—Exodus, xx., 4
Also, Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.
—Exodus, xx., 12
Positive. To the cant about the pharisaism of reform there is one short and final answer. The man who tells the truth is a holier man than the liar. The man who does not steal is a better man than the thief.
—George W. Curtis
All positive words, phrases, and sentences require, as a rule, the falling inflection, the only exception being when the words or phrases are arranged in the form of a series. This point is fully brought out and developed in the treatment of series in another part of this chapter.
Qualified Positives. The words “only,” “alone,” “merely,” etc., when not qualified by the negative word “not,” generally qualify some other word or phrase; as,
Every thing around was wrapped in darkness, and hushed in silence, broken only by what seemed, at that hour, the unearthly clank and rush of the train.
—Edward Everett
Here “only” qualifies what the silence was broken by. The meaning being that it was broken by but one thing, and that was “the unearthly clank and rush of the train.” “Only,” in this example, requires the falling inflection because it is positive.