"Keynote" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reaction against the world that is too much with us, is, after all, the keynote of what is most intimately associated with the name of pastoral in literature—the note that is struck with idyllic sweetness in Theocritus, and, rising to its fullest pitch of lyrical intensity, lends a poignant charm to the work of Tasso and Guarini. ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... be executed he always performed the office himself. Once when some one inquired why he did not delegate such a disagreeable task to one of his deputies, he is said to have replied, "Simply because it is disagreeable." It was this elevated sense of moral responsibility which formed the keynote ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... Dick (striking the keynote at once). No, no! Let me out—I am innocent! (He gives a gasp of relief as he realizes the situation.) Free! It is true, then! I have escaped! I dreamed that I was back in prison again! (He shudders and ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... the fact that, as in some others of the chateaux of Touraine (always excepting the colossal Chambord, which is not in Touraine), there is less vastness than one had expected, the least hospitable aspect of Blois is abundantly impressive. Here, as elsewhere, lightness and grace are the keynote; and the recesses of the windows, with their happy proportions, their sculpture and their colour, are the hollow sockets of the human ornament. They need the figure of a Francis I. to complete them, or of a Diane de Poitiers, or even of a Henry III. The stand ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... accusation! Is any healthily intelligent and progressive human being ever the same for many weeks together? Change—readjustment—is the keynote of life; the very breath of it. When you can accuse me of not changing I shall know that I have fallen into the sere and withered leaf past redemption. And now that I have expiated myself—(probably to your more complete confusion!)—we'll have a short canter to blow ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... "The keynote of her whole disposition was a generous charity towards everything and everybody with whom she came in contact. There was no trouble too great for her to take, no detail too small for her to neglect when it was a matter of giving happiness to others. She was ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... household tyranny, existing side by side with certain general ideas of liberty and constitutional government, under the ultimate domination of the Emperors' despotism as introduced by Augustus, is to be found the keynote of Rome's subsequent social life. Without those things, the condition of society in the Middle Age would be inexplicable, and the feudal system could never have developed. The old Roman principle that 'order should have precedence over order, not man over man,' rules ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... refused a roomful of silver for his services in exterminating the Mongolian bandits Rhodes looked at him in surprise and said: "Why didn't you take it? What is the earthly use of having ideas if you haven't the money with which to carry them out?" Here you have the keynote of the whole Rhodes business policy. A project had to be carried through regardless of expense. It applied to the Cape-to-Cairo dream just as it applied to every other enterprise ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... that old Greek fatalism, or belief in destiny or necessity. The Greek tragedies are pervaded and permeated, steeped and dyed with this idea of relentless fate. It is called heredity, in these modern days. Heredity plus environment,—in these we find the keynote of the great productions of the leader of ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... shore was the first to scent the coming strangers. He gave vent to a low growl. It was the keynote to the canine choir, which immediately sent up a howl of discord. Forthwith from every hut there leaped armed men, anxious women, and terrified children, which latter rushed towards the cliffs or took ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... at once, and hit hard! These reports here," and he gestured at the papers that Brevard had spread out under the lamp-light, "prove that, at the proper signal, every chance indicates that we can paralyze transportation—the keynote of ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... please, until his hardened nature relaxes and he begins to feel and perhaps speaks to others favorably of you. St. Paul has said: "For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant of all that I might gain the more." This is the keynote of policy, and though in humbling yourself you control and hide your true feelings, recollect that all your faculties are ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various
... perfectly bred people accepted the remark in sympathetic silence. There was not even an eyebrow raised, but I fancy that Isobel's words, calmly spoken and with obvious intent, struck the keynote of her future relations with ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... That is the keynote of the old melancholy Indian music; the bass, whose undertone accompanies, with a kind of monotonous solemnity, all the treble variations in the minor key. The world is unreal, a delusion and a snare; sense is deception, happiness a dream; nothing ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... enthrone a man, but an idea, for ideas exist for ever. But what idea? There is the touchstone of all philosophy! Amid the wreck of creeds, the crash of empires, French revolutions, English reforms, Catholicism in agony, and Protestantism in convulsions, discordant Europe demands the keynote, which none can sound. If Asia be in decay, Europe is in confusion. Your repose may be death, but our ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... the keynote of freedom, that reverberated all over Scotland, and down into England, and over into Holland, and at length struck the ears of William, Prince of Orange. Cameron and his Covenanted associates, having disowned the authority of King Charles, disputed by force of arms ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... doing things in a much bigger way than in former years. But this must not be construed as meaning that the different companies are simply looking about for new ways to spend money. On the contrary, economy—sensible economy—is becoming more and more the keynote of film production. In every department, unnecessary expense is done away with. This applies to both the purchasing and the producing of photoplays. Better prices are being paid, yes; but stories calling for what ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... a certain European character to the policy of the pontiffs after that date, for the menace of the Turk seemed so imminent that the heads of Christendom did all that was possible to unite the nations in a crusade. This was the keynote of the statesmanship of Calixtus III [Sidenote: Calixtus III 1455-8] and of his successor, Pius II. [Sidenote: Pius II 1458-64] Before his elevation to the see of Peter this talented writer, known to literature as Aeneas Sylvius, had, at the Council of Basle, published a strong argument against ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... of the next dance Betty and her partner finished up within a few feet of the camel. With the informal audacity that was the keynote of the evening she reached out and gently rubbed the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... The keynote of her being throughout this last winter was one of unwonted seriousness. A certain startling intensity of thought and feeling showed itself every now and then. It was painfully evident that she was under a severe strain, both physical and ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... every kind of a meeting held in the church with religious exercises. Then Mamanowatum made his address, always good and suggestive, the keynote of which was thanksgiving and gratitude to God for the blessings of the year. When he had finished, he called on different Indians for addresses. Some of them were very good also. This is the night of all others, when Indian orators try to ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... himself. He was a designer, and one of the greatest in literature. His heroes, little folk, artisans or rustics, bureaucrats or shopkeepers, prostitutes or rakes, he places them in faintly colored, but well-defined surroundings. And, immediately, the simplified landscape gives the keynote of the story. ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... The keynote of these books is manliness. The stories are wonderfully entertaining, and they are at the same time sound and wholesome. No boy will willingly lay down an unfinished book in ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... far more likely to prejudice than to attain the very ends expected of it, "for, if they only knew it, the British Cabinet had far less power in Dublin than the Kildare Street Club and certain other institutions which were running the military authorities;" but he struck the keynote of the situation when he said: "Ours is a fighting race, and, as I told you when I was speaking before on the Military Service Bill, it is not a Military Service Bill that you want in Ireland. If you had passed a Military Service Bill for Ireland it would have taken 150,000 men and three months' ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... Nature and The American Scholar, strike the keynote of Emerson's philosophical, poetical, and moral teachings. In fact he had, as every great teacher has, only a limited number of principles and theories to teach. These principles of life can all be enumerated ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... The keynote of the Salariki character was a wary independence. The only form of government they would tolerate was a family-clan organization. Feuds and deadly duels between individuals and clans were the accepted way of life and every male ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... The keynote of Murgatroyd's character was simplicity. Unaided he rose to be pre-eminent as a bricklayer, but in private life he never became accustomed to the exclusive society to which by his genius he had won admittance. He never quite lost the mincing speech of the class ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... lived ten thousand Negroes and two thousand whites. The country is rich, yet the people are poor. The keynote of the Black Belt is debt; not commercial credit, but debt in the sense of continued inability on the part of the mass of the population to make income cover expense. This is the direct heritage of the South from the wasteful economies of the slave ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... sternly into them. He never lied. With him the truth was instinctive, masterful; it was the keynote of his religion. "Yes," he said. "You are a spiritual hindrance. I am a human man—you are a sensual woman. You have determined to do everything in your power to keep me ever mindful of the fact. Because I love Margaret Lampton and I do not love you, you have determined to make me unworthy ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... of these seven principles of man in exactly the same way, only from the standpoint of a higher form of observation of the world, as allusion is commonly made to the seven colours that make up white light, or to the seven notes of the scale (the octave being regarded as a repetition of the keynote). As light appears in seven colours, and sound in seven tones, so is the unity of man's nature manifested in the seven principles described. No more superstition attaches to the number seven in the case of occult science than when associated ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... leaders of thought their vassals are ranged. Davis, Toombs, Breckinridge, Yancey, Pryor, Wigfall, Wise, and others direct. Herbert, Keith, Lamar, Brooks, and a host of cavaliers are ready with trigger and cartel. The tone at Washington gives the keynote to the Californian agents of the Southern Rights movement. There are not enough Potters, Wades, and Landers, as yet. The Northern mind needs time to ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... weight was thrown chiefly in favor of Republicans. In Iowa in 1891 it was given to Democrats. In all States the men whom they oppose are those who have made themselves conspicuous as 'Granger' and anti-railway politicians. The keynote of the movement and the one plank in the platform of the clubs is that the extreme anti-railroad legislation of late years has reduced the earnings of the companies to a point at which they are unable ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... Josephine and I were their age! More particularly that choicest section of it which we were taught to think and speak of as the land of the free and the home of the brave. As I look back now in philosophic mood, simplicity seems to me to have been the keynote of our day. Not merely had the gladsome flannel costume and the Indian pajamas not yet begun to force an issue with the oratorical black broadcloth coat and the up-and-down white nightgown. There were no shingle stains to speak of but those of time and eternity, and he who owned ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... the days were growing darker and the way more thorny. She was gaining only in the power of endurance; she was unconsciously developing the trait that bade fair to become the keynote of her life—fidelity. It was her absolute loyalty to her long-cherished love that prevented her from accepting invitations to go with Belle and Roger. Through all disguises she saw that the latter was a lover and not a friend, ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... is on the famous keynote of the Epistle to the Philippians: Rejoice in the Lord. This is after all the only safe temper for tempted men. By preachers of a theology as narrow as their experience, it is often said that our guilt and native vileness, our unquestioned peril and instability, ...
— Four Psalms • George Adam Smith
... the Major had not waited to see. "Millais' Huguenot" was complete. Rosalind Graythorpe, or Palliser, stood there again with her husband's arm round her—her husband of twenty years ago! And in that fact was the keynote of what there was of unusual—of unconventional, one might almost phrase it—in her way of receiving and requiting his declaration. It hardly need be said that he was unconscious of any such thing. A man whose soul is reeling with the intoxication of a new-found happiness ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... me, yet will I trust in Him"—and why has that sentiment been re-echoed by millions of men and women acquainted with grief and affliction? The early Christians did not exactly live lives of luxury or even security, sheltered from contact with tragedy and horror; yet the keynote of primitive Christianity is the note of joy, while the background of early Christian experience is a radiant conviction of the Divine benevolence. And when we remember that the same holds true of so many eminently spiritual souls in all ages, who ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... criticism; but throughout the reign of Domitian his pen was wholly laid aside. The celebrated passage of the Agricola in which he accounts for this silence may or may not give an adequate account of the facts, but at all events gives the keynote of the whole of his subsequent work, and of that view of the imperial government of the first century which his genius has fixed ineradicably in the imagination of the world. Under Domitian a servile senate had ordered the works of the two most eminent martyrs of reactionary Stoicism, Arulenus ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... on crosses in our Western world as well as any one and we can do it in crowds too as they do in India, but we propose if crosses are expected of us to know why in crowds. Knowing why makes us think of things and makes us do things. It is the keynote ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... by accident, nor is it a mere piece of tautology, that we read 'the Lord his God.' For, if you will remember, the very keynote of the psalms which are ascribed to David is just that expression, 'My God,' 'My God.' So far as the very fragmentary records of Jewish literature go, it would appear as if David was the very first of all the ancient singers to grapple that thought that he stood in a personal, individual ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... reported to her new friend, Elizabeth Stanton, who promised to help all she could, urging that the new organization lead the way and not follow the advice of cautious, conservative women. Susan agreed, and as a first step in carrying out this policy, she asked Mrs. Stanton to make the keynote speech of the convention. Soon the Woman's State Temperance Society was a going concern with Mrs. Stanton as president and Susan as secretary. There was no doubt about its leading the way far ahead of the ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... national as in an individual manner. The tendency to-day is not to put forth a universal conception but an individual belief. Individualism—the same quality that appeared so strongly in Michael Angelo's art—has become a keynote in modern work. It is not the only kind of art that has been shown in this century, nor is nature the only theme from which art has been derived. We must remember and consider the influence of the past upon modern men, and the attempts to restore the classic beauty of the Greek, ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... sentence was the keynote. Bouck had suggested the principle, and other Conservatives had vainly tried to enforce it, but it remained for Seymour to obtain for it a fair and candid hearing. With great clearness, he unfolded the condition of the public works and of the public finances, and, with able reasoning, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... abolitionists under the condemnation of that celebrated book, written by a modern limiter of "human responsibility"—not by the ancient one, who exclaimed, "Am I my brother's keeper?" In that book, to which, by the way, the infamous Atherton Resolutions are indebted for their keynote, and grand pervading idea, we find the doctrine, that even if it were the duty of Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, the North nevertheless should not seek for such abolition, unless the object of it be "ultimate within itself." If it be "for the sake of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Henceforth I will devote myself to the only real powers which can enlighten us. Yet there is humiliation in failure after so many years of study. It is folly to follow a partial truth of which we miss the keynote, though we ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... critics even found fault with the Doric order for certain 'mendosae et inconvenientes symmetriae';[133] but that order, the true symbol of the sons of Heracles, was one of the most momentous contributions ever made to the art of architecture. It was the keynote of Greek architecture throughout its finest period. Later it was superseded by the Ionic order, and when Rome became paramount in the western world, that, in its turn, yielded its place of pride to the Corinthian order, opulent, luxurious, a little vulgar, a true register of the lowering ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... Give you my word, Grig, when he was off his chump in the fever, he raved like a poet, and an orator, and he was only an ordinary sportsman when he left home in the spring! Cleopatra, he called her one day, and I fancy that was the keynote—she must have been one of those exceptional women we read of in the ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... manuscript, and set up Cide Hamete Benengeli in imitation of the almost invariable practice of the chivalry-romance authors, who were fond of tracing their books to some recondite source. In working out the new ideas, he soon found the value of Sancho Panza. Indeed, the keynote, not only to Sancho's part, but to the whole book, is struck in the first words Sancho utters when he announces his intention of taking his ass with him. "About the ass," we are told, "Don Quixote hesitated a little, trying whether he could call to mind any ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... as for their portraits, whatever the commonplace may say against them, no one can deny that they possess that unique and wonderful charm which belongs to works of pure fiction. But even the Impressionists, earnest and industrious as they are, will not do. I like them. Their white keynote, with its variations in lilac, was an era in colour. Though the moment does not make the man, the moment certainly makes the Impressionist, and for the moment in art, and the 'moment's monument,' as Rossetti phrased it, what may not be said? They are suggestive also. If ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... from making any personal application of the test case suggested by the superintendent. But in a world which took its keynote from the harsh discords of the Red Desert, these little thoughtful talks with a man who was most emphatically not of the Red Desert were refreshing. And she could scarcely have been Martha Dawson's daughter or Frederic Dawson's sister without having ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... words, into any depth and any hue of Tyrian crimson and Byzantine purple. These with full blue breathed between them at the zenith, and green blue nearer the horizon, form the scales and chords of color possible to the morning and evening sky in pure and fine weather; the keynote of the opposition being vermilion against green blue, both of equal tone, and at such a height and acme of brilliancy that you cannot see the line where their ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... the despondent, power for the weak, comfort for the afflicted, guidance in times of difficulty, wise counsel for moments of perplexity, a stimulant to faithfulness, a cure for the blues, exhilaration, jubilation. Everything of a depressing nature has been scrupulously ruled out. The keynote, persistently followed through all the pages, is optimistic, bright, buoyant. Trumpet calls and bugle notes are furnished in abundance, but no dirges or elegies. Large space, it will be seen, is given to such ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... to see this crowded house. It is good for us to be here. When liberty is in danger, Faneuil Hall has the right, it is her duty, to strike the keynote of these United States. I am glad, for one reason, that remarks such as those to which I have alluded have been uttered here. The passage of these resolutions, in spite of this opposition, led by the Attorney-General ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... signify a slow but steady growth of national sentiment in favour of securing for the poor a better life. The keynote of the whole movement is the protection of the weak. This appears especially in a recognition of the growing claims of children. Not only is this seen in the history of factory legislation, but in the long line ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... statesmen, not omitting the monarchs, Venizelos stands out prominently not only as the most able, but as being by far the most liberal and as possessed of the broadest vision. Toleration has been the keynote to all his utterances and actions. He seems to have been the one man of them all who, without ceasing to be a Greek, has been able to rise above the atmosphere of petty jealousy, greed, and hatred that pervades the politics of the Balkan ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... the ancient sequence, "strait, austere, holy, and just." It was this rule, with the enthusiasm which marked all classes for religion and for knowledge, which inspired S. Columban in his great work. It was a work whose keynote was sacred study and which found its harmony in monastic service. S. Columban was the type, the representative par excellence, of the Irish monk, in his high idealism, his thirst for self-sacrifice, ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... moment to me. The woman showed her pleasure as frankly as a happy child. I had touched the keynote of her character as I had that of Adah Yocomb's a few hours before, and in her supreme individuality Emily Warren stood revealed before ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... The Master's keynote before every threatening evil was, "Be not afraid." Carmen's life-motif was, "God is everywhere." Jose strove to see that the Christ-principle was eternal, and as available to mankind now as when the great Exemplar propounded ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... the Germans, if I venture to indicate a touch inserted by Shakespeare for no other perceptible or conceivable purpose than to obviate by anticipation the indomitable and ineradicable fallacy of criticism which would find the keynote of Hamlet's character in the quality of irresolution. I may observe at once that the misconception involved in such a reading of the riddle ought to have been evident even without this episodical stroke of illustration. In any case it should be plain to any reader that the signal characteristic ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... amongst these surprised one or two people, notably Mr Seymour, who, being games' master had come a good deal into contact with Stanning, and had not been favourably impressed. The fact was that the keynote of Sheen's character was a fear of giving offence. Within limits this is not a reprehensible trait in a person's character, but Sheen overdid it, and it frequently complicated his affairs. There come times when one has to choose which of two people ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... attempted, as far as possible, to unify the collection by arranging the poems so that each should set the keynote to the next, or at least bear some relation to it in mood or theme. While it is impossible, with so varied a mass of material, that such a sequence should be exact, and in one or two instances the arrangement has been disturbed by the late addition or elimination of poems, the idea has been to differentiate ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... what had befallen him in the Rogan power-house. "That lever, Dex!" he said swiftly. "It's the keynote of the whole business. It absolutely controls the pull of gravity, and Lord knows what else besides. If we could only get at it again! Perhaps we could not only shut it off so that Jupiter's pull would function again, but also reverse the process so its gravity would be increased! Think what that ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... Dick (striking the keynote at once). No, no! Let me out—I am innocent! (He gives a gasp of relief as he realises the situation.) Free! It is true, then! I have escaped! I dreamed that I was back in prison again! (He shudders and helps himself to a large ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... my heart also, Edward. I think too there is a measured music, a central time and tune, in every life. Quick, melodious natures like Ethel's never wander far from their keynote, and are therefore joyously set; while slow, irresolute people deviate far, and only come back after painful ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... to give any kind of real impression of India twenty-four hours after the outbreak of the mutiny. Movement was the keynote of the picture—stealthy, not-yet-quite-confident pack-movement on the one hand, concentrated here and there in blood-red eddies, and, on the other hand, swift, desperate marches in ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... long and eloquent appeal with a sentence which sounds the true keynote of the regret felt by the Parsis at being merely compared with the natives when they felt themselves to be morally and intellectually their superiors. Why are they not provided with commissions in the army like the Germans and other Europeans? [86] Then only will they feel ...
— Les Parsis • D. Menant
... and when Papua comes to erect statues to her great leaders, those of these two patriots must surely occupy the highest places, as champions of the liberties of the weak. The noble policy of Macgregor is still, and let us hope it long may be, the keynote of the administration in Papua, which to-day is being ably carried forward under the great governor's disciple, the Honorable ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... the keynote of the later history of the Italian cities. This it was, and not any real lack of patriotism, which made them choose a German emperor instead of an Italian king. There was no room at that time for the idea of Italian unity, as we now understand ...
— The Communes Of Lombardy From The VI. To The X. Century • William Klapp Williams
... the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. The divine spark had disappeared. The spiritual nature had given way to the sensual. Ambition and pleasure were enthroned in the seats of justice and humanity. Selfishness was the keynote of aristocratic life. And with this fact kept in view, the short-sightedness of royalty in the presence of the rising tide of intelligent discontent is by no means strange. Indifferent to the fate of the masses in any struggle that might be precipitated, guided by none of the higher ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... des arts which is the keynote of Gautier's poetry, the secret of modern life foreshadowed—as indeed what in our century is not?—by Goethe. You remember what he said to the German people: 'Only have the courage,' he said, 'to give yourselves up to your impressions, allow yourselves ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... is shown in the very first sentence of his great work. The careful reader at once perceives that the first paragraph of the book strikes a keynote which distinguishes it from all other economic works comparable to it in importance. Marx was a great master of the art of luminous and exact definition, and nowhere is this more strikingly shown than in this opening sentence of "Capital": "The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... of Nazi propaganda has been demonstrated repeatedly during the past decade. That its keynote was set by Hitler himself becomes evident upon an examination of his statements on foreign policy over a period of years. Not only has his policy been marked by a series of shifts and turns, so that the policy ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various
... Perhaps the keynote to the charm of George Sand's art is given in her preface to her exquisite novel "La Derniere Aldini." Here is none of the accuracy and patience of the scientific enquirer into the "mysterious mixture" man, which we find in George Eliot's preface to "Middlemarch." ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne
... Murphy remembered the keynote to Howard Frayberg's instructions: "Excitement! Sex! Mystery!" Frayberg cared little for inspiration or beauty. "I imagine," he said casually, "that you celebrate a number of interesting festivals? Colorful ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance
... great; for the keynote of all this scheme, according to Dr. Goodnow, [Footnote: It is significant that Dr. Goodnow carried out all his Constitutional Studies in Germany, specializing in that department known as Administrative Law which has no place, fortunately, ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... are fussier," Bob said. "Nevertheless the rules are pretty strict for all messages. And since accuracy is the keynote of radio and to get it your outfit must be in A1 condition, every care must be taken to have strong, clear, and effective sending and receiving power. That means you must constantly clean your apparatus and tighten it up; test out your detector by the buzzer intended ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... forgotten, just here accidentally touched the piano with his elbow, and the sound that came forth was the keynote to Mendelssohn's "Wedding March." Forthwith he began to play it. Loretz looked at him, and seemed to feel suddenly reassured. A wavering light fell around him: he beckoned to the minister. "Do any of the folks around ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... tough a morsel as the undoing of the 'Wisest Fool in Christendom.' Even Sir Digsby, who but now turned trembling toward the doorway, hath more spirit for the undertaking. Hath not Percy touched the keynote of our ill condition? What matters it that we writhe under the despotism of James Stuart? Wherefore are the penal laws renewed? Why hath England driven from her shores those who would serve us in our churches? Where is our Mass, our altars and the images of Holy Mother Church? Would we call on France, ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... gorgeous story of a noble boy, whose guardians, a Presbyterian earl and a Roman cardinal, quarrelled for his soul and for his acres, is an immense satire from first to last. In Disraeli's own words, used in another sense, the keynote of Lothair is "mockery blended with Ionian splendour." Never had he mocked so dauntlessly, never had his fancy been more exuberant, and those who criticise the magnificence must realise that it was intentional. It was thus that Disraeli loved to ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... He might have added that the entire composition contains examples—look at the first bar of the valse episode in the bass. As Niecks thinks, "This dissonant E flat may be said to be the emotional keynote of the whole poem. It is a questioning thought that, like a sudden pain, ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... also, with the doings of the three little pigs. Every image is explicable to the youngest hearer, while none suggests actual familiarity, because the actors are not children, but pigs. Simplicity, with mystery, is the keynote of all the pictures, and these are ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... business, sent for Senator Morgan, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, which was to make the Republican nomination for the presidency and to frame the Republican platform, and said to him: "I want you to mention in your speech, when you call the convention to order, as its keynote, and to put into the platform, as the keystone, the amendment of the Constitution abolishing and prohibiting slavery forever." Accordingly the third plank in that platform declared that slavery was the cause and the strength of the rebellion, that it was "hostile to the principle of ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... and recalling the delightful Christmas visit at Uncle Winthrop's. The indefinable something that she came to understand was not only leisure and refinement, but the certain harmonious satisfactions that make up the keynote of life from whence melody diffuses itself, ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... songs and exercises ranging below the pitch indicated may be overcome easily by pitching the songs, etc., a tone or two higher. If they then range too high, don't sing them, sing something else. In teaching the scale, take E or F as the keynote, and sing either one or the other of those scales first. The children must sing as softly as possible in all their singing exercises, whether songs or note drill. They should be taught to open their mouths well, to sit or stand erect ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... Staatsburg; 11th, Miss Evanetta Hare, succeeded by Mrs. George Notman, Keene Valley; 12th, Miss Lucy C. Watson, Utica. Under all of these chairmen came the 150 assembly district leaders and under these the 5,524 election district captains. From the first it was realized that organization was the keynote to success and that to be effective it must extend into every polling precinct of the State. Mrs. Catt had no superior in organizing ability. The plan followed the lines of the political parties and was already in use by the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... fell into a long silence: for she was a practised observer of men and things, and the face before her compelled attention. The keynote of the whole was vigour: not mere impetuosity, though that was present also, but a sustained, indwelling vigour, ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... liberty and relaxation of police regulations. Nor was there any runaway chauvinism noticeable, aside from the occasional singing of patriotic songs and demonstrations like the one I just described. The keynote of popular feeling was quiet dignity, joined to determination, with an undercurrent of ...
— Four Weeks in the Trenches - The War Story of a Violinist • Fritz Kreisler
... underground—the root of five hundred years ago; and the tree overshadows all the garden and the little crystal brook that sparkles along by the side of the wall. As I gazed at the stately shape, with its shining black berries and its glossy dark leaves, I knew that I had found the keynote to much of Petrarch's music—not always that of his best and most inspired moods. The resemblance of the name of Laura to the laurel; the antique fable of the transformation of Daphne into a laurel, and its adoption by Apollo as his emblem; the old ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... how he built the stronghold at Cataraqui, which was named Fort Frontenac. The vigour and the tact that he displayed on this occasion give the keynote to {73} all his relations with the Indians. Towards them he displayed the three qualities which a governor of Canada most needed—firmness, sympathy, and fair dealing. His arrogance, so conspicuous in his intercourse with equals or with refractory subordinates, ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... his eternal keynote, "and Prussia is all-sufficient. Our hosts follow the Prussian flag and not the tricolor; under the black and white they joyfully die for their country. The tricolor has been, since the March riots, recognized ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... Lordships may be assured they will never have my consent to return until they comply [take the oath] without any reservation whatever.' [Footnote: Lawrence to Lords of Trade, December 5, 1753.] This was the keynote of all Lawrence's subsequent action. The Acadians must take the oath without reserve, or leave the country. He does not appear to have given any consideration to the fact that for forty years the Lords of Trade had, for various motives, nursed the people, or that ...
— The Acadian Exiles - A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline • Arthur G. Doughty
... mi, in E major, key of four sharps. By Jove, my little man! here is a fellow who sings B's and C's away up in the clouds; an E sharp, too!" he continued, with astonishment, while the singer made a hold upon the keynote an octave higher in a voice ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... keynote of the modern ball. A piano and two stringed instruments usually comprise the entire orchestra. The charm of the home is no longer spoiled by over-decoration; a vase or two containing the flowers ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... every line written or in print concerning Brock, from first to last, all prove that the keynote of his success, the ruling impulse of his life, was promptness and action. So, at Egmont, no sooner did the bugle sound the advance than he was off with his men like a sprinter at the crack of the pistol. Others might follow; ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... which is the keynote; and where monopoly prevails, the greater the injury to society, the greater the reward of the monopolist will be. See how this evil process strikes at every form of industrial activity. The municipality, wishing for broader streets, ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... Excursion, and a score of lesser poems. Joy and sorrow, not of princes or heroes, but "in widest commonalty spread," are his themes; and the hidden purpose of many of his poems is to show that the keynote of all life is happiness,—not an occasional thing, the result of chance or circumstance, but a heroic thing, to be won, as one would win any other success, by ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... fixed stars or suns, are but stages of abode for the evolving Spirit, and that beyond the Universe as we know it there are millions of others—in fact, that the number of Universes is infinite. The keynote of this doctrine may be stated as "Eternal Progression" toward the Divine Spirit. The Spirits do not insist upon any particular theory regarding the constitution of the soul—some of them speak merely of "soul and body," while others hold to the seven-fold being—the ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... the popular literature which was inaugurated by such men as Csokonai and the two brothers Kisfaludy, who were all three born in the last century. The songs of Csokonai have retained their hold on the people's hearts because, and here is the keynote—"because they breathe the true Hungarian feeling." The insistent themes of the Magyar poets were the love of country, the joys of home, the duty of patriotism. Such was the soul-stirring 'Appeal' ('Szozat') of Varosmazty, the chief of all the ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... the photograph still more closely. It displayed a lady of twenty or thereabouts, with a weak face, small, vacant features, a feeble chin, a good-humoured, simple mouth, and a wealth of golden hair that seemed to strike a keynote. ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... beats toward flight and song. In a conscious being this movement toward perfection must take a conscious form. This conscious form is happiness,—the satisfaction of the vital impulse,—the rhythm of the inward life,—the melody of a heart that has found its keynote. To say that all men long for this is simply to confess that all men are human, and that their thoughts and feelings are an essential part of their life. Virtue means a completed manhood. The joyful welfare ...
— Joy & Power • Henry van Dyke
... was large, and arranged with that wonderful simplicity which Mrs. Hastings had adopted as the keynote of her New York parties. She had taken, in fact, simplicity under her wing and made a new thing of it. There were more flowers than silver, and cut glass than heavy plate. There seemed to be an almost ostentatious desire to conceal the fact ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... happy. He made a happy marriage in 1804; and his calm temperament enabled him to bear an amount of abuse which might have broken the health of a more irritable man. Cobbett's epithet, 'parson Malthus,' strikes the keynote. He was pictured as a Christian priest denouncing charity, and proclaiming the necessity of vice and misery. He had the ill luck to be the centre upon which the antipathies of Jacobin and anti-Jacobin ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... basis of that service that leads to greatness. The keynote of that service is found in the words: "The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister; and to give his life for many." The cross is the symbol of a service that ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... that she holds no dominion over a man, that it is only too perfectly clear that the impulse of loving is all on her side and that she has neither anything to expect nor anything to fear from him, since indifference is the keynote of his attitude to her, she will all the more readily believe that he loves elsewhere, worthily or unworthily the same to her. A woman is not a noble object in such a situation. All trusting feminine instincts, all sweet emotions of hope, all sentiment, all passion even, retreat and fall away from ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... topaz, the hair was so like such a cloud of gold as would be found on Joan of Are as seen by a mediaeval painter, that an air of faint artificiality surrounded what was in every other way a remarkable effort of nature to give this region, where she was so very busy, a keynote. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... intensified the rancour of his countrymen and co-religionists against the handful of presumptuous foreigners who arrogantly claimed to sway the destinies of Afghanistan. Cherchez la femme is the keynote among Western peoples of an investigation into the origin of most troubles and strifes; the watchword of the student of the springs of great popular outbursts among Eastern nations must be Cherchez ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... The keynote of the mass meeting on the landing was one of determined, almost aggressive smartness. The men wore bright overcoats with bands round the waist, the women those imitation furs which to the uninitiated eye appear so much more expensive than ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... said, with a slow emphasis, "is the keynote of Mr. Quarrier's character. If you haven't understood that, you don't yet know him—indeed you don't! A noble ambition, mind. He is above all meanness. In wishing to take a foremost part in politics, ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... there would be Prussian officers at dinner who were already quartered in the chateau. We were nearly too tired to be impressed at this as one naturally would, at least, be moved in one sense or another, but we did inwardly wonder what the keynote might ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... although the development theory came up for discussion under so many various aspects during that time. His views are now in the descending scale; but to give them less than their real prominence here would be to deprive his scientific career of its true basis. Belief in a Creator was the keynote of ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... everyone acknowledges and admires in their commercial dealings; in no country that is or was, has the commandment 'Honor thy father and thy mother', been so religiously obeyed, or so fully and without exception given effect to, and it is in fact the keynote of their family, social, official and national life, and because it is so their days are long in the land God ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... just now," interrupted Phil, "for I know where most of them are at just this minute. However, it would be nice if you would take us to your home for a minute, for I think I have the keynote to the whole business right now, and I would like to tell my discoveries to Garry and Dick, and also get some directions from you, if you will sit in our council of war and act as ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... form. The chorales, fifteen in number, as has already been said, were taken from the Lutheran service. One of them, which Bach also liberally used in his "Christmas Oratorio," beginning, "Acknowledge me, my Keeper," appears five times in the progress of the work, forming the keynote of the church sentiment, and differently harmonized on each occasion. Another, "O Blessed Jesus," is twice used,—once where the Saviour announces that he will be crucified after the Feast of the Passover, when the whole congregation ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... skill of the singer. The voice was no longer a 'cello, deep and resonant, but a lonely flute or silver bugle announcing some joyous reverie in a landscape at the close of day. The song closed on the keynote, and Sister Mary John turned from the instrument and looked at the singer. She could not speak, she seemed overpowered by the music, and like one more dreaming than waking, and sitting half turned round on her seat, she ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... keynote of this record. As an Official Kinematographer I have striven to be, and I have tried all the time to realise that I was the eyes of the millions of my fellow-countrymen at home. In my pictures I have endeavoured to catch something of the glamour, as ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... conservative audience, it was supposed, would surely hold this radical in check. Alas! they were all doomed, for once, to hear the naked truth, on every vital question of the day. Thinking this might be his only opportunity to rouse some liberal thought in conservative minds, he struck the keynote of every reform; defended labor strikes, the Nihilists of Russia, prohibition, woman suffrage, and demanded reformation in our prisons, courts of justice, and halls of legislation. On the ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... self-sacrificing project was this: He knew that the editor of the Hearthstone relied strongly upon Miss Puffkin's judgment in the manuscript of romantic and sentimental fiction. Her taste represented the immense average of mediocre women who devour novels and stories of that type. The central idea and keynote of "Love Is All" was love at first sight—the enrapturing, irresistible, soul-thrilling feeling that compels a man or a woman to recognize his or her spirit-mate as soon as heart speaks to heart. Suppose he should impress this divine truth upon Miss Puffkin personally!—would ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... girl approved her escort's manner and bearing as unexceptionable. No sooner had they entered into the implied intimacy of the tete-a-tete across a table than a subtle change manifested itself in his attitude. Gayety was still the keynote of his talk, but the note of the personal and insistent had gone. And, at the end, when he had paid the bill ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... of uniformity, he would try to put but one tone between, singing a mixture of A and B[flat], which sound in time fell definitely to A, leaving the mystery of the half-tone unsolved. This addition of the third would thus fall in with the law of harmonics again. First we have the keynote; next in importance comes the fifth; and last of all the third. Thus again is the absence of the major seventh in our primitive scale perfectly logical; we may search in vain in our list of harmonics for the tone which forms ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... the keynote of the occasion. Ladies who had been at each other's back door a few hours previous borrowing starch or sugar now addressed each other in strained and distant tones while the men were frankly dumb. It was a relief to everybody when a heaping platter of fried chicken appeared upon ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... and harmless enough. The effects will of course vary with the individual. Just as they vary in the same individual from time to time; but it is probable that in the former case, as in the latter, a generic resemblance will obtain. With me, as with every other person of whom I have heard, the keynote of the experience is the tremendously exciting sense of an intense metaphysical illumination. Truth lies open to the view in depth beneath depth of almost blinding evidence. The mind sees all the logical relations ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... said that the first hour of the day is the critical one. Happy is the person who can wake with a song, or who can at least hold back the fears and the grumbles until a thought of gladness has established itself as the keynote of the day. ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... going to say too much now, either," returned Dick, with unusual stubbornness. "But 'The Blade' wants to take the keynote that Theodore Dodge is alive, and will turn up. I believe Dave and I are going to make him turn up during the ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock
... keynote of the grevious native government in an incident of the date of 1841 by which "the foreign relations of the government became involved with the schemes of a private firm. The firm of Ladd & Co. had taken ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... inevitable, avoidance of the evil—is the keynote of the Epictetean philosophy. It has been summed up in the three words, [Greek: Anechou kai apechou], "sustine et abstine," "Bear and forbear,"—bear whatever God assigns to you, abstain from that ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... all these systems in their later developments, is their cosmopolitanism. Homo sum, nil humani a me alienum puto, 'I am a man; nothing appertaining to humanity do I deem alien from myself,' this was the true keynote of whatever was vital in any of them. And the reason of this is not far to seek. We have seen already (p. 82) how the chaos of sophistic doctrine was largely conditioned, if not produced, by the breakdown of the old civic life of Greece. The ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... agreeable characteristics which won him the kindly and half-contemptuous regard of Miriam and her two friends. It was he whom they called Donatello, and whose wonderful resemblance to the Faun of Praxiteles forms the keynote of our narrative. ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... arose in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Of these, the most important was the Cistercian, founded in 1098 A.D. at Citeaux, not far from Cluny. The keynote of Cistercian life was the return to a literal obedience of St. Benedict's Rule. Hence the members of the order lived in the utmost simplicity, cooking their own meager repasts and wearing coarse woolen garments woven from the fleeces of their own sheep. The Cistercians especially emphasized ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... meet on equal terms. Their problems may differ in detail, but the principles to be studied are the same. Here our art courses must be made to contribute their share to the homemaker's training. We must strike the keynote of simplicity, both within and without, and must teach girls especially the value of carefully thought-out color schemes and decorating plans, to be carried out by different people in the materials and workmanship suited to their purses. They must learn that expense is not necessarily ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... of the men in the doorway were in uniform; he could see them only in outline, mere black silhouettes against the interior lights; but there was about them the ominous cut of the official, that Russian bird of ill-omen. And then, while yet he doubted, there sounded the very keynote of disaster. From somewhere within the silversmith's shop a ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... and united the Jews in every land. And this gave a catholicity to their development and a standard for their teaching which the scattered communities of Jews to-day do not possess. None the less Philo's ideal of Judaism as religion and life is an ideal for our time and for all time. Its keynote is that Israel is a holy people, a kingdom of priests, which has a special function for humanity. And the performance of this function demands the religious-philosophical ordering of life. From the negative ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... left, as we made for this, lay a black ocean of shrubbery. It intruded, raggedly, upon the weed-grown path, for neglect was the keynote of the place. ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... such difficulty, I felt irresistibly attracted by the long-sustained pure fifths with which the first phrase opens: these chords, which, as I related above, had played such a supernatural part in my childish impressions of music, seemed in this case to form the spiritual keynote of my own life. This, I thought, must surely contain the secret of all secrets, and accordingly the first thing to be done was to make the score my own by a process of laborious copying. I well remember that on one occasion the sudden appearance of the dawn made such an uncanny impression ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... is in vivid contrast to Jeremiah's sorrowful attitude of retrospection. The picture brings out clearly the fact that the keynote of Daniel's prophecy is hope. Looking into his rapt face, we may imagine that this is the message he is writing: "They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... Virorum" ("letters of illustrious men"). It was made up of letters written by the various learned men of Europe to Reuchlin, in sympathy with him in his struggle. The title of this work gave the keynote to a series of letters called "Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum" ("letters of obscure men")—that ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... forget these facts that they have taken the trouble to find out. Once a girl has realised the outlook of Mary Queen of Scots or Elizabeth, and has learnt to impersonate her without glaring mistakes, she has the keynote to the history of the times. When she has spoken to 'Darnley,' 'Black Both-well,' 'Rizzio,' 'John Knox,' or to 'Bacon,' 'Raleigh,' 'Essex,' and 'Sidney,' she has turned mere names into real personages, and will be no more likely to confuse ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... in Chicago, November 14-15, 1917, came when the first movement of American soldiers to European battlefields was begun, and patriotism was the keynote of the meeting. Because of the stress of the times, the program was cut to two days, instead of the ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... him arid and unprofitable—mere conventional verbiage without any bed-rock of real knowledge. So he presently fell into that mood of disgust with academic learning which was afterwards to form the keynote of Faust. Outside the university he found congenial work in Oeser's drawing-school. Oeser was an artist of no great power with the brush, but a genial man, a friend of Winckelmann, and an enthusiast for Greek art. Goethe learned to admire and love him, and from this time on, for some twenty ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... told why he said it. It was impulse, and the impromptu suggestion of a half-thought. But the effect of his words upon the Rhamda and the nurse told him that, inadvertently, he had struck a keynote. Both started, especially the woman. Watson took note of this in particular, because of the ingrained acceptance of the feminine ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... immediate desire to name over certain rights with which he was vested as a citizen of the United States, Diane was more than willing to change the subject. Persistence was the keynote ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... are coming," was the keynote of his modest remarks. Afterward he was escorted to the quay-side station, where a special train of the type labelled Semi-Royal was ready to make ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... Work is the keynote of the successful life. "An idle brain is the devil's workshop." The talk is designed to catch the attention with a smile and then give an opportunity to present some valuable thoughts in the matter of diligence and the fulfillment of life's ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... something to be desired, but the evidences of care are everywhere visible, and we may reasonably expect to see it improve from month to month, into one of the leading amateur papers. Credentials form the keynote of the current issue, and a very promising assortment of recruits are here introduced to the members of the United. Miss Sandborn, who is fortunate enough to be one of Mr. Moe's pupils at Appleton, contributes an interesting school anecdote, narrated in simple fashion. Miss Thie ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... of the room was uninviting. There was little display in the work of the police. Utility and purpose was the keynote of their lives and at the year's end the tally of work accomplished was the ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... you tell me, Signore," he said at last, his voice echoing a sweetness, a cheerful patience that was doubtless the keynote to his nature—"it all sounds very beautiful; but, indeed, it cannot be! The great Duke Scorpa has given the matter much thought. The mine owners cannot pay the people more—there is scarcely any profit as ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... nectar," or "the sweet fruit of his soul to men that are winners in the games." "As when from a wealthy hand one lifting a cup, made glad within with the dew of the vine, maketh gift thereof to a youth":—the keynote of Pindar's verse is there! This brilliant living youth of his day, of the actual time, for whom, as he says, he "awakes the clear-toned gale of song"- -epeon hoimon ligyn—that song mingles sometimes with the splendours of a recorded ancient lineage, or with the legendary greatness of ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... talk with ye," said the Virginian, slowly, "because comin' from over thar whar he's been dwelling at, ye kin kinderly give me facts thet ther Commonwealth would love ter know," and that utterance sounded the keynote of the attitude Turk ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... would be selfish to leave. Is it not right, though, and of necessity, that we think first of self?" He paused, then boldly sounded the keynote of the universe. ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... all instances, and that the total sum was nearer L7,000,000 than L4,000000, while the entire cost of poor-law relief in the United Kingdom was only L8,000,000. Having dwelt upon the evils of misdirected charity, she said the keynote of General Booth's scheme, and what, as it seemed to her, gave her great hope of its being to some extent a success, was the amount of personal devotion and energy which it called for and which she believed the Salvation Army was prepared to give to its development. Its keynote was the ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... throng there are none to ascribe salvation to themselves, as if they had prevailed by their own power and goodness. Nothing is said of what they have done or suffered; but the burden of every song, the keynote of every anthem, is, Salvation to our ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... two or three little dramas of mine, wherein lies revealed the disquiet of a mind that has given itself wholly to mystery; a disquiet legitimate enough in itself, perhaps, but not so inevitable as to warrant its own complacency. The keynote of these little plays is dread of the unknown that surrounds us. I, or rather some obscure poetical feeling within me (for with the sincerest of poets a division must often be made between the instinctive feeling of their art and the thoughts of their real life), seemed to believe in a species ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... public service; (3) the fact by which he is most likely to be remembered by the casual reader. It is a good brief form to use in writing about most men and women. Model II is better if the subject is remarkable for many achievements. Its structure is as follows: (1) A keynote sentence; (2), (3), (4) three illustrations of the fact stated in (1); (5) dates. The same principles apply to notices of living people. In writing use one model or the other; do not deviate from them, unless you first find a better model, and can persuade your ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... Paris. "Yes, it is calm," he said; "we are all waiting (nous attendons). We know that the victory will be ours at the finish. But all we can do is to wait. I have two sons at the front." He had struck the keynote. Paris is calmly waiting—waiting for the end of the war, for victory, for the return of ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... to twelve hundred dollars, the Pastor now led a strong force of volunteer laborers in the manual labor of the undertaking. Felling the first tree for the timber in the woods with his own hands, Brother Himebaugh gave the keynote to the movement. Nor did he stay his hand until he had ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... was a simple man; capable, when the whole of his various qualities were directed upon one single thing, of that greatness which is the crown of simplicity. Ambition was the keynote of his life; not an unworthy keynote, by any means, if only the ambition be sound; but one serious defect of Columbus's ambition was that it was retrospective rather than perspective. He may have had, before he sailed from Palos, an ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... which they were necessarily barred while in the class room. But a sharp look at the faces of the men who were at the head of an expedition, conducting a mysterious search, showed the boys that earnestness was the keynote. ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... the keynote of inquiry; and no one knew. Old men spoke unctuously of youthful scandals; women dreamed. I suspect even Mrs. Pinckney wondered, about as much as the plowed field may wonder at the silence of the autumn. But Pinckney limped gracefully about the sleepy avenues which ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... singing a hymn and offering a short prayer. Then those present are addressed. Often one of our Lord's parables, or some striking fact or passage from the Scriptures is taken as a text. Sometimes a remark by one of our hearers, or something of general interest which has just occurred, gives the keynote to the address. The great doctrines and facts of Scripture are mainly dwelt on, and the more simply and directly they are set forth, the more are we satisfied our duty is efficiently discharged. In our preaching the first place is assigned ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... to conclude an armistice, which would result in a Constituent Assembly, and would free them from the responsibility of concluding peace on terms rather than accept which they proudly asserted a few weeks ago they would all die. The keynote of the situation is given by the organs of public opinion, which until now have teemed with articles calling upon the population of the capital to bury itself beneath its ruins, and thus by a heroic sacrifice to serve as an example to the whole of France. To-day they ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... in oil and he is going to build an estate up on the Hudson that will make the world gasp. I hadn't put in a bid, but this idea of the judge's and Greg's, with the whole village grouped about it, has given me the keynote to win the thing from the whole bunch of American architects. He wants the village built as well as the estate. That American garden idea will bowl him over. He's progressively and rabidly American. The bids don't close until December, so I'll have time to get real photographs and sketches. ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... conclusions to which his reason led him. This intellectual courage made him fitted to be the leader in the battle for evolution and against traditional thought, and we shall find again and again in consideration of his work that it was the keynote ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... higher up, destined to make history, whose voices, raised in emphatic protest, were drowned in the drone of "Peace! Peace is the thing to work for. Compromise, consideration, courtesy, these three are the keys of rule." They failed to realize that cowardice was their real keynote, and that the threefold method that they vaunted was quite useless without a stiffening ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... her first published volume. Crude and immature as these productions naturally were, and utterly condemned by the writer's later judgment, they are, nevertheless, highly interesting and characteristic, giving, as they do, the keynote of much that afterwards unfolded itself in her life. One cannot fail to be rather painfully impressed by the profound melancholy pervading the book. The opening poem is "In Memoriam,"—on the death of a school friend and companion; and the ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus |
