"Inexpressive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... say. As it was my only reply was by a glance, which, if it failed to convince her that I pitied her with a depth and intensity which approached alarmingly near the kindred emotion, love, must have been singularly inexpressive. And the evening came to an end, as all evenings, however long, are sure to do at last; and in due course I went to bed, but not to sleep, for Clara Saville and her forebodings ran riot in my brain, and effectually banished the "soft restorer," till such time ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... and he is really a thoroughly noble, good fellow, and a hero. He is a short, rather thick set, somewhat awkward, and "slouchy" man, extremely careless in his dress, blunt and abrupt in his manner, with a queer inexpressive face, little blue eyes which can look dull or flash fire or twinkle with the wickedest fun. He is so witty, sarcastic, and cutting, that he is a terrible foe, and will put the laugh even on his best friends. The son of a Quaker mother, he ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... song Has been as little heeded as the noise Of rattling wheels incessant; but to-day One of its strains brought all Elysium back Into my heart. What was it? What the tie Linking it with some inexpressive joy? At length I solve the mystery! Those notes, Pensively slow and sadly exquisite, Were what the wood-thrush piped at early dawn After that evening passage in the boat, When stars came out, that never more shall set. Oh! sweet and clear the measured ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... nature which it was impossible to transgress, the picture of a little girl with reddish hair, and a skin freckled with tiny pink marks, who held a trowel in her hand, and smiled as she directed towards me a long and subtle and inexpressive stare. And already the charm with which her name, like a cloud of incense, had filled that archway in the pink hawthorn through which she and I had, together, heard its sound, was beginning to conquer, to cover, to embalm, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... man, that Itchoua, thin, with a thick chest, clean shaven like a priest, in accordance with the fashion of the old time Basque; under the cap which he never took off, a colorless face, inexpressive, cut as with a pruning hook, and recalling the beardless personages archaically drawn on the missals of the fifteenth century. Above his hollow cheeks, the breadth of the jaws, the jutting out of the muscles of the neck gave the idea of his extreme force. He was of the ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... Cardinal Newman's, the style he wrote is certainly less open to criticism than that of any other modern Englishman. He was neither super-eloquent like Mr. Ruskin nor a Germanised Jeremy like Carlyle; he was not marmoreally emphatic as Landor was, nor was he slovenly and inexpressive as was the great Sir Walter; he neither dallied with antithesis like Macaulay nor rioted in verbal vulgarisms with Dickens; he abstained from technology and what may be called Lord-Burleighism as carefully as ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... nights, when she came up to the attic cold and hungry, with a tempest raging in her young breast, Emily's stare seemed so vacant, her sawdust legs and arms so inexpressive, that Sara lost all control over herself. There was nobody but Emily—no one in the world. ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... winter, driven home by the severity of the weather, he would sit for days together moping in the chimney-corner, without taking the least notice of what was passing around him. Brian never mentioned this boy—who had a strong, active figure; a handsome, but very inexpressive face—without a deep sigh; and I feel certain that half his own dejection was occasioned by the ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... deliberate introduction of incorrect forms, whether by the coinage of new or the revival of obsolete and inexpressive syntactical combinations, ought to be resisted even in trifles, especially where it leads to the confusion of distinct ideas. An example of this is the recent use of the adverbial phrases in respect of, in regard of, for in or with respect to, ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... pie named in the list quoted; and not only so, but that it was made out of the "umbles" or entrails of the deer, a dish of the second table, inferior of course to the venison pasty which smoked upon the dais, and therefore not inexpressive of that humiliation which the term "eating humble pie" now painfully describes. The "umbles" of the deer are constantly ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 6. Saturday, December 8, 1849 • Various
... face and sunken brown eyes. Years of business experience, mitigated only by such exercise as the game of poker affords, had intensified an instinctive inexpressiveness. Under the most solitary circumstances old Grammont was still inexpressive, and the face that stared at the ceiling of his cabin and the problem of his daughter might have been the face of a pickled head in a museum, for any indication it betrayed of the flow of thought within. He lay on his back and his bent knees lifted the bed-clothes into a sharp mountain. ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... provincial palazzo? On the face of the matter, I know, there is often no very salient peg to hang a romance on. A sort of dusky blankness invests the establishment, which has often a rather imbecile old age. But a hundred brooding secrets lurk in this inexpressive mask, and the Chigi Palace did duty for me in the suggestive twilight as the most haunted of houses. Its basement walls sloped outward like the beginning of a pyramid, and its lower windows were covered with massive iron cages. Within ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... with the weepers off his cuffs and the crape off his bonnet; he had divested himself of the hateful things whenever he found himself alone, and he was listening with a rapt and inexpressive face to the pensive call of the curlew as it rose over the fields, and the tears were dropping ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... suppose it happens to every one—to hear some well-meaning person play or sing at a party. Last night, at the Simpsons', a worthy young man, who was staying there, sang some Schubert songs in a perfectly correct, weak, inexpressive voice, accompanying himself in a wooden and inanimate fashion—the whole thing might have been turned out by a machine. I was, I suppose, in a fretful mood. "Good God!" I thought to myself, "what is the meaning of this woeful performance?—a party of absurd dressed-up people, ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... from the sacred truths they represent. The gods we have introduced from Egypt are regarded by the priests of that learned land as emblems of certain divine truths brought down from ancient times. They are like the Hermae at our doors, which outwardly appear to rest on inexpressive blocks of stone; but when opened, they are found to contain beautiful statues of the gods within them. It is not so with the new fables which the Greeks are continually mixing with their mythology. Pygmalion, as we all know, first departed from the rigid outline ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... and in him is thy sight," Said I, "blest Spirit! Therefore will of his Cannot to thee be dark. Why then delays Thy voice to satisfy my wish untold, That voice which joins the inexpressive song, Pastime of heav'n, the which those ardours sing, That cowl them with six shadowing wings outspread? I would not wait thy asking, wert thou known To me, as thoroughly I to ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... Quarante Compositions de Frederic Overbeck: gravees par les meilleurs Artistes de l'Allemagne:' Schulgen, Dusseldorf and Paris. Overbeck had an aversion to the heavy and mechanical schools of engraving; he objected to meaningless masses of shadow and to the multiplication of lines inexpressive of form. Accordingly these engravings from the Gospels, in common with other plates from the master, possess merits the opposites to such defects. Like the original drawings, they are chiefly dependent ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... age had preyed since man was come; and, although there seemed more land than belonged to this property, no other house could Levin see over all the prospect except the bold and tarnished form of Johnson's castle, sliding its long porch forward at the base of that tall, blank, inexpressive roof which seemed suspended like the drab curtain of a theatre between the solemn chimney towers; the northern chimney broad and huge, and bottomed on an arch; the southern chimney leaner, but erect as a perpetual sentry on ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... holding a glove resting negligently over the back of a chair. He faces the spectator, on his head a long, pointed black hat with a wide brim. His collar is white. A shadow covers the face above the eyes. These are rather melancholy, inexpressive; the flesh tints are anaemic, almost morbid. We are far away from the Vermeer of the Milkmaid and the Letter. There is something disquieting in this portrait, but it is a masterpiece of ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... go down to lunch," Mrs. Adams said, absently. "She's at the gong again." "In a minute, mama. Now about the sleeves——" And she went on with her planning. Unfortunately the gong was inexpressive of the mood of the person who beat upon it. It consisted of three little metal bowls upon a string; they were unequal in size, and, upon being tapped with a padded stick, gave forth vibrations almost musically pleasant. It was Alice who had substituted this contrivance for the brass "dinner-bell" ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... absurd little inexpressive word on paper, but Anne made a song of it on two notes, combining astonishment with a sincerity that was absolutely final. If, after that, Jervaise had dared to say, "Are you sure?" I believe I should have ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... remained never did the musician smile, except twice, once briefly when I sent word to him by the waiter to order a consommation and once, at some length, when we departed. On these occasions the effect was almost emotionally illuminating, so inexpressive was the ordinary cast of his features. A strange lad; I like to think of him always sitting there, passively, playing the accordion and shaking his sleigh-bells. He suggested a static picture, a thing of always, but I know it is not so, for even the ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... of his visit to the cemetery remained undefined save as a final effort of escape from his wife's inexpressive acceptance of his shame. It seemed to him that as long as he could keep himself alive to that shame he would not wholly have succumbed to its consequences. His chief fear was that he should become the creature of his act. His wife's indifference degraded him; it seemed to put him on a level with ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... gives the precious instability, the spring and balance that are so organic. But man should no longer disguise the long lines, the strong forms, in those lengths of piping or tubing that are of all garments the most stupid. Inexpressive of what they clothe as no kind of concealing drapery could ever be, they are neither implicitly nor explicitly good raiment. It is hardly possible to err by violence in denouncing them. Why, when a bad writer is praised for 'clothing his thought,' it is to modern raiment that one's nimble ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... with no other jewels upon her person than diamonds. Very beautifully she was dressed; doing infinite credit, no doubt, to those three artists who had, between them, succeeded in turning her out of hand. And her face, also, was beautiful, with a certain cold, inexpressive beauty. She walked up the room very slowly, smiling here and smiling there; but still with very faint smiles, and took the place which her hostess indicated to her. One word she said to the countess ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... date, having been made, judging from stylistic grounds, between 1407 and 1412. This statue shows a doubt and hesitation which did not affect Donatello when making the little prophets for the Mandorla door. The head is commonplace and inexpressive; the pose is dull, and the drapery with its crimped edges ignores the right leg. There is, however, nothing blameworthy in the statue, but, on the other hand, there is nothing showing promise or deserving praise. Had it been made by one of the macchinisti ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... love with Mr. Verty," said Miss Sallianna, compassionately; "that is, the child fancies that she feels a rare and inexpressive delight in his presence. ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... your way down the Avenue of Time you feel an inexpressive lightness, a sensation of being lifted out of yourself. The moment seems unique. Things are unrelated. There is no concern of proportion. The place is one of immediacy. You wander from the ephemeral to the ephemeral. ...
— The Fourth Dimensional Reaches of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition • Cora Lenore Williams
... fastened her intent but inexpressive gaze upon her caller's face and said never a word. The function thus sketched by Mrs. Bates was the precise function that for the past fortnight she had been imagining and dreading. She had filled her secluded old parlors with the squeak ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... generous, great, and princely though you be, well deserve the fate that I foresee and can foretell. Yes!" cried the speaker, extending his arms, and gazing fixedly on the proud face of the earl, which was not inexpressive of emotion—"yes! I see you, having deserted the people, deserted by them also in your need; I see you, the dupe of an ungrateful king, stripped of power and honour, an exile and an outlaw; and when you call ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... as singularly inexpressive, but he made an effort to gather his courage when his companion broke off with ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... first, no protestations of friendship on either side, but Rowland had implicitly offered everything that belongs to friendship, and Roderick had, apparently, as deliberately accepted it. Rowland, indeed, had taken an exquisite satisfaction in his companion's deep, inexpressive assent to his interest in him. "Here is an uncommonly fine thing," he said to himself: "a nature unconsciously grateful, a man in whom friendship does the thing that love alone generally has the credit of—knocks ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... opposite shore she rises, radiant and unhurt, in her native form. Modred contemplates the prodigy with astonishment; his lust and his brutality inflame him more than ever. Eagerly he gazes on her charms; in thought he devours her inexpressive beauties. And now he can no longer restrain himself; with sudden start he leaps into the river. The waves are wrought into a sudden tempest; they hurry him to and fro. He buffets them with lusty arms; he rides upon the billows. But vain is human strength; the unseen ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... such girls do, propped out on each side of her face by thick round velvet pads, which, when the waltzing pace became exhilarating, occasionally showed themselves, looking greasy. She had a pair of eyes set straight in her head, faultless in form, and perfectly inexpressive. She had a nose equally straight, but perhaps a little too coarse in dimensions. She had a mouth not over large, with two thin lips and small whitish teeth; and she had a chin equal in contour to the rest of her face, but on which Venus had not deigned to set a dimple. ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... the captain, with a suggestion of challenge in the speech, as if he would like to have the epithet resented. But the man only regarded the officer with steady, inexpressive eyes. ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... but his confidential quartermaster near him, he yielded to Israel's natural curiosity to learn something concerning the sailing of the expedition. Paul stood lightly, swaying his body over the sea, by holding on to the mizzen-shrouds, an attitude not inexpressive of his easy audacity; while near by, pacing a few steps to and fro, his long spy-glass now under his arm, and now presented at his eye, Israel, looking the very image of vigilant prudence, listened to the warrior's story. It appeared that ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... chance in this hotel, we disturb one another; a wall of prejudices and conventionalities separates us. The English old maids read their romantic novels; the German families talk among themselves; some Russian or other drinks champagne while he stares with vague and inexpressive eyes; and some swarthy man from a sultry country appears to be ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... handwriting filled her with anxiety. She would feel of the wax with her fingers, bury the letters in her pocket, hesitate about delivering them, and the moment when mademoiselle unfolded the terrible paper and scanned its contents with the inexpressive eye of elderly people was as full of suspense to her as if she were awaiting sentence of death. She felt that her secret and her falsehood were in everybody's hand. The house had seen her and might speak. The quarter knew her as she was. Of all about her, there was no one but her mistress ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... curious eyes rested upon him, McKann seemed to see himself as if she were holding a mirror up before him. He beheld himself a heavy, solid figure, unsuitably clad for the time and place, with a florid, square face, well-visored with good living and sane opinions—an inexpressive countenance. Not a rock face, exactly, but a kind of pressed-brick-and-cement face, a "business" face upon which years and feelings had made no mark—in which cocktails might eventually blast out a few hollows. He had never seen himself so distinctly in his shaving-glass as he ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... and the great desirability that its progress and developments should be observed and its history written; also of C. N——, who, it appears, is passing through a new moral phasis. He is silent, inexpressive, talks little or none, and listens without response, except a sardonic laugh; and some of his friends think that he is passing into permanent eclipse. Various other matters were considered or glanced at, and finally, between five and six o'clock, Mr. Emerson took his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... behind his back, his feet slightly apart, stood very straight and stiff by the side of the compass stand. His face, now hardly visible, was as inexpressive as the door ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... through Murdy's and Moodna, from Murderer's Creek, its present inexpressive name having been given to it by N. P. Willis. One Murdock lived on its shore with his wife, two sons, and a daughter; and often in the evening Naoman, a warrior of a neighboring tribe, came to the cabin, caressed the children, and shared the woodman's hospitality. One day the little girl found ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... acquired by following the injunctions of the Vedas they should all be interpreted as giving us injunctions. Anything therefore found in the Vedas which cannot be connected with the injunctive orders as forming part of them is to be regarded as untrustworthy or at best inexpressive. Thus it is that those sentences in the Vedas which describe existing things merely or praise some deed of injunction (called the arthavadas) should be interpreted as forming part of a vidhi-vakya (injunction) or be ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... of the name of thoughts. But as every thought, or definite exertion of intellect, implies two subjects, and some connection or relation inferred between them, the term "ideas of relation" is not incorrect, though it is inexpressive. ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... thing." Elsie withdrew her observant short-sighted eyes from Mrs. Pendleton's crowning glory, and a smile barely touched the corners of her expressively inexpressive mouth. Mrs. Pendleton glanced up, faintly suspicious of ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... hand, the looking-glass in the other, and the brush (with the comb stuck in it) between her teeth, Ariel the Second, otherwise Dexter's cousin, presented herself plainly before me for the first time. I could now see the girl's round, fleshy, inexpressive face, her rayless and colorless eyes, her coarse nose and heavy chin. A creature half alive; an imperfectly developed animal in shapeless form clad in a man's pilot jacket, and treading in a man's heavy laced boots, with nothing but an old red-flannel petticoat, ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... and more brilliant than Frans Hals. The eighteenth century, one inclines to believe, was the same everywhere. Stylistic obsession and the taste for material beauty ended in mechanical prettiness, altogether inexpressive or sentimental. In both hemispheres painting was reduced to a formula—a formula for ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... her husband. To her surprise his usually sensitive face did not show her what was passing in his mind. Indeed she thought it looked peculiarly inexpressive as he replied: ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... II. (BLACK FISH).—I give the popular fishermen's names for all these fish, for generally they are the best. Where any name happens to be vague or inexpressive, I shall say so, and suggest another. I do so now, touching the Black Fish, so-called, because blackness is the rule among almost all whales. So, call him the Hyena Whale, if you please. His voracity is well known, and ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... was affixed a brass spur. Over his shoulder, holding the two ends in his hands, he carried a strong, flexible whip, silver mounted, and polished like patent leather. He was about six feet high, stoutly built, with a heavy, inexpressive face, and a clear, sharp gray eye. One glance satisfied me that he ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Menyanthis trifoliata, and mugwort is Artemesia Judaica; that, having lost the properties of hyssop known to Solomon, we regain our superiority over that learned Hebrew by christening it Gratiola officinalis. The sexes must not be taught in one room to discard such ugly and inexpressive terms as snow-drop, meadow-sweet, heart's-ease, fever-few, cowslip, etc., and learn to know the cowslip as Primula veris—by class, Pentandria monogynia; and the buttercup as Ranunculus acnis—Polyandria monogynia; the snow-drop ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... voice. He turned to the place from whence it proceeded, and saw stretched on a mattress, a person who appeared on the point of expiring. His visage was pale and emaciated, his countenance haggard and ghastly, his eyes inexpressive and glazy. He held out his withered hand, and feebly beckoned to Alonzo, who immediately approached him. His features appeared not unfamiliar to Alonzo, but for a moment he could not recollect him. "You do not know ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... was walking among the wounded sheep, shooting those which he considered helplessly injured. His mouth was dry, his voice husky, and on his lips foam lay in yellow flecks. He ceased to imprecate only when, by repetition, his oaths became too inexpressive to be ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... leg?" asked General Feversham, as he rose briskly from his chair. He was a small wiry man, and, in spite of his white hairs, alert. But the alertness was of the body. A bony face, with a high narrow forehead and steel-blue inexpressive eyes, suggested a ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... pronounce decidedly on their original workmanship: but, judging by what appears, it would seem to have been of a ruder and coarser character than that of the slabs or of the royal statues. The Nebo images are heavy, formal, inexpressive, and not over well-proportioned; but they are not wanting in a certain quiet dignity which impresses the beholder. They are unfortunately disfigured, like so many of the lions and bulls, by several lines of cuneiform ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... Bayne found the fire newly alight in the hall, burning with that spare, clear brilliancy that the recent removal of ashes imparts to a wood fire. All the world was still beclouded with mists, and the windows and doors looked forth on a blank white nullity—as inexpressive, as enigmatical, as the unwritten page of the unformulated future itself. The present seemed eliminated; he stood as it were in the atmosphere of other days. But whither had blown the incense of that happy time? The ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... complaint,—and die at last with their hearts full of love for the brutes who have trampled upon them. Mrs. Stilton was perhaps forty years of age, of middle height, moderately plump in person, with light-brown hair, soft, inexpressive gray eyes, and a meek, helpless, imploring mouth. Her voice was mild and plaintive, and its accents of anger (if she ever gave utterance to such) could not have been distinguished from those of grief. She did not often attend our sessions, and it was evident, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... knot of idlers had congregated in the narrow street; men in blouses and boys in ragged breeches lounged against the verandah of the inn and gazed with inexpressive, stolid eyes on the soldiers, the coaches, the citizen who wore the tricolour scarf. They had seen this sort of thing before now—aristos being conveyed to Paris under arrest, prisoners on their way to or from Amiens. They saw Marguerite's pale face at the carriage window. It was not the ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... also that they have an analogy with one another, and that in Mathematics they often interpenetrate. Space or place has been said by Kant to be the form of the outward, time of the inward sense. He regards them as parts or forms of the mind. But this is an unfortunate and inexpressive way of describing their relation to us. For of all the phenomena present to the human mind they seem to have most the character of objective existence. There is no use in asking what is beyond or behind them; we cannot get rid of ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... Standard of Scotland, apparently a piece of venerable antiquity, for the field of gold had degenerated into a field of drab, and the figure in the centre showed less of leonine nobleness than of art in that imperfect state in which men are fain to content themselves with semblances doubtful and inexpressive, and less than half the result of chance. The entire pageant was such a one as Sir Walter himself could perhaps have improved. He would not have fired so many guns in the hollow, and the grey old castle so near: he would ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... spoke God's truth for onced. Honey Wiggin, you and me and the boys have hit town too frequent for any of us to play Sunday on the balance of the gang." He stopped and surveyed Public Opinion, seated around in carefully inexpressive attention. "We ain't a Christian outfit a little bit, and maybe we have most forgotten what decency feels like. But I reckon we haven't forgot what it means. You can sit down now, if ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... unrepressed familiar accent that stirred a fresh flicker of Mitchy's grin, met the new arrival in the middle of the room before Mrs. Brookenham had had time to reach her. The Duchess, quickly reseated, watched an instant the inexpressive concussion of the tall brother and sister; then while Mitchy again subsided into his place, "You're not, as a race, clever, you're not delicate, you're not sane, but you're capable of extraordinary good looks," she resumed. "Vous ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... away, he said, in his gentle, inexpressive voice, that hadn't been raised in anger once, "Can I ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... most effective, that they have formulated what might almost be called an instrumental language. Though the effective capacity of each instrument is restricted not only by its mechanics, but also by the quality of its tones—a melody conceived for one instrument sometimes becoming utterly inexpressive and unbeautiful by transferrence to another—the range of effects is extended almost to infinity by means of combination, or, as a painter might say, by mixing the colors. The art of writing effectively for instruments in combination is the art of instrumentation or orchestration, in ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel |
