"Discordant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his own experiences in the preference of better ways to lower. He knows the difficulties that arise in his own group-associations,—his home or his class or his club, for example,—the conflicts of ambitions, the readiness to shirk one's share of common responsibility, the discordant prides and appetites of one sort and another which lead to overt injustices. All these should be used to throw light upon the living moral problems of group-life in the vocations, in the civic world, ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... De Banville's lyre is that discordant one struck in the "Idylles Prussiennes." One would not linger over poetry or prose composed during the siege, in hours of shame and impotent scorn. The poet sings how the sword, the flashing Durendal, is rusted and broken, how ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... his religion, imposed a condition on the Barbarian, promising him help if he would agree to follow the worship of Christ. For he said there could be no agreement of hearts between those who embraced discordant creeds. Anyone, therefore, who asked for help, must first have a fellowship in religion. No men could be partners in great works who were separated by a different form of worship. This decision ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... Christian Temperance Union, and even upon the still larger scale of international action, she has exhibited her power by mere moral influences and the inspiration of great purposes, without the aid of legal penalties or even of tangible inconveniences, to mold and direct the discordant thought and action of thousands and millions of people scattered over separate States, and sometimes even living in countries hostile to each other to the accomplishment of great earthly or heavenly ends, it is unreasonable to deny to woman the ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... my heart only, I am forced to spend my time on the interests of others when I would fain let myself enjoy the sweet emotions which make life happy. I suffer deeply in being obliged to talk to you of subjects so discordant with your state of mind, but it is necessary. I have thought much about you during the last few days. It is evident that through a fatal delusion the fortune of your brothers and sister and your own are in jeopardy. Do you wish to save your ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... occult writings the magic pronunciation of Aum, Amitabha, Allah, of certain chants and spirit-invoking incantations of old, and one draws a conception of the powers of friendly sounds and the injurious effects of discordant sounds, such as ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... "Unlike the case of a war between independent nations, there is no authorized organization for us to treat with. No one man has authority to give up the rebellion for any other man. We simply must begin with and mould from disorganized and discordant elements. Nor is it a small additional embarrassment, that we, the loyal people, differ amongst ourselves as to the mode, manner, and measure of reconstruction. Let us all join in doing the acts necessary ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... had reached that point of tension that needed only a little more strain to become panic. Some one received the discordant cries of the maniacs with piercing rapid screams. Instantly the choked passage filled with frantic uproar. Scores attempting to flee blindly trampled over those transfixed with fear. They fought, men with women, youths with old age, children with ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... to say that, although planned by Pitt, and treasured by every succeeding Ministry as one of his wisest schemes, it was wholly useless and inexpedient. The tranquillity of Western Europe was preserved during fifteen years, not by yoking together discordant nationalities, but by the general desire to avoid war; and as soon as France seriously demanded the liberation of Belgium from Holland, it had to be granted. Nor can it be believed that the addition of the hostile and discontented population of Genoa to the kingdom ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... scepticism among the brightest intellects of Rome only thirty-seven years before the coming of Christ. The very name of the temple itself, dedicated not to a divine being as in a more pious age, but to a mere political abstraction, a mere symbol of a compact effected between two discordant parties in the state, indicated how greatly the Romans had declined from their ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... snapped, and the bagpipe set up a discordant shriek, upon which the actor sprang with one bound from the stage, and vanished behind the curtain, wooden sword and gun clattering after him, while the audience showered ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... sullen face of the man until the two were left the sole occupants of the room. Then Jentham looked up to call the waiter to bring him a final drink, and his eyes met those of Mr Cargrim. After a keen glance he suddenly broke into a peal of discordant laughter, which died away into ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... he beholds A glory in earth's kingdom all undreamed Till now. The heavy curtains are withdrawn, That shut the old horizon down so close; And, lo! a world is lying at his feet! A world without a flaw! What late he held But as discordant fragments, now show forth, From this high vantage ground, the perfect parts Of a harmonious whole! He would not dare To change one line in all that picture marvellous Of hill and vale, bright stream and rolling sea, O'erhung by the great sun ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... moderately large experience we shall get, now and again, deviations much more considerable. These erratic assays can only be met by the method of working duplicates, which call attention to the fault by discordant results. Such faulty assays should be repeated in duplicate, so that we may rest the decision on three out of ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... In some instances the shafts were occupied by a white ox, sleek with enormous and widely branching horns, an animal similar to those that used to figure in the religious ceremonies of the ancients. At his right would be hooked a horse, at his left, a great raw-boned mule, and this triple and discordant team appeared in all the carts, standing immovable before the ships the length of the docks, or dragging their heavy wheels up the slopes ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... symphony made up of the grind of wheels upon resounding cobble-stones, the thudding beat of horse-hoofs, the tread of countless feet, the shrill note of voices; it was all there, the bass and the treble blending together, harsh, discordant, yet the real ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... Ray examined his rifle coolly enough, and listened to the chirp of a solitary cricket that sung its thin strain so unbrokenly on the edge of strife as to represent something sublime in its petty indifference. He was stationed on the extreme left; near him the tumult of the torrent drowned much discordant noise, its fairy scarf forever forming and falling and floating on the evening air. He thought of Vivia sitting far away and looking out upon the quiet starlight night; then he thought of swampy midnight lairs, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... hardly his own. How it happened he never could tell, but he brought down his violin with a crash against the piano, then somehow stumbled and all but fell. In the act of recovering himself, he heard the neck of his instrument part from the body with a tearing, discordant cry, like the sound of the ruin of a living world. He stood up, understanding now, holding in his hand his dead music, and regarding it with a smile sad as a winter sunset gleaming over a grave. But Mary darted to him, threw her arms ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... substituted by a daring passion for the romantic, nerved men, and women too, to undertakings and endurances which shame our enfeebled ways. The partners in these enterprises were never homogeneous in character, as were eminently the Colonists of New England. They were of most mixed and discordant materials. Prisons were ransacked for convicts and desperadoes; humble artisans and peasants were accepted as laborers; roving mariners, whose only sure port of rest would be in the abyss, were bribed for transient service, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... man had a rough voice, as though the voice were like a cactus in its prickly irregularities. By rough he meant what his fellows meant when they spoke of the voice as harsh, grating, jarring, discordant, inharmonious, strident, raucous, or unmusical. Going farther, that early poet said the weather was rough. He thought of clement weather as being smooth and even, but of inclement, severe, stormy, tempestuous, or violent weather as being full of projections to rend and harass ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... deemed myself for ever freed, and whose presence and counsels I now dreaded more than Hell. It was his voice, but so altered—I shall never forget it till my dying day. Nay, I can scarce conceive it possible that any earthly sounds could be so discordant, so repulsive to every feeling of a human soul, as the tones of the voice that grated on my ear at that moment. They were the sounds of the pit, wheezed through a grated cranny, or seemed so ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... below and, flinging myself into my bunk, at once fell into a profound and dreamless sleep that lasted until I was awakened by the discordant clank of the pumps, about four bells in the forenoon watch, when I found Miss Onslow patiently awaiting me in the cabin, with another hot meal all ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... many sparrows which have also made their homes. In the morning, before the sun has arisen, and at the time when the dawn is making the city gray and leaden in color instead of somber and black, these sparrows begin to chatter and chirp and sing in discordant notes, and by this I know the day has come. Upon this morning it seemed to me the sparrows chattered with an unusual commotion; and as I listened I heard from another window near mine the voice of grief and lamentation. Then I knew that one who had long been sick had passed ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... discordant elements in the Holland household could not prevent the children from growing up. It was a consummation which the harrassed Caroline devoutly wished. When Christopher Holland was seventeen he was a man grown—a big, strapping ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... on this deserves notice. He wrote: "This speech is singular; at least, I do not at present see into Shakespeare's motive, his rationale, or in what point of view he meant Brutus' character to appear. For surely ... nothing can seem more discordant with our historical preconceptions of Brutus, or more lowering to the intellect of the Stoico-Platonic tyrannicide, than the tenets here attributed to him—to him, the stern Roman republican; namely, that he would have no ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... prisoners squeaked at them, as though imploring them not to add to the agony by uttering discordant cries. But it was impossible for Madge to keep quiet, and Lambert shouted in ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... no little interest; this mysterious name that had sounded so often in her young ears, and was associated with so many strange and high hopes, and some dark blending of doubt and apprehension and discordant thoughts. Hatton in his appearance realised little of the fancies in which Sybil had sometime indulged with regard to him. That appearance was prepossessing: a frank and even benevolent expression played upon his intelligent and handsome countenance: ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... thinking that perhaps some sign thereabout would furnish the key to this ghostly mystery. But there was not the faintest twinkle there, nor any sound of life. Only solemn, unanswering darkness. Somewhere in the woods a solitary screech owl was hooting its discordant song. ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... unchangeable and fickle, perfectly intelligent and perfectly void of reason, of order and permitting disorder, very just and most unjust, very skilful and unskilful. In short, are we not forced to confess, that it is impossible to reconcile the discordant attributes, heaped upon a being, of whom we cannot speak without the most palpable contradictions? Let any one attribute a single quality to the Divinity, and it is universally contradicted by the effects, ascribed ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... man remained unmoved by those discordant and repulsive tones. They repeated his name, however, so often and so perseveringly, that he noticed them ere long; and rising suddenly, as if impatient of the interruption, advanced towards the side of the waggon from which the mysterious summons appeared ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... to their idea, the very perfection of harmony, rude and discordant as they are to our ears; perhaps no more extraordinary instance of the force of habit and diversity of taste than this could be advanced. A native sings joyously the most barbarous and savage sounds, which rend asunder the refined ears of the European, who turns away in agony from the discordant ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... of June dawned bright and beautiful on these discordant elements, and at an early hour anti-slavery delegates from different countries wended their way through the crooked streets of London to Freemasons' Hall. Entering the vestibule, little groups might be seen gathered here and there, earnestly discussing the best disposition to make of those ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... well finished reading the decree, the discordant blare of trumpets, bursting forth at a prearranged signal, drowned, to a certain extent, the murmurs that followed its proclamation, amid which Laubardemont urged forward the procession, which entered the great building already referred ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... man is aware outside him, and the world of feelings and desires within him are in conflict. But the conviction lives within him that in some way they can be brought into harmony, and that a power exists which rules in both of these discordant realms and in which, if he can identify himself with it, he also will escape from their discord. If this be so, then this necessity to seek after a higher power must have begun to operate as soon as human consciousness appeared. The savage ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... expectations, on account of the shallowness of its channel. The river, however, was then at a low ebb; its banks were marshy, and its waters moved slowly and silently between forests of mangrove trees. The air was filled with the discordant croak of innumerable parrots, diversified somewhat by the notes of a few singing birds. As they proceeded, the river, instead of diminishing, seemed to increase in volume. At Embomma, much interest was excited among the natives, by the discovery ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... and is intended to represent the Durmah Rajah, whose statue is supposed to give infallibility. Two bells were suspended, one from the centre, the other from the balcony, the tongues of which were long, of ivory, and moved by a string. The Rajah received us in state, amidst discordant sounds of horns, pipes, and drums; his followers for the most part were badly clothed, the few decent looking persons being only decent externally. He was seated on a raised dais and was well dressed. He ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... perfect in its formation, wise and just in its action, the hope of the liberty loving people throughout the world, and the pride and glory of American citizens. Every year since the adoption of the old Constitution, have discordant elements cropped out, and incidents transpired, which demonstrated to every rational mind, that as time rolled on, the accumulation of combustible elements would ultimately explode, and shake the civilized world ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... With gentle finger it touched your shoulder and desired you to follow. But you were stubborn. You went your own way in dark and lonely caverns where the laughing music of the fight that sounds from above becomes a discordant thunder. You were meant to be wise and merry; you ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... whilst we floundered over stones, embedded as they appeared in their everlasting sockets, from the days of Noah. The gurgling of the unseen stream, down in the adjacent gully, (which we perchance might soon be found, reluctantly to visit!) never sounded so discordant before. Having some respect for my limbs (with no bone-setter near) I dismounted, resolving to lead my steed who trembled as though conscious of the perilous expedition on which he had entered. Mr. Coleridge who had been more accustomed to rough riding ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... away, talking up hill and down dale, laughing, tossing her head, showing her brilliant teeth. He looked on in silence, now spitting heavily on the floor, now putting his head back and uttering a loud, discordant, joyless laugh. He had a tangle of shock hair, the colour of wool; his mouth was a grin; although as strong as a horse, he looked neither heavy nor yet adroit, only leggy, coltish, and in the road. But it was plain he was in high spirits, thoroughly enjoying his visit; and he laughed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he exulted, a dissolving element was flung upon the crystal in which he saw his own glorification. A harsh, discordant voice was speaking at his elbow. He turned. Ernie Cronk was standing beside him. It required a moment of concentration on the part of the infatuated David to grasp the significance of a certain livid hue in Ernie's face. The hunchback was looking up at him. His ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... its post, like some lonely old god of memory brooding over vanished years. There, according to tradition, was once celebrated the worship of the many-breasted Cybele; down that very slope of grass dotted with violets had rushed the howling, naked priests beating their discordant drums and shrinking their laments for the loss of Atys, the beautiful youth, their goddess's paramour. Infidelity again!—even in this ancient legend, what did Cybele care for old Saturn, whose wife she was? Nothing, less than nothing!—and her adorers worshiped not her chastity, ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... the result that they snatch some amusement out of circumstances that seem unpromising. This afternoon the Gordons had a Gymkhana, and got through it merrily to the entertainment of many friends before a discordant note was heard from Boer batteries. The bombardment did not begin until half-past six, and lasted only until dusk, the final shot being fired by our naval gun into ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... absolute. It was not to be fashioned into permanent forms, even by his bold and constructive genius. A soil, exhausted by the long culture of Pagan empires, was to lie fallow for a still longer period. The discordant elements out of which the Emperor had compounded his realm, did not coalesce during his life-time. They were only held together by the vigorous grasp of the hand which had combined them. When the great statesman died, his Empire necessarily fell to pieces. Society had ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... plead their cause; but all to no avail, as she had long considered her future settled and had no desire to change it. At the age of seventeen they celebrated their wedding, and their life together, which began with that moment, was never marred by a single discordant note. ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... of the court, is by Arthur F. Mathews, and is far superior to the other two, though unfortunately placed in a dark spot. It is called by the artist A Victorious Spirit. The central figure, gorgeously suggesting the Spirit of Enlightment, protects Youth from the discordant elements of life from materialism and brute force, as represented by the rearing horse and militant rider. Youth is attended by the peace-bringing elements of life, by Religion, Philosophy or Education, and the Arts. The symbolism here is sound, the composition and drawing ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney
... her hands pressed upon her breast, drinking in all the sights and sounds, and many of their soft whisperings that only the spirit catches; when her ear was caught by very dissimilar and discordant notes behind her, — the screaming of discomposed chickens and the grating of Mr. Underhill's ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... manifestations of power which are discerned by the enlightened eye, when a stupendous scheme is developed, gradually and imperceptibly, but without pause or hesitation through a long succession of ages; when a multitude of seemingly discordant elements are at last brought together in a perfect work; when a power, unseen and unnoticed, slowly but surely overrules the working of ten thousand apparently independent agents, through a thousand generations, and moulds their separate works into ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... unaccountably, like a disagreeable sound, or a chill from a contrary wind. It was not a pettish humor, but a deep, grave feeling of hatred, as if the germ of it had grown in the blood and spread to every tissue of his body. The thought of Boyle's being so near him was discordant. It pressed on him with a sense of being near some unfit thing which should ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... elements is the only one which is clearly visible to modern eyes. This point, however, was reached at the earliest only in the second half of the next century. It was only then that the fusion of the seemingly discordant elements gave birth to the new "Romanism," which was to be the ruling civilisation of Italy and the Western provinces and, in virtue of the completeness of the amalgamation and the novelty of the product, was itself to be contrasted and to live for centuries in ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... him such a love of light, sunshine, and living human poetry, such an organic aversion for all that is ugly, or coarse and discordant, that he made himself almost exclusively the poet of the gentler side of human nature. On the fringe of his pictures or in their background, just for the sake of contrast, he will show us the vices, the cruelties, ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... boxes and I must confess that, as my eye traveled along the rows of impassive faces and noted the perfect though diminutive features, the tiny ears, the bristling hair, the frowning eyebrows—so discordant with the placid expression and peacefully closed eyes—a chill of horror crept over me. The whole thing was so unreal, so unnatural, so suggestive of some diabolical wizardry. I looked up ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... them the very rocks appear to smile; The haven hums with many a cheering sound, The beacons blaze their wonted stations round, The boats are darting o'er the curly bay, And sportive Dolphins bend them through the spray; Even the hoarse sea-bird's shrill, discordant shriek, Greets like the welcome of his tuneless beak! 1730 Beneath each lamp that through its lattice gleams, Their fancy paints the friends that trim the beams. Oh! what can sanctify the joys of home, Like Hope's gay glance from ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... some pains to discover the twenty-five or thirty people that formed the company present. It was indeed a dim, but not therefore, a very religious light that pervaded rather than overcame the gloom, issuing chiefly from the crude and discordant colors of a luminous picture on a great screen at the farther end of the hall. There an ill-proportioned figure, presenting, although his burden was of course gone some time, a still very humpy Christian, was shown extended on the ground, with his sword a yard beyond his reach, and Apollyon ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... and fundamental questions as these were not likely to trouble the Council. The discordant minority took another line. Infallibility they admitted readily enough, the infallibility, that is to say, of the Church; what they shrank from was the pronouncement that this infallibility was concentrated in the Bishop ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... wall, to where, dimly outlined against the horizon, you discern the empty frames of the wonderful astronomical instruments that were once the glory of Peking, now adorning a Berlin museum, set up for the German holiday-makers to gape at. After all, there are discordant notes ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... the government which used it had no support but a band of bigoted fanatics or political adventurers; without any legal authority over the nation, or any moral hold on the army, detested, threatened, discordant, exposed to the resistance of its own upholders, to the treachery of its own members, and living only from day to day, it could maintain itself only through a brutal absolutism and permanent terror, while the public power of which the first care ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... after truth. Were it not that the world is hopelessly intoxicated with the wine of Babylon, multitudes would be convicted and converted by the plain, cutting truths of the word of God. But religious faith appears so confused and discordant, that the people know not what to believe as truth. The sin of the world's impenitence lies at the door ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... Piegan camp was greeted by a discordant chorus of yelps and howls from a pack of mangy, half-starved curs of all breeds, shapes and sizes, the invariable and inevitable concomitants of an Indian encampment. The squaws, who had been busy superintending the pots and pans in which simmered the morning meal of their ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... Birth.—In treating this topic Dr. Charles F. Deems (The Light of the Nations, p. 28), after giving careful consideration of the estimates, calculations, and assumptions of men who have employed many means in their investigation and reach only discordant results says: "It is annoying to see learned men use the same apparatus of calculation and reach the most diverse results. It is bewildering to attempt a reconciliation of these varying calculations." In an appended note the same author states: "For example: ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... way!" cried Jude, and though it now rained steadily he seemed not to know it, and took them round to the theatre. Here they stood upon the straw that was laid to drown the discordant noise of wheels, where the quaint and frost-eaten stone busts encircling the building looked with pallid grimness on the proceedings, and in particular at the bedraggled Jude, Sue, and their children, as at ludicrous persons who ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... in my breast Soothe these discordant tones to rest, And breathe the soul of peace; Mild visitor, I feel thee here, It is not pain that brings this tear, For thou hast bid it cease. Oh! many, a year has pass'd away Since I, beneath thy fairy ray, Attuned my infant reed; When wilt thou, ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... would have found harsh and discordant sounded pleasantly enough to the listening Timothy, who nodded his head complacently, wishing ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... No character in all history has been the subject of more conflicting speculations than the Arabian Prophet. By some he has been called a self-deluded enthusiast, while others have denounced him as the boldest of impostors. We shall, perhaps, reconcile these discordant views, if we bear in mind that the same person may, in different periods of a ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... the other hand, they find us either destitute of an effectual government (each State doing right or wrong, as to its rulers may seem convenient), or split into three or four independent and probably discordant republics or confederacies, one inclining to Britain, another to France, and a third to Spain, and perhaps played off against each other by the three, what a poor, pitiful figure will America make in their eyes! How liable would she become not only ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... brief, for his self-control was fast leaving him, and having bowed a rather abrupt farewell to the doctor, he was not long in reaching one of his haunts, from which during the evening, and quite late into the night, came repeated peals of laughter, that grew more boisterous and discordant as that synonyme of mental and moral anarchy, the "spirit of ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... Tom's story. He and I were alone in that large room; I was sitting near the open window, looking into the dark night air. I fancied I saw something white move across it; and I heard a sound like low talking that swelled into a discordant shriek—"Hoo-oo-oo! Bowes, the devil! Over your shoulder. Hoo-oo-oo! ha! ha! ha!" I started up, and saw, by the light of the candle with which Tom strode to the window, the wild eyes and blighted ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... feelings that we can follow in some cases and to a certain extent the progress of a work. Indeed, the sight of the particular accidents among which it was developed—which belong perhaps to a heterogeneous and wildly discordant order of things, which are out of proportion and out of harmony with it, which do not explain it; which have, as it seems to us, no natural right to be connected with it, to bear on its character, or contribute to its accomplishment; to which we feel, as it were, ashamed to owe what ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... 'Church privileges have been denied the keeper's and the assistant's servants,' I read in one case, and the eminently Scots periphrasis means neither more nor less than excommunication, 'on account of the discordant and quarrelsome state of the families. The cause, when inquired into, proves to be tittle-tattle on both sides.' The tender comes round; the foremen and artificers go from station to station; the gossip flies ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... stories of several sky-scrapers rose up here and there like solemn black cliffs. A faint light in the east heralded the approach of day. Too-oo-ot, sounded the whistle of the approaching steamer once again; then its voice broke and died out in a discordant sob, which was drowned in the nervous gang, gang, gang of the ship's bell. The steamer had been obliged to anchor on account of the fog. Too-oo-ot, came from the other steamer further out. Then life in the bay came to a stand-still: nothing could be done till ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... hour of sunset, and the clouds seemed to be thickening rather than dispersing, the Black Beaver gave a long and hideous howl. His wife and daughter shuddered when they heard it, as would any one, for a more unearthly and discordant cry was never uttered by man or beast; but they had double reason to shudder; it was the death ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... laws, which are based upon the principles of human nature, and not framed to meet the exigencies of the moment. They have their natural divisions, too, answering to the kinds of virtue; very unlike the discordant enactments of an Athenian assembly or of an English Parliament. Yet we may observe two inconsistencies in Plato's treatment of the subject: first, a lesser, inasmuch as he does not clearly distinguish the Cretan and Spartan laws, of which ...
— Laws • Plato
... and drew all who loved gold and glory, and that night and death never seemed so black as by contrast with their splendor. The deeds of the young athletes were ascribed to the inspiration of the gods, whose abodes they lit up with glory; and in doing them honor these discordant states found a bond of unity. The victor was crowned with a simple spray of laurel; cities vied with each other for the honor of having given him birth, their walls were taken down for his entry and immediately rebuilt; sculptors, for whom the five ancient games were schools ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... in your letter of May the 16th, of adding an umpire to our discordant negotiators at Paris, struck me favorably on reading it, and reflection afterwards strengthened my first impressions. I made it therefore a subject of consultation with my coadjutors, as is our usage. For our government, although in theory subject to be directed by the unadvised will of the President, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... beat on the large red silk umbrella which the sacristan held over him, and felt the impact of the crowd of orchard-folk, that was mixed at random with the musicians. The latter, paying more attention to where they stepped than to their instruments, played a rather discordant march. Guns, meanwhile, continued to blaze away. The wild cheering for San Bernardo and his sisters went on; and, framed in a red nimbus of torch-light, greeted at every street-corner by a new fusillade, the image sailed along over that sea of heads, pelted by the rain, which, in the light ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... because it is a convention, a picture in which life is treated almost as theme for music. And so there remains an opportunity, even after this masterpiece, for a life of Donne which shall make no pretence to harmonise a sometimes discordant existence, or indeed to produce, properly speaking, a piece of art at all; but which shall be faithful to the document, a piece of history. Such a book has now been written by Mr. Gosse, in his Life and Letters of John ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... a woman of business seemed almost a discordant note; he did not realize that the hard simplicity of her costume had been saved by the soft warmth of its color, and by an indefinable, flowing line in the jacket above the rippling folds of an undergarment that gathered smoothly at her knees. He knew only that she made a lovely picture, ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... for us all. Then I was a boy, bobbing for fish; and now I'm getting to be an old fellow, and here I be, groping for a dead body! I tell you what, lads, if I thought anything had really happened to Zenobia, I should feel kind o' sorrowful.' That is the discordant chorus of the gravediggers in 'Hamlet.' At length the body is found, and poor Zenobia is brought to the shore with her knees still bent in the attitude of prayer, and her hands clenched in immitigable defiance. Foster tries in vain to straighten the dead limbs. As ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... think it would have been called in that event. Let me say, however, one thing which escaped me. It is not a divided Democracy—not the existence of a Whig party, but it is the union of all discordant elements combined, which have brought the abolitionists into power, which has produced this sense of insecurity in the South. It is their combined power which the people of the South feel, and which they wish ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... The discordant tones of the voices and instruments drew nearer, and now droning songs mingled with the sound of the tambourines and cymbals. The head of the procession soon appeared beneath the trees, a hundred paces away; and the strange ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... and down the floor, alternately drawing his bow across the strings and lowering it again, while he tightened them. Then, in answer to the call from the oboe, the whole place grew filled with their din, discordant at first, but slowly coming into more and more perfect harmony, uniting upon the single note, breaking again into countless changing tones, only to yield once more to the single A, caught, dropped during ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... ear of the king caught the discordant cry which rang up and down the hall, when he snatched his hat from his head, and at once the whole ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... done. Deep and discordant political divergencies have thus burst the frame of the constitutional Norwegian Monarchy. Circumstances have been stranger than the desire of the individual. But the final settlement on the dissolution of the Union, that through Your Majesty's ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund
... he rode down the street, he of a sudden raised his discordant voice and sang to the accompaniment of his horse's hoofs. And the burden of his ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... what present he would have as a mark of his favor. The barbarian begged that he might have the principal pantomimist, and upon being asked why he made such an odd request, replied that he had many neighbors who spoke such various and discordant languages that he found it difficult to obtain any interpreter who could understand them or explain his commands; but if he had the dancer he could by his assistance easily make himself intelligible ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... of Paradise, whether he does not desire to go higher. The friend replies: 'Brother, the force of charity quiets our will, making us wish only for what we have and thirst for nothing more. If we desired to be in a sublimer sphere, our desires would be discordant with the will of Him who here allots us our diverse stations.... The manner in which we are ranged from step to step in this kingdom pleases the whole kingdom, as it does the King who gives us the power to will ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... iron trees, and a red tree something resembling the bastard mahogany. Although we had penetrated and ascended more than half-way up one of the Mountains of Lions, we discovered nothing living but a variety of beautifully-plumaged birds, which, unused to the intrusion of other bipeds, uttered most discordant screams. After a fatiguing march, in which we were directed by a pocket compass, we descried a small rivulet. We followed its course for some time, and at length arrived at the base of a stupendous rock from which it issued. We, by calculation, were distant at this ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... veracity, and regard to common good. [Footnote: Dissertation on the Nature of Virtue.] Sir Leslie Stephen, writing in the latter half of the nineteenth, tells us that "in one sense moralists are almost unanimous; in another they are hopelessly discordant. They are unanimous in pronouncing certain classes of conduct to be right and the opposite wrong. No moralist denies that cruelty, falsity and intemperance are vicious, or that mercy, truth and temperance are virtuous." [Footnote: The Science ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... first view presents itself to sense, and which the soul familiarly apprehends and eagerly embraces, as if it were allied to itself. But when it meets with the deformed, it hastily starts from the view and retires abhorrent from its discordant nature. For since the soul in its proper state ranks according to the most excellent essence in the order of things, when it perceives any object related to itself, or the mere vestige of a relation, it congratulates itself on the pleasing ...
— An Essay on the Beautiful - From the Greek of Plotinus • Plotinus
... 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 ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... "Rather discordant music," answered the minister; "but I think we may as well accept your invitation—don't you, wife?" and taking the children with them, they descended to the dining-room. Ranged round the long table were eight savages, ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... mighty and so vast, I ne'er beheld: In number as the leaves, or as the sand, Against the city o'er the plain they come. Then, Hector, for to thee I chiefly speak, This do; thou know'st how various our allies, Of diff'rent nations and discordant tongues: Let each then those command o'er whom he reigns, And his own countrymen in arms array." She said; and Hector knew the voice divine, And all, dissolv'd the council, flew to arms, The gates were open'd wide; forth pour'd the crowd, Both ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... instantly! The miracle was the reverse of the preceding one. The ringing, subdivided, sharp, discordant note he struck was swallowed instantly in a sea of noise that seemed not only to have color but even smell to it; you could smell Calcutta! But that, of course, was mere suggestion—a trick of the senses of the sort that makes your mouth water when you see ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... friend, are all the poor performers upon earth, and of such is composed the discordant music of human life; the voices not only dissonant and inharmonious, but the forms and habits all differing from each other, moving in various directions, and agreeing in nothing; till at length the great master {175a} of the choir drives everyone of them from the stage, and ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... of the next theme, which is Love, Alexander sinks into a slumber, from which, however, a change in the music to discordant strains arouses him to feelings of revenge, as the singer draws a picture of the Furies, and of the Greeks "that in battle were slain." Then it was that Alexander, instigated by Thais, a celebrated Athenian beauty who accompanied him on his expedition, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... compromise. The country fairly resounded with the noise of "anticoercion meetings." Expressions of firm resolution from determined antislavery men were indeed not wanting, but they were for a while almost drowned by a bewildering confusion of discordant voices. Even this was not all. Potent influences in Europe, with an ill-concealed desire for the permanent disruption of the American Union, eagerly espoused the cause of the Southern seceders, and the two principal maritime powers of the Old World seemed only to be waiting for a ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... comfortably across the field. Merry squirrels scampered and scolded in the trees overhead. The jays jangled and bickered, it is true, but a score of sweet-voiced, peaceful-throated birds sang bravely and contentedly as though there had never been a sound more discordant than their own speech. The air was soft and sweet, just cold enough to stir the leaves upon the trees and set them whispering intimately. The sky, new washed by the rain which had fallen in the night, ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... The first discordant note in this overture of happiness was struck by Mrs. Meecher, who informed Sally, after expressing her gratification at the news that she required her old room, that Gerald Foster had ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... are puzzling, and to some extent affront our common sense. It is not the usual way in which we think of the Universe. We think of one necessary time-system and one necessary space. According to the new theory, there are an indefinite number of discordant time-series and an indefinite number of distinct spaces. Any correlated pair, a time-system and a space-system, will do in which to fit our description of the Universe. We find that under given conditions our measurements ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... said one of the passengers to him when he made a particularly discordant sound. They drove along eastwards, and as the hour grew later the streets became more filled and the traffic greater. At last they got on the road to Chingford, and caught up numbers of other vehicles going in the same direction—donkey-shays, pony-carts, tradesmen's ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... furiously into the earth, Elizabeth Mellen knelt by the window-seat watching him; and Elsie lay upon the floor, so utterly prostrated that she could only cry out to Elizabeth at intervals in her sharp, discordant voice: ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... musicians played what seemed to Dick most discordant music, but which was appreciated by the soldiers, as was evident from the plaudits and the number of small coins thrown to the players. In the great open space, by the side of the market, the crowd ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... besides throwing light on their motives in omitting the kiss, they deliberately passed us by when they brought round the plate for the collection! This was decidedly novel! A visit to the Armenian church in St. Petersburg convinced us that the discordant music was not an accident due to bad training, but deliberate and habitual. I noticed also that the men and women, though they stood on opposite sides of the church, as with the Russian Old Ritualists, with the women on the left,—in the State Church, at Court, the women stand on the ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... upon which he now gazed had weathered the storm, proof against the temptations that beset an owner embarrassed by their richness; they had maintained a smug relationship to harmony in spite of the jangling of discordant instruments, such as writs and attachments and the wails of insufferable creditors who made the usual mistake of thinking that a man's home is his castle and therefore an object of reprisal. The splendid porcelains, the incomparable tapestries and the small but exquisite paintings remained where ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... of the Cloddagh are an unlettered race. They rarely speak English, and even their Irish they pronounce in a harsh, discordant tone, sometimes not intelligible to the townspeople. They are a contented, happy race, satisfied with their own society, and seldom ambitious of that of others. Strangers (for whom they have an ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... of England man: and as he had not much leisure to be informed of Dr. Johnson's great merits by reading his works, he had a partial and unfavourable notion of him, founded on his supposed political tenets; which were so discordant to his own, that instead of speaking of him with that respect to which he was entitled, he used to call him 'a Jacobite fellow.' Knowing all this, I should not have ventured to bring them together, had ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... made to Salisbury gave me the opportunity of examining the site of the recent prison camp there. The treatment of our prisoners by the Confederate authorities is a repellent subject, and I would gladly pass it by and say nothing discordant with the tone of high honor and respectful good-will which marked the conduct of the leading officers of the Confederate forces in the field. We may fairly admit that the resources of the Confederacy had ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... assumed, I suppose, that contradictions among ideas and beliefs are of various degrees and of various modes besides that specific one which we call logical incompatibility. A perception, for example, may be pictorially inconsistent or tonically discordant with another perception; a mere faith unsupported by objective evidence may be emotionally antagonistic to another mere faith, as truly as a judgment may be logically irreconcilable with another judgment. And this wide possibility of contradiction ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... in the vicinity of Caiphas's tribunal were brightly illuminated with lamps and torches, but, as the crowds gathered around it, the noise and confusion continued to increase. Mingling with these discordant sounds might be heard the bellowing of the beasts which were tethered on the outside of the walls of Jerusalem, and the plaintive bleating of the lambs. There was something most touching in the bleating of these lambs, which were to be sacrificed on the following day in the Temple,—the ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... dogs and fowls, and boys had the curious effect of reducing the babel of voices and discordant sounds to something like a ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... over Mary Fortune as she sat, waiting stonily, at her desk; but when McBain came back and sat down beside her she typed on, automatically, as he spoke. Then she woke at last, as if from a dream, to hear his harsh, discordant voice; and a sudden resentment, a fierce, passionate hatred, swept over her as he shouted in her ear. A hundred times she had informed him politely that she was not deaf when she wore her ear-'phone, and a hundred times he had listened impatiently and gone on in his sharp, rasping snarl. She drew ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... railroad station, distinguished in some mysterious way above the hundred thousand other little red frame railroad stations of the identical size and style; he pointed out the Odd Fellows Hall, the Palace Picture Theater, with its glaring orange lights and discordant electric piano; he conducted Law to the First National Bank, of which Blaze was a proud but somewhat ornamental director; then to the sugar-mill, the ice-plant, and other points ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... poems belong in all save their final form to the ancient days in Northern Germany. They bear evidence of transmission, with varying details, from gleeman to gleeman, till they were finally carried over to England and there edited, often with discordant interpolations and modifications, by Christian scribes. Tacitus tells us that at his time songs or poems were a marked feature in the life of the Germans; but we cannot trace the clue further. To these ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... beyond the limits of their native shores. This, being a negative proposition, is not capable of direct proof. Michael Kelly gives an amusing account of the performance of the celebrated hunting song at Vienna, in which the discordant cries of "Tally-ho, Tally-ho," are said to have driven the Emperor in indignation from the theatre, a great part of the audience also following the royal example. "The ladies hid their faces with the hands, and mothers were heard cautioning ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... There breaks the mould before the season; When numbers burst what bound before, Woe to the State that thrives no more! Yea, woe, when in the City's heart, The latent spark to flame is blown; And Millions from their silence start, To claim, without a guide, their own! Discordant howls the warning Bell, Proclaiming discord wide and far, And, born but things of peace to tell, Becomes the ghastliest voice of war: "Freedom! Equality!"—to blood, Rush the roused people at the sound! Through street, hall, palace, roars the flood, And banded murder ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... desire that only the simple cross should be permitted to remain over the altar, while the pictures should be placed high upon the walls, where they could neither be kissed nor receive other objectionable marks of adoration.[13] It was a futile task to reconcile views so discordant even among the Roman Catholic partisans. Two weeks were spent in profitless discussion, and, on the eleventh of February, the new colloquy was permitted to dissolve without having entered upon any of the more difficult questions that still remained ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... placed in tin sconces along the bare walls, threw a dim and sickly glare over the motley throng. A couple of negro men, sitting on barrels at the head of the room, were drawing discordant notes from a pair of cracked, patched, and greasy fiddles. And there were men, whose red and bloated faces gave faithful witness of their habitual intemperance; and men, whose threadbare and ragged garments betokened ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown
... the mental picture will become quite plain. Practice will develop the power. The student should practice only when alone or when in the presence of some sympathetic friend or friends. He should always avoid discordant and inharmonious company while practicing his psychic power. Many of the best psychometrists keep their physical eyes closed when practicing this power, thus allowing the inner senses to function without distraction from ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... awakening his power of memory, and at last stopped before one, almost the last on the road, and which faced the broad patch of sward that lay before the lodge of Lansmere Park. An old pollard oak stood near it, and from the oak there came a low discordant sound; it was the hungry cry of young ravens, awaiting the belated return of the parent bird. Mr. Dale put his hand to his brow, paused a moment, and then, with a hurried step, passed through the little garden and knocked at the door. A light was burning in the parlor, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... conversation; he talked Scotch on account of long habit, and because it was familiar to him. He was possessed of a good musical ear, and loved to sing the ballads of his youth, with several of his own songs; and the enthusiasm with which he sung amply compensated for the somewhat discordant nature of his voice. A night with the Shepherd was an event to be remembered. He was zealous in the cause of education; and he built a school at Altrive, and partly endowed a schoolmaster, for the benefit of the children of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... of Curtain, NANETTE crosses to fireplace and shovels ashes into a pail. POTIN is heard outside, singing, in loud and discordant ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Paul Kauvar; or, Anarchy • Steele Mackaye
... also, but a discordant note rang through his forced merriment. "We-all ain't claim-jumpers, Mr. Brewster, but it seemed so quare to find Old Montresor's Mine hed ben found again, that Ah sez to my pal, here, 'How'd you-all like to run up to the Slide ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... thousands of tyrants, and it was but slowly and with much trouble that it succeeded in freeing itself from feudalism. Nothing could be more strangely troubled than the West at the time of the dissolution of the Empire of the Caesars; nothing more diverse or more discordant than the interests, the institutions, and the state of society, which were delivered to the Germans (Figs. 1 and 2). In fact, it would be impossible in the whole pages of history to find a society formed of more heterogeneous or incompatible elements. ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... one look—and every sound stopped. The Orchestra died away in a discordant wail; the guests stopped, with glasses raised half way to their lips; the waiters stood as if petrified. Old Bohemia had seen many strange sights in its career; but no stranger cavalcade had ever marched in through its portals than ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... had long since stolen away. A profound stillness had fallen upon the broad, beautiful street. The voices of Edna's disbanding guests jarred like a discordant note upon the ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... manner the reverse of triumphal. Preceded by a drummer and accompanied by a jeering rabble, among whom the urchins and all the tag-rag and bobtail of the town mustered in great force, the figure was carried about by the flickering light of torches to the discordant din of shovels and tongs, pots and pans, horns and kettles, mingled with hootings, groans, and hisses. From time to time the procession halted, and a champion of morality accused the broken-down old sinner of all the excesses he had committed and for which he was now about to be burned ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... on the hypothesis of evolution, while they are unintelligible if that hypothesis be denied. And those of the eighth group are not only unintelligible without the assumption of evolution, but can be proved never to be discordant with that hypothesis, while, in some cases, they are exactly such as the hypothesis requires. The demonstration of these assertions would require a volume, but the general nature of the evidence on which they rest may ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... a man so wealthy and so liberal as you are,' said Aulus, 'is extremely small: you can materially serve me, without the slightest loss, hazard, or inconvenience. In few words, my valise is empty: and to some ears an empty valise is louder and more discordant than a bagpipe: I cannot say I like the sound of it myself. Give me all the shreds and snippings you can spare me. They will feel like clothes; not exactly so to me and my person, but to those who are inquisitive, ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... with his eyes, but did not pretend to be wholly successful. The very names were discordant to ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... at their forges Worked the red Saint George's Cannoneers; And the "villainous saltpetre" Rung a fierce, discordant metre Round their ears; As the swift Storm-drift, With hot sweeping anger, came the horseguards' clangor On our flanks. Then higher, higher, higher, burned the old-fashioned fire ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... word, the first of our Hanover Series of English Kings; that hitherto unique sort, who are really strange to look at in the History of the World. Of whom, in the English annals, there is hitherto no Picture to be had; nothing but an empty blur of discordant nonsenses, and idle, generally angry, flourishings of the pen, by way of Picture. The English Nation, having flung its old Puritan, Sword-and-Bible Faith into the cesspool,—or rather having set its old Bible-Faith, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... threw it overboard, and allowed full forty yards of cord to run out. The albatross soon descried the tempting morsel, and sweeping down in graceful circles to seize it, was soon securely hooked. The only show of resistance it made to being drawn on board was to extend its wings, and utter loud discordant cries. Once on deck, its grace and majesty vanished. It showed no fear, and the hook, still fastened in its beak, did not seem to annoy it; but no landsman could have been more awkward than was the albatross on the smooth rocking deck. It staggered and ...
— Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... living word which first brought the momentous significance of Faith to clear consciousness in the sixteenth century. But the new way of Faith meant many and discordant things, according to the preparation of the ears of those who heard. It spoke, as all Pentecosts do, to each man in his own tongue. To those who came to the Lutheran insight with a deep hunger of spirit for reality and with minds liberated by Humanistic ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... the Greeks that they were completely surrounded, and that nothing remained for them but to prepare, where they were, to meet the attack which would certainly be made upon them in the morning. The arrival of this trireme was thus of very essential service to the Greeks. It put an end to their discordant debates, and united them, one and all, in the work of making resolute preparations for action. This vessel was also of very essential service in the conflict itself which ensued; and the Greeks were so grateful ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... thought they would make a discordant pair, the prince did not give up the idea of matching these ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of the English poets. But due allowance must be made for differences of temperament. Our cuckoo is scarcely a "merry harbinger"; his talents, such as they are, certainly are not musical. However, the guttural cluck is not discordant, and the black-billed species, at least, has a soft, mellow voice that seems ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... Bruce's tail. That unoffending canine uttered a yelp of pain, echoed by Scotty, who sprang to comfort him; and Rory, whose musical ear had been irritated by the disturbance, suddenly drew his bow with a discordant rasp across the strings, and ended the melodious song with a long, ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... unity in this apparently discordant combination between the Protestant and the Ultramontane; for the Hohenzollern State and the Roman Catholic Church were both systems organized on that principle of autocracy which was more and more coming out as the underlying issue of the war, and ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... than before, boldly continuing to say what he knew would be discordant to the family ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... ear would have been sharp enough to distinguish the voice of a single man amid the clash of arms and war-cries, the shrieks of women, the wails of the wounded, the discordant grunting of the camels, the blasts of horns and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... affairs and yet interfering now and then when opportunity offered. Hunting and fishing and the composition of his memoirs occupied his leisure hours; by way of interlude he arranged, at the request of the discordant citizens, the internal affairs of the neighbouring colony of Puteoli as confidently and speedily as he had formerly arranged those of the capital. His last action on his sickbed had reference to the collection of a contribution for the rebuilding of ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... throw them upon his head and body, until not only both became covered, but the ground around him, so that there was no cool place for his feet; while at every new infliction of pain, the crowd would break forth in strains of wild, discordant laughter. ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... numbers at once arrested the progress of the carriage. Though it was so late of a Sunday night, all seemed here awake and busy as at noonday. Oil-lamps with reeking fumes of black smoke flung a glare over the scene, and the discordant cries and chattering conversation united in so deafening a noise as to make me turn faint and giddy, wearied as I already was with long travelling. Though I felt that intense eagerness and expectation ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... means of driving away spirits, probably in consequence of its effect in frightening wild animals. It is for the same end that music is essential at weddings, especially during the night when the spirits are more potent; and this is the primary object of the continuous discordant din which the Hindus consider a necessary accompaniment ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... makes more impression than all the others that are correctly played in an entire symphony, so does a discordant incident stand out and dominate a hundred others that are ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... of the Witch at a moment of terror in the play. By it he publishes his intention not to be too utterly gruesome in his treatment of the hag. This intention, moreover, he fulfils in the succeeding scene. The Witch appears weird and wicked enough in appearance, in her discordant laugh, and the instrumental delineation of her, but when she sings to the children, she is almost ingratiating. Of course, she is seeking to lure them to a horrible fate, but though she does not deceive ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... croaking of toads and frogs—some of these as loud as the routing of a bull—there was screaming of cats, the barking of jackals, and the chattering and howling of monkeys. A perfect chorus of discordant sounds produced by the barque moving down the river, and no doubt partially by my own passage through the underwood. One kind set the other a-going, and the alarm and consequent noises proceeding from it spread to a far distance through ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... are like the catbird. When it is away from its nest, it is one of the sweetest of the northern warblers, and so it is often called the northern mocking-bird; but when it is close to its nest, you will hear only a harsh, discordant note. It has no sweetness in its voice while at its nest. Some people reserve all their kindness, tenderness, and sweetness for those outside the family circle. Is it any wonder that love dies in such a home? If ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... East—while unable to point to a single practical measure as either improperly taken, or improperly omitted by him, the Whigs could not refrain, on some pretext or other, from marring the general joy by the discordant hissings of an impotent envy. Experiencing in an unparalleled degree both the indulgence of a generous nation, who are willing to forget the past in the enjoyment of the present, and the forbearance ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... cage of a parrot on a stand at the end of the porch. The bird sidled over to her on stiff legs, cocked upon her a leering, yellow eye and said in wheedling tones, "Pretty girl, pretty girl!" But then it harshly screeched, "Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!" This laughter was discordant, cynical, derisive, as if the bird ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... as usual, ungrateful to its benefactors, and made light of the reduction on malt; while those who were to pay for it in double taxation were naturally indignant. The voices of criticism, 'angry, loud, discordant voices,' were heard simultaneously on every side. The debate waxed fast and furious. In defending his hopeless proposals, Mr. Disraeli gave full scope to his most characteristic gift; he pelted his opponents ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... smoke of the frankincense, Which there was imaged forth, the eyes and nose Were in the yes and no discordant made. ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... thick with the reek of cheap cigars, sold at tremendous prices, and the foul atmosphere of stale drink. The usual process of a further saturation had set in. Nor amidst the din of voices was there a discordant note. Even the cursings of the losers at the roulette board were drowned in the raucous din of laughter and ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... not rise! God grant that on my vision never may be opened what lies behind! When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the Sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the Earth, still full high ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... the soul, and pitied thee. Bad and accursed things have men confessed Before me, but have left them unarrayed. Naked, and shivering with deformity. The troubled dreams and deafening gush of youth Fling o'er the fancy, struggling to be free, Discordant and impracticable things: If the good shudder at their past escapes, Shall not the wicked shudder at their crimes? They shall—and I denounce upon thy head God's vengeance—thou shalt rule this ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... about the Capitol. Returning, the female always had her beak loaded with building material, while the male, carrying nothing, seemed to act as her escort, flying a little above and in advance of her, and uttering now and then his husky, discordant note. As I tossed a lump of earth up at them, the frightened mother bird dropped her mortar, and the pair scurried away, much put out. Later they avenged ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... Whatever may be the negative virtues of this preliminary essay, it undoubtedly possesses the positive one of having given a strong impulse to the study and love of Nature. True, the man who is to grasp its details, sympathies, significations, to hear, in all their grand harmony, its various discordant symphonies and fugues, to see its marvelous associations, needs to be Briarean-armed, Israfel-hearted and Argus-eyed, as perhaps none in our imperfect day and generation can claim to be. But at least this 'Nature' of Emerson's insinuated, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... that Nils burned to express; but the fiddle refused to obey him, and screeched something utterly discordant, as it seemed, from ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Commissioner was read and studied in South Africa. Every reference made to him by the representatives of the various political parties was weighed and scrutinized, and the verdict was that it was good! Fair firm and able. There had not been a discordant note nor a voice lacking in the chorus which greeted the appointment; and the judgment was, 'They have given ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... childe, by the sterne Tyrant, Warre, And no such matter? Rumour, is a Pipe Blowne by Surmises, Ielousies, Coniectures; And of so easie, and so plaine a stop, That the blunt Monster, with vncounted heads, The still discordant, wauering Multitude, Can play vpon it. But what neede I thus My well-knowne Body to Anathomize Among my houshold? Why is Rumour heere? I run before King Harries victory, Who in a bloodie field by Shrewsburie Hath beaten downe yong Hotspurre, and his Troopes, Quenching the flame of bold Rebellion, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... appeared that of a mighty, virulent hand. Out of the depths arose a flock of dark-hued birds, soaring toward the morbific fog; not moving like other winged creatures, with harmony of motion, but rising without unity, and filling the vale with discordant sounds. Nowhere could these sable birds have appeared more unearthly than in the "dark valley," as it was called by the natives, where the mists moved capriciously, yet remained persistently within the circumference of this natural cauldron, now falling like a pall and again hovering ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... thought that came to his mind was of a bow and arrow, the second was of the beautiful maiden who lay sleeping at his side. The little spirits had disappeared—not a solitary being of the many thousands who, but a few minutes before, had filled the air with their discordant cries was now to be seen or heard. At the feet of Karkapaha lay a tremendous bow, larger than any warrior ever yet used, a sheaf of arrows of proportionate size, and a spear of a weight which no Maha could wield. Karkapaha drew the bow as an Indian boy bends a willow ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous
... and placing his finger through an eyeless hole, whence once love beamed or hate flashed, he made some savage comment, which he accompanied by a long and malignant laugh. This would at another time have shocked Sir Henry, but there was another laugh, wilder and more discordant, that curdled the blood in Delme's veins. It proceeded from his brother, the gay—the happy George Delme; and as it re-echoed through the gloomy passage, it seemed that of a remorseless demon, gloating on the misfortunes of the human ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman |
