"Modulate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which the sense is too subtile and evanescent to be fixed in a paraphrase; such are all those which are by the grammarians termed expletives, and, in dead languages, are suffered to pass for empty sounds, of no other use than to fill a verse, or to modulate a period, but which are easily perceived in living tongues to have power and emphasis, though it be sometimes such as no other form of expression ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... intermediate notes of the scale. Hawkins gives pictures of a treble, a tenor, and a bass cornet, copied from Mersennus, who remarks that the sounds of the cornet are vehement, but that those who are skilful, such as Quiclet, the royal cornetist (i.e., of France, 1648) are able so to soften and modulate them, that ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... very difficult to find such a thing in Nagasaki; above all, very difficult to explain in Japanese what is a sailor's whistle of the traditional shape, curved and with a little ball at the end to modulate the trills and the various sounds of official orders. For three hours we are sent from shop to shop; at each one they pretend to understand perfectly what is wanted and trace on tissue-paper, with a paint-brush, the addresses of the shops where we shall without ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... in some proportion, its moral and its meaning. The woodcutter did not cut down so many trees a day, that the hamadryads had not time to make their plaints heard; the shepherd tended his sheep, and did no jobs or chores the while; the idyl had a chance to grow up, and modulate his oaten pipe. But now the poet must be at the whole expense of the poetry in describing one of these positions; the worker is a true Midas to the gold he makes. The poet must describe, as the painter sketches ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... musical indication observe that in the "Pater noster" I simply modulate and develop somewhat,—in the somewhat confined limits of a sentiment of trusting and pious submission,—the Gregorian intonation as sung in ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... be action, the second action, and the third action, Whitefield was undoubtedly an orator. A fine presence, attractive features, and a magnificent voice which could make itself heard at an almost incredible distance, and which he seems to have known perfectly well how to modulate, all tended to heighten the effect of his sermons. As to the matter of them, there was at least one point in which Whitefield was not deficient. He had the descriptive power in a very ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... to see you," he went on more cheerfully, and yet being careful to modulate his words so that they might still retain the bereavement vibration, "but you have forestalled me, I see. I did not wish ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... know you accuse me wrongfully, Dorothea; but now I think of it, would it not be better to modulate the tone of our conversation, seeing that our guest, (a circumstance which until now quite escaped my recollection,) was shown into the next room, for the purpose of washing his hands, the which, from their notable cleanliness, ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... before us; but we recognise them not, or pass them by, with a word or a smile of short surprise. How leaps the baby in its mother's arms, when the mysterious charm of music thrills through its little brain! And how learns it to modulate its feeble voice, unable yet to articulate, to the melodies that bring forth all round its eyes a delighted smile! Who knows what then may be the thoughts and feelings of the infant awakened to the sense of a new world, alive through all its being to sounds that haply ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... truth a conspicuous and aggressive perfection, and Biddy was sure no mere learner would have ventured to play such tricks with the tongue. He seemed to draw rich effects and wandering airs from it—to modulate and manipulate it as he would have done a musical instrument. Her view of the gentleman's companions was less operative, save for her soon making the reflexion that they were people whom in any country, from China ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... our more modern spirit of course, we would want to modulate this, we admit that we would not ask God to do a little thing like jumping on the necks of the wicked—just for us—nor would we care to break away from the other things we are doing and attend to it ourselves, nor would we even favour their necks being jumped on by others, but ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... man, born with a metaphysical caul, which eventually strangles him. No one but Conrad would dare the mingling of such two dissociated genres as the romantic and the analytic, and if, here and there, the bleak rites of the one, and the lush sentiment of the other, fail to modulate, it is because the artistic undertaking is a well-nigh impossible one. Briefly, Victory relates the adventures of a gentleman and scholar in the Antipodes. He meets a girl, a fiddler in a "Ladies' Orchestra," falls ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... considerable amplification. Each half presented the same material (it was a one-theme form) but the two halves were contrasted in tonality, i.e., the first part, beginning in the home-key, would modulate to some related key—generally the dominant; the second part, starting out in this key, gradually modulated back to a final cadence in the original key, and often—especially in Haydn and Mozart—repeated the entire main sentence of the first part. The general effect of ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding |
