"Chord" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his wife's voice struck on the right chord in Godolphin's breast; he looked up, and saw her eyes full of tears and ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... through effort or desire? In all scenes of beauty or of excitement, in the allurements of society, in solitude and in sorrow, my heart still turned to you with ceaseless longing, as if you alone could touch its master-chord, and waken the harmonies which were struggling for expression. By slow degrees, as I learned to dissever you from the material world, there came a conviction of the nearness of your spirit, sometimes so ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... is bound to the harp. When the harp is truly strung, when there is not the slightest laxity in the strength of the bond, then only does music result; and the string transcending itself in its melody finds at every chord its true freedom. It is because it is bound by such hard and fast rules on the one side that it can find this range of freedom in music on the other. While the string was not true, it was indeed merely bound; but a loosening of its bondage would not have ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... the room below there flew up a sudden snapping chord on the guitar; one followed after another; then the voice of Leon joined in; and there was an air being played and sung that stopped the speech of the two women. The wife of the painter stood like a person transfixed; Elvira, looking into her eyes, could see all ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... found it in any two bodies assuming a similar order or arrangement. Perhaps the order in which branches spring from the brachial plexus that is most constantly met with is the one represented at D, Plate 12, where we find, on the outer border of B, the axillary artery, a nervous chord, d, giving off a thoracic branch to pass behind H, the lesser pectoral muscle, while the main chord itself, d, soon divides into two branches, one the musculo-cutaneous, e, which pierces G, the coraco-brachialis muscle, and the other which forms one of the roots ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... historical development, remained sequestered from the rest of Italy, so her painters demand separate treatment.[235] It is enough, therefore, for the present to remember that without the note they utter the chord of the Renaissance ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... my lifelong friend and chum, Carl Benda, who saved his country by solving a tremendously difficult scientific puzzle in a simple way, by sheer reasoning power, and without apparatus. The sociology professor struck a responsive chord in us: for since our earliest years we had wigwagged to each other as Boy Scouts, learned the finger alphabet of the deaf and dumb so that we might maintain communication during school hours, strung a telegraph wire between our two homes, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... break and give no sign Save whitening lip and fading tresses, Till Death pours out his longed-for wine Slow-dropped from Misery's crushing presses,— If singing breath or echoing chord To every hidden pang were given, What endless melodies were poured, As sad as earth, as ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... which he was unused, and he was amazed to find that it had effected an understanding of some vague and intangible kind between him and Sylvia Garrison. She might not approve of him, he had no idea that she did; but she had struck a chord whose vibrations pleased and tantalized. She was provocative and, to a degree, mystifying, and the abrupt termination of their talk seemed to leave the way open to other interviews. He thought of many things he might have said to her at the ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... unimaginable purpose should not break down, that he should not be forced to drop this incomprehensible feint of strangeness. But her dying eyes searching the face close to them discover in it no glimmer of feeling. Her heart-broken murmur: "Siegfried.... knows me not?" touches no chord. The hero is for handing her over with all convenient haste to her proper guardian. "Gunther, your wife is ailing!" As Gunther comes, he rouses her: "Awake, woman! Here is your husband!" Because her senses seem clouded and she a moment before rejected the statement that ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... will be long remembered in Coniston. A tentative chord or two from a guitar, and then the startled village was listening with all its might to the voices of two young men singing "When I first went up to Harvard"—probably meant to disclose the identity of the serenaders, as if that ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... with a badly fumbled chord, and turned from the piano with something like the show of reluctance with which a man turns from a girl who has refused him. That Mr. Merriman did not start or change expression on seeing a stranger in the very ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... were never very strong or very tender, and Tallman Taylor's neglect and unkindness during the past year, had in some measure chilled her first feelings for him. She now, however, looked upon herself as the most afflicted of human beings; the death of her baby had indeed touched the keenest chord in her bosom—she ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... chord ZZ'. Then, by geometry, the angle FQY is equal to the angle BTF, and the protuberance FY is equal the sine of that angle, making QF radius. This angle, made by the axis of the vortex and the surface of the sphere, is commonly ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... state of mind. Her present identity failed to touch a romantic chord in my heart. She was simply a memory, like Dora. But as a memory she had rekindled some of the old yearning in me. I was still in love with Anna, but at this moment I was in love both with her and with the Matilda of ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... effect. He saw nothing but constrained faces. It seemed as if they were expecting some one or something. Time was passing; ten o'clock had just struck. From the little boudoir sounds of music were occasionally heard, when Micheline's nervous hand struck a louder chord on her piano. She was there, anxiously awaiting some one or something. Jeanne de Cernay, stretched in an easy-chair, her head leaning ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... gentleman deserved all praise. Nothing could be better than the spirit, or the plain emphatic words of his discourse in these respects. And it was a most significant and encouraging circumstance that whenever he struck that chord, or whenever he described anything which Christ himself had done, the array of faces before him was very much more earnest, and very much more expressive of emotion, than at ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... a courtesy which was as genuine as strange in Derrick, who, like most men of his class, was not given to knightly attentions; but, every time he had seen this proud and sorrowful woman, some tender chord had been touched in his heart and given forth a note of pity and respect. "I can't blame myself enough for not keeping an eye on that lamp. I hope ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... impulse the battalion halted; faced to the window, and spontaneously came to "Present!" as the ringing rebel yell rattled the windows of that block. The chord had been touched that the roughest ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... thee for his sake, But not for his alone, For in thy heart, a chord we find, That vibrates ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower
... write his counterpoint in such a way that the voice parts should often come together in successions of chords. In order to do this he was compelled to adopt the kind of formations still in use and the fundamental chord relations of modern ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... ages in my song And send them singing up the heights to thee! Chord by aeonian chord the stars prolong Their passionate echoes to Eternity: Earth wakes, and one orchestral symphony Sweeps o'er the quivering harp-strings of mankind; Grief modulates into heaven, hate drowns in love, No strife now but of love in that great sea Of song! I dream! I dream! Mine eyes grow ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... and from his genial star Shed influence to the seeds of fancy kind, Than his attemper'd bosom must preserve The seal of Nature. There alone unchanged, Her form remains. The balmy walks of May There breathe perennial sweets; the trembling chord Resounds for ever in the abstracted ear, 370 Melodious; and the virgin's radiant eye, Superior to disease, to grief, and time, Shines with unbating lustre. Thus at length Endow'd with all that nature can bestow, The child ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... purpose, and wonderment gave way to another emotion, as his mind leaped from that past, with its covert, inner life, to the untrammeled moment when she had thrown off the mask in the solitude of the forest. Had some deeper chord of his nature been struck then? Their aspirations of a kindred hope had mingled in the majestic psalm; a larger harmony, remote from roundelay, or sparkling cadenza, that drew him to this Calvin maid. A solemn earnestness fell upon his spirits; ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... dragons sprang out of the fog upon the small clerk, they had merely the effect of all miracles—they changed the universe. He discovered the fact that all romantics know—that adventures happen on dull days, and not on sunny ones. When the chord of monotony is stretched most tight, then it breaks with a sound like song. He had scarcely noticed the weather before, but with the four dead eyes glaring at him he looked round and realised the strange ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... chord of their sympathies. Henry's already on the elan, flew to meet this demonstration of returning confidence, and he replied in a voice broken by the overflowing of his ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... chord and stopped all in a sweat, and looking rather haggard: he looked at Olivier, and there was still a troubled expression in his eyes; then he began to laugh, and went back to ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... not expected this, and his palsied hands shook nervously; but the terrible misfortune of his son had touched a chord of pity, and brought to his darkened mind a vague remembrance of the years in which the unselfish Richard had thought only of his comfort, and so he answered sadly, ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... I reflected upon this arrangement the more feasible did it seem to me; indeed, I saw no reason why the depression of a number of keys at the tuning fork end of the circuit should not be followed by the audible production of a full chord from the piano in the distant city, each tuning fork affecting at the receiving end that string of the piano with which it was in unison. At this time the interest which I felt in electricity led me to study the various systems of telegraphy ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... followed her, seemed relieved that she mentioned no specific name. Her remark seemed to touch a chord of sympathy in the company, for the women, especially, became very quiet. Favorita sat down at the end of the table between the manager ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... know that—'tis an old tune, like this"—and striking a chord or two, she was off before the rest had any guess of her intention, with a merry devil in her eye and her face glowing like ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... Ethel, however, struck the chord, and the girls chimed in weakly. Then, the music, strengthening their hopes as it progressed, made them more cheerful. Loudly, they brought out ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... down at her with narrowed eyelids. She received the further impression, an impression she had almost forgotten in the intervening years, of height and leanness, of dark eyes, and dark, crisp hair; a vibrant impression; something like a chord of music struck sharply. Unconsciously she let her hand rest in his for a moment, then she drew it away hastily. He was smiling and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... with tin. One only path it show'd By which the gatherers when they stripp'd the vines Pass'd and repass'd. There, youths and maidens blithe In frails of wicker bore the luscious fruit, While, in the midst, a boy on his shrill harp 710 Harmonious play'd, still as he struck the chord Carolling to it with a slender voice. They smote the ground together, and with song And sprightly reed came dancing on behind.[12] There too a herd he fashion'd of tall beeves 715 Part gold, part tin. They, lowing, from the ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... at a signal from the princess, and commenced his playing, if such it could be called, thrumming violently, and jarring every chord of his instrument to a tone of such dissonance, that the attendant girls put their fingers into their ears, and pitied the beautiful Babe-bi-bobu's bad ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... path-breaker in the harmonic forest—that true "forest of numbers"—as the forger of a melodic metal, the sweetest, purest in temper, and lo! you are regarded as one mentally askew. Chopin invented many new harmonic devices, he untied the chord that was restrained within the octave, leading it into the dangerous but delectable land of extended harmonies. And how he chromaticized the prudish, rigid garden of German harmony, how he moistened it with flashing changeful waters until it grew bold and brilliant with promise! ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... themselves subdivided, and terminate in much-branched tendrils. The main petiole of the leaf, whilst young, moves spontaneously, and follows nearly the same irregular course and at about the same rate as the internodes. The movement to and from the stem is the most conspicuous, and I have seen the chord of a curved petiole which formed an angle of 59 degrees with the stem, in an hour afterwards making an angle of 106 degrees. The two opposite petioles do not move together, and one is sometimes so much raised as to stand close ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... wrote Petrarchian sonnets to his platonic lady; but his martial, patriotic spirit appears in his canciones, especially in those on the battle of Lepanto and on the expedition of D. Sebastian of Portugal in Africa. In these stirring odes Herrera touches a sonorous, grandiloquent chord which rouses the page xxii reader's enthusiasm and places the writer in the first rank of Spanish lyrists. He is noteworthy also in that he made an attempt to create a poetic language by the rejection of ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... with a deep sigh, "God is punishing me perhaps for thinking too late of this just reparation. O my good and noble Sandra, you touch a chord which vibrates sadly in my heart, and you anticipate the unhappy confidence I was about to make. I feel a gloomy presentiment—and in the hour of death presentiment is prophecy—that the two sons of my nephew, Louis, who has been ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... took up the Harp of Life And smote on all its chords with might; Smote the chord of self, that trembling, Passed in ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... heaven, Blessed are Bors, Lancelot and Percivale, For these have seen according to their sight. For every fiery prophet in old times, And all the sacred madness of the bard, When God made music through them, could but speak His music by the framework and the chord; And as ye saw ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... rule, by conjugal affection, which is sometimes a less intense, at other times a more intense, feeling than the emotions aroused during courtship. The process may be compared to a modulation in music, in which some of the tones in a chord are retained while others are displaced by new ones. Such modulations are delightful, and the new harmony may be as beautiful as the old. A visitor ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... absolutely. Leonard often would point to his ears while teaching and say: 'Ouvrez vos oreilles: ecoutez la beaute du son!' ('Open your ears, listen for beauty of sound!'). Most Joachim pupils you hear (unless they have reformed) attack a chord with the nut of the bow, the German method, which unduly stresses the attack. Leonard, on the contrary, insisted with his pupils on the attack being made with such smoothness as to be absolutely ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... far from hence is the gentle hill Carambis, on the north, opposite to which, at a distance of 2,500 furlongs, is the Criu-Metopon, a promontory of Taurica. From this spot the whole of the sea-coast, beginning at the river Halys, is like the chord of an arc fastened at ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... could hardly recognize the well-known rooms, such was their disorder. The visitors opened the drawers wide, tapped on the wood of the sideboard, felt of the curtains, and sometimes, as she passed the piano, a lady, without stopping or removing her gloves, would lightly strike a chord or two. The child thought himself dreaming. And his mother, where was she? He went toward her room, but the crowd surged at that moment in the same direction. The child was too little to see what attracted them, but he heard the hammer ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... living for—when she had "come to the end of everything, and cared for nothing," she met with an old priest of venerable aspect, a trusted servant of King Edward, whose first words touched the deepest chord in her heart, while his second brought the healing balm. His name was John de Wycliffe. Was it any wonder that she accepted him as a very ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... the howdahs, this was a final chord from the band, for the huge beasts were thoroughly startled, and the lookers-on noted that similar uneasiness was being displayed by the nine great elephants that appertained to Rajah Hamet's force, these in particular showing a disposition to ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... doubt. She jumped whenever I came round the corner, and used to stand behind trees watching me. Also she used to come to see the dogs fed. Now, when I knew beyond all question the state of her feelings, I borrowed Guido's guitar, and struck one chord upon it at night under her window, and sang but one word—Vieni! In three minutes she came on to the balcony, and we looked at each other. There was a moon, and we could see quite well. We stood looking like that for five minutes without a syllable spoken, and then I went away. ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... to measure from. A stout square wooden staff is attached to the axis of the head; at a distance equal to the length of the bore, the end is jogged into the centre of a half disk of wood, which is fitted to the bore. The whole is so constructed that the straight edge of the half disk (or the chord) is in the same plane as a horizontal section of the head. A few holes are bored through the disk attached to the half head, to allow the instrument to pass freely into the gun and out ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... a night I saw the Pleiades, rising through the mellow shade, Glitter like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid. Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might; Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of sight. Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest Nature's rule! Cursed be the gold that gilds the straiten'd forehead of a fool! Comfort? Comfort scorn'd of devils! this is truth the poet sings, That a sorrow's crown of sorrow ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... There are gates of all shapes and times—Louis-Quatorze towers, and fortifications specially constructed under Vauban's own eye; while the approach to the town, from the land side, is by a tunnel, cut through the live rock which forms a solid chord to the arc described by the course of the river Doubs. This excavation, called appropriately the Porte Taillee, is attributed by the various inhabitants to pretty nearly all the famous emperors and kings who have lived from Julius Caesar to Louis XIV.: it owes its origin, no doubt, ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... modern machines. Rudder and elevator a good deal like the Nieuport. One passenger. Roomy cockpit and enclosed fuselage. Bleriot control. Nearer streamline than any American plane yet. Span, 33.6 ft., length 24, chord of wing at fuselage 6' 5''. Chauviere propeller, 6' 6'', pitch 4' 5''. Dandy new Gnome engine, 70 h.p., should ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... in the Carolinas; it was Carolina workingmen, Carolina wage-slaves who happened to be colored men. Not as Negroes must the race rise;... it is as workingmen, as a branch of the working class, that the Negro must denounce the Carolina felonies. Only by touching that chord can he denounce to a purpose, because only then does he place himself upon that elevation that will enable him to perceive the source of the specific wrong complained of now." This point of view was destined more and ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... Yankee girl had of a sudden realized his ideal. Something in their first meeting, momentary though it was, and strange according to conventional notions, struck the chord in his heart that was waiting silent for the magic fingers that knew the secret of waking it. If he had fancied that those fingers would never come, or coming, never find it, that something in his unhappy birth set him ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... without the underchording of the minor? Not to human ears. For they are attuned to life as it has really come to be. And the minor chord is in real life, never quite absent; and the minor chord is in the true human heart, never wholly absent. And only the music with the minor blended in is the real music of human life. Only it can play upon the finest strings of the ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... permeated with pathos and charm, the look, the attitude from which all formality had fled and only the natural grace remained, all were of the sort which sways without virtue and rouses in both weak and strong an answering chord of sympathy. ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... walk that day as far as Frances and Georgia did, I refused to go forward, and cried to go back. The result was that he used rough means before I promised to be good and do as he commanded. His act made my sister Frances rush to my defence, and also, touched a chord in the fatherly natures of the other two men, who summarily brought about a more comfortable ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... the modern State were essential parts of a statesman's equipment, and appeals on the ground of a weakening of his position by his unremitting care for Labour interests could not have a feather's weight in the balance for one in whom the chord of self had long since been struck and passed ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... crew; Adjust their staring kilts; and their swift eyes Turn still to him who sits to supervise. He in the midst, perched on a fallen tree, Eyes them at labour; and, guitar on knee, Now ministers alarm, now scatters joy, Now twangs a halting chord, now tweaks a boy. Thorough in all, my resolute vizier Plays both the despot and the volunteer, Exacts with fines obedience to my laws, And for his music, ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Elizabeth, royal as she stood, full of compassion for him, but with her hand already stretched out to draw back the canvas which separated her from that presence of death in which live and grow, watered by tears, all human sympathies. It seemed as if she always touched some chord in him untouched by others. Was it the truth that she spoke that thrilled him so? He perceived nothing clearly except the one thing ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... words touched a chord in my memory. We were once more standing, K. and I, in our workroom at Pretoria, having just finished reading the night's crop of sixty or seventy wires. K. was saying to me, "You had better go out to the Western ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... marked by some inconsiderable mounds and shallow hollows. There is a small bright central mountain on the floor, and, S. of it, two larger but lower elevations. A distinct straight cleft traverses the N.W. side of the interior very near the wall, to which it forms an apparent chord, and a second cleft occupies a similar position with respect to the bright N.E. border. A narrow pass forms a communication with ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... was equally fitting that the first public act of the founders of the City of the Loyalists should be to render thanks for their preservation and safe arrival in the land of their adoption. The psalms for that 18th morning may have struck a responsive chord in many hearts. "Comfort us again now after the time that thou hast afflicted us, and for the years wherein we have seen adversity." "Establish the work of our hands upon us, yea, the work of our ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... the Revolution, then borrowed the sonorous voice of the Abbe Fauchet, in order to make himself heard. Camille Desmoulins was the Voltaire of the streets; he struck on the chord of passion by his sarcasms. "Representatives," said he, "the applauses of the people are its civil list: the inviolability of the king is a thing most infinitely just, for he ought, by nature, to be always in opposition to the general will and our ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... disjoin, in one swelling, brutal babblement of noise. Now one overtakes another, and now lags behind it; now five or six all strike on the pained tympanum at the same punctual instant of time, and make together a dismal chord of discord; and now for a second all seem to have conspired to hold their peace. Indeed, there are not many uproars in this world more dismal than that of the Sabbath bells in Edinburgh: a harsh ecclesiastical tocsin; the outcry of incongruous orthodoxies, calling ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of wit to know the price at which her favours were bought; brave enough not to flinch, or to make abortive effort to avoid his fate. Her whole experience brought feeling of disgust toward men, when once satiated. With this man the chord of pity was touched. The honoured sleeves were wet with the honoured tears as she made answer to the plea. Without slightest effort to deny her once purpose she consoled and reassured him. "It was determined, that granted favour you should never leave this place." Her ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... and she saw what had happened to him. She put him aside with, "Run on to bed now, sonny; I've got a little work out here." And he left her. In the sitting room only the moon gave light. He stood at the window a moment, and then turned to his melodeon. His hands fell on the major chord of "G," and without knowing what he was playing he began "Largo." He played his soul into his music, and looking up, whispered the name "Ellen" rapturously over and over, and then as the music mounted to its climax the whole world's ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... experience, a modification in personality, a change of rhythm. I was walking with Nature, marching with her, with all her captains the great trees and her infantry the little bushes, and I caught in my ears her marching music. I was thrilled by the common chord that makes crowds act as one man, that in this case made my heart beat in unison with all the wild things. I may as well say at once I love them all and am ready to live with them ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... sharp smites the axe, And helm and cuirass ring; The foam flies from the charger's flanks, Like wreaths of winter's snow; Spears shiver, and the bright shafts start In thousands from the bow— Strike up, strike up, my minstrels all Use tongue and tuneful chord— Be mute!—My music is the clang ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... vocal rowdyism reached Daniel's ear, he detected from out of the hubbub a gentle voice in E-flat minor, accompanied by the inexorable eighth-notes sung with impressive vigour. Then the voice died away in a solemn E-flat major chord, and everything was as if sunk in the bottom of ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... not smile,—I never but once saw the light of a smile on her face,—but she gave a low chuckle. Evidently we had touched a chord that would respond; an ignoble one it might be, but it was something ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... presents him with a pair of white kid gloves. The illustrious conductor, having taken some time to thrust them upon a very large and red hand, leisurely takes up his baton, rises, grins upon the expectant musicians, lifts his arm, and—the first chord is struck! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... sympathy. Every wise man and good citizen ought to be aware of the existence and operation of this power. There seems indeed to be a constitutional, original, sympathy in our nature. When men act in a crowd, their heartstrings are prone to vibrate in unison. Whatever chord of passion is struck in one breast, the same will ring forth its wild note through the whole mass. This principle shows itself particularly in seasons of excitement, and its power rises in proportion to the ardor and ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... architecture, all worship! In Dresdenian gallery let Raphael hold Him up as a child, and in Antwerp Cathedral let Rubens hand Him down from the cross as a martyr, and Handel make all his oratorio vibrate around that one chord—"He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquity." But not until all the redeemed get home, and from the countenances of all the piled-up galleries of the ransomed shall be revealed the wonders of redemption, shall either man or seraph or archangel know the height, and depth, ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... her, but he has left a striking testimony to the favourable impression which her tact and good sense made upon him when he first came into contact with her. She possessed to a high degree the power of choosing the right moment and striking the true chord, and she appears to have been an excellent judge not only of the feelings of large bodies of men, but also of the individual characters of those with whom she dealt. She had a style of writing which was eminently characteristic and eminently feminine, and it is ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... is there found a more noble or heroic character than Theodore Koerner (1791-1813). Short as was his existence, he had already struck, with more or less success, almost every chord of the poetic lyre. His dramas, with many faults, abound in scenes glowing with power and passion, and prove what he might have achieved had life been spared to him. But it is his patriotic poems, his "Lyre and Sword," which have invested the name of Koerner with the halo of fame and rendered his ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... wish," she said, "you could have heard what Mr. Harum said this morning about your singing, particularly his description of The Lost Chord, and I wish that I could repeat it just as ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... another followed, and was lost in the singer's voice. During a long phrase on the harpsichord, sharp and tinkling, the singer turned his head towards the dais, and there came a plaintive little sob. But he, instead of stopping, struck a sharp chord; and with a thread of voice so hushed as to be scarcely audible, slid softly into a long cadenza. At the same moment he threw his head backwards, and the light fell full upon the handsome, effeminate face, with its ashy pallor and big, black brows, of the singer Zaffirino. At the sight ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... wireless, mental telepathy, the sympathetic chord, and so on, and so on, good honest words to describe that which no one understands, and which caused the girl sitting on a prosaic bed in a prosaic hotel to smile suddenly as ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... firmly, O Psalmist, the jubilant chord; Golden be your harp In praise of Christ Jesus, our Savior and Lord. We sing ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... is fully accomplished, and it has nothing further to do with the material. Only that Almighty Power which created it can restore its association with a perception of matter, and that by reuniting the broken chord—the silver chord which bound it to its prison walls of clay. Henceforth it is to deal only with pure spirit and as pure spirit; it has a nobler destiny before it, and higher and more glorious objects to employ its powers and engross its emotions and affections than any that earth can afford; ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... looked at Burleson dreamily, then turned, musing with bent head, sounding a note, a tentative chord. And then she sang. ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... fascination into his face. Her dress is of rich white satin, and, with the delicate green and gold sheen of her rival's robe—she with whom the Prodigal's right hand toys in caress—makes up a wonderfully brilliant prismatic chord, having the effect of focusing the richer, but not less gorgeous, pigments spread everywhere on the canvas. The faces of the women are very beautiful, and are made voluptuous by a subtle art which, through all their beauty, tells a story of unrestrained ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... have often been seduced, and as it were carried off, by their own youth, but toward the days of autumn, restored to the maternal hearth, they have added to their harps the grave or plaintive chord on which either religion or unhappiness finds expression. Old age is a traveler in the night time; the earth is hidden from sight and he can see nothing but the ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... epitome of a harvest field, golden orange and poppy crimson, with a tiny velvet jacket for the poppy stamens. They pass, an exquisite and dazzling apparition, between McComas and Bohun, and then back in a circle to the end of the table, where, as the final chord of the waltz is struck, they make a tableau in the middle of the company, the harlequin down on his left knee, and the columbine standing on his right knee, with her arms curved over her head. Unlike their dancing, which is charmingly graceful, their attitudinizing is hardly a success, and threatens ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... go, Tom!" The trumpet tones were Peter's. The call thrilled an answering chord of defiance in every breast, and a low ominous murmur swept through ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... He struck a chord, and it sounded to him not like the voices of a musical instrument, but like a clattering together of tin dishes. This enraged him. His self-consciousness vanished. Those ivory keys and well-tempered ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... his hands down with a bang on to the final chord of his rhapsody. There was just a hint in that triumphant harmony that the seventh had been struck along with the octave by the thumb of the left hand; but the general effect of splendid noise emerged clearly enough. Small details matter little so long as the ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... to have touched with instinctive skill the right chord for consolation. Mrs. Clarkson spoke again after a minute with a steadier and ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... affliction and to the general scene of carnage that had taken place in Stockholm. He pictured the evils in store for the proud highlanders before him, and appealed to them in the name of Almighty God to join him in a war for liberty. But all this eloquence was wasted. His appeal struck no responsive chord. The people flatly refused to give him their assistance. He had, therefore, but one course left. With no further hope of keeping his whereabouts unknown, he hastened with all speed from the town, and fled over ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... rock: read Shelley: read Mrs Browning. Well, well, it was not to be. [He rises solemnly]. Lord Summerhays: I ask you to excuse me for a few moments. There are times when a man needs to meditate in solitude on his destiny. A chord is touched; and he sees the drama of his life as a spectator sees a play. Laugh if you feel inclined: no man sees the comic side of it more than I. In the theatre of life everyone may be amused except the actor. [Brightening] Theres an idea in this: an idea for a picture. ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... done what is possible with the talent entrusted to him, and unconsciously made the gift more suitable to join the Everlasting Choir, Eternal in the Heavens, to join in the congregation of saints who had found the harmony of the Lost Chord, and to make the heavens ring with the melody of the last strain, Only in heaven I shall ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... beside the quire of paper placed in readiness for his use, and dipping the pen twice into the ink-bottle, then bringing it to within an inch of his nose, to make sure it was properly filled, he broke silence: "We have said that the chord AB," etc. For three quarters of an hour he continued his demonstration, making short notes as he went on, to guide the listener in repeating the problem alone; then, taking up another cahier which lay beside him, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 10: Auguste Comte • John Morley
... bring him into the ship, he ran to the stern and said, "No! no! it is enough that I die alone. You must not perish; if you come, I shall throw myself into the water." Perceiving that his mind was affected, I said, "Now, Sekwebu, we are going to Ma Robert." This struck a chord in his bosom, and he said, "Oh yes; where is she, and where is Robert?" and he seemed to recover. The officers proposed to secure him by putting him in irons; but, being a gentleman in his own country, I objected, knowing that the insane ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... even though that right includes the privilege of not reading every word of the famous Essays, and of only reverting—in our light return to them—to those aspects and qualities which strike an answering chord ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... expense he had incurred in getting up his large expedition. Of course I told him how disappointed I had been in not getting a sight of the Little Luta Nzige. I described how we had seen the Nile bending west where we crossed in Chopi, and then, after walking down the chord of an arc described by the river, had found it again in Madi coming from the west, whence to the south, and as far at least as Koshi, it was said to be navigable, probably continuing to be so right into the Little Luta Nzige. Should this be the case, then, by building boats in Madi above the cataracts, ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... regretting deeply their mad impulsiveness in accepting the invitation. On this, other presents were offered; Bulpert said his memento would come later on. One of his friends sat on the music-stool, and Sarah, the charwoman's daughter, entering at the first chord with a tray that held sandwiches and cakes, said to him casually, "Hullo, George, you on in this scene?" and handed around the refreshments. Bulpert's friend, disturbed by the incident, waited until the girl left the room, and then explained ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... architecture of verse. For Hebrew poetry, like the poetry of many primitive peoples, utilized the natural pleasure which the ear takes in listening for and perceiving again an already uttered sound. Rhyme is a gratification of expectation, like the repetition of a chord in music [Footnote: "Most musical compositions are written in quite obvious rhymes; and the array of familiar and classical works that have not only rhymes but distinct stanzaic arrangements exactly ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... forest had the virility of a young savage; it was neither dense nor vast; yet, in contrast to the ribbony grain fields, and to the finish of the villa parks, was as refreshing to the eye as the right chord that strikes upon the ear after a ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... 11th, or the 99th, but a lens far different tells us they are used with different aims from those of Debussy. Emerson is definite in that his art is based on something stronger than the amusing or at its best the beguiling of a few mortals. If he uses a sensuous chord, it is not for sensual ears. His harmonies may float, if the wind blows in that direction, through a voluptuous atmosphere, but he has not Debussy's fondness for trying to blow a sensuous atmosphere from his own voluptuous cheeks. And so he is an ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... Wisdom! we have felt Thy fitness, when beside the smitten friend We took our place. The voiceless sympathy The tear, the tender pressure of the hand Interpreted more perfectly than words The purpose of our soul. We speak to err, Waking to agony some broken chord Or bleeding nerve that slumbered. Words are weak, When God's strong discipline doth try the soul; And that deep silence was more eloquent Than all the pomp of speech. Yet the long pause Of days and nights, gave scope for troubled thought And their bewildered minds unskillfully Launching ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... to be the only room lighted up. They entered, each with a demeanour intended to conceal the inconcealable fact that reciprocal love was their dominant chord. Elfride perceived a man, sitting with his back towards herself, talking to her father. She would have retired, but Mr. ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... musical sound uttered with decision by one instrument always makes the corresponding chord of another vibrate; and Mary felt, as she left her positive, but warm-hearted friend, a plaintive vibration of something in her own self, in which she was conscious her calm friendship for her future husband had no part. She fell into one of those reveries ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... trial of his flying-machine, which seems to have come to an abortive issue for the time, strikes a sympathetic chord in the constitution of our race. Are we not the lords of creation? Have we not girdled the earth with wires through which we speak to our antipodes? Do we not journey from continent to continent over oceans that no animal can cross, and ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... sounds has a simple physical measure for its basis; and the rate of vibration is complicated by its sweep or loudness, and by concomitant sounds. What a rich note is to a pure and thin one, that a chord is to a note; nor is melody wholly different in principle, for it is a chord rendered piece-meal. Time intervenes, and the harmony is deployed; so that in melody rhythm is added, with its immense appeal, to the cumulative effect already secured by rendering many notes together. The ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana |
