"Chord" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... voice rang through the silent caves, and once more the echoes took up the chord in a flood of melody which, surged over their heads as the little girl and the sailor stood motionless, listening till the last tones trembled into silence. Even then they did not speak ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... 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 climax the whole world's mystery, and his personal thought of the meaning ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... drew back from the flashing eye that was bent upon him, but the spirit of her speech touched a congenial chord. ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... magnificent waistcoat. A servant in livery then appears, and presents him with a pair of white kid gloves. The illustrious conductor, having taken some time to thrust them upon a very large and red hand, leisurely takes up his baton, rises, grins upon the expectant musicians, lifts his arm, and—the first chord is struck! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... and led the orchestra, and Haydn sat at the harpsichord, keeping the band together by an occasional chord or two, as the practice then was. Great composers have not always been great conductors, but Haydn had a winning way with his band, and generally succeeded ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... 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 ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... life has been passed upon the sea. As I approached middle age, people would joke me upon my single life. They could never know what a painful chord they struck, and I could never tell them. Beautiful girls were pointed out to me. I could not see them. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... in unison, as though regretting deeply their mad impulsiveness in accepting the invitation. On this, other presents were offered; Bulpert said his memento would come later on. One of his friends sat on the music-stool, and Sarah, the charwoman's daughter, entering at the first chord with a tray that held sandwiches and cakes, said to him casually, "Hullo, George, you on in this scene?" and handed around the refreshments. Bulpert's friend, disturbed by the incident, waited until the girl left the room, and then explained that he had met her in pantomime, ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... touched the right chord in Marcia's nature. She is always ready to adore when opportunity offers. And though she has loved numberless times, she is ready to begin over again, and yields to the masterful force that experiments with her. The touch of her hand is soft and tremulous, ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... masonry; audible, in the low inarticulate moaning borne eastward across the crests of Norwood. It was then and there that the tragic significance of life first dimly awed and appealed to his questioning spirit: that the rhythm of humanity first touched deeply in him a corresponding chord. ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... 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, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... looked at Elizabeth, royal as she stood, full of compassion for him, but with her hand already stretched out to draw back the canvas which separated her from that presence of death in which live and grow, watered by tears, all human sympathies. It seemed as if she always touched some chord in him untouched by others. Was it the truth that she spoke that thrilled him so? He perceived nothing clearly except the one thing that ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... but a word, said in answer to a child's idle question; it pierced like a barbed arrow through all the involutions of another heart, down into the core. It was an accent of strength and quiet and fearless security, though spoken by lips that were very uncertain of their tenure of life. It gave the chord that Eleanor wanted sounded in her own soul; where now there was no harmony at all, but sometimes a jarring clang, and sometimes an ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... far, and, impatient of delay, forced an attack on Fort Sumter, then held by a small garrison under command of Major Robert Anderson. The first gun fired on the 12th of April, 1861, resounded throughout the United States and the civilized world, touching an electric chord in every family in the northern states and changing the whole current of feeling. From this time forth, among the patriotic people of the loyal states, there was no thought or talk of compromise. That this insult to our flag must be punished, "that the Union must and shall be preserved," ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... where Mr. Powell resided for some time, was asked by his father, what he wanted to do when he got to be a man, and answered: "Be a minister and go hunting like Mr. Powell." He was a man for the boys. He touched a responsive chord in their nature. He could enjoy what they enjoyed with as keen a relish as ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888 • Various
... caprice and obstinacy. The small colts broke away from the small mares, and gambolled over the tanbark in wanton groups, with gay or plaintive whinnyings, which might well have touched a responsive chord in the bosom of fashion itself: I dare say it is not so hard as it looks. The scene remanded us to a moment of childhood; and I found myself so fond of all the ponies that I felt it invidious of the judges ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... 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 of the Scandinavian imagination. Painting is a thing utterly unknown, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 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 ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... sobbing had somewhat ceased, he struck the right chord by saying: "Mother, father is not lost to us. He himself said good-by only for a little while. Then you have us to love and think of; and remember, what ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... to model his proudest ideal from,—her eyes melted him when they rested for an instant on his face,—her voice reached those hidden sensibilities of his inmost nature, which never betray their existence until the outward chord to which they vibrate in response sends its message to stir them. But was she not already pledged to that other,—that cold-blooded, contriving, venal, cynical, selfish, polished, fascinating man of the world, whose artful ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... gravel pit, whence I looked down unexpectedly and precipitously upon the town below. A magnificent and immense cloud was rolling over the whole city. The Seine was however visible on the other side of it, shining like a broad silver chord: while the barren, ascending plains, through which the road to Caen passes, were gradually becoming dusk with the overshadowing cloud, and drenched with rain which seemed to be rushing down in one immense torrent. The tops of the Cathedral and of the abbey of St. Ouen were ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... a heavy and resonant chord heaved a deep breath, indifferent and cold; it sighed ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... grim ones. Designed, as epitaphs are, to arrest and hold in their momentary grasp the wandering attention and languid interest of the passer-by, they must hit him hard and at once, and this they can only do by striking some very responsive chord, and no chords are so immediately responsive as those which relate to death and, it may be, judgment ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... 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 showing a disposition ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... became taut and rigid almost as he, with wide eyes gazing into the night. He had struck a hidden chord; struck it ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... remind me of my days of childhood, when I revelled in the woods and corn-fields of Lincolnshire, listening to the song of birds in early fresh spring morn, or bright summer day. Here was the tender chord of childhood associations touched, and no wonder that memory should come in to the aid of sympathy in these unsympathizing deserts. How little at times contents the heart, and fills the aching vacuum of the mind! In this we cannot fail to see an arrangement ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... boy brought the bow home across the shivering strings, and, as if ears could be thirsty as a drunkard's throat, he drank his fill of the 'cello's deep, full-membered chord. The air was heavy with the resonance of marching feet, ghostly feet marching and marching down upon him in slow, inexorable crescendo as the tides ebbed later among the sedges on the marsh and the moon grew big. And above the pulse of the march he seemed ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... more than fifty yards from shore when he went under. I watched the spot where he had disappeared, and in a moment I saw his head reappear. The look of dumb misery in his eyes struck a chord in my breast, for I love dogs. I forgot that he was a vicious, primordial wolf-thing—a man-eater, a scourge, and a terror. I saw only the sad eyes that looked like the eyes of Raja, my dead ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... tender, and Tallman Taylor's neglect and unkindness during the past year, had in some measure chilled her first feelings for him. She now, however, looked upon herself as the most afflicted of human beings; the death of her baby had indeed touched the keenest chord in her bosom—she ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... "zinc" touched a chord in Mr. Mountenay's brain which had lain dormant for years. Zinc! Why did zinc ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... Mass in D, the great "Missa Solemnis." In the first movement, "Kyrie," of this work Beethoven has created an effect of surpassing beauty in the successive introduction of the solo voices. At the outset there is a crashing chord from all the forces, including the full organ. The thundering sound ceases abruptly, leaving the solo tenor voice sustaining a tone seemingly in midair. Another loud crash projects the solo contralto voice, and so on. The effect is transporting; ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... said he, "the excellent Fancher is wroth. Let us proceed, gentlemen, to more friendly topics. You, now, Doctor Chord, with what new thing in chemics are you ready to ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... moment their conversation was interrupted. Eustace Hignett, pulling himself together with a painful effort, raised his hands and struck a crashing chord, and, as he did so, there appeared through the door at the far end of the saloon a figure at the sight of which the entire audience started convulsively with the feeling that a worse thing had befallen them than even ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... have music in your shuffling feet, And spirituals for a lenient Lord, Who lets you sing your promises away. You hold your sunny corner of the street, And pluck deep beauty from a banjo chord: Philosopher whose future ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... the responsive chord. The father's face lit up. He understood. Yes, it was right to fight for his baby girl, his little Starr, his one treasure, and this boy had done it, given his life freely. Was that like fighting for those ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... that she controlled this man's actions? "Fulfilling his engagements," the letter said, too. It must have been written by an ignorant person—by some one who had no idea of what was passing, and who wrote at random, hoping to touch a sensitive chord, to do some harm, to inflict some pain, in petty vengeance for a fancied slight. But in her heart, though she crushed down the instinct, she would have believed the anonymous jest well founded, for the sake of believing, ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... full tone, jarring horribly on the theme, rose, and hoarsely trailed off into silence again. Then the accompanist glanced over his shoulder, and struck a ringing chord while he waited for a sign, and there was a curious stirring among the audience. The girl in the shimmering dress stood quite still for a moment with a spot of crimson in her cheek and a half-dazed look in her eyes, and ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... he dragged out two lowing, horned cows close to the fire; for great strength was with him. He threw them both panting upon their backs on the ground, and rolled them on their sides, bending their necks over [2517], and pierced their vital chord. Then he went on from task to task: first he cut up the rich, fatted meat, and pierced it with wooden spits, and roasted flesh and the honourable chine and the paunch full of dark blood all together. He laid them there upon the ground, and spread out the ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... moment the clock on the mantel-piece struck a quarter. The sound touched some chord in Grey which made him grasp his hat again, and prepare for another attempt ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... have never known such feelings. I am too selfish, or I would not be sad so often; it is right that I should pass through such a school of discipline. I hope it has already made me better." The look of resignation that beamed from Miss Clinton's tearful eyes, caused a chord in Alice's heart to tremble with a strange blending of love, sweetness, ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... an honest, 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 naturally ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... law could exterminate with advantage to the world in general. Whereas on the other hand, given two fine and aspiring natures with perfect sympathy between them, as perfect as the two notes of a perfect chord, the children of such a marriage would probably be as near gods as humanity could bring them. I speak as a scientist merely. Such consequences are not foreseen by the majority, and marriages as a rule take place ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... night and day Were mingled in the eastern Heaven: Throbbing with unheard melody Shook Lyra all its star-chord seven: When dusk shrunk cold, and light trod shy, And dawn's grey eyes were troubled grey; And souls went palely up the sky, And ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... side of this stele, or headstone, commences a series of separate stones, irregular in size and shape, but forming an arc, the chord of which varies from twenty to twenty-six feet; so that the whole figure somewhat resembles the bow ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... mercy and forgiveness to evil-doers; that found more worship in denying self the indulgences of soft living than in the partaking of the harmless pleasures and sweets of life, giving a good God thanks for His good gifts. Through all the life and writings of Howard one constantly hears the minor chord of infinite sadness wrought into his life by his motherless infancy, his unloved boyhood, his years of invalidism, his ceaseless mourning for his wife Henrietta, the bitterness of death in the cup held to his lips ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... the right chord at last. It quivered and thrilled under his touch; and the sense of mastery leaped in his blood. Of a sudden, he knew himself dominant. Her face was red, then white, and her eyes wavered before the blaze of his, that ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... of the wonders of that love Which Gabriel plays on every chord: From all below and all above, Loud hallelujahs ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the most refined organization, but they can colour all that they combine with the evanescent hues of this ethereal world; a word, a trait in the representation of a scene or a passion, will touch the enchanted chord, and reanimate, in those who have ever experienced these emotions, the sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past. Poetry thus makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world; it arrests the vanishing apparitions ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... into this did not so intimately startle and stir her as the Beethoven movement had done. It was always like that, she thought as she played, the sound of the first note, the first chord struck when one had not played for a day or so; it was having one's closed eyes unsealed to the daylight anew, an incredulous rapture. But after that, though you didn't go on quaking and bowing your head, though you were no longer surprised to find music still there, better ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... chiefs and ladies bright The harp of Tara swells; The chord alone that breaks at night Its tale of ruin tells. Thus Freedom now so seldom wakes, The only throb she gives Is when some heart indignant breaks, To ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... extremity something of the real passion of this wild youth found a chord of sympathy in Rosebud's heart. His sincerity, his splendid personality, savage though he was, made her listen attentively. The woman in her was not insensible to his address, but the very truth of his ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... the depths of my being. I, who had witnessed everything that human beings undergo, I, at this first signal of human life, felt some paternal and fraternal chord—I do not know what— ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... went over to the sick woman, on whose face beamed a tender smile, as Isabel spoke to her. A chord thrilled in two lives hitherto unknown to each other; but what was said Basil would not ask when the invalid had taken Isabel's hand between her own, as for adieu, and she came back to his side with swimming eyes. Perhaps his wife could have given no good reason for her emotion, if he had asked ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... knows just the effect he wants and the way to make it. The artist does many things the pupil should not attempt. The artist knows the capabilities of his own hand; his technic is, in a certain sense, individual; it should not be imitated by the learner of little or no experience. If I play a chord passage with high wrist, that I may bring out a certain effect or quality of tone at that point, the thoughtless student might be under the impression that a high wrist was habitual with me, which is ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... started and blushed, as if the other girl's speech had struck some answering chord in her. The two were silent a moment. Lois sewed; Flora stared off through the trees at the darkening sky. The low rumble ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... also, but in a different way. The personality of the player forced itself upon her with a curious insistence, and she had an odd feeling that he did it by deliberate intention. Every chord he struck seemed to speak to her directly, compelling her attention, dominating her will. He was playing to her alone, and, though she chose to ignore the fact, she was none the less aware of it. By his music he enthralled her, making ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... take advantage of the circumstance to make, en passant, some groundless quarrels with you on some inappropriate terms which one meets with here and there in your book,—as, for example, the employment of the word "scale" (ut, fa, la, etc.) instead of arpeggio chord; or, again, on your inexcusable want of gallantry which leads you maliciously to bracket the title of "Mamselle" (!) on to such and such a Diva, a proceeding which will draw down upon you the wrath of these divinities and of their ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... he charm'd alone With conscious Truth's firm elevated tone; JANE from her seat sprang forward, half afraid, Attesting with a blush what Goody said. Her Lover took a more decided part:— (O! 'twas the very Chord that touch'd his heart,)— Alive to the best feelings man can prize, A Bridegroom's transport sparkled in his eyes; Love, conquering power, with unrestricted range Silenc'd the arguments of Time and Change; ...
— Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs • Robert Bloomfield
... The worst, she told herself, had happened. She had met Derek's mother, and Derek's mother plainly disliked her. Well, that, as Parker would have said, was that. Now she just wanted to enjoy herself. She loved the theatre. The stir, the buzz of conversation, the warmth and life of it, all touched a chord in her ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... little, however, she got into the habit of going to church, and came under the influence of this delicate, upright and dictatorial abbe. A mystic, he appealed to her in his enthusiasm and zeal. He set in vibration in her soul the chord of religious poetry that all women possess. His unyielding austerity, his disgust for ordinary human interests, his love of God, his youthful and untutored inexperience, his harsh words, and his ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... heart, 'tis He alone Decidedly can try us; He knows each chord,—its various tone, Each spring,—its various bias: Then at the balance let's be mute; We never can adjust it; What's done we partly may compute, But know not ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... asserting his personal liberty. "I will carry out my lectures if they walk over my body as a dead corpse; and I say to the Mayor of Birmingham that he is my servant while I am in Birmingham, and as my servant he must do his duty and protect me." Touching and beautiful words, which find a sympathetic chord in every British bosom! The moment it is plainly put before us that a man is asserting his personal liberty, we are half disarmed; [61] because we are believers in freedom, and not in some dream of a right reason to which ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... to English literature, and the appreciation and sympathy for England which he awakened among us." Shelley, who knew Byron intimately, has given perhaps the best expression to the English view of him. He said of him in 1822: "The coarse music which he produced touched a chord to which a million hearts responded.... Space wondered less at the swift and fair creations of God when he grew weary of vacancy, than I at this spirit of an angel in the mortal paradise of a decaying body." To most Englishmen of his day, ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... through her heart, not for a lost love, but for the vanished dreams of girlhood. The chord he had hoped to touch remained mute. In view of the fact that she believed love to be dead between them, this method of stimulating an outworn romance seemed sentimental and insincere. Had he loved her, she might well have thought it boyish and pathetic. ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... some one tries to play on the piano. In the middle of the piece the ship gives an obliging lurch, but to no purpose; for, though the performer slips off the stool, striking with his hands something that sounds like the lost chord, and with his body two ladies who are waiting for their turn, he is picked up and put back on ...
— Ship-Bored • Julian Street
... whom it was granted to sit at her side, who spoke the language of her class and of her own people. Edouard was not given to analyzing his emotions; like the music of his Tzigane ancestors, they came to him sweeping every chord in his nature, beating rapidly to the time of the Schardash, or with the fitfulness of the gypsy folksongs sinking his spirits into melancholy. So he did not stop to question why this one face so suddenly ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... of the old year, and, in the midst of the Christmas joy, there were allusions to it in the services and hymns. Something in the tune of 'Days and moments quickly flying,' touched some chord in Dolores's spirit, and set her off crying. She would have done anything to stop it, but there was no helping it, great round splashes came down, and the more she was afraid of being noticed, the worse the choking grew. At last, the ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the old woman with her magnificent dark eyes and deep metallic voice, and her evident knowledge of the king's habits, were too much for the menial—a chord of superstition had been touched; it vibrated, and he was quelled. Humbly but quickly ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... conversation was interrupted. Eustace Hignett, pulling himself together with a painful effort, raised his hands and struck a crashing chord: and, as he did so, there appeared through the door at the far end of the saloon a figure at the sight of which the entire audience started convulsively with a feeling that a worse thing had befallen them than even they ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... the work of a microscopist, and not that of a physiologist or a scholar. Its merits are principally its illustrations, many of which are from original dissections, some of which are very good diagrams, others ordinary, and some—such as the view of the human brain and spinal chord on page 282—wretched. The colored figures are washed with dull tints in a very shabby and negligent way. The text is mainly an account of the objects illustrated in the figures, and will prove interesting to the working microscopist as explaining the observations of a skilful dissector. As a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... pensive artist's fancy that never had another life outside of his conception, than that infused by brush or chisel? Yet it always seems to me that as I look into those books and faces, or as I lend my ear to those engaging sounds, some chord vibrates within me that makes me feel as if my memory were struggling to awake from some lethargy: scenes and sorrows of my yesterdays come back for a short moment to my vivid recollection, and seem to hang around these powerful incentives in a misty halo. It may be ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... harmonious store,— Thy sweet persuasive triumphs are no more. Thy mournful image strikes my wand'ring eye; Sad, near thy silent strings, I sit and sigh. Cold is that band which Music form'd her own, When ev'ry chord resign'd its sweetest tone. Ah! long, fair source of rapture, shall thou rest, Silent and sad, neglected and unprest, 'Till years, lov'd shade! superior pow'rs resign, Or raise one note more eloquent than thine. Tho' with'ring ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... have a celestial fruitage. "Despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;" "he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows,"—and at last "he shall see of the travail of his soul, and be satisfied." Then the strain breaks into an exultant tenderness, weaving into one chord the deepest griefs and consolations of woman, the sublimities of nature, all the passion and all the peace of the heart. "Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child, for more are the children of the desolate than the ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... her son's colour changed, and that he suddenly grew serious: aware that she had now touched upon the right chord, she struck it again "with a master's hand and prophet's fire." She declared that all the world took it for granted that Miss Hunter was to be married to Mr. Beaumont; that it was talked of every where; that she was asked continually by her correspondents, when the marriage ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... country, against the broken evening sky, and said, "Now I see heights, and I shall never be happy or hungry till I have climbed them. The Lord made me so that I am never content until I am as near the sky as possible. Silly, no doubt. But what a sky! Blood-red and pale pink, what a unique chord of colour." ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... to make any sacrifice but THAT one; and if she should appeal to him some day, in some celebrated spot—in Italy, say, in the evening; in Venice, in a gondola, by moonlight—if she should be a little clever about it and touch the right chord, perhaps he would fold her in his arms and tell her that he forgave her. Catherine was immensely struck with this conception of the affair, which seemed eminently worthy of her lover's brilliant intellect; ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... anything of the man whom he seeks, he will have no difficulty in finding him, for every man has what may be called a kind of musical chord of his own—a chord which is the expression of him as a whole, produced perhaps by a sort of average of the rates of vibration of all his different vehicles on their respective planes. If the operator knows how to discern that chord and to strike it, ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... alert figures, the quiet, soldierly bearing, even the distant sound of the well-bred voices, pleased her, even as the whiff of cigars and Russian leather that the breeze brought down from the stoep struck some latent chord of subconscious memory, and brought a puzzled little frown between the delicately-drawn dark eyebrows arching over black-lashed golden hazel eyes. And cognisant of every fleeting change of expression in those lovely eyes, the taller of her two companions ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... but not until she had seen his look change and the slightly cynical smile—the smile of one who has examined everything and believes in nothing—fade from his lips. She had touched some chord deep down within him of which he had long ago forgotten even the existence—some echoed harmony of what had been perhaps the living ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... hurried by Each vacant space, each slackened chord; Nor would her wayward zeal let ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... regards for the old home—the grey-green nest (more grey now than green!) a good deal changed and weatherbeaten, but not quite deserted—which is bound up with so much of our lives! It is one of the points on which we feel very much alike, our love for things, and places, and beasts!!! Another chord of sympathy was very strongly pulled by your writing of the "grey-green fields," and sending your love to them. No one I ever met has, I think, quite your sympathy with exactly what the external world of out-of-doors is to me and has been ever since I can remember. From days when the batch ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... Providence. I see the truth revealed, that as magnetism pervades the universe, so there is a sentiment, which, independent of party affections and bubbling passion, pervades the breast of mankind; and that is, the love of Freedom, Justice, and Right. The chord of Freedom passes through all hearts, and whoever touches it, elicits harmony. The harmony is in the chord, not in him who touches it. There is no skill in the breeze which sweeps over the Aeolian ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... to form a semicircle. The chord—that is, a line drawn from the apex of the blade to the base of the petiole—of a young leaf, 4 3/4 inches in length, stood at 2.50 P.M. on [page 248] Dec. 5th at an angle of 13o beneath the horizon, but by 9.30 P.M. the blade had straightened itself so much, which implies ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... the circle of the eccentric are the positions of the forward and backward eccentrics. Through these points draw straight lines from the centre of the circle, and mark the intersection of these lines with the circle of the crank shaft; measure with a pair of compasses the chord of the arc intercepted between either of these points, and the diameter which is at right angles with the crank, and the diameters being first marked on the shaft itself, then by transferring with the compasses the distance found in the diagram, and marking the ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... cried a woman's voice,—clear and melodious, but, just then, with something unnatural in its chord,—"you are welcome! But you come half an hour too late, and have missed a scene which you would ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... coco-leaf. But long ere this, from the butt of the white plumule, just outside the nut, white threads of root have struck down into the sand; and so the nut lies, chained to the ground by a bridge-like chord, which drains its albumen, through the monkey's eye, into the young plant. After a while—a few months, I believe—the draining of the nut is complete; the chord dries up—I know not how, for I had neither microscope nor time ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... the world had vanished: he had her to himself, for these few happy moments he could hold her and refuse to let her go. He did not care—nor did she—that many curious and some angry glances followed their every movement. Till the last bar was played, till the final chord was struck she was absolutely his—for she had given up her will ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... little and rose up, for her mother stood on the other side of the light now. Mrs. Randolph's voice was a note belonging to another chord. ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... strong to resist the whole world had the whole world, opposed her, and that dwarfed the families into insignificant, almost impersonal, adjuncts of the place, of no more consequence than the ferns growing about the fallen stones. Not even Adelaide could jar that rich melodious chord to which her whole being vibrated. It was all peace, contentment, love; and for the first and only time in her life Leam Dundas ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... it was only in gray and gold, with scarce a touch of purple and rose; the wind visited her cheek like a living thing, and loved her; the skylarks had more than reason in their jubilation. For the first time she heard the full chord of intellectual and emotional delight. What a place her chamber would be, if she could there read such things! How easy would it be then to bear the troubles of the hour, the vulgar humor of Mr. Turnbull, and the tiresome attentions of George! Would Mr. ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... go about it. First, you draw any chord AB in the given bed ABC. You can do that with one of those long strings the gardener keeps in his shed, with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... drew near. Near or far, there was no doubt of the fact: the thing was a piano. There, where by all the laws of God and man it was impossible that it should be—there the thing impudently stood. Gideon threw open the key-board and struck a chord. Not a sound disturbed the quiet of the room. "Is there anything wrong with me?" he thought, with a pang; and drawing in a seat, obstinately persisted in his attempts to ravish silence, now with sparkling arpeggios, now with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which very nearly corresponds to the ancient territory of the imperial period is called Agro Romano.[7] That which was properly called Ager Romanus at first only occupied the surface of a slightly expanded arc whose chord was the river Tiber.[8] Primitive Rome did not extend beyond the Tiber into Etruria, and toward Latium her possessions did not extend beyond the limits of some five or six miles reckoning from the Palatine. Toward the east ...
— Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic • Andrew Stephenson
... tenderly, "compose yourself; let no desire to oblige me endanger a life that is precious to—to—so many." The words were nearly stifled by her emotions, for the other had touched a chord that thrilled ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... A rich chord of strings vibrated through the night, another followed, and then a brief pattern of sound was woven from the serious notes of a guitar. Lavinia shrank back within the room—it was, incredibly, a serenade ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... gathered close at his side, were like men dead. Long before it was over, Nicholas had flung his baton to the floor and left the stage; but still the orchestra went on—and on. In the silence following on the last chord—a silence broken by no demonstration, either of applause or of hissing—Ivan the composer rose, pushed his way to an aisle, and hurried blindly out into the streets. Thus he knew nothing of the remarkable ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... perdition. A mighty and crushing 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
... bewildered mind visions of some friendly hand, which had ministered to him daily, of a voice and form, distinct from the one he thought an angel's, and which was not there now with him. That voice, that form, he felt sure belonged to Morris Grant, and remembering his past harshness toward him, a chord of gratitude was touched, and when Morris took his hand he did not at once withdraw it, but let his long, white fingers cling around the warm, vigorous ones, which seemed to impart new ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... resolved; and the spirits that aid the designing just at that moment suggested the plan which, of all others, was most likely to be successful. Bluewater had betrayed his aversion to the interference of foreign troops in the quarrel, and on this subject he intended to strike a chord which he rightly fancied would ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the left until this is the case. The instrument will then be over a point in the curve. Any number of points at any regular or irregular distances along the curve can thus be set out. One of the simplest elements which can be taken as a datum is the ratio of the length of the chord to the radius, AB/AO, Fig. 3. This being given, the value of the ratio is found on the straight scale on the body of the instrument, and the curved plate is moved until the beveled edge cuts the scale at the desired point. The figure of this curve is a polar curve, whose ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various
... 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
... Jumonville struck a kindred chord in the bosom of Hortense de Beauharnais. They were stamped upon her heart forever. A few years after this prediction, Jumonville de Villiers lay slain under a flag of truce on the bank of the Monongahela, and of all the maids and matrons of New France who wept ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... explanations, if authority was in the slightest degree at stake. Whoever had the address to make a question take this shape, might be assured that the King would throw aside all consideration of justice, right, and reason, and dismiss all evidence. It was by playing on this chord that his ministers knew how to manage him with so much art, and to make themselves despotic masters, causing him to believe all they wished, while at the same time they rendered him inaccessible to explanation, and to those who might ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... example of the all-around American high-school boys. His fondness for clean, honest sport of all kinds will strike a chord of ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... striking testimony to the favourable impression which her tact and good sense made upon him when he first came into contact with her. She possessed to a high degree the power of choosing the right moment and striking the true chord, and she appears to have been an excellent judge not only of the feelings of large bodies of men, but also of the individual characters of those with whom she dealt. She had a style of writing which was eminently characteristic and eminently feminine, and it is easy to trace the letters which ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... slowly forward. The general and Totski had agreed to avoid any hasty and irrevocable step. Alexandra's parents had not even begun to talk to their daughters freely upon the subject, when suddenly, as it were, a dissonant chord was struck amid the harmony of the proceedings. Mrs. Epanchin began to show signs of discontent, and that was a serious matter. A certain circumstance had crept in, a disagreeable and troublesome factor, which threatened to ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... point. Here, there was a long lateral flexure with a shift of 4 inches eastward. Half-a-mile farther, the fish-plates were broken and the rails parted 8-1/2 inches. A little beyond the 10-mile point, an embankment 15 feet high was pushed 4-1/2 feet eastward along a chord of 150 feet. At the 12-mile point and beyond, fish-plates were broken, lines were bent and the joints opened; the road-bed was cut by a series of cracks, one of which was 21 inches wide, while the beginning of a long trestle was shifted 8-1/3 ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... true. It must have struck a vibrant chord in the old man's breast. Absorbed in parish gossip and his 'Cottage Poems,' caring no longer for the world but only for newspaper reports of it, actively idle, living a resultless life of ascetic self-indulgence, ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... honourable, foes; they sought not to ruin their enemies under the mask of hospitality. What have you to do with Lucy Ashton? why should your steps move in the same footpath with hers? why should your voice sound in the same chord and time with those of Sir William Ashton's daughter? Young man, he who aims at ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... must be noted in his favour that hypocrisy was wanting in his unlovely character. Amongst other atrocities which Las Casas brought to his attention was the death of seven thousand Indian children within three months, on which he dwelt, hoping to touch some humane chord in the Bishop. He was deceived. "Look what an ignorant fool you are!" exclaimed his lordship. "What is this to me or what to the King?" This rough answer goaded his patience beyond control and Las Casas shouted in reply: "That all these souls ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... that the Thomahlia was blest with odd rulers. If the Bar Senestro was a priest, he was clearly still more of a soldier. The fiery challenge of the man struck an answering chord in Watson; he knew the time must come when he should weigh himself up against this Alexander, and it was anything but displeasing ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... is fashioned—like the lyre. Strike one chord suddenly, and others vibrate. Your name abruptly mentioned, casual words Of comment on your deeds, praise from your uncle, News from the armies, talk of your return, A word let fall touching your youthful ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... shelf from the top has two devilish gaps, where you have knocked out its two eye teeth.' And his lament over the desolation of London, as it appears to a man who has lived there jovially, and revisits it as a stranger in after years, may even now touch a chord in the hearts of some ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... call your attention to the chaste beauty of this line, and the imperative necessity of the chord of the diminished seventh for the word "rose." Also "school-house" in the last line must be very loud and staccato. Snap ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... These may be either dissonant, inharmonious in relation to each other, or harmonious, agreeable. All points of repose in a harmonized piece of music must be consonant; or, to say it differently, the combined sound (chord) standing at the beginning or end of a musical phrase must be harmonious. All the elements in it must bear consonant relations to all the others. Between the points of repose the combined sounds ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... 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
... the Romanticists marks here too the turning-point of taste; Beethoven completed the emancipation of the above-mentioned wind instruments in the symphony. The modern treatment of the piano with the introduction of the perfect chord accelerated its victory at the same time. It worked favorably for the external brilliancy of tone of this instrument, while gradually closing the ears of the dilettante and the musician to the charms of a simple but characteristic management of the voice in accordance with the rules ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... and Nigel, blaming himself for having inadvertently touched some tender chord, hastened, somewhat ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... time to waste in vain speculations. My whole being was still vibrating to those magic syllables, "secret drawer;" and that particular chord had been touched that never fails to thrill responsive to such words as CAVE, TRAP-DOOR, SLIDING-PANEL, BULLION, INGOTS, or SPANISH DOLLARS. For, besides its own special bliss, who ever heard of a secret drawer with nothing in it? And ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... the road forms the chord of a semi-circle, whilst a continuation, not planted, is the segment, which turning round the walls of the city extends along the beach of the bay, giving a fine view of the shipping ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... which I pretended to enjoy in the hope of pleasing her. Over this we talked more like old and well proven friends than mere acquaintances of ten days' standing. Just once or twice the mysterious chord which marred the girl's charming conversation was touched. She immediately changed the subject on observing my distress. I say distress, for a weaker word would not fittingly describe the emotion ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... use such a grey wet effect. I think of these old navigators in their small vessels, getting the thick and the thin, just as we do to-day in our own sailing craft; getting well dusted at times, with the salt thick on their cheeks and decks. Taking it all round, the sea is rather a minor chord; so that these Burlington House pictures of the Argo and The Heroes, in orange and rose on a wine-red sea are not convincing. When my patron comes home I will humbly suggest Orpheus singing at the stem, a following wind, a great bellying sail behind, ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... love, and rapture of the sea, whose womb Breeds eternal life of joy that stings like brine, Pride of song, and joy to dare the singer's doom, Sorrow soft as sleep and laughter bright as wine, Flushed and filled with fragrant fire his lyric line. As the sea-shell utters, like a stricken chord, Music uttering all the sea's within it stored, Poet well-beloved, whose praise our sorrow saith, So thy songs retain thy soul, and so record Life so sweet as this that ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... sitting thrumming a lyre when his father and Creon came up. He struck a long, ringing chord and raised his clear voice ...
— Buried Cities: Pompeii, Olympia, Mycenae • Jennie Hall
... poet-philosophers had risen to a lofty apprehension of "the Fatherhood of God," for they had taught that "we are all his offspring;" and he seems to have felt that in asserting the common brotherhood of our race, he would strike a chord of sympathy in the loftiest school of Gentile philosophy. He thus "recognized the Spirit of God brooding over the face of heathenism, and fructifying the spiritual element in the heart even of the natural man. He feels that in these human principles there were ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... far from hence is the gentle hill Carambis, on the north, opposite to which, at a distance of 2,500 furlongs, is the Criu-Metopon, a promontory of Taurica. From this spot the whole of the sea-coast, beginning at the river Halys, is like the chord of an arc fastened at ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... that star in Judah's sky, That voice o'er Bethlehem's palmy glen! The lamp far sages hailed on high, The tones that thrilled the shepherd men: Glory to God in loftiest heaven! Thus angels smote the echoing chord; Glad tidings unto man forgiven, Peace from the ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... the feet of Christian Science,—seems to be requisite at every stage of advancement. Though our first lessons are changed, modified, broadened, yet their core is constantly renewed; as the law of the chord remains unchanged, whether we are dealing with a simple Latour exercise or ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy
... chord in my memory, and I looked out. The man who had put the question, and who was now being directed on his way—by Maignan, my equerry, as it chanced had his back to me, and I could see only that he was young, shabbily dressed, and with the air of a workman carried a small ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... "The chord of C sharp, and also the non-accordant F. When C and D sound louder than the middle note, F is heard very fully, as a deep, dull, humming, far-resounding tone, with a strength proportionate to the mass of the falling water. It easily penetrates to a distance at which the other notes are inaudible. ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... bosom's lord? Why this anguish in thine eye? Oh, it seems as thy heart's chord Had broken ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... life is a twice-written scroll Scrawled over on some boyish holiday With idle songs for pipe and virelai, Which do but mar the secret of the whole. Surely there was a time I might have trod The sunlit heights, and from life's dissonance Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God. Is that time dead? Lo, with a little rod I did but touch the honey of romance, And must I ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... I answered. "But why shall we go there?' His answer seemed to thrill through me as though it had struck some chord ready tuned within: ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... voice whose power Can in my heart awaken To passioned life each slumbering chord ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... their staring kilts; and their swift eyes Turn still to him who sits to supervise. He in the midst, perched on a fallen tree, Eyes them at labour; and, guitar on knee, Now ministers alarm, now scatters joy, Now twangs a halting chord, now tweaks a boy. Thorough in all, my resolute vizier Plays both the despot and the volunteer, Exacts with fines obedience to my laws, And for his music, ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the little act with a courtesy which was as genuine as strange in Derrick, who, like most men of his class, was not given to knightly attentions; but, every time he had seen this proud and sorrowful woman, some tender chord had been touched in his heart and given forth a note of pity and respect. "I can't blame myself enough for not keeping an eye on that lamp. I hope ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... she never appears anxious to go to bed at night. The last sound which sleepy subalterns hear is Madame's voice, uplifted in steady discourse to the circle round the stove, sustained by an occasional guttural chord from 'Nri and 'Seph. She has been doing this, day in, day out, since the combatants settled down to trench-warfare. Every few weeks brings a fresh crop of tenants, with fresh peculiarities and unknown proclivities; and she ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... she turned quickly and stepped towards the window, an involuntary movement of agitation. He had touched a chord. But even as she reached the window and glanced down to the hot, dusty street, she heard a loud voice below, a reckless, ribald sort of voice, calling to some one to, "Come ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... 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 impassive almost to the point of stolidity. Somehow, though, Miss Willis ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... Nor ceased the trance Which bound the erring fancy, till dark night Flew silent by, and at my window-grate The morning bird sang loud: nor less delight The spirit felt, when still and charmed I sate 120 Great Milton's solemn harmonies to hear, That swell from the full chord, and strong and clear, Beyond the tuneless couplets' weak control, Their long-commingling diapason roll, In varied sweetness. Nor, amidst the choir Of pealing minstrelsy, was thy own lyre, Warton, unheard;—as Fancy poured the song, The measured music flowed along, Till ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... There brake a hum that swelled to laughter loud; But on he rode, nor seemed to reck or heed, Till 'neath the balcony he checked his steed. Then, handing lance unto his tall esquire, He sudden struck sweet chord upon his lyre, And thus, serene, his lute he plucked until The laughter died and all stood hushed and still; Then, hollow in his helm, a clear voice rang, As, through his lowered vizor, ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... "world of 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 of the eye has not cultivated his ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... trusting to the help of one's own right hand to exchange honest toil for honest bread and raiment. His eyes kindled to see the goodly, broad, red-cheeked fellows. Sometimes, though, he saw women, and sometimes tender women, by their side; and that sight touched the pathetic chord of his heart with a rude twangle ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... something had gone wrong with the keys of the piano. They stuck down, and I had to get Wilfred to sit underneath and keep poking them up as fast as I played on them, or else half the notes wouldn't sound; and it seemed so queer to only get part of a chord, and to miss the middle of a run. It quite put me out. I suppose it was the damp that caused it. We must get a tuner to come ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... That ever was sacred to song— Does some one repeat my name over, And sigh that I tarry so long? And is there a chord in the music, That's missed when my voice is away? And a chord in each glad heart that waketh Regret ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... singer, with another full chord. Caruso obeyed and kept on through the scale. Then Messiani jumped up from the piano stool, seized the astonished boy about the waist and raised him high off his feet, at the same time yelling at the top of his voice: "What a little jackass! ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... have been worse. I attacked the squeaky melodion, pushed down a pedal, pulled out the "vox humana" stop—the most harmless one of the melodion, but which gave out a supernaturally hoarse sound—I struck the chord, and standing up I began. These poor, homeless creatures must have thought my one purpose was to harass them to the last limit, and I only realized what I was singing about when I saw them with bowed heads and faces hidden in their hands; some ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... Arch; and in saying, the Angle of Contact hath some magnitude, his meaning is, that the Arch of a Circle hath some crookedness, or, is a crooked line: and that, of equal Arches, That is the more crooked, whose chord is shortest: which I think none will deny; (for who ever doubted, but that a circular Arch is crooked? or, that, of such Arches, equal in length, That is the more crooked, whose ends by bowing are brought nearest together?) But, why the Crookedness of an ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... having touched a chord of pity in me, she began to play; her voice followed; dinner and dressing, the house-party and my mother's guests, were all forgotten. I remember that you looked in, your eyes touched with a suggestive and melancholy smile, and as quickly closed the door again. But even that ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood |
