"Monotonously" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... impressed. The color of the short wheat appeared soft and rich, and the boundless fields stretched away monotonously. She had not known there was so much flat land in the world, and she imagined it might be a fine country for automobile roads. When she got back to her seat she drew the blinds down and read her magazines. Then tiring of that, ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... thick coffee, which he took from a brass tray that was placed upon a stand. As she sipped the coffee and looked at the pointed head and twisted gaze of Safti, the Princess heard some distant Arab at a street corner singing monotonously a tuneless song, and the scent, the darkness, the reiterated song, and the tall, strange creature standing silently before her gave to her, in their combination, the atmosphere of a dream. She found it difficult to speak, to ...
— The Princess And The Jewel Doctor - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... he began to walk monotonously to and fro the length of the corridor, like a man timing his steps to the heavy ache of body or mind. Once he went as far as his own door, entered, and stepping to the wash-basin, let the icy water run over hands and wrists. This sometimes helped ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... on. To the adult mind, they would have seemed to pass monotonously. The quicker child perceptions, though, the magnifying point of view that makes a mountain out of every mole hill, caused them to seem charged with an infinite amount of variety and incident, full of enthusiastic dreams ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... went on—wearily, tamely, and monotonously. It was, perhaps, the presence of the Speaker—it was, perhaps, the painful recollection of the scene of violence on a previous occasion—it was, perhaps, the universal exhaustion of the House; whatever the ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... description of him given in 1866 is no longer quite fair—'No charm of voice, no sonorous phrases, nothing to captivate an audience. His voice while clear and distinct, is dry and unsympathetic. He speaks monotonously, with many pauses, at times he almost stutters, as if an obstinate tongue refused to obey orders, and as if he had to wrestle for the adequate expression of his thoughts. He rocks to and fro, somewhat restlessly, and in no relation ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... words that Richard was reading beat monotonously upon her ear, and her fingers played with the locks of Elly's hair—she resisted for the last time; she resolved that she would be steadfast—that she would do no more than see Emil once again, and ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... curving lines. And this was one gale of three in the course of those eight days in the sampan. Would it have been beaten on a ship? I fear me the ship would have gone aground on the outlying reef and that its people would have been incontinently and monotonously drowned. ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... suddenly, the Unknown Last Line of the Saaamaaa Ritual was whispered quite audibly in the room. Instantly, the thing happened that I have known once before. There came a sense as of dust falling continually and monotonously, and I knew that my life hung uncertain and suspended for a flash, in a brief, reeling vertigo of unseeable things. Then that ended, and I knew that I might live. My soul and body blended again, ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... long moment there was utter silence in the room. Outside, an elevator was buzzing, and a typewriter clicked monotonously ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... parallelism would catch the eye in a moment, but for the lighthouse, which breaks the group and prevents the artifice from being too open. Next come the two heads of boats, with their two bowsprits, and the two masts of the one farthest off, all monotonously double, but for the diagonal mast of the nearer one, which again hides the artifice. Next, put your finger over the white central figure, and follow the minor incidents round the beach; first, under the lighthouse, a stick, with its echo below a little ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... in following the round of monotonously recurring amusements of a Dublin season amazes me, they would certainly think it much more amazing to pass one's time as I do, wandering about the country alone, dipping one's head and hands into every wayside fountain ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... every afternoon, wet or dry. At one certain hour her brougham was brought round: she got into it, and had both doors and windows hermetically sealed, and then, in a semi-somnolent state, she was driven slowly and monotonously round the Park. How would Sheila fare if she were shut up in this box? He told a lie with great equanimity, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... the garden. Far away the sea was lapping gently and monotonously on the bar. The wind of evening in the poplars sounded like some sad, weird, old rune—some broken dream of old memories. A slender shapely young aspen rose up before them against the fine maize and emerald and paling rose of the western sky, which brought out every ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Coast-guardsman (kit and all), who was coming to his spell of duty there, and had we not just now parted company? So it was; but the journey seemed to glide down into the placid sea, with other chafe and trouble, and for the moment nothing was so calmly and monotonously real under the sunlight as the gentle rising and falling of the water with its freight, the regular turning of the windlass aboard the Lighter, and the slight obstruction so ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... seem so foreign to his life, now. He even began to doubt their verity, and opened his eyes slowly, half expecting to see the cool, green campus, and the big college buildings. The slanting sunlight met him full in the face, and the black pendant swung monotonously, from side to side, as before. He wearily closed ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... great tiger-owls yelped and hallooed across the valley; all night the spectral whip-poor-will whispered its husky, frightened warning. And long after midnight a tiny bird awoke and sang monotonously for an hour ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... possession of the secret of the Sleeper. Perhaps he knew it first; perhaps she snatched the keeping of the secret from him. At all events he knew it and recognized King's likeness to the Sleeper, for his eyes betrayed him. He began to stroke his beard monotonously with one hand. The rifle, that he pretended to be holding, really leaned against his back and with the free hand he ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... and spring passed, and she did not come back. They passed monotonously, like all the springs and winters he had known. He had got his rise at Michaelmas; but he was free from the obsession of the matrimonial idea and all that he now looked forward to was an indefinite ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... conundrum, whose solution is known beforehand. Whether the question was the right of petition or the duty on wine, the liberty of the press or free trade, clubs or municipal laws, protection of individual freedom or the regulation of national economy, the slogan returns ever again, the theme is monotonously the same, the verdict is ever ready and unchanged: Socialism! Even bourgeois liberalism is pronounced socialistic; socialistic, alike, is pronounced popular education; and, likewise, socialistic national financial reform. It was socialistic to build ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... not been so when he first pressed it to his face. "She is dead," whispered his heart brutally. "It is a lie, a wicked lie! she is not dead," he muttered. "Raise your head and see, raise your head and see," reiterated his heart monotonously. He had no reply to make to such an answer as this. Slowly he raised his shaking hands to his face, still not daring to look up, and again took her hand in his. A chill seemed to emanate from it which reached his very heart. Slowly his head began to rise. From ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... perhaps I am drifting away farther from it, perhaps nearer; but anyhow it is not cheering to see the realization of one's plans again and again delayed, if not annihilated altogether, in this tedious and monotonously killing way. Nature goes her age-old round impassively; summer changes into winter; spring vanishes away; autumn comes, and finds us still a mere chaotic whirl of daring projects and shattered hopes. As the wheel revolves, now the one and now the other comes to the top—but memory ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... poetry. No theme recurs more insistently and suggestively in Popiana than Pope's wealth. Faced with the nasty fact that if one wrote well enough, there was a public to support one, they could only accuse Pope monotonously ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... onus of rejecting him before a second person, she closed her mind and her ears against him. She refused to listen, although her perceptions admitted the trend of his speech. His words droned heavily and monotonously to her as through dull banks of fog. She made up her mind that if she were asked any questions by either of them she would not reply, and that she would not look at either of them, and then she thought that she would snap and stamp her feet and say that she hated him, that he had ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... looked down at the black, incoming tide lapping below her. No other person was in sight, and the white mist seemed suddenly to close around the couple. The paddles of a receding steamer churned and splashed monotonously. From Kew Bridge floated a faint murmur of rumbling traffic. It was four o'clock, and the ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... first place, they would engage, like the schoolboy, in active sports, thereby giving to their limbs, which, in rural occupation and mechanical labour, are somewhat too monotonously employed, and contract the stiffness and experience the waste of a premature old age, the activity and freedom of an athlete, a cricketer, or a hunter. Nor do these occupations only conduce to the health ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... on her back, drumming her heels on the floor, was shrieking persistently and monotonously, like a mechanical siren. Two women, clutching her under the arms, were dragging her down the aisle. She drummed and shrieked the length of it. The door opened, and a vast, muffled roar of machinery burst in; ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... Monotonously the man behind the Winchester whipped bullet after bullet into the rocky face of the slide in the immediate vicinity of Racey Dawson and the senseless burden in the crook of his left arm. Nevertheless, Racey took the time to work to ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... departure of the fleet, many months passed monotonously. The enemy were ever increasing and strengthening their works, which now mounted a great number of cannon; but beyond an occasional interchange of a few shots, hostilities were carried on languidly. The enemy made ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... good listener. He is sick and wants to be entertained. That makes him an eager listener. And finally being confined and unable to get out he is presumably an empty vessel waiting to be filled. And with this inviting prospect the News Gatherer moves his machine up to the side of the bed and monotonously pumps, pumps, pumps. It is well for that kindly hearted man that the patient is not only stretched out on his bed, but also unarmed. Ah! how many men earn sudden death and yet in the mystery of Providence escape it! I have often wondered at the persistency ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... ships. Nothing rose to space to oppose or to resist their search. They went darting over every portion of the hungry planet, land and seas alike, and there was no sign of military preparedness against their coming. The huge ships of the main fleet waited while the scouts reported monotonously that they saw no sign of the stolen fleet. But the stolen fleet was the only means by which the planet could be defended. There could be no point in a pitched battle in emptiness. But a fleet with a planet to back it might ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... was half-past nine—the middle of the second act. They knew quite well that for a quarter of an hour Elizabeth would be in her dressing room. She could ring up if she wished. The seconds ticked monotonously away. Martha found herself, too, sharing that curiously intense desire to hear the ring of the telephone. Nothing happened. A quarter to ten came and passed. ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... slowly, monotonously, for now she seemed to have lost even the power of suffering pain. It was all so hopeless, so ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... of thought, was capable of but one emotion—hate. Every object in the universe, from its Creator to himself, fell under the ban. The language of hate is curses; and as he moved out over the prairie there dripped from his lips continuously, monotonously, a trickling, blighting stream of malediction. Swaying, stumbling, unconscious of his physical motions, instinct kept him upon the trail; a Providence, sometimes kindest to those least worthy, preserved ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... Trelyon was walking up and down the almost empty thoroughfare by the side of the sea, the stars overhead shining clearly in the dark night, the dimly-seen waves falling monotonously on the shelving beach. "To keep a flower, that is nothing," he was saying to himself. "All girls do that, no matter who gives it to them. I suppose she has lots more, all with the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... around the office. A typewriter was clacking monotonously, the telephone bell was constantly ringing. ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... to the funeral," she continued monotonously, "It was very rainy, and I threw a little bunch of flowers down into the hole. There was a whole lot of flowers there; but I think Edward liked apples ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... the annals of the world, and set its own impress on the traditions of humanity. In no period has the burden of the past weighed so heavily upon the present, or the interpretation of its speculative import troubled the heart so profoundly, so intimately, so monotonously. ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... with the happy faculty for seeing the best side of things. It was all, naturally, much harder on Jacinth. And as Jacinth stood one morning in November looking out into the dreary street, where rain had been pouring down ever since daybreak, and was still dripping monotonously, she did feel that her lines had not of late fallen in pleasant places. Yet she was not so selfish as this sounds. She had made a struggle to see things as her parents did, and in this she had not been entirely unsuccessful, and the constant love and watchful sympathy ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... a long and tiresome journey in a second-class compartment from the farther end of Brittany to Paris, even under the best of circumstances. To Jack Bragdon and Milly, with the vivid memory of their personal wreck on that rocky coast, it was monotonously painful. They dared not ask each other,—"What next?" At first Milly thought there could be no next, though she was really glad not to be making this journey alone with her child, as she had expected to do. To the man who sat in the ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... skaters hold. She wrapped a down quilt from the foot of the bed around her mummy-fashion and went on to her third story. Allan's eyes, as she talked on, grew less intent—drooped. She felt the relaxation of his hands. She went monotonously on, closing her own eyes—just for a minute, as ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... in the city of New York an early Sunday morning breeze was sweeping up the leaves that had fallen from the regularly planted ailantus trees before the brown-stone frontage of a row of monotonously alike five-storied houses on one of the principal avenues. The Pastor of the Third Presbyterian Church, that uplifted its double towers on the corner, stopped before one of these dwellings, ran up the dozen broad steps, and rang the bell. He was presently admittted to the sombre ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... upon the emptiness of earth and sky—keeping their horses to the long-distance canter that kills neither man nor beast. A detachment of forty sabres followed in their wake; and the rhythmical clatter rang monotonously ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... the great plain, we had to wade monotonously through an ocean of wheat. How I longed to have with me some of the blasphemers of the Holy Land, who tell us that it is now a blighted and cursed land, and who quote Scripture amiss to show that this is a ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... monotonously, "left this flat from the time that the three of us, Exel, Cumberly, and I, entered, up to the time that Miss Cumberly came, and, with the doctor, ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... never had a friend," answered Latimer, monotonously; "I should scarcely know what to do ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Four days passed monotonously. Three times a day the Russian girl appeared with ample meals. Despite their attempts to engage her in conversation, not a word would she reply or give any indication that she either heard or understood their remarks. The bearded ...
— The Solar Magnet • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... cannot live so—it's no use," the strong Swede continued monotonously. "The men are bad enough when they are good; but when they are bad, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... again to rest, the announcement was monotonously recited: "Nine, red, odd, first dozen." And the blase prodigal was ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... the fellows fallen out of bed? No. On every hand reigned peaceful slumber. There was Dicky Brown in the next bed, flat on his back, open-mouthed, snoring monotonously, like a muffled police rattle. There was Graham minor on the other side, serenely wheezing up and down the scale, like a kettle simmering on the hob. There opposite, among the big boys, lay Faulkner, with the moonshine on his pale face, his arms above his head, smirking even in his sleep. ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... portico or colonnade outside, and this obstructed even the little light that at the best could have found its way through the small apertures in the door. The footsteps of the sentinel echoed monotonously as he paced its stone pavement to and fro (reminding Barnaby of the watch he had so lately kept himself); and as he passed and repassed the door, he made the cell for an instant so black by the interposition of his body, that his going away again seemed like the appearance ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... monotonously continued from the 31st of May to the 10th of June. On this latter date the Endeavour, after passing safely along an unknown coast, in the midst of shallows and breakers, for a space of 22 degrees or 1300 miles, was ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... come," she chanted. "With this chalk, an' around this man, I make the mark of his image." Stooping, she began to trace his outline on the dull rag-carpet, speaking monotonously as she worked: "Gordon Lee Surrender Jones, I command all the aches an' the pains, all the miseries an' fool notions, includin' the cricket in yer leg, to pass outen yer real body into this heah image on the floor. Keep yer head still, nigger! I pass 'em through ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... no one, however harmless, is allowed to continue happy. Fate—or caprice—cannot endure to see us monotonously at rest. Something perfectly trivial—a look, a word, a touch, and lo! a long chain of old associations is broken asunder, and the peace we deemed so deep and lasting in finally interrupted. This change came to me, as surely as it comes to all. ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... occupations to their old habit of scampering through the woods, had dispelled more of the glitter, and he had resolved to confine his labors to his white brethren. He did not mean to seek his opportunities among the rich, nor among the monotonously dreary poor of the city, but in a fresher field. Like most theological students, he was well read in current literature, and he had learned how often the noblest virtues are found among the roughest classes. It was true, they were sometimes so latent that like the jewel in a toad's ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... Kernan, disclaiming any lot or part in Ohio's motion, declared that others than the New York delegation must overcome the sensitiveness of the chairman. Still, he said, Horatio Seymour ought to abide the action of the convention. These speeches over, the roll-call monotonously continued, each State voting as before until Wisconsin changed from Doolittle to Seymour. In an instant the chairman of each State delegation, jumping to his feet, changed its vote to the New Yorker. The pandemonium ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Bursley, and because he was acquainted with the pathological details of their ancestral history on both sides of the hearth. His patients, indeed, were not individuals, but families. There were cleverer doctors in the place, doctors of more refined appearance and manners, doctors less monotonously and loudly gay; but old Hawley, with his knowledge of pedigrees and his unique instinctive sympathy with the idiosyncrasies of local character, could hold his own against the most assertive young M.D. that ever came out of Edinburgh ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... bank-notes on the chair on the landing, and then (she thought) in the wardrobe. Rachel recalled clearly all that she had seen and all that she had been told. She remembered once more the warnings that had been addressed to her. She lived the evening and the night of the theft over again, many times, monotonously, and ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... the monotonously sordid annals of the Latin Empire, threatened from within by the feuds of the rival baronial houses, from without by the Bulgarians, the Greek despots of Epirus, and the Greek Emperors of Nicaea. Henry of Flanders, the second Latin Emperor (1205-1216), ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... he encourage Dan to talk. Then he sometimes listened, but more frequently he did not. Slater had long since become a dumb draught animal, senseless to discomfort except in the hour of relaxation when he monotonously catalogued his ills. ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... to types familiar to Bradley. There was the legal type, monotonously emphatic, with extended forefinger, which pointed, threatened and delineated. His speaking wore on the ear like a saw-filing. Then there was the political speaker, the stump orator, who was full of well-worn phrases, ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... really free: most of it is, directly or indirectly, in the pay of business enterprises or wealthy philanthropists. To satisfy capitalist interests, men are compelled to work much harder and more monotonously than they ought to work, and their education is scamped. Wherever, as in barbarous or semi-civilized countries, labour is too weak or too disorganized to protect itself, appalling cruelties are practised for private profit. Economic and political organizations become ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... tapped the barometer at the hall-door, as was his habit. To his surprise, the dial gave a great leap downward. Something was wrong with it evidently, for the sky was as monotonously blue as it had been all day, and not a leaf stirred in the trees. However, Mr Armstrong took the precaution to return to his own room for a moment to consult the barometer there. It, too, answered him with ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... winter's evening it is very cosy to sit by a warm hearth, where the fire crackles pleasantly, and the old saucepan, which Mother has set on the fire, sings monotonously ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... very grim, came hurriedly out of the door and entered a closed carriage. It drove off instantly. Then everything went on as usual. The two men stood there, watchful, expectant. The town seemed unusually still. A flag on a two-story building flapped monotonously. Then a man across the street ran out of his store and pointed upward. A rope was thrown from an upper window of the Montgomery Block. Someone picked it up and carried it to The Bulletin Building, pulled it taut. On a strip of linen had been hastily inscribed the ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... and the ignorant negroes who served him,—society varied now and then by one or two men revolting enough in speech and aspect to drive Hitty to her own room, where, in a creaking chair, she rocked monotonously back and forth, watching the snapping fire, and dreaming dreams of a past that seemed now but a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... his head into proper focus and went on reading monotonously: 'Question—Has the man well known to you, in whose rooms you remained for several hours on Monday and on whose information you have been arrested—has he had any previous knowledge of your intention to commit a political murder?...' ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... murmured Billy wearily, and no one laughed. They were all laughers, but the picture of Billy toiling on monotonously in her sleep failed to appeal to them as humorous. T.O. went back silently to ...
— Four Girls and a Compact • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... Three hooked its tools the second day after Sanders's visit to that location. A few hours later its engine was thumping merrily and the cable rising and falling monotonously in the casing. On the afternoon of the third day Bob Hart rode up to the wildcat well where Dave was building a sump hole with a gang ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... dear, it's all right," she repeated monotonously, with set lips, "the doctor's coming. It's ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... and his ears with wax, and tied a big stone round his waist. He crept wearily down the ladder, and disappeared into the sea. A few bubbles rose where he sank. Some of the other slaves peered curiously over the side. At the prow of the galley sat a shark-charmer, beating monotonously upon a drum. ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... mental agony," Mrs. Raddle threw down all the umbrellas in the passage, disappearing into the back parlour with an awful crash. In answer to the cheerful inquiry from Mr. Pickwick,—"Does Mr. Sawyer live here?" came the lugubrious and monotonously intoned response, all on one note, of the aboriginal young person, the gal Betsey (one of the minor characters in the original chapter, and yet, as already remarked, a superlatively good impersonation in the Reading)—"Yes; first-floor. It's the door ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... earned L40, and I have to live on what I earn, and if I look dowdy when I go seeking an engagement I have little chance of getting it. Yet I am under thirty, and although not one of the little group of alleged beauties whose faces appear monotonously week after week in the illustrated papers, I am well-enough-looking when made up, and have read in criticisms references to my 'charm of presence' and even to my 'beauty.' What is to become of me, I don't know. Of course I am particularly hopeless seeing that nine of the London theatres out ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... the first time something learned by heart speak not always indistinctly, but, on account of the incomplete practicability of the motor-paths, slowly, monotonously, without modulation. Sounds and syllables do not yet follow one another quickly, although they are already formed correctly. The syllables belonging to a word are often separated by pauses like the words themselves—a sort of dysphasia-of-conduction ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... TSARPI: [Monotonously.] Black is the blood of the victim, Rimmon is unfavourable, Asratu is unfavourable; They will not war against Asshur, They will make a league with the God of Nineveh. Evil is in store for Damascus, A strong enemy will lay waste the land. Therefore ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... sincerest thinkers. Carlyle was the loadstar who drew men of renown from all quarters of the civilized globe to this somewhat narrow, dark little street in Chelsea. The houses are extraordinarily dull, of dark brick, monotonously alike; they face a row of small trees on the west side, and Carlyle's house is about the middle, numbered 24 (formerly 5). A medallion portrait was put up by his admirers on the wall; inscribed beneath it is: "Thomas ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... burst into Germany by the quickest route, had been despatched, via Archangel, to the northern coast of Scotland. Their progress thenceforwards is, of course, notorious. By now they had safely landed at Antwerp, and had pursued a career that must have bored them as monotonously victorious. Namur, "and all those places" had been captured, and at that moment Maubeuge was being relieved. The Germans were being sandwiched between the victorious Russian, French and British Arms. They ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... grimmer in the days of waiting, days which he spent principally moving between window and door, watching, listening, saying to himself monotonously: It can't storm forever; some time ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... only a few of my undertakings. Everything was "for a short time." This phrase occurs monotonously often, a fact of which I am not unaware, but I don't know how ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... recurring constantly, and slight variations interwoven, all accompanied with a regular drumming of the feet and clapping of the hands, like castanets. Then the excitement spreads: inside and outside the inclosure men begin to quiver and dance, others join, a circle forms, winding monotonously round some one in the centre; some "heel and toe" tumultuously, others merely tremble and stagger on, others stoop and rise, others whirl, others caper sideways, all keep steadily circling like dervishes; spectators applaud special strokes of skill; my approach only enlivens ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... the same scene was enacted. And inquisitive people must have been surprised to see how monotonously ordinary was the manner of the three white people in the compartment. Suddenly, at a station near London, General Armour gave a start, and used a strong expression under his breath. Glancing at the "Marriage" column, he saw a notice to the effect that on a certain day of a certain month, Francis ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... School was pervaded with an intense excitement. For soon examination day would come and the pupils were being prepared for the occasion. The children fidgeted uneasily in their seats and even the teacher became nervous and impatient, glancing often at the big clock which ticked so monotonously and slowly. Soon it would be twelve o'clock and teacher and pupils would have a respite for a few hours. If only those stupid children would solve those problems in arithmetic, the most difficult study, they ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... the Cygnet or the Phoenix were more quiet far away, far below, on the gray levels of the sea. At last a voice—Ambrose Wynch's—broke the silence that had grown too great to bear. "It was Francis Sark," he said, and again monotonously, "It was Francis Sark—it was Francis Sark." Another swore with a great oath, "'Tis as the boy says—they've crazed him with their torments!" Humphrey Carewe, a silent and a dogged man, who wore not his heart upon his ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... guests were already doing that. His toneless voice rose and fell monotonously, and he appeared so detached from what he was saying that as Evelyn gazed at him she seemed to find difficulty in relating words that were said to the speaker; only the slight movement of the lips and an occasional formless ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... universally popular song among seamen is Rule Britannia; but in general they do little more than sing the chorus, and the way in which a crew of tars, when half-seas-over, will monotonously drawl out 'Britons never, never, never shall be slaves!'—repeating it over and over again, as if they never could have too much of a good thing—is highly amusing. We believe that a decided majority of the songs sang in the forecastle are ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... passed monotonously. We used to have some fun with the squaws. Once I was writing home to mother. I wanted a little lock of Indian hair to show her how coarse an Indian's hair was. Old Betts happened to come in just then, ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... The long hot days dragged by. The fading rushes along the river drooped wearily over their dry beds. The yellowing leaves of the trees hung dejected; they were mute petitioners for cool breezes and rain. The grasshoppers chirped monotonously, the locusts screeched shrilly, both being products of the long hot summer, and survivors of the heat, inclined to voice their exultation far into the ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... lot of men too. But he could have wished the charming creature to be as desirable for her intelligence as for her physical and her strange spiritual charm: he could have wished her not to be providing yet another specimen of the phenomena of woman repeating herself so monotonously in the various worlds of London. The simpleton of fifty made in his soul an effort to be superior, and failed. "What is it that binds me to her?" he reflected, imagining himself to be on the edge of a divine mystery, and never expecting that he and Christine were ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... its final result. On the dial which you see, the hands point thus and thus; but upon a higher and transcendent dial these fingers do but precipitate or retard one gigantic hand, pointing always and monotonously to the unity of a perfect selfishness. The everlasting tacking in my course gives me often the air of retrograding and losing; but, in fact, these retrogressions are momentary, these losings of my object are no more than seeming, are still but the same stealthy creeping up under cover ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... with Korea throughout the period of over a century, from the accession of Kimmei (540) to the abdication of Kogyoku (645), is a series of monotonously similar chapters, the result for Japan being that she finally lost her position at Mimana. There was almost perpetual fighting between the petty kingdoms which struggled for mastery in the peninsula, and Kudara, always nominally ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... his legs had stiffened muscles, so that every movement gave him pain. Another man, "bearded like the bard," sat with his back to the wall clutching at two rings suspended from a machine and connected with two weights. Monotonously and with utterly expressionless eyes, he raised and lowered his arms a few inches or so, in order to bring back their vitality, which had been destroyed by a nervous shock. Many wheels were turning in that great room and men were strapped ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... felt it absolutely necessary to separate them completely by telling her that her old music master had gone back to Germany and had died there. The car windows rattled noisily and the bells jangled monotonously, as the horses tramped through the snow on their way uptown, but Von Barwig heard them not, for his brain was thronged with thoughts of his darling Helene and his impending departure to his own country. How could he leave ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... Maran-atha, the Lord cometh, seems hardly called for, seeing that marrano is Spanish for pig. The 'old Christians' learned to use the word as a term of contempt for the 'new Christians,' or converted Jews and their descendants; but not too monotonously, for they often interchanged it with the fine old crusted opprobrium of the name Jew. Still, many Marranos held the highest secular and ecclesiastical prizes in Spain, and were ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... regions of extensive habitation equatorial Africa is the worst. The climate is not only monotonously hot, but for the greater part of each year is excessively moist. Periodic rains bring deluge and periodic tornadoes play havoc. The dry seasons give partial relief, but they bring occasional blasts from the desert so ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... cigar. The new moon was just rising over the elephant's hindquarters, and the poetry of the incident appeared to move the manager profoundly. He turned and surveyed the dim bivouac, the two silent tents, the monstrous, shadowy bulk of the elephant, rocking monotonously against the sky. "Kind of Silurian an' solemn, ain't it," he murmured, "the moon shinin' onto the rump of that primeval pachyderm. It's like the dark ages of the behemoth an' the cony. I tell you, gentlemen, when them fearsome an' gigantic mamuels was aboundin' in the dawn ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... stair. Arnaud was in the library, bending over the table that bore his accumulation of papers and serious journals. A lingering impulse to speak was overborne by the memory of what, lately, she had endured—she saw him at the dusty end of that long corridor through which she had monotonously journeyed, denied of her one triumph, lost in inconsequential shadows—and she continued firmly to the door which closed behind her with a normal mute ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... brass, which held in place the veils that covered the lower part of their faces but did not conceal the beauty spots tattooed on their foreheads. A funeral procession, with professional mourners chanting monotonously a hymn to Allah, followed a casket borne on the shoulders of men. And these curious scenes, which we tried to catch with the camera, formed but unimportant parts in an ever-moving picture in which were intermingled the costumes, colors, and facial characteristics of dervishes, priests, ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... they floated on, the center of a narrow sea-circle. A gentle breath of the dying trade-wind fanned them, and they rose and fell monotonously on the smooth swells of a perfect summer sea. Once, a gunie spied them, and for half an hour circled about them with majestic sweeps. And, once, a huge rayfish, measuring a score of feet across the tips, passed ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... pretty view you have of the sea from these windows," she said in her well-trained and monotonously modulated voice. "I am so glad to have seen it, for, you know, ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... have been long past her bedtime. We had sat on our dreary perch three hours, and there were six more to wait. I noticed that the sound of my voice tranquillized the children; so I repeated hymns slowly and monotonously until they nodded against me and fell into weary slumbers. "Thank God!" I murmured when I perceived this, and I leaned back against the rock, and tried to close my eyes; but they would keep opening and staring into the darkness. ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... blessing of a musical temperament. A drunken man thumps monotonously at his door in the depths of night. To an Englishman it suggests calling the police; to ...
— A Day with Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy • George Sampson
... Queen and myself lies in the affection and devotion which you have always shown to us, in the happy days as in the unhappy. May God protect Greece.—Constantine R." [25] Motionless and silent groups read this message; but the crowd outside the Palace went on crying, monotonously: "No! ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... in the middle division of a gallery divided into three parts, where the twilight was broken by the yellow-painted backs of the chairs, and where a series of mirrors, framed in black wood, decorated the walls, reflecting monotonously different small ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... fall of the trunks of the trees, as they rolled down the slopes of the mountains. When seen from the heights, the trunks of these trees looked like slender stems; but on a nearer inspection they were found to be large and strong enough for the masts of a ship. The river murmured monotonously, the wind whistled, and ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... shillings a week. I have often sat with him in the darkness that his "cruizey" lamp could not pierce, while his mutterings to himself of "ay, ay, yes, umpha, oh ay, ay man," came as regularly and monotonously as the tick of his "wag-at-the-wa'" clock. Hendry and he were paid no fixed sum for their services in the Auld Licht kirk, but once a year there was a collection for each of them, and so they jogged along. Though not the only kirk-officer of my time Hendry ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... on monotonously, and Flora, gasping with astonishment, listened to a long recital of the remaining ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs
... caresses. As this last lady's part had not yet been assigned to anyone, Father Cossard had got up to read it, and he was now figuring away in Bosc's arms and emphasizing it despite himself. At this point, while the rehearsal was dragging monotonously on, Fauchery suddenly jumped from his chair. He had restrained himself up to that moment, but now his nerves got the ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... which William Lyon Phelps sees as the hallmark of Conrad and Hardy, and which even the most stupid cannot escape in Dreiser. The normal American novel, even in its most serious forms, takes colour from the national cocksureness and superficiality. It runs monotonously to ready explanations, a somewhat infantile smugness and hopefulness, a habit of reducing the unknowable to terms of the not worth knowing. What it cannot explain away with ready formulae, as in the later Winston Churchill, ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... soundly, notwithstanding the fact that drunkenness and brawls among young folk appeared perfectly legitimate to the old people. When they were young they, too, had drunk and fought; they, too, had been beaten by their mothers and fathers. Life had always been like that. It flowed on monotonously and slowly somewhere down the muddy, turbid stream, year after year; and it was all bound up in strong ancient customs and habits that led them to do one and the same thing day in and day out. None of them, it seemed, had either the time or the desire to attempt to change this ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... his vast sorrow numbed his other faculties of thought—his brain was overwhelmed by the calamity to such an extent that it reacted to but a single objective suggestion: She is dead! She is dead! She is dead! Again and again this phrase beat monotonously upon his brain—a dull, throbbing pain, yet mechanically his feet followed the trail of her slayer while, subconsciously, his every sense was upon the alert for the ever-present ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... more or less that of the Cormons; for it is, in its way, an archetype of the burgher houses in that region of France, and it deserves a place in this history because it serves to explain manners and customs, and represents ideas. Who does not already feel that life must have been calm and monotonously regular in this old edifice? It contained a library; but that was placed below the level of the river. The books were well bound and shelved, and the dust, far from injuring them, only made them valuable. They were preserved with the care given in these provinces deprived ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... and other places similar holocausts were under way. There was practically nothing going on on Kandar which was not related to the disaster for which the people of that world waited. The feel of bitterness and despair was everywhere. Broadcasting stations stayed on the air only to report monotonously that the tragic event had not yet happened. The small space-navy of Kandar waited, aground, to take the king and some other persons on board at the last moment. When the Mekinese navy arrived—or as much of it as was needed to make resistance ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... "Hamlet," and came to the Fane-Smith's box between the acts. Yet, desperately as he was in love, he could not delude himself with the belief that she cared for him. She was always bright, talkative, frank, even friendly, but that was all. Yet her unlikeness to the monotonously same girls, whom he was in the habit of meeting, fascinated him more and more each day. She was to go back to town on the Monday; on Friday it so happened that she met Leslie Cunningham at a great flower show, and with perfect unconsciousness piqued him almost ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... tarried here in the Farthest East, "the Land of the Rising Sun." He hardly thought of the existence of a West, but if his Buddha-like composure had been ruffled by such a thought, he might have droned monotonously: ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... thickened; but he only cast once or twice and then decided to wait half an hour. He grounded his rod and brought a brier pipe and a pouch of tobacco from his pocket. The things of day were turning to slumber; but still there persisted a clinking sound, uttered monotonously from time to time, which the sportsman supposed to be a bird. It came from behind the great acclivities that ran opposite his place by the pools. Brendon suddenly perceived that it was no natural noise but arose from some human ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... thronging around the central fire; then falling back in a half-circle, torches lifted, while the masked figures banked solidly behind, chanted monotonously: ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... went to the piano; and when playing a game of chess or draughts, remembrances of the old Shropshire rectory came back, sudden, distinct, and sweet. In these days the disease of fame and artistic achievement only sang monotonously, plaintively, like the wind in the valleys where ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... the shady side, making himself generally useful to the opulent looking man with the jewelled rings; and back again for another lot. A whole dollar and fifteen cents jingled in his grimy pocket as the trains finally moved off in their separate directions and the peace of Pleasant View settled down monotonously once more. ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... forest, through which it had many miles to travel before reaching civilization again. The view was shut in. The trees waved overhead and stretched along the road endlessly, too thick for the eye to penetrate far. The coach rumbled on monotonously. The smell of pines and other green things came sweet and odorous, but the day was hot, and everything was dry; the dust rose and the sunbeams poured down. Wych Hazel languished for a change. Only a red squirrel now and then reminded her what a lively life she led ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... a time art ministers to lower needs, and is used for material ends. She seeks her substance in hard realities because she knows of nothing nobler. Objects, the reproduction of which is considered her sole aim, remain monotonously the same. The question "what?" disappears from art; only the question "how?" remains. By what method are these material objects to be reproduced? The word becomes a creed. Art has lost her soul. In the search for method the artist goes still further. Art becomes so specialized ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... is trying to get the attention of people in order to carry through some reform. At first it was a hard confession to make, but the more I saw of politics at first-hand, the more I respected the indifference of the public. There was something monotonously trivial and irrelevant about our reformist enthusiasm, and an appalling justice in that half-conscious criticism which refuses to place politics among the genuine, creative activities of men. Science was valid, art was valid, the poorest grubber in a laboratory ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... The hours passed monotonously, while in the immeasurably empty regions beyond the light slowly changed till it grew less unreal. What at first had appeared a livid gloaming, like a northern summer's eve, became now, without any intervening "dark hour before dawn," something like a smiling morn, reflected by all the ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... said Aunt Jane; "it will not be at all becoming. I have thought about it; often have I weighed it in my mind whether to be monotonously lovely; but I have always thrust it away. It must make life so tedious. It is too late for me to change,—at least, anything about me but my countenance, and that changes the wrong way. Yet I feel so young and fresh; I look in my glass every morning to see if I have not a new face, but it never ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... and when she threw back the iron door to feed more coal the hot glow from within danced a reflection along the bright row of utensils hanging from the wall, and even sought out the brass plate on the cream separator at the far end of the big room. Through the screen door came the monotonously redundant clic...a...clank of the windmill, and a keen ear might have caught the light splash of water as it fell in the wooden horse-troughs from the iron nozzle ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... lapel, and the fit of its collar. He was most insistent upon the conventions, though if such an assembly had been held, as I have suggested, of the young men from the eastern waters, there would have been no such uniformity of costume as now makes an audience of men in America, or in Europe, so monotonously ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... smiles on their faces, as Sue came forward. There was the faintest of color in her sallow cheek, a keen brilliancy in her eyes; she looked singularly pretty. Even Ira felt a slight antenuptial stirring through his monotonously ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... monotonously easy. It could not be otherwise, for there was no landscape to vary the stages ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... Time passed monotonously after they had examined a few stars. There was little difference; each was but a scene of flaming matter. There was little interest in this work, and, as Fuller remarked, this was supposed to be a trip of exploration, ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... (3) The monotonously specialized and unnatural work, which confines a large proportion of our men, women, and youths today, promotes restlessness and the craving for excitement. The normal all-round occupations of primitive men tended to work off their energies and satisfy their natural impulses. ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... proceeded, the trees thickened and became a wood, which extended for two leagues, with clear spaces at intervals, in which herds of cattle and sheep were feeding; the bells attached to their necks were ringing lowly and monotonously. The sun was just beginning to show itself; but the morning was misty and dreary, which, together with the aspect of desolation which the country exhibited, had an unfavourable effect on my spirits. I got down and walked, entering into conversation with the old man. He seemed to have ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... monotonously conscious of the iron that had impaled her soul, she was not quite unhappy at this time, and she never ceased to love Hamilton. Whatever his lacks and failures, nothing could destroy his fascination as a man. His love for her, although tranquillized ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... in the left cheek of the old man—very bright against the gray-white of his skin. Somehow, he did not like that word "tradespeople," though it seemed harmless enough. "This last year, the total was," said he, still monotonously, "ninety-eight hundred odd—if the bills I haven't got yet ain't more ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... sound repeated itself again, again, again and again, monotonously. Something was calling to Something. She was so given up to the soft drifting that she had no thoughts to give, and gave none. In drifting so, one did not think—thought was left in the far-off place the white sea carried one from. She sank quietly a little ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... listless. The master of the launch pointed out places along the shores where wildcat stills were located. The crap-shooters, negro and white, squatted in a circle on the cabin floor, snapping their fingers and calling their points monotonously. One of the negro girls in the negro cabin took an apple out of her lunch sack and began eating it, holding it in her palm after the fashion of negroes rather than in her fingers, as is ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... ." she chanted monotonously, "with voice, hearing, mind, I make oblation. To this sacrifice . . . let ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... Gerard, Mr. Rose," he stated, monotonously explicit. "He slipped his temper and fired a wrench at Gerard for not giving him the road. It hit him, and we ran wild without a driver till we struck here. Ask him—he's in there with what's left of Gerard—why he's sent Dean where he ain't to be ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... put his arms round his knees and leaned his head on them. . . . The burning sun scorched the back of his head, his neck, and his spine. The melancholy song died away, then floated again on the stagnant stifling air. The rivulet gurgled monotonously, the horses munched, and time dragged on endlessly, as though it, too, were stagnant and had come to a standstill. It seemed as though a hundred years had passed since the morning. Could it be that God's world, the chaise ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... them in a tent put at their disposal by the surgeons, and in the long, wakeful hours of the night Olympia heard the guard pacing monotonously before the door. The music of the bugles aroused them at sunrise—a wan, haggard group, sad-eyed and silent. The girl made desperate efforts to cheer the wretched mother, and even privily took Merry to task for giving way before what was as yet but a shadow. 'Twould ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... on a moonlight night, three young men were walking monotonously along a solitary country road. Just where they were going nobody could tell: but when they came to a place where the road branched into three, they stopped there like nails attracted by a powerful magnet. At this crossroads ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... abnormalities of life, is the press. A yellow journal of lies, idiocies, filth. Ignoring the wholesome, splendid things of life—the fine, edifying beat of the tick-tock. Yet they read, glancing dully at headlines, devouring monotonously the luridness beneath headlines. They read with an irritation and a vague wonder. Tick, say the streets, and tock, say the houses; and within them men and women tick. To work and home again. Home again and to work. New shoes grow old. New seasons vanish. Years grind. Life sinks ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... of Confucius. On your head is a domed cap of black satin and your supple hands with their long nails are piously folded. You rock to and fro rhythmically. Your voice, rising and falling in clear nasal monosyllables, flows on steadily, monotonously, like the flowing of water and the flowering of thought. You are chanting, it seems, of the pious conduct of man in all ages, And I know ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... from the whinns; again the subtle fragrance of the moor sweetened her throat with its clean aroma; again the haunting complaint of the lapwings came across acres of bog and furze; and, high in the afternoon sky, an invisible curlew sadly and monotonously repeated its name through the vast blue ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... two weeks' trip through the Persian Gulf and round to the Red Sea was monotonously peaceful. Being "unattached," I had no regular duties. Occasionally I attended "stables," and wandered around the horse lines. The great heat below decks had far less effect upon the horses than would be supposed. Of course, they were ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt |
