"Dissonance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... never attained to more than a fluctuating and temporary realisation. The inherent contradiction was too extreme for the attempted reconciliation; the inequalities refused to blend in a harmony of divergent tones but asserted themselves in the dissonance of civil war. ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... enjoyment. Still the insufficiency of the palpable and appreciable is paramount; still the everlasting dolor interposes: the appetite is satiated, the aroma palls upon the nostrils, the nerves are affected by irritability, the harmony merges into dissonance; even the beautiful becomes so far an abomination that man is 'mad for the sight of his eyes that he did see.' Such is the sterile and repulsive penalty of the searcher after happiness. Happiness! O delusive phantom of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... though fallen, and evil tongues; In darkness, and with dangers compassed round, And solitude: yet not alone, while thou Visit'st my slumbers nightly, or when morn Purples the east. Still govern thou my song, Urania, and fit audience find, though few; But drive far off the barbarous dissonance Of Bacchus and his revelers, the race Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard In Rhodope, where woods and rocks had ears To rapture, till the savage clamor drowned Both harp and voice, nor could the Muse defend Her ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... to read with the microscope of criticism, and employ their whole attention upon minute elegance, or faults scarcely visible to common observation. The dissonance of a syllable, the recurrence of the same sound, the repetition of a particle, the smallest deviation from propriety, the slightest defect in construction or arrangement, swell before their eyes into enormities. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... wise. Vyasa of immeasurable intelligence, has spoken of the Mahabharata as a treatise on Artha, on Dharma, and on Kama. Those who have listened to his history can never bear to listen to others, as, indeed, they who have listened to the sweet voice of the male Kokila can never hear the dissonance of the crow's cawing. As the formation of the three worlds proceedeth from the five elements, so do the inspirations of all poets proceed from this excellent composition. O ye Brahman, as the four kinds of creatures (viviparous, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the Will in the eternal plenitude of its joy." "The Will" is Schopenhauer's "Will," the vital principle. "If it were possible," says Nietzsche, in one of his astonishing figures of speech, "to imagine a dissonance becoming a human being (and what is man but that?), in order to endure life, this dissonance would need some admirable illusion to hide from itself its true nature, under a veil of beauty." This is the aim of art, as it calls up pictures of the visible world and of the little temporary actions ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... fair space is won Beyond a briared wood of austere brow, Believed of discord by thy timely word At intervals refreshing life: for thou Art verify Keeper of the Muse's Key; Thyself no vacant melodist; On lower land elective even as she; Holding, as she, all dissonance abhorred; Advising to her measured steps in flow; And teaching how for being subjected free Past thought of freedom we may come to know The music ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... reflection of the place of eternal torment, as the shadows of the monsters, under the weak light, whipped and danced against the beams and shingles, and shrieks and shouts of "Mercy!" blended in hideous dissonance. ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... gave sonorous notice of the progress during the ascent. Now they were passing along the first terrace; still the divisions were incessant down by the gate—still the chanting continued, a dismal dissonance in the distance, a horrible discord near by. If it be true that the human voice is music's aptest instrument, it is also true that nothing vocalized in nature can excel it in ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... asserts and demonstrates it. Man, intelligent and free, is an animal wholly unpremeditated upon this planet. Produced by unexpected combinations and haphazard transformations, in the midst of a general subordination of matter, he figures as a dissonance and ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... Genius. Hume, Dr. Johnson, Sir W. Scott, Robert Peel and Lord Byron had no ear for music, and neither vocal nor instrumental music gave them the slightest pleasure. To the poet Rogers it gave actual discomfort. Even the harmonious Pope preferred the harsh dissonance of a street ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... as his footsteps sounded on the stair she felt as if she were doomed and hearing her own death-knell. What had she done? What would he do now? She stood there a dissonance of despair, and when the lower door clicked moved her hand out of the agony of her ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... of their busy days. I must not forget his admiration at the principal article of this laird's first course; namely, a gigantic haggis, borne into the hall in a wicker basket by two half-naked Celts, while the piper strutted fiercely behind them, blowing a tempest of dissonance. ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... evoked from that pampered instrument she did laugh aloud. It was not a piano tuner's arpeggio but a curiously teasing mixed dissonance she couldn't begin to identify. She thought she heard him say, "My God!" but couldn't be sure. He repeated his chord pianissimo and held it down, reached up and echoed it in the upper half of the keyboard; then struck, hard, two octaves in ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... dawn. Before sunrise he was there again, and on 1 July the watchman in the maintop gave the glad shout. The pilgrims flocked up on deck and sang Te Deum with bounding joy. It was a tumult of harsh voices; but to Fabri in his happiness their various dissonance made ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... in which the noble Lord has declared his sentiments on the subject of the constitution, demands my cordial approbation. The noble Viscount has proved, that however we may differ on particular measures, amidst all the jars and dissonance of parties, we are unanimous in principle. There is a perfect and entire consent [between us] in the love and maintenance of the constitution as happily subsisting. It must undoubtedly give your Lordships concern, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... father, and asked him for her winter cloak. He gave this answer to the maid: "Who then is this Mam'selle Wieck? I know two Fraeulein Wieck only; they are my two little daughters here. I know no other!" As Litzmann says: "With so shrill a dissonance ended Clara's stay at Leipzig." He compares this exile of the daughter by the father to the story of King Lear and Cordelia. But it was the blind and tyrannical old Lear of the first act, driving from his home his ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... truculent gaolers; they seemed willing to strain a point to oblige. The Republicanism of the officers was of a very pale red; but there was one hirsute Volunteer of Liberty who acted as chief warder, and took a delight in the occupation. He rattled his bunch of keys as if their metallic dissonance were music, grumbled at the urbanity of his superiors, and bore himself altogether as if their politics were suspicious; and he, a pure of the pure, were there as warder over that too. I nicknamed him the hyena in my own mind; but I could not conceive him laughing anywhere ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... Tumultuous love each beating bosom warms; Intemperate rage a wordy war began; But bold Telemachus assumed the man. "Instant (he cried) your female discord end, Ye deedless boasters! and the song attend; Obey that sweet compulsion, nor profane With dissonance the smooth melodious strain. Pacific now prolong the jovial feast; But when the dawn reveals the rosy east, I, to the peers assembled, shall propose The firm resolve, I here in few disclose; No longer live the cankers of my court; All to your several states with speed resort; Waste in wild riot what ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... in force; and the young Huron warriors, mounting their palisades, sang their war-songs all night, with the utmost power of their lungs, in order that the enemy, knowing them to be on their guard, might be deterred from an attack. The night was dark, and the hideous dissonance resounded far and wide; yet, regardless of the din, two Iroquois crept close to the palisade, where they lay motionless till near dawn. By this time the last song had died away, and the tired singers had left their posts ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... may tend towards its divine object, with ardor, but the will not concurring, causes dissonance and swooning, or impetuous transports. I call this momentary ecstasy; it cannot long endure without separating ...
— Letters of Madam Guyon • P. L. Upham
... without voice or instrument, essential harmony, to the ear that hears thought, and the heart that vibrates to every chord of feeling in the hearts it has created. Ah! what is it we send up thither, where our thoughts are either a dissonance or a sweetness and a grace? Alone in the dusky church, the curate's ascended like a song of the angels, for his heart was all a thanksgiving—not for any perfected gift, but for many a lovely hope. He knelt down by the organ ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald |
