"Monotony" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unsettled as the waves themselves. Sunday always makes me feel restless, because there is so little to do. It is wicked, I suppose; but how can I help it? Why, there is a boat, I do declare! Well, even a boat is welcome, just to break this gray monotony. What boat can it be? None of ours, of course. And what can they want with our Church Cave? I ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... they themselves had planted. Fresh meat was a great treat, particularly when it enabled them to prepare nourishing broth for their sick, and once Rose shot a stag, giving them several good meals, but this happened so seldom as to do little toward varying the monotony of their fare. ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... an institution which by no means has its significance only for the past. On the contrary, the high tension, the rigid routine, the gray monotony of modern life insistently call for moments of organic relief, though the precise form that that orgiastic relief takes must necessarily change with other social changes. As Wilhelm von Humboldt said, "just as men need suffering in order to become strong so they need joy ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... feature may be speeches or athletic contests, or else parades of floats, fraternal orders, soldiers, etc. Usually, however, the occurrence of some untoward accident that mars the occasion itself furnishes a story feature of greater importance than the monotony of the parade and ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... history of Silas Marner, until the fifteenth year after he came to Raveloe. The livelong day he sat in his loom, his ear filled with its monotony, his eyes bent close down on the slow growth of sameness in the brownish web, his muscles moving with such even repetition that their pause seemed almost as much a constraint as the holding of his breath. But at night came his revelry: ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... in bewildered astonishment. There indeed was a great city, but it was not Ptarth. No multitudes surged through its broad avenues. No signs of life broke the dead monotony of its deserted roof tops. No gorgeous silks, no priceless furs lent life and colour to the cold ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... smaller things-things which suggest nothing greater than a smile. I am becoming used to tiny and ingenious furniture, to doll-like desks, to miniature bowls with which to play at dinner, to the immaculate monotony of the mats, to the finely finished simplicity of the white woodwork. I am even losing my Western prejudices; all my preconceived ideas are this evening evaporating and vanishing; crossing the garden I have courteously saluted M. Sucre, who was watering his dwarf shrubs ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... entering a long avenue, came upon a party of walnut-gatherers, to whom the tragedy of the fox was again detailed, while groups came round us to hear and comment on the event, which appeared to be formed to enliven the monotony of a country existence as much as a piece of scandal ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... good-temperedly, and returned it so smartly. There was always a delightful uncertainty also as to what she would do next, and the prospect of an exciting interlude by "Yankee Doodle", as she was nicknamed, was felt decidedly to relieve the monotony of the ordinary Briarcroft atmosphere. Not that Gipsy really ever meant to behave badly; but, accustomed as she was to the free-and-easy conduct of her up-country Colonial schools, she found it almost impossible to realize that what would have been tolerated there with a smile was in her ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... as there is hardly a person in it, patrician or plebeian, on either side of the equator, who does not address everybody else as "old man" or "old girl," whenever the occasion calls for tenderness. It may be very expressive, but it implies a slight monotony in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... which gathered in the Swastika's saloon for an early breakfast. They were earnest, serious, land seekers, not tourists. In the main they were goodly folks worn by a monotony of life; men who had worked and women who had saved through long, gray years, buoyed up by the hope of a comfortable haven in old age to compensate them for a lifetime on the treadmill. Some of them were ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... monotony of repetition brought rest, and soon Yuki Chan, forgetting to count, made a bed of the fallen petals and turned her face toward the little straw-roofed house from which noises of ...
— Little Sister Snow • Frances Little
... bores a man (though surely not so quickly and so painfully as a lover bores a woman), but she is not apt to bore him so badly in her other capacities. What he commonly complains about in her, in truth, is not that she tires him by her monotony, but that she tires him by her variety—not that she is too static, but that she is too dynamic. He is weary when he gets home, and asks only the dull peace of a hog in a comfortable sty. This peace is broken by the ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... meant to follow her judgment, and, self-willed and strong in intellect as he was, he said that she should have a fair chance of fulfilling her purpose. There had been many pour parlers as to what Jim should do. There was farming. She set that aside, because it meant capital, and it also meant monotony and loneliness; and capital was limited, and monotony and loneliness were bad for Jim, deadening an active brain which must not be deprived of stimulants—stimulants of a different sort, however, from those which had heretofore mastered it. There was ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... than is done in a quiet, unostentatious way at home every day. On the contrary, to many temperaments, my own among the number, it is far less difficult to engage in a new and exciting work like the one we were then entering on there, than to pursue the uneventful monotony of daily doing good at home. As for the dress itself, I have nothing to say against it. Although not perhaps of the material or texture I should have preferred, still the colour, grey, was one I generally wore from choice. But I must confess, that ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... introduced attracts the eye, the second and third are joined with the first. If they parallel the line of the hillside they do nothing toward the development of the picture but rather harm by introducing an element of monotony. If, however, they are so placed in sky and land as to accomplish opposition to this line they help to send the eye on ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... single tree, to the spreading of which no limits can be assigned. For sublimity will never be wanting, where the sense of innumerable multitude is lost in, and alternates with, that of intense unity; and to the ready perception of this effect, similarity and almost identity of individual form and monotony of colour contribute. But this feeling is confined to the native immeasurable forest; no artificial ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... companions, especially her male cousins, who could not be denied the house. At first she was quite unhappy, finding the convent dull, triste, and strict. I cannot conceive of a convent being a very pleasant place for a worldly young lady, in any country or in any age of the world. Its monotony and routine and mechanical duties must ever have been irksome. The pleasing manners and bright conversation of Theresa caused the nuns to take an unusual interest in her; and one of them in particular exercised ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... monotony, had become too strong. The elephant, though free, stands still, sadly swaying its heavy head, ignorant of the freedom that ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... the chaos of nationalities and types on the Zone, enumerating would have become more than monotonous. But the enumerated took care to break the monotony. There was the wealth of nomenclature for instance. What more striking than a shining-black waiter strutting proudly about under the name of Levi McCarthy? There was no necessity of asking Beresford Plantaganet if he ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... as by imprisonment with the tedium and the endlessness of that vast and dreary level. But it is green and very fertile, and it has wide horizons that have a certain charm of their own even in their dulness and monotony; and among the rushes by the waterside the flowers grow, and the trees rise tall and fresh where the barges glide, with their great hulks black against the sun, and their little green barrels and vari-coloured flags gay against the leaves. Anyway, there is ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... a snarl. "That's the rotten part of it—because they do it everywhere else! As if there wasn't enough monotony in the world already without every chap trying to be like the next ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... with the nobility. We belong to both societies, who meet at our house simply because they find it amusing. My husband—I say it with pride—is as much valued by the one class as by the other. We will try to relieve the monotony of your visit here. If you stay all the time with Monsieur Grandet, good heavens! what will become of you? Your uncle is a sordid miser who thinks of nothing but his vines; your aunt is a pious soul who can't put two ideas together; and your cousin ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... which looked quite inviting, we proposed touching, and diversifying the monotony of a sea-voyage by a stroll ashore. So, forcing our canoe among the bushes, behind a decayed palm lying partly in the water, we left the old folks to take a nap in the shade, and gallanted the others among the trees, which were here trellised ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... understand: he tried to understand, and encouraged her to talk. She had nothing to tell him but the monotony of her life, and the difficulty of earning a living: she did not lay any stress on it: she was not afraid of work: it was a necessity to her, almost a pleasure. She never spoke of the thing that tried her most: boredom. He guessed it. Little by little, with the intuition ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... they depend on a free play of mind or upon personal, living sentiments. As accepted conventions regulated in an academic competition, repeated with sustained effort and without enthusiasm, their rigid monotony becomes intolerable. Such was the ultimate fate of that ability to express by half meanings, to suggest without directly stating, to which the Sung painters attached so great an importance. The day it ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci
... regularity in the daily program of the household, although, with reference to what was liable to occur outside, it can hardly be said to have partaken of the element of monotony. The work of the day consisted merely in getting something to eat, and in this work father and mother alike took an active part, their individual duties being somewhat varied. In a general way One-Ear relied upon ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... with an ineffable sense of peace, of ease, of deep inward rejoicing. "Love is everything. There is nothing worth while except love," she thought; and love meant to her then, not passion, not even romance, but comfort, tenderness, and the companionship that sweetens the flat monotony of daily living. Then, beneath the beauty and sweetness of the vision, she felt the vein of iron in her soul as she had felt it whenever she struggled to escape the sterner issues of life. The face of Arthur rose in her memory, tender, wistful, protecting, and young with the eternal youth of ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... still in the twilight where they stood. The faint murmur of a prayer came down from above, and while it lasted both were as though held motionless by its mesmeric monotony. Then, at the boom of the organ, the lad's last shred of self-control vanished. He burst again into muffled weary sobs, the light from the furnace glistening redly on his streaming cheeks. "It ain't right, Uncle Jehiel. ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... the chance of a good time, of a happy girlhood, and an independent, normal woman will be free to make a real choice of the best man. She will not be tempted to passively accept any man who offers himself, just in order to escape from a life of unbearable toil, monotony ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... Mountains. These had all gone overwhelmingly for Mr. Bryan on the free-silver issue four years previously, and it was thought that I, because of my knowledge of and acquaintanceship with the people, might accomplish something towards bringing them back into line. It was an interesting trip, and the monotony usually attendant upon such a campaign of political speaking was diversified in vivid fashion by occasional hostile audiences. One or two of the meetings ended in riots. One meeting was finally broken up by a mob; everybody fought ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... quiet. People sicken of the monotony when shells are not flying. We don't know any reason for the calm, except that the Dutch are burying their dead of yesterday. But the peace is welcome, and in riding round our positions I found nearly all the men lying asleep in the sun. The wildest stories flew: General French had been ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... Japanese music is arid and angular, and yet so great is Puccini's skill in combining creative imagination and reflection that he knew how to make it blossom like a rose. Pity that he could not wholly overcome its rhythmical monotony. Japanese melody runs almost uninterruptedly through his instrumental score, giving way at intervals to the Italian style of lyricism when the characters and passions become universal rather than local types. Structurally, his score rests on ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... taken not to put it in the exact centre, lest it divide the space into equal halves. The pillar of the tokonoma should be of a different kind of wood from the other pillars, in order to break any suggestion of monotony ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... conceivable that if a third man of any trade come along the character of business in Burunda may entirely change. But while there are but two of each, the chances are that any day the visitors may have the quiet monotony of the place broken up ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... the life and environment of those who dwelt at Ferry Post, it may be gathered that, although their daily lot was a hard one, it was sufficiently full of incident to banish monotony. Without such incident existence would have been intolerable. Nature herself seemed to be almost somnolent in these parts, for, besides a few chameleon-like lizards, a stray jackal or hawk, and a plentiful supply of small black beetles ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... particulars the banks of the Upper Mississippi can hardly be beaten. There are no high mountains; but high mountains themselves are grand rather than beautiful. There are no high mountains; but there is a succession of hills, which group themselves forever without monotony. It is, perhaps, the ever- variegated forms of these bluffs which chiefly constitute the wonderful loveliness of this river. The idea constantly occurs that some point on every hillside would form the ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... with drawings, again he went back to the Metropole and to maddening columns of new figures—back to the monotony of tasteless meals ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... to nursery-maids and their charges, and a few loungers, couldn't be opened up with one or two good rides right across, and a few intersecting bridle-paths, after the fashion of the Bois de Boulogne, and thus relieve the monotony of the Row, which is getting more and more Rotten after every shower, and more and more ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. July 4, 1891 • Various
... and reflect upon the highest truths of God. Good music, beautiful scenery, works of art, splendid architecture and fine clothing should not be pursued for their own sake, but only so far as they may be necessary to relieve the tedium and monotony of toil and labor, or as a curative measure to dispel gloom and low spirits or a tendency to melancholy. The same thing applies to the arts and sciences. Medicine is of assistance in maintaining bodily health and curing it of its ills. The logical, mathematical ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... table to go on deck, for a steamer was a welcome break in the monotony of the sea on which we floated, while the conviction that it was Death Larsen and the Macedonia added to the excitement. The stiff breeze and heavy sea which had sprung up the previous afternoon had been moderating all morning, so that it was now possible ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... personal care of the young king, and enrolling within the ranks of the royal guards. The general character of these ruffians may be easily imagined. They lounged away their time, and simply relieved the monotony of their existence by robbing passers-by of anything ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... possession of a fine woman as well as in that of a fine horse? To be sure, Mrs. Redmain was not quite in the same way, nor quite so much his, as his horses were, and might one day be a good deal less his than she was now; but in the mean time she was, I fancy, a pleasant break in the gathering monotony of his existence. As he got more accustomed to the sight of her in a crowd, however, and at the same time to her not very interesting company in private, when she took not the smallest pains to please him, he gradually lapsed into his former ways, and soon came to spend ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... he gone inside to take part in the ceremony—of such vital importance in her life —of 'afternoon tea.' The loneliness and emptiness of those short streets (consisting, almost entirely, of low-roofed houses, self-contained but not detached, their monotony interrupted here and there by the dark intrusion of some sinister little shop, at once an historical document and a sordid survival from the days when the district was still one of ill repute), the snow which had lain on the garden-beds ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... which their right to breakfast exclusively in that pavilion on the garden wall was almost explicitly conceded. No one, after a few mornings of tacit possession, would have disputed their claim, and there, day after day, in the mild monotony of the December sunshine, they sat and drank their coffee, and talked of the sights which the peasants in the street, and the tourists in the promenade beyond it, afforded. The rows of stumpy palms which separated the road from the walk were not so high but that they had the whole ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... that "singing" to the cattle refers to the habit cowboys have, while on night-guard, of singing (generally a sing-song refrain) as they slowly ride round the herd. It relieves the monotony, keeps the cattle quiet and seems to give them confidence, for they certainly appear to rest quieter while they know that men are guarding them, and are ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... the ground. This may be done most quickly by painted canvas; if the latter is not available, by planting or strewing the loose earth with surrounding herbage. In this work care must be taken not to make the covering itself too conspicuous by brightness or monotony of coloring. (c) By covering the trench itself, where convenient, with a thin material, colored like the parapet and parados. (d) By avoiding all overt movement of troops in the trenches under observation. 4. Buildings, ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... simply, with here and there one of her peculiar illustrations. She had not thought of love till it came to life suddenly, she said; and then all the world looked different. The relation of Wilfrid's bravery in fighting for her, varied for a single instant the low monotony of her voice. At the close of the confession, Mr. Pole wore an aspect of distress. This creature's utter unlikeness to the girls he was accustomed to, corroborated his personal view of the case, that Wilfrid certainly could not have been serious, and that she was deluded. But he pitied her, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... at the 'Flower of the Wavy Field;' and, in the society of old and new friends, found nothing of that sameness and monotony against which so many, myself included, have whilom declaimed. The truth is that most places breed ennui for an idle man. Nor is the climate of Madeira well made for sedentary purposes: it is apter for one who loves to flaner, or, as Victor Hugo has ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... softening to the heart. Successful ambition, gratified vanity, what are these with none to share the triumph? But put the sufferer through a steady course of daily duties, engrossing in their nature, stupefying in the monotony of their routine, and insensibly, while his attention is distracted from self and selfish feelings, he gathers strength, day by day, till at last he is able to look his sorrow in the face, and fight it fairly, as he would any other honourable foe. The worst is over then, and victory ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... as the ether of the limitless heavens. A while ago, only in the distant valley winding to the south could foliage be seen. Now, all in those depths is merged in sombre shade, and not a leaf or tree breaks for miles the grand monotony. Close at hand a host of tiny mounds, each tipped with reddish gold, and some few further ornamented by miniature sentry, alert and keen-eyed, tell of a prairie township already laid out and thickly populated; and at this moment ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... imaginary danger, but a real one. All the newspapers were full of the subject. By the Fenians every Canadian understood an indefinite number of the disbanded veteran soldiers of the late American war, who, having their hand in, were not willing to go back to the monotony of a peaceful life, but preferred rather a career of excitement. Whether this suspicion were well founded or not doesn't make the slightest difference. The effect on the Canadian mind was the same as if it were true. Now, since the Canadian mind was thus roused up to this pitch ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... Woodbridge Academy let out at halt past two on Friday afternoon. You see, it was raining so hard that there was no other place to go. But, then, the old machine shop was the best place in the world for the boys, rain or shine, so that didn't make much difference. What really did matter was the monotony of it all. For five days now the region round about Woodbridge had been literally deluged with a spring downpour. Otter Creek had swollen to twice its normal size, springs were gushing from most unheard-of places and rivulets were ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... reluctance. No sooner had he gone than she began to miss him. Life seemed dull without him. Mother and daughter were united at least in their common regret at the absence of the young bookseller. To vary the monotony of existence, to find if possible a husband for her daughter, Madame Boyer decided to leave Montpellier for Marseilles, and there start some kind of business. The daughter, who foresaw greater amusement and pleasure in ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... fine manners, if you please, are a fine art. But is not monotony the destruction of art? Your manners, O happy Ixion, banqueting with Juno, are Egyptian. They have no perspective, no variety. They have no color, no shading. They are all on a dead level; they are flat. Now, for you ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... with Etienne, and wishing to deliver him from Coupeau's kicks, had engaged him to go and blow the bellows at the factory where he worked. The profession of bolt-maker, if not one to be proud of on account of the dirt of the forge and of the monotony of constantly hammering on pieces of iron of a similar kind, was nevertheless a well paid one, at which ten and even twelve francs a day could be earned. The youngster, who was then twelve years old, would soon be able to go in for it, if the calling was to his liking. And Etienne ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... retorted unguardedly, "I grant you she hasn't one of those pleased-with-itself, don't-disturb-the-placidity-of-my-peerless-perfection sort of faces; the valentine sort that strikes a man at first sight, but that at the end of a week he would do anything for the sake of varying its monotony. But Nina—the more you look at her the more lovely she becomes, unless she gets the notion that some man wants to marry her money—and then it is time for me to take to the prairies! Her eyes get hard, her mouth goes ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... torrents of rain we were being parboiled in steamy atmosphere. The track was as tracks usually are "during the Wet," and for four hours we laboured on, slipping and slithering over the greasy track, varying the monotony now and then with a floundering scramble through a boggy creek crossing. Our appearance was about as dashing as our pace; and draggled, wet through, and perspiring, and out of conceit with primitive travelling—having spent the afternoon ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... become monotonous. The monotony, however, can be greatly reduced by repeating the drills under varying circumstances. In the manual of arms, for instance, the company may be brought to open ranks and the officers and sergeants directed to superintend the drill in the front and rear ranks. ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... And no monotony! You climb the inviting hills and woods day by day, week after week, ever to find fresh enchantment. Not a bend of road or winding mountain-path but discloses a new scene—here a fairy glen, with graceful ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... spars of much shipping, and the roofs of the houses dotted apparently over the waters of the Mediterranean. At length the low mudbanks which represent the two continents of Africa and Asia spread their dull monotony on either hand, and the good ship sat quietly down for a ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... most of his time in pacing to and fro in his soft slippers. The very monotony had eased his mind. Now and again he had lain motionless, with his face to the ceiling. He had dozed and had awakened, cold and torpid with dream. He had hardly been aware of the process, but every hour had done something, it seemed, towards clarifying his point of view. A consciousness ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... weary days gazed upon naught but sea and sky. It is true that Stukely had never tired of gazing upon that same sea and sky; with the spirit of the artist that dwelt within him he had been able to see ever-changing beauty where others had beheld only monotony; but to the crew at large that wedge of land, growing in bulk and importance as the ship rushed toward it, was more beautiful than the most glorious sunset that had ever presented itself to their ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... mother of no less a lady than the goddess Venus. The child was very near being called Maria, although there are already twenty-three other Marias, Mariettas, Mariuccias, and so forth at the convent. But the sister-bookkeeper, who apparently detests monotony, bethought her to look out Dionea first in the Calendar, which proved useless; and then in a big vellum-bound book, printed at Venice in 1625, called "Flos Sanctorum, or Lives of the Saints, by Father Ribadeneira, S.J., with the addition ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... sheepishly, borne down by trembling hope. No matter what adventure came to him, the thought of neglected duty returned ever afresh. Once, when he lay sick for weeks in an Indian wigwam, the idea so grew with each day of the monotony, that when he was able to crawl out by himself into the sunshine he had almost made up his mind to start ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... get on solid dry land again was the unspoken thought of the six friends. Once on dry surfaces and out of the level treacherous monotony of the bog, they felt they might be equal to anything. For nearly two hours they worked their way through the morass without making any apparent progress toward the mountain. And now the sun was sinking behind the Western range. Ben watched the lessening ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... as when on the 6th of April he bids us: "Do not quarrel. Be quiet," and when, on the 23rd of June, he advises: "Ask favours of females, and travel." On the whole however, his recommendations leave us with a sense of the desperate monotony of human existence. It is no wonder the novelists find it so difficult to invent an original plot. Nothing seems to happen—even in the future—except the same old thing. It is all as monotonous as North, South, East and West. We turn with relief ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... somebody else, there is still enough of it for all the purposes of examination. In my contacts with the species I find no one who possesses a quality which I do not possess. The shades of difference between other people and me serve to make variety and prevent monotony, but that is all; broadly speaking, we are all alike; and so by studying myself carefully and comparing myself with other people, and noting the divergences, I have been enabled to acquire a knowledge of the human race which I perceive is more accurate and more comprehensive than that which has ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... of those pregnant words, all the even and hopeless monotony, all the dull and barren plane of life had suddenly erupted into one towering and consuming passion for activity, for return to his old world with its gentle anaesthesia of ever-widening plans and its obliterating and ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... is always a capital one, and Mr. Pike has done wonders for Mauritius, which would seem in itself to be one of the most deplorably dull and fatiguing prominences on the face of the sea. An enthusiastic botanist and naturalist, as well as an interested ethnologist, this lively observer relieves the monotony of a seemingly easy consulate and repulsive population by watching all the secrets of animated nature around him. It is a very bloodthirsty island that his fates have guided him to: everything bites or stings or poisons. When wading out ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... shade. And our artists seem to give in to this view, in the deference they show to the subject, as if it mattered not so much what it was, or how, as that it is there,—a pious tenderness towards barns and rail-fences and stone walls and the confused monotony of the forest, not as having any special fitness, not as beautiful, but because they exist,—a scrupulous anxiety to give the every-day look of the objects they portray, as any passer-by would see them, free from any distorting personality. To ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... many cultivated men the Scriptural doctrine of Eternal Life. From time to time the taunt is thrown at Religion, not unseldom from lips which Science ought to have taught more caution, that the Future Life of Christianity is simply a prolonged existence, an eternal monotony, a blind and indefinite continuance of being. The Bible never could commit itself to any such empty platitudes; nor could Christianity ever offer to the world a hope so colorless. Not that Eternal Life ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... whining drone of a man's pleading voice and a woman's shrill, insistent tones, a monotony of sound flowing ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... chestnut-trees along the road that I now took to St. Pantaleon. The country was less barren than that which I had passed over the day before. Although there was much heather, broom and furze, trees and pasture broke the monotony of the moorland. Here was the better Limousin landscape—every knoll and mamelon covered with heather and other moor-plants, woods and meadows in the dells and dips. The numerous clumps of silver birches, and the gorse ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... door in her hand, still gazing out at the flare in the sky. The unwonted emotion had conjured a change in the stereotyped patience in her face—even anxiety, even the acuteness of fear, seemed a less pathetic expression than that meek monotony bespeaking a broken spirit. As she lifted her eyes to the mountain one might wonder to see that they were so blue. In the many haggard lines drawn upon her face the effect of the straight lineaments was lost; but just now, embellished with a ...
— 'way Down In Lonesome Cove - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... ones, or whether the explanation be simply that, as is especially the case here, women, having less to occupy their leisure either in the way of business or amusement, are more eager to seek any emotion or occasion which may serve to break the flat monotony of their lives. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... Maas where that river is broad and shallow, and a steamer anchored in the channel, grim and motionless, gave forth a grunt of warning from time to time, while a boy with mittened hands rang the bell hung high on the forecastle with a dull monotony. The wind blowing from the south-east drove before it the endless fog which hummed through the rigging, and hung there in little icicles that pointed to leeward. On the bridge of the steamer, looking like a huge woollen barrel surmounted by a comforter and a cap ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... wife of a man whose health or business or habits keep him constantly in his house, will each need some special qualities. There are few things in which both men and women naturally differ more than in the elasticity and adaptiveness of their natures, in their power of bearing monotony, in the place which habit, routine, and variety hold in their happiness; and in different kinds of life these things have very different degrees of importance. Special family circumstances, such as children by a former marriage, or difficult ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... alternative," said the Earl, "would be a diminuendo series of repetitions of the same type. Never mind the monotony of it: let's see how it would work in other ways. Begin with the race of men, and the creatures they require: let us say horses, cattle, sheep, and dogs we don't exactly require frogs ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... is now ready to begin, for with the implements and materials provided at each table the guests are required to produce a facsimile of the animal for which the table is named. Different materials are provided at each table, so there is no monotony, as the guests progress from table to table after half an hour's stay ...
— Entertaining Made Easy • Emily Rose Burt
... Starnes gives a rather chilling picture of the Mounted Police surroundings at Fort Churchill where the weather indicator was for months hitting the bottom of the thermometer bulb, and where there was a general monotony in surroundings. He says, "The place is a dreary one, and there is nothing in the way of recreation for the men except reading and no place to go except the Hudson's Bay post and the English Church mission on a Sunday." This is a good tribute to the self-sacrifice of the missionary. Starnes goes ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... numerous degrees of approximation to the unattainable Perfection, which stretches above them all, and draws them all to itself. We have not to think of that future life as oppressed, if I may so say, with the unbroken monotony of perfect identity in character and attainments. All indeed are like one another, because all are like Jesus, but that basis of similarity does not exclude infinite variety. The same glory belongs to each, but it is reflected at differing angles and received ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... and uneventfully by. Guy's letters from India formed almost the only break in the monotony of the household. Zillah soon found herself, against her will, sharing in the general eagerness respecting these letters. It would have been a very strong mind indeed, or a very obdurate heart, which could have remained unmoved at Lord Chetwynde's ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... of the mind induced by too much of one thing. Just as the body fed too long upon meat becomes a prey to that horrid disease called scurvy, so the mind fed too long upon monotony succumbs to the insidious mental ailment which the West calls "cabin fever." True, it parades under different names, according to circumstances and caste. You may be afflicted in a palace and call it ennui, and it may drive you to commit ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... Ormsby and myself, could not be taken in for some days, during which we had to remain at the school: days of shadow and monotony, with occasional ghastly outbreaks of the high spirits which nothing could repress, even ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... we passed through a dull desolation of desert sand, the queerly shaped hills on either side scarcely breaking the dead monotony, although they often hid from our sight our advance scouts, and made us feel isolated and alone. Once or twice I imagined I heard the deepening roar of waves bursting upon the shore-line to our right, but could gain no glimpse of blue water through those obscuring ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... thing, and so on. With the decease of her husband the family tenacity, the family matter-of-factness, had gone sterile within her. A great talker, when allowed, she would converse without the faintest animation for hours together, relating, with epic monotony, the innumerable occasions on which Fortune had misused her; nor did she ever perceive that her hearers sympathized with Fortune, for her heart ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... fixed for ever as in a magic mirror—a mirror that somebody had breathed upon, and, listening to the little gurgle of the water about the limestone shingle, one seemed to hear eternity murmuring its sad monotony. ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... other; under a somewhat different aspect they represent the same groups of animals. In certain latitudes, or under conditions of nearer proximity, these differences may be less marked. It is well known that there is a great monotony of type, not only among animals and plants but in the human races also, throughout the Arctic regions; and some animals characteristic of the high North reappear under such identical forms in the neighborhood of the snow-fields ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... life—as fish, mere, and row—are said to be so old that the philologists refer them to the Aryans, or, as others might say, give them up as a bad job. These words appear to be common to all the sons of Adam who preferred adventurous change to security in monotony, and so signed on as slaves to a galley. Anchor we imported from the Greeks—it is declared to be the oldest word from the Mediterranean in the language of our ships; admiral from the Arabs, and hammock and hurricane from the Caribs, through the Spaniards. But ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... to the inspiration—to the fine old round style of drawing—where the figures "stand out" completely. He adopted a sort of sketchy fashion; his figures became silhouettes and quite flat. There was also a singular carelessness in finish—a mere outline served for a face. The result was a monotony and similarity of treatment, with a certain unreality and grotesqueness which are like nothing in life. In this, however, he may have been inspired by the grotesque personages he was put to ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... went for hours, with nothing to relieve the monotony of the landscape, until finally, when they had topped a higher hill than usual, they discovered a cup-shaped valley before them in the center of which stood an enormous castle, built of purple stone. The castle was high and broad ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... their little house at Alderworth, beyond East Egdon, were living on with a monotony which was delightful to them. The heath and changes of weather were quite blotted out from their eyes for the present. They were enclosed in a sort of luminous mist, which hid from them surroundings of any inharmonious ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... tree. However this may be, there is something singularly thrilling, even something urgent and intolerant, about the endless forest repetitions; there is the hint of something like madness in that musical monotony ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... converted the Louisville goods into one panther, one deer, two bears, and a roll of "wildcat" money. It was not very good stock with which to begin life on a farm, but the monotony was relieved by a hooking, kicking cow, and a horse which broke ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... who, having dragged through a wretched forenoon and taken their afternoon sleep, and having passed an hour and a half at their toilet, pick up their card-case and go out to make calls, and who pass their evenings waiting for somebody to come in and break up the monotony. Arabella Stuart never was imprisoned in so ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... monotony of Storm. During her illness the neighborhood had been assiduous with broths and jellies, but now that she was well again the old awe of the Madam returned, and it did not occur to the modest country ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... the nation; and if we will further note that these thirty notebooks taken at random—Bavarian, Saxon, Pomeranian, Brandeburger, or from the provinces of Baden and the Rhine—must of necessity represent hundreds and thousands of others quite similar, as we may judge from the frightful monotony of their recitals; if we consider all this, we must, I think, be forced to admit that these atrocities are nothing less than the practical application of a methodically ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... occasional records of my idleness. I think I will at all events make the experiment. If we fail, as Lady Macbeth remarks, we fail. I find my entries have been longest when my life has been dullest. I doubt not, therefore, that, once launched into the monotony of village life, I shall sit scribbling from morning till night. If nothing happens—But my prophetic soul tells me that something will happen. I am determined that something shall,—if it be nothing else than that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... always, they said God will help you, our Lord will stand by you. What did that mean? It must mean deliverance, deliverance! What else could it mean? If she held her head high as she returned to the horrible monotony of that prison so often left with hope, so often re-entered in sadness, it must soon have dropped upon her tired bosom. Slowly the clouds had settled round her. Over and over again had she affirmed ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... the betrothed of Adrian. And the sweet thoughts and gentle day-dreams of that fair and enamoured girl, however full to her of an interest beyond all the storms and perils of ambition, are not so readily adapted to narration:—their soft monotony a few words can paint. They knew but one image, they tended to but one prospect. Shrinking from the glare of her brother's court, and eclipsed, when she forced herself to appear, by the more matured and ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... it's facts.... Now, I don't mind Spiritualism and those sort of things; they might help to break the monotony, and can't do much harm. But the 'sex problem', as it's written about to-day, does; it's dangerous and dirty, and it's time to settle it with a club. Science and education, if left alone, will ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... sense, is the result of the "Canterbury Tale" read in childhood. Never was man more constant in his habits and tastes than he; and, indeed, it required that indefinable charm of soul he possessed, and which pervaded his whole being, to prevent monotony from perverting ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... captives before him into the school room and ranged them against the wall, under the wide-open wondering eyes of the scholars, by whom even the most trifling incident of rebellion was always welcomed with glee as a break in the dull monotony of Joel Ham's peculiar system. But this was no trifling incident, it was a tremendous outrage and a delightful mystery; for the boys as they stood there presented to the amazed classes a strange and amazing spectacle, and were clothed ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... like sweat boxes. The high metal walls of the dock caught the sun's rays and threw out a furnace heat. The men endured it in net undershirts clinging to dripping bodies; their eyes ached against the glare, their stomachs rebelled, their brains sickened with monotony and despair. ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... after ten minutes of glaring gas at a junction had by contrast rendered the mist impenetrable, and reduced the view to brightened clouds of steam, and to white telegraphic posts, erecting themselves every moment, with their wires changing their perspective in incessant monotony, he ceased his gaze, and sat upright in his place, with the same ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... last, I thought, something is going to happen in my uneventful life—something to break the monotony of existence. Of course, he must have inquired my name—he could get that from any of the cathedral vergers—and, as he said, he had observed whereabouts in the close I lived. What is he coming to see me for? I wondered. I spent the rest of the afternoon in making the wildest surmises. I was ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... foolish and tries to relieve the strain by the relation of anecdotes in which circumstances have not been all in favour of the illusive creature. He tells of the slumbering one which lay on a mud-bank with its jaws distended, weary of the monotony of the mangroves, and took but sleepy notice when upbraided for being a sluggard. And of that other monstrous beast which, with eyelids like saucers and a bulk which filled a narrow tributary of the river, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... of James Naismith, an instructor in the gymnasium of the Young Men's Christian Association training-school at Springfield, Massachusetts. A demand had arisen for a game for the gymnasium class, which would break the monotony and take the place, during the winter months, of football and baseball, and which was not too rough to be played indoors. The idea of the game was first published in the Triangle, the school paper. It soon became one of the most popular indoor games of America, for girls as well as ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... male came racing toward the field, shout-ing excitedly. As he approached I came from my shelter to learn what all the commotion might be about, for the monotony of my existence in the melon-patch must have fostered that trait of my curiosity from which it had always been my secret boast ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... With the monotony varied occasionally by some local engagement like this we dragged through the hot, fly-pestered days and cold, drafty, vermin-infested nights of September and early October. By the middle of October, 1915, disease ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... the greatest joy among the Pioneers, when they received instructions to prepare for an advance to Khusalghar. Officers and men alike were in the highest spirits, and not the least pleased was Lisle, who had begun to tire of the monotony of camp life. The mention of the place at which they were to assemble put an end to the discussion, that had long taken place, as to route to be followed. Six days' easy march along a good road would take them to Shinawari and, in three or four days more, they would ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... seen, and that is sufficiently great to give the building a dignified and impressive effect, the height from the ground-level to the apex of the choir gable being 115 feet. The well-proportioned short transept breaks the monotony of the long clerestory, without unduly hiding it, as transepts with more projections do. The gable of the choir, with its four lancets, rises picturesquely over the double eastern aisles, while the sombre keep-like ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... The troops only left the dugouts for important defense work. During the late phase when the fire slackened officers and men had little strength for unnecessary walking. Thus there was very little to break the monotony of the siege in the way of games, exercise, or amusements, but on the right bank two battalions in the licorice factory, the 110th Mahratas and the 120th Infantry, were better off, and there was dead ground here—'a pitch ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... The monotony of evenings all like each other, of the same friends met again in the same place, at the club, of the same game with a good hand and a run of luck, of the same talk on the same topics, of the same witty remarks by the same lips, of the same jokes on the same ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... generally laid out on a square plan with the angles directed as far as possible toward the four cardinal points, and the predominance of a single architectural type imparts a certain monotony to the streets. The enclosing walls are flanked with towers and their gates are surmounted by lofty structures which include an arsenal and a guard-room. Besides the temples and commemorative monuments erected on the same plan as the temples, at the entrance to certain streets and before certain ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... for some time, in the event of anything happening to the vessel: this was very fatiguing work for the whole party but they all exerted themselves with the most strenuous energy, especially Mr. Lushington; and our labours were varied by several amusing novelties which relieved the monotony of the employment. ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... as well as usual, but could not sleep. I was not unusually tired, had taken a light supper, and saw no reason why I should be so wakeful. I turned and tossed in bed, and shut my eyes; but all in vain. I even laid my finger on my wrist, that the counting of my pulse might, by the monotony, induce slumber; when, suddenly, before my mind's eye stood my partner; it seemed as real as life; and with the appearance came little remarks of his, little acts and words, which, as they ranged themselves along like the links in a chain, revealed him to me, against my will, ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... results. Fixation of the gaze has been the most successful, but the ticking of a watch has been used. According to Moll, among uncivilized races particular instruments are used to produce similar states, for example, the magic drum's sound among the Lapps, or among other races the monotony of rhythm in song, etc. Instead of these continuous, monotonous, weak stimulations of the senses, we find also that sudden and violent ones are made use of—for example in the Salpetriere, the field of Charcot's work, the loud noise of a gong, or a sudden ray of light; however, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... myself. Hitherto, the bustle of em- barkation, the arrangement of cabins, and all the variety of preparations inseparable from starting on a voyage for at least twenty or five-and-twenty days have precluded the formation of any acquaintanceships; but the monotony of the voyage, the close proximity into which we must be thrown, and the natural curiosity to know something of each other's affairs, will doubtless lead us in due time to an ex- change of ideas. Two days have elapsed and I have not even seen all the passengers. Probably sea-sickness has prevented ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... epic is explained by Aristotle's remark on Homer. Where the characters are true, and dramatically represented, there can be no monotony. ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... with the huge wooden mansions built to shelter the "Pennsylvania" and a neighbour frigate, glide, as it were, hastily by; and nothing remains to break the monotony of the long level lines skirting the river, and ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... man was whirling me from one nightmare to another. The peace of desolation is better than that torture of doubt and repulsion. Whatever was I thinking of to engage myself to such a man? to think seriously of passing my life with him? Poor fool that I was, to rail against monotony, to sigh for sensations! ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... of naphtha, they drink sweet champagne in unlimited quantities. But what else could they do? Everything is naphtha here, everything smells of naphtha, the steamers, the railway engines are run with naphtha. The streets are greasy with naphtha. Occasionally—frequently of late—the monotony of the place is broken by fires of gigantic proportions on the premises of over-insured well-owners. The destruction to property on such occasions is immense, the fires spreading with incalculable rapidity over ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... to personal desires, or when some instinctive tendency must be inhibited or its free activity is blocked or interfered with, or when the laws of growth and experience are violated, take forced attention. Of course fatigue, disease, and monotony are frequent breeders of ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... wet spring Nance did her ten hours a day, six days in the week and on the seventh washed her clothes and mended them. Her breaking in was a hard one, for she was as quick of tongue as she was of fingers, and her tirades against the monotony, the high speed, and the small pay were frequent and vehement. Every other week when Dan was on the night shift, she made up her mind definitely that she would ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... quiet in this place of display, I rode down the street of San Francisco, and turned up the Paseo between the prison of the Acordado and the bronze horse. There was nothing to disturb the monotony that now reigned but cabs or omnibuses on their way to or returning from Tacubaya. Passing through the open gate of Belin, I rode along at the side of the aqueduct ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... watering-place, the same regiment of dragoons, in fact, which Festus had seen further on in its course. The women in the gig had no doubt that these men were marching at once to engage the enemy. By way of varying the monotony of the journey Molly occasionally burst into tears of horror, believing Buonaparte to be in countenance and habits precisely what the caricatures represented him. Mrs. Loveday endeavoured to establish cheerfulness by assuring her companions ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... being so long without a revival, would it not be welcome? Welcome you say—welcome as water in a desert. Yes, and that is just what is promised. A revival in THE MOST UNLIKELY PLACE IN THE CIRCUIT, where even the raciest of preachers seems to be dull, and where there is a monotony which would shame a prison. Yes, there, right there, look out for the water, not stagnant, but water that "breaks out." "Then shall the lame man leap as the hart" that finds the stream it needs, and the "dumb shall sing," for this living water shall quench ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... I am disposed to say that, having fascinated Mr. Swinburne, it must have great merits. That I dislike it is, no doubt, my fault, or rather my misfortune. But undoubtedly it is a metre that no man but Mr. Swinburne could handle without producing a monotony varied ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... mountain stream, diverted to the sluices, went purling down over the riffles. The drip from countless negligible leaks commenced in its monotony. Into the puddles of mud and water the three old miners sloshed, with shovels and picks in hand. They were tired before their work began. Gettysburg, at sixty-five, had been tired for twenty-five years. Nevertheless, he began his day with ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... of unbroken monotony passed. The sun had almost reached the meridian, and the man behind the barricade had all but decided he must have miscalculated somehow, when in the dim distance as before there appeared a tiny dark object, but this time directly from the east. For five minutes Ben watched ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... to time; then the world would forget him and he it, and Noemi would remain to him. And what a jewel she was! Whatever was lovable in woman was combined in her, and every feminine defect was wanting. Her beauty was not of the kind which satiates by its monotony: with every change of expression arose a new charm. Tenderness, gentleness, and fire were united in her disposition. The virgin, the fairy, the woman were harmoniously blended in her. Her love was never selfish; her ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... shades, grey sand, grey rocks, grey over-arching sky, relieved only by the soft purple of the sage—a picture of utter loneliness, of intense desolation, which was a horror. The eye found nothing to rest upon—no landmark, no distant tree, no gleam of water, no flash of colour—only that dull monotony of drab, motionless, and ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... for granted as a kindly stranger, an outsider admitted to these mysteries, and warned him that his time on this holy ground was short; nay, that it was drawing swiftly to a close. And how could he go back to the old monotony, ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... here! We are two lonely Western barbarians in a strange land. We'll play together for a little while. We're not used to each other's sort of play, but that will break up the monotony of life all the more. I don't know how long we'll play ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... India, with whom he had entered into a strict bond of amity, requesting him to select from among his subjects and transmit to the dominions of his Persian ally such persons as could by their arts help to lighten the burden of existence, and lend a charm to the monotony of toil. The result was the importation of twelve thousand minstrels, male and female, to whom the king assigned certain lands, as well as an ample supply of corn and cattle, to the end that, living independently, they might provide his people with gratuitous amusement. ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... seen in the same degree the nature which has always equally surrounded them; and that during some periods they have, for explicable reasons, seen less not only than their successors, but also than their predecessors; and seen that little in a manner conventional in proportion to its monotony. There are things about which certain historic epochs are strangely silent; so much so, indeed, that the breaking of the silence impresses us almost as the more than human breaking of a spell; and that silence Is the result of a grievous wrong, of a moral disease which half closes the eyes ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee |
