"Dissonant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the interests of our northern and southern colonies, before that time jarring and dissonant, were understood, compared, adjusted, and perfectly reconciled. The passions and animosities of the colonies, by judicious and lenient measures, were allayed and composed, and the foundation laid for a lasting agreement ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... and dissonant in my life melts into one sweet harmony—and my adoration spreads wings like a glad bird on its flight ...
— Gitanjali • Rabindranath Tagore
... while she was smiling, assured that her lord's last invention was sped, suddenly the creature arose, and seemed to listen; and his face brightened, and he clapped his hands for joy, for Sounds were heard the first time on earth—sounds dissonant, sounds harmonious. The winds murmured in the trees; the birds sang, each kind a song of its own, or chattered in speech; the rivulets running to the rivers became so many harpers with harps of silver strings all tinkling ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... night—and maidens of romance To whom asleep St. Agnes' love-dreams come— Awhile constrained me to a sweet duresse And thraldom, lapping me in high content, Soft as the bondage of white amorous arms. And then a third voice, long unheeded—held Claustral and cold, and dissonant and tame— Found me at last with ears to hear. It sang Of lowly sorrows and familiar joys, Of simple manhood, artless womanhood, And childhood fragrant as the limpid morn; And from the homely matter nigh at hand Ascending and dilating, it disclosed Spaces and ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... Bernard, fairly beside himself, was preparing for instant flight, but with his face to the wall, and unable to move from his couch, the voice, in a dissonant chant, with pauses ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... afterwards in Madras and Calcutta, he persevered in an indomitable aversion to the use of the English tongue, which he so well knew how to write with precision and power. He spoke the broadest provincial Scotch with singular pertinacity. His voice was extremely dissonant, but, seemingly unconscious of the defect, he talked loud; and if engaged in argument, raised his voice to a pitch which frequently proved more powerful than the strength of his reasoning. He was dogmatical in maintaining his opinions, and prone to monopolise conversation; his gesticulations ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... more distinctly than heretofore. The town appeared to be waking up. A baker's cart had already rattled through the street, chasing away the latest vestige of night's sanctity with the jingle-jangle of its dissonant bells. A milkman was distributing the contents of his cans from door to door; and the harsh peal of a fisherman's conch shell was heard far off, around the corner. None of these tokens escaped Hepzibah's notice. The moment ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... tones giving rise to the feeling of incompleteness or unrest, and therefore requiring resolution to some other combination which has an agreeable or final feeling. (cf. consonance.) The diminished triad C—E[flat]—G[flat] is an example of a dissonant chord. ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... strange distorted gestures, sometimes striking the earth with their feet in a kind of time and measure, sometimes clapping their hands and throwing them up on high, looking towards the heavens, and uttering barbarous and dissonant words."[21]—Sir Hans Sloan tells us, also, that the Indians employ tobacco in all their enchantments, sorceries, and fortune-tellings; that their priests intoxicate themselves with the fumes, and in their ecstacies give ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... their sev'ral chiefs the troops were rang'd, With noise and clamour, as a flight of birds, The men of Troy advanc'd; as when the cranes, Flying the wintry storms, send forth on high Their dissonant clamours, while o'er the ocean stream They steer their course, and on their pinions bear Battle and death to the ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... departed this life about the beginning of the reigne of king Henrie the second, certeine yeers before the bones of Arthur were found (as ye haue heard.) But omitting this point as needles to be controuerssed, & letting all dissonant opinions of writers passe, as a matter of no such moment that we should need to sticke therein as in a glewpot; we will proceed in the residue of such collections as we find necessarilie pertinent to the continuation of this historie; and now we will say somewhat of queene ...
— Chronicles 1 (of 6): The Historie of England 5 (of 8) - The Fift Booke of the Historie of England. • Raphael Holinshed
... teeth of nature, did all this; and whose appalling sincerity must, in our eyes, cover a multitude of such sins as sentences wrenched about end for end, clauses heaved up and abandoned in chaos, words disemboweled or split quite in two in the middle, and dissonant combinations of sound that are the despair of such poor vocal organs as are granted to human beings. The verses seem to have been hammered out on an anvil, by blows from a blacksmith's sledge. In all parts of the book ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... religious obedience to the commands of oracles, and it is probable that impressions of this sort might have had more or less influence; but it is probable, also, that on these occasions the oracles did not speak a language dissonant from the views and ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... providently done which the happy success commends. By which means it cometh to pass that the first loss which miserable men have is their estimation and the good opinion which was had of them. What rumours go now among the people, what dissonant and diverse opinions! I cannot abide to think of them; only this will I say, the last burden of adversity is that when they which are in misery are accused of any crime, they are thought to deserve whatsoever they suffer. And I, spoiled of all my goods, bereaved ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... selected where the voice has a gentle fall, and is not driven back with a recoil so as to convey an indistinct meaning to the ear. There are some places which from their very nature interfere with the course of the voice, as for instance the dissonant, which are termed in Greek [Greek: katechountes]; the circumsonant, which with them are named [Greek: periechountes]; again the resonant, which are termed [Greek: antechountes]; and the consonant, which they call [Greek: synechountes]. ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... was in a silent mood, otherwise he would not have allowed such ill-omened discourse to pass uninterrupted. Then the Baital, who in vain had often paused to give the royal carrier a chance of asking him a curious question, continued his recital in a dissonant and dissatisfied tone ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... hounds, unleashed, lifted frantic voices. The very sky seemed full of the discordant tumult; wood and shore reverberated with the volume of convulsive and dissonant baying. ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... Friedrich had to do an exceedingly strict thing: secure the Originals of those Menzel Documents. Originals indispensable to him, for justifying his new procedures upon Saxony. So that there has been, at the Palace, a Scene this morning of a very high and dissonant nature,—"Marshal Keith" in it, "Marshal Keith making a second visit" (say some loose and false Accounts);—the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... altogether the subject of their arrest. One's ear occasionally catches a few half-suppressed notes of a proscribed aire, but the unhallowed sounds of the Carmagnole and Marseillois are never heard, and would be thought more dissonant here than the war-whoop. In fact, the only appearance of gaiety is among the ideots and lunatics. —"Je m'ennuye furieusement," is the general exclamation.—An Englishman confined at the Bicetre would express himself more forcibly, but, it is certain, the want of knowing ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... deceived; for behold the catastrophe! Such of the readers as were learned in the laws, finding not only gross errors and absurdities on law, but palpable mistakings in the very words of art, and the whole context of that rude and ragged style wholly dissonant (the subject being legal) from a lawyer's dialect, concluded that inimicus et iniquus homo superseminavit zizania in medio tritici, the other discreet and indifferent readers, out of sense and reason, found out the same conclusion, both in respect of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various
... that what is called "atmosphere" in a description is dependent upon the setting forth of a multiplicity of details; but this popular conception is a fallacy. "Atmosphere" is dependent rather upon a strict selection of details pervaded by a common quality, a rigorous rejection of all others that are dissonant in mood, and an arrangement of those selected with a view to exhibiting their common quality as the pervading spirit ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... her head and stared into the black depths of the night. All was still except the shrill pipings of the frogs as they sounded their dissonant notes to one another in the far-off Schuylkill meadows. They, too, were filled with thoughts of love, Marjorie thought, which they had made bold enough to publish in their own discordant way, and they seemed to take eminent delight in having the whole world ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... curiosity. On my imitating their chirp one fluttered down, and attempted to alight on my horse's ears. On my whistling to them, one whistled some beautifully varied notes, as soft as those of an octave flute, although their common chirp was harsh and dissonant. The male and female seemed to have very different plumage, especially about the head; that on the one having the varying tint of the Rifle bird, the head of the other more resembling in colour, that of the DACELO GIGANTEUS. They were about the size of a ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... only till the dawn of day. While the trumpets sounded to arms, the undaunted courage of the Goths was confirmed by the mutual obligation of a solemn oath; and as they advanced to meet the enemy, the rude songs, which celebrated the glory of their forefathers, were mingled with their fierce and dissonant outcries, and opposed to the artificial harmony of the Roman shout. Some military skill was displayed by Fritigern to gain the advantage of a commanding eminence; but the bloody conflict, which began and ended with the light, was maintained on either ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... those who love the pensive song To whom all sounds of Mirth are dissonant! There are who at this hour Will ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... of his ripest and tenderest genius on every line and in every cadence. But for sheer bewildering incongruity there is no play known to me which can be compared with "The Mayor of Queenborough." Here again we find a note so dissonant and discordant in the lighter parts of the dramatic concert that we seem at once to recognize the harsher and hoarser instrument of Rowley. The farce is even more extravagantly and preposterously mistimed and misplaced than that which disfigures the play just mentioned: but I thoroughly ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... we yield to the caress of this mood than there enters the supernatural element which invests the tragical portion of the story. Ominous drum beats under a dissonant tremolo of the strings and deep tones of the clarinets, a plangent declamatory phrase ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... to the last, the opinions of philosophers have been so dissonant, so vague, and so unreasonable, as to draw to no conclusion. Some suppose the land to be discovered by the gradual retreat of the ocean, without proposing to explain to us from whence had come the known materials of a former earth, which compose ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... and severer repasts of the Chartreuse; to the slender, but not slenderly acknowledged, refection of the poor and humble man: but at the heaped-up boards of the pampered and the luxurious they become of dissonant mood, less timed and tuned to the occasion, methinks, than the noise of those better befitting organs would be, which children hear tales of, at Hog's Norton. We sit too long at our meals, or are too curious in the study of them, or too disordered in our application to them, or engross ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... possible position, that music is made almost more of a mathematical problem than the free expression of emotions and aesthetics. "Correct" music has now hardly more liberty than Egyptian sculpture or Byzantine painting once had. Certain dissonances are permitted, and certain others, no more dissonant, forbidden, quite arbitrarily, or on hair-splitting theories. It is as if one should write down in a book a number of charts, giving every scheme of color and every juxtaposition of values permissible to a painter. The music of certain Oriental nations, ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... hand, the system of laws which they had to administer stood in striking contrast with the habits of mind which they had cultivated. The France which had been in great part constituted by their efforts was smitten with the curse of an anomalous and dissonant jurisprudence beyond every other country in Europe. One great division ran through the country and separated it into Pays du Droit Ecrit and Pays du Droit Coutumier, the first acknowledging the written Roman law as ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... the last Ceremonies to her Husband's dead Body, after their Country Fashion, least he should be displeased, that she could not stay with them, to be a Witness, because she was in haste to go and be married again. She startled the Europeans who heard this latter Part of her Speech so dissonant from the Beginning; however, they followed her, and she led them into a Plantane Walk, where they found a great many Johanna Men and Women, sitting under the Shade of Plantanes, round the Corpse, which lay (as they all sate) on the Ground, covered with Flowers. She embraced them round, and then ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe
... degree of privation and exposure for an English queen. At any rate, she remained during all this time in a state of great mental anxiety and alarm, for there were parties of soldiery constantly going by, with a tumult and noise which kept her in continual terror. Their harsh and dissonant voices, heard sometimes in angry quarrels and sometimes in mirth, were always frightful. In fact, for a helpless woman in a situation like that of the queen, the mood of reckless and brutal mirth in such savages was perhaps more to be dreaded than ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... 'aches' was then 'ad libitum', a dissyllable—'aitches'. For read it, 'aches,' in this sentence, and I would challenge you to find any period in Shakspeare's writings with the same musical or, rather dissonant, notation. Try the one, and then the other, by your ear, reading the sentence aloud, first with the word as a dissyllable and then as a monosyllable, and you will ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... I the quarry? Then I turned and fled If it was I indeed that feared and fled Down the long glades, and through the tangled brakes, Where scarce the sunlight pierced; fled on and on, And panted, self-pursued. But evermore The dissonant music which I knew so sweet, When by the windy hills, the echoing vales And whispering pines it rang; now far, now near As from my rushing steed I leant and cheered With voice and horn the chase; this brought to me Fear of I knew not what, which bade me fly, Fly always, fly; but ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... but, in general, the principal strength of the Germans consisted in their infantry, [73] which was drawn up in several deep columns, according to the distinction of tribes and families. Impatient of fatigue and delay, these half-armed warriors rushed to battle with dissonant shouts and disordered ranks; and sometimes, by the effort of native valor, prevailed over the constrained and more artificial bravery of the Roman mercenaries. But as the barbarians poured forth their whole souls on the first ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... they both astonish me, for on their well-tuned guitars they will search out accompaniments in parts, and try again each time that the chords are not perfectly true to their ear, without ever losing themselves in the confusion of these dissonant harmonies, always weird ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... of stone The scaffold rose, whereon Death claimed his own. At the four corners, in stern attitude, Four statues of the Hebrew Prophets stood, Gazing with calm indifference in their eyes Upon this place of human sacrifice, Round which was gathering fast the eager crowd, With clamor of voices dissonant and loud, And every roof and window was alive With restless gazers, swarming like ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... life He probes; and in the battling din of things That frets the feeble ear, he seeks and finds A harmony that tunes the dissonant ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... stopped to listen, with the day evidently growing hotter, for down in the gorge there was not a breath of air; while as they listened the whistling grew louder and was accompanied by another in a different key, the two producing a curious dissonant sound for a few minutes, increasing rapidly, and then ceased, to be followed by absolute silence, and then a dull sound followed as if ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... the church with men. Without, in the churchyard, Waited the women. They stood by the graves, and hung on the headstones Garlands of autumn-leaves and evergreens fresh from the forest. Then came the guard from the ships, and marching proudly among them Entered the sacred portal. With loud and dissonant clangor Echoed the sound of their brazen drums from ceiling and casement,— Echoed a moment only, and slowly the ponderous portal Closed, and in silence the crowd awaited the will of the soldiers. Then uprose their commander, and spake from the steps of ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow
... are repealed, the blockaded ports are thrown open, and the ringers in Briarfield belfry crack a bell that remains dissonant to this day. Caroline Helstone is in the garden listening to this call to be gay when a hand ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... rhythm so securely in the reader's ear that even this bold departure from the normal would seem a welcome relief. But it is both notable and certain that in a lyric measure the very same inversion does not seem unpleasantly dissonant— ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... began to guide the steeds on a (piece of) level ground, O foremost of the Bharatas. And owing to the swiftness of those fleet coursers conducted by him, I could see nothing—and this was strange. Then the Danavas there began to sound thousands of musical instruments, dissonant and of odd shapes. And at those sounds, fishes by hundreds and by thousands, like unto hills, having their senses bewildered by that noise, fled suddenly. And mighty force flew at me, the demons discharging sharpened shafts by hundreds and by thousands. And then, O Bharata, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... monotonous tonk-tonk-tonk of the coppersmith and the kutur-kutur-kutur of the green barbet are no more heard; in their stead the curious calls of the great Himalayan barbet resound among the hills. The dissonant voices of the seven sisters no longer issue from the thicket; their place is taken by the weird but less unpleasant calls of the Himalayan streaked laughing-thrushes. Even the sounds of the night are different. The chuckles and ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... rifts and seams in its gray walls—traces of convulsion and revolution. Proud as it is, its very splendor shows the marks of a barbarous age. Its tapestry speaks a language dissonant to the ears of freemen. It tells of exclusive privileges, of divine rights, not in the people, but in the king, of primogeniture, of conformities, of prescriptions, of serfs and lords, of attainder that dries up like a leprosy the fountains of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... Galloway, guided by a tall spear, wreathed with heather blossom, and shouting, "Albin! Albin!" with harsh, dissonant cries like the roar of a tempest, fell headlong on the English ranks, and at first their fury carried them on so that they burst through them as if they had been a spider's web. But the Norman chivalry ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge |
