"Mellow" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... want to lay down rules for every one to follow who is doing their same kind of work. Sir Joshua Reynolds said, "The masses of light in a picture ought to be always of a warm, mellow colour—yellow, red, or yellowish white; and the blue, the grey, or green colours should be kept almost entirely out of the masses." Gainsborough did not agree with him. To show Sir Joshua that he was wrong Gainsborough painted ...
— The Children's Book of Celebrated Pictures • Lorinda Munson Bryant
... is deceptive and cannot be estimated as under other skies. The far-off mountains are brought near and made to glow in a halo of mellow light. Manifold ocular illusions appear in the mirage and deceive the uninitiated. An indefinable dreamy something steals over the ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... an intellect that challenged any rivalry, he had, in all that touched worldly matters, the simplicity of a child. To my countrymen it is needless I should tell of whom I speak; to others, I say his name was Mortimer O'Sullivan. The mellow cadence of his winning voice, the beam of his honest eye, the generous smile that never knew scorn, are all before me as I write, and ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... the rose garden with Valentia. It was still quite light, though the sunset glow had nearly faded. There was a rich mellow tone in the sky, a promise of peace, a feeling that it was the end of the day, which, combined with the almost cloyingly sweet scent of the roses, was enough to ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... the first of the mellow chords fell upon the noise of the revel. The servants bearing away the dishes began to tread the rushes on tiptoe, and a dozen frowns rebuked any clatter. Through the hush, the gleeman began to sing the "Romance of King Offa," the king who married a wood nymph for dear love's sake. It began with ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... Mr. Speaker, will never be forgotten by those who witnessed it. The autumn sun was fast sinking behind the bright curtain of the west, bathing "the mellow autumn fields" of Old Virginia with its purple hues. Untrumpeted by official authority, scores of friends from city, town, village, farm, and cabin gathered at Ravensworth to pay the last sad honor to their beloved friend. White ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various
... That mellow sweetness was all that Toru lacked to perfect her as an English poet, and of no other Oriental who has ever lived can the same be said. When the history of the literature of our country comes to be written, there is sure to be a page ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... and five or six stalks on one tree. They are an excellent fruit, and most parts of the East and West Indies abound with them. The banana tree is much the same with the plantain, but the fruit is only about six inches long, fifty or sixty of them growing on one stalk, and is extraordinarily mellow, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... back a pace, so as to command a good view of the lake and woods beyond. "It is absolutely perfect. We have nothing like this in Scotland. You can't beat for all round beauty a real old mellow lived-in English country seat; especially when you get a twenty acre lake, with islands and swans, all complete. And I suppose the woods beyond, as far as one can see, belong to the Inglebys—or rather, to Lady Ingleby. What a pity ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... out to purchase the viand. He soon returned, bearing the same in a fresh cabbage-leaf, where it coyly embraced a rasher of ham. Melodious sounds were not long in rising from the frying-pan on the fire, or in seeming, as the firelight danced in the mellow halls of a couple of full bottles on the table, to play ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... been a succession of days in which there was nothing but dry food on the hill, with none of the luscious fruits which invigorate and refresh; for they had been slow in ripening, and the kind husbandman would not gather them before they were mellow and fit ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams
... precisely in a singing mood or no, she began as desired. Mr. Amos joined her, in somewhat subdued tones, and Mrs. Amos gave a still gentler seconding; while the rich notes of her own voice filled the air; so mellow that their full power was scarcely recognized; so powerful that the mellow sound seemed to fill the ship's rigging. The sailors moved softly. They were accustomed to that music. All the way out, on every Sunday service or any other that was held, Eleanor had served ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... theory, be in exact harmony. John does not deceive consciously. Wemmick's office tenets differed diametrically from those he held at Walworth where his aged parent toasted the muffins, and Miss. Skiffins made the tea. The mellow fervency of John's "With all my worldly goods I thee endow"—must be taken in a Pickwickian and Cupidian sense. Reason and experience sustain him in the belief that a tyro should learn a business before being put in charge of important interests. Mary is a tyro whose abilities ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... moment as he thought out the words of what he wished to say to her. The sun was dipping down into the hills; the mellow air was still; the voice of a negro singing as he crossed a distant ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... one thinks. It is all very well, sitting here in cool shade of the beach, but you are a man, one of the kingly species, and what that Kanaka can do, you can do yourself. Go to. Strip off your clothes that are a nuisance in this mellow clime. Get in and wrestle with the sea; wing your heels with the skill and power that reside in you; bit the sea's breakers, master them, and ride upon their backs as a ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... basket! Not that we slacken in our pace the while, not we; we rather put the bits of blood upon their metal, for the greater glory of the snack. Ah! It is long since this bottle of old wine was brought into contact with the mellow breath of night, you may depend, and rare good stuff it is to wet a bugler's whistle with. Only try it. Don't be afraid of turning up your finger, Bill, another pull! Now, take your breath, and try the bugle, Bill. There's music! There's a tone!' over the hills and far away,' indeed. Yoho! The ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... hours of relief, it would mean, from the worst pressure of his torment—twelve hours of merciful solitude in the old, voiceful friendliness of his forest trail. He started early, at the break of a sweet, singing dawn. The earth was elastic under his feet, the air tingling and mellow with a taste of growth; the flooded river chattered loudly like a creature half beside itself with joy. Pete came out of the dark and silent cabin in which he had made his tiptoe preparations, and lifted his face, letting the light, soft fingers of the wind, cooler and ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... of a log cabin that was overgrown with woodvine and mellow with the dull red glow of the climbing bakneesh, with the warmth of the late summer sun falling upon her bare head. Cummins' shout had brought her to the door when we were still half a rifle shot down the river; a ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... Eiresione bring loaves; Bring us honey in pints, and oil to rub on our bodies, And a strong flagon of wine, for all to go mellow to ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... good men a guileless and holy second childhood, in which the soul becomes childlike, not childish, and the faculties in full fruit and ripeness are mellow without sign of decay. This is that songful land of Beulah, where they who have travelled manfully the Christian way abide awhile to show the world a perfected manhood. Life, with its battles and its ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... bachelor, but he was one of those mellow, gentle, affectionate men who make the most delightful companions, whose sympathy is always ready, and tact always to the fore. Mr. Ingram was full of both sympathy and tact, but he had also a little gentle vanity to be tickled, and when a handsome woman, still young, appealed ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... domed roof and came echoing down the marble walls. And now the flower altar was open, and the sunlight fell full upon the tongue of sacred flame and beat it down, so that it wavered, sank, and vanished into the hollow recesses whence it rose. As it vanished, the mellow notes of the trumpets rolled out once more. Again the old priest flung up his hands and ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... kingdoms and material splendor. Thus in the crown of our success, if we would make it truly great, we must place the sublimer elements of our being. As the ivy softens the roughness of the mountain side and the unsightly ruin, so will the aesthetic mellow and subdue the intense commercialism with which we are surrounded. Without this quality our success becomes like the fabled apples on the brink of the Dead Sea—fair without, ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given
... appreciation of another's fit word Gay laugh comes across the abysm of the years His plays were too bad for the stage, or else too good for it Insatiable English fancy for the wild America no longer there Long breath was not his; he could not write a novel Mellow cordial of a voice that was like no other Now death has come to join its vague conjectures Offers mortifyingly mean, and others insultingly vague Only one concerned who was quite unconcerned So refined, after ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of William Dean Howells • David Widger
... soil free from weeds, by the frequent use of the harrow, roller, cultivator or gang-plow. In other cases, especially on heavy clay land, the first plowing is done early in the spring, and when the sod is sufficiently rotted, the land is cross-plowed, and afterwards made fine and mellow by the use of the roller, harrow, and cultivator. Just before sowing the wheat, many good, old-fashioned farmers, plow the land again. But in this section, a summer-fallow, plowed two or three times during the summer, is becoming more and more ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... Through mellow glass, on hallowed walls, The twilight, like faint music, falls; And in each corner, cool and dim, The music is a splendid hymn. And, arch on arch, the ceilings high Seem like a hand stretched toward the sky To ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... shaded in the light by a little black down. One would have thought that an artist apt in conception had arranged the curls of hair upon her neck; they fell in a thick mass, negligently and with the changing chances of their adultery that unbound them every day. Her voice now took more mellow inflections, her figure also; something subtle and penetrating escaped even from the folds of her gown and from the line of her foot. Charles, as when they were first married, thought ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... the wise and gay, To me a grateful homage pay, Since I to all my hand extend, And, liberal, every heart befriend, Does Nancy from the croud retire, And rend my blossoms from her lyre? Though every string the loss bewail, And tones of mellow sweetness fail, Which us'd to charm the pensive ear, When list'ning ...
— Elegies and Other Small Poems • Matilda Betham
... the true, the just,— Be blown about the desert dust, Or sealed within the iron hills? No more!—a monster then, a dream, A discord. Dragons of the prime, That tore each other in their slime, Were mellow music matched with him. O, life, as futile then as frail,— O for thy voice to soothe and bless! What hope of answer or redress, Behind the vail, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... The mellow light the lake aslant, The pebbled margin's ripple-chant Attempered and low-toned, The tender ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... Fanny to the Zoological Gardens; and, after sending them off, S——- and I walked to Piccadilly, and there took a cab for Kensington Gardens. It was a delightful day,—the best of all weather, the real English good weather,—more like an Indian summer than anything else within my experience; a mellow sunshine, with great warmth in it,—a soft, balmy air, with a slight haze through it. If the sun made us a little too warm, we had but to go into the shade to be immediately refreshed. The light of these days is very exquisite, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a Michelangelo finding in a quarry a neglected block of marble and seeing through its hard edges the mellow contours of an ideal. He was as impatient to assail his task and beat ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... "You—you knew it was my land, then, Miss Isabel? When you stopped?" He bent so close that she could feel his breath stir her hair. What could she say? She had never let him know that she cared for him so much as that. She gave a frightened glance at the face above her, the mellow olive complexion, the laughing mouth, the dark, liquid eyes. It seemed to her that one of the early gods might have had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... down in the very middle of the town, a quiet, rambling, overgrown village too near New York to ever become more than a residence place. The school was spread over many acres and its buildings, most of which had been there many years, had a look of mellow antiquity which the newer Brimfield halls had not had time to acquire. Wide-spreading elms shaded the walks in Summer and even today their graceful branches added beauty to the campus. Brimfield, nearly a hundred ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... hair; she looked like a member of one of the northern European reindeer-herding peoples who had barely managed to progress as far as the bow and arrow. The butler was probably a mixture of half a dozen primitive races; he was wearing one of his late master's evening suits, a bright mellow-pink, which was ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... nod, and in less time than yew can wink there'll be no rubber-grower anywhere above ground, for there'll be a fine rich plantation to sell and no bidders, while this 'ere industrious enterprising party will be somewhere down the river, put aside into some hole in the bank to get nice and mellow by one of the crockydiles, who object to ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... fever pain, Many a tortured life is thirsting For a cooling draught to drain, Though it flash no purple vein From the mellow ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... fountain showers over fern-covered rocks, and the gravel-walks around the border are shaded by tall camellia-trees in white and crimson bloom. Lamps of frosted glass hang among the foliage, and diffuse a mellow golden moonlight over the enchanted ground. The corridor adjoining the garden resembles a bosky alley, so completely are the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... water, but of shore-room. The depots of a continent could be conveniently clustered here, and its fleets perform their tactics. There was nothing mean in Nature's mood when she planned the harbor of New York. And, after all that mellow time and consecrating tradition, the traveller's enthusiasm, the poet's fancy, and the painter's sleight have done for the beauties of the Bosphorus, the Bay of Naples, the harbor of Rhodes, and other "fine old ports" and "gems ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... it was full of wells deep enough to sink a man in. These wells were filled with water, and with a blue light, celestial in its loveliness,—a light ethereal and pellucid. It was as if the whole iceberg were saturated with transfused moonbeams, that gave forth a mellow radiance, which flashed at times like brilliants, and burst into flame and played like lightning along the almost invisible rims and ridges. The unspeakable, the incomprehensible light throbbed through and through; and was sometimes bluish green and sometimes greenish blue; but oftenest with ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... affairs, for he had just been up to try for a scholarship at Oxford. The men were down, and the candidates had been housed in various colleges, and had dined in hall. Tibby was sensitive to beauty, the experience was new, and he gave a description of his visit that was almost glowing. The august and mellow University, soaked with the richness of the western counties that it has served for a thousand years, appealed at once to the boy's taste: it was the kind of thing he could understand, and he understood it all ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... Earth," she said firmly, in her soft, mellow voice. "We don't have to follow terrestrial customs, and we shouldn't. There's only one solution that will keep everybody happy—all of ...
— Service with a Smile • Charles Louis Fontenay
... hope that I may have given her at least a measure of the happiness which she so much deserved. Again there were disappointments, frustrations and heartaches as there are in every life and existence. But gradually, with age she seemed to acquire a greater calm in her feelings, she seemed to mellow in her intensity, she seemed to find greater reconciliation within her own beliefs and thoughts and find a greater calm of the soul and a greater satisfaction in her beliefs than she ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... few weeks winter had come down from over the hills across the fields and captured the city streets with a blare of northern winds, which had been met and tempered by the mellow autumn breezes that had been slow to retreat and abandon the gold and crimson banners still fluttering on the trees. The snap and crackle of the Thanksgiving frost had melted into a long lazy silence of a few more Indian summer days so that, with lungs filled with the ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... drawl, in a mellow, agreeable voice, and with meticulous regard for the King's English,—an educated youth who had enjoyed advantages and associations uncommon to young men of the frontier. His untanned face testified to a life of ease and comfort, spent in sheltered places and not in the staining ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... interrupted by a song. The song apparently came from the same building in which his suite of rooms were situated, and from an open window some distance below him. What caught his attention was the fact that the song was Venetian, and the voice that sang it was the rich mellow ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... Sicilian stuff is too strong for me, too straightforward, uncompromising; I prefer to be wheedled out of my faculties by inches, like a gentleman—under this genial stimulus my extenuated frame was definitely restored; I became mellow and companionable; the traveller's lot, I finally concluded, is not the worst on earth. Everything was as it should be. As for Messina—Messina was unquestionably a pleasant city. But why were all the shops shut so ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... low, mellow, musical voice by my side. I turned to face a tall, dark, wiry man, with the swarthy complexion and intensely black eyes of one having strains of native blood. Among the voyageurs, I had become accustomed ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... to approach him with a plea for wildness, when he good-naturedly shakes a big mellow apple in my face, reiterating his favorite aphorism, "Culture is an orchard apple; Nature is a crab." Not all culture, however, is equally destructive and inappreciative. Azure skies and crystal waters find loving recognition, ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... individual friends, each with its own character in his eyes, its own charm for him; and the man's soul was the sweeter for each summer spent in their midst. But to-night they called to closed nostrils and blind eyes. And the evening sun, reddening the upper stems of the pines, and warming the mellow tiles of his dear cottage, had no more to say to Langholm's spirit ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... a clear, mellow laugh, sat down, and the young man reclined in the position he had indicated, gazing up at her with intense admiration in ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... are found, they should be cleaned off completely, spaded up, and left in readiness for planting the following spring. All plots should be cultivated throughout the month of September to keep the soil mellow and prevent the growth of weeds. The pupils should be allowed to pick flowers from their own plots, but should always leave a few in bloom for the sake of the general appearance of the garden. Paths should be kept clean, and all rubbish, weeds, dead plants, etc., removed to ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... in the mellow summer-morn, And the newly-planted orchards dropping their fruits first-born, And the homesteads like brown islands amidst a sea ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... much as that proverbial bear that dreams of pears might accept an exceedingly mellow "swan-egg"—really liking the gift, but accustomed to have his pleasures and pains concealed under a ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... on foreign service, whilst Beryl, my one and only sister, was staying with her fiance's family in Bath. Never shall I forget my first impressions. Depict the day—an October afternoon. The air mellow, the leaves yellow, and the sun a golden red. Not a trace of clouds or wind anywhere. Everything serene and still. A broad highway; a wood; a lodge in the midst of the wood; large iron gates; a broad carriage drive, planted on either side with ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... with thy clamor; Bird, beast, and reptile take part in thy drama; Out-speak they all in turn without a stammer,— Brisk Polyglot! Voices of Killdeer, Plover, Duck, and Dotterel; Notes bubbling, hissing, mellow, sharp, and guttural; Of Cat-Bird, Cat, or Cart-Wheel, thou canst utter ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... he opened the door. As he did so, the deep, mellow note of a gong filled the place with a gentle alarum. It was sound with noise eliminated, and matched, to the ear, ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... the horn was peculiar. Ruth could always distinguish it from any other as Tom speeded along the Cheslow road toward the Red Mill. But then, she was perhaps subconsciously listening for its mellow note. ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... as one inspired, Pale Melancholy sat retired; And, from her wild sequester'd seat, In notes by distance made more sweet, Pour'd through the mellow horn her pensive soul: And, dashing soft from rocks around Bubbling runnels join'd the sound; Through glades and glooms the mingled measure stole, Or, o'er some haunted stream, with fond delay, Round an holy calm diffusing, Love of peace, and lonely ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... bow, it was a circle: the Campanile stood up as it were a spoke in the middle,—the lower curve of the rainbow lay on the ground of the Piazzetta, cut off sharp by the shadow of the Campanile. It was worth waiting an hour to see. The islands shone mellow and bright in the clearance with the storm going off ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... crew went to their posts, the captain gave his orders in a voice which had never been so subdued and mellow since it broke at the age of fourteen, and the Mary Ann took in sail, and, dropping her anchor, waited patiently for the turning ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... occasionally appear in their outspoken philosophy. But be not deceived by this, for even in the newspaper office the half-baked cub who is getting his first glimpses of woman's frailties and man's weak will is the only cynic who means all he says. All reporters who are worth their salt mellow with the years; and editors who amount to much usually are ex-reporters trained to their jobs by long experience. The biggest editors and the ones with the biggest hearts have the biggest jobs. Most of the snubs you will receive will come from little men in little jobs, trying ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... from myself or my readers the fact of the greater humanity and consideration that prevail in the mother country. Things here are yet in the green, but I trust there is no good reason to doubt that our fruit will mellow and ripen ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... his duty in a satisfactory manner. And if a man was in a good temper with himself, it was just the kind of even to increase his satisfaction. The gray old town of Kirkwall lay in supernatural glory, the wondrous beauty of the mellow gloaming blending with soft green and rosy-red spears of light that shot from east to west, or charged upward to the zenith. The great herring fleet outside the harbor was as motionless as "a painted fleet upon a painted ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... they were too late. The rapid visitor, already hidden from them under the portico, was knocking smartly at the door. In another minute, a man's voice in the hall asked for "Miss Henley." The tones—clear, mellow, and pleasantly varied here and there by the Irish accent—were not to be mistaken by any one who had already hear them. The man in the hall ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... mellow mood (induced by a string of cocktails and a hearty lunch), he started a conversation with Jones, the elevator boy. Jones was a slender, mop-headed, man-grown, truculent flame of an individual who seemed to go out of his way to insult his passengers. It was this that ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... the object of their conversation. It was a little arbor, formed by a clustering rose, vieing with the flowering currant in fragrance; thither had the Sea-flower repaired, and as the softest rays of a northern sky, at sunset, sank into her soul, mingling with more mellow light than is of southern climes, these words fell upon her ear,—"Natalie, she is not my sister by birth." She paused to hear no more, for she knew the conversation was not designed for her, and noiselessly gliding from the spot, she sought her own room. The crescent ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... chill background there suddenly took shape in his mind the picture of a spacious room, fragrant with the scent of roses—a room full of mellow tints of brown and gold, athwart which the afternoon sunlight lingered tenderly, picking out here the limpid blue of a bit of old Chinese "blue-and-white," there the warm gleam of polished copper, or here again the bizarre, gem-encrusted image of an Eastern god. All that was rare and ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... Scotch and he couldn't do the rich mellow voice of Mr. Lauder and the face beaming with merriment, and the spectacles glittering with amusement, and he couldn't do the slate, nor the "wee bit chalk"—in fact he couldn't do any of it. He ought merely to have said, "Harry Lauder," and leaned up against a post and laughed ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... calm and warm, and where no tower Of ragged ice upreared itself. On, on I floated, while some lovely fantasy Seemed stealing my true sense—so fair the scene. Huge lillies, which no tropic land might boast, Slept on the water—like embodied moonlight; A mellow lustre bathed all things; sweet birds With rainbow plumage fluttered through the air, And this fair island dawned upon my sight. Soon on the shore rested my vessel's prow, And I, ascending the bright paths which spread ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown
... now on borrowed time. The sun of my allotted life-day has set, and with the mellow twilight of old age there come to my memory reflections of a life which, if not well spent, has in it enough of good at least to make these reflections pleasant. And yet, during all the years in which I have responded to the name Carter Brassfield, ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... is old age, beautiful as the slow-dropping, mellow autumn of a rich, glorious summer. In the old man Nature has fulfilled her work; she leads him with her blessings; she fills him with the fruits of a well-spent life; and, surrounded by his children and his children's children, she rocks him softly away to the ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... realized that, as he stood there now, Monte did not in the least inspire her with awe or fear or a sense of superior wisdom. The mellow light softened his features and the light breeze had tousled his hair, so that for all his years told he might have been back in his football days. He had been like that all ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... years to come may she Grow rich and ripe and mellow, Be quoted even above "par," "Or any ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... to the west pier. At that hour of the morning (excepting a few sailors who paid no heed to us) the place was a solitude. It was one of the loveliest days of the season. When we were tired of pacing to and fro, we could sit down under the mellow sunshine, and enjoy the balmy sea air. In that pure light, with all those lovely colors about us, there was something, to my mind, horribly and shamefully out of place in the talk that engrossed us—talk that still turned, hour after hour, on nothing but plots ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... they followed the road to its end and turned into a lane between thorn hedges. Now the moon shone straight toward them and there was no shadow, so that the earth was bright golden underfoot— a lane of mellow light on which they trod between fantastic woven walls. At the end of the lane they came into a clearing at a forested-edge, where an ancient ruined temple nestled in the shadow of great trees, its stone front and the seated image of a long-neglected ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... on the grassy banks, children roll among the leaves, sylphs dance in every open, and out from between the branches lightly steps Orpheus, harp in hand, to greet the morn. Never is there a shadow of care in a Corot—all is mellow with love, ripe with the rich gift of life, full of prayer and praise just for the rapture of drinking in the day—grateful for calm, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... impression is pleasant. In a mellow, golden light, a whole series of happy afternoon-parties have been arranged. Groups of interesting strangers have found a common interest and are sitting side by side in perfect good manners around tables. There is ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... weddings and standing beside open graves, sharing the joys and sorrows of innumerable persons, is so indispensable, as in the pastor, the physician of the spirit? Still, we will turn out some wise, shy, mellow old man, just ripened to the point of being the true minister to the souls of others, and replace him with a recent graduate of a theological school, because the latter can talk the language of the higher criticism or whatever else happens to interest us for the moment. ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... but, as if its soul had passed from the instrument into his, the musician himself took up the strain, and in a mellow tenor voice, with a mingling of air and recitative, and an expression which to Mary was entrancing, sang the words, "And he ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... them by the viaduct over the Platte River and through the North Side into the country. They rushed past truck farms and apple orchards into the rolling fields beyond, where the crops had been harvested and the land lay in the mellow bath of a summer sun. They swung round Table Mountain into the little town huddled at ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... bush, clears his throat with sharp chirps and shouts as loud as he can: "Hip! Hip! Hip! Hurrah—!" Even more boreal visitors feel the new influence, and tree and fox sparrows warble sweetly. But the bluebird's note will always be spring's dearest herald. When this soft, mellow sound floats from the nearest fence post, it seems to thaw something out of our ears; from this instant winter seems on the defensive; the crisis has come and gone in an instant, in a ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... the moon—a large, mellow tropical one,—rose from a bank of cloud so like a mountain's chain that the small one clapped his hands in glee and cried: "Land ho!" But, alas! it was only cloud-land; and his eyes, that were starving ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... and found me admiring the wild and beautiful scenery. He may have been a good miller, but he had no love for the beautiful. Perhaps that is why he was always so cold and cruel toward me. My slender, willowy grace and mellow, bird-like voice never seemed to melt ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... clusters to be sweetened by the sun, behold, it drops a leaf and then a leaf, so teaching us to strip it bare itself and let the vintage ripen. With plenty teeming, see the fertile mother shows her mellow clusters, and the while is nursing a new brood in primal crudeness. [32] So the vine plant teaches us how best to gather in the vintage, even as men gather ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... his cat sat the old Baron. In his eyes were often flashes, Now like lightning—then more softened Like the mellow rays of sunset, As he thought of bygone times. To old age belongs the solace Of recalling days of yore. Thus the aged ne'er are lonely. The dear shades are floating round them, Of the dead, in quaint old garments, Gorgeous once, now sadly faded. ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... outlined against the steel-blue sky. Far beyond that stern sentinel, the converging shores of Foveaux Strait are just discernible in dim outline through a low haze. Ahead the jagged and formidable rocks of Stewart Island, bathed in a mellow golden glow, give no hint of their terrible appearance what time the Storm-fiend of the south-west cries havoc and urges ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... liquid-mellow cry of the meadow-lark, first vocal for the day, caused him to desist. He looked at the clock. It marked seven. He set aside the proofs and began a series of conversations by means of the switchboard, which he manipulated with a ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... shingle, and dozed and talked, and skipped flat stones on the water, until it was time to swim again. All about them the scene was one of matchless beauty. Steep banks, aquiver with ferns, came down on one side of the pool, to the very edge of the crystal water; on the other, long arcades, shot with mellow sunlight, stretched away through the forest. Bees went by on swift, angry journeys, and dragon-flies rested on the stones for a few dazzling palpitating seconds, and were gone again. Black water-bugs skated over the shallows, throwing ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... Chinese white. The method in opaque water color, employed by F. Hopkinson Smith and others, of working over a tinted paper such as the general tone of the subject suggests, has its warrant in the early art of the Venetian painters. If a blue day, a blue gray paper is used; if a mellow day, a yellow paper. ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... much plumper since he had come into possession of them; and their general worn and dull appearance gave considerable distance to the period of their first possession. But there was nothing worn or dull about the countenance of the man, upon which was an expression of mellow geniality which would have been suitably consequent upon a good dinner with plenty of wine. But his only beverage had been coffee, and in his clear bright eye there was no trace of any exhilaration, except that caused by ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... of that anon.—'T is sweet to hear At midnight on the blue and moonlit deep The song and oar of Adria's gondolier, By distance mellow'd, o'er the waters sweep; 'T is sweet to see the evening star appear; 'T is sweet to listen as the night-winds creep From leaf to leaf; 't is sweet to view on high The rainbow, based on ocean, span ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... Boxes,' 'Jack Johnsons' and other varied presents from Krupp's had not fallen on the town with such lavishness at the time my regiment found shelter there. It was a June afternoon when I first found my way there. A mellow drowsiness hung over the Cloth Hall and Cathedral. It was indeed a very pleasant little town. The old houses of the square, the Prior's Gate, the noble trees, the stretch of green turf, all shared in the dream-like repose. In the Rue Bar-le-Duc, as everybody knows, just where it ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... unrestricted and original, as if he had been born in days which claim as their own such freedom and such keen discriminative sense of what is real in feeling and image—as if he had never felt the attractions of a crabbed problem of scholastic logic, or bowed before the mellow grace of the Latins. It may be said, indeed, that the time was not yet come when the classics could be really understood and appreciated; and this is true, perhaps fortunate. But admiring them with a kind of devotion, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... One warm, mellow afternoon when the golden-rod was at its sunniest, and the iron-weed flaunted its royal purple across the fields in the trail of the Indian summer, John Jay went down to the toll-gate cottage. He found his Reverend ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... thy airy shell Beneath thy waters clear; Far echoing up the woodland dell Thy wind-swept harp I hear. I catch its soft and mellow tones Amid the long grass gliding, Now broken 'gainst the rugged stones, In ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... found the ladies, as well as the entire interior of the house, was filled with a mellow light, which I knew must be artificial, although I could not discover the source from which it was diffused. Mrs. Leete was an exceptionally fine-looking and well-preserved woman, while her daughter, ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... prime of manhood, scarcely out of youth, with a figure like that of Antinous, tall, muscular, yet elegant, brown hair of the richest shade, a lofty forehead, features of the most manly cast, but exquisitely formed, and eyes which, but for the mellow softness of their expression, an eagle might have envied for their transparent brilliancy. The fame of his love for the Cooleen Bawn had come before him. The judge surveyed him with deep interest; so did every eye that could catch a view of his countenance; but, above all, were those in the gallery ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... sitting under the algaroba trees between the lanai and the beach. His eyes wandered over the dancers and he turned his head away and gazed seaward across the mellow-sounding surf to the Southern Cross burning low on the horizon. He was irritated by the bare shoulders and arms of the women. If he had a daughter he would never permit it, never. But his hypothesis was the sheerest abstraction. The ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... in Mahommed, his giving himself up to thought of the Princess while gliding down the Bosphorus, after leaving his safeguard on her gate. He closed his eyes against the mellow light on the water, and, silently admitting her the perfection of womanhood, held her image before him until it was indelible in memory—face, figure, manner, even her dress and ornaments—until his longing for her became a positive ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... saw the Pleiads, rising through the mellow shade, Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... still, but with a transparent blue penumbra over it; the white marble, palely, scintillantly amethystine. And if he was interested in her environment, now he could study it to his heart's content: the wide marble staircase, up which he was shown, with its crimson carpet, and the big mellow painting, that looked as if it might be a Titian, at the top; the great saloon, in which he was received, with its polished mosaic floor, its frescoed ceiling, its white-and-gold panelling, its hangings and upholsteries of yellow brocade, its ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... formless features, and a brown wig of false curls—glaringly false, for they were the first thing about her that fixed the eye, though there were many matters besides to fascinate an observer with leisure to look again. She seemed, however, a most free and cheerful old lady, and talked in a loud, mellow voice, with a pleasant touch of the brogue. She had been a popular Dublin singer and actress in her day—a day some forty years ago—but only Lady Latimer and herself in the rectory garden that afternoon were aware of ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... an hour the little room wore a more cheerful aspect. The sticks crackled and blazed lustily; the green-shaded lamp diffused a mellow light. The tea-tray was set and the plate of French toast was frizzling gently on a brass trivet. At the sound of her master's footstep Martha had orders to fill up the teapot ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Dilly?" said her grandfather, in the same slow, mellow, jubilant tone with which he had propounded his discovery, and not withdrawing his fond smile from the heavens; "'s the log tew reoundin' for ye to set ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... into a curtain'd room, Where mournful glimmers of the mellow sun Lie dreaming on the walls! Dim-eyed and sad, And dumb with agony, two parents bend O'er a pale image, in the coffin laid,— Their infant once, the laughing, leaping boy, The paragon and nursling of their souls! Death touch'd him, and the life-glow fled away, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... in the strength of his youth, and rolled it as a sweet morsel under his tongue. He was so glad to be young, and to know every morning on rising from sleep that he was still young! His passionate love of beauty made him see in old age only ugliness; he could not foresee the joys of the mellow years. All he saw consisted of grey hairs, wrinkles, double chins, paunches. To him all old people were Struldbrugs. We smile at the insolence of youth, because we know it will pass with the beauty and ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... are some very good pictures, particularly an Annunciation by Domenichino, which is a beautiful piece. It was brought lately from Italy by Mr. Quin, junior. The colours are rich and mellow, and the hairs of the heads inimitably pleasing; the group of angels at the top, to the left of the piece, is very natural. It is a piece of great merit. The companion is a Magdalen; the expression of melancholy, or rather misery, remarkably strong. There ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... all leaf-array'd The Danlian bird, the nightingale, out-poured, When Itys she deplored, Her mellow sorrows ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... one thing, and one thing only, you can do for me," said Lopez. His voice was peculiarly sweet, and when he spoke his words seemed to mean more than when they came from other mouths. But Mr. Wharton did not like sweet voices and mellow, soft words,—at least ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... down, turns into the vineyards, and lies down beneath the mellow shade of vines. He has no sketch-book—articles forbidden; his passport is in his pocket; and he speaks all tongues of German men. So, fearless of gendarmes and soldiers, he lies down, in the blazing German afternoon, upon the shaly soil; and watches the bright-eyed lizards ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... where the crabs hang yellow, Bright as the blossoms of the spring; Dumb is the close where the pears grow mellow, And none but the ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... uninquiring, willing or unwilling, conformity to itself. On Saturday half-holidays the scholars are taken to church in their surplices, across the [209] court, under the lime-trees; emerge at last up the dark winding passages into the melodious, mellow-lighted space, always three days behind the temperature outside, so thick are the walls;—how warm and nice! how cool and nice! The choir, to which they glide in order to their places below the clergy, seems conspicuously cold and sad. But the empty chapels ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... we have yet to add two cardinal qualifications, which by the subject of our present paper are possessed in liberal allotment. The first is, joy in life, from which the pages of M. Sainte-Beuve derive, not a superficial sprightliness merely, but a mellow, radiant geniality. The other, which is of still deeper account, is the capacity of admiration; a virtue—for so it deserves to be called—born directly of the nobler sensibilities, those in whose presence only can ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... said, in a voice audible only to him, while her eyes grew mellow with a look that tested his composure to the uttermost but which wrung no sign ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... of the most engaging stories that we have read for a goodly while—a story full of lively wit and mellow wisdom. Delightful is indeed the word which best sums up the ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... The mellow sunlight fell through the window upon old Ursela, as she sat in the warmth with her distaff in her hands while Otto lay close to her feet upon a bear skin, silently thinking over the strange story of a brave knight and a fiery dragon that ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... 1656-1743. Is reported to have been a pupil of Stainer. The work is good and the varnish in some cases of a mellow quality, in others somewhat thin. Some of the wood that he used was cut at the wrong season, ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... my approach,) che, che, che; (broken presently by a thoughtful strain,) caw, caw, (then softer and more confiding,) see, see, see; (then the original note, in a whisper,) chirrup, cheerup; (often broken by a soft note,) see, wee; (and an odder one,) squeal; (and a mellow note,) tweedle. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... risen. We are all standing up, more or less; it is impossible to sit through such news; Barbara's garden-hat is in her hand. The warm and mellow sun that is making Africa's dreary expanse in the map on the wall, one broad fine sheet, is enkindling, too, the silk of her hair, the flower-petals of her cheeks, the blue compassion of her eyes. My pretty, tall Barbara! Let them say what they like, I am sure that somewhere—somewhere—you ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... very light, for a thousand and ten glowworms came from the marsh and hung their beautiful lamps over the spot where the little folk were assembled. If the moon and the stars were jealous of that soft, mellow light, they ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field |
