"Muted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the cork-popping land of the midnight son has waned at Keeley's. No longer a road-house on the incandescent road to dawn, there is something hangdog about its very waiters, moving through the easy maze of half-filled tables; an orchestra, sheepish of its accomplishment, can lift even a muted melody above the light babel of light diners. There is a cabaret, too, bravely bidding for the something that ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... to his own, the pilot's seat. Haney pushed a button. Through the fabric of the ship came the muted uproar of a pushpot engine starting. Haney pushed another button. Another. Another. More jet engines bellowed. The tumult in the Shed would be ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... is closed, With "It is finished!" And at the alley's end He turns, and soon on me his glances bend; And, as from earth, comes speech—small, muted, yet composed. ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... observance of a day," we become "aware suddenly of the great stream of human tears falling always through the shadows of the world." Mystery and sorrow—these are its keynotes; separately or in consonance, they are sounded from beginning to end of this strange and muted tragedy. It is full of a quality of emotion, of beauty, which is as "a touch from behind a curtain," issuing from a background vague and illimitable. One is aware of vast and inscrutable forces, working in silence and indirection, which somehow control and direct the shadowy ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... muted with distance, emanated from the dense grayness of the Time Door. Faint yips and whoopings were distinct above the rumble. The sounds grew steadily—to a thousand beating drums—to ...
— Of Time and Texas • William F. Nolan
... the attempt when sweat beaded out on his forehead and went back to listening and praying. He was tempted to pray for the miracle now, for blackness blotted out even the pitiful remains of the ship, and the whine of the patrol had muted to a singing ...
— A Choice of Miracles • James A. Cox
... eight feet away while Quillan was speaking. Everybody at the table seemed fairly high, and two of the couples were embarrassingly amorous; but she couldn't quite picture any of them as somebody's spies or agents. She listened to the muted chatter. Some Hub dialect ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... sort to the great host of the Unemployed. No one else might have seen it, but he saw, with that inner eye of his, which compassion suffused but did not obscure, that they were out of a job, and he was not surprised when he heard the young girl fetch a muted sigh and then say: "No, they don't want us any more. I don't understand why; it is very strange; ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... adversaries' score had stood at one, while we were at two, and besides, we had had two by honours; as they made four by cards, they went out—and so did I—not without an obbligato accompaniment on muted strings; unwhispered whispers of "confounded blockhead!" "blundering idiot!" "well, of all the born ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 19, 1892 • Various
... from me now, but always hear The muted laughter in the dew Of that one year of youth we had, The only youth we ever knew— Turn from me now, or you will see What other years ...
— Flame and Shadow • Sara Teasdale
... from them, the most distant sounds, those which must have come from gardens at the far end of the town, could be distinguished with such exact 'finish' that the impression they gave of coming from a distance seemed due only to their 'pianissimo' execution, like those movements on muted strings so well performed by the orchestra of the Conservatoire that, although one does not lose a single note, one thinks all the same that they are being played somewhere outside, a long way from the concert hall, so that all the old subscribers, and my grandmother's ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... emergency! Underneath Olson's sentences he heard the cry of men and boys being asphyxiated in dark dungeons—he heard the wailing of women, like a surf beating on a distant shore, or the faint, persistent accompaniment of muted strings: "O, mein Mann! ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... whole-hearted, utterly innocent of that great miracle which transforms the world, as yet unrecognising of the voice of love—the Voice which, once heard, can never again be muted and forgotten. And now something stirred within her—something new and ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... fantastic baroque desert. Venus was a riot of colors, all in a minor key: muted greens and reds, an overbearing gray, a strange, ghostly blue. The sky, or rather the cloud layer, dominated the atmosphere with its weird pinkness. It was a ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... crowded dark, Where men sit muted by the roar, I ride upon the whirring Spark Beneath the ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... their revolutions resembled the refrain of an old, quiet song. The mechanism of the patent log hummed and clicked more obtrusively. Directly underfoot the screw churned a softly clashing wake. From the saloon companionway drifted intermittently a confusion of voices, Liane's light laughter, muted clatter of chips, now and then the sound of a popping cork. Forward the ship's bell sounded two double strokes, then a single, followed by a wail in minor key: "Five bells and all's well!" ... And of a sudden Lanyard suffered the melancholy oppression of knowing his littleness of body and soul, ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... windows; if it was cold, she opened them and leaned out. If it was quiet, she was filled with fear; if it was not quiet, she longed for peace. She could not say her prayers; she had none to say; her mind and soul were muted, muffled, dumb. She felt the hours following each other in regular order as something terrible; she wanted to skip over years, just as one might skip over pages of a tiresome book. And when the worst came to the worst, and she did not know what on earth to ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... man, thin and sallow. He lies prone on the floor, staring at me with dead, sightless eyes. He whispers from muted lips "Delilah!" and the sound of it is in my ears day ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... reflected, seeing himself truly a bank director, wearing his silk hat and frock coat every day—perhaps playing checkers with Harvey D. in the back office at quiet moments. Bank directing would surely be a suitable occupation for an invalid. Dave muted the vibrant strings with ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... and he continued on his way to the spring. Creeping noiselessly through the brush he reached the trail which led downward to the beach. Then he stopped and listened. The soft grating of a muted chain caused him to drop lower in the grass and draw back. Silently he retraced his steps until he reached the cover of the heavier ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... Night, discreet, propitious, When with wadded wing and muted O'er the sleeping world we fly, And the partridge in the bracken Ne'er suspects the hovering presence Till we pounce ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... the dainty spirit of the words and I think if Maitre Guedron, in that heaven where all music makers, good men or bad, should go, could have heard her, he would have bowed his admiration just to hear the tender graceful spirit that her softly muted whistle gave his quaint old song. It was a spirit never lagging, that tripped ahead of the faint strum of the ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... None of us is likely ever to forget these little gatherings; the solemn quiet which the distant crackle of rifles seemed but to emphasise; the Psalms and Hymns, in which all joined devoutly but in tones muted and softened in harmony with the evening stillness; the short lesson, read by the light of a screened candle or electric torch; the simple prayers for our comrades facing death, for the sick, the wounded, and the dying, for the bereaved, and for the dear ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... been crammed with ammunition to the muzzle. Had a stray sparrow been fluttering in the air, he would certainly have got a fright, and probably a fall—nor would there have been any hope for a tom-tit. But an eagle—an eagle ever so many thousand feet aloft—poo, poo!—he would merely have muted on the roaring multitude, and given Sardanapalus an additional epaulette. Why, had a string of wild-geese at the time been warping their way on the wind, they would merely have shot the wedge firmer and sharper into the air, and answered the earth-born shout ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... Cove. The alder, the maple and the wild cherry, all the spring-budding trees and shrubs, were making thicket and foreshore dainty green and full of pleasant smells. Jack wakened the first morning at daybreak to the muted orchestration of mating birds, the song of a thousand sweet-voiced, unseen warblers. The days were growing warm, full of sunshine. Distant mountain ranges stood white-capped and purple against sapphire skies. The air was full of the ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... spacious, costly, magnificent, and of an admirable architecture. The birds were large, fine, and neat accordingly, looking as like the men in my country as one pea does like another; for they ate and drank like men, muted like men, endued or digested like men, farted like men, but stunk like devils; slept, billed, and trod their females like men, but somewhat oftener: in short, had you seen and examined them from top to toe, you would have laid your head to a turnip that they had been mere men. However, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... in one of the coral grottos, a cave of darkness to ordinary vision. Dalgetty had to squint to see in and the muted light of the tavern was a harsh glare when his pupils were so distended. But, yes—it was Bancroft all right and there was an empty booth ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson
... stature huge, Not like to one asleep, but as absorbed in thought! With accent of command I summon her to work, The stewardess in her surmising, who perchance My spouse, departing hence, with foresight there had placed; Yet, closely muted up, still sits she, motionless; At length, upon my threat, up-lifts she her right arm, As though from hearth and hall she motioned me away. Wrathful from her I turn, and forthwith hasten out, Toward the steps, whereon aloft the Thalamos Rises adorned, thereto the treasure-house hard by; When, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... stirring with the love that filled his breast, But still, unflinching at the right's behest, Grave Lincoln came, strong handed, from afar, The mighty Homer of the lyre of war. 'T was he who bade the raging tempest cease, Wrenched from his harp the harmony of peace, Muted the strings, that made the discord,—Wrong, And gave his spirit up in thund'rous song. Oh mighty Master of the mighty lyre, Earth heard and trembled at thy strains of fire: Earth learned of thee what Heav'n already knew, And wrote thee down among ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... drew her down on the steps and they sat in silence through long minutes, listening to the muted calling of the crickets in the grasses, the rustle of the river current, all the soft noises of the ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... to hear me, but went on dreamily, "And the sounds it makes! My God, A W, a composer'd give half the years of his life to reproduce those sounds. High and piercing; soft and muted; creating tonepoems and etudes there in ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... "The muted felicity I have witnessed about my arrival is explained, then," I ventured, "Excitement that the end is near and victory close at hand, yet that feeling subdued by the realization that a period of deeper darkness ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... is an extremely difficult task. The tone of the muted horn, for example, is perfectly familiar to the average musician. Yet who would undertake to describe in words the tone of the muted horn? A description of the sounds produced by a perfectly managed voice is almost as difficult to ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor |
