"Discordant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... will be divided. Gentlemen who think they will be, even in the worst contingency, will, I think, be disappointed. If forced to the last extremity, the people will meet the issue as they best may; but be assured they will meet it with no discordant councils. ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... What worker in iron can fashion a key that will open the door to that world of higher activities, the world of moral and spiritual forces which alone woos Eunice's spirit and mine? What welder of steel can beat into one the discordant soul forces of willing Negroes and unwilling whites, the really pivotal point of the problem? Really pressing is the need of industrial training for our people, but my peculiar case calls for something that must come from Lincoln ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... crown were intermixed with sharp, piercing thorns. This is plainly observable in the previous pages, wherein the difficulties which had beset his various administrations, and which chiefly arose from the discordant passions of their members, are historically narrated. Burke rightly observes:—"Our constitution stands on a nice equipoise, with steep precipices and deep waters on all sides of it: in removing it from a dangerous leaning toward ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... treasure-ship, who had gone mad at the sight of the bursting sacks that the divers had brought up from the sea, as the gold coins covered the deck. This man had once lived in the old stone house on the 'faire greene lane,' and a report had gone out that his spirit still visited it, and caused discordant noises. Once ... on a gusty November evening, when the clouds were scudding over the moon, a hall-door had blown open with a shrieking draft and a force that caused the floor ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... the first of our Hanover Series of English Kings; that hitherto unique sort, who are really strange to look at in the History of the World. Of whom, in the English annals, there is hitherto no Picture to be had; nothing but an empty blur of discordant nonsenses, and idle, generally angry, flourishings of the pen, by way of Picture. The English Nation, having flung its old Puritan, Sword-and-Bible Faith into the cesspool,—or rather having set its old Bible-Faith, MINUS any Sword, well up in the organ-loft, with plenty of ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... action by the will and understanding, and retained under their irremissive, though gentle and unnoticed, control (laxis effertur habenis), reveals itself in the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities: of sameness, with difference; of the general, with the concrete; the idea, with the image; the individual, with the representative; the sense of novelty and freshness, with old and familiar objects; a more than ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... creative thinking. One must progress far enough in mental self-culture before it becomes a pleasure, almost an intoxication. Up to a certain point the acquirement of knowledge is a task, an effort, a seeming self-sacrifice; beyond that point it is a labor of love, a pleasure, a consecration. The crude, discordant efforts of a child, when it first begins to acquire a musical education, very convincingly illustrates the condition of mind of the beginner in self-culture. The task is a toil and the results do not stimulate further spontaneous ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... tones, with tender touches check, 340 Bend to your golden yoke his willing neck, With silver curb his yielding teeth restrain, And give to KIRWAN'S hand the silken rein. —Pleased shall the Sage, the dragon-wings between, Bend o'er discordant climes his eye serene, 345 With Lapland breezes cool Arabian vales, And call to Hindostan antarctic gales, Adorn with wreathed ears Kampschatca's brows, And scatter roses on Zealandic snows, Earth's wondering ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... kinds of genius, religious leaders have been subject to abnormal psychical visitations. Invariably they have been creatures of exalted emotional sensibility. Often they have led a discordant inner life, and had melancholy during a part of their career. They have known no measure, been liable to obsessions and fixed ideas; and frequently they have fallen into trances, heard voices, seen ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... sometimes thought that mutatis mutandis the same may be true of the bagpipes, the strains of which—'skirl,' I believe, is the proper expression—are not altogether discordant with the moaning of the wind over those desolate moors or the cries uttered by their wilder denizens; though, speaking personally, I never could ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... health of the whole body; but a defect discovers itself, even when the body is in perfect health. But a disease of the mind is distinguishable only in thought from a sickness. But a viciousness is a habit or affection discordant and inconsistent with itself through life. Thus it happens, that in the one case a disease and sickness may arise from a corruption of opinions; in the other case the consequence may be inconstancy and inconsistency. ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... the world," said a gentleman of foreign air, "but I have never seen anything so picturesque as this boat. Look at the variegated colors and styles of these costumes, at the manifold types of countenance, at the blending of races—black and white and red! Listen to the discordant but altogether charming sounds, the ringing of the great bell, the roar of the whistle, the splash of the paddlewheels, the songs of the negroes, and the clatter of dishes in the cabins! It is a hurly-burly ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... confined to one indignant line. Proof was demanded and was not offered; but its very absence only deepened the malignity of the slanderers. Even in the midst of this storm the muse of Thomas Davis sang no discordant strain, nor did his pen trace one angry word. On the contrary, he summoned his whole energies to the task of harmonising the jarring elements around him. His inspiration rose to that unearthly height, whereon guidance becomes prophecy. Great, strong and unselfish convictions, entertained ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... human deeds, unless he have a definite point of view, that is to say, an intimate personal conviction regarding the conception of the facts which he has undertaken to relate. The historical work of art cannot be achieved among the confused and discordant mass of crude facts, save by means of this point of view, which makes it possible to carve a definite figure from that rough and incoherent mass. The historian of a practical action should know what is economy and what morality; the historian of mathematics, what are mathematics; the ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... dumb. In brief, the Spoken Word of England has not been true. The Spoken Word of England turns out to have been trivial; of short endurance; not valuable, not available as a Word, except for the passing day. It has been accordant with transitory Semblance; discordant with eternal Fact. It has been unfortunately not a Word, but a Cant; a helpless involuntary Cant, nay too often a cunning voluntary one: either way, a very mournful Cant; the Voice not of Nature and Fact, but ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... led the way downstairs and out into the deserted street. The first gray halftones of dawn were creeping into the sky, so that the outlines of Limehouse loomed like dim silhouettes about us. There was abundant evidence in the form of noises, strange and discordant, that many workers were busy on dock and riverside, but the streets through which our course lay were almost empty. Sometimes a furtive shadow would move out of some black gully and fade into a dimly seen doorway in a manner peculiarly ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... corn is sold, which the Moor says is sacred and unfit to be pressed by the sandals of the dog-Jew. What a hubbub of sounds: the unearthly cry of the enormous camels and the neighing, braying, and bleating of other quadrupeds, mingled with the discordant jabber of various and strange tongues. I have been in many singular places in the course of my existence, but certainly in none more so than the Soc ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... one, "that I have been led, in the course of God's providence, to do so much as I have done, towards purging revelation from those doctrines and practices which were discordant with its teachings, and prevented ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... predict the result. Out of these conditions a new combination sprang up in New York, which took the name of the "People's party," and sought not only to transfer the choice of electors to the people, but to overturn the Albany Regency. So rapidly did the discordant elements of New York Clintonians and anti-Clintonians combine in this party, that Crawford's managers, in an effort to break the combination, introduced a resolution in the legislature removing DeWitt Clinton from his office of canal commissioner. The purpose was to split the People's ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... the boulevard once or twice, meeting no one they knew, and they listened to the band which was playing as usual in the garden. It was a very poor performance; the music being harsh and discordant, but at a distance it sounded languorous and sad. They only met men and women joking and laughing, whose noisy merriment seemed at variance with the mournful music and the dreary evening. It irritated Yourii. At ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... accustomed to pronounce these Semi-vowels, n. ng. l. r. also the following Consonants; h. g. k. t. with some kind of opening the Mouth, else they may joyn them sometimes with certain Vowels, not without a notable yawning, & a discordant noise. Now in general, Winter-time is fitter almost for to instruct the Deaf, because then they see the Breath coming forth from the Mouth, whilst ...
— The Talking Deaf Man - A Method Proposed, Whereby He Who is Born Deaf, May Learn to Speak, 1692 • John Conrade Amman
... indeed, but they were none the less effective. As far back as 1661, Hottinger, professor at Heidelberg, came into the chorus of theologians like a great bell in a chime; but like a bell whose opening tone is harmonious and whose closing tone is discordant. For while, at the beginning, Hottinger cites a formidable list of great scholars who had held the sacred theory of the origin of language, he goes on to note a closer resemblance to the Hebrew in some languages than in others, and explains this by declaring that the confusion ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... arms; business men hurrying to the slip to take the boat for Brooklyn or Jersey City,—all seemed intent on business of some kind, even to the ragged newsboys who had just obtained their supply of evening papers, and were now crying them at the top of their voices,—and very discordant ones at that, so Paul thought. Of the hundreds passing and repassing before him, every one had something to do. Every one had a home to go to. Perhaps it was not altogether strange that a feeling of desolation should come over Paul as he recollected that he stood alone, homeless, ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... afterwards, they pretended to have received an express commandment, forbidding them to shew the plates. Respecting the manner of obtaining and translating the Book of Mormon, their statements were always discordant. The elder Joseph would say, that he had seen the plates, and that he knew them to be gold; at other times he would say they looked like gold; and at other times he asserted he had not ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... Strong Color. Extreme red, yellow, and blue are discordant. (They "shriek" and "swear." Mark Twain calls Roxana's gown "a volcanic eruption of infernal splendors.") Yet there are some who claim that the child craves them, and must have them to produce a thrill. ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... liberal use of the rattle. As an illustration of the songs used at this period of the illness, the following is presented, the mnemonic characters being reproduced on Pl. XVI, C. The singing is monotonous and doleful, though at times it becomes animated and discordant. ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... which we shall perceive new aspects of the divine character. New doors may be opened in our souls, from out of which we may pass to touch parts of His nature, all impalpable and inconceivable to us now. And when all the veils of a discordant moral nature are taken away, and we are pure, then we shall see, then we shall draw nigh to God. The thing that chiefly separates man from God is man's sin. When that is removed, the centrifugal force which kept our tiny orb apart from the great central sun being ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... hard to write this letter. There are so many things I want to tell you, and they stand on such different levels, that the effect is necessarily confusing and discordant, and I find myself doubting if I am really giving you the thread of emotion that should run through all this letter. For although I must confess it reads very much like an application or a testimonial or some such thing as that, I can assure you I am writing this in ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... more cynical and dissatisfied than usual, Honor thought. His strong jaw and irregular features hid his thoughts, but not their reflection which showed a mental unrest. He was clearly not a happy man, and was plainly a discordant element in light-hearted company. "A real wet blanket," Tommy whispered in her ear. "If one makes a joke he either doesn't hear it, or thinks it not worth laughing at. Something has turned him sour, so he hates ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... before the church door; and we were on the point of riding up to let our horses drink, when it occurred to us that it might be consecrated, and we forbore. Just at this moment, the bells set up their harsh, discordant clang; and the procession moved into the court. I was anxious to follow, and see the ceremony, but the horse of one of my companions had become frightened, and was tearing off toward the town; and ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... Land: at five o'clock, we passed close to the Babel Islands, on which were heaped incredible numbers of sea-birds of various descriptions, each species huddled together in flocks separate from the other. On another part of the island many seals were seen, by the growl of which, and the discordant screams of the birds, a strange confused noise was made, not ill adapted to the name the ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... as the rest. It could be soft or harsh, musical or discordant. To Althea it was only pleasant and gentle; and, by degrees, came to possess for ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... I feel thy breath, O spring! And now the seal hath fallen from my gaze, And thy wild music in my ready ear Finds a quick echo! The discordant world Mars not thy melodies; thy blossoms now Are emblems of my heart; and through my veins The flow of youthful feeling, long pent up, Glides like thy sunny streams! In this fair scene, On forms still fairer I my blessing pour; On her the beautiful, the wise, ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... to be a Michelangelo by the Munich painter Cornelius. Good judges have adopted this attribution, and to differ from them requires some hardihood. Still it is painful to believe that at any period of his life Michelangelo could have produced a composition so discordant, so unsatisfactory in some anatomical details, so feelingless and ugly. It bears indubitable traces of his influence; that is apparent in the figure of the dead Christ. But this colossal nude, with the massive ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... approaching too near one of the hybrid beasts. Chinese mules will kick as readily as their American cousins; and I can say from experience, that their hoofs are neither soft nor delicate. They can bray, too, in tones terribly discordant and utterly destructive of sleep. The natives have a habit of suppressing their music when it becomes positively unbearable, and the means they employ may be worth notice. A Chinaman says a mule cannot ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... chiefs, because of his continual communication with them, wished to repay the Spaniards for the kind treatment that they had given him—or rather he wished to obtain their good will, in order to regain his liberty. He began to treat for peace, and to harmonize discordant spirits, so that affairs might be meliorated, by reason of what the Spaniards requested. He assured the islanders of the great moderation which the Spaniards would exercise toward them, and that they would commit ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... single rusty hinge, and from the room within a dull, gray light glimmered faintly. Myles pushed the door farther open; it creaked and grated horribly on its rusty hinge, and, as in instant answer to the discordant shriek, came a faint piping squeaking, a rustling and a pattering ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... had endured with a dogged tenacity that was wonderful even for catgut, gave way with a loud bang, causing an abrupt termination to the uproar, and producing a dead silence. A few minutes, however, soon rectified this mischance. The discordant tones of the violin, as the new string was tortured into tune, once more opened the safety-valve, and the ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... prisoners squeaked at them, as though imploring them not to add to the agony by uttering discordant cries. But it was impossible for Madge to keep quiet, and Lambert shouted in anguish ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... press life's crowded mart, With hurrying step and bounding heart, A solemn lesson glean; Beware, lest, when ye cross that stream Whose breaking surges farthest gleam, No mortal eye hath seen, Discordant voices wake the shore The struggling spirit would explore, And to the trembling soul deny Its latest resting-place on high; Our acts are Judges, that must meet us there With seraph smiles of light, or ...
— Indian Legends and Other Poems • Mary Gardiner Horsford
... horizon, formed by the roofs, towers, spires and chimneys of three cities, will not appear higher than the lower half of the pedestal. In other words the statue will neither be dwarfed nor magnified by the contiguity of any discordant objects. It will stand alone. The abstract idea, as has been said, is noble. The plan of utilizing the statue as a lighthouse at night does not detract from its worth in this respect; it may be said to even emphasize the ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various
... appeared upon his kindly face. He looked at Aurelle, whom he was surprised to find quite unmoved; at Colonel Parker, who was hard at work; at the doctor, who was inclining his head and listening devoutly; and, resigning himself to his fate, he waited for the end of the acidulated and discordant noises. ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... obnoxious, particularly to the inhabitants of the Massachusetts; but his vicinity to them gave him so many opportunities of annoyance, that they dreaded to increase his animosity by appearing to favor a rival. With the most discordant views, and widely differing feelings, the magistrates and deputies of Boston convened, at the governor's request, to consult on the propriety of yielding to the wishes of La Tour. A stormy council at length broke up, with ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... knows—those terrible "small hours" of the morning. Then, every mere insect of evil omen that daylight has kept in bounds grows to the size of an elephant, and what was the whirring of his wings becomes discordant thunder. Then palliatives lose their market-value, and every clever self-deception that stands between us and acknowledged ill bursts, bubblewise, and leaves the soul naked ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... the ancient musical instruments, which, on occasion, are still played upon in chorus; a picture of them has been published by Father Tschepe. (See page 128.) According to the description given by this European visitor, the music is of a most discordant and ear- splitting description: but that does not necessarily dispose of the question; for even parts of Wagner's Ring are a meaningless clang to those who hear the music for the first time, and who are unable to read the score or to follow out the "classical" ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... so long since I played," said the Dodo, smirking bashfully, "I think I have almost forgotten my notes; however, I'll try." And, throwing his head back, he shrieked out in a discordant voice— ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... angles approaching the right angle is always harsh and somewhat discordant, useful when you want to draw attention dramatically to a particular spot, but to be avoided or covered up at other times. There is an ugly clash of crossing lines in our original scribble, and at C we have introduced a mass to cover this up, and ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... himself to be useful. In fact, he could not remember when he had been so happy. High on his hill, he heard October's skyey gales go by above his head, and in the noonday drowse, watched, from the shade of a tree, the crows fly out across the valley, with creaking wings and harsh, discordant cries. In the early morning, he came tip-toeing down the stairs; from the open doorway he marked day rise above the east in bands of yellow light, and saw the foggy clouds of dawn slip quietly ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan
... wrote largely for the court circle. His verses were first read in tapestried chambers, and to the gracious ear of stately lords and ladies. It was because he wrote for such an audience that he avoids the introduction of any discordant element in the shape of the deeper and darker social problems of the time. The same reticence occurs in Horace, writing as he did for the ear of Augustus and Maecenas, and of the fashionable circle thronging the great palace ...
— English Satires • Various
... swolne with some other griefes, Is thought with childe, by the sterne Tyrant, Warre, And no such matter? Rumour, is a Pipe Blowne by Surmises, Ielousies, Coniectures; And of so easie, and so plaine a stop, That the blunt Monster, with vncounted heads, The still discordant, wauering Multitude, Can play vpon it. But what neede I thus My well-knowne Body to Anathomize Among my houshold? Why is Rumour heere? I run before King Harries victory, Who in a bloodie field by Shrewsburie Hath beaten ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... complain of his behavior." "Shelley and his girl-wife visited Windermere," we think are the words of De Quincey in alluding to their sudden apparition in the Lake district just after their union. And two more discordant natures could hardly have been bound ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... these feelings that we can follow in some cases and to a certain extent the progress of a work. Indeed, the sight of the particular accidents among which it was developed—which belong perhaps to a heterogeneous and wildly discordant order of things, which are out of proportion and out of harmony with it, which do not explain it; which have, as it seems to us, no natural right to be connected with it, to bear on its character, or contribute to its accomplishment; to which we feel, as it were, ashamed to owe what we ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... vermilion. Parrots of vivid green with scarlet heads flew to and fro across the stream; and twice over a great ara or macaw, with its large, hooked beak and scarlet-and-blue feathering, a very soldier in uniform among birds, flew over them, watching them keenly as it uttered its harsh, discordant cry. Then, too, there were the humming-birds darting here and there with bee-like flight, emitting a flash every now and then as their metallic, scale-like feathers caught the ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... that returned to the lodging-house later on, after wearing out the patience of several belated storekeepers, might have been the very Santa's supply-train itself. It signalized its advent by a variety of discordant noises, which were smothered on the stairs by Stretch, with much personal violence, lest they wake the Kid out of season. With boots in hand and bated breath, the midnight band stole up to the dormitory and looked in. All was safe. The Kid was dreaming, and smiled in his sleep. ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... in my throat any more than I can explain my subsequent actions on that evening. Was it possible I was sorry to see the last of him? Or was it simply self pity that shortened my breath and made my voice seem broken and discordant? ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... that Nils burned to express; but the fiddle refused to obey him, and screeched something utterly discordant, as ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... yet commenced active operations, it remains to be seen whether the Royal Academy of Music will be a worthy sister of the Royal Academy of Art, and admit this enterprising body to its orchestra. We have it, on the best authority, that its compositions will be quite as rough and discordant as ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... pale and he could not speak, and was trembling. He had not the courage to untie the cloths, for he knew there was nothing underneath but clay, and his manner was so strange that the charwoman was frightened. He stood like one dazed by a dream. He could not believe in reality, it was too mad, too discordant, too much like a nightmare. He had only finished the ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... acquainted with it is in the pages of the English poets. But due allowance must be made for differences of temperament. Our cuckoo is scarcely a "merry harbinger"; his talents, such as they are, certainly are not musical. However, the guttural cluck is not discordant, and the black-billed species, at least, has a soft, mellow voice that seems ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... shimmer of the orphreys and the stones, the costumes of the other judges appeared darker and discordant. The black vestments of secular justice, the white and black robe of Jean Blouyn, the silk symars, the red woollen mantles, the scarlet chaperons lined with ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... Power, to which supreme control Over their will by their own weakness lent, Made all its many names omnipotent; All symbols of things evil, all divine; 735 And hymns of blood or mockery, which rent The air from all its fanes, did intertwine Imposture's impious toils round each discordant shrine. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... aquatic birds, sea-mews or gulls. Some were cleverly killed and, prepared in a certain way, made very acceptable water-game. Amongst large-winged birds, carried a long distance from all lands and resting upon the waves from the fatigue of their flight, I saw some magnificent albatrosses, uttering discordant cries like the braying of an ass, and birds belonging to the family of ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... suspicion that we can neither deny nor affirm. It may be said that this comes to much the same thing as if they had formally decided in the last or neutral sense. It is not so. This illegitimate union of three contradictories fritters character away, breaks it up into discordant parts, and dissolves into mercurial fluidity that leavening sincerity and free and cheerful boldness, which come of harmonious principles of faith and action, and without which men can never walk as confident ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... heavy night air suddenly became vibrant with a medley of harsh, discordant sounds, compounded of the yells and shrieks of the savages, the fierce ejaculations of our own people, the quick, snapping explosions of revolvers, and the gasping groans of the wounded, as the natives swarmed up our low sides and suddenly found themselves confronted ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... glance at the new-comer who entered, was in keeping with the general surroundings,—giving, in their solemnity and gravity, a character of almost religious seriousness, to what, in any other land, would be a scene of riotous and discordant tumult. I was watching all this with a more than common interest, when the door opened, and the waiter entered with a large placard. He was followed by another with a ladder, by whose assistance he succeeded in attaching the large square of paper to the wall above the ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... the manipulation of the floating vote. Parties may boast of their voting strength and their compactness, but their voting strength under the present system of voting is only as strong as its weakest link, discordant or discontented minorities, will permit it to be. The stronger a party is in the Legislature the more is expected from it by every little section of voters to whom it owes its victory at the polls. The impelling force ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... office for permission to remain at Auxonne with the regiment, now known as the First. Probably the real ground of his disinclination was the fear that a residence at Valence might revive the painful emotions which time had somewhat withered. He may also have felt how discordant the radical opinions he was beginning to hold would be with those still cherished by his former friends. But the authorities were inexorable, and on June fourteenth the brothers departed, Napoleon for the first time leaving debts which he could not discharge: for the new uniform ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... tears and prayers and unbounded acknowledgments of the absurdity of your conduct, together with solemn assurances of reformation, you have for a moment recalled my lost love, and made me hope you would acquire some power over the discordant passions that devoured you. But these promises were so often repeated, and so continually forgotten, that at length they afforded neither hope nor ease: they had only been gleams of sunshine, foreboding ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... numbers burst what bound before, Woe to the State that thrives no more! Yea, woe, when in the City's heart, The latent spark to flame is blown; And Millions from their silence start, To claim, without a guide, their own! Discordant howls the warning Bell, Proclaiming discord wide and far, And, born but things of peace to tell, Becomes the ghastliest voice of war: "Freedom! Equality!"—to blood, Rush the roused people at the sound! Through street, hall, palace, roars the flood, And banded ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... You know what visit that was. It was the visit that One made to a manger in Bethlehem nineteen centuries ago. That was a visit that remade the world. It was so wonderful that a star pointed it out with finger of silver, and our discordant old earth was serenaded with the music of that land of eternal melody. But aside from that one visit, I think this the most ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... Pompey had left Rome ostensibly for the purpose of arranging for supplies of grain from Africa and Sardinia. He was followed by many of his most noted adherents, the conference counting more than two hundred senators and sixscore lictors. Csar, like a mighty magician, caused the discordant spirits to act in concert. The power of the triumvirs is shown by the change that came over public opinion, and the calmness with which their acts were submitted to, though it was evident that the historic ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... by the table and put a pair of phones to his ears. Then he began to tune. First there came to him a discordant confusion of static and other noises, including an ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... and place A harsh discordant natal scream out-sounding, to touch the mother's heart ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... Nous! [3] Thou that hast for ever parted From the Cambridge Senate House, Make, O make us valiant hearted! Wisdom, still residing here, Calm our mind and chase our fear While with wild discordant clamour On our College gate ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... homes of men, above the noisy teeming streets, they rise like some soft strain of perfect music, cleaving its way amid the jangle of discordant notes. Here, where the voices of the world sound faint; here, where the city's glamour comes not in, it is good to rest for a while—if only the pestering guides would leave one ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... the case requires, and not as it sorteth with the person." The like "proper relations" govern writers, even where their audience is unknown to them. It has often been remarked how few are the story-tellers who can introduce themselves, so much as by a passing reflection or sentiment, without a discordant effect. The friend who saves the situation is found in one and another of ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... man, a very old man, sat on an upturned clamhod and yawled a discordant miserere on a fiddle. His eyes were wide open and sightless. A woman whose tattered skirt only partly concealed the man's trousers and rubber boots which she wore, occasionally addressed him as "father." She was piling about him a few articles of furniture ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... comfortably—no, not very comfortably—to sleep. I had my sleep, however; and when I awoke and re-entered the house, a merry group of guests had surrounded the harper in the hall, and were singing Penillion at full stretch, to the now unsteady and somewhat discordant accompaniment of the minstrel; the laugh was of course against me, but good-nature, rather than contempt, characterised the bantering, and I bore it all in good part. The party broke up about eleven, and before midnight I was at home, after a magnificent ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various
... subject of the ruins, remains, and discoveries. They have all different systems, which they support with great vehemence and obstinacy, and perhaps ingenuity, but the ignorant and curious traveller is only perplexed with their noisy and discordant assertions. They will insist upon knowing everything, whereas there are many things here which are so doubtful, that they can only conjecture about them; but when once they have published a theory they ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... methods. Those who think this a disparagement of his work must have very little conception of the mass of original thought that still remains to Mr. Mill's credit, the great critical power that could gather valuable truths from so many discordant sources, and the wonderful synthetic ability required to weld these and his own contributions ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... prisoner, and in a few moments by his shouts had aroused the whole sleeping household, and stewards, freedmen, and slaves came rushing into the atrium. Candelabra blazed forth. Torches tossed. Maids screamed. Many tongues were raised in discordant shout and question. At last order was in some measure restored. Agias found himself before a tribunal composed of Falto, the subordinate villicus,[111] as chief judge, and two or three freedmen to act ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... all her spars to creak and her canvas to rustle with a pattering of reef-points, a jerk and rattle of hemp and chain sheets, and a faint click of cabin doors upon their hooks, the whole accompanied, perhaps, with a discordant bang of the wheel chains to the kick of the rudder as the black water swirled and gurgled round it. In the midst of it all there would come the clear, metallic clang of a bell—a single stroke, as though someone away out there ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... Birralong; a scandal that ate its way into the peace and contentment of the township; a scandal which introduced into the simple existence of the district a discordant, jarring note, common enough in more crowded centres of population, but absent up to that moment from the annals of the sober, clean-living inhabitants of the bush township. And the men who gathered on Marmot's verandah to settle all the problems and the squabbles ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... to its base, and could not have performed a lesser journey than twenty miles. She approached us with so much confidence, and licked our hands with that domestic affection which is so winning in dumb animals, that we declined to accept and take her from her native haunts; but strove by every discordant noise and angry gesture to drive her back to the mountains. With the same care, however, that the deer had avoided us, she now sought our society, and did not leave us until we had reached the precincts of the village, and leaping a high, wooden fence that separated it from the forest, we gave ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... from this same combination of these two apparently discordant emotions in our Lord, the lesson of what it is in men that makes them the true subjects of pity? Ay, these scribes and Pharisees had very little notion that there was anything about them to compassionate. But the thing which in the sight of God makes the true evil of men's ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... and their night's rest. Five evenings thus they come in silence. But on the sixth each and every mule lifted up his voice in rejoicing over the morrow. The distant wayfarer—familiar with ranch ways—hearing this strident, discordant, thankful chorus far across the evening peace of the wide country, would thus have known this was Saturday night, and that to-morrow was the Sabbath, the ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... other languages, when a verb has discordant nominatives connected disjunctively, it most commonly agrees expressly with that which is nearest, and only by implication, with the more remote; as, "When some word or words are dependent on the attribute."—Webster's Philos. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... again by the same virtues of industry and thrift that once made them profitable to the English ancestors of the men who are deserting them. To have achieved even these prosaic results (if you choose to call them so), and that out of materials the most discordant,—I might say the most recalcitrant,—argues a certain beneficent virtue in the system that could do it, and is not to be accounted for ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... it wandered into a melody, sweet and delicate; then she drew other chords, and on into other melodies, all related; then she began to talk again. "It is only on two strings I am playing—for hear? the others are now souls out of the music of God—listen—" she drew her bow across the discordant strings. "How that is terrible! So God creates great and beautiful laws—" she went back into the harmony and perfect melody, and played on, now changing to the discordant strain, and back, as she talked—"and gives to all people power to understand, ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... "As LIFE discordant elements arrests, Rejects the noxious, and the pure digests; Combines with Heat the fluctuating mass, And gives a while solidity to gas; 40 Organic forms with chemic changes strive, Live but to die, and die but to revive! Immortal matter braves the transient storm, Mounts from the wreck, unchanging ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... power of moving in every separate joint. I imagine, that by these gestures they desired to represent how they pursue their enemy, ridicule his cowardice, rejoice at their victory, and so forth. During all this time they howl continually in a most discordant manner, and make the most hideous faces. At the commencement, the men appear alone upon the scene of action, but after a short time two female forms dart forward from among the spectators, and dance and rave like two maniacs; the more unbecoming, bold, and indecent ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... discordant sound with his violin, a friend observed, "If your instrument could speak, it would address you in the words of Hamlet: "Though you can fret me, you ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... supply, which I remarked to you two years ago, has directed the Convention ever since. It is true, the interval has produced much dissertation, and engendered many projects; but those who were so unanimous in rejecting, were extremely discordant in adopting, and their own disputes and indecision might have convinced them of their presumption in condemning what they now found it so difficult to excel. Some decided in favour of public schools, after the example of Sparta— this was objected ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... disagreeable sound, or a chill from a contrary wind. It was not a pettish humor, but a deep, grave feeling of hatred, as if the germ of it had grown in the blood and spread to every tissue of his body. The thought of Boyle's being so near him was discordant. It pressed on him with a sense of being near some unfit thing ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... back to the town, he had not shaken himself free of dreams. The quiet of a foreign midday lay upon the streets, and there were few discordant sounds, few passers-by, to break the chain of his thought. He had movement, silence, space. And as is usual with active-brained dreamers, he had little or no eye for the real life about him; he was not struck by the air of comfortable prosperity, of thriving content, which marked the great ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... but this time their lips only hurt against each other—Oliver feels for a ghastly instant as if he were kissing Nancy after she had died. It seems to him that everything in him has made itself into a question as discordant and unanswered as the tearing cry of a puppy baying the moon, struck out of his senses by that swimming round silver above him, ineffably lustrous, ineffably removed, none of it ever coming to touch him but light too pale to help at all. He is holding ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... to dispose of them; the "British Queen," he said, was the earliest chance. The Pamphlet itself (or rather booklet, for Fraser has gilt it, &c., and asks five shillings for it as a Book) is out since then; radicals and others yelping considerably in a discordant manner about it; I have nothing other to say to you about it than what I said last time, that the sheets were yours to do with as you saw good,—to burn if you reckoned that fittest. It is not entirely a Political Pamphlet; nay, there are one or two things in it which my American ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... more disposed to cultivate our friendship than provoke our resentment. If, on the other hand, they find us either destitute of an effectual government (each State doing right or wrong, as to its rulers may seem convenient), or split into three or four independent and probably discordant republics or confederacies, one inclining to Britain, another to France, and a third to Spain, and perhaps played off against each other by the three, what a poor, pitiful figure will America make in their eyes! How liable would she become not only to their ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... loaded the air to intoxication with the sweetness of their mingled perfumes. Parrots and other gaily-plumaged birds flitted busily hither and thither with loud and—it must be admitted—more or less discordant cries; inquisitive monkeys swung from branch to branch, and either peered curiously at us as we passed, or dashed precipitately, with loud cries of alarm, into the concealment of the deepest shadows at our approach; and at one point, where the belt of mangroves was interrupted, ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... heard your flute, Mr. Fairthorn." The musician again emitted his discordant chuckle, and, nodding his head nervously and cordially, shambled away without lighting a candle, and was engulfed in the shadows of some ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... (Greek), 'jurymen,' (Greek), 'the bourgeoisie.' (d) The translator has also to provide expressions for philosophical terms of very indefinite meaning in the more definite language of modern philosophy. And he must not allow discordant elements to enter into the work. For example, in translating Plato, it would equally be an anachronism to intrude on him the feeling and spirit of the Jewish or Christian Scriptures or the technical terms of the Hegelian ...
— Charmides • Plato
... said a discordant voice, as the unpresentable person Wang stepped forth from behind a hanging curtain, where, indeed, he had stood concealed during the entire conversation, "is especially forbidden by the twenty-third detail of the things to be done and ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... it to all the rest, and makes it part of the general harmony. The Arctic lichen is found growing under the shadow of the palm on the rocks of the tropical serra, and the song of the thrush and the tap of the woodpecker mingle with the sharp discordant cries of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... and how inspiriting! Was she as shrewd, as sophisticated, as she tried to appear, or was he merely, he asked himself, the victim of her irrepressible humour, of a prodigious display of the modern spirit? At least she was a part of her time—not, like Margaret and himself, a discordant note, a divergent atom, in the general march toward recklessness and unrestraint. Young as she was, he felt that she had already solved the problems which he had evaded or pushed aside. She had learned the secret of transition—a perpetual motion that went in circles and was never still. Here, ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... degree aware of the startling effect they produced; she uttered them with the most straightforward unconsciousness and unconcern. Her taste in dress was, as might have been expected, slightly eccentric, but, for a person with so great a perception of harmony of sound, her passion for discordant colors was singular. The first time I ever saw her she was dressed in a bright brimstone-colored silk gown, made so short as to show her feet and ankles, having on her head a white satin hat, with a forest of ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... a single note which he could not place. It was music, and yet it was discordant, and it had the effect of a ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... verse-making faculties returned to me, and I proceeded successfully, till my poem grew so long, and in Wordsworth's opinion so impressive, that he rejected it from his volume, as disproportionate both in size and merit, and as discordant in its character. In the mean time I had gotten myself entangled in the old sorites of the old sophist,—procrastination. I had suffered my necessary businesses to accumulate so terribly, that I neglected to write to any one, ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... the morning, before the sun has arisen, and at the time when the dawn is making the city gray and leaden in color instead of somber and black, these sparrows begin to chatter and chirp and sing in discordant notes, and by this I know the day has come. Upon this morning it seemed to me the sparrows chattered with an unusual commotion; and as I listened I heard from another window near mine the voice of grief and lamentation. Then I knew that one who had long been sick had passed away. ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... melancholy chant from the old hags around—a dreadful strain, that sounded like a funeral dirge, sung in shrill, discordant voices, led by the nightmare hag, who as she sang waved in her hand a kind of club. All the time I held Almah in my arms, regardless of those around us, thinking only of her from whom I must soon again be separated, and whom ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... hooting, and cries of "No Noble! no six and eightpence! no bloody bridge! no murderers!" &c. &c. Poor Sir Samuel was astonished; he had been made to believe that he would be received with the greatest applause and indeed enthusiasm; but these discordant sounds quite disconcerted him, and when he began to speak, instead of his being listened to, the cries and the groans were redoubled. Alderman Noble put forth his hand to command silence; this was received with the most violent and indignant execrations ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... right, a sluggish river glided, like a serpent, stealthy, sinuous, and dark, into a seemingly impervious jungle; on the left, a Southern swamp filled the air with malarial damps, swarms of noisome life, and discordant sounds that robbed the hour of its repose. The men were friends as well as comrades, for though gathered from the four quarters of the Union, and dissimilar in education, character, and tastes, the same spirit animated all; the routine ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... the middle of his song, he heard a discordant shout, and jumping up, discovered the youngest little Missy hid behind the ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... ferocity; his complexion was colourless; and every trait spoke predominate self-will; his smile was pleasing, though disdain too often curled his lips—lips which to female eyes were the very throne of beauty and love. His voice, usually gentle, often startled you by a sharp discordant note, which shewed that his usual low tone was rather the work of study than nature. Thus full of contradictions, unbending yet haughty, gentle yet fierce, tender and again neglectful, he by some strange art found easy entrance to the admiration and affection ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... latter was a pleasant reality, the former a no less pleasant poetical foil to it. The comedy, I have said, is incongruous; a mixture of Congreve with sentimental incompatibilities: the gaiety upon the whole is buoyant; but it required the consummate art of Palmer to reconcile the discordant elements. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... at Lima are very musical, the brass of which they are composed having a considerable quantity of silver mixed with it; but they are rung in the most discordant manner. Instead of being pulled in chimes, as in England, thongs of leather are fixed to the clappers, and at the appointed times boys ascend the belfry, and swing the tongues of all the bells at once, from one side to another, producing the most barbarous ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... driving away spirits, probably in consequence of its effect in frightening wild animals. It is for the same end that music is essential at weddings, especially during the night when the spirits are more potent; and this is the primary object of the continuous discordant din which the Hindus consider a necessary accompaniment to ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... pine, dreamed that the white moonlight was the light of dawn, and began to stir his sable wings, and croak a harsh welcome; but awakened by his blunder, and ashamed of his mistake, he broke off in the very midst of his discordant call, and again settled gloomily down amid his black plumes to his interrupted repose, making by his sudden silence the surrounding silence more silent ...
— Holiday Tales - Christmas in the Adirondacks • W. H. H. Murray
... sing by night—sometimes an owl, And now and then a nightingale) is dim, And the loud shriek of sage Minerva's fowl Rattles around me her discordant hymn: Old portraits from old walls upon me scowl— I wish to heaven they would not look so grim; The dying embers dwindle in the grate— I think too that I ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... tendencies, nor to prevent their play. But we may so order our social polity as to assist their natural drift, or to obstruct it. In the one case, the affairs of the community are conducted with harmony, and with the least possible friction. In the other, they are discordant, and are forced to reach their proximately proper adjustment through antagonism and struggle. It is the difference between the ship which flies swiftly to her destined port with favoring winds, fair skies, and peaceful seas, and one which struggles wearily to her harbor through adverse ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various |
