"Chord" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... poem, on the ground of its not conforming to the end he had in view. It is difficult, in the one case as in the other, to reconstruct the imagined personality to which his preface refers; and his words on the later occasion pointed rather to that idea of a chord of feeling which is raised by the correspondence of the first and last poems of the respective groups. But either clue may ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... telepathy, the sympathetic chord, and so on, and so on, good honest words to describe that which no one understands, and which caused the girl sitting on a prosaic bed in a prosaic hotel to smile suddenly as she ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... said the maiden, in tones as soft and tremulous as the lightly-touched chord of some musical instrument, as she threw back her veil, and disclosed a beauty of features and sweetness of countenance that at once raised a buzz of admiration through ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... orchestra invited to waltz, or fox trot. As the flame died from the western sky and the shadows crept down from the trees, the bonfire was set alight. As the flame leaped high the soft strains of the orchestra died away. Then suddenly, clear, full and strong, a chord sounded forth, another, and then another. A hush fell upon the chattering, laughing crowd. Then as they caught the strain men lolling upon the ground sprang to their feet; ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... still to thee will kindling fancy cling— Glow at thy smile, as when, in younger years, I've seen thee smiling through thy maiden tears, Like a fair floweret bent with morning dew, While sunbeams kissed its leaves of loveliest hue. Thou wert the chord and spirit of my lyre— Thy love the living voice that breathed—"aspire!"— That smoothed ambition's steep and toilsome height, And in its darkest paths was round me, light. Then, sit thee by me, love, and list the strain, Which, but for ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... little jerks, and clasping her bare hands on her lap. Guest glanced at her curiously from his point of vantage in the rear. She was like no other girl whom he had met, but somewhere, in pictured form, he must surely have seen such a face, for it struck some sleeping chord of memory. A fantasy perhaps of some Norse goddess or Flame Deity; a wild, weird head, painted in reds and whites, with wonderful shaded locks, and small white face aglow with the fire within. His lips twisted in an involuntary smile. Could anything be more aggressively unlike ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... adoring. Failing this, she knows that love is dead. She is inevitably disappointed in marriage, because she is no longer his fear, intoxication, and pain, but rather his comrade and friend. The vibrant strings, struck from silence and dreams to a sounding chord, are trembling still—whispering lingering music to him who ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... back quickly. "It's just that. But that's what one must do—a commanding officer—isn't it so, General? In this war music we play on human instruments, and if a big chord comes out stronger for the silence of a note, the note must be silenced—that's all. It's cruel, but ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... arriving at Philadelphia he began to improve; but Mr. Ticknor's sudden death overthrew the little he had gained, and caused him to sink still more. It is not my purpose here to dwell upon the sad and unbeautiful details of a last illness: these things would make but a harsh closing chord in the strain of meditation on Hawthorne's life which we have been following out,—a life so beautiful and noble that to surround its ending with the remembrance of mere mortal ailment has in it something ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... came a little piteous wail; then another followed, and was lost in the singer's voice. During a long phrase on the harpsichord, sharp and tinkling, the singer turned his head towards the dais, and there came a plaintive little sob. But he, instead of stopping, struck a sharp chord; and with a thread of voice so hushed as to be scarcely audible, slid softly into a long cadenza. At the same moment he threw his head backwards, and the light fell full upon the handsome, effeminate face, with its ashy pallor and big, black ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... reflection of days long past and forgotten, children of some pensive artist's fancy that never had another life outside of his conception, than that infused by brush or chisel? Yet it always seems to me that as I look into those books and faces, or as I lend my ear to those engaging sounds, some chord vibrates within me that makes me feel as if my memory were struggling to awake from some lethargy: scenes and sorrows of my yesterdays come back for a short moment to my vivid recollection, and seem to hang around these powerful incentives in a misty halo. ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... matter crept slowly forward. The general and Totski had agreed to avoid any hasty and irrevocable step. Alexandra's parents had not even begun to talk to their daughters freely upon the subject, when suddenly, as it were, a dissonant chord was struck amid the harmony of the proceedings. Mrs. Epanchin began to show signs of discontent, and that was a serious matter. A certain circumstance had crept in, a disagreeable and troublesome factor, which threatened to ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... today with my mother. My hand swept idly over the soft white sand, shifting the order of many thousands of starry worlds. What a chord of music if one could but hear it in its entirety! As it was, I caught wonderful echoes that would light the beauties of many a sunrise. The silent man reminds me of Synge in his drifting life and the fires ...
— The Forgotten Threshold • Arthur Middleton
... saw he had touched the right chord. So he played on it, till he got Lord Tadcaster to pledge his honor not ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... child is not equipped psychologically to hear complicated units. I wish some one could determine how the average four-year-old hears the harmony of a chord on the piano. Is it much except confusion? In the same way, he is not equipped to leap a span between units. I wish some one would determine the four-year-old's memory span for rhymes, for instance. The involutions, the suggestiveness so attractive to adult ears, he cannot hear. Even an adult ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... their headlong rage, their courage steeled, And raised fair Lusitania's fallen shield, And gave new edge to Lusitania's sword, And taught her sons forgotten arms to wield - Shivered my harp, and burst its every chord, If it forget thy worth, ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... about that awkward elephant that made Jerry feel all friendly inside and struck the chord of envy in his heart. He was not at all inclined to laugh when the cap with the very floppy palm-leaf-fan-ears attached fell off, as Danny started to gallop around the woodshed on all fours to see if the ...
— The Circus Comes to Town • Lebbeus Mitchell
... is a twice-written scroll Scrawled over on some boyish holiday With idle songs for pipe and virelai, Which do but mar the secret of the whole. Surely there was a time I might have trod The sunlit heights, and from life's dissonance Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God. Is that time dead? Lo, with a little rod I did but touch the honey of romance, And must I lose ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... it passed over them without even rousing their intellect, and so vanished without doing any hurt. Tuned to the truth by obedience, no falsehood they heard from the pulpit partisans of God could make a chord vibrate in response. Dawtie indeed heard nothing but the good that was mingled with the falsehood, and shone like a lantern ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... characteristic of him. He himself had never investigated Egyptian matters closely, and therefore did not seek to direct my course minutely, but advised me, in general, never to forget that the special science was nothing save a single chord, which could only produce its full melody with those that belonged ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... appreciation of the art and its higher influences had prompted her clever novelette La Marquise. Here she illustrates the power of the stage as a means of expression—of the truly inspired actor, though his greatness be but momentary, and his heroism a semblance, to strike a like chord in the heart of the spectator—and, in a corrupt and artificial age, to keep alive some latent faith in the ideal. Since then the stage and players had figured repeatedly in her works. Sometimes she portrays a perfected type, such as Consuelo, ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... if the subject were pursued scientifically as other questions in science are.) Again, might not telepathy be facilitated if we chose individuals of the same general temperament? If we chose two individuals to whom the same chord on the piano appealed (say the common chord of G minor or C sharp), and this chord were struck repeatedly, might not telepathic transmission be facilitated under such conditions? If both subjects were hypnotized, ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... the battalion halted; faced to the window, and spontaneously came to "Present!" as the ringing rebel yell rattled the windows of that block. The chord had been touched that ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... twenty-four hours?... You are now nearer Richmond than the enemy is by the route you can and he must take. Why can you not reach there before him, unless you admit that he is more than your equal on a march? His route is the arc of a circle, while yours is the chord. The roads are as good on your side as on his ... If he should move northward, I would follow him closely, holding his communications. If he should prevent our seizing his communications and move towards Richmond, I would press closely to ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... the chord Of the Overword, Dominant, pleading, sure, No truth too small to save and make endure. No ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... frenzied by their success thus far, and, impatient of delay, forced an attack on Fort Sumter, then held by a small garrison under command of Major Robert Anderson. The first gun fired on the 12th of April, 1861, resounded throughout the United States and the civilized world, touching an electric chord in every family in the northern states and changing the whole current of feeling. From this time forth, among the patriotic people of the loyal states, there was no thought or talk of compromise. That ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... sound, considering the pressure of the population; and, with the exception of the buzz of the steel rails as a train fled north or south, and the occasional sweet chord of the great motors as they neared or left the junction, there was little to be heard in this study except a smooth, soothing murmur that filled the air like the murmur of ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... p.m., erected a large steel gin pole just south of the correct position of the center of the north truss, which was then dragged, from the place where it had been assembled, across the railroad tracks until the center of the bottom chord was vertically under its true position, the truss still lying flat and about at right angles to the center line of the bridge. Chains were made fast to the top chord at the middle panel of the truss, which was then turned up to a vertical plane, raised to its permanent position, ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 - The Site of the Terminal Station. Paper No. 1157 • George C. Clarke
... was in danger and distress would scarcely have sufficed to cause me to sacrifice, or at least to greatly complicate, my own chances of escape in order to promote hers simply because that acquaintance was of the other sex. But Emma had touched a new chord in my nature, and I felt, whether I liked it or not, that whatever I could do for myself I must do for her also. ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... lips; yet those who knew him best marked well the line that had deepened between his brows, the still endurance of his eyes, and the sadness underlying every intonation of his voice; and those who knew him not, and had in their shallower natures no chord to vibrate in sympathy with this grand patience, comprehended it not, and seeing him thus ready and helpful, not evading such pleasant talk as lightened the toil of his comrades, not preoccupied or gloomy, these thought the light wound was already healed, ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... by Each vacant space, each slackened chord; Nor would her wayward zeal let die The ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... little group sat silent. Ivan and the three gathered close at his side, were like men dead. Long before it was over, Nicholas had flung his baton to the floor and left the stage; but still the orchestra went on—and on. In the silence following on the last chord—a silence broken by no demonstration, either of applause or of hissing—Ivan the composer rose, pushed his way to an aisle, and hurried blindly out into the streets. Thus he knew nothing of the remarkable sequel of the affair: how Rubinstein, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... volume; and let them judge for themselves. Let them compare, again, the opening sentences of the Four Gospels, or of the Acts of the Apostles, with the words with which Reginald begins this life of St. Godric. "By the touch of the Holy Spirit's finger the chord of the harmonic human heart resounds melodiously. For when the vein of the heart is touched by the grace of the Holy Spirit, forthwith, by the permirific sweetness of the harmony, an exceeding operation of sacred virtue is perceived more manifestly to spring forth. ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... Shirley is a very graceful interpreter of child-life. She thoroughly understands how to reach out to the tender chord of the little one's feelings, and to interest her in the noble life of her young companions. Her stories are full of bright lessons, but they do not take on the character of moralizing sermons. Her keen observation and ready sympathy teach her how ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May
... impassable. The direction I should have preferred, and in which I had endeavoured to proceed, was along the known limits of this basin, and formed a curved line, or an arc, to which the route necessity had obliged us to follow was the chord; thus we had not lost time; but had, in fact, shortened the distance to be travelled over very considerably. A permanent route had, however, seemed to me more desirable to any country we might discover, than one liable to be interrupted by flooded rivers and soft impassable ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... Della had imagined. He had truly loved her, old as he was, and had not loved lightly; but he could not take to his heart the heartless wife which she had frankly admitted she must be if he married her; and Della had, unwittingly, skillfully touched a tender chord, when she made the appeal to his feelings which she did. He had felt the force of her reasoning, and had been delighted with her frankness and her confidence; though it pained him to relinquish her, he was too much a soldier to display his wounds; and, though he parted from ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... with a faint smile that set some chord of memory vibrating strangely in her soul. But she could not stop to wrestle with memory then. His words demanded her ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... call "Life," or "Vitality," runs like a "dominant chord" in the harmonic scale of the whole. Each part, organ, and function is related to every other and to the whole by definite vibrations and ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... gain as their brethren in the commercial cities of Britain. I drew up with a young lad of about twenty, by way of feeling the pulse of the Ghetto; but though I tried him on both the past and the present, I succeeded in striking no chord to which he would respond. He seemed one of the prophet's dried bones,—very dry. Seventy years did their fathers dwell by the Euphrates; but here, alas! has the harp of Judah hung upon the willow for eighteen centuries. Beneath the dark shadow of the Vatican do they ever think of the sunny and ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... trumpery in the shape of a half-deaf old woman or little girl pestering one with questions. I sent an answer by the maid asking Sasha to select some park or boulevard for a rendezvous. My suggestion was readily accepted. I had struck the right chord, ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... getting up his large expedition. Of course I told him how disappointed I had been in not getting a sight of the Little Luta Nzige. I described how we had seen the Nile bending west where we crossed in Chopi, and then, after walking down the chord of an arc described by the river, had found it again in Madi coming from the west, whence to the south, and as far at least as Koshi, it was said to be navigable, probably continuing to be so right into ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... 1252, in honour of Saints Mary, Peter, and Etheldreda. King Henry III. was present, as well as Prince Edward, afterwards king. When the new portion of the church was ready, the remains of the four saints were removed further east. In the Norman church the high altar was in the chord of the apse, assuming one to have been built; after Bishop Northwold's alterations it was placed at the east end of the present sixth bay, where the apse terminated. The shrine of the foundress was placed some feet ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... some of the same sources as the author just described, but who also owes much directly to him. In him philosophy seems to degenerate into pantheism. Nature is a vast whole, in which we are parts, vibrations of a chord, radiations of the eternal light.(915) Starting from a unitarian point of view, Christianity appears to be resolved into natural religion; and the historic view of Christianity, and the habit of considering the revelation as something long ago ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... femoral hernia; A, femoral artery; V, femoral vein; E, epigastric artery; O, obturator from epigastric (dangerous); S O, obturator from epigastric (safe); N O, normal course of obturator; I R, internal inguinal ring; Sp C, spermatic chord and its vessels; G, Gimbernat's ligament; , in ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... slavery. In order to maintain it by law in the American colonies, it had to be recognized in England. The people of Massachusetts took a lively interest in the question. In 1761, at a meeting "in the old court-house," James Otis,[360] in a speech against the "writs of assistance," struck a popular chord on the questions of "The Rights of the Colonies," afterwards published (1764) by order of the Legislature. He took the broad ground, "that the colonists, black and white, born here, are free-born British subjects and entitled to all the essential rights of such."[361] In 1766 Nathaniel Appleton ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... Smith was pointing at the piano. In two strides he was across the room, and sitting on the stool he lifted the cover and struck a chord. The instrument sounded a little flat and apparently had not received the attention of a tuner for ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... as though expecting the desired answer from that hand. The musicians still played; then silence fell upon them, too, and the gay sounds died down, as scattered coals are extinguished by water. The pipe became mute, and the ringing tympanum and the murmuring dulcimer; and as though a chord were broken, as though song itself were dying, the zither echoed a trembling broken sound. ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... and what is called the lady in the lobster, as they are very unhealthy. If the fish are not eaten cold, warm them up with a little water, vinegar, salt, pepper, and butter. The following way of dressing lobsters looks very prettily. Pick out the spawn and red chord, mash them fine, rub them through a sieve, put in a little butter and salt. Cut the lobsters into squares, and warm it, together with the spawn, over a moderate fire. When hot, take it up, and garnish it with parsely. The chord and spawn are a ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous
... Superintendent of the E—— Sunday School, with his girl! No wonder I had met so many people, and all going in the same direction. They were the sediment of the pic-nic party, returning from their orgy. Here was the lost chord. The whole truth flashed upon me. Now, the solid earth wheeled right-about face; east became west, and west, east. I recognised the Victorian river road, because I saw things as they were, not as I had ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... confer upon the through traveler the gift of an excursion through the capital. This loop swings southwardly from Baltimore to a point near Frederick, Washington being set upon it like a bead in the midst. The older road, like a mathematical chord, stretches still between the first points, but is occupied with the carrying of freight. The tourist notices the stout beams of the bridges, the new look of the sleepers, and the sheen of the double lines of fresh steel rail: he observes some heavy mason-work at the Monocacy ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... Lola's collapse reached England by means of a cutting in a theatrical paper. There it appears to have touched a long slumbering maternal chord. "Mrs. Craigie," says a paragraphist, "suddenly arrived in America, anxious, as next of kin, to secure her daughter's property. On discovering, however, that none existed, she hurried back again, leaving behind her a sum of three pounds for medicine ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... unimaginable purpose should not break down, that he should not be forced to drop this incomprehensible feint of strangeness. But her dying eyes searching the face close to them discover in it no glimmer of feeling. Her heart-broken murmur: "Siegfried.... knows me not?" touches no chord. The hero is for handing her over with all convenient haste to her proper guardian. "Gunther, your wife is ailing!" As Gunther comes, he rouses her: "Awake, woman! Here is your husband!" Because her senses seem clouded and she a moment before ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... verse, because she had formerly noticed that it moved some chord in his memory connected with an old love affair in which his heart had been scathed; but she hesitated, for the meaning it conveyed was dowie ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... words were gentle, but their tone Was sad as sorrow's sigh,— A tear-drop trembled in his own As he sought her downcast eye. A chord was struck within his breast That long untouched had lain, Old memories started from their rest,— The maid was ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... passion in Scott's poetry is patriotism, the passion of place. In his metrical romances the rush of the narrative and the vivid, picturesque beauty of the descriptions are indeed exciting to the imagination; but it is only when the chord of national feeling is touched that the verse grows lyrical, that the heart is reached, and that tears come into the reader's eyes, as they must have done into the poet's. A dozen such passages occur at once to the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... away a costly jewel, for the sake of a bit of glass, shining only in the sunlight of thy ignorance, and trodden by the foot of every passing stranger. What! can I do nothing to rouse thy recollection? Look at me well! look hard, and it may be, something of me will touch as it were a chord in ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain
... a chord in my memory, and I looked out. The man who had put the question, and who was now being directed on his way—by Maignan, my equerry, as it chanced had his back to me, and I could see only that he was young, shabbily dressed, and with the air of a workman carried a small frail of tools ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... a small gray, dingy church, where a mist of incense blurred the lights on the ancient altar, and the muffled roll of an organ broke into sonorous waves, like reverberations of far-away thunder; and why was it, tell me, that the universal glory thrilled me only as a sensuous chord of color, but in the dark corner consecrated to the worship of our God, my soul expanded, as if a holy finger touched it, and I fell on my knees, and prayed? Each of us comes into this world dowered with the behest to make desperate war against that indissoluble ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... but THAT one; and if she should appeal to him some day, in some celebrated spot—in Italy, say, in the evening; in Venice, in a gondola, by moonlight—if she should be a little clever about it and touch the right chord, perhaps he would fold her in his arms and tell her that he forgave her. Catherine was immensely struck with this conception of the affair, which seemed eminently worthy of her lover's brilliant intellect; though ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... the howdahs, this was a final chord from the band, for the huge beasts were thoroughly startled, and the lookers-on noted that similar uneasiness was being displayed by the nine great elephants that appertained to Rajah Hamet's force, these in particular showing a ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... possessed that rare gift of touch, which no master in the world can impart, because it is a produce neither of hand nor brain, but of the player's individual soul. Desmond's fingers were unpractised, but he gave every note its true value; and he played slowly, as though composing each chord as it came, or building it up from memory. It was almost as if he were thinking aloud; and Honor had just decided that she really had no business to be overhearing his thoughts, when an apprehensive "woof" from the Aberdeen brought them suddenly to ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... which really means, you of course understand-"all churches are not of my denomination." And so, in spite of her regard for the printer, she could not bring herself to link her destiny with one whose eternal future was so insecure, and whose life did not chord with that which was to her, the one great keynote of the universe, the church. And then, too, does not the good book say: "Be ye not unequally yoked with unbelievers." What could that mean if not, "Do ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... far from any one of them. He admits that their poet-philosophers had risen to a lofty apprehension of "the Fatherhood of God," for they had taught that "we are all his offspring;" and he seems to have felt that in asserting the common brotherhood of our race, he would strike a chord of sympathy in the loftiest school of Gentile philosophy. He thus "recognized the Spirit of God brooding over the face of heathenism, and fructifying the spiritual element in the heart even of the natural man. He feels that in these ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... maimed by inhuman fathers, and for their weeping mothers too. My father did not forget in his art the note he found in beautiful Florence, though it was too sad to introduce by a definite exposition, and falls upon the ear, in "Monte Beni," like a wordless minor chord. ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... draping of a graceful stuff About a statue, broidered at the hem,— Not just the trilling on an opera-stage Of "liberta" to bravos—(a fair word, Yet too allied to inarticulate rage And breathless sobs, for singing, though the chord Were deeper than they struck it) but the gauge Of civil wants sustained and wrongs abhorred, The serious sacred meaning and full use Of freedom for a nation,—then, indeed, Our Tuscans, underneath the bloody dews ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... may cool his peppery blood some!" had been the keeper's decision. So the door was left open, and Last Bull entered or refrained, according to his whim. It was noticed, however,—and this struck a chord of answering sympathy in the plainsman's imaginative temperament,—that, though on ordinary nights he might come in and stay with the herd under shelter, on nights of driving storm, if the tempest blew from the west or northwest, ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... wonders, but he will not consent to perish obscurely for the sake of anything or anyone. Trochu has utterly failed in exciting enthusiasm in those under his command; he issues many proclamations, but they fail to strike the right chord. Instead of keeping up discipline by judicious severity, he endeavours to do so by lecturing like a schoolmaster. And then, since the commencement of the siege he has been unsuccessful in all his offensive movements. I am not a military man, but although I can understand the reasons ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... off again, but at the first note of the supplication she stopped. A chord of memory stirred. She knew the words, she knew the tune. She had sung them both herself often and often at home in France. She was a ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... have, except as it was likely to establish his reputation with the crowd. Still, it would seem, that by one of those singular coincidences that are hourly occurring in real life, he had unwittingly touched a sensitive chord in the system of his fair fellow-traveller. Her eyes sank to the deck at this abrupt question, the color again stole to her polished temples, and the least practised in the emotions of the sex might have detected painful embarrassment ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... then be over a point in the curve. Any number of points at any regular or irregular distances along the curve can thus be set out. One of the simplest elements which can be taken as a datum is the ratio of the length of the chord to the radius, AB/AO, Fig. 3. This being given, the value of the ratio is found on the straight scale on the body of the instrument, and the curved plate is moved until the beveled edge cuts the scale at the desired point. The figure of this ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various
... character he has not studied, and each individual he has so caught at the supreme moment of his life, and in the hardest stress of circumstance, that the inmost working of his nature is revealed. The wealth is bewildering, and it is hard to follow the central thought, "the imperial chord, which steadily underlies the accidental mists of music ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... God seemed freshly to have touched her face. It was simple and harmonious as a chord of music, yet inexhaustible in its variety. It recalled no other face, yet might be seen in it the germs of a mighty nation, that should begin from her and among a myriad resemblances evolve no perfect duplicate. No angel's countenance, but warmest human clay, which must undergo some change ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... pipe out of his doublet, and put it to his lips; and the man reached out his hand and took up a small lute which lay on the bank beside him. He held up a warning finger to the boy. "Remember," he said, "that you come in at the fifth chord, together with the voice—not before." He struck four simple chords on the lute, very gently, and with a sort of dainty preciseness; and then at the same moment the little pipe and his own voice began; the pipe played a simple descant in quicker time, with two notes to each ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... replied: "Because you never pay any attention to the arpeggio, dear. It doesn't begin on the chord. It begins on the G flat. Look here, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... exception of the rook, who always tries his best to be an honest, useful citizen; but it is not precisely the same. They may be regarded as bad hats generally In the bird community, and on this very account—"I'm sorry to say," to quote Mr. Pecksniff—they touch a chord in us; and the daw being the genial rascal in feathers par excellence is naturally the ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... Nautilus's hull quivered like a resonating chord, and the ship sank steadily under the waters. Stationed in the lounge, the captain and I watched the needle swerving swiftly over the pressure gauge. Soon we had gone below the livable zone where most fish reside. ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... do it? I asked him one day. 'Well, you wouldn't believe it,' said he; 'but they're mostly cocks. The best ones I buy for a tanner [sixpence] apiece. If a tall gentleman with a big beard comes in, I strike a deep chord and sing,— ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... common chord in music like a portion of the Mediterranean?—Because it's the E G & C ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... of a rich girl. She would not be suited to the trials of a minister's life. But finding that Henry was firm in his opinion that this sound general principle did not in the least apply to this particular case, the professor proceeded to touch the tenderest chord in the young man's heart. He told him that it would be ungenerous, and in some sense dishonorable, for him to take a woman delicately brought up into the poverty and trial incident to a minister's life. If you understood, sir, how morbid ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... V; the points of the cusps will be c c; p p will be the bases of perpendiculars let fall from V and c on a b; and d the base of a perpendicular from the point of the cusp to the arch line. Then a b will always be a span of the arch, V p its perpendicular height, V a the chord of its side arcs, d c the depth of its cusps, c c the horizontal interval between the cusps, a c the length of the chord of the lower arc of the cusp, V c the length of the chord of the upper arc of the cusp, (whether continuous or not,) and ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might, Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... nowhere strikes so deep a chord within us as the poor Fool in King Lear, is, I think, the most entertaining of Shakespeare's privileged characters. And he is indeed a mighty delectable fellow! wise too, and full of the most insinuative counsel. How choicely does his grave, acute nonsense moralize the scenes wherein he moves! ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... quiet of an old-fashioned kitchen whose spotless rows of pans and its rocker by the window reflected nothing of first citizenship, the memory-making mystery of child and woman in a homely setting drew taut an age-old chord of sympathy. Out of the hum of the kettle and the fire-shadows of the grate it came, out of the winter wind that rattled the checkerpaned windows—that eternal something that is only given to women to understand. Jimsy did not know why Aunt Judith smiled or why the ...
— Jimsy - The Christmas Kid • Leona Dalrymple
... to Rhein-gold where Wagner wishes to portray a certain elemental condition he uses 136 measures of the chord of E ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... A servant in livery then appears, and presents him with a pair of white kid gloves. The illustrious conductor, having taken some time to thrust them upon a very large and red hand, leisurely takes up his baton, rises, grins upon the expectant musicians, lifts his arm, and—the first chord is struck! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... and take station With the stars of the worlds that rejoice; Till the voice of its heart's exultation Be as theirs an invariable voice; By no discord of evil estranged, By no pause, by no breach in it changed, By no clash in the chord of its choice. ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the harp of life and smote on all the chords with might; Smote the chord of self, that, trembling, passed in music out ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... make, en passant, some groundless quarrels with you on some inappropriate terms which one meets with here and there in your book,—as, for example, the employment of the word "scale" (ut, fa, la, etc.) instead of arpeggio chord; or, again, on your inexcusable want of gallantry which leads you maliciously to bracket the title of "Mamselle" (!) on to such and such a Diva, a proceeding which will draw down upon you the wrath of these divinities and of their numerous admirers. But I can assure ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... this appear in the conditions of poverty, suffering, and social degradation. Every fine chord of human nature is seared, sodden, torn from its sockets, in the darkness of the moral faculties and by the pressure of animal wants. The poor man is conscious of nothing but privation and suffering. He gazes at the power and discipline and pomp of society all about him, not as an ally but as ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... bisect the chord ZZ'. Then, by geometry, the angle FQY is equal to the angle BTF, and the protuberance FY is equal the sine of that angle, making QF radius. This angle, made by the axis of the vortex and the surface of the sphere, is commonly between 30d and 40d, according as the moon is near her ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... denizens of trees, and both furnish famous country sports, especially in the South. ''Possum up de gum-tree, cooney in de hollow,' is a line from a negro ditty that touches a deep chord in the African heart. The former is found not infrequently in this region, but the Hudson seems to be the eastern boundary of ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... promising that this man might come. She had found herself later in her own apartments, panting, wide-eyed, afraid. Some great hand, unseen, uninvited, mysterious, had swept ruthlessly across each chord of womanly reserve and resolution which so long she had held well-ordered and absolutely under control. It was self-distrust, fear, which now compelled her to take refuge in this woman's fence of speech with him. "Surely," argued ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... and good. The Bounding Zouaves, with one accord, bounded into their clothes and disappeared through the door just as a long-drawn chord from the invisible orchestra announced the conclusion of the ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... Since the playing of those melancholy minor strains in that red sunset so long ago, which had touched so responsive a chord in Laurelia's grief-worn heart, the crazy old fiddle had been naturalized, as it were, and had exchanged its domicile under the porch for a position on the wall. It was boldly visible, and apparently no more ashamed of itself than was the big earthen ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... take but little shear. Some writers, however, hold the opinion that the stirrups are in tension and not in shear, and some are bold enough to compare them with the vertical tension members of a Howe truss. Imagine a Howe truss with the vertical tension members looped around the bottom chord and run up to the top chord without any connection, or hooked over the top chord; then compare such a truss with one in which the end of the rod is upset and receives a nut and large washer bearing solidly against the chord. This gives a comparison of methods of design in wood and reinforced ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... cannot but feel that allowances must be made for Viva Winthrop. He meant to marry her, to be a loyal and affectionate husband; but he had not loved her as women love to be loved, and she was conscious of the lacking chord. That she had been deceived and swindled, too, by some shameless scoundrel, and made to believe in her fiance's guilt, was another thing that was plain to him. She had probably been told some very strong story of his interest in this other girl. Very probably, too, Hollins ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... fine although they are rugged, is quite as absurd as to say that a rock, artistically considered, is fine although it is rugged. Ruggedness being an essential quality in the universe, there is that in man which responds to it as to the striking of any other chord of the eternal harmonies. As the children of nature, we are akin not only to the stars and flowers, but also to the toad-stools and the monstrous tropical birds. And it is to be repeated as the essential of the question that on this side of our nature we do emphatically love the form of the toad-stools, ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... name awoke a new chord of recollection—the casket, she had it with her yet. Instantly, everything was forgotten but it and its contents; and she placed a chair directly under the lamp, drew it out, and looked at it. It was a pretty little ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... swung the silver censer. What splendour, what magnificence did he see here! It streamed through his soul and overpowered him; the church and the faith of his parents surrounded him, and touched a chord in his soul, so that the tears overflowed ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... thy notes, that linger'd in the air? That linger still!—Vain thy harmonious store,— Thy sweet persuasive triumphs are no more. Thy mournful image strikes my wand'ring eye; Sad, near thy silent strings, I sit and sigh. Cold is that band which Music form'd her own, When ev'ry chord resign'd its sweetest tone. Ah! long, fair source of rapture, shall thou rest, Silent and sad, neglected and unprest, 'Till years, lov'd shade! superior pow'rs resign, Or raise one note more eloquent than thine. Tho' with'ring Sickness mark'd thee in the womb, And form'd ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... into the valley of fear and doubt. What she wanted of him was just what she had not—feeling, intense, varied feeling, so that, while she remained ice, she could paint as if she felt; and with a gifted woman's tact, and with the power of one loved almost to idolatry, she caused every chord of his soul, now in happy harmony, now in painful discord, to vibrate under her skilful touch. But such a life was very wearing, and he was failing under it. Moreover, he was robbing himself of sleep ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... just as the artist is attracted by form and colour, and the musician by delicate combinations of harmonies and the exquisite balance of sound. You know," he said, "what a suspension is in music—it is a chord which in itself is a discord, but which depends for its beauty on some impending resolution. It is just so with moral choice. The imagination plays a great part in it. The man whose morality is high and profound ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... interchange an unadulterated sympathy. The innocent little creatures remind me of my days of childhood, when I revelled in the woods and corn-fields of Lincolnshire, listening to the song of birds in early fresh spring morn, or bright summer day. Here was the tender chord of childhood associations touched, and no wonder that memory should come in to the aid of sympathy in these unsympathizing deserts. How little at times contents the heart, and fills the aching vacuum of the mind! In this we cannot fail to see an arrangement of infinite wisdom. If only great ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... the mermaid's song. Sir Emerson's account has in itself a touch of the romantic and marvellous. He says: "On coming to the point mentioned I distinctly heard the sounds in question. They came up from the water like the gentle thrills of a musical chord, or the faint vibrations of a wineglass when its rim is rubbed by a moistened finger. It was not one sustained note, but a multitude of tiny sounds, each clear and distinct in itself, the sweetest treble mingling with the lowest ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... of the bright eyes looking at me. Then a little hand was put over the parapet, and I saw a dark hat swinging by its strings, as she was waving it to me. Oh! that I could have climbed those steps and done that! But that exploit of hers touched a strange chord within me. Had she been a boy, I could have borne it in a defiant way; or had she been any other girl than this, my heart would not have sunk as it now did when I thought of the gulf between her and me. Down I sat upon a grave, and looked at ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... the interval that most frequently occurs. Those who perform on the violin use the same notes as in our division, and they tune the instrument by fifths to a great nicety. They are fond of playing the octave, but scarcely use any other chord. The Sumatran tunes very much resemble, to my ear, those of the native Irish, and have usually, like them, a flat third: the same has been observed of the music of Bengal, and probably it will be found that the minor key obtains ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... independent clues which you may work out for yourself. You must re-educate your memory. You want to know all about this murder, of course. Well, now, look over these papers. They'll tell you in brief what little we know about it. And they may succeed in striking afresh some resonant chord in your memory." ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... responsive chord had been touched in the simple, agitated breasts of the Wallencampers, and they joined in the chorus—those rough people—not with their usual reckless exuberance of tone, but plaintively, tremblingly even, as though, whatever the words, they ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... vehement action, appealing rather to the nerves than to the intelligence—such a passage as Gustav Freytag, in his Technik des Dramas, happily entitles an einleitende Akkord, an introductory chord. It may be added that this rule holds good both for Coriolanus and for Julius Caesar, in which the keynote is briskly struck in highly animated scenes of commotion ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... but once saw the light of a smile on her face,—but she gave a low chuckle. Evidently we had touched a chord that would respond; an ignoble one it might be, but it was something to have ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... was so profound and quiet, that she did not know its depth or strength. As she had not believed that parting from him would be painful until the event had taught her, so even now she did not know how intertwined with every chord and fibre of her heart and how identical with her life, was her love for Paul. She was occupied by a more enthusiastic devotion to her "brother," as she called ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... jumped whenever I came round the corner, and used to stand behind trees watching me. Also she used to come to see the dogs fed. Now, when I knew beyond all question the state of her feelings, I borrowed Guido's guitar, and struck one chord upon it at night under her window, and sang but one word—Vieni! In three minutes she came on to the balcony, and we looked at each other. There was a moon, and we could see quite well. We stood looking like that for five minutes without a syllable spoken, and then ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... administration met with success and received popular approval. Ever since the war the people of the North had desired an opportunity to make Great Britain suffer for her attitude during that struggle. Senator Sumner struck a popular chord when he suggested that England should pay heavy damages on the ground that her encouragement of the South had prolonged the war. Specifically, however, the United States demanded reparation for destruction committed by the Alabama and other vessels that had been built in English ports. ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... had touched a tender chord. For a moment Ben Zoof stood with clenched teeth and contracted muscles; then, in a voice of real concern, he inquired whether anything could be done to ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... hopes of universal prosperity. They wished for it at once, with the eagerness of a child who is shown a dainty which is afterwards put out of its reach. The sacrifices, the slow work for the future, struck no chord in their minds. From Gabriel's explanations they only drew the fact that they were unhappy, but that they had the same right to happiness and comfort as those privileged few whom they had formerly respected in their ignorance. As a certain portion ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... tender and honest and true—and Lord Fordyce had touched the highest chord in it, the chord of ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... this stele, or headstone, commences a series of separate stones, irregular in size and shape, but forming an arc, the chord of which varies from twenty to twenty-six feet; so that the whole figure somewhat resembles the bow and shank of ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... remember!" answered Godfrey, in a tone of indifference which it was difficult to mistake. The lady raised her two hands, held them suspended for an instant above the keys as if they were about to grasp another chord, and then with a half-turn on her music-stool she remained for a moment looking at the too tranquil Godfrey, whose eyes did their best to ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... at the breaking of such a day—good to be young and strong, and eager and unafraid, when the nation called for its young men and red Mars was the morning star. The blood of dead fighters began to leap again in his veins. His nostrils dilated and his chin was raised proudly—a racial chord touched within him that had been dumb a long while. And that was all it was—the blood of his fathers; for it was honor and not love that bound him to his own flag. He was his mother's son, and the unspoken bitterness ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... playing and singing when this I had heard, and more, Though tears half-blinded me; yes, I remained going on and on, Just as I used me to chord and to sing at the selfsame time! . . . For it's a contralto—my voice is; they'll hear it again here to- night In the psalmody notes that I love more than world or than ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... the delights of dreaming. She was fond of reading, of novels and poetry, not for their value as works of art, but for the sake of the tender melancholy mood they would induce in her. A line of poetry, often but a poor one, often a bad one, would touch the little chord, as she expressed it, and give her the sense of some mysterious desire almost realized. And she delighted in these faint emotions which brought a little flutter to her soul, otherwise as strictly kept ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... freckled face of the complexion described as pasty, a pair of greyish-blue eyes, and a tangle of reddish curls just long enough to admit of being tied back with the bit of crumpled ribbon which kept them tidy. Cash was not of prepossessing appearance; yet perhaps because, the grateful glance touched a chord common to humanity in the heart of the stranger, or because one naturally warms to any creature whom one has befriended, or perhaps simply from the sweet womanliness which finds all childhood attractive,—whatever the motive, upon the impulse of the moment the lady did a ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... capacity for physical pleasure, yet that of one who possessed complete control over every like and dislike of his being. I at first took him to be extremely reticent; but later I learned, that, when the proper chord of sympathy was touched, he responded in perfect torrents of spoken confidence. So I that evening sat in the larger of my rooms—my "sitting-room"—in momentary expectation of the arrival of one or both ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... am happy, my father!" Here a sudden change was visible,—some chord of sorrow was touched, and it ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... thing said this so slowly and in such a low pathetic tone that March felt sorry for having unwittingly touched a tender chord. He hastened to ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... desire. Here, the daughter was born, and here, I am convinced, we shall find the key to the mystery, though I'm very far from guessing what that key is. But I have a premonition—you may smile if you wish—that I'll find the clew I'm seeking at Etretat. The name has somehow struck an answering chord ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... spoke, And the thoughts that in him woke, Can adequately utter none Save to his ear the wind-harp lone. Therein I hear the Parcae reel The threads of man at their humming wheel, The threads of life and power and pain, So sweet and mournful falls the strain. And best can teach its Delphian chord How Nature to the soul is moored, If once again that silent string, As erst it wont, ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Feeble and selfish beyond all example among women! Why, why was I born, or why received I breath in a world and at a period, with whose inhabitants I can have no sympathy, whose notions of rectitude and decency find no answering chord in my heart? ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... stood fascinated. A chord deep in his nature thrilled as he said to himself, "My brother." He, the young man, felt himself captive to this imperious boy. He wished he knew the mind of the picture, or could hear its voice. What were the ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... struck the chord, and the girls chimed in weakly. Then, the music, strengthening their hopes as it progressed, made them more cheerful. Loudly, they brought out ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... double chorus of frogs in the pools of the island. Our pools, Natacha, are like the enchanted lakes of the Caucasus which are silent by day and sing at evening; there are innumerable throngs of frogs which sing on the same chord, some of them on a major and some on a minor. The chorus speaks from pool to pool, lamenting and moaning across the fields and gardens, and re-echoing like AEolian harps placed opposite ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... the saint? and he recalled that wonderful illumination of her plain face that made her actually beautiful as she looked up from the little waif of humanity she held in her arms. It had startled him, and struck a new chord in his heart, and planted a new pang there that she had no belief ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... he brought about the very last thing he intended with his music—stopped the flirtation's immediate progress. Maga seemed to take to Fred's unchastened harmony with all the wildness that possessed her. Some chord he struck, or likelier, some abandoned succession of them touched off her magazine of poetry. And so ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... anyone else in the discovering of tones, peculiar to suffering, oppressed, and tormented souls, who can endow even dumb misery with speech. Nobody can approach him in the colours of late autumn, in the indescribably touching joy of a last, a very last, and all too short gladness; he knows of a chord which expresses those secret and weird midnight hours of the soul, when cause and effect seem to have fallen asunder, and at every moment something may spring out of nonentity. He is happiest of all when creating from out the nethermost depths of human happiness, ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... jovial manner and that facile talk. Others were content to laugh and chatter and transact their business; Manning was more artistic. He watched his opportunity, and then, when the moment came, touched with a deft finger the chord of the Conversion of England. There was an immediate response, and he struck the same chord again, and yet again. He became the repository of the Cardinal's most intimate aspirations. He alone sympathised and understood. 'If God gives me strength to undertake a great wrestling-match with ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... be measured by their permanent popularity, Walton deserves an enthusiastic mention in literary annals, not for the greatness of his achievements, but for his having touched a chord in the human heart which still vibrates without hint of cessation wherever English ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... time, "worst of all, we found the people, not actually against us, but apathetic, lethargic, incredulous, indifferent. It was then, and not till then, that we sounded the right note, and touched a chord that never ceased to vibrate. To uphold slavery was a crime against God! It was a NOVEL DOCTRINE, but it was a cry that was heard, for it would be heard. The national conscience was awakened to inquiry, and inquiry soon produced conviction." Sir George justly ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... as spirits of the most refined organization, but they can colour all that they combine with the evanescent hues of this ethereal world; a word, a trait in the representation of a scene or a passion, will touch the enchanted chord, and reanimate, in those who have ever experienced these emotions, the sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past. Poetry thus makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world; it arrests the vanishing apparitions which haunt the interlunations ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... not a voluntary contribution, but a tax. Nothing is unforced and spontaneous. There is a want of elasticity and motion. The story does not "give an echo to the seat where love is throned." The heart does not answer of itself like a chord in music. The fancy does not run on before the writer with breathless expectation, but is dragged along with an infinite number of pins and wheels, like those with which the Lilliputians dragged Gulliver pinioned ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... with their nets ashore after a sleepless night, made a living picture which stamped itself deeply on his receptive mind. A man of the people himself, born to toil and inured to it from babyhood, this constant scene of toiling and struggling humanity touched the deepest chord in his whole nature, so that some of the most beautiful and noble of his early pictures are really reminiscences of his first student days at Cherbourg. But after he had spent a year in Mouchel's studio, sad news came to him from Gruchy. His father was ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... encouraged peasant ignorance—ignorance being the mainspring of contentment, and contentment the bed-rock of happiness; but it is all to no purpose. A note from the other world will strike upon the chord of my being, and the spirit which has been dozing within me awakens and fiercely beats at its bars, demanding some nobler thought, some higher aspiration, some wider action, a more saturnalian pleasure, something more than the peasant ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin |
