"Mellowed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mandanes of yore, they should resume the humour of sending their lovers into banishment. Distance, in truth, produces in idea the same effect as in real perspective. Objects are softened, and rounded, and rendered doubly graceful; the harsher and more ordinary points of character are mellowed down, and those by which it is remembered are the more striking outlines that mark sublimity, grace, or beauty. There are mists too in the mental as well as the natural horizon, to conceal what is less pleasing in distant objects, and there are happy lights, to stream in full glory upon those ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... to her window. Out upon the lawn a light breeze made the shadows from the high trees dance, the sunlight mellowed and reddened. But Ethne was of her county, as Harry Feversham had long ago discovered, and her heart yearned for it at this moment. It was the month of August. The first of the heather would be out upon the hillsides of Donegal, and she wished ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... I chanted firmly to the music's mellowed accompaniment. "I am free to say now that the thing must be stopped, but you shall do it less brutally—to-morrow ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... scattered at capricious intervals a pale but unpiercing wanness rather than lustre along the tide, or save where the stillness was occasionally broken by the faint oar of the boatman or the call of his rude voice, mellowed almost into music ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... conversing thus in low tones, enjoying the fresh air and the calm influences around them, the notes of an accordion came over the water in tones that were sweetened and mellowed by distance. ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... an inn of lamps and shades, a yellow inn under a yellow moon—then silence, where crescendo laughter fades... the car swung out again to the winds of June, mellowed the shadows where the distance grew, then crushed the ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... sluggish way through the broad level marshes like a ribbon of molten gold, and the few great fleecy bundles of white clouds sailing across the deep blue of the sky like froth upon some placid stream. Imagine a sound of fresh voices, mellowed by a little distance, from where, to and fro, walking, trotting, darting, but ever moving like the particles in a kaleidoscope, many squads of players were practicing on the football field. Such, ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... combats it was my privilege to witness. The war arose on our announcement to Mere Mouchard, the lady of the inn by the sea, of our decision to move next door. To us Mere Mouchard presented the unruffled plumage of a dove; her voice also was as the voice of the same, mellowed by sucking. Ten minutes later the town was assembled to lend its assistance at the encounter between our two landladies. Each stood on their respective doorsteps with arms akimbo and head thrust forward, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... fell through this leafy screen with a mellowed and delicious softness, and the perfume of flowers was wafted ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... the general rule, by the extent of its shores, the elevation of its mountains, the beauty of its water—which has the deep tint of the ocean off soundings—and the softness of the atmosphere; lending to it by day all the mellowed and dreamy charms that other scenes borrow from the illusions of night and the milder brilliance of the secondary planets. Raoul did not exert himself at the oar; and, as he sat aft, his companion was obliged to take the stroke ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... a pile of rose-petals in which a tiny skull is half-hidden. The "Old Man" in the Brera has the hard, narrow, but intensely sad face of one whose natural disposition has been embittered by the circumstances of his life, just as that of our Prothonotary speaks of a large and gentle nature, mellowed by natural affections and happy pursuits. We smile, as Lotto does, with kindly mischief at "Marsilio and his Bride;" the broad, placid countenance of the man is so significantly contrasted with the clever mouth and eyes of the bride that it does not need the malicious glance ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... the last word she checked and hearkened, and they smiled together at the far-away whistle of another steamer, deep-toned, mellowed by distance, and ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... fairylike, as the faint silver light of the sun, mellowed by the screen of tree tops, half-lighted up, these silent caves. The giant stems of the trees sprang like tall columns from the foundations of the rocks that shadowed them with their dense foliage. Two or three families of 'Cyclops' ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... the snow and playfully tossed his long, pointed nose as he crept near. But had Jimmie Grimm been more observant, more knowing, he would have perceived that the light in the lanky pup's eyes had not mellowed. ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... enjoyed the expressions of admiration that escaped me, as I gazed on the high and low roofs on every side, the black turrets, the walls of houses, red, green, blue, crimson, yellow, and white all mellowed by age. Down below us were the narrow streets, the iron-barred windows, the curious shops, verandas, balconies, flag staffs, flying pigeons, flowers blooming on the roofs, and bananas growing. Away to the north-east stood the grand Morro Castle, the sentinel ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... little office for the night. A light was burning in the kitchen, and he made his way round to the back door of the house, and let himself in. His wife was there, sitting before the stove, in those last delicious moments before going to bed, when all the house is mellowed to such a warmth that it seems hard to leave it to the cold and dark. In this poor lady, who had so long denied herself spiritual comfort, there was a certain obscure luxury: she liked little dainties of the table; she liked soft warmth, an easy cushion. It was ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... wooden houses where the old sod dwellings used to be, and little orchards, and big red barns; all this meant happy children, contented women, and men who saw their lives coming to a fortunate issue. The windy springs and the blazing summers, one after another, had enriched and mellowed that flat tableland; all the human effort that had gone into it was coming back in long, sweeping lines of fertility. The changes seemed beautiful and harmonious to me; it was like watching the growth of a great man or of ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... a harsh, discordant torturing of reeds when heard on the stair outside his chamber, seemed somehow more mellowed and appropriate—pleasing even—when it came from the garden outside the castle, on whose grass-grown walk the little lowlander strutted as he played the evening melody of the house of Doom—a pibroch all imbued with ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... junks; and further south had smelled the breeze that blows through the straits of the Spice Islands. He knew the surface of the earth, as a farmer knows his farm; but never, he thought, had he beheld a softer and more inviting prospect than this which spread before him now, mellowed by the haze of ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... spunk," she replied, and afterwards, "You may look at my cunt if you like," and she threw herself on the side of the bed, thighs wide open. She was faultless. I pulled a chair to the side of the bed, and contemplated her cunt at my leisure. The dirty white blind down in the window only just mellowed the light, it was as light as day, I could have hunted crabs, had there been any in ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... all the early samplers was a coarse linen, and to this fact we owe the preservation of many of them. Those made two hundred years later, on a coarse, loose canvas, even now show signs of decay, while these ancient ones on linen are as perfect as when made, only being gently mellowed by Time to the ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... with the faithfulness that human infirmities will permit, must greatly brighten the brief and often fretful journey from the cradle to the grave. Friends, in this evening twilight of my journalistic work, so sweetly mellowed by the smiling faces, young and old, about me, I answer your generous greeting with the gratitude that can perish only when the gathering shadows shall have settled into the night that comes ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... the river smiled up. The opposite hill-tops shone in the warm clear light of the October setting sun, the more warm and bright for the occasional red and yellow leaves that chequered their green, and many tawny and half turned trees that mellowed the whole mountain side. Such clear light as shone upon them! such unearthly blue as rose above them! such a soft and fair water face that gave back the blue! What could eyes do but look; what could the mind do but wonder, and be thankful; and wonder again, ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... daguerreotype of her mother, done when she was a girl. "As old-fashioned as your grandmother's hoopskirt," Martha called it. A sampler wrought by some ancient great-aunt, both aunt and sampler long since yellowed and mellowed by the years. A della Robbia plaque, with its exquisite swaddled baby holding out eager arms, as if to be taken. A lacquer casket, a string of Egyptian mummy-beads—what seemed to the children an inexhaustible stock of wonderful, ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... them into harmonies that are gay yet touched with peace. On the walls hung a few reproductions of fine pictures: an old woman of Rembrandt, in whose wrinkled face and glittering dark eyes the past pleasures and past sorrows of life seemed tenderly, pensively united, mellowed by the years into a soft bloom, a quiet beauty; an allegory of Watts, fierce with inspiration like fire mounting up to an opening heaven; a landscape of Frederick Walker's, the romance of harvest in an autumn land; Burne-Jones's "The Mill," and a copy in oils of a knight of Gustave Moreau's, ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... He told them droll stories, incited their rivalry in study by instituting prizes for which they struggled monthly, and, in short, metamorphosed his department. The change spread to himself. His cheeks took on a ruddier hue, the sparkle of his black eyes mellowed into a calm and steady radiance. There was no trace of feverish elation which, in solitude, recoiled to the brink of despair. He sang to himself evenings in his dormitory, clearly and with joy. His step was as ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... was now an old man. The vehemence and determination and aggressiveness that had made him a far-famed conqueror had been mellowed by the years and rarely, ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... stowed them away in the carriage, got in, told me which road to take, and did not again speak till we were out of the village and driving along a pretty country lane, arched over with crimson maples and golden-brown beeches. The purplish haze of a sunny autumn day mellowed over the fields, and the bunch of golden rod at my companion's belt was akin to the plumed ranks along the fences. I hazarded the remark that it was a fine day; Miss Ashley gravely admitted that it was. Then a deep smile seemed to rise somewhere in her eyes and creep over her face, discovering a ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... as I pen these lines, the picture comes back with the same intensity, but little mellowed or softened with the years. The gaunt old room that had entertained so many guests, emptied of its last one, with nothing but the faint chill that had come through the opened window to remind one of their presence—the fitful light of the two candles that had begun spluttering in the tall brass sticks—Brutus ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... to the evening train with his old friend, and Mr. Northrup's mellowed spirit remained with ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... no distemper, of no blast he died, But fell like autumn fruit that mellowed long, E'en wondered at because he dropt no sooner; Fate seemed to wind him up for fourscore years; Yet freshly ran he on ten winters more, Till, like a clock worn out with eating Time, The wheels of weary life at last ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... the Doctor. "Sweet Claudia Peckham: How she used to scrap with my little brothers when she came to visit us! She had a disposition like the bubonic plague when she was little, and by all the signs she doesn't seem to have mellowed ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey
... of weary anxiety, she was able to breathe freely once more, for her father steadily regained his strength. The devotion of her whole time and strength and thought to another had done wonders for her, her character had strangely deepened and mellowed. But no sooner was she free to begin her ordinary life than new perplexities beset ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... thatcher, for fear they should fall into the evil ways of slate, and spoil the lovely contours of the village. A landlord has as much right to preserve the beauty of his property as he has to the upkeep of his fences, and we are indeed fortunate to live in an age when the mellowed beauty of ancient buildings has become almost a religion. But to me there is a smugness about such a village, which has become the hobby, the by no means selfish or unenlightened hobby, of a single man, which does much to temper my enjoyment. Selworthy, ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... the leafy arcade formed by whose boughs and trunks the level beams of the setting sun were pouring. In the distance a group of dairymaids were plying their task, which they accompanied throughout with snatches of Irish songs which, mellowed by the distance, floated not unpleasingly to the ear; and beside them sat or lay, with all the grave importance of conscious protection, six or seven large dogs of various kinds. Farther in the distance, and through the cloisters of the arching wood, two or three ragged ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... satisfied with the species of emotion with which her devoted knight had hitherto gazed on the beautiful features, and fair form, and lustrous eyes, of the lovely Rebecca; eyes whose brilliancy was shaded, and, as it were, mellowed, by the fringe of her long silken eyelashes, and which a minstrel would have compared to the evening star darting its rays through a bower of jessamine. But Ivanhoe was too good a Catholic to retain the same ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... the latticed balcony where the never-failing trade-winds fanned it, was decorated tastefully with flowers, red-shaded candles, white linen, and gleaming silver gave it a metropolitan air. Both the food and the wine were well served, and the consul's half-dozen guests soon became mellowed and friendly. Kirk felt he had fallen among kindred spirits, for it was almost like a ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... the waiting rack And while I promises sweet-coated make, Will gently turn the screw until their bones Do crack. And then to happy period make, The ax shall deftly lop some waiting head, With touch most skilful, mellowed by a smile. Quezox: And, noble sire, I pray thee hasten not But let it pleasure thee to so proceed That dire suspense may make the waiting wretch More keenly feel the act of justice stern. Sweet to my soul 'twill be to walk the street And meet prospective ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... the drawing-room and thence to the library, looking wistfully, as she passed through it, at the pleasant hall, with its old furniture, and its mellowed comfort. She would like to find a home here, if only they would put up with her. ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the copies. The copy is to the original as the pallid, smart, inane new wax-work group is to the vigorous, earnest, dignified group of living men and women whom it professes to duplicate. There is a mellow richness, a subdued color, in the old pictures, which is to the eye what muffled and mellowed sound is to the ear. That is the merit which is most loudly praised in the old picture, and is the one which the copy most conspicuously lacks, and which the copyist must not hope to compass. It was generally conceded by the artists with whom I talked, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... fields; the domestic chickens, just visible in the distance; and the friendly barking of a dog,—all seemed to greet me with a first welcome to the shores of this strange country: while the sun, shining brightly from a slightly clouded sky, mellowed the whole landscape, and so deeply impressed my soul, that tears sprang to my eyes, and a feeling rose in my heart that I can call nothing else than devotional; for it bowed my knees beneath me, and forced sounds from my lips that I could not translate into words, for they were ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... the world's finest coffees, of which the best known are Medellins, Manizales, Bogotas, Bucaramangas, Tolimas, and Cucutas. Old-crop Colombians of the higher grades, when mellowed with age, have many of the characteristics of the best East Indian coffees, and in style and cup are difficult to distinguish from the Mandhelings and the Ankolas of Sumatra. Such coffees are scarce on the American market, practically all the shipments coming ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... a beneficial influence upon the destinies of his country. In a confidential letter to his wife in 1797, he expressed an opinion that the father of his country was not a good-natured and amiable man, but time had mellowed these recollections and softened the asperity of this judgment. Washington had not, he said (in 1843), 'an extraordinary amount of acquired knowledge; he was neither a classical scholar nor a man of science, nor was he endowed with the powers of eloquence, ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... I put on wig and spectacles and the venerable costume which had been provided for the occasion. Appropriately enough, it had originally belonged to an aunt—Aunt Eliza, to wit—who had handed it to me in its mellowed age, to be bequeathed to one of my many protegees. It was brown in colour—I detest brown, and it cordially detests me in return— and by way of further offence the material was roughened and displayed a mottled check. The cut was that of a country tailor, the coat accentuating ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... properly drained the other steps in improvement are easily taken. After soil has been dried and mellowed by proper drainage, then commercial fertilizers, barnyard manure, cowpeas, and clover can most readily do their great work of improving the texture of the soil and of making ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... inharmonious colors, of polluted waters, of soot-stained walls and smoke-tinged air, the green of jungle comes like a cooling bath of delicate tints and shades. I think of all the green things I have loved—of malachite in matrix and table-top; of jade, not factory-hewn baubles, but age-mellowed signets, fashioned by lovers of their craft, and seasoned by the toying yellow fingers of generations of forgotten Chinese emperors—jade, as Dunsany would say, of the exact shade of the right color. I think ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... haven, suggests more images of the useful than of the pleasing; while a background of modest receding hills offers little beyond the verdant swales of the country. In this respect England itself has the fresh beauty of youth, rather than the mellowed hues of a more advanced period of life; or it might be better to say, it has the young freshness and retiring sweetness that distinguish her females, as compared with the warmer tints of Spain and Italy, and which, women and ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... parlour, where supper was set out for us. I had not tasted its equal since I left Maryland. We sat down to a capon stuffed with eggs, and dainty sausages, and hot rolls, such as we had at home; and a wine which had cobwebbed and mellowed under the Castle Inn for better than twenty years. The personage did not drink wine. He sent his servant to quarrel with Goble because he had not been given iced water. While he was tapping on the table I took occasion to observe him. His was a physiognomy to strike ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of no blast he died, But fell like autumn fruit that mellowed long: Even wondered at, because he dropt no sooner. Fate seemed to wind him up for fourscore years; Yet freshly ran he on ten winters more, Till like a clock worn out with eating time, The wheels of weary ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... comes a hollow booming sound—a roar, mellowed and subdued by distance, with a peculiar beat upon the ear, as if a wave struck the nerve and rebounded and struck again in an infinitesimal fraction of time—such a sound as can only bellow from the mouth of cannon. Another and ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... of outdoors derived from the shadows of the pillars, and the sunshine streaming brilliantly through the open intervals. The tables bore proofs of the collation served upon them. Overhead was the soft creaminess of pure marble in protected state mellowed by friendly touches of time. At the end of the vista, the company was indistinctly visible through the verdure of obtruding branches. Voices came to him from that part, and gleams of bright garments; and to get to them it seemed he must pass through a viridescent ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... fall sunshine and drifting leaves. Miss Letty, standing at an upper window looking out on her pear tree, the leaves leathery brown, felt a twitching of the lips. She gazed farther over her domain, and it seemed to her that it had never been so pleasant before, so mellowed and softened by the last light of the year. She knew there were neighbors in the yard below, and could not bring herself to glance at them. A line of horses stood there, and, she was sure, all the way up the lane, and she remembered that was the way they had ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... toast mellowed Alexander Abraham in spite of himself. He ate the last crust, and didn't growl when I gave William Adolphus all the cream that was left. Mr. Riley did not seem to want ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... taken occasion to descant upon, is one of a collection of excellent pictures, as this collection is itself one of a series from the old masters, which have for some years back embrowned the walls of the British Gallery, and enriched the public eye. What hues (those of nature mellowed by time) breathe around as we enter! What forms are there, woven into the memory! What looks, which only the answering looks of the spectator can express! What intellectual stores have been yearly poured forth from the shrine of ancient art! The works ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... of the beach began to be cold to our bare feet; the frogs set up their croaking in the marshes, and one solitary owl, from the end of the distant point, gave out his melancholy note, mellowed by the distance, and we began to think that it was high time for "the old man,'' as a shipmaster is commonly called, to come down. In a few minutes we heard something coming towards us. It was a man on horseback. He came on the ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... after the laws of physical abstinence were adopted things mellowed out considerably, and men went back to their self- obsession, their material minds weren't yet weaned ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... and sharpness of vigor about him which was lost sight of as he ripened and mellowed in a conspicuous manner under the influences of ampler means and advancing years. The simple tastes and quiet ways of his boyhood home were however to the end more attractive and satisfactory to him than the demands and restraints ...
— Fifty years with the Revere Copper Co. - A Paper Read at the Stockholders' Meeting held on Monday 24 March 1890 • S. T. Snow
... reading wonderful story-books, bought for her on his summer excursions to New York or Boston. In one of her visits with Alfred, she sat there and read aloud from "Lalla Rookh." It was a mild winter day. The sunlight came mellowed through the evergreens, a soft carpet of scarlet foliage was thickly strewn beneath their feet, and the air was redolent of the balmy breath of pines. Fresh and happy in the glow of her fifteen summers, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... was royal. The sky, the river, the delicate golden green of the young leaves and grass, the lights and shadows on the distant mountains, all were mellowed in together like one of Church's pictures, and there was one of those spicy winds that Gypsy always described by saying that "the angels had been showering great bottles of fresh ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... glassy than glare-ice, and she sought standing place on one of the great skins that gave a sense of security to the polished surface. A huge fireplace—an extravagant fireplace, she deemed it—yawned in the farther wall. A flood of light, mellowed by stained glass, fell across the room, and from the far end came the white gleam ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... was Mrs. Carteret, with powers matured in hill-stations in India, mellowed by much voyaging in P. and O. steamers. Not even an environment as unpromising as that of Enniscar in its winter torpor had power to dismay her. A public whose artistic tastes had hitherto been nourished upon travelling circuses, Nationalist ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... exotic poet ranged, a long list might be compiled; nor will the pleasant sounds of the afternoon be set down in formal order to the vexing of his memory, for possibly he never heard the whoop and gurgle of the swamp pheasant or the blended voices of hundreds of nutmeg pigeons mellowed by half a mile of still, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... be larger than the other. Witherspoon was lordly, and in his smile a stranger might have seen a life of generosities. And with what a welcoming dignity he took the hand that in its time had cut the throats of a thousand hogs. Diamonds gleamed in the mellowed light, and there were smiles none the less radiant for having been carefully trained. The evening was warm. There was a wing-like movement of feathered fans. Scented time was ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... meetings, and the more matter-of-fact assumption of babies and bundles, the red-capped porters, with their lucky burdens of fashionable traveling-cases, pilot or follow the sirs and mesdames of fortune. Among these is one whose handsome face is mellowed by softening, early-gray hair, and whose perfect attire and tenderness in greeting our doctor at once associate mother and son. She has just come down the Hudson on one of the few seriously difficult errands of her ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... him the wail of them who beneath the fierce sun toiled under the whips of relentless masters? Heard from granite colonnade or beneath cool linen awning, it was mellowed by distance, to monotonous music. Why should he question the Sphinx of Fate, or quarrel with destinies the high gods had decreed? So had it always been, for ages and ages; so must it ever be. The beetle rends the insect, and the hawk preys on the beetle; order on order, life rises from ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... itself to her mind in an enigma which she could not solve—for Adams, she recognised, had mastered, not escaped, his personality. The poison of bitterness was gone, but the effectiveness of power was still as great; and his temperament, in passing through the fiery waters of experience, was mellowed into a charm which seemed less a fortunate grace of aspect than the result of a peculiar quality of vision. Was it his own life that had opened his eyes until he could look into the secret chambers ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... to the development of a comprehensive system "which was to combine, to conciliate, and to supersede them all."[496] The knowledge he had derived from travel, from books, from oral instruction, he fused and blended with his own speculations, whilst the Socratic spirit mellowed the whole, and gave to it a unity and scientific completeness which has excited the admiration ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... what if a sorrow were tolled to rest Where the rich light mellowed away in the West, As a glory of fruit in an autumn orchard Heaped and asleep ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... has struck the attention at the time. The measure of the song varies according to circumstances. It is gay and lively, for the dance; slow and solemn for the enchanter; and wild and pathetic for the mourner. The music is sometimes not unharmonious; and when heard in the stillness of the night and mellowed by distance, is often soothing and pleasing. I have frequently laid awake, after retiring to rest, to listen to it. Europeans, their property, presence, and habits, are frequently the subject of these songs; and as the natives possess great powers of mimicry, and are acute in the observation ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... rest in quality, and remained to the last "under a veil," to use the Italian term. Some of her notes were always out of time, especially at the beginning of a performance, until the vocalizing machinery became warmed and mellowed by passion and excitement. Out of these uncouth and rebellious materials she had to compose her instrument, and then to give it flexibility. Chor-ley, in speaking of these difficulties, says: "The volubility and brilliancy, when acquired, gained a ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... the westward across the mouth of the small estuary where she lay at anchor. So still and silent was the breathless night that the volume of sound raised by the insects on shore rang in my ears almost as distinctly out here as it had done when I stood upon the beach; it was, however, so far mellowed and softened by the intervening distance that it was possible to hear other sounds distinctly through it, even when they were so faint as the slight, almost imperceptible creak of the yard-parrels aloft, ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... of a man, with bands of love, He who made Pleiades, and Arcturus and his sons, has united them in eternal fellowship with their departed loved ones, through faith in Christ. This, while it hallows the remainder of life with the rich, mellowed beauty of the changing leaf, and ripening grain, and shortening days, lays the foundation of that perfect happiness for which our homes are intended to prepare us; their joys alluring, their separations ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... Smyrna for a time, but Smyrna, obeying their foreman's adjurations, mellowed into amiable grins and went on ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... twenty years, and my heart had been mellowed in the tender sunshine of a happy home, and I had loved this boy as a stranger; and lo, he was Roland's son! I forgot all else, looking upon that anguish; and I threw myself on the ground by the form that writhed there, and folding my arms round the breast which in vain ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Mainwaring, entering into the spirit of the joke. "If it were ambrosia, she is worthy of a brimmer. Come, then, fill your glasses. Edward, attend to Miss Gourlay. Sam, help Mrs. Mainwaring. Here, then, my dear Martha; like two winter apples, time has only mellowed us. We have both run parallel courses in life; you, in instructing the softer and more yielding sex; I, the nobler ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... whispers of a new truth are not caught by those who begin to feel the need of an ear-trumpet. Granting all these advantages to the young man, he ought, nevertheless, to go on improving, on the whole, as a medical practitioner, with every year, until he has ripened into a well-mellowed maturity. But, to improve, he must be good for something at the start. If you ship a poor cask of wine to India and back, if you keep it a half a century, it only grows ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... broad flight of steps and crossing the terrace, the house door is entered. A spacious hall, paved with delicately-grained marble, its windows mellowed by the soft tints of stained glass, whose pervading hues are of rose and violet, gives entrance to reception rooms on either side. Those on the right hand are mostly reserved for state occasions; those on the left ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... however preposterous, has, by virtue of its contact with individualities, an effect of realness and rightness no untried thing may share. It has ripened, it has been christened with blood, it has been stained and mellowed by handling, it has been rounded and dented to the softened contours that we associate with life; it has been salted, maybe, in a brine of tears. But the thing that is merely proposed, the thing that is merely suggested, however rational, however necessary, ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... me again at the side of your mother, who received me with the same artless demonstrations of affection. There was a mellowed softness in her countenance, and a tender languor in her eye, I had not remarked the preceding day. Then there was more of the vivacity and playfulness of the young girl; now, more of the deep fervour ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... news was fresh, The simple clerk, but loyal, did announce, And eke did rear right merrily, two staves, Sung to the praise and glory of King George. —Man praises man; and Garrick's memory next, When time has somewhat mellowed it, and made The idol of our worship while he lived The god of our idolatry once more, Shall have its altar; and the world shall go In pilgrimage to bow before his shrine. The theatre, too small, shall suffocate Its squeezed ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... table. Here, taking off his hat and putting it in his lap, he fixed a look on Burrage that might have been the deep gaze of a sage or the vacant one of a child. The green-shaded lamp sent a bright, downward gush of light over his legs, its mellowed upper glow shining on his forehead, high and bare to his crown. He had the curious, sexless appearance of elderly Chinamen; might have been, with his tapering hands, flowing coat, and hairless face, ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... common fairness to be added that the character of the Prince mellowed visibly during his later years, and that the formality of his earlier manner was exchanged for a more genial attitude towards those with whom he came in contact in the duties and society of the Court. ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... and "The London and Westminster Review," and his later contributions to various periodicals, helped to testify; but towards the close of his life the interest was perhaps keener, as the judgment was certainly more mellowed. It was not strange, therefore, that his admirers among the working classes, and the advanced radicals of all grades, should have urged him, and that, after some hesitation, he should have consented, to become ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... as any faithful portraiture of the Midwestern landscape could be; you could not mistake the source of the poem or the picture. In a certain tenderness of light and coloring, the poems would recall the mellowed masterpieces of the older literatures rather than those of the New England school, where conscience dwells almost ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... curious to his friends to observe how he had mellowed with time. The irritabilities of his earlier days had been wholly overcome; his reluctance to mingle with men was quite gone; and old age, which makes so many of us exacting and crabbed, if not morose, imparted to ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... thought, at first, that you were perhaps again using a term that you are accustomed to yourself. Yes; I certainly do put the canvases into the garden that they may dry in the open air while I am painting, but I should be sorry to see them 'mellowed.'" ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... of them, and know the masonry." About the same time this conversation was going on at the bureau of the police, in another part of the town Morton and Gawtrey were seated alone. It is some weeks since they entered Paris, and spring has mellowed ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the weather be rightly characteristic of the place, the sky fades towards night through a surprising key of colours. The latest gold leaps from the last mountain. Soon, perhaps, the moon shall rise, and in her gentler light the valley shall be mellowed and misted, and here and there a wisp of silver cloud upon a hilltop, and here and there a warmly glowing window in a house, between fire and starlight, kind and homely in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... narrow ways where it was easy to lose one's self, small as the town really was; innumerable little toy bridges over toy canals one could have leaped at a bound, overlooked by quaint, irregular little dwellings, of colors that had once been as those of the rainbow, but which time had mellowed into divine harmonies, as it does all it touches—from grand old masters to oak palings round English parks; from Venice to Mechelen and its lace; from a disappointed first love ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... for their peculiar laugh of embarrassment, but the questioner's smile was so serious that she forced her sweetest gravity. "Why, General, according to our Southern ways," she said,—every word mellowed by her Southern way of saying it,—"that's for Isabel to ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable
... bitter enemy, a warm but irritable friend.' Tread on his toes, and he would let you feel his claws, though you were his oldest friend; but so long as you avoided his numerous tender points, he showed a genuine capacity for kindliness and even affection; and in his later years he mellowed down into an amiable purring old gentleman, responding with eager gratitude to the caresses of the charming Miss Berrys. Such a man, skinless and bilious, was ill qualified to join in the rough game of politics. He kept out of the arena where ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... an equal splendor, The morning sun-rays fall, With a touch impartially tender, On the blossoms blooming for all; Under the sod and the dew, Waiting the judgment day; Broidered with gold, the Blue; Mellowed with gold, the Gray. ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... his white beard is no longer cut short and square, but flows majestically down upon his broad breast. His step is slow, but firm still, and when he looks up suddenly from under his wrinkled lids, the fire is not even yet all gone from his eyes. He is still contradictory by nature, but he has mellowed like rare wine in the long years of prosperity and peace. When the change came in Rome he was in the mountains at Saracinesca, with his daughter-in-law, Corona and her children. His son Giovanni, generally known as Prince of Sant' Ilario, was among the volunteers at the last and sat ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... found Diana and Mrs. Colwood on the lawn of the old house, reading and working in the shade of a yew hedge planted by that Topham Beauclerk who was a friend of Johnson. The scent of roses and limes; the hum of bees; the beauty of slow-sailing clouds, and of the shadows they flung on the mellowed color of the house; combined with the figure of Diana in white, her eager eyes, her smile, and her unquenchable interest in all that concerned the two friends, of whose devotion to her she was so gratefully and simply proud—these things put the last touch to Ferrier's ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes: Thus mellowed to that tender light Which Heaven ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... for new needs and mellowed through slow-growing associations, we endeavored to fashion it from without, as it were, as well as from within. A tiny wall fountain modeled in classic pattern, for us penetrates into the world of the past, but for the Italian immigrant it may defy distance and barriers as he dimly responds ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... intensity attracted sentimentally by the opposite sex. Indeed, at that period of life of which Mr. Booth Tarkington has written so searchingly—the age of seventeen—he had been in love with practically every female he met and with dozens whom he had only seen in the distance; but ripening years had mellowed his taste and robbed him of that fine romantic catholicity. During the last five years women had found him more or less cold. It was the nature of his profession that had largely brought about this cooling of the ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... by-road by a high, time-mellowed brick wall, it stood back lonely and secluded in about a couple of acres of well wooded ground. From a big, rusty iron gate the ill-kept, gravelled drive took a broad sweep up to the front of the house, a large, roomy one with square, inartistic windows and plain front, the ugliness ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... anodyne of liquor, or both, brought surcease of sorrow, and Brown slept. Mr. Hamlin moved his chair to the window and looked out on the town of Wingdam, now sleeping peacefully, its harsh outlines softened and subdued, its glaring colors mellowed and sobered in the moonlight that flowed over all. In the hush he could hear the gurgling of water in the ditches and the sighing of the pines beyond the hill. Then he looked up at the firmament, and as he did so a star shot ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... This world has had its CHRIST, its FENELONS, its HOWARDS, as well as its CALIGULAS and NEROS. Love hath been at times a manifestation as well as a principle; and the train of its glory swept far below the stars, and its brightness has fallen in mitigated and mellowed rays from the faces of men. As the ambiguous stranger-star of Bethlehem had its interpreting angel-song to the herdsmen of the plains, so loving men in all ages have given glimpses and interpretations ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... tints, suggestions, of gods and goddesses, nymphs and shepherds, standing in flowery grass under fruit-laden trees and wreathed about with roses. Both colour and subject were of fairyland. The golds and browns and pinks of it, the greens and ivory whites had been mellowed and pearled and warmed by age into a most glowing, delicate, and fanciful beauty. It was Italy at ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fragrant memories. One is tempted to linger in these temples of a goddess half-dethroned. One would like to study these women who added to the social gifts of their race a character that had risen superior to many storms, hearts that were mellowed and purified by premature sorrow, and intellects that had taken a deeper and more serious tone from long brooding over the great problems of their time. But only a glance is permitted us here. Most of them have been drawn in living colors ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... red on tiles. In the farmyards were haystacks with yellow conical coverings of thatch. And around all closed dense masses of chestnut foliage, the green just touched with gold. The little group of houses had mellowed with age; their guarded peacefulness was soothing to the eye and the spirit. Along the stretch of the hollow the land was parcelled into meadows and tilth of varied hue. Here was a great patch of warm grey soil, where horses were drawing the harrow; yonder the same work was being done ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... waited, wisely, until he was calm, then opened his eyes once more. The room was not dark, but was filled with the soft, golden glow of sunset—a light that illumined and, strangely, brought no pain. Objects long unfamiliar save by touch loomed large and dark before him. Remembered colours came back, mellowed by the half-light. Distances readjusted themselves and perspectives appeared in the transparent mist that seemed to veil everything. He closed his eyes, and said, aloud: "I can see! Oh, I ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed |
