"Chord" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... the Great Feast strikes the same note when the liberal host sent out his servants, saying, 'Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled'. But the grand chord was sounded out by our Risen Lord when He said to His disciples, 'Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature'. That is ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... the feeble note Of one small bird's awakening throat, Than that unnamed, tremendous chord Arcturus sounds before ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... feelings were not such as to enable me to join in what seemed to me little else than a mockery of human life; but rather than "displace the mirth," I tried, but could not long remain a passive spectator; the glee seemed forced and unnatural. It touched no sympathetic chord; it only jarred the feelings; it was the last attempt at gaiety I witnessed within the ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... of him. He himself had never investigated Egyptian matters closely, and therefore did not seek to direct my course minutely, but advised me, in general, never to forget that the special science was nothing save a single chord, which could only produce its full melody with those that belonged ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... 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
... to each other belong, Come graceful elf, And around my lute in sympathy strong Now wind thyself; And quake as if mov’d by zephyr’s wing, ’Neath the clang of the chord, And a morning song with glee we’ll sing To ...
— The Expedition to Birting's Land - and other ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... thou hear them ring? what a grief is this Thus to be deaf, and lose such harmony. Wretched Auditus, now shalt thou never hear The pleasing changes that a well-tun'd chord Of trolling bells will make, when ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... unread, In all the workings of the brain; Whose concepts of the avenues That reach the mind of tender youth, Are labyrinths of tangled views Devoid of art, science, and truth; Touch but that chord of magic power Which gives the soul augmented bliss, And lifts it for the present hour Above the world's base selfishness; Then let the search-light of the soul Illumine every page that's read, Until an animated whole Shall ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... a week, a month, a year—Art exacts of its votaries no less service than a lifetime. But in her girl's soul the right chord had been touched, which began to vibrate unto noble music—the true seed had been sown, which day by day grew ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... several stringed instruments. One of these, which Captain Grant describes, was played by an old woman; it had seven notes, six of which were a perfect scale. Another, which had three strings, was played by a man: they were a full, harmonious chord. A third instrument called "the laced nanga" formed of dark wood, in the shape of a tray, had three crosses in the bottom, and was laced with one string, seven or eight times, over bridges at ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... chord ZZ'. Then, by geometry, the angle FQY is equal to the angle BTF, and the protuberance FY is equal the sine of that angle, making QF radius. This angle, made by the axis of the vortex and the surface of the sphere, is commonly between 30d and 40d, according as the moon is near her ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... a chord that might easily have given a jarring note; namely, the misfortunes of the kingdom. But it was done with so delicate a hand, and so entirely without a trace of rejoicing in a neighbour's calamities, that no susceptibilities could be ruffled, while yet the solemn lesson is unfalteringly ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... life passed away, and a new chord was awakened. Mary had become a mother; and as she pressed the babe to her bosom, new hopes were aroused. The clouds which had gathered around her seemed passing away, and the cheering sunbeams again ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... the midst of all this bustle, Willie moped and pined. He had the same chord of delicacy running through his mind that made his body feeble and weak. He kept out of the way, and was apparently occupied in whittling and carving uncouth heads on hazel-sticks in an out-house. But he positively avoided Michael, and shrunk away even from Susan. She was too much ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... this strange woman, to whom he had lately grown so much attached, plunged into intense emotion, awakened, apparently, by anxiety about his fate, stirred him very deeply—as it would have stirred anybody. Indeed, it struck some chord in him for which he could not quite account, and its echoes charmed and yet frightened him. ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... the crests of Norwood. It was then and there that the tragic significance of life first dimly awed and appealed to his questioning spirit: that the rhythm of humanity first touched deeply in him a corresponding chord. ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... the news arrived that the north was in open revolt, it struck a chord in the hearts of both brothers; and when the dark-browed twins came with the news that they had openly joined the standard of Llewelyn, they did not encounter the opposition they had expected, and it was with an eager hopefulness that they urged upon the Lord of Dynevor ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... far from hence is the gentle hill Carambis, on the north, opposite to which, at a distance of 2,500 furlongs, is the Criu-Metopon, a promontory of Taurica. From this spot the whole of the sea-coast, beginning at the river Halys, is like the chord of an arc fastened ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... of the deserted two on Cod Lead must have appealed to the commander. He was profane about it, and talked about elephants and men who owned them in a way that struck an answering chord in the Cap'n's breast. But he finally gave orders for the embarkation of Imogene, and after much more profanity and more slurs which Hiram was obliged to listen to meekly, the task was accomplished, and the cutter proceeded on her way along coast ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... desire. Here, the daughter was born, and here, I am convinced, we shall find the key to the 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
... sculpture especially arrests the eye, and awakens a chord of feeling in the most callous heart. It represents one of those Imagines Clipeatae which the ancient Romans were so fond of sculpturing in their temples or upon their tombs; a clam shell or shield with the bust ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... route that you can, and he must take. Why can you not reach there before him, unless you admit that he is more than your equal on a march? His route is the arc of a circle, while yours is the chord. The roads are as good ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... have not discovered, and each with his own instrument interprets that life to those less sensitive than himself. Observe a musician composing. He writes; stops; hesitates; meditates; perhaps hums softly to himself; perhaps goes to the piano and strikes a chord or two. What is he doing? He is trying to express to himself a beauty which he has heard in the world of infinite phenomena, and to reproduce it as well as sensuous sounds can reproduce it, that those with duller hearing than himself may hear it also. Observe a painter ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... began an account of his experiences, speaking in an indifferent manner at first, but warming to his subject, until he spoke eloquently at length. He was not a vain man, but Millicent had set the right chord vibrating when she chose the topic of his new-world experiences. He stopped at last abruptly, ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... a strain of weird, unearthly music, sweet and sad beyond expression, but distant and fleeting. Yet long after it had ceased, the chord that it awakened in my heart continued to vibrate as with the echo of the strain which had departed. An unutterable, indescribable longing filled my soul—a vague yearning for something, I knew not what. My whole spiritual being ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... touched a chord of pity in me, she began to play; her voice followed; dinner and dressing, the house-party and my mother's guests, were all forgotten. I remember that you looked in, your eyes touched with a suggestive ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... in her choice than the lady who had suggested the Progress of Error. 8he bade him take the sofa on which she was reclining, and which, sofas being then uncommon, was a more striking and suggestive object than it would be now. The right chord was struck; the subject was accepted; and The Sofa grew into The Task; the title of the song reminding us that it was "commanded by the fair." As Paradise Lost is to militant Puritanism, so is The Task to the religious movement of its author's ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... and ladies bright The harp of Tara swells: The chord alone, that breaks at night, Its tale of ruin tells. Thus freedom now so seldom wakes, The only throb she gives Is when some heart indignant breaks, To ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... two black dragons sprang out of the fog upon the small clerk, they had merely the effect of all miracles—they changed the universe. He discovered the fact that all romantics know—that adventures happen on dull days, and not on sunny ones. When the chord of monotony is stretched most tight, then it breaks with a sound like song. He had scarcely noticed the weather before, but with the four dead eyes glaring at him he looked round and realised the ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... where the painter sought unreproved his models in simple nature, and trusted for his effect to what was holiest and most immutable in our common humanity, he must have been a bungler indeed if he did not succeed in touching some responsive chord of sympathy in the bosom of the observer. This is, perhaps, the secret of the universal, and, in general, deserved popularity ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... a similar order or arrangement. Perhaps the order in which branches spring from the brachial plexus that is most constantly met with is the one represented at D, Plate 12, where we find, on the outer border of B, the axillary artery, a nervous chord, d, giving off a thoracic branch to pass behind H, the lesser pectoral muscle, while the main chord itself, d, soon divides into two branches, one the musculo-cutaneous, e, which pierces G, the coraco-brachialis muscle, ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... for the train and a recollection that was freshest of all, one he had not mentioned to his partners; the touch of Molly's lips on his as he had bade her good-by. The kiss had not been that of a child, there had been a magic in it that had thrilled some chord in Sandy that still responded to that remembrance. He never dwelt on it long, it brought a vague reaction always, stirred that strange instinct of his that had branded him as woman-shy, kept him clean. Part of it ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... Ah! that name awoke a new chord of recollection—the casket, she had it with her yet. Instantly, everything was forgotten but it and its contents; and she placed a chair directly under the lamp, drew it out, and looked at it. It was a pretty little bijou itself, with its polished ivory ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... example of the all-around American high-school boys. His fondness for clean, honest sport of all kinds will strike a chord ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... were beginning to think that we had received the day's allotment, when a boom rang through the startled air! Now, a boom (in warfare) is not an harmonious note; but one gets accustomed to discord as to most other things. It was not the boom that was strange; it was the loud, unearthly chord it seemed to strike; the dread whiz which followed; which blanched faces, and sent the timid housemaid diving beneath the bed out of harm's way. Was it an earthquake?—the buildings shook. A fearful crash dissipated the notion. ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... her, old as he was, and had not loved lightly; but he could not take to his heart the heartless wife which she had frankly admitted she must be if he married her; and Della had, unwittingly, skillfully touched a tender chord, when she made the appeal to his feelings which she did. He had felt the force of her reasoning, and had been delighted with her frankness and her confidence; though it pained him to relinquish her, he was too much a soldier to display his wounds; ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... saw the Pleiades, rising through the mellow shade, Glitter like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid. Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might; Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of sight. Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest Nature's rule! Cursed be the gold that gilds the straiten'd forehead of a fool! Comfort? Comfort scorn'd of devils! this is truth the poet sings, ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... just, for the sixth time, won through to 'Iyam-ah waiting for-er theeee-yass-thorre,' and was doing some intricate three-chord work preparatory to starting over again, when a loaf of bread whizzed past his ear. It missed him by an inch, and crashed against a plaster statuette of the Infant Samuel on the ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... good. The Bounding Zouaves, with one accord, bounded into their clothes and disappeared through the door just as a long-drawn chord from the invisible orchestra announced the conclusion of the ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... change. He sought, with well-practised and delicate art, To surprise from Lucile the true state of her heart; But his efforts were vain, and the woman, as ever, More adroit than the man, baffled every endeavor. When he deem'd he had touch'd on some chord in her being, At the touch it dissolved, and was gone. Ever fleeing As ever he near it advanced, when he thought To have seized, and proceeded to analyze aught Of the moral existence, the absolute soul, Light as vapor the phantom ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... (historicissimus). If the history of the world be conceived as a circle, then Jewish history occupies the position of the diameter, the line passing through its centre, and the history of every other nation is represented by a chord marking off a smaller segment of the circle. The history of the Jewish people is like an axis crossing the history of mankind from one of its poles to the other. As an unbroken thread it runs through ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... part without discovering in it something new. In this character she bade farewell to her profession June 29, 1812. It was said by a contemporary critic that "there was not a height of grandeur to which she could not soar, nor a darkness of misery to which she could not descend; not a chord of feeling from the sternest to the most delicate which she could not cause to vibrate at ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... the responsive chord. The father's face lit up. He understood. Yes, it was right to fight for his baby girl, his little Starr, his one treasure, and this boy had done it, given his life freely. Was that like fighting for those other unloved, uncared-for, hungry darlings? Were they then dear children, ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... will use such a grey wet effect. I think of these old navigators in their small vessels, getting the thick and the thin, just as we do to-day in our own sailing craft; getting well dusted at times, with the salt thick on their cheeks and decks. Taking it all round, the sea is rather a minor chord; so that these Burlington House pictures of the Argo and The Heroes, in orange and rose on a wine-red sea are not convincing. When my patron comes home I will humbly suggest Orpheus singing at the ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... tea, which I pretended to enjoy in the hope of pleasing her. Over this we talked more like old and well proven friends than mere acquaintances of ten days' standing. Just once or twice the mysterious chord which marred the girl's charming conversation was touched. She immediately changed the subject on observing my distress. I say distress, for a weaker word would not fittingly describe the emotion I felt whenever she blundered into the pseudo-scientific nonsense which was her brother's favourite ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... other thoughts, which end in a volition and an act—the loosing of the greyhound from the leash. These several thoughts are the concomitants of a process which goes on in the nervous system of the man. Unless the nerve-elements of the retina, of the optic nerve, of the brain, of the spinal chord, and of the nerves of the arms went through certain physical changes in due order and correlation, the various states of consciousness which have been enumerated would not make their appearance. So that in this, as in all other intellectual ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... carpet, golden brass candlesticks on the mantel, a red-beaded mat on the table under the lamp, the lamp itself clear glass and filled with red kerosene that happily repeated the tint of the mat. It all pleased Annie, touching some hitherto untwanged chord of beauty in her nature. And there was about it the unmistakable ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... trembling hands he lit the lamp and drew near. Near or far, there was no doubt of the fact: the thing was a piano. There, where by all the laws of God and man it was impossible that it should be—there the thing impudently stood. Gideon threw open the keyboard and struck a chord. Not a sound disturbed the quiet of the room. 'Is there anything wrong with me?' he thought, with a pang; and drawing in a seat, obstinately persisted in his attempts to ravish silence, now with sparkling arpeggios, now with a sonata of Beethoven's which (in happier ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... have been overwhelmed by it, had not my over-active imagination been brought to bay by another's common sense. Hugo's plea for suffering Humanity—for the world's miserable—struck a responsive chord within me. Not only did it revive my latent desire to help the afflicted; it did more. It aroused a consuming desire to emulate Hugo himself, by writing a book which should arouse sympathy for and interest in that class of unfortunates ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... upon which he was gazing held him by an irresistible fascination. I was so much interested in him that I scarcely looked at the bride during the ceremony. At last, the minister, in conclusion, announced the twain to be husband and wife. I saw Wallingford give a slight start as if a tensely strung chord of feeling had been jarred. A moment more and the spell was broken! Every lineament of his countenance showed this. The stern aspect gave way—light trembled over the softening features—the body stood more erect as if a great pressure ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... third is the interval that most frequently occurs. Those who perform on the violin use the same notes as in our division, and they tune the instrument by fifths to a great nicety. They are fond of playing the octave, but scarcely use any other chord. The Sumatran tunes very much resemble, to my ear, those of the native Irish, and have usually, like them, a flat third: the same has been observed of the music of Bengal, and probably it will be found that the ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... New Testament make a chorus of sweet music on this chord, ringing out in clear tones the full notes of delight and joy. Luke's simple narrative sounds the note four times. Paul swells it out with a joyous fulness that grows in volume and intensity as his narrowing prison walls shut out ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... 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
... Miles captured the fancy of his countrymen with one song, "Said the Rose," which at one time was the most popular song in the United States. It has not the depth and the melting tenderness of "Home, Sweet Home," but its quaint fancy and melodious verse struck a responsive chord. In his "Inkerman," a stirring ballad, which every American boy of a former age knew by heart, there was an echo of the "Lays of Ancient Rome," of the "Lays" of Scott and Aytoun, while in the more ambitious "Christine" (1866), there was the accent of the genuine poet, something that recalled ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... was thrilling at least some of us; some of them fair enough, I fancied, to be walking in a better world than ours; then, by some strange freak of the imagination, I fell to thinking of the poverty and sorrow, and breaking hearts all about us, until the music seemed to change to a minor chord; and away back of all other sounds I seemed to hear the sob and moan of the dying and broken-hearted. Perhaps some new chord had been touched in my own heart that had never before responded to human things; for in spite of myself I sat and wept with a full, aching ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... as of a great mallet, sepulchral, grave, came from behind the wings; the leader of the orchestra raised his baton, then brought it slowly down, and while from all the instruments at once issued a prolonged minor chord, emphasised by a muffled roll of the kettle-drum, the curtain rose upon a mediaeval public square. The soprano was seated languidly upon a bench. Her grande scene occurred in this act. Her hair was un-bound; ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... a guardian spirit, which deigns to flit through this wayward world, to cheer the stricken breast, and purify feelings, whose every chord vibrates to the touch of woe; surely such presides, and throws a sunny halo, on the group, that blood has united—on which family love has shed its genial influence—and of which, each member, albeit bowed down by ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... watched and enjoyed his perplexity in seeking for and finding it! A second day this was repeated; but his manifest disturbance of mind, and his long pondering with the bonnet in hand, as if almost alarmed, seemed to touch another chord in her heart—that chord of pity which is so often the prelude of love, that finer pity that grieves to wound anything nobler or tenderer than ourselves. Next day, when he came to his accustomed place of prayer, a little card was pinned against the tree just where he knelt, and on it these ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... to be aware of the existence and operation of this power. There seems indeed to be a constitutional, original, sympathy in our nature. When men act in a crowd, their heartstrings are prone to vibrate in unison. Whatever chord of passion is struck in one breast, the same will ring forth its wild note through the whole mass. This principle shows itself particularly in seasons of excitement, and its power rises in proportion to the ardor and zeal of those ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... metal pipe out of his doublet, and put it to his lips; and the man reached out his hand and took up a small lute which lay on the bank beside him. He held up a warning finger to the boy. "Remember," he said, "that you come in at the fifth chord, together with the voice—not before." He struck four simple chords on the lute, very gently, and with a sort of dainty preciseness; and then at the same moment the little pipe and his own voice began; the pipe played a simple ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... they were expecting some one or something. Time was passing; ten o'clock had just struck. From the little boudoir sounds of music were occasionally heard, when Micheline's nervous hand struck a louder chord on her piano. She was there, anxiously awaiting some one or something. Jeanne de Cernay, stretched in an easy-chair, her head leaning ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... get into the rear of Time, to borrow an expression from "The Crisis," and, placing ourselves in January, 1776, look at "Common Sense" from that date, we may understand without much difficulty why it produced so great an impression. Paine, as later, when he brought out the "Rights of Man," caused a chord to vibrate in the popular mind which was already strung to the exact point of tension. The publication was not only timely,—it was novel. Paine founded a new school of pamphleteering. He was the first who wrote politics ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... was one to which he was unused, and he was amazed to find that it had effected an understanding of some vague and intangible kind between him and Sylvia Garrison. She might not approve of him, he had no idea that she did; but she had struck a chord whose vibrations pleased and tantalized. She was provocative and, to a degree, mystifying, and the abrupt termination of their talk seemed to leave the way open to other interviews. He thought of many things he might have ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... so profound and quiet, that she did not know its depth or strength. As she had not believed that parting from him would be painful until the event had taught her, so even now she did not know how intertwined with every chord and fibre of her heart and how identical with her life, was her love for Paul. She was occupied by a more enthusiastic devotion to her "brother," as ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... pencilled image seem a living girl? When not affected or rendered conventional by society, her voice was singularly girlish and natural, and there would often be a tone in a plaintive and minor key that vibrated like a low, sweet chord in his heart rather than in his ears. It must be admitted that he gave little heed to the sacred words she read; but the flexible music of her voice, mingled with the murmur of the brook, the rustle of the leaves and the occasional song of a bird, all combined ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... horned cows close to the fire; for great strength was with him. He threw them both panting upon their backs on the ground, and rolled them on their sides, bending their necks over [2517], and pierced their vital chord. Then he went on from task to task: first he cut up the rich, fatted meat, and pierced it with wooden spits, and roasted flesh and the honourable chine and the paunch full of dark blood all together. He laid them there upon the ground, and spread out the hides on a rugged ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... spirit I 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
... one dove, Than tones or colours in chord, We are one—and safe, and for ever, my love, Two thoughts in the ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... note, a long, illuminating pause. The note itself was a divine inspiration. It rang all golden. It thrilled to the verge of the dominant chord in Anne. It touched her soul, the mother of ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... Mendelssohn, therefore, London struck a sympathetic chord, and the pleasure which he felt on entering the city was heightened by the warmth of the welcome which he received at the hands of the musical public. His first appearance was at the Argyll Rooms, ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... I found it, first of all, in the dreary region,—then in the cup of hot coffee that I had drunk in the restaurant, which might possibly have been poisonous;—finally, it occurred to me that the hoof-beats of the horses were tuned to a very saddening minor chord. The coachman in his hurry had forgotten to take bells with him, and in order to avoid violating police regulations he had borrowed at the inn another peal, and my sad state dated from the moment ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... man watches her emotions with a penetrating eye, conscious that he has touched a chord in which all the milk of kindness is not ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... said eagerly, for he had touched a chord which set me thinking—I mean trying to think; "that trouble hanging over us. There ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... our love-life," murmured Eloise. "How full of memories it is—what tenderness and harmony—and oh! what peace it brings! But tell me, Master, what means this minor chord,—this undertone of sadness and of pathos that flows like a deep, unfathomable current throughout it all, and wailing, weaves itself about thy theme of love and happiness with its ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... advised him not to seek the hand of a rich girl. She would not be suited to the trials of a minister's life. But finding that Henry was firm in his opinion that this sound general principle did not in the least apply to this particular case, the professor proceeded to touch the tenderest chord in the young man's heart. He told him that it would be ungenerous, and in some sense dishonorable, for him to take a woman delicately brought up into the poverty and trial incident to a minister's life. If you ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... ploughed fields and his harvests. He took pleasure in pine trees; he was a man of groves and of the dark. For him that things should come to an end was but part of an universal rhythm; a part pleasing to the general harmony, and making in the music of the world about him a solemn and, oh, a conclusive chord. This man would study the sky at night and take from it a larger and a larger draught of infinitude, finding in this exercise not a mere satisfaction, but an object and goal for the mind; when he had so wandered for a while ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... Laripet struck a chord on the piano. Paragot joined in and played three bars. Then he stopped short. There was not the vestige of a laugh on his face. It was deadly white, and his eyes were those of a man who sees ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... Marion's heart. Not that she was hopeless; far from it, she would have told you. But her sense of humor did not conceal from her that in spite of her grin-and-bear-it mien, she was far from happy. At any rate, the suggestion that Jimmy was hopeless awoke a sympathetic chord in her breast, so that she looked at him more tenderly on the day after she had been told. Jimmy was slow of speech and rather dirty as to his face. There were warts on his hands, and his sphinx-like countenance was impassive almost ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... now—I am getting shivery,' answered the old man, meekly. 'But I want to see you again, Mary—I like your face—and I like your voice. It strikes a chord here,' touching his breast, 'which has long been silent. Let me see you again, child. When ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... but once saw the light of a smile on her face,—but she gave a low chuckle. Evidently we had touched a chord that would respond; an ignoble one it might be, but it was something to have ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... already stretched out to draw back the canvas which separated her from that presence of death in which live and grow, watered by tears, all human sympathies. It seemed as if she always touched some chord in him untouched by others. Was it the truth that she spoke that thrilled him so? He perceived nothing clearly except the one thing that ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... kindly and considerate he always showed himself towards Miles Herrick. Perhaps somewhere within him a responsive chord was touched by the evidence of the other man's ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... could be the companion to his mind, walk through the garden of knowledge by his side, and trim the flowers while he cleared the vistas. On the other hand, there was an inborn nobility in Lady Ellinor's sentiments that must have struck the most susceptible chord in Roland's nature, and the sentiments took eloquence from the look, the mien, the sweet dignity of the very turn of the head. Yes, she must have been a fitting Oriana to a young Amadis. It was not hard to see that Lady Ellinor was ambitious, that she had a love of fame ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... from the card-table. "Sing again, Jacqueline, do! Sing something peaceful," and Jacqueline, still with a colour and with shining eyes, laughed, struck a sounding chord, and in her noble contralto sang Scots wha ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... foretold against thee. I once thought not so. Once, I was blind; but now the path of life is plain before me, and my sight is clear; yet, Elfonzo, return to thy worldly occupation—take again in thy hand that chord of sweet sounds —struggle with the civilized world and with your own heart; fly swiftly to the enchanted ground—let the night-OWL send forth its screams from the stubborn oak—let the sea sport ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of them. He admits that their poet-philosophers had risen to a lofty apprehension of "the Fatherhood of God," for they had taught that "we are all his offspring;" and he seems to have felt that in asserting the common brotherhood of our race, he would strike a chord of sympathy in the loftiest school of Gentile philosophy. He thus "recognized the Spirit of God brooding over the face of heathenism, and fructifying the spiritual element in the heart even of the natural man. He feels that in these human principles there were some faint adumbrations ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... was now tense with fear, anxiety, apprehension; and with resolute fingers Mrs. Barton tightened the chord until the required note vibrated within the moral consciousness. The poor Marquis felt his strength ebbing away; he was powerless as one lying in the hot chamber of a Turkish bath. Would no one come to help him? The implacable melody ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... minor chord that sings Faintly and far along the forest ways, When the firs finger faintly on the strings Of that rare violin the night wind plays, Just as it whispered once to you and me Beneath the ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... become thoroughly convinced of their transcendent merits, but in order to snub the younger artists. His life was already approaching the period when everything which suggests impulse contracts within a man; when a powerful chord appeals more feebly to the spirit; when the touch of beauty no longer converts virgin strength into fire and flame, but when all the burnt-out sentiments become more vulnerable to the sound of gold, hearken more attentively to its ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... the prison was lifted from him, all the joyous gaiety and fun of his nature bubbled up irresistibly. There was no contradiction in this complexity. A man can hold in himself a hundred conflicting passions and impulses without confusion. At this time the dominant chord in Oscar was pity ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... the Italian population seemed lukewarm toward the war during the period of diplomatic negotiations, there was no doubt of the temper of the nation after hostilities actually began. The chord of national feeling was struck by King Victor Emmanuel in an order issued upon taking supreme command of the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... time, because something had gone wrong with the keys of the piano. They stuck down, and I had to get Wilfred to sit underneath and keep poking them up as fast as I played on them, or else half the notes wouldn't sound; and it seemed so queer to only get part of a chord, and to miss the middle of a run. It quite put me out. I suppose it was the damp that caused it. We must get a tuner to come and see ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... each step in these twilit recesses, for the fays of Brittany are not as those of other lands. Harsh things are spoken of them. They are malignant, say the forest folk. The note of Brittany is scarce a joyous one. It is bitter-sweet as a sad chord ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... you would not grieve your father. Yet you have just said, were you young Waverly, you would renounce parental authority, and abjure your name. This shews that there is an innate principle in your composition at enmity with filial obedience; touch but the chord that moves it, and duty ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... terminate in much-branched tendrils. The main petiole of the leaf, whilst young, moves spontaneously, and follows nearly the same irregular course and at about the same rate as the internodes. The movement to and from the stem is the most conspicuous, and I have seen the chord of a curved petiole which formed an angle of 59 degrees with the stem, in an hour afterwards making an angle of 106 degrees. The two opposite petioles do not move together, and one is sometimes so much raised as to stand close to the stem, whilst the other is not far from horizontal. The ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... justify the life she had to endure in ever-growing weariness. She had little belief and no sympathy for her father's dreams; but the savage ravings of her mother chanced to strike a responsive chord, deep down somewhere in her despairing heart; and she dreamed dreams of her own with the persistent absorption of a captive thinking of liberty within the walls of his prison cell. With the coming ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... saying, the Angle of Contact hath some magnitude, his meaning is, that the Arch of a Circle hath some crookedness, or, is a crooked line: and that, of equal Arches, That is the more crooked, whose chord is shortest: which I think none will deny; (for who ever doubted, but that a circular Arch is crooked? or, that, of such Arches, equal in length, That is the more crooked, whose ends by bowing are brought nearest together?) But, why the Crookedness of an Arch, ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... up the harp of life, and smote upon its chords with might— Smote the chord of self, that trembling passed in ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... bench-wall left the upper part of this water-proofing stretched taut across the curved top of the sand-wall, forming a chord of the arc. As the arch was built up, the top was gradually slackened so as to allow the concrete to press the mat back into place until the top of the sand-wall was reached, when the end was turned in, as shown at C, Fig. 18, or the water-proofing was continued over the ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 - The Bergen Hill Tunnels. Paper No. 1154 • F. Lavis
... battle of the Dreitval, Jigger, Stafford's trumpeter, had said a thing to him which had struck a chord that rang in empty chambers of his being. He had found Jigger sitting disconsolate beside a gun, which was yet grimy and piteous with the blood of men who had served it, and he asked the lad what ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... he slowed his steps, enchanted by the thunder of the elevated trains above him and the soothing crash of the wheels on the cobbles. And then there was a new, delightful chord in the uproar—the musical clanging of a gong and a great shining juggernaut belching fire and smoke, that people were hurrying ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... suffering and the storm and stress of existence; and the outcome of it is to show the vanity of all human effort. Deeply moved, we are either directly prompted to disengage our will from the struggle of life, or else a chord is struck in us which ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... had struck an always responsive chord in Sidney. The two girls went toward the elevator together. With a very little encouragement, Sidney talked of K. She was pleased at Miss Harrison's friendly tone, glad that things were all right between them again. At her ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... traveller who first comes upon it clad in spring and summer verdure. The rippling Vire at its very feet gives at once the note; it not only binds and enwraps it like the setting of a precious stone, but adds that one feature which, lacking, would be a chord misplaced. Perhaps no other cathedral in all France, with regard to its bijou setting, certainly no other so accessible to the English tourist, has more dainty charm than this not very grand, but graceful, church ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... be a mingled one, for so is our theme; having a sympathy alike for our mirthful and sorrowful moments, which it alike spiritualizes; striking the light, gleesome chord to the one, and attuning the soul to more ethereal joy; while by its soft influence it tones down the harshness of bitter, unavailing sorrow, and woos the heart, misanthropizing under the pangs of grief or unrequited love—pent up in its own ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... was the good of it all? Who could possibly care? Was the end commensurate with the exhaustive and exhausting means?" As the fierce light from the window beat down upon her mother's face, it seemed so old, so wondrously old, that all the formidable machinery of beautification about the room struck a chord of compassion in the flapper's breast, which was, however, at once compounded with humour in her mind. And then she could control herself no longer, and was forced to smile,—one of those broad mirthful smiles that are parlously ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... class of ours united here, Ere long shall cease to be; A thought which strikes a tender chord ...
— Silver Links • Various
... joyous horn, The splendid Jay Is the trumpeter gay, The Kingfisher, sounding his rattle,—he May the player on the cymbals be, The Cock, saluting the sun's first ray, Is the bugler sounding a reveille. "Caw! Caw!" cries the crow, and his grating tone Completes the chord like a deep trombone. ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... called to see me two or three weeks since—he who had been an habitue of the White House—both the rooms of the President and my own reception-room, in either place he was always sure of a heartfelt welcome; my present situation must have struck a painful chord in his noble, sympathizing heart. And yet, when I endeavored to ameliorate my condition, the cry has been so fearful against me as to cause me to forget my own identity, and suppose I had plundered the nation, indeed, and committed ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... new and has just come into his sphere of creative power. When he is thoroughly satisfied that he can produce the effect at will, he abandons it for something newer and a little higher. The boy who discovers, without being told, that the dominant chord, followed by the tonic, produces a certain musical effect, is doing something that for him is on a par with Wagner's searching the piano for those marvellous effects of his that are ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... woman's voice,—clear and melodious, but, just then, with something unnatural in its chord,—"you are welcome! But you come half an hour too late, and have missed a scene ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... less vehement action, appealing rather to the nerves than to the intelligence—such a passage as Gustav Freytag, in his Technik des Dramas, happily entitles an einleitende Akkord, an introductory chord. It may be added that this rule holds good both for Coriolanus and for Julius Caesar, in which the keynote is briskly struck in highly animated scenes of commotion ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... where the animal had lain down to watch him pass. From this point he followed the trail just far enough to catch its curve. Then he left it and ran in a straight line shrewdly calculated to form the chord to his quarry's section of a circle. His plan was to intercept and pick up the trail again about three quarters of a mile further on. In nine cases out of ten his calculation would have worked out as he wished; but in this case he had not made allowance for this particular buck's individuality. ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... and was sitting thrumming a lyre when his father and Creon came up. He struck a long, ringing chord and raised his clear voice in ...
— Buried Cities: Pompeii, Olympia, Mycenae • Jennie Hall
... clergyman is a good thing, but I should have made a very bad one. As to the wife—oh how like a night-mare is the thought of being bound for life to one of my cousins! No doubt they are accomplished and pretty; but not an accomplishment, not a charm of theirs, touches a chord in my bosom. To think of passing the winter evenings by the parlour fire-side of Seacombe Rectory alone with one of them—for instance, the large and well-modelled statue, Sarah—no; I should be a bad husband, under such circumstances, as well as a ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell |
