"Tympanum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... feet high, in which that execrable tyrant confined all persons who came within the range of his suspicion, and which was so ingeniously contrived and constructed that Dionysius, by applying his ear to a small hole, where the sounds were collected as upon a tympanum, could catch every syllable that was uttered in the cavern below, and could deal out his proscription and his vengeance accordingly upon all who might dare to dispute his authority or to complain of his cruelty. Or they may have imagined, perhaps, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... aspects, of any which I am just now able to recollect. Perhaps the basement story, upon which this double columned colonnade of the Corinthian Order runs, is somewhat too plain—a sort of affectation of the rustic. The alto-relievo figures in the centre of the tympanum have a decisive and appropriate effect. The advantage both of the Thuileries and Louvre is, that they are well seen from the principal thoroughfares of Paris: that is to say, along the quays, and ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... stretch a skin very tight over the knees, and thus may be said to use the tympanum in its rudest form, this being the only instance of a musical instrument that I have seen among them. Burder says: "By the timbrels which Miriam and the other women played upon when dancing, we are to understand the tympanum of the ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... long we were ascending we did not know. Certain it is that the impressions described were all there was time for, and that when Donaldson turned and spoke we saw his lips move but could hear no sound. Our speed had been such that the pressure of the air upon the tympanum of the ear left us deaf for some minutes. We had made a dash of two miles into cloudland and had accomplished it, we three firmly believed, in little ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... bawling in a voice sharp enough to split the tympanum of a deaf man. "Alfred! have at 'em, old darling! They wanted to behave improperly to thy 'Stasie! (Anastasia). Those rascals would take liberties with me! Pitch into them with your broom! call the oyster-woman and the potboy next door to help you. Quick!— quick!—after them! ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... assistance of a bass, it is a poor concert, very poor indeed, though there are about ten executants in my immediate vicinity. The tone lacks intensity. My old tympanum is not always capable of perceiving these subtleties of sound. The little that reaches me is extremely sweet and most appropriate to the calm of twilight. Just a little more breadth in your bow-stroke, my dear Green Grasshopper, and ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... excellent people do not begin to understand the intense pleasure with which one listens, whose auricular nerves are more highly developed. But this rare and soul-stirring enjoyment is many times accompanied, as in my case, with acute suffering whenever the tympanum is made to resound with the slightest discord. The most painful moments of my life, physically speaking, have been those in which I have been forced to listen to diabolical noises. A harsh, rasping sound has often given me a pang more severe than neuralgia, while even an uncultivated voice ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... except the occipital, are separated by rows of large cells, some from four to five inches in length, others only small, irregular, and honey-comb-like:—these all communicate with each other, and, through the frontal sinuses, with the cavity of the nose, and also with the tympanum or drum of each ear; consequently, as in some birds, these cells are filled with air, and thus while the skull attains a great size in order to afford an extensive surface for the attachment of muscles, and a mechanical support for ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... inscriptions on the tombs of the Pharaohs, the language of flowers, the "step lively" of the conductor, and the prelude of the milk cans at 4 A. M. Certain large-eared ones even assert that they are wise to the vibrations of the tympanum produced by concussion of the air emanating from Mr. H. James. But who can comprehend the meaning of ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... deliberate hand on her call bell and, as its vibrations dinged and smote upon the shrinking tympanum, a rigid and breathless expectancy would pervade the silence of the ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... ones appear only during the hot season. According to Torrey and Gray, the North American species of Helianthemum, when growing in poor soil, produce only cleistogamic flowers. The cleistogamic flowers of Specularia perfoliata are highly remarkable, as they are closed by a tympanum formed by the rudimentary corolla, and without any trace of an opening. The stamens vary from 3 to 5 in number, as do the sepals. (8/17. Von Mohl 'Botanische Zeitung' 1863 pages 314 and 323. Dr. Bromfield 'Phytologist' volume 3 page 530, also remarks that the calyx of the cleistogamic flowers ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... inscribed with "Port Hudson and Vicksburg is ours," garnished with a luminous row of tapers, and, drunk on two bits' worth of lager beer, he has been shrieking out all Union songs he can think of with his horrid children until my tympanum is perfectly cracked. Miriam wants to offer him an extra bottle of lager for the two places of which he claims the monopoly. He would sell his creed for less. Miriam is dying to ask him what he has done with the Confederate ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... the tympanum of her ear, man, Mr Dedalus said through smoke aroma, with an organ ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... in that he had brought home a viper in his bosom, a wolf into his fold, the wretched minion of a worldly church to lead her son away captive at his will; and partly no doubt from his last uncomfortable sermons, but mainly from the play of Mrs Marshal's tongue on her husband's tympanum, the deacons in full conclave agreed that no further renewal of the invitation to preach "for them" should be made to the schoolmaster—just the end of the business Mr Graham had expected, and for which he had provided. On Tuesday morning he smiled to himself, ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... is situated at the inner end of the canal and separates it from the tympanum or middle ear. It is placed like the membrane in the telephone. It is pearly gray in color. This membrane not only serves as a protection to the delicate structures within the tympanum, but also receives the sound vibrations from without and transmits them to the ossicular (bony) ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... she hesitated, from the room above came the soft, racking, petitionary music of a violin. The hag, music, bewitches some of the noblest. The daws may peck upon one's sleeve without injury, but whoever wears his heart upon his tympanum gets it not far ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... sun- shining day, and the larkes are pleased at it, and strike at it, as at a sheepe's eye, and at that time the nett is drawn over them. While he playes with his glasse he whistles with his larke-call of silver, a tympanum of about the diameter of a threepence. In the south part of Wiltshire they doe not use dareing-glasses but catch these pretty theriall ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... This was that clerk who sold his soul to the Devil and whom Our Lady redeemed. You may find the whole story sculptured on the Tympanum of the exquisite northern door of ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... F.—My tympanum is smitten with pleasant peltings of wisdom! I 'll lay you ten to one you cannot tell me the present condition ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... as far removed from the coarseness of a Rubens as from the irreverence of too many religious teachers, who will repeat and repeat again the most sacred words for the merest logical ends until the tympanum of the moral ear hears without hearing the sounds that ought to be felt as well as held holiest. They bear strongly, too, upon the outcome of feeling in action, although doubtless there was the same tendency ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... westernmost of these two bays, and two sub-arches built. If the same kind of work is carried out in the other, we shall see in all probability an attempt to copy the unique scale decoration which still exists on the tympanum under the corresponding principal arch on the north side, cut with modern tools with all the lifeless rigidity of modern work. Another mistake which has been made, is the scraping off of the plaster from the interior walls of the chamber known as St Michael's Loft, over the Lady ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins
... over his bony epileptic lips) She sold lovephiltres, whitewax, orangeflower. Panther, the Roman centurion, polluted her with his genitories. (He sticks out a flickering phosphorescent scorpion tongue, his hand on his fork) Messiah! He burst her tympanum. (With gibbering baboon's cries he jerks his hips in the cynical spasm) Hik! Hek! Hak! ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... tureto. Turtle-dove turto. Tusk dentego. Tutor guvernisto. Twain du. Tweezers prenileto. Twelve dekdu. Twig brancxeto. Twilight vespera krepusko. Twin dunaskito. Twine sxnureto. Twinkle brileti. Twist tordi. Twitter pepi. Two du. Tympanum oreltamburo. Type (model) modelo. Type tipo, preslitero. Typhoid (fever) tifa febro. Typhus tifo. Typical modela. Typographist preslaboristo. Typography tipografio. Tyrannical tirana—ema. Tyranny tiraneco. Tyrant ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... how it does belabor and thrash one's tympanum!" said the judge irritably, as he slowly arose ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... Leger line. The use that Mr. Boomer makes of the Bombastophone is very original and effective. Whenever he sees that the attention of his audience is flagging he introduces an interlude of "bombination," which renders lethargy impossible and exercises an indescribably stimulating effect on the tympanum. The current of air is supplied by a bellows operated by an eight-cylinder Brome engine, but Mr. Boomer works the keys himself, climbing up and down them with a rapidity which must be seen ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various
... we often find in the tympanum at the back of the head of the arch, is generally covered with rude sculpture in basso relievo, sometimes representing a scriptural subject, as the temptation of our first parents on the tympanum of ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... Tympanum group in the doorway - Ralph Stackpole Groups of men and women in the lunette of the ornate doorway on the ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... guns in that direction I think of the last time we were there. Do you remember how we sat, in the twilight of a rainy day, in our top-floor room, at the Lion d'Or, in the wide window-seat, which brought us just at a level with that dear tympanum, with its primitive stone carving of David and Goliath, and all those wonderful animals sitting up so bravely on the lacework of the parapet? Such a wave of pity goes over me when I think that not only is it destroyed, but that ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... Government. On the friezes of Greek temples, we see coloured bas-reliefs representing sacrifices, battles, processions, games—all in some sort religious. On the pediments we see painted sculptures more or less united with the tympanum, and having for subjects the triumphs of gods or heroes. Even when we come to statues that are definitely separated from the buildings to which they pertain, we still find them coloured; and only in the later periods of Greek civilisation ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... capitis anticus major muscle and in front of the pre-vertebral layer of the cervical fascia. They receive part of the lymph from the posterior wall of the pharynx, the interior of the nose and its accessory cavities, the auditory (Eustachian) tube, and the tympanum. When they are infected with pyogenic organisms or with tubercle bacilli, they may lead to the formation of one form ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... for an explanation of all this, will answer: "It is the vibration of the tuning-fork which, transmitted by the air, is carried to our auditory apparatus, causes a vibration in the tympanum, the movements of which are communicated to the small bones of the middle ear, thence (abridging details) to the terminations of the auditory nerve, and so produces in us the subjective sensation of sound." ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... man." If malicious suggestions whisper [1] evil through the mind's tympanum, this were no apology for acting evilly. We are responsible for our thoughts and acts; and instead of aiding other people's devices by obeying them,—and then whining over misfortune,— [5] rise and overthrow both. If a criminal coax the unwary man to commit a crime, our ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... in the old hospice of Santa Cruz, in Toledo, Spain, was assigned to Ralph Stackpole. He is a sculptor who delights to honor the laborer and the craftsman and has supplied the figures for niches and keystone space and the tympanum and secondary groups in the portal of Varied Industries with evident affection. He treats the subject of labor with dignity, according it respect and not sentimentality. In this secondary or crowning group, a strong young man is taking the burden of labor ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... avenue, and supernatural Whispering-gallery, where the "Ghosts of Life" rounded strange secrets in his ear. O thou philosophic Teufelsdrockh, that listenest while others only gabble, and with thy quick tympanum hearest the grass grow! ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... of the tympanum are "damped" by the ossicles of the middle ear, which also receive and pass on the auditory tremors to the ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... tympanum of the ear, aching with the dead collapse of its world, made sounds for itself; and it required the exercise of reason to convince myself, sometimes, that I did not hear distant ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... to say to his Majesty that I respectfully request that none of the families left by my subordinates shall suffer. The only matter I am anxious about now is this. Atmospheric pressure is increasing, and I feel as if my tympanum were breaking. At 12.30 o'clock respiration is extraordinarily difficult. I am breathing gasoline. I am intoxicated with gasoline. It is ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... as to be little more than outer mouldings to the inner door. They are, however, often richly ornamented and have rooms above, which rooms are wrongly called "parvises." The shallow aperture often follows the form of the arch, but is frequently square-headed, having a semi-circular tympanum of masonry filling the space between the lintel of the door and ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... with his fingers: a servitor interpreting. Very curious to note the rapidity with which motion was translated into sound; and the simultaneousness with which meaning made its way through four successive channels to the mind—hand, sight, voice, and tympanum. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville |
