"Mellifluous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Kostanzhoglo's mellifluous periods fell upon Chichikov's ear like the notes of a bird of paradise. From time to time he gulped, and his softened eyes expressed the pleasure which it gave ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... are expressed by pretty rapid fiddling for some minutes, winding up with a puff from the orpheclide played by an intoxicated Teuton with an atrocious breath—it is impossible to misunderstand the description.) Now rises o'er the plains, in mellifluous accents, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... Leopold, he heard her singing, and stood on the stair to listen. And to listen was to marvel. For her voice, instead of being hard and dry, as when he heard it before, was, without any loss of elasticity, now liquid and mellifluous, and full of feeling. Its tones were borne along like the leaves on the wild west wind of Shelley's sonnet. And the longing of the curate to help her from that moment took a fresh departure, and grew and grew. But as the hours and days and weeks passed, and the longing found no outlet, ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... intonated by the Aquavitario, in a sharp kestrel key,—hear him! Now, list to two men carrying a large deep tub of honey between them, and bellowing in rapid alternation, "Miele, miele," and say if their accents are mellifluous! Next, comes a loud-tongued salesman, who out-brays Lablache, but confines his singing to "Che vuole, che vuole!" and oranges and lemons are his commodity. From an itinerant green-grocer, who passes with his panniered donkey, suddenly bursts forth, "Cimaroli, cimaroli!" The last ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... hall; but Deer of Deer's Castle is a prince to his neighbors. I shall not easily forget the brightening eye, the swift glance of intelligence in the face of another old negro, an hostler, in Nova Scotia. He was from Virginia, and adopting the sweet, mellifluous language of his own home, I asked him whether he liked best to stay where he was, or go back to "Old Virginny?" "O massa!" said he, with such a look, "you must know dat I has de warmest side for ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... the hotel. The waiters were now abjectly admiring, and in the most mellifluous tones that signified their "great expectations," expressed to the heedless Mr Campbell their congratulations on the discovery of his son. They could scarcely believe their eyes at the sight of Harry, the fine handsome boy, with curling sunny hair and gentlemanly ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly
... mellifluous voice suddenly intervened. Otto Schmidt thought fit to assume a role for which Lord ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... whether she might not be using her illness both as an excuse for self-indulgence, and as a means of keeping her husband's interest in her on the stretch. I did not like the wearing of her religion on her sleeve, nor the mellifluous drawl in ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... some conclusion whether for good or ill—it did not matter. If Marishka herself had written it!... She would be awaiting him now—and he could not come to her.... In his stead—Linke the gigantic, the mellifluous.... ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... "Unmingled wine, Mellifluous, undecaying, and divine, Which now, some ages from his race concealed, The hoary sire in gratitude revealed.... Scarce twenty measures from the living stream To cool one cup sufficed: the goblet crowned, Breathed aromatic ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... the German princes, like a man inquisitive and judicious, and recounts many particularities, which are lost in the mass of general history, in a style, which, to the ears of that age, was undoubtedly mellifluous, and which is now a very valuable ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... situation and temper for receiving soft impressions, she sat negligently rocking herself in her chair, and polishing the lid of a copper saucepan! when the sweet, mellifluous strains of an itinerant band struck gently upon the drum of her ear. "Wapping Old Stairs" was distinctly recognized, and she mentally repeated the words so applicable to ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... to answer the telephone, came rustling back, and sank, wheezing, into a white and gilt chair, which was too small to contain the whole of her ample person. Though she had spoken quite sharply at the telephone, her voice was mellifluous when she attuned ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... not the shadow of a dimple responds to my unhappy attempt to win from them a smile. Pretty but not coquettish are these communistic maidens of Amana. At Tiffin, the stilly air of night, is made joyous with the mellifluous voices of whip-poor-wills-the first I have heard on the tour-and their tuneful concert is impressed on my memory in happy contrast to certain other concerts, both vocal and instrumental, endured en route. Passing through Iowa City, crossing Cedar River at Moscow, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Alexander to subdue the world, Lyceum there and painted Stoa next; ... To sage philosophy next lend thine ear. From Heaven descended to the low roof'd house Of Socrates; see there his tenement, Whom, well inspired, the oracle pronounced Wisest of men; from whose mouth issued forth Mellifluous streams that water'd all the schools Of Academics old and new, with those Surnamed Peripatetics, and the sect Epicurean, and ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... I am not so deficient as not to be aware that a man singeth from the mouth; yet is thy voice mellifluous, sweet as the ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... for perturbation are not imaginary or based on the hallucinations of a hypersensitive mind. They are prompted and justified by the notorious facts, established by the leading psycho-analysts, that, just as mellifluous and melodious names exercise a mollifying influence on the activities of the sub-conscious self, so the possession or choice of strange or ferocious appellations incites the bearer, if I may be permitted to use so commonplace a term, to live up to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... Latin poets, has always been assigned to Grotius: his diction is always classical, his sentiments just. But those who are accustomed to the wood notes of the Bard of Avon, will not admire the scenic compositions, however elegant or mellifluous, of the ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... dear son," said the Rev. Mr Bastian, with a face and voice as mellifluous as a honeycomb, "that all the members of your household are faithful, and well affected ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... 16, 17. (4) Published a collection of declamations, or school rhetorical exercises on set themes; cf. Section 17. (5) Came from Egypt; cf. Section 24; Xois and Thmuis were in that country. (6) Is said to have been appointed professor of rhetoric at Athens by Commodus purely on account of his mellifluous voice; ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... I flounder about; thrice one of them, load and all, goes down with a squidge and a crash into the side grass, and says "damn!" with quite the European accent; as a rule, however, we go on in single file, my shoes giving out a mellifluous squidge, and their naked feet a squish, squash. The men take it very good temperedly, and sing in between accidents; I do not feel much like singing myself, particularly at one awful spot, which was the exception to ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... imagined, made no farewell calls. She disappeared from Symford as suddenly as she had appeared; and Mrs. Morrison, coming into Creeper Cottage on Monday afternoon to unload her conscience yet more, found only a pleasant gentleman, a stranger of mellifluous manners, writing out cheques. She had ten minutes talk with him, and went home very sad and wise. Indeed from that day, her spirit being the spirit of the true snob, the hectorer of the humble, the devout groveller in the courtyards of the great, ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... to it. These faults are found to a much smaller degree in her miscellaneous poems. Her sonnets, here printed for the first time, seem to me to be of great beauty, and her longer piece entitled "Our Casuarina Tree," needs no apology for its rich and mellifluous numbers. ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... but Romley promised to be the bright exception in a long list of failures. (It was he who discovered and introduced Johnny Whitelamb to the household.) He was sociable; had pleasant manners, a rotund figure not yet inclining to coarseness, a pink and white complexion, and a mellifluous tenor voice. To his voice, alas! he owed most of ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... water-meadows. What gardens and green shades and coolness of comfort, he remembered, and linked with that time and that place. He dreamed a dream with the smell of new-turned hay in it, then awoke to find himself repeating that mellifluous tag of his about man's airy notions. The ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... of his brother-captains, as if he would have wrung them off, and then threw himself into a chair to recover from his exertions; but, when he began to speak, instead of the rough voice one might have expected, a soft, mellifluous tone was heard, which might better win a woman's ear than vie with the howling of the tempest. He at once waived all the right he might claim to lead the attack on the island, and cordially agreed to the plan proposed ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... flashing eyes, and fingers that dance with gemmy rings. A new-comer arrives, unhooking from his shoulders the wooden tray which holds the group of statuettes that he has been hawking round Streatham and Norwood. He salutes them in mellifluous tones, and sits down. He orders nothing; but a heaped-up dish of macaroni is put before him, and he attacks it with fork and finger. There are few women to be seen, but those few are gaudily arrayed in coloured handkerchiefs, their mournful eyes and purring voices touching ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... in 1598, recognises Shakespeare as both playwright and poet. So Judge Webb can only reply: 'But who this mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare was he does not say, AND HE DOES NOT PRETEND TO KNOW.'* He does not 'pretend to know' 'who' any of the poets was—except Samuel Page, and he was a Fellow of Corpus. He speaks of Shakespeare just as he does of Marlowe, Kid, Chapman, and the others whom he mentions. ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... that's holy, I wish you would, Hermogenes. How delightful it would be. Just as a song sounds sweeter in concert with the flute, so would your talk be more mellifluous attuned to its soft pipings; and particularly if you would use gesticulation like the flute-girl, to suit the ...
— The Symposium • Xenophon
... honey and resounding with the notes of the peacock, the king at last reached the sacred lake of Dwaitavana. And the spot which the king reached swarmed with bees inebriate with floral honey, and echoed with the mellifluous notes of the blue-throated jay and was shaded by Saptacchadas and punnagas and Vakulas. And the king graced with high prosperity proceeded thither like the thunder-wielding chief of the celestials ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... after this fashion? 'Scarce had the rubicund Apollo spread o'er the face of the broad spacious earth the golden threads of his bright hair, scarce had the little birds of painted plumage attuned their notes to hail with dulcet and mellifluous harmony the coming of the rosy Dawn, that, deserting the soft couch of her jealous spouse, was appearing to mortals at the gates and balconies of the Manchegan horizon, when the renowned knight Don Quixote of La ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... see Miss Dane, you ragamuffin!" exclaimed the mellifluous tones of footman Wilson. "You hadn't oughter ring the door-bell! The ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... the voice of a man who sang baritone, and his accent was an odd combination of the Bush drawl grafted on to the mellifluous Gaelic, from which race ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... highness desires to know above all things how I can have dared to intrude here at so unusual an hour, and without the shadow of permission," he said with his mellifluous, insinuating voice. "Most gracious Princess, I confess that you are well justified in this curiosity, and I hasten to gratify it. Your grace expected a visitor indeed, but not the tiresome, unbidden Count d'Entragues—not the ambassador and servant of King Louis XIII or Cardinal Richelieu, ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... corrupt officials, all Congress, (except the Right Party,) all torpid fogies and peddlers of red tape, all humbugs of every size and shape, in fact, as will speedily reduce them to ashes. Then, by skilfully manipulating the other crank, he can produce from it strains of such mellifluous harmony that the very telegraph-poles will throng around him, as erstwhile did the trees of the forest around ORPHEUS, and tender their services for the transmission of his melting music to all the beautiful places on Earth. It is hardly necessary ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 27, October 1, 1870 • Various
... prophet, 'Man ate the bread of angels,' are fulfilled in these holy poor ones. God has given the Friars Minor to the world in these latter times, that the elect may have it in their power to practise what will cause them to be glorified by the Supreme Judge, when He will address them in these mellifluous words: 'What you did to one of these, the least of My brethren, you did it to Me.' It is pleasing to solicit charity in the capacity of a Friar Minor, whom our Master seemed to designate expressly by the appellation, 'the ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... Tancred and Godfrey, "On to the breach, ye soldiers of the cross, Scale the red wall and swim the choking foss. Ye dauntless archers, twang your cross-bows well; On, bill and battle-axe and mangonel! Ply battering-ram and hurtling catapult, Jerusalem is ours—id Deus vult." After which comes a mellifluous description of the gardens of Sharon and the maids of Salem, and a prophecy that roses shall deck the entire country of Syria, and a speedy reign of peace be established—all in undeniably decasyllabic lines, and the queerest aping of ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... as graceful, and as mellifluous as anything that appeared in that marvelously productive time. Lodge's poetic interludes impress one not only by their easy grace and sweetness, but by their melody as well. They possess that truly lyric quality that Burns's songs exhibit to such a marked degree. They seem ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... all about it. Cantarella, he calls it—Cantharides. Why Cantarella? Possibly because it is a pleasing, mellifluous word that will help a sentence hang together smoothly; possibly because the notorious aphrodisiac properties of that drug suggested it to Giovio as just the poison to be kept handy by folk addicted to the pursuits which he and others attribute to the ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... daintily falling, Sweet as its plaintive, mellifluous song, Voices of absent ones seem to be calling:— "Come to us! Come! ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... trembling lyre, Silence, ye vocal choir, And thou, mellifluous lute, For man soon breathes his last, And all his hope is past, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... Day, a Vision of Her in the $200 Rig that she had flashed on the Night of the Party. It never occurred to him that she could wear any other Costume. He would close his Eyes and try to hear once again the dulcet and mellifluous Tones of that Voice which, to him, sounded as Good as an AEolian Harp moved by gentle Zephyrs within a Bower ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... Board Room. It was almost as if the apartment itself was becoming historic, like those chambers they pointed out to the tourist wherein crowned heads had slept. The manner of the Marquis lent itself charmingly to this illusion. He spoke in a facile, mellifluous voice, and as fluently as if he had been at work for a long time preparing a dissertation on this subject, instead of taking it up now by chance. In his tone, in his gestures, in the sustained friendliness of ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... a very formidable and perplexing indictment, sparkling with learning and bristling with difficulties. But when these mellifluous mysticisms are once translated into "the vulgar tongue" they prove to be, strange to say, easily within the comprehension ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... somewhat astray. Rather hard to sit up all the way through the Squire's speech; an hour and a half long; bristling with figures; mellifluous with millions, throbbing with thousands. The Squire is in peculiar degree dependent for success upon mood of his audience. In crowded House, Members cheering, laughing, or, if you please, jeering and howling, the ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... (its swelling force t'assuage), By pouring oil of flattery on its rage. And now, of all the heart approved, possess'd, Fear'd, favour'd, follow'd, dreaded, and caress'd, He gently yields to one mellifluous joy, The only sweet that is not found to cloy, Bland adulation!—other pleasures pall On the sick taste, and transient are they all; But this one sweet has such enchanting power, The more we take, the faster we devour: Nauseous to those who must the dose apply, And most disgusting ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... shall presently see how their labours resulted. But in the first place a special feature of the situation has to be noted. The Japanese language was then undergoing a transition. In order to fit it to the Chinese ideographs for literary purposes, it was being deprived of its mellifluous polysyllabic character and reduced to monosyllabic terseness. The older words were disappearing, and with them many of the old traditions. Temmu saw that if the work of compilation was abandoned solely to princely and official litterateurs, they would probably sacrifice on the altar of the ideograph ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... my too constant inspection disturbed you. Myriad pardons for me," began the Swami in his mellifluous voice. "It is the tribute. When I feel deep interest I am prone to forget all but my study. See, I am the last of a family once powerful and wealthy; yet I hardly regret that heritage that I have lost. I look at you. You are the type of another fate. You are a bride, ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... because of the shape of its flowers, has a most mellifluous and pleasing botanical name, Liriodendron Tulipifera—is not that euphonious? Just plain "liriodendron"—how much better that sounds as a designation for one of the noblest of American forest trees than the misleading "common" names! "Tulip-tree," ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... his sentimentalism forces him to be has often been overlooked because of his diction and his pictures. Though he tends to the mellifluous and the saccharine he has in his better pages a dewy, luminous style, with words choicely picked out and cadences delicately manipulated. By comparison most of the local colorists of his period seem homespun and most of the ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... idylls, such as 'Dora,' 'The May Queen,' and 'The Miller's Daughter,' or in those tender lyrics such as 'Mariana,' 'Sir Galahad,' 'The Dying Swan,' and 'The Talking Oak.' In the ballads and songs, how felicitous again is the poet's work, and how rich yet mellifluous is the strain! Had Tennyson written nothing else but these, with the verse included in the volumes issued by him in 1832 and 1842, how high would he have been placed in the choir of song, and how supreme should we have deemed his art! In ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... speak of is to cast out the demagogue. They are the fellows that are the curse of both and of all political parties. We have had them from the days of Julius Caesar and Marc Antony down to date. [Laughter.] These smooth, sleek, mellifluous-tongued fellows that always have the same blood-stained garment to hold up before the populace, and some forged will to read, whereby the people were to get great legacies which they never could collect, let us cast them out. Let us frown upon them in both ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... home as when alone, the mellifluous Sundown's imagination expanded, till it embraced the farthest outpost of his theme. He became the towering center of things terrestrial. The world revolved around but one individual that glorious morning, and he ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... Leasowes published a pastoral that was no way equal to the pastoral he wrote with trees, walks, and water upon his land; yet there are few cultivated readers who have not some day met with it, and been beguiled by its mellifluous seesaw. How its jingling resonance comes back to me to-day from the "Reader" book ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... during the first year of your mellifluous union, scenes more or less delightful, pleasantries uttered in good taste, pretty purses and caresses might accompany and might decorate the handing over of this monthly gift; but the time will come when the self-will of your wife or some unforeseen expenditure will compel her to ask a loan of the ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac |
