with juniper-sprigs; it was swung about, and concluded the morning service to our great relief, for the noises were quite intolerable. Fervid as the devotions appeared, to judge by their intonation, I fear the Lama felt more curious about us than was proper under the circumstances; and when I tried to sketch him, his excitement knew no bounds; he fairly turned round on the settee, and, continuing his prayers and bell-accompaniment, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... began to shout a long string of further directions, to which the canoe men replied from time to time by waving their hands. Finally Oahika brought his communication to an end with a few words which, from the intonation of his voice, might have been an injunction to the men to hurry up; and away the canoe sped toward ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... Fawkes, pronounced by Winter with an intonation which would have puzzled any one not familiar with certain matters known only to a few in England, Catesby, Wright and Digsby cast searching glances at the new comer, as though seeking to read in the impassive features of the soldier of fortune some riddle which heretofore ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... elderly mistress. Well, but at his age nobody has a conscience. Yes, and Madame Dorothy is handsome still; and still my pulse is playing me queer tricks, because she is near me, and my voice has not the intonation I intend, because she is near me; and still I am three-quarters in love with her. Yes, in the light of such cursed folly as even now possesses me, I have good reason to give thanks for the regained ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... presently cooked and served me himself was lavishly done. He spoke good English, but slowly, heavily, with the guttural intonation of his race. He sat across the table from me, puffing his pipe ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... to explain I had no chance to do so. I said a few discrepant things that she answered rather by her intonation than her words. ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... what a Postage Department should be. What that is, at present, I do not exactly know. However. Excursion trains will be run from distant shires to see this Postage Department. American visitors to London will do it before going on to the Tower. And now,' he broke off, with a crisp, businesslike intonation, 'I must ask you to excuse me. Much as I have enjoyed this little chat, I fear it must now cease. The time has come to work. Our trade rivals are getting ahead of us. The whisper goes round, "Rossiter and Psmith are talking, not working," and other firms prepare ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... were gracefully spoken, with just the faintest trace of kindly reproach in their intonation. Simple as they were, they managed to deprive John of all power to frame a suitable reply. He bowed over the little white hand extended to him, and murmured something which was inaudible even to himself, while he despised what he considered his ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... in astonishment, with that intonation in the voice naturally so gratifying to the "old" suggesting that the person talking with them really regards ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... voice—for the first time in my life. If that is my voice, I don't want to hear it again! I could not believe that it could be so awful! A high, squeaky, nasal sound; I was ashamed of it. And the faster the man turned the crank the higher and squeakier the voice became. The intonation—the pronunciation—I could recognize as my own, but the voice!... ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... to a close church and a dull sermon, surely have the right to choose, whether with trees and flowers and singing birds to worship in "That temple not made with hands, eternal in the heavens," or within four walls to sleep during the intonation of that melancholy service that relegates us all, without distinction of sex or color, to the ranks of "miserable sinners." Let each one do what seemeth right in her own eyes, provided she does not encroach on the ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... emotion. "Ah, you have a noble heart," said the count; "so much the better." This exclamation, which corresponded to the count's own thought rather than to what Albert was saying, surprised everybody, and especially Morrel, who looked at Monte Cristo with wonder. But, at the same time, the intonation was so soft that, however strange the speech might seem, it was impossible to be offended at it. "Why should he doubt it?" ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to be entering a land of eternal dew and roses, and as our car filled with the delicious scent of pine branches and green grasses, the miner, with a solemn look on his face, took off his hat and, turning to me, said, with deep intonation: ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... such elocution. The intonation, the fervour and fire, the gesticulation were the perfect interpretation of a poet, a mystic, a veritable Thespian. On and on Jim went in uninterrupted, almost breathless silence. Phil was anxious for his friend's well-being, but he stood ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... every intonation of her voice under her control. There was no hint of irony or triumph. She was a respectful lady's maid, frankly answering questions about her dead mistress. But she did not so successfully keep sentinel over her looks. She ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... trebled the Columbiad's charge; they could have quadrupled or quintupled it!" exclaimed Michel, with whom the verb took a higher intonation each time. ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... letters I received made it preferable that I should come back here, and the doctor kindly gives me an abiding-place. Excuse me," and he passed the major by and went on and bent over the sofa and took Miss Bayard's hand and greeted her with tender intonation in every word, even while he bowed pleasantly to ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... anyone since:—the era of the great Warrior-poetry of the Tragedies and of Paradise Lost. Then came, with Wordsworth and Keats and Shelley, the Age of Alawn, lasting on until today; when the music of intonation brought with it romance and mystery and Natural Magic with its rich glow and wizard insight. And you will remember how English Poetry, on the uptrend of a major cycle, is a reaching from the material towards the spiritual, a growth toward that. Though Milton ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... Cannon had completely changed the attitude of her conscience,—by less than a phrase, by a mere intonation. In an instant he had reassured her into perfect security. It was plain, from every accent of his voice, that he had done nothing of which he thought he ought to be ashamed. Business was business, and newspapers were newspapers; and the simple truth was that her ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... effects of which he was perfectly conscious. He would often try to talk; laying his paw on my knee, he would fix on me that earnest gaze of his and begin a series of murmurs, sighs, and grunts, so varied in intonation that it was hard not to recognise them as language. Sometimes in the course of a conversation of this sort, Dash would break out into a bark or a yelp, and then I would look sternly at him and say: "That is barking, not speaking. Is it possible that you are an animal?" Dash, feeling humiliated ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... stiff new blouse with a red collar—the badge of his office—and a straw hat like a beehive. The whole of the way to Beaulieu his tongue was not still a minute. He told me stories of his bravery and his love adventures with a most amusing accent and intonation. The Rabelaisian expressions, which give such a peculiar flavour to the conversation of the 'people' in Southern France, rolled off his tongue with a sonority that could hardly have been excelled at Nimes or Tarascon. ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... his lesson, and being naturally clever, with a fine, deep voice, in a quarter of an hour could roar out Freiheit und Gleichheit with an intonation which would have raised a revolution in Berlin. We came to the garden, and there was an immense sensation. The Colonel had winning manners, with a manly mien, and he was duly introduced. When he rose to speak there ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... the first time he had seen her even smile other than bitterly. Characteristically unconscious of any humor in her error, he remained unembarrassed. But he could not help noticing a change in the expression of her face, her voice, and even her intonation. It seemed as if that fit of laughter had loosed the last ties that bound her to a self-imposed character, had swept away the last barrier between her and her healthier nature, had dispossessed a painful unreality, and relieved the morbid tension of a purely nervous attitude. The change in her ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... right!" said a new voice, with a transatlantic intonation, "though I'd like to point out, here and now, that things are getting a mite difficult. There's not the sympathy there was, and a growing disposition to let the Irish settle their own affairs without interference ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... musical, with a slight sing-song in it, and a faint SOUPCON of foreign intonation in the pronunciation of ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... in the intonation of the King's voice that Frina Mavrodin was on her guard in a moment. "She is a woman, your Majesty, and, since I am no ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... conventional, intellectual where Lady Alice had been only intelligent, were not perceptible at first sight even to a practised observer of men and women like Caspar Brooke. But the flash of her brown eyes, so like his own, and an occasional intonation in her voice, had told him something. She was in arms against him, so much he felt; and she had more individuality than her mother, in spite of her ignorance. It was a pity that her education had been so much neglected! Manlike, Caspar ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... persuasion is the means men chiefly employ in their commerce with each other, especially in the regions of a court, so a tone of artificial blandness and subdued insinuation is chiefly that in which the accents of worldly men are clothed; the artificial intonation, long continued, grows into nature, and the very pith and basis of the original sound fritter themselves away. The change was great in me, for at that time which I brought in comparison with the present my age was one in ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... face must no doubt be death to those on whom her eyes had smiled, for whom her set lips had parted, for those whose soul had drunk in the melody of that voice, lending to her words the poetry of song by its peculiar intonation. Inhaling the perfume of violets that accompanied her, I understood how the memory of this wife had arrested the Count on the threshold of debauchery, and how impossible it would be ever to forget a creature who really was a flower to the touch, a flower to ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... against it, 121. A second attempt, a little later in the session, was equally unsuccessful, except for the moral effect produced out of doors by another of those speeches, which it is impossible to read even at this day, without falling into the attitude, and assuming the intonation, and feeling the heartfelt inspiration ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... burgess, like a calf? Not I! I have had moments when I have been applauded on the boards: I think nothing of that; but I have known in my own mind sometimes, when I had not a clap from the whole house, that I had found a true intonation, or an exact and speaking gesture; and then, messieurs, I have known what pleasure was, what it was to do a thing well, what it was to be an artist. And to know what art is, is to have an interest for ever, such as no burgess ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to the water that no means he possessed could remedy.—His mandates were, therefore, issued with a full perception of the critical nature of the emergency, but with that collectedness of manner, and intonation of voice, that were best adapted to enforce a ready and animated obedience. Under this impulse, the crew of the schooner soon got their anchor freed from the bottom, and, seizing their sweeps, they forced her by their united efforts directly in ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... initiative in conversation, at first slowly and abstractedly, and then, as if appreciating his sympathetic reticence, or mayhap finding some relief in monotonous expression, talked mechanically, deliberately, but unostentatiously about herself. So colorless was her intonation that at times it did not seem as if she was talking to him, but repeating some conversation she ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... not speak naturally. She did so evidently feeling there was a charm in the exaggerated, honeyed modulation of the syllables. It was, of course, only a bad, underbred habit that showed bad education and a false idea of good manners. And yet this intonation and manner of speaking impressed Alyosha as almost incredibly incongruous with the childishly simple and happy expression of her face, the soft, babyish joy in her eyes. Katerina Ivanovna at once made her sit down in an arm-chair facing Alyosha, and ecstatically ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... you hear? Dr. Cumberledge's uncle commanded in Burma." A faint intonation on the word commanded drew unobtrusive attention to its social importance. "May I ask what was his name?—my cousin was there, you see." An insipid smile. "We may ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... arm in a rhythmic gesture of appeal. He uttered one word, arresting and commanding in its intonation:— ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... voice shouting, "Paiper! Paiper!" No mere spelling of the word will give the intonation. It was the voice of English towns he heard again. The very voice of London in the morning. It seemed like magic, or like some ...
— Unhappy Far-Off Things • Lord Dunsany
... J-sound as though it were Zh; he gave all his syllables an equally-accented intonation. "Say, somebody gave him ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... boche voice called out, a little to our front: "Bist du Deutsch?" That much German I understood. We flattened. As it happened, we were at the foot of a tree at the base of which grew brush. We lay motionless. Again the voice, with its demand in intonation. ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... is some Intonation in thy grum Monotony of utterance that strikes the spirit dumb, As we hear Through the clear And unclouded atmosphere, Thy palpitating syllables roll in ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... your souls to the deepest hells, you chicken-hearted cowards! I'm done with you!" He said it calmly enough, but his strength spoke in every syllable, and every intonation was advertisement of intention. "Come on," he continued, "whack up, and in whatever way suits you best. I own a quarter-interest in the claims; our contracts show that. There're twenty-five or thirty ounces in the sack from the test pans. Fetch out the scales. We'll ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... he said in his ear, with a slightly ironical intonation, "the august Sovereigns who owe their discovery to your learning and research are naturally anxious to express their acknowledgements. So come along and be presented, and perhaps you will produce a better impression ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... of intonation which Isaac had never heard before from other than ladies' lips. Her slightest actions seemed to have the easy, negligent grace of a thoroughbred woman. Her skin, for all its poverty-stricken paleness, was as delicate as if her life had been passed in the enjoyment of every social comfort ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... asked with a kindly intonation not at all in keeping with the purpose which had actuated him ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... and procedure arose naturally from their special needs. Their senses had become marvellously acute; they could hear and judge the slightest gesture of a man a dozen paces away—could hear the very beating of his heart. Intonation had long replaced expression with them, and touches gesture, and their work with hoe and spade and fork was as free and confident as garden work can be. Their sense of smell was extraordinarily fine; they could distinguish individual differences as readily as a dog can, and they went about ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... would be alone the day after to-morrow. 'It is so quiet and restful;' that was to say, no idle callers would break upon her retirement; she would be able to welcome a friend, and talk reposefully with him. Surely she must have meant that; for she spoke with a peculiar intonation—a look—— ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... anecdote we will close our budget. One evening, while Rowland Hill was preaching, a shower came on, and his chapel was speedily filled with devotees. With that peculiar sarcastic intonation which none could assume so successfully as himself, he quietly remarked, "My brethren, I have often heard that religion can be made a cloak, but this is the first occasion on which I ever knew it could be ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... the ear, no striking illustrations to charm the imagination; but there is undoubtedly something in his commanding figure and strange, wild countenance, his vehemence, and above all the astonishing power of his voice, its compass, intonation, and variety, which arrests attention, and gives the notion of a great orator. I daresay he can speak well, but to waste real eloquence on such an auditory would be like throwing pearls to swine. 'The bawl of Bellas' is better adapted for their ears than ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... sea or in service. There is a beautiful seemliness in the extreme youth of the priest who serves these aged children of God. He bends to communicate them with the reverent tenderness of a son, and reads with the careful intonation of far-seeing love. To the old people he is the son of their old age, God-sent to guide their tottering footsteps along the highway of foolish wayfarers; and he, with his youth and strength, wishes no better task. Service ended, we greet each other ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... first I saw nothing but his back, which was covered with a long, shapeless, and extravagantly dirty dressing gown. When he rose to meet us his manners were as rough as his integument. His welcome to myself was an inarticulate grunt, unmistakably Scotch in its intonation; and his first act was to move across the room to the fireplace and light a "churchwarden" pipe by sticking its head between the bars. As I watched him perform this rite, I noticed that close to the fender was a pair of very dirty slippers. To ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... also by a young professor in the same school where she taught. Mary Ballard greeted him most kindly, but she felt things were happening too rapidly in her family. Jamie and Bobby watched the young man covertly yet eagerly, taking note of his every movement and intonation. Was he one to be emulated or avoided? Only little Janey was quite unabashed by him, and this lightened his embarrassment greatly and helped him to the ease of manner ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... Sea Dayaks speak one language, with but slight local diversities of dialect. It is extremely simple, being almost devoid of inflections, and of very simple grammatical structure, relying largely on intonation. It is ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... to the high pressure of thought or of feeling, flows in a torrent or is reduced to a mere thread, and collects to flash in lightnings, is the occult agent to which are due the evil or the beneficent efforts of Art and Passion—intonation of voice, whether harsh or suave, terrible, lascivious, horrifying or seductive by turns, thrilling the heart, the nerves, or the brain at our will; the marvels of the touch, the instrument of the mental transfusions of a myriad artists, whose creative fingers are able, after passionate study, ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... man lives to any considerable age, it cannot be denied that he laments his imprudences, but I notice he often laments his youth a deal more bitterly and with a more genuine intonation. ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that he had the air of a man who with piercing eyes saw his way before him and did not flinch from taking it, rough as it might be. 'You seem an old man for such work,' said he, 'but if you are strong enough to lift those stones why are you not in the army?' As he spoke I noticed that he had not the intonation of a true Frenchman. He had the accent of the ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... sorts of things. Some of them could be led, and some had to be driven like Paddy's pig who thought he was going the other way. Some of them had wives who could talk to them, and some—hadn't," said Mrs. Baker, with a queer intonation in ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... girl's presence, felt a need to be gentle and friendly and to make amends for his inexplicable rudeness. An unexpected sense of pity softened him. He took the small, ice-cold hands between his own and said, kindly, with the intonation of a big ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... him. You're no better than swindlers, both on you. Don't be a bullyin' ME. I won't stand it. Pay us our selleries, I say. Pay us our selleries." It was evident, from Mr. Trotter's flushed countenance and defective intonation, that he, too, had ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to the subject of force, since that expression, which is so very important in elocution, is almost altogether dependent on some one or other modification of this attribute of the voice. It may truly be considered the light and shade of a proper intonation. Force may be applied to sentences or even to single words, for the ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... near the beach, handsome, spreading, and with a mixed European and indigenous arrangement and furnishing that was very attractive. I met his sons and daughters, and had luncheon with them. Tati, of course, spoke English fluently, yet with the soft intonation of the Tahitian. Some of the dishes and knives and forks had belonged to Robert Louis Stevenson, who, said Tati, had given them to him when he was departing from Tahiti. Tati's sister, a widow, was of the party, and together we went to the Protestant ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... attire. What a dream some of our Parisian dress artists could have made of her, and here she was immured in this dull English house in the high-necked costume of a labourer's wife. 'Welcome, Monsieur Valmont,' she cried, in French of almost faultless intonation. 'I am so glad you have arrived,' and she greeted me as if I were an old friend of the family. There was nothing of condescension in her manner; no display of her own affability, while at the same ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... by talking; but when he heard a sound he hoped at first to see some one come; and when no one answered him, he raised his voice, as a person would do who calls, and, getting no reply, cried out louder and louder till he was heard and answered. The meaning of the differences of intonation is as evident in this case as in that of the drunken man. A parrot raised in the South had learned to swear in the local patois. Being fond of coffee, he was sometimes given a spoonful, which he would come awkwardly up to the table to drink with his master. One day the master, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... manner quite unaffected, but sweet and devout. His sermon was a very sound and good one, beautifully delivered; perhaps in the early parts, from the very sweetness of his voice, and the very rapid delivery of his words, a little more variety of intonation would have helped in conveying his meaning more distinctly to those who formed the bulk of his congregation. But when he came to personal parts this was not needed. He made a kind allusion to me, very affecting to me; and when ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... into the rhythmic intonation of the Indian orator, and his eyes were fixed upon the names that curled, lean and red, among the dry sticks of the camp-fire. Chloe gazed in fascination into the rapt face of this man of many moods. The soul of the girl caught the enthusiasm of his words, and she, ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... brother made two pen-and-ink sketches of him, and gave one of them to Browning. So far as I remember, the Poet-Laureate neither saw what Dante was doing, nor knew of it afterwards. His deep grand voice, with slightly chaunting intonation, was a noble vehicle for the perusal of mighty verse. On it rolled, sonorous and emotional. Dante Rossetti, according to Mr Hall Caine, spoke of the incident in these terms: 'I once heard Tennyson read Maud; and, whilst the fiery passages were ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... taxed my memory to an alarming extent. I have recalled everything that I have said for the last two weeks, word by word, syllable for syllable, endeavoring to give to each expression its intonation, its inflection, its sharps and flats. Every different signification that the music of the voice could give to a thought, I have analyzed, debated, commented upon twenty times a day. Not a word, accent nor gesture has enlightened me. I defy the most embittered and envious spirit to find anything ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... with an intonation as fine as if he had learnt it at a music hall; while at the same moment the name of his mother's carriage was bawled through the place. Mrs. Tramore had parted with her old gentleman; she turned again to her ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... good and kind of you to think so much for me, and so little for yourself," answered my companion. She spoke with her face turned away from me, so that I was unable to read its expression, and her voice had an intonation that I would have given much to have been able to translate. Was it merely my imagination—I asked myself—or was there really a recurrent shade of her former hauteur of manner, mingled with just the faintest suggestion of irony and impatience? The fact is that I was at that ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... replied the old man, with emotion, "I ain' narvous; but dat saw, a-cuttin' en grindin' thoo dat stick er timber, en moanin', en groanin', en sweekin', kyars my 'memb'ance back ter ole times, en 'min's me er po' Sandy." The pathetic intonation with which he lengthened out the "po' Sandy" touched a responsive chord in our ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... his voice gathered in strength and condemnatory intonation as he proceeded, and when he had finished it seemed to many as though he were the judge and those to whom he spoke were criminals. More than one of the jury, who had been unconvinced, but who had given way to the opinions of others, felt as though his words were true. They ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... tone, "could I have done any thing to save her? I have been engrossed with my own affairs, my own dreams of advancement. I wanted to have money again, but it was for her sake and my mother's," with a lingering tremulous intonation. "She has been too solitary, she has brooded over every thing. But she would not go out, or see any company; and somehow it was our misfortune to grow up without any warm, vital interest in each other. When I was ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... Wilmarth, with a slow, irritating intonation that hardly conceals insolence, "feels able to advance for the three quarters, I can look after my share. I must confess that I am not an expert in mechanics, and may have been mistaken in some of my views. My late partner was very sanguine, while my temperament is of the doubting order. ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... this depreciatory intonation, and throwing himself backwards in his large easy chair, repeated: "An orphan girl," at the same time putting a half angry, half comical expression into his countenance, and perpetrating a pun in what followed: "Yes, many ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... against most machine-made music is its unhuman accuracy. The phonograph companies seldom give out a record which is not practically perfect in technic and intonation. As for the mechanical piano, there is no escape from the certainty of just what notes are coming next—that is, if little Johnnie has not been editing the paper record with his father's leather-punch. Therefore one grows ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... move other than to turn a page, his glance followed blindly blurring lines of text, and his quickened wits overlooked no shade of meaning or intonation as that ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... this explanation of the tears with a murmured sound of somewhat enigmatic intonation. Her thin dark face settled into a repose that had a little grimness in it. She began putting the flowers into a vase that stood between the reproduction of a Giotto Madonna and a Japanese devil-hunt, both results of the study ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... show by inflection the reciprocal dependence of words and sentences. Degrees of motion corresponding with vocal intonation are only used rhetorically or for degrees of comparison. The relations of ideas and objects are therefore expressed by placement, and their connection is established when necessary by the abstraction of ideas. The sign ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery |
