In the first place, narrowness, due to the confinement to a single action in which the elements of human skill or strength are largely eliminated; secondly, monotony, in the assimilation of man to a machine, whereby seemingly the machine dominates man and not man the machine, and, thirdly, irrationality, in that work became dissociated in the mind of the worker with any complete or satisfying achievement.

It was driving past the window with a silent, purposeful monotony.

The noise of the iron-teethed rollers crunching the lumps of coal, and the bang and rattle of ponderous machinery were never before so loud and discordant, and the black streams moving down their narrow channels never passed beneath these dizzy boys in monotony quite so dull and ceaseless as they were passing this day.

He always had kind words for them, and devised means to lessen, at times, the rigid monotony of their tasks.

Nature, rather than cultivation, had bestowed on him the faculty of conveying the impression he wished to convey, in tones that charm; and held his auditors, and penetrated ears dulled and fatigued by monotony and indistinctness.

They prefer variety, and the occasional light and air of heaven, to monotony and seclusion and silence.

They give bills of fare for one week; bills of fare for each day in a month, to avoid too great monotony in diet.

Hence our more recent historians, wishing to avoid the monotony of ordinary history, have attempted to explore the common life of the people, and to bring out their manners and habits: they would succeed in making history more interesting if the materials, at present, were not so scanty and unsatisfactory.

Its monotony and routine and mechanical duties must ever have been irksome.

Perhaps (he wrote) months of the monotony of a Calcutta existence may render the mind more sensitive to novelty and beauty; at any rate, the impressions experienced on visiting Agra at this time have been singularly vivid and keen.

Having a special predilection for the human body, he by no means confined himself to monotony in its presentation.

One realises the awful monotony of a long stay in the pack, such as Nansen and others experienced.

A spirit of tolerance and good humour pervades the whole community, and it is glorious to realise that men can live under conditions of hardship, monotony, and danger in such bountiful good comradeship.

For two hours I watched them, and then, bored with the monotony of it, returned to the hotel.

And seeing it as it now is, you would not believe all the delightful detail that a ray of sunlight awakens in that hideous brown monotony, soaked with rain and bedimmed with mist.

A book written by a Cornish miner, whose life passes in subterranean monotony, sparing none of the petty and ever-recurring details that make up his routined existence, would, if set down in the baldest language, be a valuable contribution to literature.

At the workhouse the monotony weighed upon him.

The very monotony of their grazing and chewing their cuds gets on your nerves.

This idea that his fate was bound up with that of the plant took strange possession of the once practical Grizel; it was as if some of Tommy's nature had passed into her to help her break the terrible monotony of the days.

It is hard to believe that they have been supporting the monotony of trench life for so long, and living under bombardment,and cavalry at that, trained and hoping for another kind of warfare.

Sea-sickness wore off after a day or two, and was succeeded by the monotony of life on board a small ship.

Our own reaction on its monotony would be the one thing experienced there in the form of something coming to pass.

She is continually subjected to impositions from her ignorance of what is required for the dishes she selects, while a lavish extravagance, or parsimonious monotony betrays her utter inexperience in all the minute yet indispensible details of elegant hospitality.

The pale blue sky of spring over me, and the pale green grass under me, were charming perhaps; but there was the same monotony in them, as in other things.

The dinners themselves were improved, for a horrible monotony had crept into the soups and sauces of forty years; and Uncle Leonard was no epicure; he seemed to have no more stomach than he had heart; brain and pocket made the man.