"Keynote" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nothing narrower, is religion in its perfection; and the measure in which we have attained to this harmony with God, is the measure in which we are Christians. As two stringed instruments may be so tuned to one keynote that, if you strike the one, a faint ethereal echo is heard from the other, which blends undistinguishably with its parent sound; so, drawing near to God, and brought into unison with His mind and will, our responsive spirits vibrate in accord with His, and give forth tones, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... in his descriptions, and his suggestions for decoration, that shows that he did not entirely free himself from the false taste of his time. But it is clear that he was one of the first to recognise what is, indeed, the very keynote of aesthetic eclecticism, I mean the true harmony of all really beautiful things irrespective of age or place, of school or manner. He saw that in decorating a room, which is to be, not a room for show, but a room ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... done with it. Henceforth I will devote myself to the only real powers which can enlighten us. Yet there is humiliation in failure after so many years of study. It is folly to follow a partial truth of which we miss the keynote, though we sometimes blunder ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... Tyrian crimson and Byzantine purple. These with full blue breathed between them at the zenith, and green blue nearer the horizon, form the scales and chords of color possible to the morning and evening sky in pure and fine weather; the keynote of the opposition being vermilion against green blue, both of equal tone, and at such a height and acme of brilliancy that you cannot see the line where their edges ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... incarnation of the Arthurian legend which we have. It is singular, by the way, how frequently one is impelled to use the epithet "noble" in praising MacDowell's work; in reference to the "Sonata Eroica" it has an emphatic aptness, for nobility is the keynote of this music. If the work, as a whole, has not the dynamic power of the "Tragica," the weight and gravity of substance, it is both a lovelier and a more lovable work, and it is everywhere more significantly accented. He has written few things more luxuriantly beautiful ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... to Roman citizens. Others might look on, but they could not take part, nor were they the recipients of any of the blessings which were to follow. But now every free member of the community, with wife and child, might join in the celebration, and thus the note was struck which was to be the keynote of all that was best in the changes introduced by the empire whose "highest and most beautiful task," as Professor Mommsen puts it, "and the one which she fulfilled most perfectly, was gradually to reconcile and thus to put ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... not have told why he said it. It was impulse, and the impromptu suggestion of a half-thought. But the effect of his words upon the Rhamda and the nurse told him that, inadvertently, he had struck a keynote. Both started, especially the woman. Watson took note of this in particular, because of the ingrained acceptance of the feminine in ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... accusation! Is any healthily intelligent and progressive human being ever the same for many weeks together? Change—readjustment—is the keynote of life; the very breath of it. When you can accuse me of not changing I shall know that I have fallen into the sere and withered leaf past redemption. And now that I have expiated myself—(probably to your more complete confusion!)—we'll have a ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... position with logic, passion, and eloquence; while Webster replied with an equal logic, a broader and higher ideal of nationality, a vindication of New England which thrilled all hearts, and a patriotism which gave the keynote to the ultimate triumph of the Union. Hitherto, Massachusetts and South Carolina had each stood stiffly at times for her own way, even at peril of the national bond; but in that hour the individuality of South Carolina was merged in the slave-holding ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... yet the wage earner was starting with the abstract notion of equal citizenship as contained in the Declaration, and only then proceeding to search for the remedies which would square reality with the idea. Hence it was that the aspiration toward equal citizenship became the keynote of labor's earliest political movement. The issue was drawn primarily between the rich and the poor, not between the functional classes, employers and employes. While the workmen took good care to exclude from their ranks "persons not living by some useful occupation, such as bankers, brokers, ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... still more closely. It displayed a lady of twenty or thereabouts, with a weak face, small, vacant features, a feeble chin, a good-humoured, simple mouth, and a wealth of golden hair that seemed to strike a keynote. ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... The keynote of these books is manliness. The stories are wonderfully entertaining, and they are at the same time sound and wholesome. No boy will willingly lay down an unfinished book in ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... one of the waters. Then sat she face to face with her son as he let the tears down fall, and caressed him, saying, "Child, wherefore weepest thou, for what sorrow of heart? Hide it not, tell it to me; that I may know it as well as thou." Here the poet strikes the keynote of the character of Achilles, the deadly in war, the fierce in council, who weeps for his lost lady and his wounded honour, and cries for help to his mother, ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... While this item does not jar the country quite so extensively as it would if Miss Hawkes belonged to one of your leading New York families, and was employing an eleven-thousand-dollar physician to treat her for gout, it is just as important to Miss Hawkes. And there you have the great keynote of our Homeburg journalism. In the eyes of the Democrat ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... terrible arraignment of the old order of protecting society by early and indiscriminate marriages, it seemed as if the mantle of some modern prophet had fallen on him. He had struck at the real keynote of Ireland's misery to-day. The spirit of oppression followed them into the privacy of their lives. Even their wives were chosen for them by their teachers. Small wonder the English government could enforce brutal and unjust ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... was refused by Belgium because the Government had made itself a tool of England and France. This same Government then organized an unparalleled guerrilla warfare in order to support a lost cause, and by that act—Herr Rolland, you are a musician!—struck the horrible keynote of conflict. If you are at all in a position to break your way through the giant's wall of anti-German lies, read the message to America, by our Imperial Chancellor, of Sept. 7; read further the telegram which ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... in behalf of the African slave was 226:6 still echoing in our land, when the voice of the herald of this new crusade sounded the keynote of uni- versal freedom, asking a fuller acknowledg- 226:9 ment of the rights of man as a Son of God, demanding that the fetters of sin, sickness, and death be stricken from the human mind and that its freedom be won, ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... aspects during that time. His views are now in the descending scale; but to give them less than their real prominence here would be to deprive his scientific career of its true basis. Belief in a Creator was the keynote ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... which the fight was won, were prepared by Ernest Coxhead, architect, of this city. These proposed a massed grouping of the Exposition structures, around courts, and on the Bay front. They were afterwards amplified by Coxhead, and furnished the keynote of the scheme finally carried out. While the Exposition belongs not to California alone, but to the whole world, it is pleasant to find that so much of what is best in it is the work ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... The Excursion, and a score of lesser poems. Joy and sorrow, not of princes or heroes, but "in widest commonalty spread," are his themes; and the hidden purpose of many of his poems is to show that the keynote of all life is happiness,—not an occasional thing, the result of chance or circumstance, but a heroic thing, to be won, as one would win any other success, by ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... accustomed to analyzing his emotions. But as he sat in his Katy-bereft 10x12 parlor he hit unerringly upon the keynote of his discomfort. He knew now that Katy was necessary to his happiness. His feeling for her, lulled into unconsciousness by the dull round of domesticity, had been sharply stirred by the loss of her ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... in imitation of the almost invariable practice of the chivalry-romance authors, who were fond of tracing their books to some recondite source. In working out the new ideas, he soon found the value of Sancho Panza. Indeed, the keynote, not only to Sancho's part, but to the whole book, is struck in the first words Sancho utters when he announces his intention of taking his ass with him. "About the ass," we are told, "Don Quixote hesitated a little, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... your life, your thoughts, your hopes, your ambitions to Him. You will probably hear much and be told much at this time. I have nothing to say that you have not heard and will not hear said far better by others. Our Church gives the keynote in the collect for Sunday: 'We have no power.' I never realised my weakness, my pride, my hollowness so much as I did at my ordination. God has been teaching me, even in the short time since I was ordained, wonderful lessons—lessons of strength being perfected in weakness. ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... lifetime. Give you my word, Grig, when he was off his chump in the fever, he raved like a poet, and an orator, and he was only an ordinary sportsman when he left home in the spring! Cleopatra, he called her one day, and I fancy that was the keynote—she must have been one of those exceptional women we read of in ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... six participating nations first face each other across the council table, a nation-wide demonstration will be under way in the United States. Organized labor announces that in every town and city the workers will join with other citizens in mass-meetings and parades and that the keynote of Armistice Day should be, 'It is time to disarm.' It will help in impressing upon our own government and upon other governments that the people are weary of war-made tax burdens; that they are deeply in earnest in their ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... voice is its keynote, or governing note. It is that on which the voice usually dwells, and to which it most frequently returns when wearied. It is also the pitch used in conversation, and the one which a reader or speaker naturally ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Perhaps the keynote to the charm of George Sand's art is given in her preface to her exquisite novel "La Derniere Aldini." Here is none of the accuracy and patience of the scientific enquirer into the "mysterious mixture" man, which we find in George Eliot's preface to "Middlemarch." Indeed these ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne
... Cosmopolis, smoking one of his admirable cigars and chatting with his old friend, Professor Binstead. A stranger who had only encountered Mr. Brewster in the lobby of the hotel would have been surprised at the appearance of his sitting-room, for it had none of the rugged simplicity which was the keynote of its owner's personal appearance. Daniel Brewster was a man with a hobby. He was what Parker, his valet, termed a connoozer. His educated taste in Art was one of the things which went to make the Cosmopolis different from and superior ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... The keynote of her being throughout this last winter was one of unwonted seriousness. A certain startling intensity of thought and feeling showed itself every now and then. It was painfully evident that she was ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... Murphy remembered the keynote to Howard Frayberg's instructions: "Excitement! Sex! Mystery!" Frayberg cared little for inspiration or beauty. "I imagine," he said casually, "that you celebrate a number of interesting festivals? Colorful dancing? ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance
... city-dweller meet on equal terms. Their problems may differ in detail, but the principles to be studied are the same. Here our art courses must be made to contribute their share to the homemaker's training. We must strike the keynote of simplicity, both within and without, and must teach girls especially the value of carefully thought-out color schemes and decorating plans, to be carried out by different people in the materials ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... taken from the Corn Ritual, represents a visit to the field later in the season when the harvest time is near at hand. The keynote of this visit is in a line of one of the many stanzas of the original Ritual Song, "I go in readiness of mind." The mind is assured, prepared to find in the place where the "footprints" had been made, where ...
— Indian Games and Dances with Native Songs • Alice C. Fletcher
... concord. And then began the runs introduced in the Amen in order to exhibit the skill of the singer. The voice was no longer a 'cello, deep and resonant, but a lonely flute or silver bugle announcing some joyous reverie in a landscape at the close of day. The song closed on the keynote, and Sister Mary John turned from the instrument and looked at the singer. She could not speak, she seemed overpowered by the music, and like one more dreaming than waking, and sitting half turned round on her ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... (Marcus Aurelius calls it 'the good ordering of the mind') is the keynote of technical control. Together with the principle of relaxation it provides the player with the most effective means of establishing precise and sensitive cooeperation between mental and physical processes. Muscular relaxation at will is one of the results of this cooeperation. ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... But Botticelli's painted statue and Perugino's "S. Michael" and "Warriors" of the Cambio seem to spread their legs because they are too puny to bear the weight of the body in any other manner, while with Signorelli, the attitude became the keynote of his resolute indomitable nature, and so much a part of his work, that one is apt to forget it did ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... keynote of whose historical work is contained in his assertion that "the Reformation was the root and source of the expansive force which has spread the Anglo-Saxon race over the globe," recognising a logical ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... a discovery, indeed, that Euphemia had papers. At the first glance these close-written sheets suggested a treasonable Keynote, and the husband gripped it with a certain apprehension mingling with his relief at the opiate of reading. It was, so to speak, the privilege of police he exercised, so he justified himself. He began to read. But what is this? "She stood on the balcony outside the window, while the ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... was renominated at the Democratic Convention in St. Louis, and the platform expressed a blanket endorsement of the achievements of his Administration. But the chief incident of that convention was the keynote speech of Martin H. Glynn, which was based on the text, "He kept us out of war." His recital of the long list of past occasions in American history when foreign violations of American rights and injuries to American interests had not led to war was ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... association with this cultured old gentleman that Mary Louise had imbibed a certain degree of logic and philosophy unknown to many girls of fifteen. He taught her consideration for others as the keynote of happiness, yet he himself declined to mingle with his fellow men. He abhorred sulking and was always cheerful and pleasant in his home circle, yet when others approached him familiarly he resented it with a frown. He taught his granddaughter to be generous to the poor and supplied ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... Him"—and why has that sentiment been re-echoed by millions of men and women acquainted with grief and affliction? The early Christians did not exactly live lives of luxury or even security, sheltered from contact with tragedy and horror; yet the keynote of primitive Christianity is the note of joy, while the background of early Christian experience is a radiant conviction of the Divine benevolence. And when we remember that the same holds true of so ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... young people into the kingdom, in the foundation of the "Wesley Guild," of which the President of Conference is the head, with four vice-presidents, two being laymen. The guild is "a union of the young people of a congregation. Its keynote is comradeship, and its aim is to encourage the young people of our Church in the highest aims of life." The story of its origin may ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... duties. But whether ministering at the altar or making the rounds of his parish, his spirit frequently found utterance in song. In 1880 he published a volume of poems, to which only a few additions were subsequently made. The keynote of his poetry is struck in the opening piece, Song of the Mystic. He dwelt much in the ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... Against all this, George Sand, both with pen and life, protested. She contended that it was love alone which made marriage anything but a disgusting sin. We have heard much of this in these latter days, even in our own country, but it was George Sand who first struck the keynote; the doctrine is essentially hers in all its parts. That she denounced the whole system of marriages of convenience, is an honor to her; that she proclaimed love as the only true foundation for marriage, is equally an honor; but that she ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... dear child. We are out of tune when God finds us. He puts us in tune with our great keynote Jesus, and then we are like an Aeolian harp. The west and the east winds make music through it, and the shrieking storm the sweetest music of all. But remember, little one, it is the "joy of the Lord" which is our strength. We must sit in the sunshine ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... reference to the violence of Mr. Crawford's death was avoided, and a rigorous formality was the keynote of all the ceremonies. The servants were garbed in correct mourning, the ladies of the house refused to see anybody, and all personal callers were met by Philip Crawford or his wife, while business acquaintances were received ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... his at least respects everyone's liberty and applauds all originality; but it helps no one, troubles itself for no one, bears no one's burden; in a word, it lacks charity, the great Christian virtue. To his mind perfection lies in personal nobility, and not in love. His keynote is aesthetic and not moral. He ignores sanctity, and has never so much as reflected on the terrible problem of evil. He believes in the opportunity of the individual, but neither in liberty nor in responsibility. He is a stranger to the social and political aspirations of the multitude; he has ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... replied indifferently. "I will grant you that greed is the keynote of this place; yet even that has its interesting side. Where else do you see it so developed? Where else could you see the same emotion actuating a number of very different people ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... for every pastor, missionary, and devout Christian. It deals with the deep things of God and the riches of His grace. Above all, it has the keynote of sincerity ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer
... says, everything fails so far as its object is external and unsubstantial; everything succeeds so far as it is moral and spiritual. Success grows out of failure; and the mode in which it grows is indicated by the lines which give the keynote of the poem. Emily, the heroine, is to become ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... vary in the same individual from time to time; but it is probable that in the former case, as in the latter, a generic resemblance will obtain. With me, as with every other person of whom I have heard, the keynote of the experience is the tremendously exciting sense of an intense metaphysical illumination. Truth lies open to the view in depth beneath depth of almost blinding evidence. The mind sees all the logical relations of being ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... is in vivid contrast to Jeremiah's sorrowful attitude of retrospection. The picture brings out clearly the fact that the keynote of Daniel's prophecy is hope. Looking into his rapt face, we may imagine that this is the message he is writing: "They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... daring, and whose competing religions and castes possess the germ of fanaticism that might be roused to bloodshed. The white man's control is supported by the presence of two hundred policemen, it is true, but these are natives. The keynote of this exposition of a multitude ruled by a handful of Europeans is the absolute fairness of their control, of course. Were justice non-existent, it would be inviting disaster for the white official to apprehend a wrong-doer, place him on trial, and personally administer with lash ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... World writes of this artist: "She has exquisite color sense and delights in presenting that exaltation de la vie, that love, radiance, and joy of life, which are at once the secret of the success and the keynote of the masterful canvases of Roll, in whose studio were first developed Claude Marlef's delicate qualities of truthful perception in the portraiture of woman.... Her perceptions being rapid, she has a remarkable ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... than that of the love-sick knight who joyfully throws away his life for an hour in his lady's chamber, tears up the warrant reprieving him from execution, and accepts death to save Queen Mary's fragile reputation. But although the keynote of Mr. Swinburne's coming poetry is struck in Chastelard—the overpowering enthralment of Love, a joy to live and ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... nest, the repose of faith, the quiet rest in the Lord, and 'waiting patiently for Him.' Such trust so directed is the one condition of such tranquillity. Then, again, note a Christian is all that he is because he is 'in Christ.' That phrase 'in Him' is in some sense the keynote of this Epistle to the Ephesians. If you will look over the letter, and pick out all the connections in which the expression 'in Him' occurs, I think you will be astonished to see how rich and full are its uses, and how manifold the blessings of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... action outweighs the words. The keynote to Beowulf is deeds. In New England, more than a thousand years later, Thoreau wrote, "Be not simply good; be good for something." In reading other literatures, for instance the Celtic, we often find that the words overbalance the action. The Celt ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... personality never failed to translate itself in purple to me; a pale one in blue. It was out of that spiritual sight that I built my theory of color. It took me years, but time after time have I proved to my own complete satisfaction that each individual has a keynote of color; a ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... declare that the keynote of every policy was the advancement of power. This term, however, has acquired, since the German Reformation, a meaning other than that of the shrewd Florentine. To him power was desirable in itself; for us ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... Nazi propaganda has been demonstrated repeatedly during the past decade. That its keynote was set by Hitler himself becomes evident upon an examination of his statements on foreign policy over a period of years. Not only has his policy been marked by a series of shifts and turns, so that the policy of one year was frequently ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various
... it was the old keynote of suppressed hopeless pain: it somehow recalled to me the image of some helpless innocent bird struggling in a fowler's net. Her eyes looked at me with ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... everybody I shall appear to sanction immorality. For the fact is that our civilization has upset all the original intentions of nature. Nature evidently meant Love, or the emotion we call Love, to be the keynote of the universe. But apparently Nature did not intend marriage. The flowers, the birds, the lower animals, mate afresh every spring, and this is the creed that the disciples of Naturalism nowadays are anxious ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... as it were, and keynote of all the rest, is a quotation from Novalis;—"Philosophy can bake no bread; but it can prove for us God, freedom, and immortality. Which, now, is more practical, Philosophy or Economy?" The reference ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... The keynote of neurasthenia is increased liability to fatigue. The tired feeling that comes on with a minimum of exertion, worse on arising than on going to bed, is its distinguishing mark. Sleep, which should remove the fatigue of the day, does not; the victim ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... Zunis, and writes with enthusiasm of the people. "Their domestic life might well serve as an example for the civilised world. They do not have large families. The husband and wife are deeply attached to one another and to their children." "The keynote of this harmony is the supremacy of the wife in the home. The house with all that is in it is hers, descending to her through her mother from a long line of ancestresses; and the husband is merely her permanent guest. The children—at ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... gauge is the keynote of Russian railway engineers. Accordingly in possessing a five-foot guage, the Great Siberian is uniform with all the railroads throughout the Russian Empire. Thus, the ample breadth of the cars harmonizes with the luxury which astonishes the traveller ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... that Archelaus should feel hurt about it. At first Ishmael, with the quick generosity of his age, had wanted to give Cloom up to his brother there and then, but the Parson talked gravely to him, impressing on him for the first time what was to be the keynote of his teaching, that never, never must he forget that Cloom was the great trust of his life. What he made of Cloom was everything; he could not shift this thing God had put upon him. Thus the Parson, to whom what ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... unavoidable self-deception at the time, because they knew nothing of the Aztec social system. Unfortunately it inaugurated American aboriginal history upon a misconception of Indian life which has remained substantially unquestioned until recently. The first eye-witnesses gave the keynote to this history by introducing Montezuma as a king, occupying a palace of great extent crowded with retainers, and situated in the midst of a grand and populous city, over which, and much beside, he was reputed master. But king and kingdom were in time found ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... parody, at home or in the saloons, to hearers as obtuse as themselves, to the seriousness of the episode. Somehow, so far, the elect from Illinois was ever the Western buffoon. But when, in his inaugural address, Lincoln thundered the new keynote, the ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... world not to enthrone a man, but an idea, for ideas exist for ever. But what idea? There is the touchstone of all philosophy! Amid the wreck of creeds, the crash of empires, French revolutions, English reforms, Catholicism in agony, and Protestantism in convulsions, discordant Europe demands the keynote, which none can sound. If Asia be in decay, Europe is in confusion. Your repose may be death, but ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... the hills, and the fertility of the broad vales and level plains which lie between them. The Kingdom of Israel, in its brief season of prosperity, was richer, more luxurious, and weaker than the Kingdom of Judah. The poet Isaiah touched the keynote of the northern kingdom when he sang of "the crown of pride of the drunkards of Ephraim," and "the fading flower of his glorious beauty which is on the head of the fat valley." ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... craftsmanship as human work may be. It is a romance of death with a setting of profound gloom, and is wrought out as a highly imaginative study in fear—a symphony in which every touch blends into a perfect unity of effect. "Ligeia," perhaps standing next, incorporating "The Conqueror Worm" as its keynote, portrays the terrific struggle of a woman's will against death. "The Masque of the Red Death," a tale of the Spirit of Pestilence and of Death victorious over human selfishness and power, is a splendid study in somber color. "The Assignation," a romance of Venice, is also splendid ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... facing a hostile and belligerent assembly, he faced members who were ready to support him in anything he did. The Chancellor, however, realised that he could take some of the thunder out of the opposition by making a strong statement against England. "Down with England," the popular cry, was the keynote of the Chancellor's remarks. In this one speech he succeeded in uniting for a time at least public sentiment and the political parties in support of ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... opens with a conversation between the civil engineers Kampe and Ravn, and the former's son Hans, who has just returned from a prolonged sojourn abroad. The keynote is struck in the sarcastic remark of Ravn, that in a small society only small truths can be tolerated—of the kind that takes twenty to the inch; but great truths are apt to be explosive and should therefore ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... whimsical was the mind of the Austrian ex-admiral and how slight was his grasp of the situation. Long-postponed issues, involving vital questions of policy and of administration, were awaiting his decision, and he busied himself with frivolities and with impossibilities. These early days gave the keynote of ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... the play, that has to be explained to us. The whole tragedy germinates and culminates within what the prologue calls "the two hours' traffick of the stage." The opening colloquy of the Witches in Macbeth, strikes the eerie keynote, but does nothing more. Then, in the second scene, we learn that there has been a great battle and that a nobleman named Macbeth has won a victory which covers him with laurels. This can in no sense ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... it's Captain Cormorant, but I don't think he's going to stay. He's only brought her up in the motor from town." "By Jove, how good of him!" said Spillikins; and this sentiment in regard to Captain Cormorant, though he didn't know it, was to become a keynote of ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... pledges, amounting to twelve hundred dollars, the Pastor now led a strong force of volunteer laborers in the manual labor of the undertaking. Felling the first tree for the timber in the woods with his own hands, Brother Himebaugh gave the keynote to the movement. Nor did he stay his hand until he had expended ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... He was evidently a man who had seen cities and knew countries as well. And while he was dressed with the comfortable simplicity of a Californian mounted traveler, her inexperienced but feminine eye detected the keynote of his respectability in the carefully-tied bow of his cravat. The Sierrean throat was apt to be ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... N. prototype, original, model, pattern, precedent, standard, ideal, reference, scantling, type; archetype, antitype^; protoplast, module, exemplar, example, ensample^, paradigm; lay-figure. text, copy, design; fugleman^, keynote. die, mold; matrix, last, plasm^; proplasm^, protoplasm; mint; seal, punch, intaglio, negative; stamp. V. be an example, be a role model, set an example; set a copy. Phr. a precedent embalms a principle [Lat.Tran] ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... theorists. In my mind I bring all Labour together, all the toilers of the world who are slaves to the great Moloch, Capital. You have an immense middle class here in England, who are living in fatness and content. The keynote of my creed is that these people have twice the incomes they ought to have, and Labour half as much. That, of course, is just the simple, oldfashioned, illogical Socialism with which you probably all started life, and which doubtless lies in some ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Goose rhyme was the keynote of a bachelor supper which one girl gave for her brother and a few of his friends on ...
— Entertaining Made Easy • Emily Rose Burt
... on this point, because upon it the whole theory of poetry depends. Neither on the formal nor on the essential sides of his art is he among the small company of the supreme. And no one understood this better than himself. He touched the keynote of his own power, though with too great modesty, when he said, "I am sensible that if there is anything good about my poetry ... it is a hurried frankness of composition which pleases soldiers, sailors, and young people of bold and active ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... first by contemporary naturalists: they could hardly grasp Cuvier's wide generalizations, and perhaps there was also some jealousy of the grandeur of his views. Whatever the cause, his principle of classification was not fully appreciated; but it opened a new road for study, and gave us the keynote to the natural affinities among animals. Lamarck, his contemporary, not recognizing the truth of this principle, distributed the animal kingdom into two great divisions, which he calls Vertebrates and Invertebrates. Ehrenberg also, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... dog on shore was the first to scent the coming strangers. He gave vent to a low growl. It was the keynote to the canine choir, which immediately sent up a howl of discord. Forthwith from every hut there leaped armed men, anxious women, and terrified children, which latter rushed towards the cliffs or took refuge among ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... acknowledges and admires in their commercial dealings; in no country that is or was, has the commandment 'Honor thy father and thy mother', been so religiously obeyed, or so fully and without exception given effect to, and it is in fact the keynote of their family, social, official and national life, and because it is so their days are long in the ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... the mantel and its arrangement of ornaments that sound the keynote upon first entering ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... me much alone, alone with my thoughts. Often when all was quiet I knew she was sitting there beyond the curtain, sitting thinking, just as I was thinking. Quiet was the keynote of our life, quiet and sunshine. That little cabin might have been a hundred miles from the gold-born city, it was so quiet. Here drifted no echo of its abandoned gaiety, its glory of demoralisation. How sweet she ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... not give her much time to develop her objections. He met her half way and stated them for her, and overwhelmed her with sympathy and understanding. She had been "too literal." "Too literal" was his keynote. He was a little astonished at the liberality of his own views. He had been getting along now for some years without looking into his own opinions too closely and he was by no means prepared to discover how far he had come to meet his daughter's ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... was very ready for peace, but not entirely humbled, for was she not still secure in the British Channel, victorious over the Dutch, triumphant in the Caribbean, unshaken in India, and unmoved on Gibraltar? Defeat, but not humiliation, was the keynote of the treaties (1783) which Great Britain concluded, one at Paris with the United States, and one at Versailles with France and Spain. Let us consider the provisions of these treaties in order, as they affected the United ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... number, as has already been said, were taken from the Lutheran service. One of them, which Bach also liberally used in his "Christmas Oratorio," beginning, "Acknowledge me, my Keeper," appears five times in the progress of the work, forming the keynote of the church sentiment, and differently harmonized on each occasion. Another, "O Blessed Jesus," is twice used,—once where the Saviour announces that he will be crucified after the Feast of the Passover, when the whole congregation ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... solemn and final summing-up—this quietly authoritative keynote into which all the clashing discords seem at length to be resolved—the poem, in most hands, would have closed. But Browning was too ingrained a believer in the "oblique" methods of Art to acquiesce in so simple and direct a conclusion; he loved ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... be introduced and concluded, which we cannot explain here, but this leading up to and away from have for their purpose softening the harshness of the dissonance which was greatly feared in bygone times. Take if you please, the simple key of C natural. Do is the keynote, sol is the dominant. Place on this dominant two-thirds—si-re—and you have the perfect dominant chord. Add a third fa and you have the famous dominant seventh, a dissonance which to-day seems actually agreeable. ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... and she is now beaming with the smile of spring, and everything around us whispers of the gentleness of God. This beautiful fruit is in lovely harmony with the gentle month of which it is the keynote. May the Holy Spirit lead us, beloved, these days, into His sweetness, quietness, and gentleness, subduing every coarse, rude, harsh, and unholy habit, and making us like Him, of whom it is said, "He shall not strive, nor ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... conduct yourselves in your own homes, at public tables, at general gatherings. Give the people at least such liberty with their own collection of books as the bookseller gives them with his. Let the shelves be open, and the public admitted to them, and let the open shelves strike the keynote of the whole administration. The whole library should be permeated with a cheerful and accommodating atmosphere. Lay this down as the first rule of library management; and for the second, let it be ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana
... written in the political gloom and uncertainty of the fall of 1848. While realizing fully its inherent tragic elements, Storm loved and glorified life and thirstily drank in its beauty to the very last. This is the keynote of ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... Christian Science church erected in Boston strikes a keynote of definite attention. This church is in the fashionable Back Bay, between Commonwealth and Huntington Avenues. It is one of the most beautiful, and is certainly the most unique structure in any city. ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... the very keynote of romantic art was to him the proper basis of natural life. He saw no other basis. And when they brought him one, taken in the very act of sin and showed him her sentence written in the law, and asked him what was ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde
... Institution, Joseph Henry articulated a program that included the following statement: "It is proposed to publish a series of reports, giving an account of the new discoveries in science, and of the changes made from year to year in all branches of knowledge." This keynote of basic research has been adhered to over the years in the issuance of thousands of titles in serial publications under the Smithsonian imprint, commencing with Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge in 1848 and continuing with the following ...
— Agricultural Implements and Machines in the Collection of the National Museum of History and Technology • John T. Schlebecker
... This keynote, or governing note, as it may be called, is that upon which the voice most frequently dwells, to which it usually returns when wearied, and upon which a sentence generally commences, and very frequently ends, while, at the same time, there is a considerable play of ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... and eloquent appeal with a sentence which sounds the true keynote of the regret felt by the Parsis at being merely compared with the natives when they felt themselves to be morally and intellectually their superiors. Why are they not provided with commissions in the army like the Germans and other ...
— Les Parsis • D. Menant
... Their house on the Esplanade des Invalides has been for years the centre of aristocratic life in Paris; not the most exclusive circle, but certainly the gayest of this gay capital, and from the days of Louis Philippe he has given the keynote to the fast set. ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory |
