"Monotonous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shrines of romance out of the knowledge of the living, and a part of the Longchamps racecourse occupies the spot whither impecunious poets and adventure-seeking wives repaired to escape the insistence of cruel bailiffs and the spies of suspicious and monotonous husbands. ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... when she was crying. And it seemed to me as if someone else was speaking. And I listened to myself. I thought I hated the prairie through the long winter months, and yet, somehow, it has taken hold of me. It was dreary and monotonous, and yet, I can't tear it out of my heart. There's beauty and a romance about it which fills ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... accompanying his song by liberal use of the rattle. As an illustration of the songs used at this period of the illness, the following is presented, the mnemonic characters being reproduced on Pl. XVI, C. The singing is monotonous and doleful, though at times ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman
... drew softly back into the shadow, and a deep silence fell in the room. Through it in a long, monotonous roar there came the sound of the sea breaking, eternally breaking, along ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... it was time for smoking; they began to drink and, reverting to their usual topic, they spoke of their monotonous and tedious life. Bottles of cognac and liqueur passed from hand to hand, and seating back on their chairs, they were all absorbing their liqueur in repeated sips, holding at the corner of their mouths the ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... a pane of glass and the cold wind blew right through the room making the door bang to and fro with a madly monotonous tone. ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... there was a stir of awakening interest The travel-wearied passengers, laying aside books and magazines and cards, renewed conversations that, in the last monotonous hours of the desert part of the journey, had lagged painfully. Throughout the train, there was an air of eager expectancy; a bustling movement of preparation. The woman of the observation car platform ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... in the distant western ranges, though rain seemed forever denied to the desert valleys. But on the Sunday noon before Rabbit Tail's gang was to arrive, the impossible happened. Roger and Gustav were eating their monotonous lunch of corned beef and canned brown bread when a curious roar broke the desert silence. As the two men looked at each other questioningly, there was a deafening crash and a huge deluge of water smashed down on the cook tent. The sun-baked canvas was like a sieve and in ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... for sailing was hoisted on board of the Young America, and the pilots came on board. The students were bright and fresh, and having seen the dikes and ditches of Holland, they were rather anxious to escape from its muddy waters and its monotonous plains. In fact, they sighed for another taste of blue water and the fresh ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... lovely view of green fields and trees. The moment you put your foot inside the court, you felt the atmosphere of peace and cheerfulness, though it was a hospital. The nuns all looked happy and smiling—they always do, and I always wonder why. Life in a cloister seems to me so narrow and monotonous and unsatisfying unless one has been bred in a convent and knows nothing of life but what the ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... its sable veil, They rustle sideling through the watery way, The wild, monotonous cry with which they hail Each ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... equal masses in a design is monotonous. The eye finds variety of size more interesting. But to determine what form of variety is most interesting we must find, if possible, the ideal area relationship between masses in a design. This problem has of necessity been solved by the designers of all nations and all periods, ...
— Applied Design for Printers - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #43 • Harry Lawrence Gage
... enforce the same argument. Among the lower savages music, as we understand it, hardly exists, though they all delight in rude musical sounds, as of drums, tom-toms, or gongs; and they also sing in monotonous chants. Almost exactly as they advance in general intellect, and in the arts of social life, their appreciation of music appears to rise in proportion; and we find among them rude stringed instruments and whistles, ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... no more of it, he began to sing his song again. The song told, in monotonous couplets, the complaint of a linen weaver whose lover in a distant war prolonged his absence. It was written in that mysterious Euskarian language, the age of which seems incalculable and the origin of which remains unknown. And little by ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... countess' first husband. The abandoned husband and wife decided out of spite to unite their fortunes, but found nothing but disappointment and ill-will in this second marriage. And you suffer the consequences. They lead a monotonous, narrow, lonely life for eleven months or more out of the year. One day, you met M. Rossigny, who fell in love with you and suggested an elopement. You did not care for him. But you were bored, your youth was being wasted, you longed for the ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... is a dead monotonous period under a roof; but in the open world it passes lightly, with its stars and dews and perfumes, and the hours are marked by changes in the face of Nature. What seems a kind of temporal death to people choked ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... I know myself: I always thought the same of him, and was just as well satisfied with it as now. His poem I never did greatly affect: nor can I learn to do so: it is full of finest things, but it is monotonous, and has that air of being evolved by a Poetical Machine of the highest order. So it seems to be with him now, at least to me, the Impetus, the Lyrical oestrus, is gone. . . It is the cursed inactivity (very pleasant to me who am no Hero) of this 19th century which has spoiled ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... yet, perhaps, not wholly unnatural. After five-and-twenty years of convent life, Therese Linders still clung to the memory of the closing scenes of her worldly career, as the most eventful in the dead level of a grey monotonous life, still held to the remembrance of her mother's death, and of her fierce quarrel with her brother, as the period when all her keenest emotions had been most actively called into play. And indeed what memories are so precious ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... long one and not exhilarating. Through the open door came no sound of organ or choir, but the deep and monotonous drawl of one voice. There had been no ringing of bells. The north countries, with the exception of Russia, require more than the ringing of bells or the waving of flags to warm their hearts. They celebrate their festivities with good meat and wine ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... breathe the exhilarating desert air—and smell the Bazaars! But Egypt is ugly a pin's prick beneath its beauty. It is so old and covered with bones and decayed ideas. The Nile is associated with Moses, and it is long it is true, but it is also very narrow and shallow, and its banks are monotonous to a degree; a mile or so of green crop on either side, then stones, sand, bits of crockery, human bones and rags, then desert sand—a cross between a cemetery and a kitchen garden. The ruins are awfully ugly! "Think ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... chopper he tried to glance away from the Brass-button Man. For one- nineteenth of a second he kept his head turned. It turned back of itself; he stared full at the man, half bowed—and received a hearty absent-minded nod and a "Fine evenin'." He sang to himself a monotonous song of great joy. When he stumbled over the feet of a large German in getting to a seat, he apologized as though he were accustomed to laugh ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... seemed to him like floating down the current of some enchanted river; but even in enchanted rivers there are eddies, otherwise the enchantment of the current and the flowery banks under which it flows would become monotonous, and presently Owen was caught in an eddy. The stream flowed gaily while he told her of his experience in the desert; she was interested in the gazelles and in the eagles, though qualifying the sport as cruel, and in his synthesis ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... The bitterness of the first hours was softening; each day brought additional tranquillity and calm; life resumed its course with weary languidness, and with the monotonous intellectual insensibility which follows great shocks. At the commencement, Laurent and Therese allowed themselves to drift into this new existence which was transforming them; within their beings was proceeding a silent labour which ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... him, is not said. Mrs. Lovell, the grandmother, followed her husband in two years,—for Mary, two years of assiduous nursing and tender care. Perhaps one sentence from a letter at this time will assist us in picturing her in this exacting service. She says that she is leading a monotonous existence, that her animal spirits are not sufficient for both duty and solitude, "And when evening closes, and my beloved charge is laid peacefully to rest, excitement ceases, and I am ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... the delight of seeing the noble shire-hall—the boast of the county—and of catching glimpses of the dancers, and hearing the band; much as she longed for some variety to the dull, monotonous life she was leading, she could not feel happy to accept a privilege, granted, as she believed, in ignorance of the real state of the case; so she startled her companions by rising abruptly and going up to Mrs Mason, ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Barbarossa in the evening; that he should have played for twenty-eight nights at Drury Lane, and drawn L17,000 into the treasury of the theatre. He was simply a handsome boy of thirteen with a fine voice, deep for his age, and powerful but monotonous. Surely he was not very intellectual, though he did witch the town so marvellously. 'If they admire me so much, what would they say of Mr. Harley?' quoth the boy, simply. Mr. Harley being the head tragedian of the same strolling company—a large-calved, leather-lunged ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... punishment for his ghost than to wander, perpetually through these long suites of rooms, over the cold marble or mosaic of the floors, growing chiller at every eternal footstep. Fancy the progenitor of the Dorias thus haunting those heavy halls where his posterity reside! Nor would it assuage his monotonous misery, but increase it manifold, to be compelled to scrutinize those masterpieces of art, which he collected with so much cost and care, and gazing at them unintelligently, still leave a further portion of his vital warmth ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... this apartment, also, that there stood against the western wall, a gigantic clock of ebony. Its pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made the circuit of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, but of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... however, to be quite undisturbed. I was awakened, at the first slight peep of dawn, by a sound from an apartment beneath our own—a plaintive, monotonous chant, rising and then falling in a sort of mournful cadence. It seemed to me a wail of something unearthly—so wild—so strange—so unaccountable. In terror I awoke my husband, who reassured me by telling me it was the morning ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... long lone tracks of Tideswell's native moor, Stretched on vast hills that far and near prevail. Bleak, stony, bare, monotonous, ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... waters—the distant fires, surrounded by clouds of white smoke ascending in winding columns to the skies—the stillness of the night, interrupted only by the occasional cry of the pelican or the crane, and the monotonous thumping of the steam-boat paddles, formed a strange combination; and had the days of witches and warlocks not long since passed away, one would have sworn that these gentry were performing incantations over the mystic cauldrons, casting "seven bullets," ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... into human faces is arrested because it has lit upon a personality that cannot be immediately located, measured, accounted for. The reason for this sterility of variety which soon makes the world rather monotonous to the seeing eye is that few of us are born with any considerable amount of personality, and what little we have is speedily suppressed by a system of training which is throughout based upon an abhorrence of originality. We obey the law of nature—and nature so abhors ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... and heat, is dancing a crazy ballet. It is a hover of Anthophorae, a few feet thick and covering an area which matches the sort of house-front formed by the perpendicular soil. From the tumultuous heart of the cloud rises a monotonous, threatening murmur, while the bewildered eye strays through the inextricable evolutions of the eager throng. With the rapidity of a lightning-flash thousands of Anthophorae are incessantly flying off and scattering over the country-side in search of booty; thousands ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... stars come forth to listen To the music of the sea. They gather, and gather, and gather, Until they crowd the sky, And listen, in breathless silence, To the solemn litany. It begins in rocky caverns, As a voice that chants alone To the pedals of the organ In monotonous undertone; And anon from shelving beaches, And shallow sands beyond, In snow-white robes uprising The ghostly choirs respond. And sadly and unceasing The mournful voice sings on, And the snow-white choirs still ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... A deep monotonous sound, rising and falling at regular intervals, Mr. Helbeck reading prayers, with the two maids, who represented the only service ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sun is lower than I thought," exclaimed Roy, suddenly awakening to the fact that they had wandered a considerable distance from the camp. Several of the monotonous ground-swells of the desert hills, in fact, separated them ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... to an end, and the women have gathered together enough wood for the fires during the night, they, too, throw themselves into their hammocks; and all talk together. Till far into the night the men tell endless stories, sometimes droning them out in a sort of monotonous chant, sometimes delivering them with a startling amount of emphasis and gesticulation. The boys and younger men add to the noise by marching round the houses, blowing horns and playing on flutes. There is but little ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... nightfall, when he was returning heart-broken at not having discovered anything at either bagnio or mosque, our man from Tarascon, in passing mansions, would hear monotonous songs, smothered twanging of guitars, thumping of tambourines, and feminine laughter-peals, which would ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... It was a woman's voice, old and quavering, and the song was a weird, almost unearthly, chant or dirge in a minor key. Slowly the singer approached the station, and reaching it, mounted the steps of the platform and seated herself on a bench, keeping on, without pause, her monotonous singing. The woman was a Mexican, very poorly dressed, and looked to be all of ninety years of age. This aroused in some slight degree the interest ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... sight of that! To fortify men in love for their motherland, to see that insecurity, grinding poverty, interference, petty tyranny, could no longer undermine that love—this was to be, surely must be, done! Monotony? Was that cry true? What work now performed by humble men was less monotonous than work on the land? What work was even a tenth part so varied? Never quite the same from day to day: Now weeding, now hay, now roots, now hedging; now corn, with sowing, reaping, threshing, stacking, thatching; the care of beasts, and their companionship; sheep-dipping, shearing, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... but the most favorable winds and tides for many a long and to those on board somewhat monotonous days, and the sun rose out of the sea clear and bright, and sunk again beneath its surface in gorgeous splendor with every diurnal rotation, until at length the ship touched at the Cape of Good Hope, where, having taken fresh water and ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... reasons well, hits hard, and replies with remarkable promptitude and effect; but he is at an immense distance below the great models of eloquence, Pitt, Fox, and Canning; his voice is not melodious, and it is a little monotonous; his action is very ungraceful, his person and manner are vulgar, and he has certain tricks in his motions which exhibit that vulgarity in a manner almost offensive, and which is only redeemed by the real power of his speeches. His great merit consists in his judgment, tact and discretion, his ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... Jimmie, wouldn't it," she said in the same monotonous voice, "it would have been better if—if I had never found out anything, and they—they had done the same to me that they did ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... time on the floor-mats, and drumming, were the usual musical accompaniments. Their music, on these occasions, was a monotonous chant of a line or two, repeated over and over again, with no variety beyond two or three notes. They sought variety rather in time. They began slow, and gradually increased until, at the end of ten or twenty minutes, they were full of excitement, the perspiration streaming ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... streets and boulevards are very handsome, with elegant fountains which relieve the somewhat monotonous regularity. Some of the squares are of immense size. There is a very large lazaretto, which is said to be one of the best managed in the world. The cafes are like small palaces, and the shops rival the ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... itself, merriment seemed to spread. Every one began to laugh and to cry out. The magpies and the jays fluttered away uttering their guttural cries, beneath the waving avenues of oaks; the cuckoo staid his monotonous cry in the recesses of the forest; the chaffinch and tomtit flew away in clouds; while the terrified deer bounded riverwards from the midst of the thickets. This crowd, spreading joy, confusion, ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... that was scarcely to be born. If he stood still long enough to rest he became cold, a deadly chill that he knew to be the precursor of death's benumbing sleep would creep over him, and then he would force himself to resume the monotonous, aching walk. ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... The monotonous roll-call, the heat, the attitude in which I was lying, all conspired to make me drowsy; even the very press of sensations that crowded to my brain lent their aid, and at last I slept as soundly as ever I had done in my bed at night. I was dreaming of the dark alleys ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... manners and fashion, associated with relatively profound differences in individual opinions, sentiments, and beliefs. This is just the reverse of what one meets among primitive peoples, where diversity in external forms, as between different groups, is accompanied by a monotonous sameness in the mental attitudes of individuals. There is a striking similarity in the sentiments and mental attitudes of peasant peoples in all parts of the world, although the external differences are often great. In the Black Forest, in Baden, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... in silence along the dim-lighted street, between monotonous rows of high sombre houses, each with its pillared portico which looked like the entrance to a tomb. Glancing about him with a sense of depression, Harvey wondered that any mortal could fix his pride on the fact of residence in such a ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... inquired anxiously, "Got the joker? Guess I'm euchred, then," the Boy in desperation would catch up Kaviak, balance the child on his head, or execute some other gymnastic, soothing the solemn little heathen's ruffled feelings, afterwards, by crooning out a monotonous plantation song. It was that kind of addition to the general gloom that, at first, would fire O'Flynn to raise his own spirits, at least, by roaring out an Irish ditty. But this was seldomer as time went on. Even Jimmie's brogue suffered, and grew ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... loved the clash of conflicting intellects, and acquired the rewards of fame—could accommodate himself to the cabined range of his kinsfolks' half-civilized existence, take interest in their trivial talk, find varying excitement in the monotonous household of a peasant-like farmer. I could not help saying as much to him once. "My friend," replied the old man, "believe me that the happiest art of intellect, however lofty, is that which enables it to be cheerfully at home ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is unfortunate in one important particular. It invariably involves repetition; and conscious, explicit repetition tends to become monotonous. We must hold attention to the drill process, and yet attention abhors monotony as nature abhors a vacuum. Consequently no small part of the tedium and irksomeness of school work has been due to its emphasis of drill. The formalism of the older schools has been described, criticized, and ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... southward and make for Denver. Northward he dare not go. There were the army posts along the Platte; beyond them the armed hosts of Indians, far more to be dreaded than all the sheriffs' posses on the plains. Half-past ten came and still no Loring, and the round of drinks were getting monotonous. Judge Pardee, a bibulous and oracular limb of the law, had been chosen inquisitor-general, with powers to call for all the news that was stowed away in that secretive "knowledge-box" on the shoulders of the Engineer. Gate City ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... desirable to note just what were these wares and why they were demanded so insistently. First were spices, far more important then than now. The diet of those times was simple and monotonous without our variety of vegetables and sauces and sweets, and the meat, if fresh, was likely to be tough in fiber and strong in flavor. Spices were the very thing to add zest to such a diet, and without them the epicure of the sixteenth century ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... this story, but its charm and power consist in a vivid description of common life, minute but not exaggerated, which enlists our sympathy with suffering and misfortune, deeply excites our interest in commonplace people living out their weary and monotonous existence. This was a new departure in fiction,—a novel without love-scenes or happy marriages or thrilling adventures or impossible catastrophes. But there is great pathos in this homely tale of sorrow; with no attempts at philosophizing, no digressions, no wearisome ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... he continued, "that before sailing you had expressed the hope that something really exciting and adventurous would befall the party—that you were tired of the monotonous humdrum of twentieth-century existence—that you regretted the decadence of piracy, and the expunging of romance ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... allow the matter to drop. Every preparation was therefore made for sudden flight. Aemilia was warned on no account to trust any message she might receive purporting to be from him, and the Britons in the palace, who were heartily sick of their monotonous duty, were told to hold themselves in readiness for action. Beric knew that he could depend on the slave who had been assigned to him as an attendant. He was not the man who had at first served him, and who, as Beric doubted not, had acted as a spy upon him. When it was ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... their meeting of the other day, seeming to seek in them some savour that still escaped her good-will. She answered him alertly, swiftly, and often at random, as though by her intelligence and competence to cover his ineptitude. Her smile was brightly mechanical; her voice at once insistent and monotonous. She had an air, which Gregory felt more and more to be almost insolent, ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... by profession, but I went out with the first Inns of Court lot for a little amateur soldiering and lost part of my foot at Mons. Since then I have been indulging in the unremunerative and highly monotonous occupation of censoring." ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... faithful almost with his first breath. I do not know whether I have been a good seaman, but I know I have been a very faithful one. And, after all, there is that handful of "characters" from various ships to prove that all these years have not been altogether a dream. There they are, brief, and monotonous in tone, but as suggestive bits of writing to me as any inspired page to be found in literature. But then, you see, I have been called romantic. Well, that can't be helped. But stay. I seem to remember that I have been called a realist, also. And as that charge, too, can be made out, let us try ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... the last words with a meaning smile, and Cotherstone took a turn or two about the room, trying to steady himself. And Kitely presently went on again, in the same monotonous tones: ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... have elapsed; for when I got up, the sun was low in the western heavens. My head was so weak and wandering, that I could not well explain to myself how it was that I had been thus riding after my own shadow. Yet the thing was clear enough. Without landmarks, and in the monotonous scenery of the prairie, I might have gone on for ever following my horses track, and going back when I thought I was going forwards, had it not been for the discovery of the tobacco paper. I was, as I subsequently learned, in the Jacinto prairie, one of the most beautiful in Texas, full ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... the contrary, lack the vivacity of the Bavaro-Austrian stock. On the monotonous heights of the Swabian plateau are developed such brusque individualism, tenacious self-will, peculiar humor inclined to self-depreciation, soaring fantasy, and (withal there is no lack of comprehension for the ideas of domesticity) such a predilection for adventures abroad ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... dictum in regard to music holds good when applied to the Eskimo, for they have but little music in their souls, and among no people is there such a noticeable absence of "treason, stratagem and spoil." A rude drum and a monotonous chant, consisting only of the fundamental note and minor third, are the only things in the way of music among the more remote settlements of which I have any knowledge. Mrs. Micawber's singing has been described as ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... of these notes gets monotonous as there is nothing much doing. Artillery duels are constant, and during the last few days the naval guns have fired more than usual. Occasionally a Taube flies over us and drops bombs, but such things are now ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... equilibrium; the tide stands poised; the holiday spirit is unabated. But as the harvest ripens beneath the long, hot days, the melody gradually ceases. The young are out of the nest and must be cared for, and the moulting season is at hand. After the cricket has commenced to drone his monotonous refrain beneath your window, you will not, till another season, hear the wood thrush in all his matchless eloquence. The bobolink has become careworn and fretful, and blurts out snatches of his song between his scolding and upbraiding, as you approach ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... considerable distance, when he heard the voice of a little girl, who probably believed herself to be quite alone, singing in a path that ran along the edge of the maquis. It was one of those slow, monotonous airs consecrated to funeral dirges, and the child ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... not formidable in the flesh, the evil that he does lives after him. Freeman's view of Froude is not now held by any one whose opinion counts; yet still there seems to rise, as from a brazen head of Ananias, dismal and monotonous chaunt, "He was careless of the truth, he did not make history the business of his life." He did make history the business of his life, and he cared more for truth than for anything else in the world. Freeman's biographer has given no clue to his imperfect sympathy with Froude. Green, true historian ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... in the daytime they were allowed, in parties of fifty, to walk for two hours in the courtyard. There were several large rooms in which they sat and took their meals, two sentries with loaded muskets being stationed in each room. Thus, although monotonous, there was little to complain of; their food, if coarse, was plentiful, and the prisoners passed the time in talk, playing cards, and in such games as their ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... us. But he didn't lie down until he had rolled a cigarette, and then instead of going to sleep he began talking to Piegan, asking what seemed to me a lot of rather trifling questions. I was nearly worn out, and their conversation was nowise interesting to me, so listening to the monotonous drone of their voices and the steady beat of falling rain, I went ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... a long time at sea, the enemy did not appear—and there was no chance either of bringing him to action, or of returning into port. Indeed nothing can be more dull and monotonous than a blockading cruise "in the team," as we call it; that is, the ships of the line stationed to watch an enemy. The frigates have, in this respect, every advantage; they are always employed on shore, often in action, and the more men they have killed, the happier are the survivors. ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... talking, Mohegan was uttering dull, monotonous tones, keeping time by a gentle motion of his head and body. He made use of but few words, and such as he did utter were in his native language, and consequently only understood by himself and Natty. Without heeding Richard, he continued to sing a kind of wild, ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... reckoned a very simple, monotonous animal; and most people, when they have called him a clown, or a country-hob, think they have described him. If you see a picture of him, he is a long, silly-looking fellow, in a straw hat, a white slop, and a pair of ankle-boots, with a bill in his hand—just ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... strange rivalry as to the ability to "ease a guest of his money"—strange enough because they did not derive any profit out of this, unless, indeed, a certain affection from the housekeeper or a word of approbation from the proprietress. But in their petty, monotonous, habitually frivolous life there was, in general, a great deal of ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... monotonous until after we left Salt Lake City at dawn this morning. Nothing happened until we were about a hundred miles east of Reno. We had taken elevation to cross the Stillwater Mountains and were skimming low over them, my plane trailing the T. A. C. plane by about ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... I had read of the Congo I expected a broad sweep of muddy, malaria-breeding water, lined by low-lying swamp lands, gloomy, monotonous, depressing. ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... and sorrow, light shot with dark, will be unrolled before us— but of anything more we are really ignorant. We know that certainly the great majority of us will be alive at the close of this New Year; but who will be the exceptions? A great many of us, especially those of us who are in the monotonous stretch of middle life, will go on substantially as we have been going on for years past, with our ordinary duties, joys, sorrows, cares; but to some of us, in all probability, this year holds some great change which may darken all our days or brighten them. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... I could settle to reading again,—my life is monotonous, and yet desultory. I take up books, and fling them down again. I began a comedy, and burnt it because the scene ran into reality;—a novel, for the same reason. In rhyme, I can keep more away from facts; but the thought always runs through, through ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... contrast with the surrounding districts. This wooded Numidia, with its flowing brooks, its fields where the cattle graze, differs in the highest degree from the Numidia towards Setif—a wide, desolate plain, where the stubble of the wheat-fields, the sandy steppes, roll away in monotonous undulations to the cloudy barrier of Mount Atlas which closes the horizon. And this rough and melancholy plain in its turn offers a striking contrast with the coast region of Boujeiah and Hippo, which is not unlike the Italian Campania in its mellowness and gaiety. Such clear-cut ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... The monotonous character of the Carboniferous flora might be explained by imagining that we have only the vegetation handed down to us of one set of stations, consisting of wide swampy flats. But Dr. Dawson supposes that the geographical conditions ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... which they sat, small groups dotted here and there on the floor of Nature's cathedral. Through the shadowy Gothic vaulting, the groining of many boughs which met overhead, a rare star twinkled, as through some clerestory window; and from the dell below rose in the night, now the monotonous chanting of the frogs, and now, as some great bull-frog took the note, a diapason worthy of a Brescian organ. The darkness walled all in; the night was still; a falling caterpillar sounded. Even the rude men at the farthest fire stilled their voices at times; awed, they knew not why, ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... attended to. What with making the beds and sweeping the rooms, and washing out some clothing for the boys, both Esther and Olive found plenty to occupy their time until the hour for preparing dinner arrived. When Olive commenced that rather monotonous operation, assisted by Esther, who, as she sat on the door-step between the dining room and kitchen paring potatoes, and placing them in a can of cold water beside her, attracted her sister's attention ...
— The Haunted House - A True Ghost Story • Walter Hubbell
... one end as it seemed from the roof, and at the other by the usual north window. At the end of the yard rose a huge many-storied building which seemed to be a factory of some sort. David's Lancashire eye distinguished machinery through the monotonous windows, and the figures of the operatives; it took note also of the fact that the rooms were lit up and work still going on at seven o'clock. All around were the ugly backs of tall houses, every window flung open to this May heat. The scene ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Frank walked up and down the corridors. He had three for which he was responsible. It was rather monotonous work, even though now and then nurses and attendants passed through. He was beginning to feel sleepy, and decided that a drink of ice water would rouse him. He walked to the end of the long hall to where the cooler stood. As he was passing room twenty-seven he heard a great racket ...
— Frank Roscoe's Secret • Allen Chapman
... 'Ali!' ever passed his lips. If he wanted food or drink or anything else, he expressed his wants still by repeating 'Ali!' Begging or buying at the bazaar, it was always 'Ali!' Treated ill or generously, he would still harp on his monotonous 'Ali!' Latterly his zeal assumed such tremendous proportions that, like a madman, he would race, the whole day, up and down the streets of the town, throwing his stick high up into the air, and shriek our, all the while, at the top of his voice, 'Ali!' This ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... all beyond the first fighting age. For many months there has not been much active work along this front, no great adventure to rouse the blood and wing the imagination: it has just been month after month of monotonous watching and holding on. And the soldiers' faces showed it: there was no light of heady enterprise in their eyes, but the look of men who knew their job, had thought it over, and were there to hold their bit of France till the day of ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... woman leads a contracted, monotonous existence under the authority of the priest. The wives of many rich bankers have tried to do something to improve the condition of Hebrew women by founding aid societies, primary schools, and normal schools. The Bulgarian women of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... auditor's department to the deck of a fighting ship seemed to him like one of those happy dreams when one pinches himself to try and confirm the impossible. Metaphorically speaking, he was always pinching himself and contrasting the monotonous past with the glorious and animated present. The change told in his manner, in the tilt of his head, in his fearless eyes and straighter back. It comes natural to heroes to protrude their chests and walk upon air; and it is pardonable, indeed, in war time, when each feels himself ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... illustrated by Robinson and the Pilgrim church. The successive companies of emigrants as they arrived, ship-load after ship-load, each with its minister or college of ministers, followed with almost monotonous exactness the method adopted in the organization of the church in Salem. A small company of the best Christians entered into mutual covenant as a church of Christ, and this number, growing by well-considered accessions, ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... without cessation; and the monotonous beating of the rain over head began to exert a drowsy influence upon the men, who, throwing themselves here and there upon the large war-canoes, after ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... midst of its dangers; sharing the privations of the camp and the fatigues of the march; riding with scouts, and visiting the skirmishers on the extreme front; journeying to the rear through regions infested by the enemy's cavalry, or running the gauntlet of Rebel batteries, his life was far from monotonous. Frequently the correspondents acted as volunteer aids to generals during engagements, and rendered important service. They often took the muskets of fallen soldiers and used them to advantage. On the water, ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... girl. His wife was dead, and the child was being brought up by his sisters. He regretted the streets, the pavements, the cafes, his friends of many years; all the things he used to see, day after day; all the thoughts suggested by familiar things—the thoughts effortless, monotonous, and soothing of a Government clerk; he regretted all the gossip, the small enmities, the mild venom, and the little jokes of Government offices. "If I had had a decent brother-in-law," Carlier would remark, "a fellow with a heart, I would ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... joined us at Dominica was an old friend, an ample, full-bodied, admirable gentleman who travelled from England with us, and found the ocean extremely monotonous and trying upon the voyage out. The same trouble still dogged his footsteps. He came aboard quite wild and haggard, and declared the universal and appalling lack of variety was telling upon ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... or standing stared at me from every niche and cornice. It almost seemed, as the light veered slowly round, as though they smiled and frowned at times, but never a word was there amongst those millions; the silence itself was audible, and save the dull low thunder of the fall, so monotonous the ear became accustomed to and soon disregarded it, there was not a sound anywhere, not a rustle, not a whisper broke the eternal calm of that great caravansary ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... excitement of the Lower School mutiny had subsided, Gipsy began to find the life more than a trifle dull. She had an adventurous temperament, and her roving life had given her a taste for constant change and variety, so the prim regime of the English boarding school seemed to her monotonous in the extreme. She chafed against the confinement and the regularity ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... of an opportunity to stretch their legs, and then they tried their luck at fishing, also. After a time this became monotonous for the active young ones, and they started up the Creek to adventure. The Third Lake Creek came down over moss-covered rocks, which were held in place by gnarled roots of giant trees. These ancient foresters stood looking ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... at churning. It was a weary task, I well remember, to stand, perhaps for an hour, and drive the dasher up and down through the thick cream. How often did we examine the handle for evidence that the butter was forming, and what was the relief when the monotonous task was at an end. As soon as my legs were long enough, I had to follow a team; indeed, I drove the horses, mounted on the back of one of them, when my nether limbs were scarcely sufficiently grown ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... side, his life during this period seems to have been happy, though uneventful; but in the failure of children he was deprived, both then and afterwards, of that sweetest of interests, continuous yet ever new in its gradual unfolding, which brings to the most monotonous existence its daily tribute of novelty and incident. The fond, almost rapturous, expressions with which he greeted the daughter afterwards born to him out of wedlock, shows the blank in his home,—none the less ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... amidst which we find ourselves transported. When a traveller attempts to describe the loftiest summits of the globe, the cataracts of the great rivers, the tortuous valleys of the Andes, he incurs the danger of fatiguing his readers by the monotonous expression of his admiration. It appears to me more conformable to the plan I have proposed to myself in this narrative, to indicate the peculiar character that distinguishes each zone: we exhibit with more ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... writing, and could not get it. Of all boons this is the most difficult to find in France. It can be had in Paris, where it is easy to live shut off from the world, hearing nothing save the monotonous rumble of life in the streets; but let no one talk to me about the blessed quietude of the country in France, unless it be that of the bare moor or mountain or desolate seashore. In villages there is no escape from the clatter of tongues until everybody, excepting ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... upon days and without end over the soft, unpacked snow. It was hard, monotonous work, with none of the joy and blood-stir that went with flying over hard surface. Now one man to the fore in the snowshoes, and now the other, it was a case of stubborn, unmitigated plod. A yard of powdery snow had ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... labor is simple and natural. It has everywhere been placed under the sanction of religion, but it arose from secular necessity. In the nomadic state, when men had little to do at ordinary times except watching their flocks and herds, the days passed in monotonous succession. Life was never laborious, and as human energies were not taxed there was no need for a period of recuperation, We may therefore rest assured that no Sabbatarian law was ever given by Moses to ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... will be tantamount to saying that never do the broad tendency and the general scope of a work become immediately apparent. Similarly does the entry to every town—the entry even to the Capital itself—convey to the traveller such an impression of vagueness that at first everything looks grey and monotonous, and the lines of smoky factories and workshops seem never to be coming to an end; but in time there will begin also to stand out the outlines of six-storied mansions, and of shops and balconies, and wide perspectives of streets, and ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... trying the experiment of clean covers. They should be of the firmest thin but tough Manila paper, and it is claimed that twenty renewals of clean paper covers actually cost less than one re-binding. On the other hand, it is not to be denied that books thus covered look shabby, monotonous, and uninteresting. In the library used for reference and reading only, without circulation, covers are quite ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... a poor sailer; we thought it a good run if she made eight knots an hour, so no wonder we did not reach Singapore till May 23, 1848. It was a long monotonous voyage, but we were well occupied, and I do not remember ever finding it dull. The sea was all I ever fancied by way of a companion, and, like all one's best friends, made me happy or unhappy, but was never stupid. Then we had to learn Malay and ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... full flowing music of a strong deep river. Such a style, introduced at proper intervals and in appropriate positions, is frequently very effective; but, when long continued, it grows wearisome and monotonous. As our late writers are much given to it, they should be on their guard lest it become ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... blows; I go back to my monotonous task. The old aches begin again, first gently, then more and more sharply. The work itself is growing more mechanical. I can watch the girls around me. What is it that determines superiority in this class? Why was the girl filling pickle jars put on piece-work after three weeks, when others ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... happier?" returned Archie so quietly to this that she scarcely started. "The sunshine and shade are more evenly balanced than we know. To be sure, there are some lives like that day that is neither clear nor dark,—gray, monotonous lives, with few breaks and pleasures in them. But perhaps even that question may be happily solved when one looks out a little ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... of fine farms. Besides being an industrious and skillful farmer, the father of Kit Carson was a celebrated hunter. When the Indians of Kentucky became quieted down, putting an end to the calls upon his courage and skill as a woodsman, he settled into a simple, respectable farmer. This monotonous life did not suit his disposition; and, as the tide of emigration into the wilds of Missouri was then commencing, where both game and the red man still roamed, he resolved to migrate in that direction. It was only one year after the birth of his son Christopher, that ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... however, to relate their experience during the few months they remained on the Ranchee; for they found, after the first novelty had worn off, the life was dull and exceedingly tiresome. So monotonous did it become in fact, that it was with difficulty I persuaded them to remain, even until the fall, when I intended to make a ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... walked back alone, if she had chosen. But instead she sat down on a boulder near the hedge, folding her hands in her lap like a demure child. The house was so dull, so hopelessly monotonous contrasted with this fresh, wind-tossed outdoors and Lestrange in his vigor of life ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram
... had been accustomed to doing precisely the same thing, not with such monotonous regularity as would have seemed to him excessive, but with periodical moderation. Between times he was a shiftless, indulgent, and somewhat henpecked little man of watery eyes, a mouth with several missing teeth, and a limp in one "sprung leg." ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... who swore constantly in a monotonous undertone. Always I am reading where a man of my race under strain or provocation coins new and apt and picturesque oaths; but myself, I have never seen such a man. I should have seen him, too, if he really existed anywhere except in books, seeing ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... was a tender-hearted and anxious mother, daughter, and sister, and an impeccable wife, if a somewhat monotonous one. At all events her husband never found fault with her in public or private. He had his reasons. To the friends of her youth and to all members of her own old set, she was intensely loyal; and although ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... strong and athletic, and delude yourself into the notion that you are training for the sports. Ten minutes at the broad jump, five with the weight, a few sprints on the track—it is all very amusing and harmless, but it is apt to become monotonous after a time. And if the weather is at all inclined to be chilly, ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... be, had clean faces, but horridly dirty feet, and were very plain. The dancing was poor, consisting chiefly of ungraceful motions of the hands and forearms; the singing pleasing, harmonious but monotonous. ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... were mercers in Verdiers, and rather rich, had much ambition on my account. They sent me to a boarding-school while I was very young. You cannot conceive what a boy may suffer at college, by the mere fact of separation, of isolation. This monotonous life without affection is good for some, and detestable for others. Young people have often hearts more sensitive than one supposes, and by shutting them up thus too soon, far from those they love, we may develop to an excessive extent a sensibility which is of an overstrung ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... sat in a chair by the fire and waited for the hours to pass. The new nurse had arrived and moved quietly about the room. There was no sound at all save the monotonous whispering beseeching little cries that came from the bed. One had heard that concentration of will might do so much in the directing of such a battle, and surely great love must help. Peter, as he sat in the half-darkness thought that he had never before ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... the fitful wind; boat on beam-ends; boys on the uppermost gunwale; sail lying flat on the water. But nobody seems to care, not even the young castaways. Perhaps the inhabitants of Tacoma are amphibious. Very beautiful sheet of water, this Puget Sound; long, winding, monotonous shores; trees all alike, straight up and down, mostly pines and cedars; shores rather low, and outline too regular for much picturesque effect. Tacoma commands the best view of the Sound and of Mt. Tacoma, with its fifteen thousand ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... sufficient food. Nevertheless for ten years her life remained straightforward and uniform, like the smooth sanded paths in her husband's garden, and she pursued it with measured steps, listening with resigned weariness to the dry and irritating sound of the ever-moving scissors, or to the monotonous and endless showers that fell from the watering pots on to the leafy shrubs. The rabid horticulturist bestowed on his wife the same scrupulous attention he gave to his flowers. He carefully regulated the temperature of the drawing-room, overcrowded with ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... long time after he had reached his room, and had had his bath and change, Griswold sat at his writing-table with his head in his hands, thinking in monotonous circles. As in those other stressful moments, the importunate devil was at his ear; now mocking him for not having left the drowned enemy as he was; now whispering the dreadful hope that age and the shock and the drowning might still re-erect the barrier of safety. ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... were abroad that night. Faintly audible to the apothecary of the rue Royale through that deserted stillness which is yet the marked peculiarity of New Orleans streets by night, came from a neighboring slave-yard the monotonous chant and machine-like tune-beat of an African dance. There our lately met marchande (albeit she was but a guest, fortified against the street-watch with her master's written "pass") led the ancient Calinda ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... take and give, the jar and clash back there in the meeting hall, had come certain thoughts and passions, hopes and plans, that the multitude had not ignored or hooted but had caught up and cheered into life. And these ideas that they had cheered were now being pounded back into their minds. Monotonous repetition, you say? Yes, monotonous repetition—slow sledgehammer blows upon something red hot—pounding, pounding, pounding—that when it cooled its ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... dinner. A short snatch of sleep upon the sand, and the voice of the guide again disturbed us. The camels had not been unloaded, but had lain down to rest with their packs, and had thus eaten their feed of dhurra (Sorghum vulgare) from a mat. In a few minutes we started, once more the silent and monotonous desert march. ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... Tennessee, a big, scared Pole, and the disdainful Celt whom he had sat beside on the train—the two former spent the evenings in writing eternal letters home, while the Irishman sat in the tent door whistling over and over to himself half a dozen shrill and monotonous bird-calls. It was rather to avoid an hour of their company than with any hope of diversion that, when the quarantine was lifted at the end of the week, he went into town. He caught one of the swarm of ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Sing Sing. Its mission is to crush, obliterate, destroy, and no considerations of civilization or chivalry or humanity will affect it. I think that the Germans, with their grim, set faces, their monotonous uniforms, and the ceaseless shuffle, shuffle, shuffle of their boots must have gotten on my nerves, for it was with a distinct feeling of relief that I turned the bonnet of my car once more towards Antwerp and my friends ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... him he would never have sent me into a country so dangerous as this, to which I came through pure obedience and against my own inclination. Here duplicity passes for wit, and frankness is looked upon as folly. I am neither cunning nor mysterious. I am often told I lead too monotonous a life, and am asked why I do not take a part in certain affairs. This is frankly the reason: I am old; I stand more in need of repose than of agitation, and I will begin nothing that I cannot, easily finish. I have never learned to govern; ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... hour; To crown my rose-wreath with a greener flower' To do my master's bidding, that's to give Life to yourself, who only think you live. But listen! Have you seen the nine waves roll Monotonous upon the shoal, Rising and falling like a maiden asleep; Then with a lift and a leap The ninth wave curls, and breaks upon the beach, And rushes up it, swallowing the sand? I am that ...
— Household Gods • Aleister Crowley
... a fresh rope of evergreen. The climbing and reaching and lifting had heated their faces, and the cool salt air flowed in, refreshing them. Their hands were pricked by the spiny foliage, but they labored without complaint, in unbroken meditation. A monotonous low singing of the Etchemin's kept company with the breathing of the sea. This decking of the chapel acted like music on the Abenaqui girl. She wanted to be ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... from camp on slope of the Himalayas, without much to vary monotonous daily routine, the survey party arrives at Calcutta. All are paid, ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... crew, were planned and effected with such admirable good sense, that listlessness and fatigue were strangers, even among sailors, a class of men who, above all others, it would have been apprehended, would have soon wearied of such a monotonous life. The commencement of winter was justly dated from the 14th of September, when the thermometer suddenly fell to 9 deg.. On the 4th of November the sun descended below the horizon, and did not appear again till the 8th of February. A little before and after what ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... if you don't accept this offer, your life isn't worth—that!" With the word, Seguis snapped under his heel a twig from the little fire. "Either you stay with us, and know everything—or you go from us, to die with the secret!" The voice was monotonous in its emotionless calm, but ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... hours on Mrs. Hannay's sofa, his body leaning back, his head bowed forward, his chin sunk on his breast, listening attentively, yet with a dazed and rather stupid expression, to Mrs. Hannay's conversation. His own was sometimes monotonous and a little dull. He was growing even physically heavy. But Mrs. Hannay did not ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... in her father's heart; but another held that place now, and would hold it forever. What should she do in the long days, and months, and years, that were to come? How should she drag through a useless and monotonous existence in this dull place? Even now, earnestly as she sought to do good in her mission of mercy, there were hours and hours of wretched, unspeakable dreariness and desolation. When her work was ended, when the fever was over, what would become of her then? That dim vision of the cloister and veil ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... unwonted degree of power, and several of the subsequent emperors fell victims to their plots. The T'ang dynasty, which for over a hundred years had governed firmly and for the good of the nation, began to decline. The history of the 8th and 9th centuries is for the most part a monotonous record of feeble governments, oppressions and rebellions. Almost the only event worth chronicling is the iconoclastic policy of the emperor Wu-tsung (841-847). Viewing the increase of monasteries and ecclesiastical ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... time passed, yet it could hardly be called monotonous. Whenever wearied of their darksome waiting, the young men would steal again into the hollow image of Huitzil', there to utilise the cunningly arranged peepholes, now looking out upon the priests, or listening to catch such words as fell from the lips ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... they had been during the last month, to the monotonous sameness of a low flat country, the banks of the river covered with mangroves overhanging the water, and in many parts, in consequence of its extraordinary height, apparently growing out of it; the lofty summit of Fernando Po, and the still loftier ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... the twenty-first of March, the soldier, Colard, was standing at the corner of the Rue de l'Ambrague, playing a monotonous air on his flute, one that he had learned from the shepherds of the Pyrenees. The shopkeeper, Galtier, came up the road, stood still, made a pretense of listening, but finally interrupted the musician, addressing ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... intended for his nose almost always lodged upon it. So the judge was talking with the assistant. A barefooted girl stood holding a tray with cups at once side of them. At the end of the table, the secretary was reading the decision in some case, but in such a mournful and monotonous voice that the condemned man himself would have fallen asleep while listening to it. The judge, no doubt, would have been the first to do so had he not entered into an engrossing conversation while ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... left about 6 p.m., and by then she was too numbed—for the working of a typewriter is monotonous work—to do anything save walk with the hurrying crowds as far as Charing Cross and take a bus from there to Montague Square. But since work filled her days she had less time for discontent or depression. Sometimes she would be tempted to wander off the direct route ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... of climate should always go with stability of abode. The weather in the desert is monotonous; and as a natural consequence the Arabs wander about, hoping it may be different somewhere. But an Englishman's house is not only his castle; it is his fairy castle. Clouds and colours of every varied dawn and eve are perpetually touching and turning it from ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... been accustomed to this monotonous life by his first queen, and he did not care for any other. The new Queen, upon arriving, soon found this out, and found also that if she wished to rule him, she must keep him in the same room, confined as he had been kept by her predecessor. Alberoni was the only person ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... masses of naked rock. I am no geologist, but it strikes me that the whole surface of the earth, in this part of the world, differs in character from that of the eastern continent; on one hand, the mountains are less abrupt and decided in their forms with us; and on the other, the plains are less monotonous here. If our mountains are not grand, the general surface of the country seems more varied, more uneven; there is not so large a proportion of dead level in this country as in France, Germany, Russia, for instance; ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... thinker and discoverer, who knew how to utilize in philosophy discovered facts, and was not busy like many modern scientists in the monotonous repetition of experiments which had already ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various
... Mansions was one of her two best books, but she was surely far wrong in that. The Mansions, sometimes called The Interior Castle, to me at any rate, is a most shapeless, monotonous, and wearisome book. Teresa had a splendid imagination, but her imagination had not the architectonic and dramatic quality that is necessary for carrying out such a conception as that is which she has laid in the ground-plan of this ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... experience, I begin all confidence and trust: by-and-by come the subtle but well-known signs of deceit; so doubt is forced on me; and then I am all suspicion, and so darkly vigilant that soon all is certainty; for 'les fourberies des femmes' are diabolically subtle, but monotonous. They seem to vary only on the surface. One looks too gentle and sweet to give any creature pain; I cherish her like a tender plant; she deceives me for the coarsest fellow she can find. Another comes the ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... flowers round her Nantais cap. After supper the party danced Breton "ronds." The dancers form a large ring (grand rond), holding each other's hands, which they swing violently as they sidle round in a kind of hop-skip-and-a-jump step, accompanied by singing in a most monotonous tone. This went on until midnight. This kind of dance dates, they say, from Celtic times. The music consists of the biniou or bagpipe, and the flageolet or hautboy, sometimes with the addition of a drum. The biniou, cornemuse, or bagpipe, is the national instrument ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... be inferred that I entertained any affection for my friendly keeper. I continued to regard him as an enemy; and my life at his home became a monotonous round of displeasure. I took my three meals a day. I would sit listlessly for hours at a time in the house. Daily I went out—accompanied, of course—for short walks about the town. These were not enjoyable. I believed everybody was familiar with my black ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... grew weary of the show around them because it was so quiet, so regardless of their presence, so moveless, so monotonous. Endless change was going on, but it was too slow for them to see; had it been rapid, its motions were not of a kind to interest them. Ere half an hour they had begun to think with regret of Piccadilly and Regent street—for they had passed the season in ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... he went on in a dull, monotonous voice. "How often HAVE we agreed for friendship! And yet—it neither stops ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... and his ears have heard the strange and startling episodes with which the quiet country-side is filled. I do not dare record all the adventures which clustered around us at Four Oaks. People who know only the monotonous life of cities would not believe the half if told, and I do not wish to invite discredit upon my story of the making of ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter |
