"Chord" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... emotion, "I ain' narvous; but dat saw, a-cuttin' en grindin' thoo dat stick er timber, en moanin', en groanin,' en sweekin', kyars my 'memb'ance back ter ole times, en 'min's me er po' Sandy." The pathetic intonation with which he lengthened out the "po' Sandy" touched a responsive chord in ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... powerful thrust the Nautilus's hull quivered like a resonating chord, and the ship sank steadily under the waters. Stationed in the lounge, the captain and I watched the needle swerving swiftly over the pressure gauge. Soon we had gone below the livable zone where most fish reside. Some of ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... class of emotions produces an augmented treasure of expressions; and language, gesture, and the imitative arts, become at once the representation and the medium, the pencil and the picture, the chisel and the statue, the chord and the harmony. The social sympathies, or those laws from which, as from its elements, society results, begin to develop themselves from the moment that two human beings coexist; the future is contained within the present, as the plant ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... und we vill try something you know vell. I shall then be able to judge both of your execution und your tone. There iss de chord. Ah! now you are ready? All right. Shall we try de 'Miserere' from 'Il Trovatore?' I see ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... Montaigne as we please, even though that right includes the privilege of not reading every word of the famous Essays, and of only reverting—in our light return to them—to those aspects and qualities which strike an answering chord in ourselves. ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... that his arm partly released its clasp. Oceaxe turned around to gaze at him. Whether or not she was satisfied with what she saw, she uttered a low laugh, like a peculiar chord. ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... advantage of his absence, and make good use of moments so blissful to hearts that love. There was something in the old man's mournful tone and glance when it rested upon him, that answered strangely and sadly to the spirit-voice breathing in his own bold breast. It seemed to touch that chord indefinably, yet felt by the vibration of every nerve which followed. He roused himself, however, and ere they joined the morning meal, there was a brighter smile on the lip and heart of Agnes than had rested there for many ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... thoughtfully, 'you have just—as it were by mere hazard—struck the one chord in the English nature that will always respond to the appeal of a home affection. Were I to say, "Do you know why Kostalergi makes so hard a bargain? It is to endow a daughter. It is the sole provision he stipulates to make her—Greek ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... supremely selfish to esteem another higher than himself, and though it flattered him to know that the young creature was so glad to meet him, it awoke no answering chord, and he merely thought that with her to minister to him he should possibly be happier than he had ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... not deeds of heroes or of kings; No chant of bloody war, no exulting pean Of arms-won triumphs; but your humble strings You touched in chord with music empyrean. You sang far better than you knew; the songs That for your listeners' hungry hearts sufficed Still live,—but more than this to you belongs: You sang a race from ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... eminences on either flank, where far-reaching batteries could be posted, were great advantages. It covered the principal roads to Washington and Baltimore, and its convex shape, enabling troops to reinforce with celerity any point of the line from the centre, or by moving along the chord of this arc, was probably the cause of our final success. The enemy, on the contrary, having a concave order of battle, was obliged to move troops much longer distances to support any part of his line, and could not communicate orders rapidly, nor could ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... punishing the infringement of marital rights; petty thieves, and idle and feckless to the last degree. Certain Monrovia men have laid out farms of coffee and cacao (chocolate) upon the St. Paul River, which, heading in Mandenga-land, breaks the chord of the bay; but nothing can induce these ex-pets or their congeners, the Golas and the ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... she remembered that time in the vanished past, when she had stood by the coffin that contained the loved of her youth, he who had made her girlhood one dream of happiness, but over whose calm face the grass had greened and faded for many a weary year; perhaps this remembrance touched a chord of her better nature. Life, with its cares, and sorrows, and disappointments, had hardened her, till she had almost lost faith in humanity. Moreover, she was a woman, homely, and old and common, and with feminine malice and spite she could not readily forgive another ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... suffering, oppressed, and tormented souls, who can endow even dumb misery with speech. Nobody can approach him in the colours of late autumn, in the indescribably touching joy of a last, a very last, and all too short gladness; he knows of a chord which expresses those secret and weird midnight hours of the soul, when cause and effect seem to have fallen asunder, and at every moment something may spring out of nonentity. He is happiest of all when creating from out the nethermost depths of human happiness, and, so to speak, from ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... more still by Methuselah's agitated condition. "The whole night through, my dear friends," he cried, seizing their hands, "that bird has been chattering, chattering, chattering. Oh, mon Dieu, quel oiseau! It seems as though the words heard yesterday from mademoiselle had struck some lost chord in the creature's memory. But he is also very feeble. I can see that well. His garrulity is the garrulity of old age in its last flickering moments. He mumbles and mutters. He chuckles to himself. If you don't hear his message now and at once, it's my solemn ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... which at one time was the most popular song in the United States. It has not the depth and the melting tenderness of "Home, Sweet Home," but its quaint fancy and melodious verse struck a responsive chord. In his "Inkerman," a stirring ballad, which every American boy of a former age knew by heart, there was an echo of the "Lays of Ancient Rome," of the "Lays" of Scott and Aytoun, while in the more ambitious "Christine" (1866), ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... popular voice. Even with these humbler hands to build up his monument, the great master of music has a perpetual possession within the hearts of men, that the poet and the painter may well envy. Every chord in the human frame that answers to his strains, every tear that rises at the bidding of his cadences, every sob that struggles for an outlet at his touches of despairing tenderness, or at the thunders of his massive harmony, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... to have touched some chord of recollection in your mind, O my saviour of Dunwich," said the Man. "Look at me and tell me, who ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... find that direct influence, as a general rule, can be most easily traced in the case of religious themes. Here, in the literature of vision, so popular in Ireland, a chord was struck which continued to vibrate powerfully until the time of the Reformation. In this branch the riotous fancy of the Celtic monk caught the medieval imagination from an early period. Bede has preserved for us the story of Fursey, ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... graciousness of His nature was nothing to them. They had no eyes for His tenderness and no ears for His wisdom; but if some vulgar sign had been wrought before them, then they would have run after Him with their worthless faith. And that struck a painful chord in Christ's heart when He thought of how all the lavishing of His love, all the grace and truth which shone radiant and lambent in His life, fell upon blind eyes, incapable of beholding His beauty; and of how the manifest revelation of a Godlike ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... Apelles and Zeuxis, are all there too. The poet and the philosopher, the painter and the sculptor, rank as high through pen, pencil, and chisel, as the warrior by his blade and his bloody exploits. Art, in the North, finds no existence, and strikes no sympathizing chord in the bosoms of the sturdy Northmen. Art, to be perfect, requires a distinctness of conception, and an assimilation to human nature in its subjects, entirely at variance with the dim, mysterious character ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... with the talent entrusted to him, and unconsciously made the gift more suitable to join the Everlasting Choir, Eternal in the Heavens, to join in the congregation of saints who had found the harmony of the Lost Chord, and to make the heavens ring with the melody of the last strain, Only in heaven I shall hear that ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... pipe out of his doublet, and put it to his lips; and the man reached out his hand and took up a small lute which lay on the bank beside him. He held up a warning finger to the boy. "Remember," he said, "that you come in at the fifth chord, together with the voice—not before." He struck four simple chords on the lute, very gently, and with a sort of dainty preciseness; and then at the same moment the little pipe and his own voice began; the pipe played a simple descant in quicker time, with ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... so much interested in him that I scarcely looked at the bride during the ceremony. At last, the minister, in conclusion, announced the twain to be husband and wife. I saw Wallingford give a slight start as if a tensely strung chord of feeling had been jarred. A moment more and the spell was broken! Every lineament of his countenance showed this. The stern aspect gave way—light trembled over the softening features—the body stood more erect as if a great pressure had ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... replaced, as a rule, by conjugal affection, which is sometimes a less intense, at other times a more intense, feeling than the emotions aroused during courtship. The process may be compared to a modulation in music, in which some of the tones in a chord are retained while others are displaced by new ones. Such modulations are delightful, and the new harmony may be as beautiful as the old. A visitor to ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... "The Crisis," and, placing ourselves in January, 1776, look at "Common Sense" from that date, we may understand without much difficulty why it produced so great an impression. Paine, as later, when he brought out the "Rights of Man," caused a chord to vibrate in the popular mind which was already strung to the exact point of tension. The publication was not only timely,—it was novel. Paine founded a new school of pamphleteering. He was the first who wrote politics for the million. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... for them, and she had not been in the conservatories for months. John said a word or two on the cost of keeping them up, and the need of prudence, with a view to providing for Arthur's children. It was the right chord. She looked up, puzzled: her mathematical knowledge had never descended ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... penitent, "And so you wrote 'Junius'?" "Too true, my dear sir. Alas! I did," replied B. One year later a third penitent was going off, and upon the clergyman saying, "Bless me, is it possible? Did you write 'Junius'?" he replied, "Ah, worshipful sir, you touch a painful chord in my remembrances—I now wish I had not. Alas! reverend sir, I did." Now, you see,' went on my friend, 'so many men at the New Drop, as you may say, having with tears and groans taxed themselves with "Junius" as the climax of their offences, one begins to think that ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... happened to him. She put him aside with, "Run on to bed now, sonny; I've got a little work out here." And he left her. In the sitting room only the moon gave light. He stood at the window a moment, and then turned to his melodeon. His hands fell on the major chord of "G," and without knowing what he was playing he began "Largo." He played his soul into his music, and looking up, whispered the name "Ellen" rapturously over and over, and then as the music mounted to its ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... Malinda was, "Oh! my dear little child is gone? What shall I do? my child is gone." This most distressing sound struck a sympathetic chord through all the prison among the prisoners. I was not permitted to go to my wife and inquire what had become of little Frances. I never expected to see her again, for I supposed that ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... begin to sing a song, you go on and on to the end without thinking about it at all. It is the theme that carries you. Well, a human life is made like a song,—it carries itself along. You do not stop to think why. It can't stop in the middle, on one chord, for long. Yours now is resting, on a chord of happiness. But soon it will go on again. You want it to. Life in the Forest, though, isn't like that. Here it is music without any theme, like the music we dance to. Thrum, thrum, thrum, thrummmmmmmm. But there is more than that ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... jewel, for the sake of a bit of glass, shining only in the sunlight of thy ignorance, and trodden by the foot of every passing stranger. What! can I do nothing to rouse thy recollection? Look at me well! look hard, and it may be, something of me will touch as it were a chord ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain
... situation here?" "Oh yes, madam," answered the woman in a quick tone, and then tried to force a smile. "Why is it that you often look sad, and with tears in your eyes?" The mistress saw that she had touched a tender chord, and continued, "I am your friend; tell me your sorrow, and, if I can, I will help you." As the last sentence was escaping the lips of the mistress, the slave woman put her check apron to her face and wept. Mrs. Morton saw plainly that there was cause for ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... song of our love-life," murmured Eloise. "How full of memories it is—what tenderness and harmony—and oh! what peace it brings! But tell me, Master, what means this minor chord,—this undertone of sadness and of pathos that flows like a deep, unfathomable current throughout it all, and wailing, weaves itself about thy theme of love and happiness with its ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... ever erected has the resonance, the perfect acoustics of a circus tent when the canvas is wet and the temperature within above 70 degrees. There was a chord from the orchestra. Alfred ran to the platform in the middle of the ring. (The gentleman who announced the concert assured the audience there would be a stage erected). This stage was a platform ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... detail. The human soul may be compared to those instruments, of which the chords, already diversified in themselves, by the manner in which they have been spun, are also strung upon different notes: struck by the same impulse, each chord gives forth the sound that is peculiar to itself; that is to say, that which depends on its texture, its tension, its volume, on the momentary state in which it is placed by the circumambient air. It is this that produces the diversified spectacle, the varied scene, which the moral world ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... upstairs to my own room, I surprised myself by beginning to laugh about it and then surprised myself still more by beginning to cry about it. In short, I was in a flutter for a little while and felt as if an old chord had been more coarsely touched than it ever had been since the days of the dear old doll, long ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... all controversial. The flowers that yield honey to the bee likewise delight the bee-keeper with their perfume and the poet with their colours, and there is no adequate reason why the magic verse which strikes a responsive chord in the soul of lovers of high art, and starts a new train of ideas in the minds of serious thinkers, should thereby lose any of the healing virtues it may have heretofore possessed for the suffering souls of ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... a farewell gathering at a friend's whose brothers are to leave this week for Richmond. There was music. No minor chord was permitted. ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... passing through her life, of which external edifice was a necessary sign. I complained of you just now that you never looked at the Byzantine font in the temple of St. John. The sacristan generally will not let you. He takes you to a particular spot on the floor, and sings a musical chord. The chord returns in prolonged echo from the chapel roof, as if the building were all ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... understand-"all churches are not of my denomination." And so, in spite of her regard for the printer, she could not bring herself to link her destiny with one whose eternal future was so insecure, and whose life did not chord with that which was to her, the one great keynote of the universe, the church. And then, too, does not the good book say: "Be ye not unequally yoked with unbelievers." What could that mean if not, "Do not marry ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... herself. This was the discovery, real or pretended, of a former illicit connection between her brother-in-law and a pretty and intelligent mulatto girl, about eighteen or nineteen years of age, who was still retained in the family in the capacity of housemaid. Having once struck this jarring chord, she continued to play upon it with diabolical skill. To those who watched the course of her unholy labors, the energy and ingenuity with which this wretched woman wrought at her task, and the completeness of her success, would have seemed a subject of admiration, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... those whom Fortune seems most highly to favour. One of the most popular books of the preceding century had been Lydgate's version of Boccaccio's poems on the calamities of illustrious men, a vast monody in nine books, all harping on that single chord of the universal mutability of fortune. Lydgate's Fall of Princes had, by the time that Mary ascended the throne, existed in popular esteem for a hundred years. Its language and versification were now so antiquated as to be obsolete; ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... summer time when skies are hot We seek its verdant, velvet sward, Oh may we hold in reverent thought The debt we owe, forgetting not The spirit passed to its reward Of one whose giant soul was fraught With true benignity—who sought To touch humanity's quick chord With fire from Heaven's altar brought, That love and zeal and being caught As inspiration ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... Jo followed, and managed, when it was needed, that the herd should keep the great circle, of which the wagon cut a small chord. At sundown he came to Verde Crossing, and there was Charley with a fresh horse and food, and Jo went on in the same calm, dogged way. All the evening he followed, and far into the night, for the wild herd was now getting ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... example of the all-around American high-school boys. His fondness for clean, honest sport of all kinds will strike a chord of sympathy ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... had twice the natural strength of these short, close-knit foreigners. The excitement and novelty of the employment helped me through those first few days. I felt the joy of the pioneer—felt the sweet sense of delving in the mother earth. It touched in me some responsive chord that harked back to my ancestors who broke the rocky soil of New England. Of the life of my fellows bustling by on the earth-crust overhead—those fellows of whom so lately I had been one—I was not at all conscious. I ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... that which he, too, heard beneath the rhythm of unnumbered feet? Deep in his heart a wonder grew. What was it? Ah, he knew! It was music,—some strong and mighty chord. It rose higher as the brilliantly-lighted church split the night, and swept radiantly toward them. So high and clear that music flew, it seemed above, around, behind them. The governor, ashen-faced, crouched ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... complexion described as pasty, a pair of greyish-blue eyes, and a tangle of reddish curls just long enough to admit of being tied back with the bit of crumpled ribbon which kept them tidy. Cash was not of prepossessing appearance; yet perhaps because, the grateful glance touched a chord common to humanity in the heart of the stranger, or because one naturally warms to any creature whom one has befriended, or perhaps simply from the sweet womanliness which finds all childhood attractive,—whatever the motive, ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... face, continually striking his hand upon his breast and pointing with his sword toward his fallen enemy. Next him on the extreme left was his friend the basso, in high leather boots, growling from time to time during a sustained chord, "Mon honneur et ma foi." In the centre of the stage, the soprano, the star, the prima donna chanted a fervid but ineffectual appeal to the tenor who cried, "Jamais, jamais!" striking his breast and pointing with his sword. The prima donna cried, "Ah, mon Dieu, ayez ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... from necessary that wine should be served. Still, if wines are to be used, they should be brought on correctly, each wine having its proper place in the varied courses of a dinner, as each note has its fit position in a chord ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... same Time that these Buboes appeared, severals towards the Decline of this Fever complained of a Pain all along the Spermatic Chord; and soon after a Swelling of the Testicle appeared[22]. However, this Complaint was not peculiar to those who had the Fever; for others recovering from Fluxes, and other Disorders, were likewise affected with such Swellings. I did not ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... characteristic of him. He himself had never investigated Egyptian matters closely, and therefore did not seek to direct my course minutely, but advised me, in general, never to forget that the special science was nothing save a single chord, which could only produce its full melody with those that belonged to the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... reality and beauty which the eye perceives." There are people who are colour-blind, people who are tone-deaf. Most people are smell-blind-and-deaf. We should not condemn a musical composition on the testimony of an ear which cannot distinguish one chord from another, or judge a picture by the verdict of a colour-blind critic. The sensations of smell which cheer, inform, and broaden my life are not less pleasant merely because some critic who treads the wide, bright pathway ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... criticism. Byron suffered or enjoyed vivid dreams, and, as poets will, shaped his dreams, consciously and of set purpose, to the furtherance of his art, but nothing concerning himself interested him or awoke the slumbering chord which was not based on actual fact. If the meeting on the "cape crowned with a peculiar diadem," and the final interview in the "antique oratory" had never happened or happened otherwise; if he had ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... freshest of all, one he had not mentioned to his partners; the touch of Molly's lips on his as he had bade her good-by. The kiss had not been that of a child, there had been a magic in it that had thrilled some chord in Sandy that still responded to that remembrance. He never dwelt on it long, it brought a vague reaction always, stirred that strange instinct of his that had branded him as woman-shy, kept him ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... card-board should be large enough to leave a space of at least three inches between the illuminated border and the frame, which should be a wide band of dull gilding or pale-colored wood, with a tiny line of black to relieve it. The ornament should, if possible, chord in some way with the picture. Thus a photograph of a Madonna might have the annunciation-lilies and passion-flowers on the ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... suffering humanity, but suffering brute creation has found in her a sympathetic chord. The Bev. H. Russell, who is well known in the county for his efforts on behalf of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, told two interesting stories of her Grace in her presence at the ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... the stirrups are in tension and not in shear, and some are bold enough to compare them with the vertical tension members of a Howe truss. Imagine a Howe truss with the vertical tension members looped around the bottom chord and run up to the top chord without any connection, or hooked over the top chord; then compare such a truss with one in which the end of the rod is upset and receives a nut and large washer bearing solidly against the ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... chord, but rather a faint and broken one, sounds in the five-twenties, or begins then. At Constantinople the thirteen pralayic and recuperative decades since the death of Theodosius and the split with the West have ended. Now an emperor dies; and it becomes a question which of ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... weight oppressed him; blood gushed from the pores of his skin; his eyes almost leaped from their sockets, and his brain seemed swimming in molten lead. At length Death came, and snapped asunder the chord of his existence; the soul of the murderer was in the ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... touched a chord in my memory. We were once more standing, K. and I, in our workroom at Pretoria, having just finished reading the night's crop of sixty or seventy wires. K. was saying to me, "You had better go out to the Western Transvaal." I asked no question, ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... my! Help, help!" he yelled at his comrades; but they only stood staring, while the foremost sailors passed on so as to block the way of escape, and the next instant the offender was hemmed in by a half circle of pursuers, who formed an arc, the chord being the edge of the pier, beneath which ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... breathed into it the power to express a sublimer and a profounder tone of emotion; he has given it the cadence and the color of tragedy; he has touched and transfigured its note of meditative music into a chord of passionate austerity and prophetic awe. This was the key in which all previous poets had played upon the metre which Webster was to put to so ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Nature spoke, And the thoughts that in him woke, Can adequately utter none Save to his ear the wind-harp lone. Therein I hear the Parcae reel The threads of man at their humming wheel, The threads of life and power and pain, So sweet and mournful falls the strain. And best can teach its Delphian chord How Nature to the soul is moored, If once again that silent string, As erst it wont, ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... any more affect the thoughts than the thoughts affect the scenery. We see places through our humours as through differently-coloured glasses. We are ourselves a term in the equation, a note of the chord, and make discord or harmony almost at will. There is no fear for the result, if we can but surrender ourselves sufficiently to the country that surrounds and follows us, so that we are ever thinking suitable thoughts ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... came into any, even the slightest, contact. Snarley invariably loved or hated at first sight, or rather at first sound, for he was strangely sensitive to the tones of a human voice. If, as seldom happened, your voice and presence chanced to strike the responsive chord, Snarley became your devoted slave on the spot; the heavy, even brutal, expression that his face often wore passed off like a cloud; you were in the Mount of Transfiguration, and it seemed that Elijah or one of the prophets ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... that all this morbid feeling would vanish if the chord of sympathy between him and his countrymen were touched. But my persuasions were vain, the mind could not be bent from its natural inclination. Shelley shrunk instinctively from portraying human passion, with its mixture of good and evil, of disappointment ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... the occupants of the howdahs, this was a final chord from the band, for the huge beasts were thoroughly startled, and the lookers-on noted that similar uneasiness was being displayed by the nine great elephants that appertained to Rajah Hamet's force, these in particular ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... a little more interest in our affairs than I feared papa would like; but he took it quietly. More quietly than I could, though my reason for disquietude was different. Mr. Dinwiddie's words had set vibrating a chord in my heart which could not just then give a note of pleasure. I wanted it to lie still. The wide fair landscape took a look to me instantly, which indeed belonged to it, of "places where the heart was;" and the echo of broken hopes came up to my ear from ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... seemed to have seen the woman in her—or was it the saint? and he recalled that wonderful illumination of her plain face that made her actually beautiful as she looked up from the little waif of humanity she held in her arms. It had startled him, and struck a new chord in his heart, and planted a new pang there that she had no belief in a ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... roaming about seeking adventures which no one ever witnessed and which therefore remained unsung and unheralded, they go and serve some great emperor engaged in war, so that their achievements and valor might go down to posterity. This struck a resonant chord in his master's heart. In fact, he went into raptures over it, and commenced to rant about all the great honors the future had in store for the Knight of the Rueful Countenance. He cunningly surmised that their first ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... of a grassy knoll, and stopped. It may be that little Muskwa's babyish friendship, the caress of his soft little red tongue at just the psychological moment, and his perseverance in following Thor had all combined to touch a responsive chord in the other's big brute heart, for after nosing about restlessly for a few moments Thor stretched himself out beside the rock. Not until then did the utterly exhausted little tan-faced cub lie down, but when he did lie down he was so dead tired that he was ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... bearer of this intelligence, but as a woman lost almost beyond redemption. Will you return to this gang of robbers, and to this man, when a word can save you? What fascination is it that can take you back, and make you cling to wickedness and misery? Oh! is there no chord in your heart that I can touch! Is there nothing left, to which I can appeal ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... did not love her, how could he answer her? Surely that message could not pass except along the golden chord of love, which ever makes its sweetest music when Pain strikes it with ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... no doubt. She jumped whenever I came round the corner, and used to stand behind trees watching me. Also she used to come to see the dogs fed. Now, when I knew beyond all question the state of her feelings, I borrowed Guido's guitar, and struck one chord upon it at night under her window, and sang but one word—Vieni! In three minutes she came on to the balcony, and we looked at each other. There was a moon, and we could see quite well. We stood looking like that for five minutes without ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... to Zelter on the Palestrina music as heard in the Sistine chapel, says that nothing could exceed the effect of the blending of the voices, the prolonged tones gradually merging from one note and chord to another, softly swelling, decreasing, at last dying out. "They understand," he writes, "how to bring out and place each trait in the most delicate light, without giving it undue prominence; one chord gently melts into another. ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... been chosen to sing "The Star Spangled Banner," and she stepped out a little from the crowd to face the young men as the orchestra sounded the first chord. She sang in a full, clear voice, but when the volunteers saw that, as she sang, the tears were streaming down her cheeks in spite of the brave voice, they began to choke with the others. If Miss Betty found them worth weeping for, they could afford to cry a little for themselves. Yet they ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... him, then, if thou can'st go, Waste not a thought on me; My heart and mind are a' my store, And they were dear to thee. But there is music in his gold (I ne'er sae sweet could sing), That finds a chord in every breast ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... his thoughts were a dark, minor chord in the general light-hearted chatter, for he cordially hated the whole blooming business of automobiles, golf, and bridge. He was the raven at the feast. Everybody seemed to be talking to somebody else. Only he was alone. He wondered why he had not been ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge
... chord in Alric's breast which at once turned his thoughts from himself, and allowed his native courage to rise. During the foregoing dialogue his left hand had been nervously twitching the little elm bow which it carried. It now grasped the bow ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... same altitudes at those two instants, the one before, the other after noon. It follows that, if the sun has not changed its declination during the interval, the two positions will be symmetrically placed one on each side of the meridian. Therefore, drawing the chord AB, and bisecting it in M, HM will be the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... from it, she would have told you. But her sense of humor did not conceal from her that in spite of her grin-and-bear-it mien, she was far from happy. At any rate, the suggestion that Jimmy was hopeless awoke a sympathetic chord in her breast, so that she looked at him more tenderly on the day after she had been told. Jimmy was slow of speech and rather dirty as to his face. There were warts on his hands, and his sphinx-like countenance was ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... and best seat of learning in America?" There was an exaltation in Krebs's voice that arrested my attention, and made me look at him again. A troubled chord ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... staircase and who immediately exchanged with her one of his most artlessly familiar signals. This simplicity of his visual attention struck her, even with the other things she had to think about, as the quietest note in the whole high pitch—much, in fact, as if she had pressed a finger on a chord or a key and created, for the number of seconds, an arrest of vibration, a more muffled thump. The sight of him suggested indeed that Fanny would be there, though so far as opportunity went she had not seen her. This was about the limit of what it ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... striking of the common chord I saw them heave, promiscuous and unanimous, up the steps to the stage. Josey was set upon Abe Hanson's shoulder, while ladies wept around him. What the literary committee might have done I do not know, for we had ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... they esteem even more than being loved, and that is for love to be made a serious business. Nothing flatters a woman more than to let her see that she is feared, and the Church by placing chastity in the first place among the duties of its ministers, touches the most sensitive chord ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... numbers at least 12,000 men, with perhaps a dozen excellent guns. They hold along the line of the Tugela what is practically a continuous position of vast strength. Their superior mobility, and the fact that they occupy the chord, while we must move along the arc of the circle, enables them to forefront us with nearly their whole force wherever an attack is aimed, however it may be disguised. Therefore there is no way of avoiding a direct assault. ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... nearest troops available for the pursuit of him were the columns of Knox and Hamilton at Bethulie. Here the river bends round to the south, forming an arc through Norval's Pont towards Zand Drift; and the columns therefore crossed to the right bank and marched eighty miles along the chord, only to find when they reached the Drift on February 12 that De Wet had two days previously crossed by it into the ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... had undergone in the course of this long inquisition to which destiny had doomed him, this was the most terrible. Never had such pincers seized him hitherto. He felt the mysterious stirring of all his latent sensibilities. He felt the plucking at the strange chord. Alas! the supreme trial, let us say rather, the only trial, is the loss of ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... led to many experiments, in which Professor Fillmore took part, and that brought to light many interesting facts. Among these facts may be mentioned the complexity of rhythms, one played against the other; the modulation implied in some of the melodies; the preference for a major chord in closing a minor song; and the use of certain harmonic relations which have been deemed peculiar to ...
— Indian Story and Song - from North America • Alice C. Fletcher
... a few paces with an energetic, as if soldierly, stride; he bowed a second time after which he straightened as a chord and, looking straight into the ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... play which they are "sure we shall like." "So long"—they are old friends, and yet they thought we should like that play or that book! "So long"—and yet they think one capable of certain acts or feelings which do not remotely seem to belong to one! "So long"—and yet they can't even touch one chord that responds! ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... stroke of ill fortune had acted upon him, in effect, as a blow delivered upon the apex of a certain ingenious toy, the musical top, which, when thus buffeted while spinning, gives forth, with scarcely retarded motion, a complete change of key and chord. ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... establishments got mixed at the edges. Exiles from the library, the music room, and the picture gallery would be found languishing among the stables, miserably discontented; and hardy horsewomen who slept at the first chord of Schumann were born, horribly misplaced, into the garden of Klingsor; but sometimes one came upon horsebreakers and heartbreakers who could make the best of both worlds. As a rule, however, the two were apart and knew ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... compare, again, the opening sentences of the Four Gospels, or of the Acts of the Apostles, with the words with which Reginald begins this life of St. Godric. "By the touch of the Holy Spirit's finger the chord of the harmonic human heart resounds melodiously. For when the vein of the heart is touched by the grace of the Holy Spirit, forthwith, by the permirific sweetness of the harmony, an exceeding operation ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... brow. Until this day and for how long a time!—he had refrained from talking of the treasure, which had brought upon the abbe the accusation of madness. With his instinctive delicacy Edmond had preferred avoiding any touch on this painful chord, and Faria had been equally silent. He had taken the silence of the old man for a return to reason; and now these few words uttered by Faria, after so painful a crisis, seemed to indicate a serious relapse into ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... sympathetically. His speech and general appearance struck a long-dormant chord; but in her mind was no ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... The chord was struck. "No, indeed, I have not," said I; "I'll go and find her, and bring her back to you as my wife if ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... piano was playing the melody my mother most often played. My agony was beyond bearing. Repentance again swept over me, and eased me. It had been many years since I had heard that old-fashioned tune. At the first chord on the piano a flood of memories rushed ...
— Futurist Stories • Margery Verner Reed
... prose- rhyme serving to attract attention, e. g., "In days of yore and in times long gone before there was a King," etc.; in England where we strive not to waste words this becomes "Once upon a time." The closings also are artfully calculated, by striking a minor chord after the rush and hurry of the incidents, to suggest repose: "And they led the most pleasurable of lives and the most delectable, till there came to them the Destroyer of delights and the Severer of societies and they became as though they ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... the piano and, after a random chord or two, she played the Alan Breck Overture, played it so well that even its creator was pleased, as he listened. Then she rose, shut the piano and crossed the room to ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... fell out, and squatted there, along the wayside. At once discipline was relaxed. Their faces were a study as the wee piano was set up again, and Johnson, in uniform, of course sat down and trued a chord or two. And then suddenly something happened that broke the ice. Just as I stood up to sing a loud voice broke ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... add that there was something more in it all than the gratification of mere fun and laughter, more even than the rarer pleasure that underlies the outbreak of all forms of genuine humor. Another chord had been struck. Over and above the lively painting of manners which at first had been so attractive, there was something that left deeper mark. Genial and irrepressible enjoyment, affectionate heartiness of tone, unrestrained exuberance of mirth, these are not more ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... returned Edna sympathetically, for Bessie's eyes had grown soft and misty as she touched this chord of sadness; "it must be terrible to lose any one whom one loves." And then she added, with a smile, "I did not mean to hurt your feelings by calling your brother a boy, but he seemed very young ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... tones is a melody. If we strike the keys of the piano with two or more fingers of each hand simultaneously, we produce a body of tones, which—if they are so chosen that they blend harmoniously—is called a Chord; and a series of such chords is an illustration of what is known as Harmony. If, however, we play with one finger only, we produce a melody. The human voice, the flute, horn,—all instruments capable of emitting but one tone at ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... watch now showed. Cally swung a little on her circular seat, and encountered the full stare of a girl of the lower orders, seated next her. Her own glance, which had been casual, suddenly became intent: the girl's face, an unusual one in its way, touched a chord somewhere. In a second Cally remembered the little factory hand who had brought her the note from Dr. Vivian, that fateful ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... phrases presently drew together and rose up in one great major chord. No one spoke. I felt as if some mighty spirit had been evoked and that its ...
— A Day with Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy • George Sampson
... us that anything that interests us is not without interest to Christ. Anything that is big enough to occupy our thoughts and our efforts is large enough to be taken into His. All our ignoble toils, and all our petty anxieties, touch a chord that vibrates in that deep and tender heart. Though other sympathy may be unable to come down to the minutenesses of our little lives, and to wind itself into the narrow room in which our histories are prisoned, Christ's sympathy can steal into the narrowest cranny. The risen Lord is interested ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... chord in our little circle is Aniela's mother. The poor soul has had so many sorrows and anxieties that her cheerfulness, if ever she had any, is a thing of the past. She is simply afraid of the future, and instinctively suspects pitfalls even in good fortune. She was very unhappy in her married ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... but this brief interruption in which they had mingled their sorrows for a common misfortune, struck a new chord of feeling, and removed a mountain of reserve and distance, that might otherwise ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... her hands fall upon the last somber chord (her puritanical soul enjoying the double dissipation of pretending to herself while she afflicted others), she lifted her eyes to the mirror over the piano and saw Irene out in the hall. In the mirror their eyes met, and the mockery in Irene's was unmistakable as Sissy rose, agitated, caught in ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... trail wending his way toward the purple mountain—the silent way to the bunk-house at the camp—in that clear air where sound travels a long distance the traveler heard the song, and something thrilled his soul. A chord that never had been touched in him before was vibrating, and its echoes would be heard ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... go over the way and speak to a neighbour,' said Stanway carelessly when Leonora had struck the final chord. 'You'll excuse me, I know. ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... his senses in a question of morals, but by plain, honest, soul-commanding speech. Truth is omnipotent, if we do not violate its majesty by surrendering its outworks, and giving up that vantage-ground, of which if we deprive it, it ceases to be truth. It finds a responsive chord in every human bosom. Whoever hears its voice, at the same time recognises its power. However corrupt he may be, however steeped in the habits of vice, and hardened in the practices of tyranny, if it be mildly, distinctly, emphatically enunciated, the colour will ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... denoted; for he made Eugene Aram a noble, tender, gentle person, whom ungovernable passion, under circumstances of overwhelming provocation, had once impelled to an act of half-justifiable homicide, and who had for years been slowly dying with remorse. He touched no chord of terror, but only the chord of pity. Like his portrayal of Mathias, the picture showed the reactionary effect of hidden sin in the human soul; but the personality of the sufferer was entirely different. Each of those men has had experience of crime and of ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... which gradually grew into a purpose so all-absorbing that I might have been overwhelmed by it, had not my over-active imagination been brought to bay by another's common sense. Hugo's plea for suffering Humanity—for the world's miserable—struck a responsive chord within me. Not only did it revive my latent desire to help the afflicted; it did more. It aroused a consuming desire to emulate Hugo himself, by writing a book which should arouse sympathy for and interest in that class of unfortunates in whose behalf I felt it my peculiar right and duty ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... meal Collins talked incessantly of the country and his prospects in South America. Ned listened, saying little, even in the short spaces of silence. He was waiting for the fellow to strike some chord which tuned with his actions of the night before. ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson
... place is a kind of wilderness of ruin; there are scarcely any details; the great feature is the overtopping wall. This wall being the back of the scene, the space left between it and the chord of the semicircle (of the auditorium) which formed the proscenium is rather less than one would have supposed. In other words, the stage was very shallow, and appears to have been arranged for a number of performers standing in a line, like a company of soldiers. There stands the silent skeleton, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... progression of chords in which the sub-dominant or chord on the fourth degree of the scale precedes the tonic or chord on the first degree of the scale. The name arises from the modes used in early church music called Plagal Modes, which were a transposition of the authentic modes beginning on the fourth ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... into music by the chord of the dominant seventh, the invention of which is attributed to Monteverde. However, Palestrina had already employed that chord in his "Adoremus," but probably without understanding its ...
— On the Execution of Music, and Principally of Ancient Music • Camille Saint-Saens
... and broken board, How can it bear the painter's dye! The harp of strain'd and tuneless chord, How to the minstrel's skill reply! To aching eyes each landscape lowers, To feverish pulse each gale blows chill; And Araby's or Eden's bowers Were barren as ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... inherit, to erect an altar, it was equally fitting that the first public act of the founders of the City of the Loyalists should be to render thanks for their preservation and safe arrival in the land of their adoption. The psalms for that 18th morning may have struck a responsive chord in many hearts. "Comfort us again now after the time that thou hast afflicted us, and for the years wherein we have seen adversity." "Establish the work of our hands upon us, yea, the work of our hands establish ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... the deserted two on Cod Lead must have appealed to the commander. He was profane about it, and talked about elephants and men who owned them in a way that struck an answering chord in the Cap'n's breast. But he finally gave orders for the embarkation of Imogene, and after much more profanity and more slurs which Hiram was obliged to listen to meekly, the task was accomplished, and the cutter proceeded on her way along coast ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... miserable petty persecution of the prison was lifted from him, all the joyous gaiety and fun of his nature bubbled up irresistibly. There was no contradiction in this complexity. A man can hold in himself a hundred conflicting passions and impulses without confusion. At this time the dominant chord in Oscar was ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... useful citizen; but it is not precisely the same. They may be regarded as bad hats generally In the bird community, and on this very account—"I'm sorry to say," to quote Mr. Pecksniff—they touch a chord in us; and the daw being the genial rascal in feathers par excellence is ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... project from the string-course, which rises to pass over the east window. The angles of the east end seem to rest upon the very edge of the cornice of the apse, and one wonders how the wall is supported along the chord of the curve. In reality, however, the apse is not so sharply curved internally as externally, and its walls are very thick, so that the square form could be imposed upon the round without much overlapping. The parapet shows the same wide merlons and ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... at Burleson dreamily, then turned, musing with bent head, sounding a note, a tentative chord. And ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... those moments that come very seldom in our lives, when all the forces in us are sweetly strung, and every chord vibrating gives ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... love with the old lady at first sight. There are very few old people to be seen in India, and the dignity and pathos of her appearance touched a tender chord. He admired her fine white hair and handsome features, all furrowed with the countless little lines of time. And she wore such stiff brocades and silks, such beautiful old lace, and the funniest brooches, with pictures in them. Her soft white hands touched him in a loving way, and she ...
— A Little Hero • Mrs. H. Musgrave
... Signora Rovero produced a deep sensation on Maulear, and a shadow of uneasiness passed over his brow. She had ignorantly touched a sensitive chord of the heart of the young lover. Led astray by his heart, seduced invincibly by charms which were so new to him, Maulear, under the influence of passion, had entered on the flowery route, at the end of which he caught a glimpse ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... in that little cathedral town would be most difficult to describe. After the hurry, rattle, and fever of the city, the rare weeks spent here were infinitely peaceful. They were full of a quaint sense of childhood, with sometimes a deeper chord touched—the giant and spiritual things childhood has dreams of. The little room I slept in had opposite its window the great grey cathedral wall; it was only in the evening that the sunlight crept round it and appeared ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell |
