"Inflection" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... marquis who opened the door for the ladies; it was the marquis who said good night with an inflection which gave it a new meaning; it was the marquis who intruded into madame's thoughts, causing her partly to forget the letter and ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... books!" repeated Lady Glistonbury, with the same inflection of voice, and the same bridling and smiling. "Very different," continued her ladyship, "very different from what you have been accustomed to see on some ladies' tables, no doubt, Mr. Vivian! Without mentioning names, or alluding to transactions that ought to be buried in eternal oblivion, and ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... within a circle in which the phantoms of all his sensations in presence of this woman surged and wheeled around him. Suddenly there would emerge from this tangle of memory, with singular precision, some phrase of hers, an inflection of her voice, an attitude, a glance, the seat where they had sat, the finale of the Beethoven sonata, a burst of melody from Mary Dyce, the face of the footman who had held back the portiere—anything that happened to have caught his attention at ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... icy inflection in the tones which sent a chill to Marcantonio's heart as he listened. One of the Chiefs of the Ten was always a member of the still more dreaded Inquisition, whose identity was never known, and ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... they grow thickly and wild," he replied, with some inflection of sadness in his voice; "long, long ago, before my father's father lived, there was a great town here. That was long before we of this land had ever seen a white man. And now we who are left are but as ...
— "Martin Of Nitendi"; and The River Of Dreams - 1901 • Louis Becke
... home," answered Mrs. Dent with rising inflection. "Be you gone crazy over that girl? The last boat from Porter's Falls was in before we went to bed. ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... Lawrence never omitted one of my performances, always occupying the stage box, and invariably sending me the next morning a letter, full of the most detailed and delicate criticism, showing a minute attention to every inflection of my voice, every gesture, every attitude, which, combined with expressions of enthusiastic admiration, with which this discriminating and careful review of my performance invariably terminated, was as ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... played upon her red-gold hair, and surprise had driven the weariness from her face. Against the black oak of the chimneypiece she had almost the appearance of a framed cameo. Her voice was quite steady, although its inflection ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... echoed; and the inflection of the pronoun might have flattered him had he not reflected that it was impossible she could have understood his allusion. And now she bethought her that she had not thanked him—and the debt was ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... to go walking, madam, and to go alone. He ordered us—I say, he ordered us not to come. Surely we are right to obey him?" The sarcastic inflection of his voice conveyed his opinion ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... a guide, I'd not wait a minute, or if I could recognize the man whenst I viewed him. The constable promised to send a fellow to meet me here,—what's his name!—yes, Smith, Barton Smith,—who will guide us to where he was last glimpsed. I hope to take him alive." he added with an inflection of doubt. ...
— Wolf's Head - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... and there was an indecisive moment that mounted toward panic. Beardsley watched her churning effort to control it. She said quickly, an inflection of fear in her voice: "Mr. Beardsley, if it really matters—my whereabouts that night—you'll understand my reluctance to say it before! I was with Jeff. Truly! I'm sure ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... think—" said the elderly gentleman, getting in. The inflection of his voice suggested the Irishman. It was not a brogue. There were no strange words. But the general effect was Irish. Garnet congratulated himself. Irishmen are generally good company. An Irishman with a pretty daughter should be unusually ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... with delicatest meditative inflection, "this is indeed sweet. The mighty is fallen indeed. The proud one is suppliant now. The knee is bent that would not bend. Hearken, you and your puling babe, to the Princess Ysolinde! Were your lives in that glass, to save or to destroy—her life and your suffering—to ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... the true sense of rhythm and the clearest enunciation; she has a deep and musical voice, which in moments of pathos thrills with a sweet and tender inflection. She has seized, in this instance, upon the touching rather than the harmonious side of Galatea, the pure and innocent girl who is not fit to live upon this world. She is only not human because she is ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... musical inflection jarred on Gifford, who began to wonder whether their companion could be a professional singer. One of their own class he ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... receive you," he said. "It will be among the most memorable incidents of my reign that I welcome to my Court the first visitor from another world, or," he added, after a sudden pause, and with an inflection of unmistakable irony in his tone, "the first who has descended to our world from a height to which no balloon could reach and at ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... of my powers. The detail of my progress would be curious and instructive. What impediments, in the attainment of a darling purpose, human ingenuity and patience are able to surmount; how much may be done by strenuous and solitary efforts; how the mind, unassisted, may draw forth the principles of inflection and arrangement; may profit by remote, analogous, and latent similitudes, would be forcibly illustrated by my example; but the theme, however attractive, must, for ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... delight of that exquisite sound of refinement in the pronunciation. Miss Sharp never misplaces an inflection or slurs a word, she never uses slang, and yet there is nothing pedantic in her selection of language—it is just as if her habitual associates were all of the same class as herself, and that she never heard coarse speech.—Who ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... Cleek, with a strong rising inflection. "I think I begin to smell the toasting of the cheese. Of course, when the villa was burnt out, Madame la Comtesse insisted that, as the fiancee of her brother, Mademoiselle de Carjorac must make her home at the Chateau until the necessary ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... with that tender, indescribable inflection which a woman's voice holds only for the one beloved man, floated down to him, and instinctively he looked up. For an instant his glance lingered, and ever afterwards there remained stamped indelibly upon his memory the impression of her as she leaned there like ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... a peculiar rising inflection, but she did not catch the significance of the question, and replied, "Yes. He is tall and thin and black and slab-sided. That's me, too, except I am short yet; but I expect I will grow. Besides, I've got ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... Harry?" I noted a strange inflection in his voice. He stood still and peered into the fog bank. His stop was sudden and suggestive. Just then a passing taxicab almost caught us and we were compelled to dodge quickly. Hobart ducked out of the way and I side-stepped in another direction. We came up on the sidewalk. Again he ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... would bend round the edges of opaque bodies and agitate the ether behind them. He was right in affirming that this bending ought to occur, but wrong in supposing that it does not occur. The bending is real, though in all ordinary cases it is masked by the action of interference. This inflection of the light receives the name ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... Pittsburgh millionaires, or just a plain millionaire from the country at large; and I doubt whether the man who wrote the lines had any conception when he did write them of the fashion in which they were afterward read. Be that as it may, the actor who essayed to play the American used an inflection, or an accent, or a dialect, or a jargon—or whatever you might choose to call it—which was partly of the oldtime drawly Wild Western school of expression and partly of the oldtime nasal Down East school. I had thought—and had hoped—that both ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... Inflection. Change in the form of a word to show a modification or shade of meaning. At a very early period in our language there was a separate form for practically every modification. Although separate forms are now less ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... improving the speaker's language equipment let us pass to some remarks upon his use of words. The English language is the largest, the most varied in the universe. Almost entirely free from difficulties of inflection and conjugation, with a simplified grammar, and a great freedom of construction, it suffers from only two signal drawbacks—its spelling and its pronunciation. While it has preserved to a great degree ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... that voice whose soft inflection had always thrilled him, but never as it did now as, turning the handle, he entered his ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... that Jerry found himself on the verge of tears one moment, and the next something she would say, some odd look or quaint inflection would compel his laughter again. He had a mental picture of "MICHAEL," the pet of Peg's home, submitting to the indignity of companionship with mere horses. Small wonder he was snapping at Ethel's mare, when ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... country and Italy with respect to the status quo in Mediterranean, FERGUSSON had stood up and recited the multiplication table up to twelve times twelve, the remarks would have been just as relevant and informing as those he read from the paper. Moreover, the gravity of his aspect and the solemn inflection of his voice, would have compelled Members to listen to the end of the recitation with a sort of dim consciousness that they were really being informed as to the details of an understanding come to between Her majesty's ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 18, 1891 • Various
... on Darling." As she did not reply, he added, with a gentler inflection, "You know why the ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... so disagreeable an inflection that Arved was astonished. He looked around and spat at ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... taste in writing, as to make Carteret a dactyl[4]. In matters of genealogy it is necessary to give the bare names as they are; but in poetry, and in prose of any elegance in the writing, they require to have inflection given to them. His book of the Dialects[5] is a sad heap of confusion; the only way to write on them is to tabulate them with Notes, added at the bottom of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... in job; his whole speech, indeed, had the engaging inflection of the Scandinavian tongue overlaid upon ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... having uttered the foregoing without pause or inflection of voice from beginning to end, came to an abrupt stop. Whether from want of breath or ideas it is difficult to ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... tobacco. He did not fail to take it, but at the same time I heard him sizzle out "Zhid" from between his tightly closed lips. I looked at him in amazement: how on earth could he guess I was a Jew, when I spoke my Russian with the right accent and inflection, while his was lame, broken, and half mixed with Polish? That was a riddle to me. But I had no time to puzzle it out, and I ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg
... the open Bible, and leant forward for a long, silent moment, looking earnestly from side to side into the upturned faces of his hearers. Then he began to talk—to talk, not to preach, speaking every word with an inflection of the truest sincerity. The text was "Forgetting the things that are behind, I press towards the mark," and the "talk" ran ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... is enunciated distinctly, with a rising inflection at the end, and in such manner that the command of ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... to shake hands with me," she said brightly. "You have been away, I believe?" with a delicious inflection. ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... worry my head about you, you old fox. You're too much of a master hand," Cronin returned, with an inflection that sounded like a grin. "I imagine you can hold up ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... in her eyes more of the shining happiness of a bride than they had ever held before. Her face was flushed with a pretty eagerness, and the petulant lines about her mouth were far less apparent than of old. Her laugh had a gay spontaneous ring, and though her voice still had a slightly arrogant inflection it was not without softer notes when she addressed ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... jelly," resumed Pollyanna; "—calf's-foot. I hope you like it?" There was a rising inflection in her voice. ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... express the feelings which disturbed her; but M. Gustave, misunderstanding her silence, and congratulating himself upon the effect he had produced, grew bolder, and with the tenderest and most impassioned inflection he could impart to his voice, continued: "Who could fail to be impressed as I have been? How could one behold, without rapturous admiration, such beautiful eyes, such glorious black hair, such smiling lips, such a graceful mien, such wonderful charms of person and of mind? ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... tapestry, gay with silver lace, coquettish fans, and high-heeled Spanish slippers. Eighteen years old, married, and dead; and muy querida, much beloved! My thoughts stayed behind, as I moved on, and the words, with their soft inflection, would recur dreamily to me, again and again—muy querida; alas! ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase
... unfortunate waif. Something drew her sympathy toward him, and she pitied him for the mother whom he had never known. In the adjoining room she could hear the voices of her own "childer," with their cultured inflection and language, which was theirs by inheritance and as unconsciously as were "Bony's" harsh tones and rude ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... of inspiration—the Italian dying down with Milton and the French following at the heels of the restored Royalists. For convenience, again, I have set myself certain rules of spelling. In the very earliest poems inflection and spelling are structural, and to modernize is to destroy. But as old inflections fade into modern the old spelling becomes less and less vital, and has been brought (not, I hope, too abruptly) into line with that sanctioned by use and familiar. To do this seemed wiser than to discourage ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... her calm inflection and her supercilious glance I hotly retorted, "Nonsense! You can acquire all the technic you require, right here in Chicago. If you are in earnest, and are really in search of instruction you can certainly get it in Boston or New York. ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... out!" said Buck, with a warning cantankerous inflection, firmly and almost brutally reproving this conversational delinquency of George's. "Rule it out, young man! We don't want any of that sort of mountebanking in England. We know what ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... without the "how" in speech. The same written sentence becomes two diametrically opposite ideas, given opposing inflection and accompanying voice-effect. "He stood in the front rank of the battle" can be made praiseful affirmation, scornful scepticism, or simple question, by a simple varying of voice and inflection. This is the more ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... from a delicate observance of etiquette on the part of the ambassador. After carrying us to his box, which was close to that of the Royal Family, in order that we might see the members of it properly, he retired with Lord Byron to another box, an inflection of manners to propriety in the best possible taste—for the ambassador was doubtless aware that his Lordship's rank would be known to the audience, and I conceive that this little arrangement was adopted to make his person also known, by showing him with distinction apart ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... weight of thoughts that furrowed their brows. Others whispered in one another's ears, imparting excessively mysterious information of the utmost importance, putting a finger to their lips, screwing up their eyes to enjoin secrecy. A provincial flavor distinguished them all, with differences of inflection, Southern excitability, the drawling accent of the Centre, Breton sing-song, all blended in the same idiotic, strutting self-sufficiency; frock-coats after the style of Landerneau, mountain shoes, and home-spun linen; the monumental ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... man like the rest of you," he began in the more formal English and high-pitched inflection I knew so well, though the effect was diminished because some one broke in with assumed wonder, ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... paramount importance to the arguer is sincerity. This he must really possess if he is to be eminently successful. To feign it is almost impossible; some word or expression, some gesture or inflection of the voice, the very attitude of the insincere arguer will betray his real feelings. If he tries to arouse an emotion that he himself does not feel, his affectation will be apparent and his effort a failure. There are few things that an audience resents more than being tricked into an expression ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... I could not rid my tone of an ironical inflection. I was goaded to it by her attitude, by the scornful turn of her lip and the disdainful glance of her grey eyes—she had her father's eyes, saving that her gaze was as steadfast as ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... word preceding the command Halt should always be given with a rising inflection in order to prepare the men ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... attention to one cock, about a hundred yards away, or a little more perhaps, for by contrast all the other songs within hearing seemed strangely inferior. Its voice was singularly clear and pure, the last note greatly prolonged and with a slightly falling inflection, yet not collapsing at the finish as such long notes frequently do, ending with a little internal sound or croak, as if the singer had exhausted his breath; but it was perfect in its way, a finished performance, artistic, and, by comparison, brilliant. After once hearing this bird I ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... his subject precluded the dramatic suggestion to be looked for in the Pickwick trial, thus rendering comparison inapposite. Nevertheless one was bound to contrast them. Thackeray's features were impassive, and his voice knew no inflection. But his elocution in other respects was perfect, admirably distinct and impressive from its complete obliteration of ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... indifferently enough, just in mechanical response to the matter-of-fact inflection of Rosalind's voice. Then she laid down her pen, smiled in a puzzled way up into her daughter's face, and added, "My ears must have played me a funny trick. What did ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... creep as of some live horror over her very soul. Her flesh prickled with cold, before an inflection of his voice. She rose, tottering on ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... according to tense; hun "to sell," sin "to hide," tin "to see," and numerous other radical elements, if low-toned, refer to past time, if high-toned, to the future. Another type of function is illustrated by the Takelma forms hel "song," with falling pitch, but hel "sing!" with a rising inflection; parallel to these forms are sel (falling) "black paint," sel (rising) "paint it!" All in all it is clear that pitch accent, like stress and vocalic or consonantal modifications, is far less infrequently employed as a grammatical ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... and to admire her collection of shells; and since then every noon and night he found her waiting here by her gate to speak to him; and she invariably asked the same question about his wife, always in the same tone, always with the same inflection. The meeting with her had become one of the frightfully unvarying things of his day. As he walked on now, he saw stretching before him an interminable vista of days, weeks, years—one deadly sameness of hard work, long hours, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... watched the affair with amusement, although Mr. Clark's friends adopted an inflection of voice in speaking to him which reminded him strongly of funerals. Mr. Tucker's week was up, but the landlord of the George was responsible for the statement that he had ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... up to the couch, and his first words roused the woman's interest. He spoke for ten minutes or more, now in whispers, now with a rising inflection; now persuasively, now with well-feigned indignation and scorn. The effect which his argument had on his companion was shown by the swift changes that passed over her face; she interrupted him frequently, asking questions and making comments. At ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... at this language, which established between him and the French gentleman equality at least, raised his piercing eye to the stranger's face, and with a sensible irony conveyed by the inflection of his voice alone, for not a muscle of his face moved,—"I thank you, monsieur," said he; "but, in the first place, to whom have I ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... that type of high, sincere manhood which he represents; but it is a dangerous business, this attempting to define the character and disposition of people by the turn of an eyelid, the curve of a lip, or a particular vocal shade and inflection. Not only has Art learned to imitate Nature very closely, but Nature herself plays many a trick upon our credulity in matters of this kind. Upon a woman who owns no higher motive than low and selfish cunning she bestows the musical tones of a seraph, as she ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... Mrs. Budge, you are prepared for two hungry people. We lunched very early and the ride here is always tiresome. In Madame's absence, I am sure you will take care of Miss Gordon and—me." There was the finest inflection on the "miss." "I shall stay a day or two. Robin, my dear, this ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... found it difficult to say this with the proper inflection. It did not sound as business-like as he could have wished. But she was too much absorbed ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... Then with a sudden animation, "I know what to do, I shall tell grandmother about Dora's marriage. It is all plain enough now. Good night, Ruth." And this good night, though dropping sweetly into the minor third, had yet on its final inflection something of the pleasant hopefulness of its major ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... that man?" asked a young lady passenger of the steward, with the imperious inflection which tells of riches able to force obedience from menials who ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... the father and daughter together was evidence enough of the strong affection that bound them. The tone in which he had spoken to his son had been brusque and crisp, but when he addressed her, his voice took on a softer inflection, his eyes betrayed the place she ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... I think of you, I don't see all of you, but instead a particular gesture, or I hear an inflection of voice that is too familiar to be borne. Now I see mother's hands and they ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... the same condition," said Reine, "neither better nor worse, and, with the illness which afflicts him, the best I can hope for is that he may remain in that condition. But," continued she, with a slight inflection of irony; "doubtless it is not for the purpose of inquiring after my father's health that you have come all the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... gate on the back porch, see." (This frequent "see" which interlarded Elmer's verbiage was not used in an interrogatory way, but as a period, and by way of emphasis. His voice did not take the rising inflection as he uttered it.) "What does he do, he opens it. I come home, and the wife says to me: 'Say, you better get busy and fix a new ketch on that gate to the back porch. Little Elmer, first thing I know, he'd got it open to-day ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... risen above such follies," Kitty said, and it is impossible to tell you what a disagreeable inflection there was to her voice. "Mother, I am sorry that the poor child has to associate with such volatile creatures as you and I. She ought to have ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... their legs under a table glorified with toasted Sally Lunns and Melton Mowbrays, served by a waitress who said "Thank you" with a rising inflection, they gazed at the line of mirrors running Britishly all around the room over the long lounge seat, and smiled with the triumphant content which comes to him whose hunger for dreams and hunger for meat-pies ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... be too happy," said the mother, and her daughter, from her inflection, knew that she would be ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... "you would always be better than other people, Miss Ruth—you and Carrie—oh, why are you both so good?" with a despairing inflection in my voice. "How you must both ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... said the broker, with an airy English inflection. "I suppose it's your hard hat, as much as anything. We all wear fur caps in ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... supposed to embody, he had before him only the skeleton of a sentence, from which the flesh and sinews had disappeared; the tone and rhythm of the words were wanting, as were also the indications of gender, number, person, and inflection, which distinguish the different parts of speech and determine the varying relations between them. Besides this, in order to understand for himself and to guess the meaning of the author, the reader was obliged to translate ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... and would have been supposed to have missed its aim, had it not copied the mien, the walk, the dress, the motions of the face of those whom it exhibited. Now parody is an imitation of this kind; it is a change of serious to burlesque, by a slight variation of words, inflection of voice, or an imperceptible art of mimickry. Parody is to poetry, as a masque to a face. As the tragedies of Eschylus, of Sophocles, and of Euripides were much in fashion, and were known by memory ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... declension in three genders, but more than this, it had a double set of trigeneric inflexions, Definite and Indefinite, Strong and Weak, just like that which makes the beginner's despair in German."[404] Verbs were conjugated without auxiliaries; and as there was no particular inflection to indicate the future, the present was used instead, a very indifferent substitute, which did not contribute much to the clearness of the phrase. Degrees of comparison in the adjectives were marked, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... if you read much at a time, as the later Kerry essays do not, but nothing that he has written recalls so completely to my senses the man as he was in daily life; and as I read, there are moments when every line of his face, every inflection of his voice, grows so clear in memory that I cannot realize that he is dead. He was no nearer when we walked and talked than now while I read these unarranged, unspeculating pages, wherein the only life he loved with his whole heart reflects itself as in the still water of a pool. Thought comes ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... loud, stereotyped tone, giving the last word a strong upward inflection, suggestive of a final ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... moment the door had opened to him the "glittering woman" had been receding into remote and ever remoter distances, for the Helen Merival before him was as simple, candid, and cordial as his own sister. Her voice had the home inflection; she displayed neither paint nor powder; her hair was plainly brushed—beautiful hair it was, too—and her dress was lovely and in ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... moment she looked doubtful; but the inflection of breeding in his voice, the wholesome, lean face and humorous eyes, reassured her. A smile hovered about the corners of ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... the truth to strike home to his hearers; but if the bird is watched, he will be seen to be picking and hopping about on the branch which serves him as a pulpit, snapping up a bug or a seed here and there. Yet his discourse goes steadily on, by the half hour, or hour, sometimes with a rising inflection, as after a question, sometimes the falling, as having given an irrefutable answer, himself. Once the idea that the bird is preaching has entered a listener's mind, he can never shake ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... the greatest master of the anecdote this generation has known. He claimed the humorous story as an American invention, and one that has remained at home. His public speeches were little mosaics in the finesse of their art; and the intricacies of inflection, insinuation, jovial innuendo which Mark Twain threw into his gestures, his implicative pauses, his suggestive shrugs and deprecative nods—all these are hopelessly volatilized and disappear entirely from the printed copy of his ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... taken the plunge and said her say, but the last words are spoken with sinking inflection, followed instantly by a sinking heart. He makes no answer whatever. She dares not look up into his face to see the effect of her stab. He stands there silent only an instant; then raises his cap, turns, ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... considerable shrewdness frequently remarked that Stan was an awful ass, but he could paint some. This was the common last analysis, the degree of qualifying favor being measured in each case by the comparative pause between the last two words and the accent and inflection upon the ultimate. ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... I did"—still with the sarcastic inflection which all the children, and Anne especially, hated. It flicked on the raw. "Obey me ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the two had never been alone together even for a quarter of an hour; they had scarcely had a word in confidence, and in consequence he had been forced to derive what comfort he could from a chance look, a smile, some inflection of her voice. Even at night, after camp was pitched, it had been little better, for the thin walls of her canvas shelter afforded little privacy, and, being mindful of appearances, he had never permitted himself to be alone with her very long at a time—only long enough, in fact, to make ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... are these: First, That the noun means is necessarily singular as well as plural, so that one cannot with propriety use the singular form, mean, to signify that by which an end is attained; Second, That the subjective mood, to which he himself had previously given all the tenses without inflection, is not different in form from the indicative, except in the present tense. With regard to the later point, I have shown, in its proper place, that he taught erroneously, both before and after he changed his opinion; and concerning the former, the most that can be proved by quotation, is, that ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the Major better he would have been aware that what he meant to say was that he did not wish to know, but he did not detect the inflection of his voice, and went on—"They say he showed the white feather. If it is the same man, I was at school with him, and unless he has improved since then, I am sure I have no wish to ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... two hours every morning and afternoon little Miss Hitty worried her innocent soul over conjugations and declensions and particles, as perseveringly as any professor could have desired. But the dreadful part of the lessons to Hitty was the recitation after tea; no matter how well she knew every inflection of a verb, every termination of a noun, her father's cold, gray eye, fixed on her for an answer, dispelled all kinds of knowledge, and, for at least a week, every lesson ended in tears. However, there ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... this calmly as his carriage, Miss Carstairs. See what a week of New York has done for him. Where did he disappear to—did you notice? A great day it has been"—in the rising inflection of ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... harping on death I despise so much," he remarked with emphasis of gesture as well as of speech—the inclined head and body, the right hand lightly placed upon the listener's knee, the abrupt change in the inflection of the voice, all so characteristic of him—-"this idle and often cowardly as well as ignorant harping! Why should we not change like everything else? In fiction, in poetry, in so much of both, French as well as English, and, I am told, in American art and ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... sorry—really," said he. But he said it with the London inflection, which plainly implies: "I'm nothing of ...
— The Agony Column • Earl Derr Biggers
... go to meeting with me this afternoon, Mabel? Come; this is your last day here; do go once before you leave the White Mountains." "What do you do in 'meeting'?" asked the gay, beautiful, "High Church" New York belle, with just a shade of contemptuous inflection in her voice. ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... prominent blue eyes behind invisible pince-nez. Her face was long, like a sheep's, but she gave no impression of foolishness, rather of extreme alertness; she had the quick movements of a bird. The most remarkable thing about her was her voice, high, metallic, and without inflection; it fell on the ear with a hard monotony, irritating to the nerves like the pitiless clamour of ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... human word. Coming to us in the sweet accents of love, it may lure us from paths of rectitude to shameful ignominy and wreck our life with sorrow and remorse, or it may spur us on in noblest efforts to acquire glory and honor, here or hereafter. According to the inflection of the voice a word may strike terror into the bravest heart or lull a timid child to peaceful slumber. The word of an agitator may rouse the passions of a mob and impel it to awful bloodshed, as in the French Revolution, where dictatorial mandates of mob-rule killed and exiled at pleasure, ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... as I adore the works of the great masters. I would as soon have thought of plucking a virgin from the canvas—a Venus from her pedestal, as of appropriating one of them. Enrica Guinigi"—there was a tender inflection in Count Marescotti's voice whenever he named her, an involuntary bending of the head that was infinitely touching—"Enrica Guinigi is an exception. I could have loved her—ah! she is worthy of all love! Her soul is as rare as her person. ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... lacking is sentence accent and variety in the inflection of phrases. Miss Keller pronounces each word as a foreigner does when he is still labouring with the elements of a sentence, or as children sometimes read in school when they have to ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... the uses of perversity," he said, with inimitable inflection. For a moment his wife eyed ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... account for the change that's come over them. For four years now they've been at us to let their wings grow again. And for four years we've been saying no in every possible tone of voice and with every possible inflection. I've had no idea that Peachy would ever get over it. My God, you fellows have no idea what I've been through with her in regard to this question of flying. Why, one night three months ago, she had an awful attack ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... from it as an insult offered to his intellect and his breeding alike? Indeed, the hope of effecting good showed very thin. The danger of provoking evil bulked very big. What was his duty? He suffered an agony of indecision. And again with a slight inflection of mockery in his tone, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Christmas Carol in a prelude and three scenes. Scene first, Marley's Ghost. Marley was dead, to begin with." These words, or words very similar, were spoken in a husky voice, not remarkable in any way, and with the English cadence in articulation, a rising inflection at the end of every few words. They were spoken with perfect simplicity, and the introductory description was read with good sense, and conveyed a fine relish upon the reader's part of the things described. There was nothing formal, no effort ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis |
