"Loudness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... however, is a very different thing from boldness or obtrusiveness. Courtesy and considerateness are cardinal qualities of the well-equipped salesman, but boastfulness, glibness, egotism, loudness, and self-assertion, are as distasteful as ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... their fellow mortals, that every eye watches for their fall, and every heart exults at their distresses: yet even a projector may gain favour by success; and the tongue that was prepared to hiss, then endeavours to excel others in loudness of applause. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... engaged her in earnest conversation. Through the long passage, closed at the further end by the red curtain, they could hear from time to time Almayer's voice mingling in conversation with an abrupt loudness that made Mrs. Almayer ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... bushes, Henry threw it at the pack and all set up a wild yelping. Away they sped into the darkness, and he fancied they were gone. But this did not last. They came back howling with additional loudness, and drew closer and closer, until it looked as if the largest would certainly leap for ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... can be civil and kind, if he will, though he have not a penny in his purse. Gentleness in society is like the silent influence of light, which gives colour to all nature; it is far more powerful than loudness or force, and far more fruitful. It pushes its way quietly and persistently, like the tiniest daffodil in spring, which raises the clod and thrusts it aside by ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... restore me untainted to the world-the world never forgives a fallen woman. Her own sex will be first to lacerate her heart with her shame." These words were spoken with such biting sarcasm, that the Judge, whose nap the loudness of Anna's voice had disturbed, protruded his flushed face and snowy locks from out the curtains of the alcove. "The gay Madame Montford, as I am a Christian," he exclaims in the eagerness of the moment, and the strange figure vanishes ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... flowing of streams," said one of their bardic clan, "is sweeter than any music of men." "The harp of the woods is playing music," said another. In Finn's Song to May, the waterfall is singing a welcome to the pool below, the loudness of music is around the hill, and in the green fields the stream is singing. The blackbird, the cuckoo, the heron and the lark are the musicians of the world. When Finn asks his men what music they thought the best, each says ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... view of billows which mount to the very skies—of huge volumes of water, dashing down the dreadful precipice into a vast basin, which seemed large enough to be the tomb of the giant Chappewee; and their ears were saluted with sounds, whose loudness and violence were a thousand times beyond those of the tempest, or the thunder, or the earthquake. Onward they groped their desperate way beyond the fiercest fall, until all at once they came to a dreadful cavern shrouded in the deepest ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... the clergy to their loneliest retreats, and dragged them thence before persecuting tribunals, by whose sentence they were doomed to perpetual banishment. They must all have finally disappeared from the island, if the people, at last grown indignant at such baseness and cruelty, had not, by the loudness of their execrations, checked the activity of the priest-hunters. Wherever they dared show themselves, they were pelted with stones, and exposed to the summary vengeance of a ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... his feet, put his hands on either side of his mouth and shouted. The unexpected loudness of the call startled him a little; it went echoing around and in the dead solitude of the low-lying hills seemed to carry for miles. But although he listened intently there was no answer other than the echo which soon drifted ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... broke out from the company. It began with the parson, and was taken up by the schoolmaster, the exciseman, the landlady, and the landlord, in succession. 'More red!' proceeded from every lip, with different degrees of loudness. The landlord's was the least loud, the schoolmaster's the loudest of all. 'I suppose, gentlemen,' said the stranger, 'you were remarking upon my slippers.'—'Eh—yes! we were just saying that they were red,' replied the schoolmaster. 'And ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 402, Supplementary Number (1829) • Various
... the fact that all the words spoken by the Jew were overheard by the man who was supposed to be there in the capacity of his servant. But the man, as it seemed, had a mission to fulfil, and was the captain's master as well as servant. "Mr. Hart," said Captain Scarborough, repressing the loudness of his words as far as his rage would admit him, but still speaking so as to attract the attention of some of those round him, "I do not know what good you propose to yourself by following me in this manner. You have my bonds, which are not even ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... secondary circuit for adjustment to the wave length, turning it slowly from minimum to maximum until you come to the point where the desired station is heard. When this is found, you again readjust the primary until you find the point of maximum loudness. ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... so that they have very much the appearance of lions when their upper part alone is seen above the water. Such were the monsters which seemed to be guarding the island towards which we were pulling, their roar vying in loudness with the hoarse sound of the surf as it beat ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... had a borrowed loudness reverberated from the height of the land. Several voices cried out together: "We are all on ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... courage and strength expanded, we tried bolder flights—spent a day among the smoke and thunder of the Nantiglo ironworks—with processions of thousands of men hurrying off amidst music, and shouts of the most tremendous loudness, to a dinner at their club. Great, hard-featured, savage-looking fellows they were, though in their holiday attire, and accompanied by one or two of the Bailey family—the real iron kings of the neighbourhood; and a sight of their grim features and brawny arms gave us ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... and grinning aside. My uncle, on the other hand, who was raised higher than I had yet seen him on his pillows, wore an air of really imposing gravity. No sooner had we appeared behind him than he lifted his voice to a good loudness, and addressed the assemblage. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... usual but Most uncommon openness, protested there was something in the violence of their animal spirits that Would make him accept no post and no pay to live with them. Their very voices, he said, had a loudness and force that ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... soft of heart, but proud of spirit, and haughty beyond his age; you may not remember, even I could not always look down his anger, or silence his loudness of speech. Why should he kill Mr. Barbary? I will tell you, child: the preacher, too, had discerned well your brother's besetting sin, and, being fearless in duty, from the Sabbath pulpit he spake of it plainly and with such point that it could not fail ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... and after the present convention. The resumption of The Lake Breeze would supply a pressing need. Mr. Moitoret's Cleveland Sun, which promises to be a frequently issued paper, made its first appearance lately, and will, after much of its "loudness" has been removed, be of substantial benefit to new members. The "sporting" features should be eliminated at once, as not only being in bad taste, but exerting a noxious influence over the literary development ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... blood. Where was that former self of mine? Whence came foaming into me this surging flood of glory? Sandip's hungry eyes burnt like the lamps of worship before my shrine. All his gaze proclaimed that I was a wonder in beauty and power; and the loudness of his praise, spoken and unspoken, drowned all other voices in my world. Had the Creator created me afresh, I wondered? Did he wish to make up now for neglecting me so long? I who before was plain had become suddenly beautiful. I who before had been ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... something ought to be spoken of the Composition of Kennels, wherein I must appeal to the Affection of the Gentleman, the Lover of this Sport, and let him tell me the Reasons that induced him take pleasure in Hounds, whether it be he fancies Cunning in Hunting? Or Sweetness, Loudness, or Deepness of Cry? Or for the Training his Horses? Or for the Exercise of ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... a third time, without any increase of loudness; and the old man, obeying an impulse for which to his dying hour he could never account, proceeded to remove, one by one, the three great oaken bars which secured the door. Time and damp had effectually corroded ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... recognition between the two sexes of a species, and as an invitation from the male to the female bird. When the individuals of a species are widely scattered, such a call must be of great importance in enabling pairing to take place as early as possible, and thus the clearness, loudness, and individuality of the song becomes a useful character, and therefore the subject of natural selection. Such is especially the case with the cuckoo, and with all solitary birds, and it may have been equally important at some period of the development of all birds. The act ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... tenor, and his pipes was kinder cracked, But Rube made up in loudness what in tune he might have lacked; But 'twas a leetle cur'us, though, for p'r'aps his voice would balk, And when he'd fetch a high note give a most outrageous squawk; And Uncle Elkanah was deef and kind ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... out of his instrument, and these he lets off in spasmodic puffs, governed by a curious notion of the proper places for them to fit into the general performance. The flutes are a little unsteady and unreliable; the clarionet always squeaks in pathetic parts; and the cornet imagines that loudness is the chief ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... music; the use of a single hue to color the different objects in a painting, as in a nocturne of Whistler: these are simple illustrations of harmony. An almost equally simple case is gradation or lawful change of quality in space and time—the increase or decrease of loudness in music of saturation or brightness of hue in painting, the gentle change of direction of a curved line. In these cases there is, of course, a dynamic or dramatic effect, if you take the elements in sequence; but when taken simultaneously and together, ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... brilliance, and objects were distinguishable far over the prairie. A red glare could be seen on the sides of the deer as they bounded over the tall, dry grass, which was soon to be no longer a refuge for them. The young men heard a low, continued roar, that increased every moment in loudness, and looking in the direction whence they supposed it proceeded, they observed an immense, dark, moving mass, the nature of which they could not divine, but it threatened to annihilate every thing that opposed it. While gazing ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... plants in his window-box, which seemed to grow before his eyes and give an odor like the breath of a runner. He heard whole flocks of birds in the sky outside. He distinguished quite clearly one bird-song which he had never heard before. His newspaper rustled with astonishing loudness when he turned the pages, his cigar tasted to an extreme which he had never before noticed. The leaves of the plants and the tree-boughs outside cut the air crisply. His window-shade rattled so loudly that he could not believe it was simply that. A great onslaught of the splendid ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... a well-known writer, "at times of a low, deep moaning, repeated five or six times, and ending in scarcely audible sighs; at other times, the forest is startled with loud, deep-toned, solemn roars, increasing in loudness to the third or fourth, and then dying away in sounds ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... to be to cram as much ammunition into the gun as the hand would contain, and then, looking carefully away from the object aimed at, to close both eyes and pull the trigger. Accuracy of aim was not so much considered as loudness of report. As regards their powers of riding, they are still unchanged; and as to the virtue of their women, virtue is so largely a matter of convention that it is generally wisest to leave such matters uncommented on, as it is so easy not to understand the conventions ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... as it was used by Chopin and Schumann, he cannot reveal the poetry of their compositions. In one of his letters Chopin notes that Thalberg played forte and piano with the pedals, not with his hands, and some piano bangers do so still; but every pianist who deserves the name knows that loudness and softness must be regulated by the hands (and very rarely the left-side pedal). Yet even among this better class of pianists the notion seems to prevail that the main object of the right-side pedal is to enable them to prolong a chord or to prevent a confusion of consecutive harmonies. ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... picae, we must refer this extraordinary bird to the passeres, the genera of which are connected with each other by almost imperceptible transitions. It forms a new genus, very different from the goatsucker, in the loudness of its voice, in the vast strength of its beak (containing a double tooth), and in its feet without the membranes which unite the anterior phalanges of the claws. It is the first example of a nocturnal bird among the Passeres dentirostrati. Its habits present analogies both with those ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... king, (by his sister and others), the slayer of Kesin, exceedingly afflicted by grief, answered,—'So be it!'—These words were uttered with sufficient loudness and they gladdened all the inmates of the inner apartments of the palace. The puissant Krishna, that foremost of men, by uttering these words, gladdened all the people assembled there, like one pouring cold water on a person afflicted with sweat. He then quickly ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... sounds has a simple physical measure for its basis; and the rate of vibration is complicated by its sweep or loudness, and by concomitant sounds. What a rich note is to a pure and thin one, that a chord is to a note; nor is melody wholly different in principle, for it is a chord rendered piece-meal. Time intervenes, and ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... The intensity, or loudness, of the voice is governed by the force with which the air is expelled from the lungs. The vibrations of the cords, however, are greatly reenforced by the peculiar structure of the upper air passages, ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... time, the cannon from our batteries, but faintly answered by the Americans, had continued to thunder without intermission, and as the columns drew nearer, each succeeding discharge came upon the ear with increased and more exciting loudness. Hitherto the view had been obstructed by the numerous farm houses and other buildings, that skirted the windings of the road, but when at length the column emerged into more open ground, the whole scene burst splendidly and imposingly upon the sight. Within ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... of the chain-pumps. It didn't last long. The gale spilled itself upon us, and the Araminta, sick and spent, slowly settled down. The last I saw of her"—Philip raised his voice as though he would hide what he felt behind an unsentimental loudness—"was the white pennant at the main-top gallant masthead. A little while, and then I didn't see it, and—and so good-bye to my first command! Then"—he smiled ironically—"then I was made prisoner by the French frigates, and have been closely confined ever since, against every ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... who is an old and faithful retainer to this household, is now suffering from his annual cough. It is a terrific cough, capable of disputing supremacy with all other coughs of which the world has heard. The special points about this cough are (1) its loudness; (2) its combination of the noises made by all other coughs; (3) its depth; (4) its shriek of despair as it trembles and reverberates through the house; (5) its capacity to repel and annihilate sympathy. It is true that I have interviewed Binns with regard to his cough—it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156., March 5, 1919 • Various
... than themselves. Off-hand dogmatists of this stamp, who usually abound among professional religionists, think that they can refute any number of scholars, however profound and however pious, if only they shout "Infidel" with sufficient loudness. ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... harsh, strident voices; and there is too much truth in the accusation. Nor is there any excuse for unpleasant, harsh, rough, nasal tones of voice in these days when in every good school instruction is given in the management of the voice for reading and conversation. The cause of harshness and loudness is often mere carelessness on the part of young people. But talking in too loud a tone is scarcely less unpleasant to the listeners than the use of too low a tone, which is generally ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... to take life, but there are probably few people who are so callous concerning the sufferings of the animal world. The owners of the donkeys have a cruel custom of slitting their nostrils, because it is supposed to moderate the loudness of their bray. ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... To Claude, of course, they were perfectly intelligible, though not so to Zac, who did not understand any language but his mother Yankee. Judging by the distinctness and the loudness of the sound, the speaker could not be very far away. The voice seemed to come from the water astern. No sight, however, was visible; and the two, as they stared into the fog, saw nothing whatever. Nor did any of the others on ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... Sylvia would be still awake, would hear the violent words of Hine, and would therefore be an available witness afterward, Chayne found the reason both of the loudness of Garratt Skinner's tones and his early retirement for ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... sat in a pew near the pulpit with several other clergymen. He looked pale, and rubbed his hand over his face and pushed back his hair oftener than usual. Standing in the aisle close to him, and repeating the responses with edifying loudness, was Mr. Budd, churchwarden and delegate, with a white staff in his hand and a backward bend of his small head and person, such as, I suppose, he considered suitable to a friend of sound religion. Conspicuous in the gallery, too, was the tall figure of Mr. Dempster, whose professional ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... by frequent shocks of earthquake, which continued for nearly a couple of months; but they afterward entirely ceased, so that the inhabitants of the place were lulled into security. On the night between the 28th and 29th of September, however, the subterranean noises were renewed with greater loudness than before, and the ground shook severely. The Indian servants living on the place started from their beds in terror, and fled to the neighboring mountains. Thence gazing upon their master's farm they beheld it, along with a tract of ground ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... foolish as his wife thought him. This mood lasted half through dinner; the worst of Quisante was uppermost, and the exhibition depressed the others. The brothers were apologetic, Mrs. Gellatly gallantly suave; her much-lined, still pretty face worked in laborious smiles at every loudness and every awkwardness. Morewood was so savage that an abrupt conclusion of the entertainment threatened to be necessary. May, who had previously decided that Mr. Quisante would be much better in company, ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... and the exercise consists, first, in the recognition of sounds of equal intensity, arranging the cylinders in pairs. The next exercise consists in the comparison of one sound with another; that is, the child arranges the six cylinders in a series according to the loudness of sound which they produce. The exercise is analogous to that with the color spools, which also are paired and then arranged in gradation. In this case also the child performs the exercise seated comfortably at a table. After a preliminary explanation ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori
... with a crank, and rotated by handle. A heavy flywheel was attached to give it uniformity of motion. A sheet of tinfoil formed the record, and the delivery could be heard by a roomful of people. But articulation was sacrificed at the expense of loudness. It was as though a parrot or a punchinello spoke, and sentences which were unexpected could not be understood. Clearly, if the phonograph were to become a practical instrument, it required to be much improved. Nevertheless this apparatus sufficiently demonstrated the feasibility of storing ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... woman who kept her faith in his capacity for soaring above the common pitch. She it was who, understanding him better than his own family, became a second mother to him. Attracted by him, in spite of his weaknesses of conceit, loudness, and vulgarity, she polished his behaviour, guided his perceptions, corrected his pretentiousness, influencing him through the sincerity ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... than to see him shake his head, which was instantly enveloped in a cloud of dust. At this signal the plaudits burst forth with great violence, and the would-be singer, screaming with still greater loudness, seemed on the point ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... surpassed in loudness that of all the others put together; and brought up several ferocious-looking Turks, bent on condignly punishing the outrageous conduct of the ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... shouts of the people. This done, the competitors were not brought in and presented all together, but one after another by lot, and passed in order through the assembly without speaking a word. Those who were locked up had writing-tables with them, in which they recorded and marked each shout by its loudness, without knowing in favor of which candidate each of them was made, but merely that they came first, second, third, and so forth. He who was found to have the most and loudest acclamations was declared senator duly elected. Upon this he had a garland set upon his head, and went ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... reports of carbines and the yells of the bandits. There were scarcely more than a dozen of the original twenty left; but they made up for their depleted numbers by the rapidity with which they worked their firearms and the loudness and ferocity of their ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... loud, short cry filled the cavern for an instant, and almost froze their blood! The loudness and abrupt stoppage of the cry left the impression that the creature which uttered it had been suddenly and effectively killed, for it ended in a sharp gasp or gurgle, and then all was still,—but only for a moment, for the shock to Mark's nerves was such that ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... rather than convey sounds, though on given planes above its level sounds travel unimpeded for remarkable distances. The resonance of the atmosphere appears at times to be dependent on the tone and quality rather than on the abruptness and loudness of the sound. I have listened with strange delight to the rustle of the sea on the mainland beach—two and a half miles distant—when the air has been so idle that the sensitive casuarinas—ever haunted by some secret woe upon which to moan and sob—have been mute and ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... in a pantaloon fob, and minus a chain, it proves beyond his power of discovery. Nevertheless, by bending his head down and listening, he ascertains and announces it to be somewhere about my person; the Waterbury is then produced, and the loudness of its ticking awakes the wonder and admiration of the Koords, even to a greater extent than the Turks. During the evening, the inevitable question of Euss, Osmanli, and English crops up, and I win unanimous murmurs of approval by laying my forefingers together and stating that the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... I saw it!" I shouted. Then, shrinking from the hysterical loudness of my own voice, I lowered my tone. "Something that looks human has occupied some of those prickly, six-foot shells. I saw arms—and a man's head! I ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... times very different degrees of importance. There is no lack of evidence that we have entered into a period in which an especial emphasis will be laid on the too long neglected psychical factor. This new movement is probably only in its beginning and the loudness with which it presents itself to-day is one of the many indications of its immaturity. Whether it will be a blessing or a danger, whether it will really lead forward in a lasting way, or whether it will soon demand a reaction, will probably depend in the first place on the soberness and ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... say it. The boot was emphatically not on that leg. The head- master talked to Mr. Povey, in tones carefully low, for about a quarter of an hour, and then he closed the interview. Mr. Povey escorted him across the shop, and the head-master said with ordinary loudness: "Of course it's nothing. But my experience is that it's just as well to be on the safe side, and I thought I'd tell you. Forewarned is forearmed. I have other parents to see." They shook hands at the door. Then Mr. Povey stepped ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... perceived, on the opposite side, Sir Lionel Garrett, a personage whom I had not before even inquired after, or thought of. He was busily and noisily employed in discussing the game-laws. Thank Heaven, thought I, I shall be on firm ground there. The general interest of the subject, and the loudness with which it was debated, soon drew all the scattered conversation ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... cried, with a sudden loudness that rang through the quiet room, "you know all! You know how wicked I am. But you don't know how lonely and wretched I have been. I tried to break myself of it I did try to keep from it; but it was always there on the table when I sat down to my meals with Aunt Bolton; and I could always ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... so glad for dear Agnes," she said with a natural loudness in that hushed room. "It even made me forget papa to ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... "I am here, uncle," and if the first voice startled one with its loudness, this second was equally startling from its music, its ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... weather, the Bobolink seldom flies without singing, often hovering on the wing over the place where his mate is sitting upon her ground-built nest, and pouring forth his notes with great loudness and fluency. The Bobolink is one of our social birds, one of those species that follow in the footsteps of man, and multiply with the progress of agriculture. He is not a frequenter of the woods; he seems to have no taste for solitude. He loves the orchard and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... preached; but the sunshine was over—the glad and careless look, the joy of young life and mutual love. He was little with us, and, as I said, the house was still, except when he was mandating his sermons for Sabbath. This he always did, not only viva voce, but with as much energy and loudness as in the pulpit; we felt his voice was sharper, and rang keen ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... more varied, euphonious, and enchanting than Beethoven's, and in this direction he did for the symphony what Weber did for the opera. By using the brass instruments pianissimo, for color instead of for loudness, he opened a path in which later masters, including Wagner, eagerly followed him. Schubert was also the first composer who revealed the exquisite beauty and the great emotional power of the freest modulation from key to key. His poetic impromptus for piano became the model for ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... a cigarette and his metal soles scraped the floor with the same startling loudness he had noticed before. The bubble was ...
— The Nothing Equation • Tom Godwin
... these men, as is usual amongst Somali, had prepared themselves for a feast by several days' previous fasting, and each man would, if I allowed it, swallow at one meal as much as a sheep's skin could contain. As a gun is known by the loudness of its report, and ability to stand a large discharge of powder, to be of good quality, so is a man's power gauged by his capacity of devouring food; it is considered a feat of superiority ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... thoughts without it. You need not open the casement of your bosom; I see through it. You think me a strange bold girl, half coquette, half romp; desirous of attracting attention by the freedom of her manners and loudness of her conversation, because she is ignorant of what the Spectator calls the softer graces of the sex; and perhaps you think I have some particular plan of storming you into admiration. I should be sorry ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... heard. It was loud enough to shake the walls of the apartment, and abrupt enough to throw me into tremors. I dropped the book and yielded for a moment to confusion and surprise. From what quarter it came, I was unable accurately to determine; but there could be no doubt, from its loudness, that it was near, and even in the house. It was no less manifest that the sound arose from the discharge of a pistol. Some hand must have drawn the trigger. I recollected the disappearance of the candle from the room ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... baptisms. Many were easily dubbed geographically from the regions from which they confessed to have hailed. Some announced themselves to be "Thompsons," and "Adamses," and the like, with a brazenness and loudness that cast a cloud upon their titles. A few vaingloriously and shamelessly uncovered their proper and indisputable names. This was held to be unduly arrogant, and did not win popularity. One man who said he was Chesterton L. C. Belmont, ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... often noticeable in the generation succeeding next to that of the men in their shirt-sleeves, he would have been noticed anywhere as one evidently a scholarly thinker astray from the alcove or the study, which were his natural habitats. His voice was very sweet, and penetrating without any loudness or mark of effort. His enunciation was beautifully clear, but he often hesitated as if waiting for the right word to present itself. His manner was very quiet, his smile was pleasant, but he did not like explosive laughter any better than Hawthorne did. None who met him ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... that he insisted upon haste, for they had not gone far when the glacier broke abreast of the spot they had just left. There came a rending crack, terrifying in its loudness; a tremendous tower of ice separated itself from the main body, leaned slowly outward, then roared downward, falling in a solid piece like a sky-scraper undermined. Not until the arc described by its summit had reached ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... he not only convinced himself that she had injured him but, by the loudness of his voice and the brutality of his attack, he convinced her also, and presently he had her apologizing for his having spent the evening with Tanis. He went up to bed well pleased, not only the master but the martyr of the household. For a distasteful moment after he had lain down he ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... into fierce exultation, when the stones were flying, the pony's hot breath floating back to his cheeks, and the yelling of the savages began to grow faint; and then again moments when the mustang's efforts seemed to flag and the yells of the Indians increasing in loudness came nearer and nearer, till the boy had hard work to keep from wrenching himself round in the saddle to try and pierce the black darkness to gaze defiantly at the fierce starting eyeballs and gleaming teeth of those who were ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... gone, before another—a far heavier—step sounds in the passage outside the professor's door. It is followed by a knock, almost insolent in its loudness and sharpness. ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... bride-elect, and ran swiftly down stairs. There did seem to be a good deal of confusion in the orderly household, and the very air of the hall seemed to be pervaded with a singular subdued excitement; voices of suppressed loudness issued from the front parlor and as Ester knocked she heard a half scream from Mrs. Ried, mingled with cries of "Don't let her in." Growing thoroughly alarmed, Ester now abruptly pushed open the ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... in a peculiar condition. In the French it has very various significations, but has come to be adopted in music and acoustics to connote the quality of a musical sound independent of its pitch and loudness, a quality derived from the harmonics which the fundamental note intensifies, and that depends on the special form of the instrument. The article Clang in the Oxford Dictionary quotes Professor Tyndall regretting that we have no word for this meaning, ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 3 (1920) - A Few Practical Suggestions • Society for Pure English
... putting her hands to her ears in implied rebuke at the loudness of the squire's tone. "My dear sir, do remember that I'm a ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and contains a number of the nerve-ends, which are, however, most numerous in the cochlea. We do not know for certain what the functions of the canals and the cochlea are; but it is probable that the former enables us to distinguish between the intensity or loudness of sounds and the direction from which they come, while the latter enables us to determine the pitch of a note. In the cochlea are about 2,800 tiny nerve-ends, called the rods of Corti. The normal ear has such a range as to give about 33 rods to ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... associated with the ear, in the mind of the musician, are those of the pitch, rhythm (and time), and quality of tones. The loudness of a tone is, of course, recognized by the ear also, but this is hardly a musical quality proper. In reality, like all that belongs to hearing, these perceptions are the result of a series of physiological processes, in which the ear ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... afternoon of the same day, while the news of the disaster was still fresh, there came a whisper, which gained in loudness and in precision of detail as it passed from mouth to ear and from ear to mouth, that the worst had not yet been told. There had been not one, but two disasters. Two battle-cruisers, it was declared, had been sunk in the Channel by German mines or submarines. What ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... shouted at last with unnatural loudness. "Kindly make the declaration demanded of you. Show him. Alexandr Grigorievitch. There is a complaint against you! You don't pay your debts! ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... River mountains south 39 deg. east. The summit rock was gneiss, succeeded by sienitic gneiss. Sienite and feldspar succeeded in our descent to the snow line, where we found a feldspathic granite. I had remarked that the noise produced by the explosion of our pistols had the usual degree of loudness, but was not in the least ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... out of the bed, and hurled the boot-jack at him with all my strength; but had only the satisfaction to hear him go down stairs chuckling at his escape; and as he reached the parlour, the increase of mirth and the loudness of the laughter told me that he was not the only one who was merry at my expense. Any thing was preferable to this; down stairs I resolved to go at once—but how; a blanket I thought would not be a bad thing, and particularly ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... will not take more of the discourse than falls to his share; nor in this will he shew any violent impetuosity of temper, or exert any loudness of voice, even in arguing; for the information of the company, and the conviction of his antagonist, are to be his apparent motives; not the indulgence of his own pride, or an ambitious desire of victory; which latter, ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... of command is animated, distinct, and of a loudness proportioned to the number of men for whom ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... beard combed from the center. The visible part of his face would have made a gambler's fortune; and, save for its warm color, it might have been carved out of ice. Without ever a hint of harshness or loudness, his voice was one to command attention; though it came out soft and velvety, it was with the half assurance that it could ring like steel if the occasion arose. The occasion never arose. The hands, whose fingers thrummed on the glass-topped desk, ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... to yet higher personages, and find their doings recorded in the blushing pages of timid little Miss Burney's Memoirs. She represents a prince of the blood in quite a royal condition. The loudness, the bigness, boisterousness, creaking boots and rattling oaths, of the young princes, appeared to have frightened the prim household of Windsor, and set all the tea-cups twittering on the tray. On the night of a ball and birthday, when one of the pretty, kind princesses ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... shooting at us from the private houses. When they saw us take the barracks they had probably decided that the time had come to wipe off the powder-stains, and reappear as friends of the revolution. The only firing now was from where Garcia was engaged. Judging from the loudness of these volleys he had reached the outskirts of the town. I set half of my force to work piling up bags of meal behind the iron bars, and, in the event of fire, filling pails with water, and breaking what little glass still remained in the windows. Others I sent ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... speedily ensue. If the chain were removed, she might be easily thrown into the state of delirium; when she would sing at the request of her magnetiser; and, if the chain were then unrolled, her voice would be arrested in the most gradual manner; its loudness first diminishing — the tune then becoming confused, and finally lost altogether. The operations of her intellect could be checked, while the organs of sound would still continue to exert themselves. For instance, while her thoughts were occupied on the poetry and air of ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... and from the loudness Joan shrank, for there was never a harsh sound in the cave except the growl of Bart warning away danger. She turned quite around and there stood Daddy Dan, perfectly erect, quite indifferent, to all seeming, ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... was such a "Hurray! hurray!" as surpassed the former cheer in loudness. Everybody engaged in it except Piggy Duff, who made an instant dash at the three-cornered puffs, but was stopped by Champion, who said there should be a fair distribution. And so there was, and no one lacked, neither of raspberry, open tarts, nor of mellifluous bulls'-eyes, ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... older residents still called Rodney Lane, was as still and deserted as a country road. The entry gate to Tory Hill clicked behind him with curious, lonely loudness. The gravel crunched in the same way beneath his tread. Looking up at the house, he saw neither light nor sign of living. There was something stricken and sinister about ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... fondly united and raising their voices to the night as if superfluously to sing out at you that they were happy, and above all were Tuscan. On reflection, and to be just, I connect the slightly incongruous loudness that hung about me under the Beautiful Towers with the really too coarse competition for my favour among the young vetturini who lay in wait for my approach, and with an eye to my subsequent departure, on my quitting, at some unremembered spot, the morning train from Siena, from which ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... remarkable change of colour in a lark, belonging to Dr. Thos. Scott, of Fanash, occurred under my own eye, and which, I have no doubt, was produced by grief at being separated from a mavis. Their cages had long hung side by side in the parlour, and often had they striven to out-rival each other in the loudness of their song, till their minstrelsy became so stunning, that it was found necessary to remove the laverock to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... as newspapers (as gatherers of news) the American papers are probably the best in the world. What repels the Englishman is primarily the form in which the news is dressed—the loudness, the sensationalism but if he can overcome his repugnance to these things sufficiently to be able to judge the paper as a whole, he will find, apart from the amazing quantity of "news" which it contains, a large ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... Mrs. Forbes cleared her throat with desperate loudness and tugged at her son's shirt sleeve with an energy which ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... with the feminine world more intimately she would not be the standard of maidenly modesty and reserve that she was in her nineteenth year; but in her there was an utter absence of that self-sufficiency and loudness that is painfully prominent now-a-days in the very city we inhabit. And yet in all her meekness and mildness if you by look or word injured the extreme sense of delicacy that was the under current ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... a very effective report. The rockets in general had a slight advantage over the same quantities of material fired near the ground. The loudness of the sound was by no means proportional to the quantity of the material exploded, 8 oz. yielding very nearly as loud a report as 1 lb. The 'aerial echoes,' which invariably followed the explosion of the rockets, ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... traces the movements of the stars, and tells of their constitution; but the fact of their singing together, and that "such harmony is in immortal souls," it leaves to poet and philosopher. The timbre, loudness, pitch, of musical tones, is a concern of science; but for this a Beethoven symphony is no better than the latest ragtime air from the music halls. In brief, science deals only with phenomena, and its gift to man is power over his ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... climbing it, when he heard a footstep. Some one dragged a chair out toward the railing, then seemed to change his mind and began to pace the veranda, his footfalls resounding on the dry boards with singular loudness. Little White drew a step backward, got the figure between himself and the sky, and at once recognized the short, broad-shouldered form of ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... cordiality, suddenly became flaccid and died. If Mr. Crooper had been a sensitive person he might have perceived the chilling disapproval in their glances, for they had just begun to be most unfavorably impressed with him. The careless loudness—almost the notoriety—with which he had uttered Miss Pratt's name, demanding loosely to be presented to her, regardless of the well-known law that a lady must first express some wish in such matters—these were indications of a coarse nature sure ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... knew not whither, and cared not, so that she escaped from her dreaded pursuers. All would not do. Ever and increasing, nearer and nearer, came the dismal sound! How her heart died within her, as the increased loudness of the baying of the wolves told her they were fast overtaking her! In vain she exerted all her remaining strength, and taxed every nerve and muscle to its utmost capacity! There was no help! As unerring as mistakeless instinct, and as certain as the decree of fate came the ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... voice accommodated to the hearing, not by its loudness, but by its propriety."—Quintilian, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... not more than thirty-six;[96] but they may be variously combined, so as to form words innumerable. Different vowel sounds, or vocal elements, are produced by opening the mouth differently, and placing the tongue in a peculiar manner for each; but the voice may vary in loudness, pitch, or time, and still utter the ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... centre-point of the section is the last cry which, in its loudness, indicated physical strength quite incompatible with the exhaustion to which death by crucifixion was generally due. It thus confirms the view which sees, both in the words of Jesus and in the Evangelist's expression ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren |
