"Keynote" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... went to The Hague attached to the French minister, and there he fell in love. The girl's mother objected. Voltaire sent his clothes to the young lady that she might visit him. Everything was discovered and he was dismissed. To this girl he wrote a letter, and in it you will find the keynote of Voltaire: "Do not expose yourself to the fury of your mother. You know what she is capable of. You have experienced it too well. Dissemble; it is your only chance. Tell her that you have forgotten me, that you hate me; then after telling her, love me ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the first verse strikes the keynote of the whole. In the beginning "Elohim [11] created the heaven and the earth." Heaven and earth were not primitive existences from which the gods proceeded, as the Gentiles taught; on the contrary, the "Powers" preceded and created heaven and ...
— Mr. Gladstone and Genesis - Essay #5 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... country-and the city-dweller meet on equal terms. Their problems may differ in detail, but the principles to be studied are the same. Here our art courses must be made to contribute their share to the homemaker's training. We must strike the keynote of simplicity, both within and without, and must teach girls especially the value of carefully thought-out color schemes and decorating plans, to be carried out by different people in the materials and workmanship ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... War had only just come to an end, and the keynote of this polemical pamphlet is, "Beware of the intoxication of success." When the whole of Germany was delirious with joy over her victory, at a time when the unquestioned triumph of her arms tended rather to reflect unearned glory upon every department of her social organisation, ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... am taken by that sensation of almost trembling magic which came to me when first I saw a mirage far out in the Sahara. But Egypt, though it contains so many marvels, has no longer for me the marvellous atmosphere. Its keynote is seductiveness. ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... that Euphemia had papers. At the first glance these close-written sheets suggested a treasonable Keynote, and the husband gripped it with a certain apprehension mingling with his relief at the opiate of reading. It was, so to speak, the privilege of police he exercised, so he justified himself. He began to read. But what is this? "She stood on the balcony outside the window, while the noblest-born ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... one of the greatest of Christian singers, unpolished as his verses are. Noble by birth, he made himself utterly as the common people for whom he piped his rustic notes. "Dio fatto piccino" ("God made a little thing") is the keynote of his music; the Christ Child is for him "our sweet little brother"; with tender affection he rejoices in endearing diminutives—"Bambolino," "Piccolino," "Jesulino." He sings of the Nativity with extraordinary realism.[13] Here, in words, is a picture of the Madonna and her Child that might ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... kind of a meeting held in the church with religious exercises. Then Mamanowatum made his address, always good and suggestive, the keynote of which was thanksgiving and gratitude to God for the blessings of the year. When he had finished, he called on different Indians for addresses. Some of them were very good also. This is the night ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... was the keynote of his mood. He felt as if he trod on air—as if he had but to walk boldly forward and every obstacle must give way. The door of No. 13 was open, and a boy who had brought a telegram was turning away from it. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... The keynote of these books is manliness. The stories are wonderfully entertaining, and they are at the same time sound and wholesome. No boy will willingly lay down an unfinished book ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... fashion? and why did she take it into her head to air all sorts of independent notions that quite shocked her mother? and why was she for ever drawing plans to herself of a life that should be solitary, and yet crowded with interests—whose keynote should be sympathy for her fellow-creatures and large-hearted work among them? and, above all, why did she want to persuade herself and Michael that this was the sort of life best fitted for her? But no one could answer ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... to the longer version of the "Sick-bed" is the Egerton version of "Etain," which is a complete one, and makes a stately romance. It is full of human interest, love being its keynote; it keeps the supernatural element which is an essential to the original legend in the background, and is of quite a different character to the earlier Leabhar na h-Uidhri version, although there is no reason to assume that the latter is really the more ancient in date. In the ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... troubled me: it was the old keynote of suppressed hopeless pain: it somehow recalled to me the image of some helpless innocent bird struggling in a fowler's net. Her eyes looked at ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... major, key of four sharps. By Jove, my little man! here is a fellow who sings B's and C's away up in the clouds; an E sharp, too!" he continued, with astonishment, while the singer made a hold upon the keynote an octave higher in a voice as clear as ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... had. Elsewhere the servants wandered about restlessly, waiting for news from the front, to learn if they, too, were to join in the mad flight from the city. Few servants love masters in adversity. Self-interest is the keynote to ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... concession brings abolitionists under the condemnation of that celebrated book, written by a modern limiter of "human responsibility"—not by the ancient one, who exclaimed, "Am I my brother's keeper?" In that book, to which, by the way, the infamous Atherton Resolutions are indebted for their keynote, and grand pervading idea, we find the doctrine, that even if it were the duty of Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, the North nevertheless should not seek for such abolition, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... fable of a mysterious Arabic manuscript, and set up Cide Hamete Benengeli in imitation of the almost invariable practice of the chivalry-romance authors, who were fond of tracing their books to some recondite source. In working out the new ideas, he soon found the value of Sancho Panza. Indeed, the keynote, not only to Sancho's part, but to the whole book, is struck in the first words Sancho utters when he announces his intention of taking his ass with him. "About the ass," we are told, "Don Quixote hesitated a little, trying ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... chorales, fifteen in number, as has already been said, were taken from the Lutheran service. One of them, which Bach also liberally used in his "Christmas Oratorio," beginning, "Acknowledge me, my Keeper," appears five times in the progress of the work, forming the keynote of the church sentiment, and differently harmonized on each occasion. Another, "O Blessed Jesus," is twice used,—once where the Saviour announces that he will be crucified after the Feast of the Passover, when the whole ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... This keynote, or governing note, as it may be called, is that upon which the voice most frequently dwells, to which it usually returns when wearied, and upon which a sentence generally commences, and very frequently ends, while, at ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... phrased it to himself that she hit a man squarely in the eyes. Her beauty had that direct and almost aggressive quality that is like a challenge, and with sophisticated feminine art she had contrived that the dinner gown she chose for that evening should sound the keynote of her personality like a leitmotif in an opera. The costume was a creation of white satin, the folds caught here and there with strings of pearls. There was a single large rose of pink velvet among the draperies of the skirt; a looped girdle of blue velvet was the only other splash of color. ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... the keynote to the breeder's operations. He is aiming at the production of a strain which shall combine the greatest number of desirable properties with the least number of undesirable ones. This good quality he must take from one strain, that from another, and that again from a third, while ...
— Mendelism - Third Edition • Reginald Crundall Punnett
... the world,' she said slowly. 'The harmony having its keynote from heaven, and then finding its accord in all one's earthly life. I suppose that was what David meant"O God, my heart is fixed; I will sing and give praise, even with my glory." 'She laid her head down upon her ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... The keynote of the dialogue is the opposition of day and night, typifying delusion and reality, avidya and Atman. In ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... God and hast prevailed.' And, says Christ: 'This man also is a son of Israel, one of God's warriors, who has prevailed with Him by prayer.' 'In whom is no guile'—Jacob in his early life had been marked and marred by selfish craft. Subtlety and guile had been the very keynote of his character. To drive that out of him, years of discipline and pain and sorrow had been needed. And not until it had been driven out of him could his name be altered, and he become Israel. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... assume the offensive. There is no way in which he can more thoroughly deceive his partner, create greater havoc with the bidding of the hand and cast deeper distrust upon his future declarations than by using the keynote bid to announce strength which his ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... life, I see that its keynote—through all the blunders, and the blind mistakes, and clumsy follies—has been this longing for sacrifice to something felt as greater than the self. It has been so strong and so persistent that I recognise it now as a tendency brought over from a previous life and dominating the ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... won, were prepared by Ernest Coxhead, architect, of this city. These proposed a massed grouping of the Exposition structures, around courts, and on the Bay front. They were afterwards amplified by Coxhead, and furnished the keynote of the scheme finally carried out. While the Exposition belongs not to California alone, but to the whole world, it is pleasant to find that so much of what is best in it is the work of ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... almost simultaneously—Cristofori, an Italian, Marins, a Frenchman, and Schroter, a German. For years attempts to carry out the new mechanism were so clumsy that good harpsichords on the wrong principle were preferred to poor piano-fortes on the right principle. But the keynote of progress had been struck, and the day of the quill and leather jack was swiftly drawing to a close. A small hammer was made to strike the string, producing a marvelously clear, precise, delicate tone, and the "scratch" with a sound at the end of it was about to be consigned to oblivion for ever ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... when England will have to fight for her existence, but for Heaven's sake let us not commit the folly of plunging into war at a moment when all Europe would be hostile to our armies—not one Power allied to the English cause.' [Footnote: Vol. I., Chapter XVI., p. 239.] The keynote of his policy was friendship with France. His experience in the Franco-German War had for ever changed the friendly impression which led him first to follow the ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... the voice is its keynote, or governing note. It is that on which the voice usually dwells, and to which it most frequently returns when wearied. It is also the pitch used in conversation, and the one which a reader or speaker naturally adopts—when he reads or ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... are fussier," Bob said. "Nevertheless the rules are pretty strict for all messages. And since accuracy is the keynote of radio and to get it your outfit must be in A1 condition, every care must be taken to have strong, clear, and effective sending and receiving power. That means you must constantly clean your apparatus and tighten it up; test out your detector ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... of South Carolina vindicated the State's position with logic, passion, and eloquence; while Webster replied with an equal logic, a broader and higher ideal of nationality, a vindication of New England which thrilled all hearts, and a patriotism which gave the keynote to the ultimate triumph of the Union. Hitherto, Massachusetts and South Carolina had each stood stiffly at times for her own way, even at peril of the national bond; but in that hour the individuality of South Carolina was merged in the slave-holding States, and that ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... was the keynote of his modest remarks. Afterward he was escorted to the quay-side station, where a special train of the type labelled Semi-Royal was ready to make ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... "To a Highland Girl," "Stepping Westward," The Excursion, and a score of lesser poems. Joy and sorrow, not of princes or heroes, but "in widest commonalty spread," are his themes; and the hidden purpose of many of his poems is to show that the keynote of all life is happiness,—not an occasional thing, the result of chance or circumstance, but a heroic thing, to be won, as one would win any other success, by ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... "Mardoche." He persuaded his father to give a literary party, to which his friends of the Cenacle were invited, and repeated his latest compositions to them, including "Mardoche." Here we have another example of manners startling to our notions: the keynote of these verses was rank libertinism, yet in his mother's drawing-room and apparently in the presence of his father, a dignified, reputable man, venerated by his children, this young rake declaimed stanzas more licentious than any in Byron's Don Juan. But it caused no scandal: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... The keynote of all these attacks upon the effort to secure honesty in business and in politics, is expressed in a recent speech, in which the speaker stated that prosperity had been checked by the effort for the "moral regeneration of the business world," an ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Of these, the most important was the Cistercian, founded in 1098 A.D. at Citeaux, not far from Cluny. The keynote of Cistercian life was the return to a literal obedience of St. Benedict's Rule. Hence the members of the order lived in the utmost simplicity, cooking their own meager repasts and wearing coarse woolen garments woven from the fleeces of their own sheep. ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... our mother, but her soul was too gentle to keep in restraint hot, fiery youths like my brothers and myself. On the whole we were good boys, and I suppose caused her no more pain than the average youngsters. Perhaps the keynote of her character can best be found in the following incident, if that which was of daily occurrence ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... fact that solitude was as much the keynote of his existence as of that of his father and mother, many eyes were concentrated upon the development, spiritual and mental, of Ivan Gregoriev. Upon him had been fastened the hopes even of the Gregoriev serfs, who were as devoted to him and to his mother as they were miserably ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... intrusion on the sacred ground of Gigadibs and the Germans, if I venture to indicate a touch inserted by Shakespeare for no other perceptible or conceivable purpose than to obviate by anticipation the indomitable and ineradicable fallacy of criticism which would find the keynote of Hamlet's character in the quality of irresolution. I may observe at once that the misconception involved in such a reading of the riddle ought to have been evident even without this episodical stroke of illustration. In any ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... countless fixed stars or suns, are but stages of abode for the evolving Spirit, and that beyond the Universe as we know it there are millions of others—in fact, that the number of Universes is infinite. The keynote of this doctrine may be stated as "Eternal Progression" toward the Divine Spirit. The Spirits do not insist upon any particular theory regarding the constitution of the soul—some of them speak merely of "soul and body," while others hold to the seven-fold ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... when some one inquired why he did not delegate such a disagreeable task to one of his deputies, he is said to have replied, "Simply because it is disagreeable." It was this elevated sense of moral responsibility which formed the keynote of his ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... set himself this task, and, so far, what he had done was satisfactory in view of his object. He turned from the heavy-slumbering men and his eyes fell upon the two small gold chests. Instantly his whole expression changed. Here was the keynote to the man's disposition. Gold! It was the gold he coveted. At all costs that gold was to be his. His eyes shone with greed. He moved towards the boxes as though he were about to handle them; but he paused ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... visited the Zunis, and writes with enthusiasm of the people. "Their domestic life might well serve as an example for the civilised world. They do not have large families. The husband and wife are deeply attached to one another and to their children." "The keynote of this harmony is the supremacy of the wife in the home. The house with all that is in it is hers, descending to her through her mother from a long line of ancestresses; and the husband is merely her permanent guest. The children—at least the female children—have their share in the ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... building one-fifth of their entire property. Having secured pledges, amounting to twelve hundred dollars, the Pastor now led a strong force of volunteer laborers in the manual labor of the undertaking. Felling the first tree for the timber in the woods with his own hands, Brother Himebaugh gave the keynote to the movement. Nor did he stay his hand until he had expended sixty days ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... ultramontane Catholics, Protestants even, such, at least, as were earnest Christians, and practised what they believed, forgot their divisions. The bishops were the first who spoke out. Mgr. de Parisis, who had so nobly contended for the liberties of the church in the reign of Louis Philippe, gave the keynote, and all took part with him and their venerable colleagues of Italy and Germany, of Ireland and Spain, of England and America. To say all in a word, the note of alarm was sounded throughout ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... at general gatherings. Give the people at least such liberty with their own collection of books as the bookseller gives them with his. Let the shelves be open, and the public admitted to them, and let the open shelves strike the keynote of the whole administration. The whole library should be permeated with a cheerful and accommodating atmosphere. Lay this down as the first rule of library management; and for the second, let it be said that librarian ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana
... notorious Carmagnole could be heard every hour of the day—on stated days, officially, at the Belvedere Club. Love for France, hatred for England, was the spirit of the age; it effected the trend of commerce, it dominated politics, it was the keynote of conversation wherever men and ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... of Peter into the drawing-room of Mrs. Deane, the pale flowery wisp of a boy walking as it were into a garden of pungent spices and herbs, and of actions so alien to his own? We are given at this moment the keynote of mastery in delicate suggestion, which never fails throughout the play, tedious as it is, overdrawn on the side of ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... told them, still holds good, though it has declined in use, like all things chivalrous, in an age deafened by the clamour of industrial strife; an age grown blind to the beauty of service, that, in defiance of "progress," still remains the keynote of an Indian ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... never forget these facts that they have taken the trouble to find out. Once a girl has realised the outlook of Mary Queen of Scots or Elizabeth, and has learnt to impersonate her without glaring mistakes, she has the keynote to the history of the times. When she has spoken to 'Darnley,' 'Black Both-well,' 'Rizzio,' 'John Knox,' or to 'Bacon,' 'Raleigh,' 'Essex,' and 'Sidney,' she has turned mere names into real personages, ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... paintings. But Botticelli's painted statue and Perugino's "S. Michael" and "Warriors" of the Cambio seem to spread their legs because they are too puny to bear the weight of the body in any other manner, while with Signorelli, the attitude became the keynote of his resolute indomitable nature, and so much a part of his work, that one is apt to forget it did not ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... papal court was responsible for the widespread moral inertia which was characteristic of the time. The pontiff's chair at the dawn of this century was filled by Roderigo Borgia, known as Alexander VI., and it may well be said that his career of crime and lust gave the keynote to the society which was to follow him. By means of most open bribery he had been elected to his office, but, in spite of these well-known facts, his advent was hailed with great joy and his march to the ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... told Lady Blessington on the 20th of November; and to Forster he expressed the yearning that was in him to "leave" his "hand upon the time, lastingly upon the time, with one tender touch for the mass of toiling people that nothing could obliterate." This was the keynote of "The Chimes." He intended in it to strike a great and memorable blow on behalf of the poor and down-trodden. His purpose, so far as I can make it out, was to show how much excuse there is for their shortcomings, ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... support—but was ready and eager to meet the enemy in the hour of need. If it is a sound axiom never to despise the enemy, it is nevertheless true that excessive prudence has lost many an action. Farragut's motto has been the keynote of the success of all the great sea-captains, "L'audace, et encore de l'audace, et toujours ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... sitting on the couch, listening to the conversation without really hearing it. She was in a dreamy, contented mood. She found herself curiously soothed by the atmosphere of the studio, with its shaded lights and its atmosphere of peace. That was the keynote of the place, peace. ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... in doctrine, with gentle leaning toward Catholicism in externals, held still firmly by the "Act of Supremacy" in the controlling hand of the Sovereign. Above all else desiring peace and prosperity for England, the keynote of Elizabeth's policy in Church and in State was conciliation and compromise. So the Church of England was to a great extent a compromise, retaining as much as the people would bear of external form and ritual, for the sake of ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... forms the keynote of his art. Every opera he wrote depicts a soul in bonds. From "The Flying Dutchman" to "Parsifal" we are shown the struggle of a strong man with cruel Fate; a reaching out for liberty and light; the halting between duty and inclination; and the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... began the runs introduced in the Amen in order to exhibit the skill of the singer. The voice was no longer a 'cello, deep and resonant, but a lonely flute or silver bugle announcing some joyous reverie in a landscape at the close of day. The song closed on the keynote, and Sister Mary John turned from the instrument and looked at the singer. She could not speak, she seemed overpowered by the music, and like one more dreaming than waking, and sitting half turned round on her seat, she looked ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... whole drama, receive their true significance only when the centre of the whole drama, round which it develops itself, as round its kernel, becomes perfectly clear and lucid in that particular passage. And that passage, the keynote of my whole work, I was compelled ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... His sovereign will, who is the life of our lives—this, and nothing shallower, nothing narrower, is religion in its perfection; and the measure in which we have attained to this harmony with God, is the measure in which we are Christians. As two stringed instruments may be so tuned to one keynote that, if you strike the one, a faint ethereal echo is heard from the other, which blends undistinguishably with its parent sound; so, drawing near to God, and brought into unison with His mind and will, our responsive ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... on Aunt Lucy's floors since before the Civil War. Isn't it beautifully faded?—it furnishes the keynote of the whole room. Isn't it fortunate that the room should be so long and low, instead of high and square? Is it a restful room, girls? That's what ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... significantly placed his Oktoberlied, written in the political gloom and uncertainty of the fall of 1848. While realizing fully its inherent tragic elements, Storm loved and glorified life and thirstily drank in its beauty to the very last. This is the keynote ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... ages of fourteen and seventeen were collected, and constituted her first published volume. Crude and immature as these productions naturally were, and utterly condemned by the writer's later judgment, they are, nevertheless, highly interesting and characteristic, giving, as they do, the keynote of much that afterwards unfolded itself in her life. One cannot fail to be rather painfully impressed by the profound melancholy pervading the book. The opening poem is "In Memoriam,"—on the death of a ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... is the very keynote of his character and of his intellectual life as well. As M. Walferdin has said, the denial of the supernatural was for him the base of all virtue, and resting on this principle, he exemplified social qualities that do the greatest ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing
... itself in purple to me; a pale one in blue. It was out of that spiritual sight that I built my theory of color. It took me years, but time after time have I proved to my own complete satisfaction that each individual has a keynote of color; ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... except those for Crawford, denounced the old system; legislatures passed resolutions against it; public meetings condemned it; ponderous pamphlets were hurled at it; the campaigns of Jackson and Clay, in particular, found their keynote in hostility toward it. Failing to perceive that under the changed circumstances a caucus nomination might become a liability rather than an asset, the Crawford element pushed its plans, and on February 14, 1824, a caucus—destined to be the last of ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... knew how to make the most of his opportunity. On his part, the king wanted a general badly. He had been grievously disappointed in Sir William Howe, whose victories seemed never bringing the war any nearer to an end. Burgoyne brought forward his plan at the right moment, shrewdly touched the keynote of the king's discontent by declaring for aggressive war, smoothed every obstacle away with easy assurance, and so impressed the ministers with his capacity, that they believed they had found the very man the king wanted for the work ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... (Marcus Aurelius calls it 'the good ordering of the mind') is the keynote of technical control. Together with the principle of relaxation it provides the player with the most effective means of establishing precise and sensitive cooeperation between mental and physical processes. ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... other across the council table, a nation-wide demonstration will be under way in the United States. Organized labor announces that in every town and city the workers will join with other citizens in mass-meetings and parades and that the keynote of Armistice Day should be, 'It is time to disarm.' It will help in impressing upon our own government and upon other governments that the people are weary of war-made tax burdens; that they are deeply in earnest in their demands that these burdens be removed. It will strengthen ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... gold and wine and flowers, is itself avowedly a flower, or "liquid nectar," or "the sweet fruit of his soul to men that are winners in the games." "As when from a wealthy hand one lifting a cup, made glad within with the dew of the vine, maketh gift thereof to a youth":—the keynote of Pindar's verse is there! This brilliant living youth of his day, of the actual time, for whom, as he says, he "awakes the clear-toned gale of song"- -epeon hoimon ligyn—that song mingles sometimes with the splendours of a recorded ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... conceal the personality of a man. A critic in the Paris World writes of this artist: "She has exquisite color sense and delights in presenting that exaltation de la vie, that love, radiance, and joy of life, which are at once the secret of the success and the keynote of the masterful canvases of Roll, in whose studio were first developed Claude Marlef's delicate qualities of truthful perception in the portraiture of woman.... Her perceptions being rapid, she has a remarkable instantaneous insight, enabling her to fix the dominant feature and soul ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... of the greatest in literature. His heroes, little folk, artisans or rustics, bureaucrats or shopkeepers, prostitutes or rakes, he places them in faintly colored, but well-defined surroundings. And, immediately, the simplified landscape gives the keynote of ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... The keynote of the Salariki character was a wary independence. The only form of government they would tolerate was a family-clan organization. Feuds and deadly duels between individuals and clans were the accepted way of life ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... of Wednesday will astound the world when made known in full. I know that two German detachments of 1,000 men each, which were surrounded and cornered but which refused to surrender, were wiped out almost to the last man. The keynote of these operations was the tremendous attack of the Allies along the Ourcq Tuesday, which showed the German commander that his lines were threatened. Then came the ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... of the inevitable, avoidance of the evil—is the keynote of the Epictetean philosophy. It has been summed up in the three words, [Greek: Anechou kai apechou], "sustine et abstine," "Bear and forbear,"—bear whatever God assigns to you, abstain from ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... a well-known passage in his Discorsi (i. 27), explains his theory with terrible frankness, and his words are the exact keynote of the ethics of his age. He relates how Julius II ventured into Perugia, although Giampolo Baglione had gathered a large number of troops there, and how the latter, overawed by the Pope, surrendered the city to ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... indifferently. "I will grant you that greed is the keynote of this place; yet even that has its interesting side. Where else do you see it so developed? Where else could you see the same emotion actuating a number of very different people in an altogether ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... believed that if he could once identify the four Mexicans whom Helen May had seen, he would be a long step ahead. He considered the simple expedient of asking her to describe them as closely as she could. But since secrecy was the keynote of his quest, he did not want to rouse her curiosity, and for purely personal reasons he did want to shield her as far as possible from any uneasiness or any ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... The keynote to the sailor's treatment in the Navy may be said to have been profane abuse. Officers of all ranks kept the Recording Angel fearfully busy. With scarcely an exception they were men of blunt speech and rough tongue who never hesitated to call a spade a spade, ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... the glorious Resurrection of our Lord from the dead. Here, the praise of the Greek Church touches its highest note, and pours forth its most enchanting melody. "Christ is risen," and the glad response, "He is risen indeed"—these words constitute the keynote of all that is best and most beautiful in Greek worship. The Knowledge and the Wisdom of God are everywhere extolled, and the attribute of Light is continually and cordially applied to ...
— Hymns from the East - Being Centos and Suggestions from the Office Books of the - Holy Eastern Church • John Brownlie
... in Chicago, November 14-15, 1917, came when the first movement of American soldiers to European battlefields was begun, and patriotism was the keynote of the meeting. Because of the stress of the times, the program was cut to two days, instead of the three days of ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... are running up and down my backbone? And you say Philippe has never been to the chapel on a stormy night to test the truth of the story? Lived here all his life and never had the get-up-and-get to go find out? That is the keynote of his character. He lacks imagination, and that is one big reason both of us have had for not succumbing to his charms. There is no telling what havoc he might have played with our hearts if ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... state, the patient may be objectively in the same condition as a typical stupor. The histories of the two psychoses differentiate the two reactions which may be indistinguishable at one interview. The keynote of one reaction is indifference, while that of absorption is distraction, a perversion of attention to an ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... 2) the procedure or method of attack, 3) observation of results, 4) and the use of these in making some generalizations or arriving at some conclusions. Then there must follow a testing of these generalizations or conclusions by further experimentation. Accuracy must be the keynote of all work, accuracy in recording experiments, accuracy in observation, accuracy in drawing, which serves as a shortcut method of description. Neatness is very desireable but should never supercede thinking and understanding. If the problem has stimulated ...
— Adequate Preparation for the Teacher of Biological Sciences in Secondary Schools • James Daley McDonald
... shibboleths, mainly drawn from the vocabulary of extreme Radical sentimentalists, which Mr. Mallik supplies to his readers in rich abundance, two may be selected which give the keynote to his opinions. The first, which is inscribed on the title-page, is St. Paul's statement to the Athenians that all nations of men are of one blood. The second, which occurs towards the close of his work, is that "sane ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... During the first days at school the morning hymn had been both a delight and stimulus. She had listened to the words with a beating heart, and whispered them to herself in devout echo; they had seemed to strike a keynote for the day, and send her to work full of courage; but, alas! for weeks past the strains had fallen on deaf ears, and the lips had been too busy conning Latin substantives to have leisure for other repetition. Her sense of guilt made her meek under the confiscation of her ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... meant us from the first to see it struggling through them. But in so doing he has judged Sordello's poetic life as a blind aspiration after the spiritual, while the egotism which he represents as the keynote of his poetic being was in fact the negation of it. The idea was just: that the greatest poet must have in him the making of the largest man. His Sordello is imperial among men for the one moment in which his song is in sympathy with human life; and Mr. Browning would ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... more wildly. Were their wishes fully realized this day, and the Confederacy an undisputed fact, a party would instantly arise—nay, a party already exists—throughout the country, demanding reunion on any terms. Archbishop Hughes has already in either hemisphere struck the keynote of this cry. He truly says that our country cannot be permanently divided. He unworthily adds that, if it cannot be united under the old Constitution, it must be under a new one—in other words, under that of the Confederacy. The Democratic party of the Free States, abandoning the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... money in the last ten years in oil and he is going to build an estate up on the Hudson that will make the world gasp. I hadn't put in a bid, but this idea of the judge's and Greg's, with the whole village grouped about it, has given me the keynote to win the thing from the whole bunch of American architects. He wants the village built as well as the estate. That American garden idea will bowl him over. He's progressively and rabidly American. The bids don't close until December, so I'll have time to get real photographs and sketches. Me for ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Macchiavelli, Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Amerigo Vespucci. For the development of their commerce, the cities of the North had grouped themselves into the great Hanseatic League, with branches in Bruges, London, Bergen, and Novgorod. Commercialism had everywhere become the keynote of the closing Middle Ages, inspiring that maritime enterprise which was soon to outline a new ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... worthy achievement is the keynote of the present volume, its object, to arouse to honorable exertion youth who are drifting without aim, to awaken dormant ambitions in those who have grown discouraged in the struggle for success, to encourage and stimulate to higher resolve those who are setting out to make their ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... roomful of silver for his services in exterminating the Mongolian bandits Rhodes looked at him in surprise and said: "Why didn't you take it? What is the earthly use of having ideas if you haven't the money with which to carry them out?" Here you have the keynote of the whole Rhodes business policy. A project had to be carried through regardless of expense. It applied to the Cape-to-Cairo dream just as it applied to every other enterprise with which he ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... and formality of learning. In literary style the passage displays the uncertain hand of youth, and in a translation something is lost of the charm of simplicity which pervades the original. But in this passage the keynote ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... of age upwards, contempt for the masters was the keynote of all conversation about them. The Latin master, a little, insignificant-looking man, but a very good teacher, was said to be so disgracefully enfeebled by debauchery that an active boy could throw him without the least difficulty. The Natural History master, a clever, outspoken ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... world not to enthrone a man, but an idea, for ideas exist for ever. But what idea? There is the touchstone of all philosophy! Amid the wreck of creeds, the crash of empires, French revolutions, English reforms, Catholicism in agony, and Protestantism in convulsions, discordant Europe demands the keynote, which none can sound. If Asia be in decay, Europe is in confusion. Your repose may be death, but our ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... again?" Eva shyly asks of Walther, as Magdalene is hurrying her off. His answer gives the keynote of him, characteristic outburst that it is of his vital, vigourous, enthusiastic youth, to which all things seem possible—beautiful youth, which has the splendour and force of fire, with the freshness of flowers; which flashes like ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... a risen Saviour, was the keynote of his ministry. As he said: "Who of all the Saviours of the Indian people has risen from the dead? Not one." "Our fathers told us many things and gave us many customs, but they were not true." "I grew up believing in what my father taught me, but when ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell
... and that the total sum was nearer L7,000,000 than L4,000000, while the entire cost of poor-law relief in the United Kingdom was only L8,000,000. Having dwelt upon the evils of misdirected charity, she said the keynote of General Booth's scheme, and what, as it seemed to her, gave her great hope of its being to some extent a success, was the amount of personal devotion and energy which it called for and which she believed ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... of her table, so that if the waitress omits any service she may by a glance direct her to supply it. The arrangement should be graceful and pretty, and, in summer, garden flowers may be used with propriety. The flowers give the keynote of the color scheme; dinner cards, bonbons, ices and creams and the decorations of the small cakes usually served with the dessert, conform to it. Candelabra are less used than at one time, but are by no means "out." A handsome ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... of Nazi propaganda has been demonstrated repeatedly during the past decade. That its keynote was set by Hitler himself becomes evident upon an examination of his statements on foreign policy over a period of years. Not only has his policy been marked by a series of shifts and turns, so that the policy of one year was frequently canceled ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various
... is risen. Good reader, you will probably agree that to know that saying, is to know the key-note of the world to come. Believe me, to know it, and all it means, is to know the keynote of this world also, from the fall of dynasties and the fate of nations, to the sea-weed which ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... dog on shore was the first to scent the coming strangers. He gave vent to a low growl. It was the keynote to the canine choir, which immediately sent up a howl of discord. Forthwith from every hut there leaped armed men, anxious women, and terrified children, which latter rushed towards the cliffs or took ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... be briefly alluded to as eminently characteristic of the Sagas is their fatefulness. As we read we seem to hear the voice of Doom speaking continually. "Things will happen as they are fated": that is the keynote of them all. The Norse mind had little belief in free will, less even than we have to-day. Men and women were born with certain characters and tendencies, given to them in order that their lives should run in appointed channels, and their acts bring about an appointed ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... immunity from Fate, to which suffering humanity is subject. But this humanity is represented by Hoelderlin characteristically as helpless, passive—"schwinden," "fallen," "blindlings von einer Stunde zur andern." Whereas the opening lines of Goethe's "Parzen" strike the keynote of conflict ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... simple man; capable, when the whole of his various qualities were directed upon one single thing, of that greatness which is the crown of simplicity. Ambition was the keynote of his life; not an unworthy keynote, by any means, if only the ambition be sound; but one serious defect of Columbus's ambition was that it was retrospective rather than perspective. He may have had, before he sailed from Palos, an ambition to be the discoverer of a New World; but ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... went around the table. Mr. Watling winked at me; I nodded, but said nothing. The banker was not a man to listen to superfluous words. The keynote of his ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... hand, we possess a curious lyrical prelude to the play, which he put on paper on March 16, 1892. It is said to have been his habit, before setting to work on a play, to "crystallise in a poem the mood which then possessed him;" but the following is the only one of these keynote poems which has been published. I give it in the original language, with a ...
— The Master Builder • Henrik Ibsen
... after the drawing-master had endowed the work with artistic merit by the application of white chalk to the high lights, the pearls, the canary's eyes, and the pathetic tear-drops upon the damsels' faces, the immortal productions were ready for framing. The giraffe or swan-necked angel was the keynote for all ideal work, and even the recognised artists of those days, with one or two brilliant exceptions, followed in ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... giggled and the four little Japanese maids giggled, too; not that they understood a word of the language, but good humor is the keynote of the Japanese character and strangers are treated with a sympathetic courtesy and hospitality unequaled in any ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... can, what he thinks are the criteria for the formation of judgment in these matters. Yet his interpretation is to be different from technical criticism, as his effort is primarily directed toward intention, meaning and effect. This thought is the keynote to the comments on the various sculptures illustrated in the work. While one may not agree with the author in his arrangement and may differ from his interpretation, it must be admitted that the book contains interesting information and is a bold step in the right direction. It is a portraiture ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... the first Christian Science church erected in Boston strikes a keynote of definite attention. This church is in the fashionable Back Bay, between Commonwealth and Huntington Avenues. It is one of the most beautiful, and is certainly the most unique structure in any city. The First Church of Christ, Scientist, as it is officially ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... at his truest in these ESSAYS, written during the last seven years of his life. Their style is simple, and their thoughts are pure. They have, for their keynote, the happiness of one who loves true liberty in quiet possession of himself. When he turns to the Latins, his translations are all from those lines which would have dwelt most pleasantly upon a mind that to the last held by the devout wish expressed by ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... the delicious poetical tropics. Do you desire to create an ideal paradise, a la Bernardin de St. Pierre, where idyllic Virginies die of pure modesty rather than appear before the eyes of their beloved but unwedded Pauls in a lace-bedraped peignoir?—then you strike the keynote by sticking in the middle distance a hut or cottage, overshadowed by the broad and graceful foliage of the picturesque banana. ('Hut' is a poor and chilly word for these glowing descriptions, far inferior to the ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... the ancient one of the waters. Then sat she face to face with her son as he let the tears down fall, and caressed him, saying, "Child, wherefore weepest thou, for what sorrow of heart? Hide it not, tell it to me; that I may know it as well as thou." Here the poet strikes the keynote of the character of Achilles, the deadly in war, the fierce in council, who weeps for his lost lady and his wounded honour, and cries for help to his ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... candidate for governor. With one or two exceptions, he was the youngest member of the Nineteenth Congress. He was prominently connected with every leading question, and upon all he struck what proved to be the keynote for the action of his party. His maiden speech was in defense of the proposed amendment to the Constitution giving the choice of the President and Vice-President directly to the people. It at once placed him in the front rank of Congressional debaters. He opposed the appropriation ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... of all, and endeavoring to compensate by intelligence and kindness for the poverty of their surroundings. "One cheerful, bright, and contented spirit in a household will uplift the tone of all the rest. The keynote of the home is in the hand of the resolutely cheerful member of the family, and he or she will set ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... keynote to Mrs. Fordyce's plan of action. To secure Gladys as a daughter-in-law at any price was her aim, and she had already stifled her womanly indignation over her son's fall, and even comforted herself by the cheap reflection that George had never been half so fast as dozens ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... from headquarters. Your self-conceived plan has met with every encouragement from us. You will be placed in a unique position to achieve your final purpose. Now mark my words and do not misunderstand me. The very keynote of our progress is ruthlessness. To take even a single step forward towards the achievement of that purpose is worth the sacrifice of all the scruples and delicacies conceivable. But when a certain course of action is without profit to our purpose, ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the book of Proverbs no more mean the theoretical philosopher than the fool and the scorner in the same book denote the one ignorant in theoretical speculation. "The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord." This is the keynote of the book of Proverbs, and its precepts and exhortations are practical and nothing else. That the Pentateuchal law is solely concerned with practical conduct, religious, ceremonial and moral, needs not saying. ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... marching army of humanity, therefore they are necessarily the first discoverers and proclaimers of the new landscapes and ranges of Duties and Rights that rise out of the horizon, point after point, and vista after vista, along the line of progress. For the sonnet of the poet today is to furnish the keynote of the morrow's speech in Parliament, as that which yesterday was song is today the current prose of the hustings, the pulpit, and the market. Wherefore, O poet, take heart for the world; thou, in whose utterance speaks the inevitable Future; who art thyself ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... integrity of the defense. It is wrong, dead wrong, to start, or carry along, on the opposite track, and try to persuade men to do the right thing, by dwelling on the awful consequence of doing the wrong thing. Confidence, not fear, is the keynote of ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... and Other Folk Plays for Young People Simplicity is the keynote of these eight plays. Each has a footnote on its origin, and full descriptions and directions for easily arranged costumes and scene-settings, especially designed to fit the limitations of the schoolroom stage. $1,20 net; ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... stern appeals to conscience and reason, sparing of words, utterly without rhetoric, intense in purpose. They were like the short, sharp, rapid utterances of men in pain and danger and pressing emergency. The first one gave the keynote of the series. Mr. Newman "had out of his own head begun the Tracts": he wrote the opening one in a mood which he has himself described. He was in the "exultation of health restored and home regained": he felt, he says, an "exuberant and joyous energy which he never had before ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... 16, 1864. Similar articles and editorials might be quoted from many of the more important papers, but the Times and the Gazette will suffice as furnishing the keynote. I have not examined in detail the files of the metropolitan press beyond determining their general attitude on the Civil War and for occasional special references. Such examination has been sufficient, however, to warrant ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... balances is another circumstance which often depresses the exchange market sharply. "Trouble in the Balkans" and "trouble over the Moroccan situation" are two bugbears which have for years back furnished the keynote for many swoops downward in the exchange market, and for years after this book is published will probably continue to do so. Money on deposit at a point several thousand miles away is naturally very sensitive, ...
— Elements of Foreign Exchange - A Foreign Exchange Primer • Franklin Escher
... music rolling and echoing from choir to canopy, and from spire to shaft, and over all the clear glad voice of a singing boy, affecting one as a thing over-sweet, and striking just the right artistic keynote for one's emotions; or At Lanuvium, through the music of whose lines one seems to hear again the murmur of the Mantuan bees straying down from their own green valleys and inland streams to find what honeyed amber the sea-flowers might be hiding; or the poem ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... that went through every heart, high or low, young or old, that heard it. And she went to him, through the air it seemed; but, quick as she was, another was as quick; the mother had seen him first, and she was there. Christie saw nothing. With another cry, the very keynote of her great and loving heart, she flung her arms round—Mrs. Gatty, who was on the ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... electricity must accord with the lines of your architecture and furniture. The mantelpiece is the connecting link between the architecture and the furnishing of a room. It is the architect's contribution to the furnishing, and for this reason the keynote ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... of reincarnation shows our inherent divinity and the method by which the latent becomes the actual. Instead of the ignoble belief that we can fling our sins upon another it makes personal responsibility the keynote of life. It is the ethics of self-help. It is the moral code of self-reliance. It is the religion ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... newspaper "story." All that the newspaper usually demands is that the reporter cram the gist of his facts into the first few sentences. The magazine insists that the first paragraph of a manuscript not only catch attention but also sound the keynote of many words to follow, for the "punch" of the magazine story is more often near the end of the ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... him—a course she unhesitatingly resolved to take should he think fit to declare himself. She was interested in him and his marvellous beauty, as she might have been in some fascinating panther or leopard—for some undefinable reason she shrank from him, even whilst she admired. The keynote of her nature, a warm 'precipitance of soul,' as Coleridge happily writes it, which Manston had so directly pounced upon at their very first interview, gave her now a tremulous sense of being in some way ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... setting of profound gloom, and is wrought out as a highly imaginative study in fear—a symphony in which every touch blends into a perfect unity of effect. "Ligeia," perhaps standing next, incorporating "The Conqueror Worm" as its keynote, portrays the terrific struggle of a woman's will against death. "The Masque of the Red Death," a tale of the Spirit of Pestilence and of Death victorious over human selfishness and power, is a splendid study in somber color. "The Assignation," a romance of Venice, is also splendid in coloring ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... Strand, is unique. Here, if he wishes, the Briton may for the small sum of half a dollar stupefy himself with food. The god of fatted plenty has the place under his protection. Its keynote is solid comfort. ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... keynote to the charm of George Sand's art is given in her preface to her exquisite novel "La Derniere Aldini." Here is none of the accuracy and patience of the scientific enquirer into the "mysterious mixture" man, which we find in George Eliot's preface to "Middlemarch." ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne
... old furnishings, the room gave one a sense of space and comfort; its agreeable warmth was too equable to have been derived solely from the cheerful blaze in the veritable Adam's fireplace, which seemed to have provided the keynote to the general scheme of decoration. The great bay-window overlooked a long, gently sloping lawn, bounded on either side by shrubbery, trees, and hedges, terminated by shrubbery and hedges alone, the trees originally there having been long since removed to admit of a clear ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... exultingly on the celebration in memory of the Maccabean heroes, on the days of Purim, at wedding banquets, at the love-feasts of the pious brotherhood. This fusion of melancholy and of rejoicing is the keynote of mediaeval Jewish music growing out of the grotesque contrasts of Jewish history. Yet, despite its romantic woe, it is informed with the spirit of a remote past, making it the legitimate offspring of ancient Hebrew music, whose characteristics, to be sure, we arrive ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... effect likely to be produced in the country by the example set by London; and those who, unlike Pepys, were of a Presbyterian turn of mind freely expressed their hopes that the keynote of the election struck by the City would be taken up by the country at large. "God has overruled the hearts of men and heard the prayers of his people in the city election, though the Episcopals were high and thought to have the day; a precedent is given to the whole country," ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... to the old nurse, or moving, sweetly grave and softly demure, through the stately figures of the minuet—was already marked off from among the living, already overshadowed by a terrible fate, already alone in the bleak loneliness of the broken heart. Striking the keynote thus, the rest followed in easy sequence. The ecstasy of the wooing scene, the agony of the final parting from Romeo, the forlorn tremor and passionate frenzy of the terrible night before the burial, ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... is a squeezed orange, but for public good there is something to do, and I shall try—but it must be cautiously— to do it. You know my politics well enough to know what I mean when I say that for 'Europe' I shall be desirous now and then to read 'England.'" The closing sentence was the keynote of his policy. For years it had been customary for representatives of the powers to treat all important matters as "European questions," and England had become habituated to a diplomacy which kept English interests ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... opportunity of the Catholic Church to show that she is from the God who created nature, by opening before this people her treasures, amid which the soul revels in rational liberty and intelligence, and enjoys the gratification of its best and purest moral instincts. These convictions are the keynote of Father Hecker's controversial discourses and writings, notably of two books, Aspirations of Nature and Questions of the Soul. He assumed that the American people are naturally Catholic, and he labored with this proposition constantly ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... glad, Sir, to see this crowded house. It is good for us to be here. When liberty is in danger, Faneuil Hall has the right, it is her duty, to strike the keynote of these United States. I am glad, for one reason, that remarks such as those to which I have alluded have been uttered here. The passage of these resolutions, in spite of this opposition, led by the Attorney-General of the Commonwealth, will show more clearly, more decisively, the deep indignation ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... find the keynote of all our subsequent troubles. The complete and almost absurd confidence of the British, supported as it was by valour without wisdom or activity, was a "voice" and nothing more. Deeply have we suffered since ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... which would result in a Constituent Assembly, and would free them from the responsibility of concluding peace on terms rather than accept which they proudly asserted a few weeks ago they would all die. The keynote of the situation is given by the organs of public opinion, which until now have teemed with articles calling upon the population of the capital to bury itself beneath its ruins, and thus by a heroic sacrifice to serve as an example to the whole of France. To-day they say, "It appears ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... rather than allow some poor wretch to sit beside his pictures and collect an alms. And there is great joy in destroying that which men are too coarse to appreciate, in feeling that they have in their power that which, something tells them, belongs to a refinement they cannot attain. That was the keynote of the excesses of the French Revolution, for nothing arouses the fury of the unclean so much as cleanliness, and a man has been killed before now for daring to wash his hands. And it is this elemental love of destroying that has raged through Belgium in the last few months, ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... or change In a weary monotonous burden, Be the keynote of mourning or mirth; Free, but free not to range; Taking for crown and for guerdon No man's ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the Greek notions of heroism than that of the love-sick knight who joyfully throws away his life for an hour in his lady's chamber, tears up the warrant reprieving him from execution, and accepts death to save Queen Mary's fragile reputation. But although the keynote of Mr. Swinburne's coming poetry is struck in Chastelard—the overpowering enthralment of Love, a joy to live and ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... Mrs. Mary Barker Dodge (D. Lothrop & Co., Boston) has won a series of splendid notices; yet, so far as we know, sufficient stress has not been laid upon the keynote of the volume. Love, in its varying phases, sounds through the majority of the verses like the refrain of a song. Sometimes sad, sometimes solemn, oftener gay and hopeful, the differing themes take up, one after another, the burden of the initial poem; and ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... lifetime. Give you my word, Grig, when he was off his chump in the fever, he raved like a poet, and an orator, and he was only an ordinary sportsman when he left home in the spring! Cleopatra, he called her one day, and I fancy that was the keynote—she must have been one of those exceptional women we read ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... bars later. He might have added that the entire composition contains examples—look at the first bar of the valse episode in the bass. As Niecks thinks, "This dissonant E flat may be said to be the emotional keynote of the whole poem. It is a questioning thought that, like a sudden pain, shoots through ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... The keynote of neurasthenia is increased liability to fatigue. The tired feeling that comes on with a minimum of exertion, worse on arising than on going to bed, is its distinguishing mark. Sleep, which should remove the fatigue of the day, does not; the victim takes half of his day to get ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... forgotten, just here accidentally touched the piano with his elbow, and the sound that came forth was the keynote to Mendelssohn's "Wedding March." Forthwith he began to play it. Loretz looked at him, and seemed to feel suddenly reassured. A wavering light fell around him: he beckoned to the minister. "Do any of the folks around ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various |
