"Shrillness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with such resounding shrillness that the woman awoke with a jerk of her head; and as she put up her left hand to feel her armpit, her crumpled features gathered themselves into wrinkles. Then she glanced at the lamp, raised herself to a sitting position, and, fingering the ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... bigger boy who had tripped him up. Without a word I carried him home, followed by the jeers and laughter of the racers, the girls making their presence known in the early December twilight by the shrillness of their voices and by manners no gentler than those of ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... to the pavilion of Zingalee gipsies, where a band of these wild sons of Hagar were creating a perfect furor by the shrillness and discord of their voices. Never was such terrific music inflicted upon mortal ears. It went through and through you, quivering and vibrating like a rapier; but the common classes of Russians ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... which, being low and without an upper story like the rest of the houses, attracted attention on account of this attic window in the gabled roof. I stood still. A soft distinct note increased to loudness, diminished, died out, only to rise again immediately to penetrating shrillness. It was always the same tone repeated as if the player dwelt upon it with pleasure. At last an interval followed; it was the chord of the fourth. While the player had before reveled in the sound of the single note, now his voluptuous enjoyment of this harmonic relation was very much more susceptible. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... perched among the branches of a lofty tree, crowed aloud, so that the shrillness of his voice echoed through the wood and invited a Fox to the place, who was prowling in that neighbourhood in quest of his prey. But Reynard, finding the Cock was inaccessible by reason of the height of his situation, had recourse to stratagem in order to decoy ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... you," cried the attorney, with sudden shrillness. "Have a care what you're about. You are here to sell for the underwriters, let me tell you—not to act for Mr. Douglas Longhurst. This sale has been already disgracefully interrupted to allow that person to hold a consultation with his minions. It ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... notice of it. Up, and on, through the elastic carpet of heather and bilberry, and across bogs which showed like veins of vivid green on the dark surface of the moor; under circling peewits, who fled before them, crying with plaintive shrillness to each other, as though in protest; and past grouse-nests, whence the startled mothers soared precipitately with angry duckings, each leaving behind her a loose gathering of eggs lying wide and open on the heather, those ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... muscle, and, as for Manilov, he was too much under the spell of Chichikov's eloquence to do aught beyond nod his approval at intervals, and strike the kind of attitude which is assumed by lovers of music when a lady singer has, in rivalry of an accompanying violin, produced a note whereof the shrillness would exceed even the ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... of this activity, we heard the voices of men, walking round the building. They again whistled, with a piercing shrillness; and, though we heard nothing distinctly, yet we caught tones that were coarse, rude, and savage; and words, that denoted anger and anxiety, for the perpetration of some dark purpose no doubt corresponding to the fierce ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... the audience was decidedly antagonistic to grave deliberation, and the anxious curiosity of the woman superseding the self imposed role of the diplomatist, our envoy lost the pompous tone she had first adopted, and a volley of queries and replies was exchanged so rapidly, and with such appalling shrillness, that we onlookers ran a great risk of being either deafened, or driven out of our senses. At the first slackening of the wordy warfare, Dunmore put his questions, and ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... geometrical form, has a disturbing influence, and reveals in the colour an insistent, aggressive character. [Footnote: It is worth noting that the sour-tasting lemon and shrill-singing canary are both yellow.] The intensification of the yellow increases the painful shrillness of its note. ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... face flushed a deeper pink, his lip trembled, and there was a huskiness in the voice that murmured "My dear boy!" Then he recollected himself, threw back his great head and frowned. His voice resumed its habitual shrillness. "You realize, I hope, that you have behaved damnably... damnably, ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... me!" There was a sudden shrillness in the voice of honey, and the six words were run so rapidly together they seemed to form but one. After a moment Cora added, with a deprecatory ripple of laughter not quite free from ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... budding desire for subtler harmony. The noises of the street, with all the whistles of the factories and the horns of the motor cars, are bad enough, and the antinoise crusade is quite in order. Yet the destructive influence of those chaotic sounds is far weaker than the shrillness and restlessness of these modern specimens of so-called literature. The mind is tossed up and down and is torn hither and thither, following now a column of text while the advertisements are pushing in from both sides, and then reading ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... God! God! that it should come to this! Ah! the cruelty! But still I will fight to the last—I will never go.' Her voice had risen to shrillness, her face was contorted by anger; she looked incarnate rage, a Megaera. Suddenly her features resumed their usual expression—nay, more, it was the ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... inexpressibly mournful. It seems just like one's own feelings—exultation and action, with the remembrance of past sorrow wailing up, yet without bitterness, tender in its shrillness, through the mingled tide of present joy; and the notes seem thoughts—thoughts pure of words; and a spirit seems to call to me in them and cry, "Hast thou not felt all this?" And I start when I find myself answering unconsciously, "Yes, yes, I know ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... noontide, and little he cared for the heat that wilted the fat mullein leaves and made the barefoot boy, who passed by, skip gingerly through the burning dust with anguished mouth and watery eye. Little he knew of the locust that suddenly whirred his mills of shrillness in the maple-tree, and sounded so hot, hot, hot; or those others that railed at the country quiet from the dim shade around the brick house; or even the rain-crow that sat on the fence and swore to them in the face of a sunny ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... in the doorway, and Warwick, turning, faced the old judge. Time had left greater marks upon the lawyer than upon his office. His hair was whiter, his stoop more pronounced; when he spoke to Warwick, his voice had some of the shrillness of old age; and in his hand, upon which the veins stood out prominently, a decided ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... co-hero's role to his guide. Then another story illustrating the strange ways of lions. The elephant gun figured in still another tale, this time of a vicious rhinoceros. His audience was quiet now, breathless with interest, and he welcomed the respite from shrillness he had won ...
— The Hunters • William Morrison
... baskets here and there, as if some work had been left unfinished. I looked all around, but saw no Zeenab. I coughed once or twice; no answer. The only sound which reached my ears was the voice of the doctor's wife, exerting itself upon some one within the house; although its shrillness pierced even the walls, yet I could not make out what was the cause of its being so excited, until of a sudden it burst into the ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... grievously that the world was different—that it had indeed deteriorated since her young days. She was fatigued by the modes of thought of these youngsters, as a nurse or mother is fatigued by too long a spell of the shrillness and the naivete of a family of infants. She wanted repose.... Was it conceivable that when, with incontestable large-mindedness, she had given a case of pipes to Julian, he should first put a slight on her gift and then, ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... by a low cry similar to that of a panther. We both ceased speaking and listened attentively, when the cry was repeated still nearer, as if the arrival was rapidly advancing upon us; and thus the cry was repeated, again and again, till its shrillness seemed not more than a hundred yards distant, when the voice changed to that of a yell, whose tones were so familiar to the ear of my companion as to exert quite a visible effect upon his actions. We both sprang to ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... that only the book of the ages would be big enough to hold them—were they written out! Life beats, like some great wave, up the dim alleyways—it breaks, in a shattered tide, against rock-like doorways. The music of a street band, strangely sweet despite its shrillness, rises triumphantly above the tumult of pavement vendors, the crying of babies, the shouting of small boys, and the ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... were the next thing in his range of vision—one face in particular, sallow and still with eyes glancing sideways, seeing all things;—divining much! soft steps, and bandages, and out of silence the excited shrillness of Don Diego Maria Francisco Brancadori the tutor:—the shepherd who had lost track of his ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... preparation, suspension, resolution. staff, stave, line, space, brace; bar, rest; appoggiato^, appoggiatura^; acciaccatura^. note, musical note, notes of a scale; sharp, flat, natural; high note &c (shrillness) 410; low note &c 408; interval; semitone; second, third, fourth &c; diatessaron^. breve, semibreve [Mus.], minim, crotchet, quaver; semiquaver, demisemiquaver, hemidemisemiquaver; sustained note, drone, burden. tonic; key note, leading note, fundamental note; supertonic^, mediant^, dominant; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... said slowly. His voice had not the mellow tones of the other's, being inclined to shrillness, but it gave the impression of great power waiting on release somewhere in his massive chest. "But I reckon it's only half the truth, for truth's like a dollar-piece, it's got two sides, and both are wanted to make it good currency. The law and the constitution are like a child's pants. They've ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... true singing bird," he said, "and you do as much with your little voice as can possibly be done with it. But one requires a little more shrillness, that every hearer may hear that one ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... ligaments is in either case absolutely the same, and it takes the form of one vowel or another, solely according to the shape which the "resonator" assumes, and which may be described as a mould into which the tone is cast. The quality of the voice also—its throatiness, its nasal twang, its shrillness, harshness, and ugliness, or its purity, roundness, fulness, and beauty—depend mainly upon the nature of the resonator, and upon the way in which we work it. It is, therefore, a matter of the highest importance to be fully acquainted with this part ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... sweating mob, parti-coloured, parti-speeched, crackling and sputtering under the hot sun like a dish of fritters over a kitchen fire. Tony, agape, shouldered his way through the press, aware at once that, spite of the tumult, the shrillness, the gesticulation, there was no undercurrent of clownishness, no tendency to horse-play, as in such crowds on market-day at home, but a kind of facetious suavity which seemed to include everybody in the circumference of one huge joke. ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... a noise unearthly in its shrillness: it was Hugh calling his Aunt Woggles. He threw himself into my arms, keeping one eye, I could not help noticing, on the parcels. During the hug, which gave him plenty of time to make up his mind, he evidently decided which was for him; for he relaxed ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... crew a moment longer in suspense. The silence was first broken by the sound of the boatswain's whistle, followed by the hoarse cry of "All hands, up anchor, ahoy!"—the former rising on the night air, from its first low mellow notes to a piercing shrillness that gradually died away on the waters; and the latter bellowing through every cranny of the ship, like the hollow ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... and repulsion gave shrillness to Ringfield's voice. To have met and loved, to have coveted and dreamed of that warm, imperious yet womanly presence, and to hear this dreadful truth concerning her—if ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... she cried, her voice so charged with derision that it inclined to shrillness. "La! Richard, Mr. Wilding was never afraid of ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... the coal-cellar. She opened the door to Mr. Critchlow's knock. Mr. Critchlow entered without any formalities, as usual. He did not seem to have changed. He had the same quantity of white hair, he wore the same long white apron, and his voice (which showed however an occasional tendency to shrillness) had the same grating quality. He stood fairly straight. He was carrying a newspaper ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... peace of the room the screaming "Monsieur l'Administrateur" of the frail, hairy Frenchman seemed to acquire a preternatural shrillness. The explorer of the Capitalist syndicate was still enthusiastic. "Ten million dollars' worth of copper practically in sight, Monsieur l'Administrateur. Ten millions in sight! And a railway coming—a railway! They will never believe my report. C'est ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... for fear-dispersing. But ear-piercing is an epithet so eminently adapted to the fife, and so distinct from the shrillness of the trumpet, that it certainly ought not to be changed. Dr. Warburton has been censured for this proposed emendation with more noise than honesty, for he did not himself put it ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... less festive times. I wondered whether they were tingling still with the heart-throbs and with the pressure of those many arms? Was their old age warmed, as mine was, with that gust of life—the young men who had clung to them like bees to lily-bells, and shaken all their locked-up tone and shrillness into the wild winter air? Alas! how many generations of the young have handled them; and they are still there, frozen in their belfry; and the young grow middle-aged, and old, and die at last; and the bells they grappled in their lust of manhood toll them to their graves, on which the tireless ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Majesty at her apartments at Versailles, holding the little rustic by the hand, astonished the whole household; he cried out with intolerable shrillness that he wanted his grandmother, his brother Louis, and his sister Marianne; nothing could calm him. He was taken away by the wife of a servant, who was appointed to attend him as nurse. The other children ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... one was in sight. Then the metallic shrillness of a bicycle bell broke the silence. He wheeled about. Noiselessly threading his way down the village highway came a thick-set, rosy-faced boy of sixteen or seventeen years ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... he told her a childish falsehood. She did not whip him, but stood him in front of her and began to reason with him and explain the wickedness of an untruth. By-and-by she broke off in the midst of a sentence, appalled by the shrillness of her own voice. From argument she had passed to furious scolding. And the little fellow quailed before her, his contrition beaten down under the storm of words that whistled about his ears without meaning, his small faculties disabled before this ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... at the bottom of the third ran a long passage, where a greenish yellow dusk from some unseen lamp prevailed. The walls were of unpainted wood, made of slips as thin as laths, and several doors were roughly cut in it. At the end, one of these doors gaped open, music of a peculiar shrillness floated out. Also a smell as of musk and sandalwood drifted through the crack, with small, fitful trails of ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... Corrie gasped in his effort not to break down; Alice wept with silent joy as she continued to chafe the man's limbs; and Poopy went off into a violent fit of hysterical laughter, in which her "hee, hees!" resounded with terrible shrillness among ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... son, 't was but this instant That I entered here, alarmed By the strange and sudden shrillness Of thy voice; and though I had On my hands important business, Grave and weighty, since to me Hath the Emperor transmitted This decree, which bids me search Through the mountains for the Christians Hidden there, and specially For Carpophorus, their admitted Chief and teacher, for which cause I ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca |
