"Cymbal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hieroglyphs are dumb That once were read of him that ran When seistron, cymbal, trump, and drum Wild music of the Bull began; When through the chanting priestly clan Walk'd Ramses, and the high sun kiss'd This stone, with blessing scored and ban - This monument in ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... heavenly temper of mind in which Christian manhood consists, and which our Lord had already described in the sermon on the Mount; He says, "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal." And then He describes it as suffering long, kind, envying not, vaunting not, behaving seemly, unselfish, rejoicing in the truth, slow to be provoked, bearing all things and hoping all. And with this agrees St. James's ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... that it seemed nearly all of that costly metal, with his snow-white plumage waving above a small diadem that surmounted his lofty helm, he seemed a fit leader to that armament of heroes. Behind him flaunted the great gonfanon of Spain, and trump and cymbal heralded his approach. The Count de Tendilla rode ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... speak with the tongues of angels and men; and if you knew all mysteries, and had all knowledge; and if you had faith, so as to remove mountains, and have not charity—even though you be a virgin—you are become as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. Neither will your virginity, nor all other gifts, profit you ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... sound its chants, bade it push onward with its old faith and vigor, since the Slavonic grandeur and glory were assured. For through the savage trumpet-blasts and rude and lumbering rhythms, through the cymbal-crashing Mongol marches and warm, uncouth peasant chants that are his music, there surges that vision, that sense of ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... lyric inn Where the rarer sort so long Drew the rein, to 'scape the din Of the cymbal and the gong, Topers of the classic bin,— Oporto, sherris and tokay, Muscatel, and beaujolais— Conning some old Book of Airs, Lolling in their Queen Anne chairs— Catch or glee or madrigal, Writ for viol or virginal; Or from ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... breeding would desert the paternal mansion to follow the drum; and Mr Grattan tells a romantic history of a certain Jacinta Cherito, the beautiful daughter of a wealthy judge, who blacked her face and tramped off as a cymbal boy under the protection of the drum-major of the Eighty-eighth—a magnificent fellow, whose gorgeous uniform and imposing cocked hat caused him to be taken by the Portuguese for nothing less than a general of division. The young lady had not forgotten to take her jewels with her, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... celestial, and a silver din, As though imprisoned angels played within; Hushed in my heart my fragrant secret dwells; If thou wouldst learn it, Paul of Tarsus tells;— No jangled brass nor tinkling cymbal sound, For in my bosom Charity ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... Elandslaagte, when the uproar of various sounds was simply terrific, from the shrill treble of the whimpering bullets to the trumpet-like whoop of the shells as they arched overhead, to alight with a drum-boom and burst with a cymbal crash; the whole orchestra of battle was playing—it seemed that everyone must recognise the air—"The Ride of the Valkyrie;" and now the driving rain and the salt spindrift, the flapping of the leech of our brown sail, every note of accompaniment is being given to that ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... old-fashioned enough to believe in the need of—er—the saving power of the gospel. Full pews without that would make our church the sounding of brass and the tinkling of cymbal. We must have the old-time power in our churches to-day, ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... hermits and Holy Fathers of the Church. But little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth. For a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love. The Latin adage meeteth with it a little: Magna civitas magna solitudo ("A great town is a great solitude"), because in a great town friends are scattered, so that there is not that fellowship, for the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... surprised and disturbed his mother, for she had filled the house with fragrant suggestions of good things coming, in honor of Mr. Lindsay, who was to be her guest at tea. And chiefly the genteel form of doughnut called in the native dialect cymbal (Qu. Symbol? B. G.) which graced the board with its plastic forms, suggestive of the most pleasing objects,—the spiral ringlets pendent from the brow of beauty; the magic circlet, which is the pledge of plighted affection,—the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the other day before Plantagenet. I heard him. Plantagenet pulled that long face of his, looking as though he meant to impose silence on the whole world for the next six weeks. But Sir Timothy is brass itself, a sounding cymbal of brass that nothing can silence. He went on to declare with that loud voice of his that the death of Lopez was a good riddance of bad rubbish. Plantagenet turned away and left the room and shut himself up. He didn't ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... tinkling cymbal!' Pretty words, and musical; but empty as those polished shells yonder that echo only hollow strains of the never silent sea. ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... have ventured on thy strident streets, Mid whir of traffic in the vibrant hour When Commerce with its clashing cymbal greets The mighty Mammon in his pomp of power.... And in the quiet dusk of eventide, As wearied toilers quit the marts of Trade, Have I been of their pageant—or allied With Passion's revel ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... Mrs. Spalding, who was no poetess, would undoubtedly have welcomed Mr. Glascock as her niece's husband with all an aunt's energy. When told by Miss Petrie that old Lord Peterborough was a tinkling cymbal she snapped angrily at her gifted countrywoman. But she was too honest a woman, and too conscious also of her niece's strength, to say a word to urge her on. Mr. Spalding as an American minister, with full powers at the court of a European sovereign, felt that he had full as much to give as to ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... the ceremony, it was now evidently approaching a climax. The chanting grew louder and more furious and the cymbal players clashed their huge metal instruments together with a deafening clangor. Suddenly, from the passage from which the galleries branched off, there appeared six men clad in robes of flaming scarlet and conical caps of the ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... get a reputation for being clever, then no matter how dexterous his work may be, it is but another mode of the speaking with the tongues of men and angels without charity; it is as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal, full of sound and fury ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... female shriek! - It seemed as if Don Roderick knew the call, For the bold blood was blanching in his cheek. - Then answered kettle-drum and attabal, Gong-peal and cymbal-clank the ear appal, The Tecbir war-cry, and the Lelie's yell, Ring wildly dissonant along the hall. Needs not to Roderick their dread import tell - "The Moor!" he cried, "the Moor!—ring out ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... boards and tables for all sorts of games, playing-cards along with the blocks for printing them, dice, and other apparatus for gambling; there were worldly music-books, and musical instruments in all the pretty varieties of lute, drum, cymbal, and trumpet; there were masks and masquerading-dresses used in the old Carnival shows; there were handsome copies of Ovid, Boccaccio, Petrarca, Pulci, and other books of a vain or impure sort; there were all the implements of feminine vanity—rouge-pots, false hair, mirrors, perfumes, ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... The membranous cymbal and the steel cricket are analogous instruments. Both produce a sound by reason of the rapid deformation and recovery of an elastic substance—in one case a convex membrane; in the other a slip of steel. The "cricket" was ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... of a numeral; the more places you carry it out to, the greater the sum. Judge, then, of Kooloo's esteem. Nor is the allusion to the ciphers at all inappropriate, seeing that, in themselves, Kooloo's profession turned out to be worthless. He was, alas! as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal; one of those who make no music ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... thought, is particularly suited to express itself worthily in music, for in no other form of artistic endeavor is this balance more requisite. Music without emotion is, to be sure, like "sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal" and dies in short order. On the other hand, music which is a mere display of crude emotion soon palls. The works of modern French composers deserve enthusiastic study for their charm, their finish and ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... the changing scale, through the whole range of cymbal and spinet, "flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of music," stand literally before me, and a strange revelation it is. Is it the same faculty which produces that grand piano of Bechstein's, and that clarion organ ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... yet apt the verse, More ponderous than nimble; For since grimed War here laid aside His Orient pomp, 'twould ill befit Overmuch to ply The Rhyme's barbaric cymbal. ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name? And then I will profess unto them, I never knew you, depart from me you that work iniquity;" and on these of St. Paul: "If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal." "I chastise my body, and bring it into subjection, lest, perhaps, when I have preached to others, I ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... ascribed to the same cause, since the use of the sinews of animals for stringed instruments would also prevent the educated classes from learning to play them. Thus no stringed instruments are permitted to be used in temples, but only the gong, cymbal, horn and conch-shell. And this rule would greatly discourage the cultivation of music, which art, like all the others, has usually served in its early period as an appanage to religious services. It has been held that instruments were originally ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... 'Ma-arch on, Brass Money,' says th' Orange marshal. Murphy pulled him fr'm his horse; an' they wint at it, club an' club. Be that time th' whole iv th' line was ingaged. Ivry copper belted an Orangey; an' a sergeant named Donahue wint through a whole lodge, armed on'y, Jawn, with a clarinet an' wan cymbal. He did so. An' Morgan Dempsey, th' cute divvle, he sthood by, an' encouraged both sides. F'r, next to an Orangey, he likes to see a polisman kilt. That ended ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... several hours in exhorting, praying and singing their curious, doleful hymns. The whites gave them instruction and training along these lines. Heart and conscious were alike cultivated—not alone the sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. Statistics show that there were 466,000 slaves belonging to churches in the South: Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, and other sects. So the owners of these christianized people thought ...
— Historic Papers on the Causes of the Civil War • Mrs. Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... gains, without pretence! Be not a cymbal-tinkling fool! Sound understanding and good sense Speak out with little art or rule; And when you've something earnest to utter, Why hunt for words in such a flutter? Yes, your discourses, that are so refined' In which ...
— Faust • Goethe
... tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... sweetened all the place. Each raised his mighty voice as loud As thunders of an angry cloud, And conchs their stirring summons gave That echoed through the giant's cave. Then on his breast they rained their blows, And high the wild commotion rose When cymbal vied with drum and horn. And war cries on the gale upborne. Through all the air loud discord spread, And, struck with fear, the birds fell dead. But still he slept and took his rest. Then dashed they on his shaggy chest Clubs, maces, fragments ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... and cymbal, rung forth at once, and the deep and regular shout, which for ages has been the English acclamation, sounded amidst the shrill and irregular yells of the Arabs, like the diapason of the organ amid the howling of a storm. There was silence ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... off. Man must know the reality of the divine Existence, and then know—not only vaguely believe and hope—that his own innermost Self is one with God, and that the aim of life is to realise that unity. Unless religion can guide a man to that realisation, it is but "as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal."[33] ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... intermittent sound of music had grown insistent and continuous. Solemn bodies of priests approached, series after series of the shaven, white-robed ministers of Amen. The murmur had grown to an uproar. The wild clamor of trumpet, pipe, cymbal and sistrum, with the long drone of the arghool as undertone, drifted by. The upper orders of priests followed in the vibrating wake of the musicians. Then came Loi, high-priest to the patron god of Thebes, ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... pant-pant!" from his hoarse throat, answered by the groans and creaks of sympathy from the laden carriages and the clinking rattle of the coupling-chains, as they drew taut from the tension, lending a sort of cymbal-like ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... indeed, suits not all persons. Geniuses must be explored, and the manner of instructing proportioned to them. But there is one thing which suits all persons, and without which knowledge is nothing but "a sounding brass and tinkling cymbal": this is the supernatural culture of the soul, or the habitual endeavor of man of rendering himself more pleasing in the sight of God by the acquisition of solid Christian virtues, in order thus to reach his last end—his eternal ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... streaming [fn95] clouds of fragrance, in the hands of the trembling descendant of Aaron approaching the inner sanctuary of the INVISIBLE AND ALMIGHTY; three hundred sons of song, accompanied with psaltery and cymbal, and "the harp with a solemn sound," resounding the attributes of HIM WHO IS, AND EVER SHALL BE;[fn96] and hundreds of thousands of worshippers prostrating their foreheads on the pavement in awe and extacy, as the temple shines forth with the ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... out of the sanctuary, her footsteps waking the echoes of the roof which once had resounded to the clash of cymbal, the roll of drum and blare of trumpets. She heard Ellen's strident voice calling to her, telling her to come and join them in the crypts; she paid no heed, she ran on and out into the sunshine and down to the maid, who ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... stood his rival, the young poet Julius.... And the populace all round him shouted: 'Glory! Glory! Glory to the immortal Julius! He has comforted us in our sorrow, in our great woe! He has bestowed on us verses sweeter than honey, more musical than the cymbal's note, more fragrant than the rose, purer than the azure of heaven! Carry him in triumph, encircle his inspired head with the soft breath of incense, cool his brow with the rhythmic movement of palm-leaves, scatter at his feet all the fragrance of ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... when the Sithonian[64] matrons are wont to celebrate the triennial festival of Bacchus. Night is conscious of their rites; by night Rhodope resounds with the tinklings of the shrill cymbal. By night the queen goes out of her house, and is arrayed according to the rites of the God, and carries the arms of the frantic solemnity. Her head is covered with vine leaves; from her left side hang down the skins of a deer;[65] upon her shoulder rests a ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... were playing on native instruments—one of the men on a sort of fiddle, and the other on a rude guitar; the girls, one striking, in sharp staccato fashion, a wooden perforated bowl inverted on a standard or post, and the other a kind of cymbal; they were singing in the same shrill, monotonous way we had heard before. We counted eight girls here. There was a piece of unpainted tin or zinc, about eight by twelve inches, set upon the table toward one end, ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... Scabella: commentators are undecided as to the nature of this instrument. Some of them suppose it to have been either a sort of cymbal or castanet, but Pitiscus in his note gives a figure of an ancient statue preserved at Florence, in which a dancer is represented with cymbals in his hands, and a kind of wind instrument attached to the toe of his left foot, by which it ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... and doubtful near the moon, but shone like diamonds in the dark spaces between the clouds. The rugged fortress lay swathed in the softness of the creamy light. No noise broke the stillness, save the dull drum-beat of their horses' hoofs on the turf, or their cymbal-clatter where they crossed a road, and the occasional ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... derived from a mistaken separation into two words, chimbe bell, of chymbal or chymbel, the old form of "cymbal," Lat. cymbalum), a mechanical arrangement by which a set of bells in a church or other tower, or in a clock, are struck so as to produce a sequence of musical sounds or a tune. For the mechanism of such an arrangement in a clock and in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... Hearing a cymbal in your dreams, foretells the death of a very aged person of your acquaintance. The sun will shine, but you will see ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... spare. When the hospitals of London are threatened with closure for want of funds, it is clear that mere "charity" is a useless resort. "Charity" moreover leaks. Though it is much puffed up and advertiseth itself, and is supported on the public platforms with sounding brass and tinkling cymbal, nevertheless it faileth. There is knowledge, and it remains, prophecies and they are fulfilled, but this thing which we call "charity" faileth, it vanisheth away. "The fund will soon be exhausted," we hear on all sides. Why not, then, ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... her room with Dr Cabot's letter, which I silently prayed might bless her as it had blessed me. And then a jaded, disheartened mood came over me that made me feel that all I had been saying to her was but as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal, since my life and my professions did not correspond. Hitherto my consciousness of imperfection has made me hesitate to say much to Helen. Why are we so afraid of those who live under the same roof with ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... be sorry for him. He wasn't sorry for himself one bit,—nor bitter—nor cynical. He didn't even seem trying to make a merit of his refusal to acquiesce in that sordid point of view. He just dismissed the thing with a cymbal-like clash of laughter and plunged ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... form. Unless they had formed part of the original dowry of the human soul, religion itself would have remained an impossibility, and the tongues of angels would have been to human ears but as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. If we once understand this clearly, the words of St. Augustine which have seemed startling to many of his admirers, become perfectly clear and intelligible, when he says:[1] 'What is now called the Christian religion, has existed among the ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... ribbons, that was supposed to bear away the bride and groom, had gone amid the shouting and the tumult of the populace, and after the phaeton and the sorrel mare had actually taken the bride and groom from the barn to the railway station, after the fiddle and the bassoon and the horn and the tinkling cymbal at Morty Sands's dance had frayed and torn the sleep of those pale souls who would sleep on such a night in Harvey, Grant Adams and his father, leaving Jasper to trip whatever fantastic toes he might have, in the opera house, drove down the hill through the glare of the furnaces, ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... the Sun uttered these words than Fortune, as if she had been playing on a cymbal, began to unwind her wheel, which, whirling about like a hurricane, huddled all the world into an unparalleled confusion. Fortune gave a mighty squeak, saying, 'Fly, wheel, and the devil drive thee.'"—Fortune in her Wits, Quevedo. English trans. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... drum's long roll, The cymbal's clang, the trumpet's breath; While Beauty's glances fire the soul, And Honor ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... than a cymbal (A sound which I never have heard); She plays—and her fingers most nimble Make music more soft than a bird. She speaks—'tis like melody stealing O'er the Mediterranean sea; She smiles—I am instantly kneeling On each ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... followed those great novelists who write French a child may read and understand. He calls the moon 'a spiritual gray wafer'; it faints in 'a red wind'; 'truth beats at the bars of a man's bosom'; the sun is 'a sulphur-colored cymbal'; a man moves with 'the jaunty grace of a young elephant.' But even these oddities are significant and to be placed high above the slipshod sequences of words that have done duty till they are as meaningless as the imprint on ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... only was it not inevitable, but the earnest entreaty to return showed that God intensely desired their salvation. Yet, if Calvinism is true, the oath of God and His earnest entreaty, as far as millions of the human race are concerned, are simply as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. Nay, more, they are a solemn mockery. I see two men floundering in deep water; I jump into my boat and save one, and bring him safely to shore. I could easily have saved the other had I wished it, but did not. Were I then to stand on the bank of the river and ask the sinking man, Why will ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... o'er her; her blue veins that rose Along her most transparent brow; her nostril 390 Dilated from its symmetry; her lips Apart; her voice that clove through all the din, As a lute pierceth through the cymbal's clash, Jarred but not drowned by the loud brattling; her Waved arms, more dazzling with their own born whiteness Than the steel her hand held, which she caught up From a dead soldier's grasp;—all these things made Her seem unto the troops a prophetess Of victory, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... ye stately palms! Clashing your cymbal tones, In thro' the mystic moans Of pines at solemn psalms: Ye myrtles, singing Love's inspired song, We part, and ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... "No cymbal clashed, no clarion rang, Still were the pipe and drum; Save heavy tread and armor's clang, The ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... imperfectly; and that the beautiful and sublime thought and language of the book of psalms, which are admired by all educated men, should be, to those who read them every day for years, nothing but a tinkling cymbal, vox et praeterea nihil. This is often the case even with priests who practise piously and methodically mental prayer. And yet nowhere are such beautiful acts of faith and confidence in God's power expressed as in the Psalms (e.g., ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... with a terrifying clash of cymbal and thump of drum. "Back at the end of my first turn," he said as he Red. Terry followed his lithe, electric figure. She turned to meet the heavy-lidded gaze of the woman seated opposite. She relaxed, then, and sat back with a little sigh. "Well! ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber |
