"Discordant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... number of troops now assembled within its walls, amounting to full thirteen hundred, composed, as they were, of the most discordant materials, gave great uneasiness to Hernando Pizarro. For there were enemies glaring on each other and on him with deadly though smothered rancor, and friends, if not so dangerous, not the less troublesome from their craving and unreasonable demands. He had given ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... and noise of the day and slept gently, gratefully, with their heads drooping to the soil, their petals closed by the tender hands of the spirits of the garden. The night-sounds were strangely musical. Cries that were discordant in the day mingled now with the running of distant water, the last notes of some bird before it slept, the measured harmony of a far-away bell, the gentle rustle of some arrival in the thickets; the voice that could not be heard in ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... standing against the door was a tall, white figure, its arms spread out like the limbs of a cross. Screams, both shrill and discordant, filled the room,—Martini, Beppo, Marietta, and the girls tumbling and rushing about distraught with terror. Such a mad-like scene! There was a trembling and a shaking of the white figure for a moment, then down it went in a heap to the floor, and out came the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... before still upon her lips, she held the flying threads in her hand, and so strained was her mind that it would not have caused her surprise if they had wound round her fingers or given forth forked tongues. She laughed again—a low and discordant ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... men spitted and roasting before it, was alone wanting to render it complete! Little boys and girls were outside the ring, running to and fro, clashing empty calabashes against each other, and crying bitterly; groups of men were blowing on trumpets, which produced a harsh and discordant sound; some were employed in beating old drums; others again were blowing on bullock's horns; and in the short intervals between the rapid succession of all these fiend-like noises, was heard one more dismal ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various
... besought to live in such daily and hourly fellowship with God as that their own unbelief and disobedience might not risk either their own power in prayer, or the agreement, needful among them, in order to common supplication. One discordant note may prevent the harmonious symphony of united prayer, and so far hinder the acceptableness of such ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... controlling influence in the affairs of humanity. Nor is this crisis ever a mere fortuitous circumstance, but the necessary consequence of conflicting ideas and of untried systems. It is that point in the great process of assimilation when different and hitherto almost discordant elements tremble on the verge either of a harmonious blending for all time, or of flying off into eternal divergence and hostility. Hence it was not to be imagined that we could escape the common lot: our crisis ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... on the hypothesis of evolution, while they are unintelligible if that hypothesis be denied. And those of the eighth group are not only unintelligible without the assumption of evolution, but can be proved never to be discordant with that hypothesis, while, in some cases, they are exactly such as the hypothesis requires. The demonstration of these assertions would require a volume, but the general nature of the evidence on which they ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... scrape very passable melody out of it. Old John Dilly announced that he had played the cornet in his youth, and before very long an instrument was found for him, and after a few days' practice (during which we had to suffer a variety of discordant and ear-splitting noises) he recovered something of his former skill. An old drum with a very loose membrane was found in the lumber room of the keep, and this the bosun appropriated, though being quite destitute of a sense of rhythm he ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... drowned by a horrible clamor which filled the whole church. Bagpipes, horns, timbrels, drums, every instrument known to the populace, lifted up their discordant voices all at once. ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... of their human victim, the wolves had maintained a frightful and most discordant howling, as if angered beyond expression at the style in which they had ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... having re-equipped His Majesty's ship, and fully completed her provisions, you will proceed by the inner route to Torres Strait, where the most arduous of your duties are yet to be performed. The numerous reefs which block up that Strait; the difficulty of entering its intricate channels; the discordant result of the many partial surveys which have from time to time been made there, and the rapidly increasing commerce of which it has become the thoroughfare, call for a full and satisfactory examination of the whole space between Cape York and ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... stream. Near the line was a deserted brick-kiln, surrounded by long uneven mounds and ridges of ice, with three poplars mounting guard over it. Flights of rooks hung over the barren ground, and wheeled in the air with discordant clamor as we passed—the only living moving things in the utter desolation of the scene. As I looked there was an exclamation from one of the workmen, and the engine began to slacken. ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... self-culture before it becomes a pleasure, almost an intoxication. Up to a certain point the acquirement of knowledge is a task, an effort, a seeming self-sacrifice; beyond that point it is a labor of love, a pleasure, a consecration. The crude, discordant efforts of a child, when it first begins to acquire a musical education, very convincingly illustrates the condition of mind of the beginner in self-culture. The task is a toil and the results do not ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... not know why sin abounds Within this world so fair, Why numerous discordant sounds Destroy the heavenly air— I can't explain this thing, I must Rely ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... discordant scream of the electric trams, the sun warm upon his face, aroused Emile from a restless, fitful sleep of a few hours. The street cries had begun to swell into a volume of sound, and at the earliest dawn the whole place teemed with stir and life. There ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... again at the boxes and I must confess that, as my eye traveled along the rows of impassive faces and noted the perfect though diminutive features, the tiny ears, the bristling hair, the frowning eyebrows—so discordant with the placid expression and peacefully closed eyes—a chill of horror crept over me. The whole thing was so unreal, so unnatural, so suggestive of some diabolical wizardry. I looked up sharply at ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... Richardson but in an editorial by Mrs. Stanton frankly analyzed the tragic human relations so obvious in the case. With Susan's full approval, Mrs. Stanton wrote, "I rejoice over every slave that escapes from a discordant marriage. With the education and elevation of women we shall have a mighty sundering of the unholy ties that hold men and women together who loathe and despise each other...."[249] When the court acquitted McFarland, giving him the custody of his twelve-year-old ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... boom came the discordant blare of a megaphone, faint at first but swiftly overbearing the noise ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... hideous scarecrow. His appearance was greeted by the mob with a perfect hurricane of indignant outcries and yells. But he heeded them not, but calmly pursued his task. Above him wheeled the two ravens, who had never quitted the place since daybreak, uttering their discordant cries. When all was done, he descended a few steps, and, taking a black hood from his girdle to place over the head of his victim, called out in a voice which had little human in its tone, "I wait ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... war between independent nations, there is no authorized organization for us to treat with. No one man has authority to give up the rebellion for any other man. We simply must begin with and mould from disorganized and discordant elements. Nor is it a small additional embarrassment, that we, the loyal people, differ amongst ourselves as to the mode, manner, and measure of reconstruction. Let us all join in doing the acts necessary to restoring the proper practical relations between these States and the Union." ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... limited. Music, with its refining power, was uncultivated, and indeed almost unknown. There were no musical instruments, unless some wandering fiddler happened to come along to delight both old and young with his crazy instrument. There were no critical ears to detect discordant sounds, or be displeased with the poor execution of the rambling musician. The young folk would sometimes spirit him away to the village tavern, which was usually provided with a large room called a ball-room, where he would fiddle while they danced the hours gaily ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... discordant jangles," he exclaimed impatiently to himself; "cease, I say! No song except for Nell! Nell! Pour forth your sweetest melody ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... refused to pay court to the ruling cliques and circles of their little day, had seen the doors of recognition slammed in their faces; and who, even as they wrought their great works, had been forced to hear, as they toiled, the discordant yelpings of the self-appointed watchdogs of the halls of fame. Nor did the artist question the final outcome,—if only his work should be found worthy to endure,—for the world's history establishes, also, the truth—that he who labors for a higher wage than an approving paragraph in the daily ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... lost their supremacy, but had even to struggle for their bare existence. On the other hand, it was truly glorious for Numa that he was a stranger and sent for by the Romans to be their king; that he effected all his reforms without violence, and ruled a city composed of discordant elements without any armed force such as Lykurgus had to assist him, winning over all men and reducing them to order by his ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... plates after the Book of Mormon was translated; but afterwards, they pretended to have received an express commandment, forbidding them to show the plates. Respecting the manner of obtaining and translating the Book of Mormon, their statements were always discordant. The elder Joseph would say, that he had seen the plates, and that he knew them to be gold; at other times he would say, they looked like gold; and at other times he asserted he had not seen the plates ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... the middle of the room as his eye rested first on Ardworth, and then glanced towards Madame Dalibard. But Ardworth, jarred from his revery or resolves by the sound of a voice discordant to his ear at all times, especially in the mood which then possessed him, scarcely returned Varney's salutation, buttoned his coat over his chest, seized his hat, and upsetting two chairs, and very considerably disturbing the gravity of a round table, forced his way ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... usually are, or ought to be—turned their soft inquiring gaze on their lord. Thus they stood, as if spell-bound, while the sounds slowly but steadily increased in volume and approached their retreat. Presently a shoulder of the mountain was turned by the drivers, and their discordant voices came down on the gentle breeze with ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... not over yet, and it will not terminate, I think, without an improvement in the present condition of affairs. The proposed help from France must become a reality of no ordinary proportion, else the discordant factions will achieve dire results. Tell me," he said, suddenly changing the topic of conversation, "were you ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... hastened to the fish-market, where at the outset everything happened in exactly the same manner. Heinz was requested to play, but his avaricious gaze was fixed on the golden vessels on the table, and his thoughts were with the large reward he would ask. Consequently his playing became so discordant that the ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... beginning to paint the chill white with a shining glow. The street was filled with men, most of them scorning the narrow board walks and traversing the roadway. A pandemonium of sound was robbing the night of peace through music, of assorted character, which boiled forth from open doors in discordant business rivalry, but underneath it all was the steady, dull monotone of the stamp-mill, remorselessly beating the ore ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... now called,(774) the natural longing of the philosophical mind that tries to rise beyond facts into their causes, to penetrate behind phenomena into ideas, grows up in a country, as is seen by the example of ancient Greece, when the popular creed and the scientific have become discordant. Suggested in Germany by the old rationalism, it had been especially stimulated by the subjective philosophy of Kant and Fichte. Historic facts were the expression of subjective forms of thought. The Non-ego was a form, in which ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... not grumble at his outlying patients; was only too thankful to turn his back on the town. It was pandemonium. Bands of music, one shriller and more discordant than the next, marched up and down the main streets—from the fifes and drums of the Fire Brigade, to the kerosene-tins and penny-whistles of mere determined noise-makers. Straggling processions, with banners that bore the distorted features of one or other of the candidates, made ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... red tree something resembling the bastard mahogany. Although we had penetrated and ascended more than half-way up one of the Mountains of Lions, we discovered nothing living but a variety of beautifully-plumaged birds, which, unused to the intrusion of other bipeds, uttered most discordant screams. After a fatiguing march, in which we were directed by a pocket compass, we descried a small rivulet. We followed its course for some time, and at length arrived at the base of a stupendous rock from which it issued. We, by calculation, ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... instinct led her to reply to a thought, the existence of which she perceived; and she quietly told the truth, and explained how she had interfered repeatedly to prevent Mr. Horner from taking certain desirable steps, which were discordant to her hereditary sense of right and wrong between landlord and tenant. She also spoke of the want of ready money as a misfortune that could be remedied, by more economical personal expenditure ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... as an inferior artist would have done, the juxtaposition of the familiar and the divine, the wildest and most fantastic comedy with the loftiest and gravest tragedy, Shakespeare not only made such apparently discordant elements mutually heighten and complete the general effect which he contemplated, but in so doing teaches us that, in human life, the sublime and ridiculous are always side by side, and that the source of laughter is placed close by the fountain ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... sharp, mean, envious, sidelong glances from beneath lowered lids. Yellow roses appear in their buttonholes. Thus they pass through the room, slowly and in perfect silence. The sounds of the steps, the music, and the exclamations of the Guests produce a sharply discordant noise. ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... physical senses. Because they do not do as we should do under similar circumstances is no proof that they do not possess the power to hear and see. Experiments, for instance, have been made with bees to find out if they have any sense of hearing, by shouting close to a bee, drawing discordant notes on the violin, striking pieces of metal together, and so on, to all of which the bee remained indifferent. What else could she do? Neither of these sounds hurt if she heard them, nor seemed to threaten danger; they simply conveyed no impression at all to her mind. ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... and make a great noise with horns, bells, whips, &c., in order to |342| frighten away two wood-spirits. In Labruguiere in southern France on the Eve of Twelfth Day the inhabitants rush through the streets, making discordant noises and a huge uproar, with the object of ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... providence, law; that is to say, the divinity, under that form of it which is accessible to childhood. If she is herself passionate, she will inculcate on her child a capricious and despotic God, or even several discordant gods. The religion of a child depends on what its mother and its father are, and not on what they say. The inner and unconscious ideal which guides their life is precisely what touches the child; their words, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... heard The glory of the Living Word; Till those that see not have their sight; Till all the fringes of the night Are lifted, and the long-closed doors Are wide for ever to the Light. Spread—the—Light! O then shall dawn the golden days, To which true hearts are pressing; When earth's discordant strains shall blend— The one true God confessing; When Christly thought and Christly deed Shall bind each heart and nation, In one Grand Brotherhood of Men, ...
— Bees in Amber - A Little Book Of Thoughtful Verse • John Oxenham
... the issue with her approval. Whereby it comes to pass that reputation is the first of all things to abandon the unfortunate. I remember with chagrin how perverse is popular report, how various and discordant men's judgments. This only will I say, that the most crushing of misfortune's burdens is, that as soon as a charge is fastened upon the unhappy, they are believed to have deserved their sufferings. I, for my part, who have been banished from all life's blessings, stripped ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... she spoke, the music of her tale Was sweet, the music of her voice to suit, Till listeners felt as if the nightingale Had grown discordant like a jangled lute. ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... the deserted street. The first gray halftones of dawn were creeping into the sky, so that the outlines of Limehouse loomed like dim silhouettes about us. There was abundant evidence in the form of noises, strange and discordant, that many workers were busy on dock and riverside, but the streets through which our course lay were almost empty. Sometimes a furtive shadow would move out of some black gully and fade into a dimly seen doorway in a manner peculiarly ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... however, the chastened atmosphere was perfect. Rocky Springs, so far away, was powerless to affect it. Even the song of the tumbling creek, which coursed through the heart of the valley, was powerless to awaken discordant echoes. Its music was low and soft. It was like the drone of the stirring insects, part of that which went to make up the atmosphere ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... mutatis mutandis the same may be true of the bagpipes, the strains of which—'skirl,' I believe, is the proper expression—are not altogether discordant with the moaning of the wind over those desolate moors or the cries uttered by their wilder denizens; though, speaking personally, I never could ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... cockatoos, paroquets, with plumage of all colors, kingfishers of a sparkling green and crowned with red, blue lories, and various other birds appeared on all sides, as through a prism, fluttering about and producing a deafening clamor. Suddenly, a strange concert of discordant voices resounded in the midst of a thicket. The settlers heard successively the song of birds, the cry of quadrupeds, and a sort of clacking which they might have believed to have escaped from the lips of a ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... the rattle. As an illustration of the songs used at this period of the illness, the following is presented, the mnemonic characters being reproduced on Pl. XVI, C. The singing is monotonous and doleful, though at times it becomes animated and discordant. ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman
... contradiction does not show dulness of apprehension, but often talent and ingenuity. Poetry and humour are much indebted to such expressions—thus the old Greek writers often call offerings made to the dead "a kindness which is no kindness," and Horace speaks of "discordant harmony" and "active idleness." Some other contradictions are humorous, and most bulls would be so were they made purposely.[18] A genuine bull is never intentional. But few people would plead guilty to having shown bovine stupidity. They would shelter themselves under some ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... affairs and yet interfering now and then when opportunity offered. Hunting and fishing and the composition of his memoirs occupied his leisure hours; by way of interlude he arranged, at the request of the discordant citizens, the internal affairs of the neighbouring colony of Puteoli as confidently and speedily as he had formerly arranged those of the capital. His last action on his sickbed had reference to the collection of a contribution ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... The discordant minstrelsy of every kind renewed its din; the boys shrieked and howled, and the men laughed and hallooed, and the women giggled and screamed, and the beasts roared, and the dragon wallopped and hissed, and the hobby-horse ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... religion are like the catbird. When it is away from its nest, it is one of the sweetest of the northern warblers, and so it is often called the northern mocking-bird; but when it is close to its nest, you will hear only a harsh, discordant note. It has no sweetness in its voice while at its nest. Some people reserve all their kindness, tenderness, and sweetness for those outside the family circle. Is it any wonder that love dies in such ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... some, mounted on the backs of their companions, charged at everyone they met; all the time the whole band were stamping, bellowing, yelping, and making other terrific noises, while another party were seated on the ground beating their drums, and shaking their rattles, the dancers keeping time to the discordant music. It is difficult to describe the feats of the different performers, for each man appeared to dance until he could dance no more, except that when a pretended buffalo was shot by a blunt arrow, he was dragged out, and another immediately took his place. This ...
— Adventures in the Far West • W.H.G. Kingston
... (Greek), 'jurymen,' (Greek), 'the bourgeoisie.' (d) The translator has also to provide expressions for philosophical terms of very indefinite meaning in the more definite language of modern philosophy. And he must not allow discordant elements to enter into the work. For example, in translating Plato, it would equally be an anachronism to intrude on him the feeling and spirit of the Jewish or Christian Scriptures or the technical terms of the Hegelian or ...
— Charmides • Plato
... him with no little interest; this mysterious name that had sounded so often in her young ears, and was associated with so many strange and high hopes, and some dark blending of doubt and apprehension and discordant thoughts. Hatton in his appearance realised little of the fancies in which Sybil had sometime indulged with regard to him. That appearance was prepossessing: a frank and even benevolent expression ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... and are Apparitions; round us, as round the veriest spectre, is Eternity; and to Eternity minutes are as years and aeons. Come there not tones of Love and Faith, as from celestial harp-strings, like the Song of beatified Souls? And again, do not we squeak and gibber (in our discordant, screech-owlish debatings and recriminatings); and glide bodeful, and feeble, and fearful; or uproar (poltern), and revel in our mad Dance of the Dead,—till the scent of the morning air summons us ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... the French commanders to suspend hostilities, and let the usual celebration of Christmas eve take their place. This was agreed to, and the air was filled with the song of the minstrels and the music of trumpets, instead of the discordant sounds ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... moment there came the discordant sounds that proclaimed the arrival of the last train from town. Gordon could imagine some wretched new boy huddled underneath the stairs, ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... and cries of "No Noble! no six and eightpence! no bloody bridge! no murderers!" &c. &c. Poor Sir Samuel was astonished; he had been made to believe that he would be received with the greatest applause and indeed enthusiasm; but these discordant sounds quite disconcerted him, and when he began to speak, instead of his being listened to, the cries and the groans were redoubled. Alderman Noble put forth his hand to command silence; this was received with the most violent and indignant execrations and hootings, mingled with cries of "No ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... priests and devotees of all the countries which it governed—"the dark-skinned daughters of Isis, with drum and timbrel and wanton mien; devotees of the Persian Mithras, imported by the Pompeians from Cilicia; emasculated Asiatics, priests of Berecynthian Cybele, with their wild dances and discordant cries; worshipers of the great goddess Diana; barbarian captives with the rites of Teuton priests; Syrians, Jews, Chaldean astrologers, and Thessalian sorcerers." Oh, what scenes of sin and misery did that imperial capital witness in the third and fourth centuries—sensualism and superstition, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... seemed peculiarly affected by his master's song, which he accompanied by a long-drawn howl of woe; and, before the imperial virtuoso had concluded, a discordant cry sounded for a short time from the street, in imitation of the squeaking of young pigs. It arose from the crowd who were waiting round the Serapeum to see Caesar drive to the Circus; and Caracalla must have noticed it, for, when it waxed louder, he gave a sidelong glance toward the place from ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... pits which thickened the skin, the flesh beneath it being deeply indented. Even her forehead did not escape the ravages of the scourge; it turned brown and looked as though it were hammered, like metal. Nothing can be more discordant than brick tones of the skin surrounded by golden hair; they destroy all harmony. These fissures in the tissues, capriciously hollowed, injured the purity of the profile and the delicacy of the lines ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... has crimps, some in the heel; The first is more important, Because the toe is always seen; If rough becomes discordant. ...
— How to Make a Shoe • Jno. P. Headley
... started up, still half asleep and wholly bewildered, when within a rod of him he heard the dreadful war-whoop. Then another more discordant voice took up the fearful cry. Joshua did very well considering that it ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... declaration of the latter, were soon snoring like a brace of tops. They had had an early awaking by the bear-scrape of the previous morning; besides, they had been at work all day, and were wearied. This they must have been, to have gone to sleep with such a discordant howling around them—enough to have kept an opium-eater awake. Basil was wearied as well as they; and he soon began to feel what a painful thing it is to keep awake when one is sleepy. The eyes of the wolves continued to glare upon him from all sides; but ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... under the boats' awnings. We were in the act of depositing our loaded rifles by our sides in a place of security, when the unearthly war cry rose in the jungle, and in the stillness of the night these discordant screams sounded like the yelling of a legion of devils. Immediately afterwards a body of natives rushed from the jungle in the direction of the boats, in which we supposed that our European party were all assembled. Always ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... semi-circle, black and precipitous, to the height of about a hundred feet, and flocks of white seagulls who had their nests therein were constantly circling round, or flying seaward with steadily expanded wings and discordant cries. At the top of these inhospitable-looking cliffs a line of pale green betrayed the presence of vegetation, and from thence it spread inland into vast- rolling pastures ending far away at the outskirts of the bush, above which could be seen giant mountains ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... what he wanted in resolution, he advanced with tolerable firmness towards the fire, the figures which surrounded it appearing still more wild, fantastical, and supernatural, the more near he approached to the assembly. He was received with a loud shout of discordant and unnatural laughter, which, to his stunned ears, seemed more alarming than a combination of the most dismal and melancholy sounds that could be imagined. "Who art thou?" said the giant, compressing his savage ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... Mrs. Barclay was excessively disgusted and disappointed. She had not, indeed, all along seen how Philip's wooing could issue successfully, if it ever came to the point of wooing; the elements were too discordant, and principles too obstinate; and yet she had worked on in hope, vague and doubtful, but still hope, thinking highly herself of Mr. Dillwyn's pretensions and powers of persuasion, and knowing that in human nature at large all principle and all discordance are apt to come ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... speak; thrice the words faltered on his lips; and when at last he spoke, it was in a weary, lifeless way. His tones startled the audience like an electric shock. The marvellous power and sweetness were gone from his voice; its accents were discordant, uncertain. Could the death's head before them be that of Tohomish? Could those harsh and broken tones be those of the Pine Voice? He seemed like a man whose animal life still survived, but ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... sound, it seemed to me, as Carette might have made in her sleep or in wakening, but something altogether foreign and discordant. ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... Petulantly Louis chid these discordant minstrels of the night, and joyfully he hailed the first gush of moonlight that rose broad and full and red, over the ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... the sterne Tyrant, Warre, And no such matter? Rumour, is a Pipe Blowne by Surmises, Ielousies, Coniectures; And of so easie, and so plaine a stop, That the blunt Monster, with vncounted heads, The still discordant, wauering Multitude, Can play vpon it. But what neede I thus My well-knowne Body to Anathomize Among my houshold? Why is Rumour heere? I run before King Harries victory, Who in a bloodie field by Shrewsburie Hath beaten downe yong Hotspurre, and ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... mind you, laughing at the troupe, passing from one to the other any sort of low jest at their expense, and inside the four white people—the old woman, clumsy, heavy-footed, shining with heat, lumbering round slowly, panting with her exertions; the girl, lissom and young; the two men with their discordant, torturing music; and just above you the great planets and stars of an African sky, and just about you the great silent and spacious dignity of the moonlit desert. Imagine it! The very ineptness of the ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... and I slept like a log until reveille. This unpleasant function occurred at three bells (half-past five o'clock), and it consisted of an infernal hubbub of drums and bugles and boatswains' pipes, loud and discordant enough to awaken the seven sleepers. We roused in a hurry, and, with eyes scarcely open, began to ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... ears of his audience with a difference: or so it seemed to them, as they stood before the booth. Some heard in it, through the discordant hubbub of the fair, the rattle of vehicles and the tramp of feet in the busy thoroughfares of a great city; for others, it was the whistling of birds in the hedgerows; and to some, like the restless pulsations of the sea. To each, according to his memories and his mood. ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... power which are discerned by the enlightened eye, when a stupendous scheme is developed, gradually and imperceptibly, but without pause or hesitation through a long succession of ages; when a multitude of seemingly discordant elements are at last brought together in a perfect work; when a power, unseen and unnoticed, slowly but surely overrules the working of ten thousand apparently independent agents, through a thousand generations, ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... thought would be received with indulgence, if not deference, from a veteran of his fame and standing, a living classic. On the contrary, to my surprise, I soon observed signs of impatience in the company; the poet was repeatedly interrupted by coughs and discordant sounds, and as often endeavored to proceed; the noise at length became intolerable, and he was absolutely clamored down, sinking into his chair overwhelmed and disconcerted. I could not have thought such treatment possible to such a person at ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... Italian at court, famous for the guitar: he had a genius for music, and he was the only man who could make anything of the guitar: his style of play was so full of grace and tenderness, that he would have given harmony to the most discordant instruments. The truth is, nothing was so difficult as to play like this foreigner. The king's relish for his compositions had brought the instrument so much into vogue, that every person played upon it, well or ill; and you were as sure to see a guitar on a lady's ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... of this life: with its thousands of eyes, infinitely sad in their expression, it looked into his heart, asking him for it knew not what,—and then the radiant images of the future died in his soul; a groan out of the powerlessness of the man mingled in the discordant chorus of lamentations and tears from poor human ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... conciliating an enemy by leaving to him the full benefit of maturing in security all his means of annoyance against you, and at the same time muzzling yourself, is a most extraordinary doctrine; surely, to do so must ensure success to that enemy, as we know that success will unite discordant parties and interests, whilst defeats promote disunion, and would have strengthened the anti-war party in the States, by furnishing to them unanswerable arguments when depicting the folly and impolicy of the war, which had been so wantonly declared ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... outright at his poor attempt, startling even him with the discordant sound. She sprang to his side, her eyes rolling with terror. But he laughed himself, and in a few moments she was attempting to imitate him. Awhile later she introduced him to the birds; but he forbore to trill, having ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... Quixote, and afforded similar adventures. In the midst of our supper, (which was by no means a bad one of the kind), in burst a fat German woman in a transport of fury, who thought herself ill-used in the allotment of the rooms; squabbling in a very discordant key with the landlady, who followed her "blaspheming an octave higher." Both were apparently viragos of the first order, and the keen encounter of their wits was so loud, that we turned a deaf ear to the German's appeal, and insisted on their choosing another ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... attendant, Acota. Who was there in the whole kingdom of Souffra who could so sweetly touch the mandolin as Acota? Yet, who was there, not only in Souffra, but in all the adjacent countries, who struck such occasional discordant notes as Acota, and that in the ear of the beautiful princess Babe-bi-bobu, who, far from being displeased, appeared to approve of his occasional violence, which not only threatened to crack the strings of the instrument, but the tympanums of those who were near, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and down the boulevard once or twice, meeting no one they knew, and they listened to the band which was playing as usual in the garden. It was a very poor performance; the music being harsh and discordant, but at a distance it sounded languorous and sad. They only met men and women joking and laughing, whose noisy merriment seemed at variance with the mournful music and the dreary evening. It irritated Yourii. ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... ancient musical instruments, which, on occasion, are still played upon in chorus; a picture of them has been published by Father Tschepe. (See page 128.) According to the description given by this European visitor, the music is of a most discordant and ear- splitting description: but that does not necessarily dispose of the question; for even parts of Wagner's Ring are a meaningless clang to those who hear the music for the first time, and who are unable to read ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... went on. It was vaguely discordant, and it was monotonous, and it was more than a little irritating. Again it changed timbre, going up to the shrillest of squealings, and back nearly to its ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... his dwelling when Sam arrived with his trucks, and accused him of obtaining goods under false pretences. John was a man of few words and listened attentively to Sam's reasoning. From the little window of the caboose came the discordant wail of a very young infant, and old Sam felt his claims growing more ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... native sprawling on the ground in consequence of approaching too near one of the hybrid beasts. Chinese mules will kick as readily as their American cousins; and I can say from experience, that their hoofs are neither soft nor delicate. They can bray, too, in tones terribly discordant and utterly destructive of sleep. The natives have a habit of suppressing their music when it becomes positively unbearable, and the means they employ may be worth notice. A Chinaman says a mule cannot bray without elevating his tail to a certain height; so to silence ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... delicate piece of fancy-work, and the weaver's art is indescribable. But one may note the ingenuity with which four or five interesting yet perfectly natural types are brought into a group and contrasted; improbable incidents so handled as not to strike a discordant note, the characteristics of the past introduced without ever losing hold of the links, the points of identity between past and present. The scene is the hamlet of Nohant itself; the time is a century ago, when ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... discovering the follies, faults, and crimes he commits. If they clearly perceive certain defects of execution, not he, but his victims, are in such cases made responsible. If he has caused the chorus-singers to fail in taking up a point in a finale, if he has allowed a discordant wavering to take place between the choir and the orchestra, or between the extreme sides of the instrumental body, if he has absurdly hurried a movement, or allowed it to linger unduly, if he has interrupted a singer before ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... wall, to where, dimly outlined against the horizon, you discern the empty frames of the wonderful astronomical instruments that were once the glory of Peking, now adorning a Berlin museum, set up for the German holiday-makers to gape at. After all, there are discordant notes ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... weather, and just before a squall of rain, this monkey will often howl in the daytime; and if you advance cautiously, and get under the high and tufted tree where he is sitting, you may have a capital opportunity of witnessing his wonderful powers of producing these dreadful and discordant sounds. ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... unknown. And when I reflect that France has many millions who can become such soldiers, I ask myself, to what a degree of debasement must such an immense people be reduced, stronger in its natural resources than in its artificial defences, opposing to a monstrous and discordant confederation, simple and united counsels and combinations, that the cowardly, degrading idea of sacrificing its soverignty, of permitting any discussion as to its liberties, of committing to negotiation its rights, could be considered among the possibilities ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... but he led his men to a counter assault with courage born of desperation. Cutlasses crashed together, boarding-pikes smashed and hacked, and pistols growled and spattered in one discordant roar. Back went the Dutch sailors fighting savagely and bluntly with all the stubbornness of their natures, then back they pushed the followers of Jean Bart, while Ranc ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... gazed the time arrived for King James to take his way to a solemn mass. The distant bells chimed the hour, the fife, the sackbut, the psaltery, the cymbal, the war-pipe, in discordant cry took up the note, and together the sounds rolled up ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... Republica!" "Viva Garibaldi!" At the name Garibaldi, a wild yell of applause resounded wide and high—a long, shrill yell, and the name was taken up in a kind of mad fervor till the shout rose to a frenzy, and nothing was heard but the confused outcries of a thousand discordant voices, all uttering that one grand name, ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... there is the thump, thump of the tam-tam, the whistling of fifes, and the screeching of a horrible instrument resembling a fiddle, which can only be compared with the Belzebub music of Hawai. If, amongst these discordant sounds, you throw in a cloud of mosquitoes and a hurricane of dust, you will have a tolerable ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... heard aright: Zeus is an habitual liar, of course, but what has that got to do with his "goodness"?—Only those who would have Homer a kind of Salvationist need regret this. Just because he could only make his gods "good" in this primitive style, he was able to treat their discordant family in that vein of exquisite comedy which is one of the most ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... discomfort did not hinder them from observing what was passing around them. They could have slept on; but the discordant noises of the douar, and a belief that they would not be permitted any longer to enjoy their interrupted slumbers, hindered them from reclosing their eyes. Still recumbent, and occasionally exchanging remarks in a low tone of voice, they noted the ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... of discordant hue: "My bride's-wreath true!" She twined it and twined, till her fingers were sore: "Crown me, I implore!" But when she turned, he was not there, she ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... dissatisfied with the Grant administration, it will be remembered that its candidates were subsequently endorsed by the Democratic party at its convention in Baltimore, and that the fusion of such hitherto discordant political elements added exceptional interest to the subsequent campaign. The venerable Thomas Jefferson Randolph, grandson of the author of the Declaration of Independence, although he had reached the advanced age of eighty years, was chosen as the temporary chairman of the ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... laughing, coughing, dragging their feet, shoving the heavy benches, dropping song-books. They greeted the snow-covered trio with a royal roar, and a few minutes later were singing, "Yes, we'll gather at the river," at the tops of their discordant voices. Carol sat at the wheezy organ, painfully pounding out the rhythmic notes,—no musician she, but willing to do anything in a pinch. And although at the pretty little church up in the Heights she never attempted to lift her voice in song, down at ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... window, crossing the road to do so. Four together were screeching in an elm close to the road, and since then I have seen others with acorns, while walking there. Indeed, this autumn it is not possible to go far without hearing their discordant and unmistakable cry. They were never scarce here, but are unusually numerous this season, and in the scattered trees of hedgerows their ways can be better observed than in the close covert of copses and plantations, where you hear them, but cannot see for ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... one, "that I have been led, in the course of God's providence, to do so much as I have done, towards purging revelation from those doctrines and practices which were discordant with its teachings, and prevented its ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... I could make one myself. It was bound about her waist with a heavy dark red woollen sash, the ends of which, hanging down at her side, were adorned with a most amazing collection of colored strings, bright yellow, startling orange, pale blue, and flaming crimson. It sounds discordant, and I must admit that, as it hangs now in my room, it almost makes my head ache. But out there on the red, wet rocks it was toned down by the faint morning light, and mingled charmingly with the greens on the bank and the far-reaching blue of the sea. In her hand was a spear—a stick ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... Saints. Here the monument should have ended, but it is surmounted by an ogival arch, flanked by two trumpeting children and with a central medallion of God the Father. This topmost tier may have been a subsequent addition. It overweights the whole monument, introduces a discordant architectural motive, and is decorated by inferior sculpture. The Madonna in the lunette is also poor, and the curtain looks as if it were made of lead. But the lower portion of the tomb compensates for the faults above. The caryatides, the bas-relief of the Assumption, the Cardinal himself ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... the hostile fleet. A few skiffs were passing and repassing the Sound, and several American gun-boats lay off a point which jutted out from the main land, far to the eastward. Numberless summer insects mingled their discordant strains amidst the weedy herbage. A heavy black cloud was rising in the north west, which seemed to portend a shower, as the sonorous, distant thunder was at long ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... authorities, both Teuton and foreign, in questions of art and architecture, have pronounced themselves in this sense, the only discordant note being that to which the emperor has given utterance. Not only has he publicly declared the new Reichshaus to be "the very acme of bad taste," but he even went to the length of striking the designer's name from the list of gold medalists at the exhibition ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... for wonder or examination. We swept on through the shadowy gardens about it, and my guide quickly brought me to the Hall of the Council, a low, inconspicuous building of yellow brick, one of the few discordant architectural notes in ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... the horizontal once more, and in so doing descended upon poor Bruce's tail. That unoffending canine uttered a yelp of pain, echoed by Scotty, who sprang to comfort him; and Rory, whose musical ear had been irritated by the disturbance, suddenly drew his bow with a discordant rasp across the strings, and ended the melodious song ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... good-natured fellow (I know him), tugged at her hand. "Here, I'll teach you to stop! On with you!" he repeated, as though in anger. She staggered, and began to talk in a discordant voice. At every sound there was a false note, both hoarse ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... church difficulties. They hold the captious in awe. By a sort of magnetic persuasion and lively sense of humor they soothe this one and that, win the regard of the outlying community, attach many new members to the organization, and build up, out of discordant and erstwhile discontented elements, a harmonious and active church. This is the man for these martial times! If there are born leaders in every other department of the world's work, men who quietly but firmly assert their authority and supremacy in ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... to pronounce these Semi-vowels, n. ng. l. r. also the following Consonants; h. g. k. t. with some kind of opening the Mouth, else they may joyn them sometimes with certain Vowels, not without a notable yawning, & a discordant noise. Now in general, Winter-time is fitter almost for to instruct the Deaf, because then they see the Breath coming forth from the Mouth, whilst Pronounciation ...
— The Talking Deaf Man - A Method Proposed, Whereby He Who is Born Deaf, May Learn to Speak, 1692 • John Conrade Amman
... army thus describes this artillery contest: "I have never yet heard such tremendous artillery-firing. The enemy must have had over one hundred guns, which, in addition to our one hundred and fifteen, made the air hideous with most discordant noise. The very earth shook beneath our feet, and the hills and rocks seemed to reel like a drunken man. For one hour and a half this most terrific fire was continued, during which time the shrieking of shell, the crash of fallen timbers, the fragments of rocks flying ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... strongest mutual attraction, but they cannot, on that account, compose an independent whole; for the degrees of this affinity imperceptibly diminish and increase, and in the midst of so many transitions there is no absolute repulsion, no total separation, even between the most discordant elements. Take which you will of these masses which have assumed an organic form according to their own inherent energy; if you do not forcibly divide them by a mechanical operation, no one will exhibit an absolutely ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... the middle of the road. It was quite dark now. The lights of the camp were flaring; men were passing to and fro; the loose boards on the walks rattled to their tread; the saloons had begun to hum; and there was a discordant blast from the ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... ran upon the field, to the welcoming though somewhat discordant music of the university band. What the music lacked in harmony it made up in volume, and as noise appeared to be the order of the day, it was most appropriate. However, a great booming cheer from the crowded stands ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... thousand cries From the gulf did rise, With a wild discordant sound; Laughter and wailing, Prayer and railing, As the ball spun round ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... dashed at each other with beak and claw, their preliminary utterances had to my ears anything but a hostile sound. Indeed, for the bluebird to make a harsh, discordant sound seems out of the question. Once, when the two males lay upon the ground with outspread wings and locked beaks, a robin flew down by them and for a moment gazed intently at the blue splash upon the grass, and then went ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... the Zephyrs, who had spent the evening in the hall, went home, leaving Uncle Ben, who had been deputed by Captain Sedley to watch the Rovers, still gazing through his night-glass at the camp-fires on the island. Soon after, discordant cries were wafted over the waters, and it was plain to the veteran that there was "trouble in the camp." The sounds seemed to indicate that a fight was in progress. After a time, however, all was quiet again, and the ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... this hour Of feeling's opening bloom, expected long, Wakes boding fears: thou know'st to sudden rage Love stirs tumultuous breasts; and if this flame With jealousy should rouse the slumbering fires Of ancient hate—I shudder at the thought! If these discordant souls perchance have thrilled In fatal unison! Enough; the clouds That black with thundering menace o'er me hung Are past; some angel sped them tranquil by, And my enfranchised spirit ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... delegates, and could be none. This met in Decatur on Washington's birthday, 1856. It was a motley assembly, from a political standpoint. It included whigs, democrats, free-soilers, abolitionists, and know-nothings. Said Lincoln: "Of strange, discordant, even hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds." Politicians were conspicuously absent, for it would imperil their political orthodoxy to be seen there. Lincoln was the principal one who ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... complexion was colourless; and every trait spoke predominate self-will; his smile was pleasing, though disdain too often curled his lips—lips which to female eyes were the very throne of beauty and love. His voice, usually gentle, often startled you by a sharp discordant note, which shewed that his usual low tone was rather the work of study than nature. Thus full of contradictions, unbending yet haughty, gentle yet fierce, tender and again neglectful, he by some strange art found easy entrance to the admiration ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... casus belli[Lat]; question at issue &c. (subject of inquiry) 461; vexed question, vexata quaestio[Lat], brand of discord. troublous times[obs3]; cat-and-dog life; contentiousness &c. adj.; enmity &c. 889; hate &c. 898; Kilkenny cats; disputant &c. 710; strange bedfellows. V. be discordant &c. adj.; disagree, come amiss &c. 24; clash, jar, jostle, pull different ways, conflict, have no measures with, misunderstand one another; live like cat and dog; differ; dissent &c. 489; have a bone to pick, have a crow to pluck ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... was chiaroscuro in its most extensive sense—compared with the expanse in which he floats, the effects of Leonardi da Vinci are little more than the dying ray of evening, and the concentrated flash of Giorgione discordant abruptness. The bland, central light of a globe, imperceptibly gliding through lucid demi-tints into rich reflected shades, composes the spell of Correggio, and affects us with the soft emotions of a delicious dream." Here terminates ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... not neglect it," replied the other, "but we practise it in a special place, inclosed in the most charming mountain-valley; and then again we take care that the different instruments are taught in places lying far apart. Especially are the discordant notes of beginners banished to certain solitary spots, where they can drive no one crazy; for you will yourself confess, that in well-regulated civil society scarcely any more miserable nuisance is to be endured than when the neighborhood ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... garden, which was once Angermann's, famous for its company, kings, composers, poets, wits, and critics, all mingling there in discordant harmony. Now it is overrun by Cook's tourists in bicycle costumes, irreverent, chattering, idle, and foolish. Even Wagner has grown gray and the Ring sounded antique to me, so strong were the ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... blunted by incessant labour, reminds us of what is related by persons who were acquainted with the late sagacious magistrate Sir John Fielding; who, when fatigued with attending to complicated cases, and perplexed with discordant depositions, used to retire to a little closet in a remote and tranquil part of the house, to rest his mental powers and sharpen perception. He told a great physician, now living, who complained of the distance of places, as caused ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... held at Shelby, in July. Mr. James M. Root, for several terms a Member of Congress, was my chief competitor, but I was nominated, chiefly because I had been less connected with old parties and would encounter less prejudice with the discordant element of a ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... the situation by the elimination of the presence of the jilted lover. Pride, indeed, forbade his flight. His self-respect clamored for recognition. There was no cause for humiliation in his consciousness, and he could not consent to abase himself before the untoward and discordant facts. He did not disguise from himself, however, that, if he might have chosen earlier, he would have avoided the ordeal of the meeting, from which he shrank in anticipation. Already he was poignantly conscious of the heavy draughts it made on his composure, ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... eyes from the loss of earth to the gain of dying; even Milton gave himself to the discords of politics in action, and the symphonies of the seraphims. In the silence great lives everywhere have mingled the meditations of the Absolute with the thoughts of the discordant, differentiated and ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... took some pains to discover the twenty-five or thirty people that formed the company present. It was indeed a dim, but not therefore, a very religious light that pervaded rather than overcame the gloom, issuing chiefly from the crude and discordant colors of a luminous picture on a great screen at the farther end of the hall. There an ill-proportioned figure, presenting, although his burden was of course gone some time, a still very humpy Christian, was shown ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... peacock's plumes adorn, Yet horror screams from his discordant throat. Rise, sons of harmony, and hail the morn, While warbling larks on russet pinions float; Or seek, at noon, the woodland scene remote, Where the grey linnets carol from the hill. O let them ne'er, with artificial note, To please a tyrant, strain the little bill! But sing what heaven inspires, ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... have rather fallen off in the writing line lately, but we have been leading a very pleasant but humdrum life, and the evenings have been rather busy; at present, five rowdy young subalterns profane the air with discordant music and facetious witticisms, so it is difficult to write ("Mack, you will never write a letter," "Do lend me a hundred sandbags," "Orders from ...
— Letters from France • Isaac Alexander Mack
... younger comrades. The exquisite voice does not grow weak and pathetic and ethereal by degrees, so that we still love to hear it, even to the end; far more often it is suddenly flat or sharp by a quarter of a tone throughout whole acts, or it breaks on one note in a discordant shriek that is the end. Down goes the curtain then, in the middle of the great opera, and down goes the great singer for ever into tears and silence. Some of us have seen that happen, many have heard of it; few can think without real sympathy of ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... blazed for a moment with reminiscent fury. Then his lips parted and he broke into strange, discordant merriment. ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... blending is sometimes a discordant trying of strings far removed from a melody, very far from a symphony. (For the benefit of those who must be reassured, I will say that I have felt a musician tuning his violin, that I have read about a symphony, and so have a fair intellectual perception ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... gigantick phantom of collective power vanishes at once into air and emptiness, at the first attempt to put it into action. The different apprehensions, the discordant passions, the jarring interests of men, will scarcely permit that many should unite ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... of her birdlike brain, inflated and empty as any cracknel, he held his tongue, and silently resigned himself to let her go on to the bitter end. But this determined silence exasperated Madame, seemed to her more insulting, more disdainful than anything. Her sharp voice became discordant, and growing higher and shriller, stung and buzzed, like the ceaseless teasing of a fly, till at last her enraged husband in his turn, burst ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... can read and understand the books which were a maze of print to me before. I can see the things in the pictures, and feel the thrill of the music, which seemed to come to me, somehow, before, all dislocated and discordant. ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... gave one look—and every sound stopped. The Orchestra died away in a discordant wail; the guests stopped, with glasses raised half way to their lips; the waiters stood as if petrified. Old Bohemia had seen many strange sights in its career; but no stranger cavalcade had ever marched in through its portals than this "Peaceful Valley Quartette." The three ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... Si quiddam humanum passus fuerit was the extreme form to which men advanced in such cases. And this scrupulous feeling, originally founded on the supposed efficacy of words, prevails to this day. It is a feeling undoubtedly supported by good taste, which strongly impresses upon us all the discordant tone of all impassioned subjects, (death, religion, &c.,) with the common key of ordinary conversation. But good taste is not in itself sufficient to account for a scrupulousness so general and so austere. In the lowest classes there is ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... aspects of the divine character. New doors may be opened in our souls, from out of which we may pass to touch parts of His nature, all impalpable and inconceivable to us now. And when all the veils of a discordant moral nature are taken away, and we are pure, then we shall see, then we shall draw nigh to God. The thing that chiefly separates man from God is man's sin. When that is removed, the centrifugal force which kept our tiny orb apart from the great central sun being withdrawn, we shall, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... suppressing daily what they have neither leisure nor abilities to supply, which I remarked to you two years ago, has directed the Convention ever since. It is true, the interval has produced much dissertation, and engendered many projects; but those who were so unanimous in rejecting, were extremely discordant in adopting, and their own disputes and indecision might have convinced them of their presumption in condemning what they now found it so difficult to excel. Some decided in favour of public schools, after ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... such constant guard, we sat or lay listening of an evening to a most discordant noise caused by the singing of psalms and hymns at the same time at different farms. We sometimes joined in. As a people we ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... danced. What gross, discordant movements! The play of her limbs was all false and artificial Her bounds were painful athletic efforts; her poses were angular and distressed the eye. I could bear it no longer; with an exclamation of disgust that drew every eye upon me, I rose ...
— The Diamond Lens • Fitz-James O'brien
... that on my vision never may be opened what lies beyond! When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the Republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... the Delameres," cried Glenville to Thornton, as we all lounged down one afternoon, not long after our arrival, to the parade, where the little discordant German band was playing. "Looking for you, too, I think," ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... since I played," said the Dodo, smirking bashfully, "I think I have almost forgotten my notes; however, I'll try." And, throwing his head back, he shrieked out in a discordant voice— ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... large into any invidious discussion on the causes of the natural jealousy which they felt toward Holland, it may suffice to state that such did exist, and in no very moderate degree. The countries had hitherto had but little community of interests with each other; and they formed elements so utterly discordant as to afford but slight hope that they would speedily coalesce. The lower classes of the Belgian population were ignorant as well as superstitious (not that these two qualities are to be considered as inseparable); and if they were averse to the Dutch, they were perhaps not more favorably ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... places quite overhung by the forest-trees. We had accomplished about half the defile, when I was suddenly and rudely awakened from a dozing sleep by the shock of my palankeen coming to the ground, and by the most discordant shouts and screams. I jumped out to ascertain the cause of the uproar, and found, on inquiry, that a foraging party of tigers—probably speculating upon picking up a straggling bearer—had sprung off the rocks, and dashed across the road, bounding between my palankeen ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... his tongue hanging out, and his eyes gleaming furiously as if swimming in liquid fire. At times he was charged simultaneously in front and flank, when for an instant the whole group seemed to be one dark writhing mass, uttering a medly of discordant and horrid sounds. But determined to conquer or die on the spot he occupied, Bruin never relaxed his blows, until the bruised and exhausted dogs were forced to withdraw a moment the combat, and rush into the narrow rivulet. While they lay panting in the water, the bear turned his ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones |
