"Chord" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sights and sounds of a hay-field which seems to touch the same chord in one as Lowell's lines in the "Lay of Sir Launfal," ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... sympathy. The innocent little creatures remind me of my days of childhood, when I revelled in the woods and corn-fields of Lincolnshire, listening to the song of birds in early fresh spring morn, or bright summer day. Here was the tender chord of childhood associations touched, and no wonder that memory should come in to the aid of sympathy in these unsympathizing deserts. How little at times contents the heart, and fills the aching vacuum of the mind! In this we cannot fail to see an ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... mother, much of that consciousness as her mother had absorbed and carried away. Her haunting, harrassing father, her menacing, uncompromising aunt, her portionless little nephews and nieces, were figures that caused the chord of natural piety superabundantly to vibrate. Her manner of putting it to herself—but more especially in respect to Marian—was that she saw what you might be brought to by the cultivation of consanguinity. She had taken, in the old days, as she supposed, ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... shoulders. "All the first matter should be removed except for the spinal chord and the ...
— Man Made • Albert R. Teichner
... pretended, of a former illicit connection between her brother-in-law and a pretty and intelligent mulatto girl, about eighteen or nineteen years of age, who was still retained in the family in the capacity of housemaid. Having once struck this jarring chord, she continued to play upon it with diabolical skill. To those who watched the course of her unholy labors, the energy and ingenuity with which this wretched woman wrought at her task, and the completeness of her success, would have seemed a subject of admiration, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... on either flank, where far-reaching batteries could be posted, were great advantages. It covered the principal roads to Washington and Baltimore, and its convex shape, enabling troops to reinforce with celerity any point of the line from the centre, or by moving along the chord of this arc, was probably the cause of our final success. The enemy, on the contrary, having a concave order of battle, was obliged to move troops much longer distances to support any part of his line, and could not communicate orders rapidly, nor could ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... dollars and cents how cheap a summer's lodging she might secure. He dwelt upon the fact that she would strike a truce with tables-d'hote and have a cook of her own, amenable possibly to instruction in the Northampton mysteries. He had touched a tender chord; Mrs. Hudson became almost cheerful. Her sentiments upon the table-d'hote system and upon foreign household habits generally were remarkable, and, if we had space for it, would repay analysis; and the idea of reclaiming a lost soul to the Puritanic canons of cookery quite ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... gate Didst thou the land of knowledge find. To merit a more glorious fate, In graces trains itself the mind. What thrilled thee through with trembling blessed, When erst the Muses swept the chord, That power created in thy breast, Which to the mighty ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... (1870-1881). That this should be the period beloved of amateurs does not surprise me. It is the period of Mme. Maitre (1871), La Loge (1874), Moulin de la Galette (1876), and M. Choquet—"portrait d'un fou par un fou," Renoir calls it—pictures of ravishing loveliness to set dancing every chord in a spectator of normal sensibility. Also, it is a period that has an extraordinary charm for the literary connoisseur. It throws glamour over the "seventies," and, for that matter, on to the "eighties." ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... the criminal classes when they are so unfortunate as to get into prison always strikes a sympathetic chord in the gentle breast of Mr. EDMUND HARVEY. His latest discovery is that they are allowed the use of writing-paper not more than once a month; and for the rest of the time have to entrust their literary compositions to the unsympathetic surface of a slate, with the aid of a probably ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 23, 1917 • Various
... slowly forward. The general and Totski had agreed to avoid any hasty and irrevocable step. Alexandra's parents had not even begun to talk to their daughters freely upon the subject, when suddenly, as it were, a dissonant chord was struck amid the harmony of the proceedings. Mrs. Epanchin began to show signs of discontent, and that was a serious matter. A certain circumstance had crept in, a disagreeable and troublesome factor, which threatened ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the valley of fear and doubt. What she wanted of him was just what she had not—feeling, intense, varied feeling, so that, while she remained ice, she could paint as if she felt; and with a gifted woman's tact, and with the power of one loved almost to idolatry, she caused every chord of his soul, now in happy harmony, now in painful discord, to vibrate under her skilful touch. But such a life was very wearing, and he was failing under it. Moreover, he was robbing himself of sleep in the early morning, ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... this same bow, which he shall never bend. So they; but when the wary Hero wise Had made his hand familiar with the bow Poising it and examining—at once— As when in harp and song adept, a bard Unlab'ring strains the chord to a new lyre, The twisted entrails of a sheep below With fingers nice inserting, and above, 490 With such facility Ulysses bent His own huge bow, and with his right hand play'd The nerve, which in its quick vibration sang Clear as the swallow's voice. Keen ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... Carved night, and chiselled shadow: be the tomb That speaks him famous graven with signs of doom Intrenched inevitably in lines athwart, As on some thunder-blasted Titan's brow His record of rebellion. Not the day Shall strike forth music from so stern a chord, Touching this marble: darkness, none knows how, And stars impenetrable of midnight, may. So looms the likeness ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... which the eye perceives." There are people who are colour-blind, people who are tone-deaf. Most people are smell-blind-and-deaf. We should not condemn a musical composition on the testimony of an ear which cannot distinguish one chord from another, or judge a picture by the verdict of a colour-blind critic. The sensations of smell which cheer, inform, and broaden my life are not less pleasant merely because some critic who treads the wide, ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... but the womanly love and devotion, and unselfishness, are all there, writ in clear and uncompromising characters. The first and last acts were decidedly the best; in the latter especially Miss Anderson touched a true pathetic chord, and fairly elicited the pity and sympathy of the audience. With a gentle wonder and true dignity she meets the gradual dropping away of her illusion, the crumbling of her unreasoning faith, the cruel stings when her spiritual nature ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... fearest to enter there whence has issued no revealing. It is God who gives thee thy mirror of imagination, and if thou keep it clean, it will give thee back no shadow but of the truth. Never a cry of love went forth from human heart but it found some heavenly chord to fold it in. Be sure thy friend inhabits a day not out of harmony with this morning of earthly spring, with this sunlight, those rain-drops, that sweet wind that flows so softly over ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... climb so far. He drops the poisoned drop into the ear, and from that moment all consciousness takes on a dulness, and the man becomes terrified lest life is losing its possibilities for him. He rushes back on to a familiar platform of experience, and there finds comfort in touching a well-known chord of passion or emotion. And too many having done this linger on, afraid to attempt the unknown, and satisfied to touch continually that chord which responds most readily. By this means they get the assurance that life is still burning within them. But at last their fate ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... terms and fictions. It is the word "slavery" which shocks their tender sensibilities; and their imaginations associate it with "hydras and chimeras dire." The thing itself, in its most hideous reality, passes daily under their view unheeded—a familiar face, touching no chord of shame, sympathy or indignation. Yet so brutalizing is your iron bondage that the English operative is a by-word through the world. When favoring fortune enables him to escape his prison-house, both in Europe and America he is shunned. "With all the skill ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... The sympathetick chord she feels Soft thrilling in her soul; And, as the sweet vibration steals Through every vein, in tender peals She seems to hear ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... woman's delicate tact. But daily the bushman put the woman to shame, while she stood dumb or stammering. The Maluka had touched the one chord in the man's heart that was not strained to breaking point, and instantly the fingers closed over the sovereigns, and the defiant hand fell to his side, as with a husky "Not from your sort, boss," he turned sharply ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... In all that great building, but one little group sat silent. Ivan and the three gathered close at his side, were like men dead. Long before it was over, Nicholas had flung his baton to the floor and left the stage; but still the orchestra went on—and on. In the silence following on the last chord—a silence broken by no demonstration, either of applause or of hissing—Ivan the composer rose, pushed his way to an aisle, and hurried blindly out into the streets. Thus he knew nothing of the remarkable sequel ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... kitchen and here, in the shining quiet of an old-fashioned kitchen whose spotless rows of pans and its rocker by the window reflected nothing of first citizenship, the memory-making mystery of child and woman in a homely setting drew taut an age-old chord of sympathy. Out of the hum of the kettle and the fire-shadows of the grate it came, out of the winter wind that rattled the checkerpaned windows—that eternal something that is only given to women to understand. ...
— Jimsy - The Christmas Kid • Leona Dalrymple
... mood to be easily persuaded. The plaintive sobs, telling of woe that clutched some one's heart-strings, stirred a responsive chord within him. He, too, remembered those at home. Jack had put a clincher on his argument when he asked what their opinion of a man would be who turned aside and went his own way after hearing a woman or ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... know that—'tis an old tune, like this"—and striking a chord or two, she was off before the rest had any guess of her intention, with a merry devil in her eye and her face glowing like a ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... reply, but walked away. It seemed to him that, at that instant, a chord in his filial love snapped, and ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... honour of Saints Mary, Peter, and Etheldreda. King Henry III. was present, as well as Prince Edward, afterwards king. When the new portion of the church was ready, the remains of the four saints were removed further east. In the Norman church the high altar was in the chord of the apse, assuming one to have been built; after Bishop Northwold's alterations it was placed at the east end of the present sixth bay, where the apse terminated. The shrine of the foundress was placed some feet further to the east, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... me in that little cathedral town would be most difficult to describe. After the hurry, rattle, and fever of the city, the rare weeks spent here were infinitely peaceful. They were full of a quaint sense of childhood, with sometimes a deeper chord touched—the giant and spiritual things childhood has dreams of. The little room I slept in had opposite its window the great grey cathedral wall; it was only in the evening that the sunlight crept round it and appeared in the room strained through the faded green blind. It must have been ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... to ride more slowly, in oder to gain a few moments to manage my thoughts. I even halted awhile. There was a slight bend in the river-bank, and the road crossed this like a chord to its arc. The part cut off was a piece of waste—a common—and as there was no fence I forsook the road, and walked my horse out on the river-bank. There I drew up, but remained ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... the maiden, in tones as soft and tremulous as the lightly-touched chord of some musical instrument, as she threw back her veil, and disclosed a beauty of features and sweetness of countenance that at once raised a buzz of admiration through ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... the immense distance of that future to which their master confided all his hopes of universal prosperity. They wished for it at once, with the eagerness of a child who is shown a dainty which is afterwards put out of its reach. The sacrifices, the slow work for the future, struck no chord in their minds. From Gabriel's explanations they only drew the fact that they were unhappy, but that they had the same right to happiness and comfort as those privileged few whom they had formerly respected in their ignorance. As a certain ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... to the bar to the lost chord pipe. Bald Pat carried two diners' drinks, Richie and Poldy. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... is spoken— Mourn, for the knell hath knoll'd— The master chord is broken, And the master's hand is cold! Romance hath lost her minstrel, No more his magic strain Shall throw a sweeter spell around, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 326, August 9, 1828 • Various
... She had wed One of those common men, who serve as ore For the gold grains to lie in. Virgin gold Lay hidden there—no richer was the dross. She went to gay assemblies, not content; For she had found no hearts, that, struck with hers, Sounded one chord. She went, and danced, or sat And listlessly conversed; or, if at home, Read the new novel, wishing all the time For something better; though she knew not what, Or ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... the slightest degree at stake. Whoever had the address to make a question take this shape, might be assured that the King would throw aside all consideration of justice, right, and reason, and dismiss all evidence. It was by playing on this chord that his ministers knew how to manage him with so much art, and to make themselves despotic masters, causing him to believe all they wished, while at the same time they rendered him inaccessible to explanation, and to those ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... one of those moments that come very seldom in our lives, when all the forces in us are sweetly strung, and every chord vibrating ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... unbelief which is eating its way like a festering sore to the heart of our modern world. If the lusts of the flesh and the pride of life sum up the totality of our being here, why should that crowd on the artist's canvas be represented as moved by an anguish that touches no chord in its soul; which is, indeed, foreign to its every thought, sympathy, and pursuit? So long as men are indifferent about the very question, Why that anguish? vain is the appeal, "To you is it nothing your ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... direction requires to be stopped in a marked and distinct manner when it has run its course, and we find a similarly felt necessity in regard to musical form. The repetition so common at the close of a piece of music of the same chord several times in succession is exactly analogous to the repetition of cross lines at the necking of a Doric column to stop the vertical lines of the fluting, or to the strongly marked horizontal ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... Scott's poetry is patriotism, the passion of place. In his metrical romances the rush of the narrative and the vivid, picturesque beauty of the descriptions are indeed exciting to the imagination; but it is only when the chord of national feeling is touched that the verse grows lyrical, that the heart is reached, and that tears come into the reader's eyes, as they must have done into the poet's. A dozen such passages occur at once to the memory; the last stand of the Scottish nobles around ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... the bases of perpendiculars let fall from V and c on a b; and d the base of a perpendicular from the point of the cusp to the arch line. Then a b will always be a span of the arch, V p its perpendicular height, V a the chord of its side arcs, d c the depth of its cusps, c c the horizontal interval between the cusps, a c the length of the chord of the lower arc of the cusp, V c the length of the chord of the upper arc of the cusp, (whether continuous or not,) and c p the length of a ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... aglow, and she saw what had happened to him. She put him aside with, "Run on to bed now, sonny; I've got a little work out here." And he left her. In the sitting room only the moon gave light. He stood at the window a moment, and then turned to his melodeon. His hands fell on the major chord of "G," and without knowing what he was playing he began "Largo." He played his soul into his music, and looking up, whispered the name "Ellen" rapturously over and over, and then as the music mounted to its climax the whole world's mystery, and ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... "Its songs, its hues, its radiant air! O, do you remember—" and, forgetting the Rat, they slid into passionate reminiscence, while he listened fascinated, and his heart burned within him. In himself, too, he knew that it was vibrating at last, that chord hitherto dormant and unsuspected. The mere chatter of these southern-bound birds, their pale and second-hand reports, had yet power to awaken this wild new sensation and thrill him through and through with it; what would one moment of the real thing work in him—one passionate touch of ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... now what had struck that vibrant chord within me! The voice, though infinitely deeper, yet had an unmistakable resemblance to the dulcet tones of Karamaneh—of Karamaneh whose eyes haunted my dreams, whose beauty had done much to ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... answer for the consequences. It was true, he cared not for life; but who could assure him that, unless he changed his resolution, the uncontrolled disease might not operate such disorganisation in his system as utterly and for ever to deprive him of reason?—I had now hit at last on the sensible chord; and, partly annoyed by our importunities, partly persuaded, he cast at us both the fiercest glance of vexation, and throwing out his arm, said, in the angriest tone, 'There,—you are, I see, a d—d set of butchers,—take away as much blood ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... born for; her form was fit to model his proudest ideal from,—her eyes melted him when they rested for an instant on his face,—her voice reached those hidden sensibilities of his inmost nature, which never betray their existence until the outward chord to which they vibrate in response sends its message to stir them. But was she not already pledged to that other,—that cold-blooded, contriving, venal, cynical, selfish, polished, fascinating man of the world, whose artful strategy would pass with nine women out of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... Commissioner says that detachments of the Mounted Police are found at points "where industrial activities are vital to the welfare of the nation" he strikes a chord that will find grateful response from every industrious citizen, whether employer or employed, who understands that "trade is the calm health of nations." There is nothing in this world of material things more to be feared than the wanton destruction of industries that have been ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... good," thought Cagliostro, "if you only touch the right chord.—From this evening," he said aloud, "you shall move to other rooms, where the windows look on Menilmontant and the Bellevue. You need not fear to show yourself to the neighbors; they are all honest, simple ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... than wings of one dove, Than tones or colours in chord, We are one—and safe, and for ever, my love, Two thoughts in ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... their co-disciples;[6172] the institution, through its mechanism, labors to keep this up, and the administrators or professors, by order or through zeal, use all their efforts to make the sonorous and ringing chord vibrate with all the more energy. After 1811, even in a private institution,[6173] "the victories of the Emperor form almost the only subject on which the imagination of the pupils is allowed to exercise itself." After 1807,[6174] at Louis le ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... kindly received, I have spoken of my literary sympathy with this country. Every Englishman rightly looks to this country as he would with a sense of appeal to posterity. He feels that if he has said anything, if he has written anything, if he has touched any chord, if he has struck even any verbal assurance that pleases mankind, if you take it up you pass it on; it does not go from tongue to tongue in the little distant Anglia ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... the division of a chord of the circle equal to the radius into 60 equal parts, called degrees: the division of these into 60 minutes, of the minute into 60 seconds, and the second into 60 thirds; the division of the day into 24 hours, each ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... writer of America, whose great novel struck a chord of universal sympathy throughout the civilized world, has habits of composition peculiarly her own, and unlike those belonging to any author of whom we have record. She croons, so to speak, over her writings, and it makes very little difference to her whether there is a crowd of people ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... chord, then, of this arc, Harry was driving furiously, with the intent, as it would seem, to cut him off from the gully—the stone wall crossed his line, but not a second did he pause for it, but gave his ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... reverence, and a soul I worship, nor is there a happier being in the world this moment than Ferdinand Armine. With such a woman as you every fate must be a triumph. You have touched upon a chord of my heart that has sounded before, though in solitude. It was but the wind that played on it before; but now that tone rings with a purpose. This is glorious sympathy. Let us leave Armine to its fate. I have a sword, and ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... of the city must have been clearly visible in ancient times. As we mounted the steps and approached the idol I observed that Pablo hung back a little; as though in the depths of his nature some chord had been touched, some ancient instinct in his blood aroused, that filled his ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... these short, close-knit foreigners. The excitement and novelty of the employment helped me through those first few days. I felt the joy of the pioneer—felt the sweet sense of delving in the mother earth. It touched in me some responsive chord that harked back to my ancestors who broke the rocky soil of New England. Of the life of my fellows bustling by on the earth-crust overhead—those fellows of whom so lately I had been one—I was not at all conscious. ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might; Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd ...
— Beauties of Tennyson • Alfred Tennyson
... from our Pacific coast. Yet if a line be drawn from the point of our territory nearest Asia to the Southern boundary of California, that line being the chord of which our Pacific coast is the bow, Hawaii will fall this side of it. Held by a great Nation with whom we were at war, it would be a most formidable and valuable base of supplies. We had sustained a peculiar relation to it. ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... dances on a thin coating of ice, and spite of his better reason would persuade himself that he is on solid ground. I love with all my heart and soul; and if there be no truth in her affection, the last chord of my whole life has been struck. I shall still live on,—marry perhaps some day,—who knows? But love and ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... mystery, though I'm very far from guessing what that key is. But I have a premonition—you may smile if you wish—that I'll find the clew I'm seeking at Etretat. The name has somehow struck an answering chord in me." ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... in homage fall; He comes—the Judge, the Lord of all: His welcome sound on every chord, Hosanna! to ...
— Poems on Serious and Sacred Subjects - Printed only as Private Tokens of Regard, for the Particular - Friends of the Author • William Hayley
... his companion. She had struck the main chord of his nature in her words, and he felt suddenly that thrill of pleasure which comes from the flattery of our pride and our hopes. John was not a vain man, but he was capable of being intoxicated by the grandeur ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... with a badly fumbled chord, and turned from the piano with something like the show of reluctance with which a man turns from a girl who has refused him. That Mr. Merriman did not start or change expression on seeing a stranger in the very heart of his privacy was also in keeping with ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... their barracks in the Phoenix Park, Dublin, on Friday evenings, sometimes include the tune in their programme, but when I heard them it was led up to and preceded by "St. Patrick's Day in the Mornin'," to which it was conjoined by one intervening chord. A ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... Dr. Higdon's face. He was the least severe of the three men, and something in Dalaber's bold bearing touched a sympathetic chord ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... show that this lady was failing rapidly with consumption. Among the old letters, one from an assistant teacher to Daniel Anthony, dated 1839, a year after Susan left school, says: "The tender chord that so long confined our beloved Deborah to this world was broken on the 25th day of the 4th month, and we trust her happy spirit took its flight to realms of eternal felicity." Deborah Moulson was a cultured and estimable woman, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... are constantly receiving more letters from women who read "Give Her A Job," and find that what you had to say upon an apparently well-worn subject struck a most responsive chord. Can you not give us another two thousand words upon this, or a similar subject? This type of article is always ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... she got into the habit of going to church, and came under the influence of this delicate, upright and dictatorial abbe. A mystic, he appealed to her in his enthusiasm and zeal. He set in vibration in her soul the chord of religious poetry that all women possess. His unyielding austerity, his disgust for ordinary human interests, his love of God, his youthful and untutored inexperience, his harsh words, and his inflexible will, gave Jeanne an idea ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... the other was hardly more than a rare accelerated heart-beat at a chord of music like the memory of a lost happiness, or at the sea shimmering with morning. He never spoke of it now, not even to Fanny; although it was possible that he might be doing her understanding an injustice. Fanny, generally, was a woman in whom the best of sense triumphed; ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the pressure is always perpendicular to the surface, and the ratio of lift to drift is therefore the same as that of the cosine to the sine of the angle of incidence. But in curved surfaces a very remarkable situation is found. The pressure, instead of being uniformly normal to the chord of the arc, is usually inclined considerably in front of the perpendicular. The result is that the lift is greater and the drift less than if the pressure were normal. Lilienthal was the first to discover this exceedingly important fact, which is fully set forth in his ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... its tentative delicacy, compared to the mature splendor of Fontainebleau, for example. This forest had the virility of a young savage; it was neither dense nor vast; yet, in contrast to the ribbony grain fields, and to the finish of the villa parks, was as refreshing to the eye as the right chord that strikes upon the ear after a ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... blaming himself for having inadvertently touched some tender chord, hastened, somewhat ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... singing breath, if echoing chord To every hidden pang were given, What endless melodies were poured, As sad as ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... came together, and, desperate to snap the chord of impotent suspense, mooted and rejected plan after plan that their sane judgment knew from the first to ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... ground of its not conforming to the end he had in view. It is difficult, in the one case as in the other, to reconstruct the imagined personality to which his preface refers; and his words on the later occasion pointed rather to that idea of a chord of feeling which is raised by the correspondence of the first and last poems of the respective groups. But either clue may be followed ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... flowers that yield honey to the bee likewise delight the bee-keeper with their perfume and the poet with their colours, and there is no adequate reason why the magic verse which strikes a responsive chord in the soul of lovers of high art, and starts a new train of ideas in the minds of serious thinkers, should thereby lose any of the healing virtues it may have heretofore possessed for the suffering souls of ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... their grace. When a man's mother holds his child in her gladdened arms he is aware (with some instinctive sense of propriety) of the roundness of life's cycle; of the mystic harmony of life's ways. There speaks humanity in its chord of three notes: its little capture of completeness and joy, sounding for a moment against the silent flux of time. Then the perfect span is shredded away and is but ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... humbly began, resembled the 'little spring in the mountain rock,' which became a brook, a torrent, a wide rolling river. By narrating the lives saved by Ellerthorpe's unprecedented bravery, they had struck a chord in the innermost recesses of the heart of the benevolent portion of the people. He was surprised to find that no one had recognised Ellerthorpe's heroism before. During a period of forty years he had saved the lives of upwards of thirty persons. But however tardily it may appear ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... the water-line of the Nautilus. Then the screw set to work at its maximum speed, its four blades beating the waves with in describable force. Under this powerful pressure, the hull of the Nautilus quivered like a sonorous chord and sank regularly under ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... praise, Tempered their headlong rage, their courage steeled, And raised fair Lusitania's fallen shield, And gave new edge to Lusitania's sword, And taught her sons forgotten arms to wield - Shivered my harp, and burst its every chord, If it forget thy ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... and singing when this I had heard, and more, Though tears half-blinded me; yes, I remained going on and on, Just as I used me to chord and to sing at the selfsame time! . . . For it's a contralto—my voice is; they'll hear it again here to- night In the psalmody notes that I love more than world or than flesh or ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... an intelligence made for higher things than spade and oar. As they sat there they were like the notes of a piano, and Kosmaroff played the instrument with a sure touch that brought the fullest vibration out of each chord. He was a born leader; an organizer not untouched perchance by that light of genius which enables some to organize ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... a lively chord or two, "I hope you'll catch it, young man. You're altogether too free and easy with your feminine friends.... What do ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... both of us the enchanted chord was touched; we both looked through the same window into Heaven. In that moment of musical, shared delight, my soul and the soul of that large lady, joined hands and sang ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... of a flower. The poem, 'An Evening,' given below, may be classified both as a song and as a lyric; yet it needs no music other than its own rhythms, and the full close to each verse which falls upon the ear like a soft and final chord ending a musical composition. A light touch and a feeling for shades of meaning are required to execute such dainty verse. In 'St. Margaret's Eve,' and in many other ballads, Allingham expresses the broader, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... of the elbow that pressed against hers, and the ecstasy of her child's voice still trilling on the black silence, Lilly was conscious of movement. The gray silhouette marching down the aisle of gloom. A group up about the piano. Another chord struck out. Zoe's voice skipping upward in ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... list," she said. "Present my regrets." Covering his irritation with a smiling face, as courtiers must ever learn to do, he asked for ink and paper and patiently wrote her on the spot a respectful and pointed warning on the danger to Cyrene. His missive struck the dominant chord in the breast ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... chosen to sing "The Star Spangled Banner," and she stepped out a little from the crowd to face the young men as the orchestra sounded the first chord. She sang in a full, clear voice, but when the volunteers saw that, as she sang, the tears were streaming down her cheeks in spite of the brave voice, they began to choke with the others. If Miss Betty found them worth weeping for, they could afford to cry a little ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... sometimes juvenile in form and following closely after Spanish models, reveal at times flashes of thought and turns of expression that show distinct originality; even in these early compositions there is that plaintive undertone, that minor chord of sadness, which pervades all his poems, reaching its fullest measure of pathos in the verses written in his death-cell. He received a bachelor's degree according to the Spanish system in 1877, but continued advanced studies in agriculture at the Ateneo, at the same ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... third and fifth, whereas it acts on grains of fine sand lying on stretched parchment so as to distribute them in geometrical figures that are always the same, according to the pitch,—quite regular when the combination is a true chord, and indefinite when the sounds are dissonant,—I say that music is an art conceived in ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... my bosom's lord? Why this anguish in thine eye? Oh, it seems as thy heart's chord Had broken ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... conclusion that there was nothing upon earth worth living for—when she had "come to the end of everything, and cared for nothing," she met with an old priest of venerable aspect, a trusted servant of King Edward, whose first words touched the deepest chord in her heart, while his second brought the healing balm. His name was John de Wycliffe. Was it any wonder that she accepted him as a very angel ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... thought. But he may be something very different! Love her he must: all who behold her love! The few words she has occasionally dropped, have led me to suspect 'more was meant than met the ear.' Whenever this chord is touched, my heart instantly becomes tremulous; and with sensibility so painful as fully to lay open its weakness; against which I must carefully and resolutely guard. It is these incongruous these jarring tokens that engender doubt, and ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... was interrupted. Eustace Hignett, pulling himself together with a painful effort, raised his hands and struck a crashing chord, and, as he did so, there appeared through the door at the far end of the saloon a figure at the sight of which the entire audience started convulsively with the feeling that a worse thing had befallen them than ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... have missed this experience in the early days of light purses; who have not, in the dawn of their genius, stood in the presence of a master and felt the throbbing of their hearts, will always carry in their inmost souls a chord that has never been touched, and in their work an indefinable quality will be lacking, a something in the stroke of the brush, a mysterious element that we call poetry. The swaggerers, so puffed ...
— The Unknown Masterpiece - 1845 • Honore De Balzac
... with pathos and charm, the look, the attitude from which all formality had fled and only the natural grace remained, all were of the sort which sways without virtue and rouses in both weak and strong an answering chord of sympathy. ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... a right to treat Montaigne as we please, even though that right includes the privilege of not reading every word of the famous Essays, and of only reverting—in our light return to them—to those aspects and qualities which strike an answering chord ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... intend to do with Clotelle?" A paleness that overspread his countenance, the tears that trickled down his cheeks, the deep emotion that was visible in his face, and the trembling of his voice, showed at once that she had touched a tender chord. Without a single word, he buried his face in his handkerchief, and ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... between Joseph Scaliger and William Hamilton,[211] in a certain impetuousity of character, and inaptitude to think of quantity. Scaliger maintained that the arc of a circle is less than its chord in arithmetic, though greater in geometry; Hamilton arrived at two quantities which are identical, but the greater the one the less the other. But, on the whole, I liken Hamilton rather to Julius than to Joseph. On this last hero of literature ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... sentiment and delighted the people. He was in Paris when his State legislature enacted the act for which he had so strenuously worked, establishing the freedom of religion. He had numerous copies of it printed in French and distributed. It struck another popular chord and received the ardent praise of ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... gentle, but their tone Was sad as sorrow's sigh,— A tear-drop trembled in his own As he sought her downcast eye. A chord was struck within his breast That long untouched had lain, Old memories started from their rest,— ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... pencil, and dash out upon paper the wildest discords. These we would play for him, at his request, from morning till night,—during much of which time he would seem to be in a happy trance. Of this music no chord or melody was true; they were jangling memories of his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... mistaken," remarked Mr. Thornton, quietly, realizing that he had unconsciously touched an unpleasant chord, "but the resemblance was ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... conceivable that the physiological units of a living organism may be so influenced by surrounding conditions (organic and other) that the accumulation of these conditions may upset the previous rhythm of such units, producing modifications in them—a fresh chord in the harmony ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... chord died into silence, but the woman lingered, dreaming over the keys. Firelight from the end of the room brought red- gold gleams into the dusky softness of her hair and shadowed her profile upon the opposite wall. No answering flash of jewels met the questioning light—there was only ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... and the spirits that aid the designing just at that moment suggested the plan which, of all others, was most likely to be successful. Bluewater had betrayed his aversion to the interference of foreign troops in the quarrel, and on this subject he intended to strike a chord which he rightly fancied would ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... powers of Art Propitious view'd, and from his genial star Shed influence to the seeds of fancy kind, Than his attemper'd bosom must preserve The seal of Nature. There alone unchanged, Her form remains. The balmy walks of May There breathe perennial sweets; the trembling chord Resounds for ever in the abstracted ear, 370 Melodious; and the virgin's radiant eye, Superior to disease, to grief, and time, Shines with unbating lustre. Thus at length Endow'd with all that nature can bestow, The ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... of the old year, and, in the midst of the Christmas joy, there were allusions to it in the services and hymns. Something in the tune of 'Days and moments quickly flying,' touched some chord in Dolores's spirit, and set her off crying. She would have done anything to stop it, but there was no helping it, great round splashes came down, and the more she was afraid of being noticed, the worse the choking grew. At last, the very worst person—she thought—to take notice. Uncle Reginald, ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... chords of the 9th, 11th, or the 99th, but a lens far different tells us they are used with different aims from those of Debussy. Emerson is definite in that his art is based on something stronger than the amusing or at its best the beguiling of a few mortals. If he uses a sensuous chord, it is not for sensual ears. His harmonies may float, if the wind blows in that direction, through a voluptuous atmosphere, but he has not Debussy's fondness for trying to blow a sensuous atmosphere from his own voluptuous cheeks. And so he ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... trouble and expense he had incurred in getting up his large expedition. Of course I told him how disappointed I had been in not getting a sight of the Little Luta Nzige. I described how we had seen the Nile bending west where we crossed in Chopi, and then, after walking down the chord of an arc described by the river, had found it again in Madi coming from the west, whence to the south, and as far at least as Koshi, it was said to be navigable, probably continuing to be so right into the Little Luta Nzige. Should ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... The chord is shorter than the arc; and this applies to walks in gardens as well as geometry, only people generally call that which amounts to the ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... do not know what I was playing, Or what I was dreaming then; But I struck one chord of music, Like the sound of ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... common appreciation of one whose influence was not merely local but worldwide. He invites the old world and the new to kneel together at the altar of sentiment, an appeal to the emotions which never fails to touch a responsive chord ...
— Dickens in Camp • Bret Harte
... the sacred chord. "Ah of course I don't deny that we must do something with her, ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... one joy, or even to dwell On one rich chord of pain, Beyond the pulse of the song, would untune heaven And ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... serviceable to you to think over all the details of the annoyance from which you are suffering, and to consider all the extenuating circumstances of the case; to imagine (this will be good use to make of your vivid imagination) what painful chord you may have unconsciously struck, what circumstances may possibly have led the person who annoys you to suppose that the provocation originated with yourself instead of with her. It may be possible that some innocent words of yours may have ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... saintly beings he had ever seen. She had one married daughter, and two more, nuns at Port Royal, and she was with them in heart, the element of Augustinianism in the Jansenist teaching having found a responsive chord in her soul from her Calvinist education. She spent her whole time, even while living in the world, in prayers, pious exercises, and works of charity, and she would fain have induced her son to quit secular life and become one of those recluses who inhabited the environs ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... i.e. caught any part of it between the ends. The bight of his cable has swept our anchor, i.e. the bight of the cable of another ship as she ranged about has entangled itself about the flukes of our anchor. Any part of the chord or curvature of a rope between the ends may be ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... will come back," said the musician kindly, seeing the tears in the young fellow's eyes. "See, we will try a scale." He struck a chord. "Now, open your mouth—so—Do-o-o-o!" He sang a long note. Nino could not resist any longer, whether he had any voice or not. He blushed red and turned away, but he opened his mouth and ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... large attempts. Whether she merely twisted her golden-brown hair into a knot, or tied a few flowers together and fastened them on her dress with a pearl pin, either thing was perfectly done—without a false line or a discordant hue. Her face, form, voice and colouring were like a chord of music, harmonious,—and hence the impression of satisfaction and composure her presence always gave. In herself she was a creature of remarkable temperament and character;—true womanly in every delicate sentiment, fancy and feeling, but with something of the man-hero in her scorn of petty ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... and clear once more, that shadowy figure seemed to gather substance, and I felt as if some unknown force were compelling my attention and chaining my every sense in a mute endeavor to establish some chord of connection between me and the dim spirit world which floats forever round us. Now waxing, now waning, the vision grew, till I fancied I caught a glint of armor. For an instant a wild imploring glance met my own, and a transparent finger pointed to the richly-carved paneling below the arras, but ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... to a single chord. He cannot tell where his direction tends; He strives unguided towards indefinite ends; He is an ignorant though ...
— Poems of West & East • Vita Sackville-West
... on the opposite side of the aisle, and the child's face, with her soft curls and brown eyes reminded Randy of the little sister at home. Then a strange hush pervaded the hall, and as the director swayed his baton, twenty bows were drawn across the strings of as many violins in one grand chord of sweetest harmony. ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... pureness filtered crystal-clear, And know the pleasure sprinkled bright By simple singing of delight, Shrill, irreflective, unrestrained, Rapt, ringing, on the jet sustained Without a break, without a fall, Sweet-silvery, sheer lyrical, Perennial, quavering up the chord Like myriad dews of sunny sward That trembling into fulness shine, And sparkle dropping argentine; Such wooing as the ear receives From zephyr caught in choric leaves Of aspens when their chattering net Is flushed to white with shivers wet; And such the water-spirit's chime On mountain ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... of seats was seventeen, divided into wedges by six flights of steps, and in stalls by lines yet visible upon the stone. The upper tiers were approached by vomitories and by a subterranean corridor. The orchestra formed an arc the chord of which was indicated by a ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... Penn Shirley is a very graceful interpreter of child-life. She thoroughly understands how to reach out to the tender chord of the little one's feelings, and to interest her in the noble life of her young companions. Her stories are full of bright lessons, but they do not take on the character of moralizing sermons. Her keen observation and ready sympathy teach her how to deal with ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May
... majority of all present, in the galleries, in the lobbies, and on the floor, rose in quick response to the sentiment and cheered with all their might. There had been no such outburst in the whole course of the evening. Evidently this was the responsive chord, and having gone on with the main line of my argument, I at last closed with the same declaration in different form;—that our great Commonwealth,—the most important in the whole sisterhood of States,—which had ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... chord. She glances up and smiles, and is transfigured in spite of the dismal mourning gear. If she can do anything for him! If the benefits will not always ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas |
