"Symphony" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the cynosure of a thousand admiring glances. And that night, beneath the windows of their residence, a party of gallant amateurs, with voice and instrument, awoke sounds of such celestial harmony, that the winged spirits of the air paused in their aerial flight to catch the choral symphony that floated on the soft breezes of ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... field of Goito; it was won. It was won against odds. At Pastrengo they witnessed an encounter; this was a battle. Vittoria perceived that there was the difference between a symphony and a lyric song. The blessedness of the sensation that death can be light and easy dispossessed her of the meaner compassion, half made up of cowardice, which she had been nearly borne down by on the field of Pastrengo. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... does a leaping fish Send through the tarn a lonely cheer; The crags repeat the raven's croak In symphony austere: Thither the rainbow comes, the cloud, And mists that spread the flying shroud, And sunbeams, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... me not worthy of thy answer; but for her sake who concedes to me the asking, O blessed life, that keepest thyself hidden within thine own joy, make known to me the cause which has placed thee so near me; and tell why in this wheel the sweet symphony of Paradise is silent, which below through the others so devoutly sounds." "Thou hast thy hearing mortal, as thy sight," it replied to me; "therefore no song is here for the same reason that Beatrice has no smile. Down along the steps ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... simply not seeing a number of ladies who were pushing behind me. When Liszt appeared there was a terrible hissing—he looked as if petrified, glanced like a demon at the public, but nevertheless began to play the Scherzo and Finale of the Pastoral Symphony. Then there burst out a perfect thunder of applause, and all seemed pacified, while Madame Schmidt sang a song accompanied by a certain Mr. Kermann. As soon as that was over, a new storm of hisses arose, ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... sort of symphony which Marius had lived since he had been in the habit of seeing Cosette, the past, even the most recent past, had become so confused and distant to him, that what Cosette told him satisfied him completely. It did not ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... day. The panorama before me is of a grandiose splendor; it is a symphony of mountains, a cantata ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... flush creeps up the sky, The birds begin their symphony. I hear the clear, triumphant voice Of the Robin, bidding the world rejoice. The Vireos catch the theme of the song, And the Baltimore Oriole bears it along, While from Sparrow, and Thrush, and Wood Pewee, And, deep in the pine-trees, the Chickadee, ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... several days to run Bouchalka down, but when we did find him Cressida promptly busied herself in his behalf. She sang his "Sarka" with the Metropolitan Opera orchestra at a Sunday night concert, she got him a position with the Symphony Orchestra, and persuaded the conservative Hempfstangle Quartette to play one of his chamber compositions from manuscript. She aroused the interest of a publisher in his work, and introduced him to people who ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... differing notes of higher or lower pitch which disagreed once, but are now reconciled by the art of music; for if the higher and lower notes still disagreed, there could be no harmony,—clearly not. For harmony is a symphony, and symphony is an agreement; but an agreement of disagreements while they disagree there cannot be; you cannot harmonize that which disagrees. In like manner rhythm is compounded of elements short ...
— Symposium • Plato
... reassurance, some ground for felicitation. This rash challenge had consequences merely dreadful; the wretched volumes, imperturbable and impeccable, with their shyer secrets and their second line of defence, were like a beautiful woman more denuded or a great symphony on a new hearing. There was something quite sinister in the way they stood up to me. I couldn't however be dumb—that was to give the wrong tinge to my disappointment; so that later in the afternoon, taking my courage in both hands, I approached ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... the curtain was being raised. And now the physician heard the sublime symphony with which the composer introduces the great Biblical drama. It is to express the sufferings of a whole nation. Suffering is uniform in its expression, especially physical suffering. Thus, having instinctively felt, like all men of genius, that here there ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... a symphony of blue, surrounded by a company of admiring friends, is Mme. Alice, a Broadway opera star; her story is very interesting indeed. No, I dare not tell; it is sufficient that you should know that she is a gentle, sweet ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... musicians, of which his mother seemed almost culpably tolerant, not to say proud. The arts were rising, socially, in that generation, and Elliot was actually excused from an examination in ethics for the purpose of attending a concert by the Boston Symphony Society. ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... khedive and of czar. The seven-branch candlestick so biblical and supplicating of arms. An urn, shaped like Rebecca's, of brass, all beaten over with little pocks. Things—cups, trays, knockers, ikons, gargoyles, bowls, and teapots. A symphony of bells in graduated sizes. Jardinieres with fat sides. A pot-bellied samovar. A swinging-lamp for the dead, star-shaped. Against the door, an octave of tubular chimes, prisms of voiceless harmony and of ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... with tears at his father's house, or sing with too much boisterousness at the dinners of the St. Andrew's Club, for which the Leith frigates had made special provision of the Scottish wine. Anon the fingers strayed upon an Italian symphony full of languors and of sun, and once at least a dance ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... oak-forests of our isle, An ocean-music that thou ne'er couldst know Storms Heaven—O, keep us steadfast all the while; Not idly swayed by tides that ebb and flow, But strong to embrace the whole vast symphony Wherein no note (no bird, no leaf) can fall Beyond His care, to enfold it all as though Thy single harp were ours, its unity In battle like one sword, And O, its one reward One spray of the sacred oak, still coveted ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes
... are his close-piled cheeks His paws, sequestered warm! An oak-grained panel backs his head And all the stock-in-trade is spread, A symphony in white and red, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various
... little late in keeping this engagement. He came in quickly and softly between two movements of Tschaikowsky's "Pathetic Symphony," found Nigel in his stall, and, with a word, sat down beside him. The conductor raised his ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... The "symphony in yellow and red," which "H. H." calls this wonderland, grows upon the sojourner in some mysterious way, till by the time he has seen the waxing and waning of one moon he is an enthusiast. It is charming alike to the sight-seer whose jaded faculties pine for new and thrilling emotions, to ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... immortal friend and countryman, Rossini? What was Moses in Egypt but a sublime oratorio, which was acted on the stage instead of being coldly sung in a concert-room? What was the overture to Guillaume Tell but a symphony under another name? Had I heard Moses in Egypt? Would I listen to this, and this, and this, and say if anything more sublimely sacred and grand had ever been composed by mortal man?"—And without waiting for a word of assent or dissent on my ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... Yet, as thus presented, Twelfth Night lingers in my mind with Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme as presented at the Comedie Francaise, so presented that, by force of tradition wrought with faultless art, a play becomes an embodied symphony, a visible manifestation of ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... rushed madly through the black, howling nights, and the leaden, fierce days, with every timber protesting the strain, and every piece of cordage adding its shrill, thrummed note to the storm's mighty symphony. ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... facility. Musicians, for instance, often become intoxicated by their own sweet sounds, and are lured on to unseemliness, making much discord in life's symphony. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... eyes and ears being wholly attracted by the passing and repassing of the persons desirous to sell or supply themselves with fish; Thames Street was almost blocked up with carts, and the hallooing and bawling of the different drivers, loading or unloading, formed an occasional symphony to the 298 continual hum of those who were moving in all directions ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... city for its million pulses, the beat of its great heart, and the terrific symphony of its soul, have you ever picked out from its orchestra the plaintive rune of the ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... is old enough now to appreciate the atmosphere of culture and refinement in such a place,—I am told that the first families of Boston send their daughters there—and she could have the advantage of attending the Symphony concerts. ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... event, To luckless Itys that befell. Thence the strain Shall rise again, And soar amain, Up to the lofty palace gate Where mighty Apollo sits in state In Jove's abode, with his ivory lyre, Hymning aloud to the heavenly choir, While all the gods shall join with thee In a celestial symphony. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... of despair: "O, mein Mann! O, mein Mann!" She turned away, staggering about like some creature that has received a death wound. Hal's eyes followed her; her cry, repeated over and over incessantly, became the leit-motif of this symphony of horror. ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... company should work toward a common end, with the nicest subordination of their individuality to the general purpose. Without this method a play when acted is at best a disjoined and incoherent piece of work, instead of being a harmonious whole like the fine performance of an orchestral symphony. ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... of the country." From now on the whole trip is one of carefully engineered surprises and revelations. Colwell's Moana Villa, and Pomin's new and beautiful place are passed and then we ascend, and suddenly Meek's Bay is revealed to us, a glorious symphony in blues, deepening and richening into pure amethyst, with lines, patches and borders of emerald and lapis lazuli. Beyond rise hill-studded slopes leading the eye higher and higher until, anchored in a sky as blue as ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... graphophone repeats a Beethoven symphony, the voluminousness of the orchestra is reduced to a thin feeble surface sound, and no one would accept this product of the disk and the diaphragm as a full substitute for the performance of the real orchestra. But, after all, every instrument is actually represented, ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... Spirit's indwelling, of the wondrous inner peace that follows obedience in hard places, of the joys of service, of the delight of being able to sympathize. His experience ran through the whole diapason of human feelings, and so He can find a key-note in every one of its tones for the sweet rich symphony ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... four notes of the opening movement, Beethoven said, some time after he had finished the Fifth Symphony: "So pocht das Shicksal an die Pforte" ("Thus Fate Knocks at the Door"); and between that opening knock, and the tremendous rush and sweep of the Finale, the emotions which come into play in the great ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... the smiling throng he goes, His Winter garments hung—where, no one knows! A Symphony in radiant scarfs and hose, Wrought t'inspire a maiden's "Ah's!" ...
— The Rubaiyat of a Bachelor • Helen Rowland
... to begin their piratical careers close beside the criminals which bore them; or better still, from their point of view, float downstream to found new colonies afar. When the beautiful jewel-weed—a conspicuous sufferer—is hung about with dodder, one must be grateful for at least such symphony ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... seventh-form boys, In weeds of Greek the church-yard's peace annoys, With classic Weston, Charley Coote and Tew, In dismal dance about the mournful yew. But first in notes Sicilian placed on high, Bates sounds the soft precluding symphony; And in sad cadence, as the bands condense, The curfew tolls the knell ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 9, Saturday, December 29, 1849 • Various
... house looked mellow and beautiful; the Japanese garden was a symphony of green plush sod and brilliant color—the Bougainvillaea almost smothering the little summerhouse and a mocking-bird who must be a grandson of the one of her betrothal night was singing his giddy heart out. Kada ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... was a Work upon which I spent only special hours of delicious leisure and infinite labor. It held all that was forbidden to popular compositions; depth and sorrow and dissonances dearer than harmony. I called it a Symphony Polynesian, and I had spent years in study of barbaric music, instruments and kindred things that this love-child of mine might be more richly clothed by a tone or a fancy. Aunt Caroline had interrupted, this morning, ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... a pleasant evening," said Oaky, "amid the wild splendor of nature's wonderland. And now the National Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Otter Krug brings you 'The Upland Glades,' by Ernesto Nestrichala, recorded by the National North American Broadcasting Company. This is your friendly oak ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... upon Andras. His nerves were shaken by the memories which the czardas of the Tzigani musicians had evoked; and it seemed to him that the place was deserted now that they had departed, and Varhely had gone with them. In the eternal symphony of the sea, the lapping of the waves upon the shingle at the foot of the terrace, one note was now lacking, the resonant note of the czimbalom yonder in the gardens of Frascati. The vibration of the czimbalom was ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... oldest of Mr. Punch's young men thought he would like to hear some orchestral music on Monday week last, so he dropped in at the Queen's Hall to assist at a concert of the new British Symphony Orchestra. The name of the founder and conductor, Mr. RAYMOND ROZE, was already familiar, for Mr. Punch's young man was old enough to remember Mr. ROZE'S mother, MARIE ROZE, in her brilliant prime as prima donna of the Carl Rosa Company; and he is glad to know that she is still living ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various
... management of detail, have mostly been women; and there is not in all modern literature a more eloquent vehicle of thought than the style of Madame de Stael, nor, as a specimen of purely artistic excellence, anything superior to the prose of Madame Sand, whose style acts upon the nervous system like a symphony of Haydn or Mozart. High originality of conception is, as I have said, what is chiefly wanting. And now to examine if there is any manner in which this deficiency can be ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... the unceasing strain of hand and eye, and all this under the hot burning rays of a June sun, so exhausted his vitality that when the cow bell rang for supper it seemed to him a sound more delightful than the strains of a Richter orchestra in a Beethoven symphony. ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... itself to a long voyage, with the two women always seated before him, sometimes on the railway, again at the table of strange hotels. During the whole execution of the symphony they accompanied him, as if, while driving with him in the sunshine, they had left the image of their two faces ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... crossed over to the fireplace. Bertram, leading the talk now, took him in without a trace of apparent resentment. Kate, emerging from the room, dropped down beside Harry Banks on the floor and joined her cheerful pipe to the symphony of good fellowship. Before luncheon, this find of hers was the centre of the party; events were revolving ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... far easier works of his predecessors before he came. The Richters and Mottls and Schuchs of our day are a very different race from the Reissigers and Lachners and Costas of a past generation. It was Richter who taught us in London how a symphony of Beethoven ought to sound; before he came, performances were approved which the present day would not tolerate. He, as well as his great compeers, was brought up in the school of Wagner, the essence of ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... instantly complied, casting a sweet glance at Sir Robert, who immediately led her to the piano-forte, followed by the Scottish merchant of the Baltic, whither the noble symphony of "The Douglas," "hound and horn," soon gathered the rest of the company. The remainder of the evening passed away delightfully in the awakened harmony. Mrs. Montresor joined Lady Albina in some touching Italian duets; Pembroke supported both ladies in a fine trio of Mozart's; ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... of day is gone, Only the dark, dark night shows to my eyes the stars; After the clangor of organ majestic, or chorus, or perfect band, Silent, athwart my soul, moves the symphony true. ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... we three on this our island, although most unlike in many things, when united, made a trio so harmonious that I question if there ever met before such an agreeable triumvirate. There was, indeed, no note of discord whatever in the symphony we played together on that sweet Coral Island; and I am now persuaded that this was owing to our having been all tuned to the same key, namely, that of love! Yes, we loved one another with much fervency while we lived on that island; and, for the matter of that, ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... in herself, A symphony of joyousness. She sang, she sang from finger tips, From every tremble of her dress. I saw sweet haunting harmony, An ecstasy, an ecstasy, In that strange curling of her lips, That happy curling of her lips. And quivering with melody Those eyes ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... a musical evening would consist of the conversation or paper upon a certain musical form, such as the opera, symphony, or perhaps dance music, being illustrated and varied by the performance of examples of those forms. The organized musical clubs could here be of the greatest service in taking ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana
... differences, such as young married people with any individual flavor in their characters must have, if they are tolerably mated, had only added to the music of existence, as the lesser discords admitted into some perfect symphony, fitly resolved, add richness and strength to the whole harmonious movement. It was a deep wound that Fate, had inflicted on him; nay, it seemed like a mortal one; but the weapon was clean, and its edge was smooth. Such ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... If the art of today has made no progress in fugue, song, sonata, symphony, quartet, oratorio, opera [who has improved on Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert? Name! name! I say], what is the use of talking about "the average of today being higher"? How higher? You mean more people go to concerts, more ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... to rise above my material self so that I might place myself in harmony with the flowing symphony of Absolute Truth," he lectured me sonorously. Oh well, his enrapturement with such terminology differed little from some of the sciences which tended to grow equally esoteric. And maybe it meant something. Who was I to say that ...
— Sense from Thought Divide • Mark Irvin Clifton
... love-note dies; And beauty fades in the air, To make the master-symphony immortal, And find new life and ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... here are real kind to me; they hardly ever let me feel myself alone. We make up little parties, you know, picnics and excursions. And then, of course, there is the Opera and the Symphony Concerts, and the subscription dances. The dear old king has been doing a good deal this winter, too; and I must say the Embassy folks have been most thoughtful, so far as I am concerned. No, it would not be right for me to complain of loneliness, ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... in the heights soughed the everlasting song, the voice of the air, the distant, toneless humming which is never silent. I listened so long to this ceaseless faint murmur that it began to bewilder me; it was surely a symphony from the rolling spheres above. Stars that intone ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... said. "I hope you do, but I am going to tell you once more that he loves you, and once more and once more." What pleased me in it all was a certain unity of service, from the beginning to the end. The congregation's singing seemed to suggest the prayer; the prayer seemed to continue in the symphony of the organ; and, while I was in revery, the organ ceased; but as it was ordered, the sermon took up the theme of my revery, and so that one theme ran through the whole. The service was not ten things, like the ten parts of a concert, it was one act ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... of billows drifting across the sky, glittering, frosted—a symphony in metals—silver, aluminium, lead—rendered buoyant for the nonce, ethereal—as though the world were really gone Christmas mad, and, having a sudden attack of topsy-turvydom in its inside, had taken to showering its treasures about the firmament, ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... Art's two highest spheres,—music of sound and music of speech,—we find that Beethoven and Mozart, and Milton and Shakespeare, have written. But the symphony is sacred only because, and only so far as, it renders the joy or the sorrow which we have felt. Surely, the interpretation is less than the thing interpreted. Face to face with a joy, a sorrow, would a symphony avail us? And, ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... a magnificent symphony, after which Laschi and Baglioni sang a duet with great talent and much taste. They were followed by a pupil of the celebrated Vandini, who played a concerto on the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... place of a founder of a new movement, apart even from his own compositions, which though few in number are remarkable in themselves. His works consist largely of songs and collections of folk-songs, but include a symphony (first played in England in 1901), two symphonic poems ("Russia" and "Tamara"), and four overtures, besides pianoforte pieces. His orchestral works are of the "programme-music" order, but all are brilliant examples of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... the instruments of the Assyrians to the general features and character of their music, we may observe, in the first place, that while it is fair to suppose them acquainted with each form of the triple symphony, there is only evidence that they knew of two forms out of the three—viz, the harmony of instruments, and that of instruments and voices in combination. Of these two they seem greatly to have preferred the concert of instruments without voices; indeed, one instance alone shows that they were ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... the Thackeray dinner. It was a company of exceedingly clever and brilliant men, but the gayety of the feast was extinguished by the general consciousness that the situation was abnormal. It was a fruit without flavor, a flower without fragrance, a symphony without melody, a dinner without speeches. But the dinner of which I speak, when the condition of Irving's presence was that there should be no speeches, was the great exception. It was the only dinner of the kind that I have ever known. But ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... bless our human ears, (If ye have power to touch our senses so) And let your silver chime Move in melodious time; And let the Base of Heav'ns deep Organ blow, 130 And with your ninefold harmony Make up full consort to th'Angelike symphony. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... the Cevennes is the impression M. Fabre most commonly conveys. In this book it is rather the cheerful aspect of summer, those upland valleys of the Cevennes presenting then a symphony in red, so to call it—as in a land of cherries and goldfinches; and he has a genial power certainly of making you really feel the sun on the backs of the two boys out early for a long ramble, of old peasants resting themselves a little, with spare ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... him, in silent attention, as if watching the progress of the work. He observed more than once the man's hard features, as if by the force of association, prepare to accompany the sound of the saw and hammer with his usual symphony of a rude tune, hummed or whistled,and as often a slight twitch of convulsive expression showed, that ere the sound was uttered, a cause for suppressing it rushed upon his mind. At length, when he had ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... century (on December 26, 1900) was well sustained by the singers and attended by many hundreds of citizens and visitors. Eight Christmas Carols and an anthem were sung, the concluding Carol being "The First Nowell"; and the organist (Mr. J. B. Lott, Mus. Bac., Oxon) played the Pastoral Symphony from Sullivan's "Light of the World," Mendelssohn's March ("Cornelius"), the Pastoral Symphony from Handel's "Messiah," and other exquisite voluntaries. From the anthem, E. H. Sears's beautiful ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... the Referendum on this sole ground there can be little doubt what the result would be. There are not many people, even in the most highly educated communities, who value the possibility of a new poem, symphony, or mathematical law so highly that they would sacrifice their own health, happiness, and sanity to retain that possibility for their offspring. Of course we may declare that a majority which made such a decision must be composed of very low-minded uncultured people, altogether lacking in appreciation ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... orchestra with an individual voice; and those two will live mostly because they created Beethoven. Ah, Beethoven! power and strength amidst serene suffering, Michael Angelo at the tomb of the Medici! A heroic logician, a kneader of human brains; for the symphony, with choral accompaniments, was the starting-point of all the great ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... mere modern foundation; the Church is older than Hengist and Horsa, Clovis, or Mahomet; yet it stretches over the Atlantic continent from Missouri to Cape Horn, and still goes on conquering and to conquer. And the climax of this kaleidoscopic "symphony in purple and gold"—the New Zealander sketching the ruins of St. Paul's from a broken arch of London Bridge—has become a proverb, and is repeated daily by men who never heard of Macaulay, much less of Von Ranke, and is an inimitable bit of picturesque colouring. It is very telling, nobly hyperbolic, ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... our aim be to lean up against a tree all day in a short seersucker coat and ditto pantaloons that segregated while we were festooning the hammock, the picnic is the thing. If we desire to go home at night with a jelly symphony on each knee and a thousand-legged worm in each ear, we may look upon ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... Lanier wrote "The Symphony," which he said took hold of him "about four days ago like a real James River ague, and I have been in a mortal shake with the same, day and night, ever since," which is the only way that a real poem or real music or a real picture ever can get into the ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... our company to describe that charming little bay of Glaucus, into which we entered on the 26th of September, in the first steam-boat that ever disturbed its beautiful waters. You can't put down in prose that delicious episode of natural poetry; it ought to be done in a symphony, full of sweet melodies and swelling harmonies; or sung in a strain of clear crystal iambics, such as Milnes knows how to write. A mere map, drawn in words, gives the mind no notion of that exquisite nature. What do mountains become in type, or rivers in Mr. Vizetelly's best ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... said Joe Dumsby, assuming the air of one who endeavoured to recall something. "Could you come Beet'oven's symphony on ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... a capable person; there is no ignoring her militant character; the battles of Saxon kings ring still in her blood. Marjorie has scribbled verses in secret, and Celia is the quietest auditor at the symphony. And you may have observed that there is no button on Elizabeth's foil; you do well not to clash wits with her. Do you say that these ascriptions are not square with your experience? Then verily there must have been a ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... they also consist of dancing, by which religious fervor is produced, and they give rise to music, romance, poetry, and drama. Thus it is that the esthetic arts have their origin in mythology. The epic poem and the symphony are lineal descendants of the dance, and the dance arises as the first form of worship, born of the mythic conception of ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... The symphony, incidentally, was so successful at its first performance that a strange-looking man rushed to the platform, saluted the composer, and sent him a more substantial token in the shape of twenty thousand ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... among those who are seriously interested in a literary drama that the audiences have been drawn. It was such people as do not habitually go to the theatre, but that are to be found at revivals of old English comedy and Ibsen plays and symphony concerts, that made up the audiences of the Irish Players in America, whether in Boston or in Philadelphia or Chicago. These audiences approximated to the Dublin audiences only in the fact that they were constant in attendance at all the plays of the repertoire. There were, of course, some ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... one can no more explain success than one can explain Beethoven's C minor symphony. One may state what key it is written in, and make expert reflections upon its form, and catalogue its themes, and relate it to symphonies that preceded it and symphonies that followed it, but in the end one is reduced to saying that the C minor symphony is ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... him rose the stately columns and porticoes of the park museum, once a member of an exposition whose glories are almost forgotten, which now veiled its need of repair in the kindly dawn and formed a symphony in gray with the willow-studded, low-lying lagoon banks. The air throbbed with the subdued noises of awakening animal life. In a shrub near them, a catbird cleared his throat in a few harsh notes as a prelude to a morning of tuneful parody, and on the slope ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... of this story, the author has had occasion to refer to Beethoven's Sonata Appassionata as containing a suggestion of the opening theme of the Fifth Symphony. He has often seen this stated, and believed that the statement was generally accepted as true. Since writing, however, he has heard the opinion expressed, by a musician who is qualified to speak as an authority, that the two themes have nothing to ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... his work, and saw that it was good. He had created a gem. The Old Town was a symphony in ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... he heard that fine sylvan symphony of the sound of the falling water—the tinkling bell-like tremors of its lighter tones mingling with the sonorous, continuous, deeper theme rising from its weight and volume and movement; with the surging of the wind in the pines; with the occasional cry of a wild bird deep in the ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... story is not all told when we are dead. The huge procession goes on and shall go on, till the secret of the grand symphony of life is reached. ...
— The Philosophy of Despair • David Starr Jordan
... boy would declaim loweringly, and with fitting gesture, with hypnotic eye fastened on the cowering Bernal, "where the only music is the symphony of damned souls. Where howling, groaning, moaning, and gnashing of teeth make up the horrible concert. There is a place where demons fly swift as air, with whips of knotted burning wire, torturing poor souls; where tongues on fire ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... his head gravely and sighed. Surely something was wrong, for Anton was not himself. Never before had he stopped rehearsal and dismissed his men on the morning preceding a concert night, and, moreover, the night of the first performance of a new symphony—Von Barwig's ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... "children" she strove mightily to make these last days in it the most wonderful days in the garden of their lives. She never let them see that she feared. Just to hear her when she came home in the late afternoon was like listening to a symphony of inspiration. It began at the basement door. How she braced herself for it! How she advanced, ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... the impetus given to musicians and composers has been equally remarkable. Professor Banville de Quantock, whose Oriental proclivities are well known, has at once embarked on a gigantic choral symphony, to words of his own composition, in which the whole process and procedure of the Turkish Bath is treated historically, dramatically and realistically in seventeen movements. The title has not yet been definitely fixed, but it will probably be known as the Symphonie Bathetique, to differentiate ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 • Various
... advantage in one's mind. It is just the reverse with the rooms in a certain palace I sometimes have the privilege of entering, where every detail is worked—furniture, tapestries, embroideries, majolica, and flowers—into an overwhelming Wagner symphony of loveliness. There is a genuine Leonardo in one of those rooms, and truly I almost wish it were in a whitewashed lobby. And in coming out of all that perfection I sometimes feel a kind of relief on getting into the empty, uninteresting street. My thoughts, somehow, ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... beautiful and again ugly and mediocre and heroic, all between two heart beats; but the dead ask only our love. Genoa has never asked it, and never will. She is one of us, her future is hidden from her, and into her mystery none has dared to look. She is like a symphony of modern music, full of immense gradual crescendos, gradual diminuendos, unknown to the old masters. Only Rome, and that but seldom, breathes with her life. But through the music of her life, so modern, so full of a sort of whining and despair in which no ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... situation had been developing beyond anything she had ever dreamed of; she was aquiver as to what might happen next. So absorbed was she in her chaos of feeling and thoughts that she did not even hear the humble symphony of the hundreds of bees drawing their treasure from the golden hearts of the roses; and did not see, across the path a score of yards away, the tall figure of Joe Ellison among the rosebushes, pruning-shears in hand, with which ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... words we have the following: 'pyramis' and 'pyramides', forms often employed by Shakespeare, became 'pyramid' and 'pyramids'; 'dosis' (Bacon) 'dose'; 'distichon' (Holland) 'distich'; 'hemistichion' (North) 'hemistich'; 'apogaeon' (Fairfax) and 'apogeum' (Browne) 'apogee'; 'sumphonia' (Lodge) 'symphony'; 'prototypon' (Jackson) 'prototype'; 'synonymon' (Jeremy Taylor) or 'synonymum' (Hacket), and 'synonyma' (Milton, prose), became severally 'synonym' and 'synonyms'; 'syntaxis' (Fuller) became 'syntax'; 'extasis' (Burton) 'ecstasy'; 'parallelogrammon' ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... still in the frieze of the Parthenon a marble transcript. There we may see the life of ancient Athens moving in stone, from the first mounting of their horses by isolated youths, like the slow and dropping prelude of a symphony, on to the thronged and trampling ranks of cavalry, past the antique chariots reminiscent of Homeric war, and the marching band of flutes and zithers, by lines of men and maidens bearing sacrificial urns, by the garlanded sheep and ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... inquisitive people and institutions abounding," said Arobin, "that one is really forced as a matter of convenience these days to assume the virtue of an occupation if he has it not." Monsieur Ratignolle stared a little, and turned to ask Mademoiselle Reisz if she considered the symphony concerts up to the standard which had been set the previous winter. Mademoiselle Reisz answered Monsieur Ratignolle in French, which Edna thought a little rude, under the circumstances, but characteristic. Mademoiselle had only disagreeable ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... curiosity, though he had seen many similar ones further to the east. It was about fifteen feet long, made of bark, sewed together, and the cracks filled with gum. The ends were curved over, so there was no difference between them, and each was ornamented with paintings which composed a symphony in black, ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... begins to recite, she reminded me of the description given of the priestess of. Delphi. She walks along the stage for four or five minutes in silent meditation on the subject proposed, then suddenly stops, calls to the musicians to play a certain symphony and then begins as if inspired. Among the different rhimes in osco, a gentleman who sat next to me proposed to her Cimosco. I asked him what Cimosco he meant; he replied a Tuscan poet of that name. For my part, I had never heard of any other of that ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... of my Scottish impressions," said Mendelssohn; "I have many more, and I am trying to weave them into a Scottish Symphony to match the Italian." ...
— A Day with Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy • George Sampson
... true the peasants know nothing of Beethoven's symphony in C, they are not familiar with the melodies of Rossini, Madame Grisi has never in her terrible finale "Qual cor tradisti" made them weep, nor has the orchestra of Monsieur Jullien made them deaf. But what are these splendid wonders of the ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... war, he had taken on enough flesh to fill out the wrinkles around eyes that shone with an artist's enjoyment of his work. Down under cover of the ridge were his guns, the keys of the instrument that he played by calls over the wire. Their barking was a symphony to his ears; errors of orchestration were errors in aim. He talked as he watched, his lively features reflective of ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... repudiating, he continued to spy the art-world from a distance. An audience is, however, necessary to a 'cello player, and the Turf Club and the Royal Yacht Club contained not a dozen members, he said, who would recognise the Heroica Symphony if they happened to hear it, which was not likely. Lately he had declared openly that he was afraid of entering any of his clubs, lest he should be asked once more what he thought of the Spring Handicaps, and if he intended sailing the ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore |
