Indeed, as she so often said to me, with a kind of plaintiveness which should have softened my declamatory ardour but did not, she did not like speaking of such matters at all; she regarded it as a kind of desecration. ❋ Unknown (1912)
Puss teams up with Humpty Dumpty a creepily epicene ovoid voiced with eerie plaintiveness by Zach Galifianakis to repay an old debt by stealing some magic beans from Jack and Jill. ❋ Joe Morgenstern (2011)
The recorded blare of Lynyrd Skynyrd and commotion of thousands of milling football fans — gathered for college football's national championship game — hardly obscured the plaintiveness in Linda Pope's voice Sunday afternoon. ❋ Unknown (2011)
Their eyes had in them the querulous plaintiveness of the monkey, their faces were even less symmetrical than the monkey's, and, hairless of body, they were far more ungarmented than any monkey, for clothes they had none. ❋ Unknown (2010)
The unaccustomed pessimism and plaintiveness of her letters worried Pearl “A little seed of anxiety sowed itself,” Grace wrote, “and thrust down a torturing root”. ❋ Hilary Spurling (2010)
It was the plaintiveness, the earnest, weak whine of the appeal, exactly the sort of sheep-to-the-slaughter attitude the Übermenschen Germans attributed to the lowly Jews, that alleged pathetic helplessness that only triggered more Blutrausch, the frenzy of killing that once begun could not be stopped. ❋ Mark Jacobson (2010)
Rougher hits: It would be years before I was savvy enough to realize that you'd have to hear "Don't Be Cruel" and "Heartbreak Hotel," rougher hits that preceded "Love Me Tender," and only then would you have an inkling of just how dangerous a singer might sound who cross-wired the plaintiveness of white gospel and country to the jump boogie of black blues. ❋ Unknown (2008)
In the drafts, we encounter this plaintiveness again but in a different register. ❋ Unknown (2006)
Just listening to him speak – with his slurred pronunciations, his breathtaking malapropisms, his embarrassing over-emphasis of terms he had obviously just learned, and his substitution of smirking plaintiveness for persuasive argument – this is an experience I simultaneously both wish for you as historians, and would hope that you could avoid as decent human beings. ❋ Unknown (2007)
It will only plead at first to my friends in the still conscious plaintiveness of a young and unhardened beggar. ❋ Unknown (2006)
Lately I've been getting a lot of very kind email saying nice things about the Secret Lives of Dresses series one, two, three, four and asking me, with various levels of plaintiveness and expectation, whether I'm going to write any more of them. ❋ Unknown (2006)
But as he listened, and glanced at the rise and fall of her chest and rib cage as she breathed, and as he took in the full power of her beautiful skin, sympathetic nature, palpable intellect, and the plaintiveness of her desire to make something of her life, he became frustrated by the need for distance. ❋ Meg Wolitzer (2005)
And lastly, even this engrossing subject being exhausted for the moment, they take refuge in singing; and, monotonous and droning as it is, their Modinha has yet an artless plaintiveness, which admirably suits the singer and the scenery. ❋ Unknown (2003)
Mr. Licitra is a protégé of one of the exemplary postwar Verdi stylists, Carlo Bergonzi, and he has that great tenor's unforced elegance of line, command of mezza voce and the capacity to adjust the timbre of his voice to suit the requisite emotion, from a stentorian, almost baritone thickness that promises a great Otello one day, to the reedy plaintiveness of La Traviata 's Alfredo. ❋ Unknown (2003)
Her voice had something of plaintiveness, and altogether she was of frailer type than her daughter. ❋ Unknown (2003)
Behind me, the cry of the animal rose from the stream bed, the plaintiveness replaced by pure frustrated rage. ❋ Unknown (2003)
