FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • More 'Modulate' Quotes from Famous Books

... 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

... with just intonation on a piano, if you get everything quite straight and on all fours in one department, in perfect tune, it is delightful so long as you keep well in the middle of the key; but as soon as you modulate you find the new key is out of tune and the more remotely you modulate the more out of tune you get. The only way is to distribute your error by equal temperament and leave common sense to make the correction in philosophy which ...

— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... that might pass for feminine, the character was acted in a mask, which was at that time part of a lady's dress so much in use that it did not give any unusual appearance to the scene: and he that could modulate his voice in a female tone might play the women very successfully. It is observed in Downes's Memoirs of the Playhouse, that one of these counterfeit heroines moved the passions more strongly than the women that have since been brought upon the stage. Some of the catastrophes ...

— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson

... style;—the paeon in such as require more compass and elevation; and the dactyl is equally applicable to both. So that in a discourse of any length and variety, it will be occasionally necessary to blend and intermingle them all. By this means, our endeavours to modulate our periods, and captivate the ear, will be most effectually concealed; especially, if we maintain a suitable dignity both of language and sentiment. For the hearer will naturally attend to these (I mean our words and sentiments) and to them alone attribute ...

— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... to the earliest poets of the sixteenth century, more particularly to Clement Marot. A tinge of the expiring romanticism lingered in 'Les Amoureuses' with a much more substantial admixture of the spirit of an age which made pleasure-hunting its paramount occupation. The precocious child could modulate the 'Romance a Madame' as well as the page of Beaumarchais, if not better; but he could also laugh it down in Gavroche's sneering way; he could intersperse a song of love with the irony of the boulevard or the more genial humor of his native South. He was at his best in the ...

— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... a time came when, turning full of hate And weariness from my remembered themes, I wished my poet's pipe could modulate Beauty more palpable than words ...

— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley

... brightness of a new-born star. Then, soft hands trembled in my palm, and forms Graceful and rounded with the bloom of youth, Flitted about me in the languishment Of music and sweet motion; voices low, And modulate from laughter unto sadness, Hung on the air like perfume on the wind, And eyes, flashing, and mild, and fond, spake too, A very Babel of soft speech, and yet— I sighed. Life seemed to me a painted daub—all glare, And show, and tinsel, where the eye in vain Sought ...

— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels

... itself all those sweet-sounding melodies used in the accompaniment of David's Psalms. Sometimes it seems to me as though it would be safer to do as I have often heard that Athanasius, the Bishop of Alexandria, did, for he made the reader of the Psalms so modulate his voice that he came to be rather speaking than singing. Yet, on the other hand, when I remember the tears which I shed when I heard the Church's chant in the early days of my regaining the faith, and when I notice that even now I am ...

— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas

... cases is sure. Two questions the artist has, therefore, always to ask himself,—first, "Is my whole right?" Secondly, "Can my details be added to? Is there a single space in the picture where I can crowd in another thought? Is there a curve in it which I can modulate—a line which I can graduate—a vacancy I can fill? Is there a single spot which the eye, by any peering or prying, can fathom or exhaust? If so, my picture is imperfect; and if, in modulating the line or filling the vacancy, I hurt the general ...

— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... attention to the cultivation of the speaking voice, and it was from her that Beth had learnt how to round hers to richness, and modulate it so that its natural sweetness and charm were greatly enhanced. There was considerable difference of opinion about her looks. She was always striking in appearance, but dress, for one thing, altered her very much, and the state of her mind still more. People ...

— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... 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 ...

— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson