"Keynote" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Peace was the keynote of the whole situation. In front the country lay stretched out, with its hedges and trees, its fields and farmhouses. In certain places there ran long rows of poles with strips of brown material stretched ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... 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 ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... 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. Muscular ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... La, la, la, la; mi, in E 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 ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... was held. Langdon, Phelan, Mayor Taylor pleaded for order. "Let us see to it," said the last, "that no matter who else breaks the law, we shall uphold it." This became the keynote of the meeting. Rudolph Spreckels, who arrived late, was greeted ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... Minister of Education is a lawyer; the Minister of Commerce, an author; the War Minister, a doctor; the Minister for the Navy, a journalist. Beaumarchais' epigram "The post required a mathematician—it was given to a dancing master!" strikes the keynote much more of a democracy ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... 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 the same time, there is a considerable play of the voice ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... a very good one the other day from old Bauldy Johnston," said Allan, opening his usual wallet of stories when the dinner was in full swing. At a certain stage of the evening "I heard a good one" was the invariable keynote of his talk. If you displayed no wish to hear the "good one," he was huffed. "Bauldy was up in Edinburgh," he went on, "and I met him near the Scott Monument and took him to Lockhart's for a dram. You remember what a friend he used to be of old Will ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... is to be the test, it will not stand it. There is nothing in it you can seize and name. You will not find in it support for any creed or theory. The redemption of Catherine Linton and Hareton is thrown in by the way in sheer opulence of imagination. It is not insisted on. Redemption is not the keynote of Wuthering Heights. The moral problem never entered into Emily Bronte's head. You may call her what you will—Pagan, pantheist, transcendentalist mystic and worshipper of earth, she slips from all your formulas. She reveals a point of view above good and evil. Hers is ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... not really begin to grow big and overspread the earth until 1896, but the keynote of expansion was first sounded by Theodore Vail in the earliest days, when as yet the telephone was a babe in arms. In 1879 Vail said, in a letter written ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... 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 ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... young man, though anything but intellectually brilliant, had many agreeable characteristics which won him the kindly and half-contemptuous regard of Miriam and her two friends. It was he whom they called Donatello, and whose wonderful resemblance to the Faun of Praxiteles forms the keynote of our narrative. ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the technique of the play is faultless. It is not easy to point to a better piece of dramatic exposition than the scenes which precede the appearance of Johanna in the French army. The Prologue is perhaps a trifle too long, but serves admirably to give the tragic keynote, by picturing the shepherd-girl of Dom Remi leading a life apart from that of her family, given to strange brooding, and at last receiving the sign from Heaven, which she prophetically feels to be the call of death. And then the desperate plight of France; the helpless weakness ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... rank of poets. No compromise can be made on this point, because upon it the whole theory of poetry depends. Neither on the formal nor on the essential sides of his art is he among the small company of the supreme. And no one understood this better than himself. He touched the keynote of his own power, though with too great modesty, when he said, "I am sensible that if there is anything good about my poetry ... it is a hurried frankness of composition which pleases soldiers, sailors, and young people of bold and active dispositions." The poet Campbell, ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... At every wolf howl Breed felt the old hatred of Flatear surge up in him, but though he frequently met wolves none of them proved to be his enemy. The big grays showed only a casual interest in coyotes, evidencing neither enmity nor delight at any chance meeting, indifference the keynote ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... testimonial fund, such as was in fact raised and presented to him in 1883. In June 1879 he accepted the inevitable, and in a speech at Westport put himself with his parliamentary following and machinery at the service of the founder of the Irish Land League, uttering the keynote of Mr. Davitt's "new departure" in his celebrated appeal to the Irish tenants to "keep a firm grip of their homesteads." In the middle of October 1879, Mr. Davitt formally organised the Irish National Land League, "to reduce rack-rents and facilitate the obtaining ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... 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, ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... to sneak down and step into active control again to-morrow through some sly, subtle suggestion which it hopes may get past the vigilance of my sentinel. That word daily becomes, of necessity, my constant keynote—a daily conflict, a daily sleepless vigilance, and, thank ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... fault with the Doric order for certain 'mendosae et inconvenientes symmetriae';[133] but that order, the true symbol of the sons of Heracles, was one of the most momentous contributions ever made to the art of architecture. It was the keynote of Greek architecture throughout its finest period. Later it was superseded by the Ionic order, and when Rome became paramount in the western world, that, in its turn, yielded its place of pride to the Corinthian ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... Again, the keynote of success in football to-day is team work, perfect interlocking of all parts. In the old days play was individual, man against man, and this gave rise in many cases to personal animosity which frequently reduced great football ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... die on crosses in our Western world as well as any one and we can do it in crowds too as they do in India, but we propose if crosses are expected of us to know why in crowds. Knowing why makes us think of things and makes us do things. It is the keynote of our temperament. ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... open scows, or "sturgeon-heads," which are to form our convoy have been built, the freight is all at The Landing, but for three days the half-breed boatmen drag along the process of loading, and we get our introduction to the word which is the keynote of the Cree character,—"Kee-am," freely translated, "Never mind," "Don't get excited," "There's plenty of time," "It's all right," "It will all come out ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... have touched the keynote," exclaimed Mrs. Hayden warmly. "It is freedom people need, freedom to think and act the highest, for everybody ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... The keynote of the mass meeting on the landing was one of determined, almost aggressive smartness. The men wore bright overcoats with bands round the waist, the women those imitation furs which to the uninitiated eye ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... amongst these surprised one or two people, notably Mr Seymour, who, being games' master had come a good deal into contact with Stanning, and had not been favourably impressed. The fact was that the keynote of Sheen's character was a fear of giving offence. Within limits this is not a reprehensible trait in a person's character, but Sheen overdid it, and it frequently complicated his affairs. There come times when one has to choose which of two people one shall offend. By acting in one ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... by millions of men and women acquainted with grief and affliction? The early Christians did not exactly live lives of luxury or even security, sheltered from contact with tragedy and horror; yet the keynote of primitive Christianity is the note of joy, while the background of early Christian experience is a radiant conviction of the Divine benevolence. And when we remember that the same holds true of so many eminently spiritual souls in all ages, who have combined ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... was very great; for the keynote of all this scheme, according to Dr. Goodnow, [Footnote: It is significant that Dr. Goodnow carried out all his Constitutional Studies in Germany, specializing in that department known as Administrative Law which has no place, ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... 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 abruptly before he reached them. The barking of the dogs and the strident ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... of the next dance Betty and her partner finished up within a few feet of the camel. With the informal audacity that was the keynote of the evening she reached out and gently rubbed the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... Signore," he said at last, his voice echoing a sweetness, a cheerful patience that was doubtless the keynote to his nature—"it all sounds very beautiful; but, indeed, it cannot be! The great Duke Scorpa has given the matter much thought. The mine owners cannot pay the people more—there is scarcely any profit ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... Scotia's food," they formed the staff of life of a people whose tastes were as simple as their ideals were high. "We cultivate literature on a little oatmeal," was the motto proposed by Sydney Smith for the "Edinburgh Review"; and, jocular as was the suggestion, it touches the keynote of Scottish character and history. For, what have we not done on a little oatmeal? Our fathers fought on it, worked on it, thought and studied on it, wrote ballads and preached sermons on it, and created the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... members who were ready to support him in anything he did. The Chancellor, however, realised that he could take some of the thunder out of the opposition by making a strong statement against England. "Down with England," the popular cry, was the keynote of the Chancellor's remarks. In this one speech he succeeded in uniting for a time at least public sentiment and the political parties in support ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... Peter Cooper thus strikes the keynote, or, more accurately, the triple chord, of his life. For he was first of all an American, keenly aware of the opportunities offered by the free institutions of his country to individual ambition, ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond
... love for real expression) the entrance 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
... 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... Edward. I think too there is a measured music, a central time and tune, in every life. Quick, melodious natures like Ethel's never wander far from their keynote, and are therefore joyously set; while slow, irresolute people deviate far, and only come back after painful dissonances and ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... 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 me with ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... or compel admiration or regard. In an earlier period of the history of the Indian communities, when their forests were astir with the demon of war, eligibility for the chiefship contemplated in the chief the conjoining of bravery with wisdom, and these were the keynote to his power over his people. He, by manifesting on occasion, these, desirable traits, had his followers' confidence confirmed in his selection; upheld those followers' and his own traditions; and often assured his tribe's pre-eminence. ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... and feel and say on this keynote question of polygamy, however much they may seek to hide their sentiments behind a mask of lies, may be found in former utterances from the Church pulpit, made before the shadow of the ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... strength of character. The wife at the crisis of this other love, is killed in a street accident, and remorse ensues. But the book is a weary one; it bears upon its face the burden of sorrow. "How could this have been otherwise?" is the keynote of the story. ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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 honor to human nature. He and Madame Holbach are the only ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing
... 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, and will be no more likely to confuse them than to mix up her ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... o' work puttin' up the lights," said the man at sight of some building superbly illuminated. This was the keynote of his being. All his fife he had worked, and the whole objective universe, as well as his own soul, he could express in terms only of work. "Coronations is some good," he went on. ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... December is a wholesome juvenile product. The typography still leaves something to be desired, but the evidences of care are everywhere visible, and we may reasonably expect to see it improve from month to month, into one of the leading amateur papers. Credentials form the keynote of the current issue, and a very promising assortment of recruits are here introduced to the members of the United. Miss Sandborn, who is fortunate enough to be one of Mr. Moe's pupils at Appleton, contributes an interesting school anecdote, narrated ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... same city where Abraham Lincoln had first been nominated four years before, struck its keynote in opposition to his Administration. Mr. August Belmont, Chairman of the National Committee, opened the proceedings with a violent speech. "Four years of misrule," he said, "by a sectional, fanatical, and corrupt party have brought our country to the ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... (called an "Episcopacy," on account of the jurisdiction of its Bishops,) was Protestant 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 ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... reward, thank you, sir!'" My sister, who was made quite delicate, at first, by the English climate, and acquired from this temporary check and the position of eldest child a pathetic nobility which struck the keynote of her character, writes from Rockferry: "This morning of the New Year was very pleasant. It was almost as good as any day in winter in America. I went out with Mamma and Sweet Fern [Julian]. The snow is about half a foot deep. Julian is out, now, playing. I packed him up very warmly ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... different from every one else. Ralph had something of this same quality, this appearance of thinking that life was a matter of connoisseurship; but in Ralph it was an anomaly, a kind of humorous excrescence, whereas in Mr. Osmond it was the keynote, and everything was in harmony with it. She was certainly far from understanding him completely; his meaning was not at all times obvious. It was hard to see what he meant for instance by speaking of his provincial side—which was exactly the side she would have taken him most to lack. Was ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... to be done," replied Fitz slowly, as was his wont. "That has been the keynote of his life as long as I have known him. If there had been anything to do, you may be sure that De ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... difficulty with songs and exercises ranging below the pitch indicated may be overcome easily by pitching the songs, etc., a tone or two higher. If they then range too high, don't sing them, sing something else. In teaching the scale, take E or F as the keynote, and sing either one or the other of those scales first. The children must sing as softly as possible in all their singing exercises, whether songs or note drill. They should be taught to open their mouths well, to sit or ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... was his eternal keynote, "and Prussia is all-sufficient. Our hosts follow the Prussian flag and not the tricolor; under the black and white they joyfully die for their country. The tricolor has been, since the March riots, recognized as the color of their opponents. The accents of the Prussian National ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... Democrats and Liberals. "The antagonisms which civil war has created between the kindred populations of our country," declared Tilden, in his speech at the Syracuse convention, "must be closed up now and forever."[1403] This was the keynote of his party, and, apart from the personal question of candidates, was the only serious issue of the campaign. In his letter of acceptance Greeley added a new phrase to the vocabulary of the common people: "I accept your nomination," he said, "in the confident trust that ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... 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 ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... 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
... of the pious ejaculations, which in the first centuries were rising from the lips of thousands of mystae, in Egypt, Asia Minor, Italy and elsewhere. The idea of re-birth was in the air; it was the very keynote of all the solemn initiations and mysteries—Mythraic, Orphic, Eleusinian—through which repentant pagans secured pardon and eternal bliss. Yet there is not much evidence that the church directly borrowed many of its ceremonies or interpretations from outside sources. They for the most ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... with ye," said the Virginian, slowly, "because comin' from over thar whar he's been dwelling at, ye kin kinderly give me facts thet ther Commonwealth would love ter know," and that utterance sounded the keynote of the attitude Turk ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... accusations against him before the Roman proconsul Gallio, but in this they were unsuccessful. Paul tarried and worked here until it seemed best for him to turn his steps homeward again to Antioch. The keynote of his preaching in this city is given by him in his First Epistle to the Corinthians where he says (2:2), "For I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified." If this gospel could win converts in Corinth, ...
— Bible Studies in the Life of Paul - Historical and Constructive • Henry T. Sell
... "The keynote of her whole disposition was a generous charity towards everything and everybody with whom she came in contact. There was no trouble too great for her to take, no detail too small for her to neglect when it was a matter of giving happiness to others. ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... the Democratic Convention in St. Louis, and the platform expressed a blanket endorsement of the achievements of his Administration. But the chief incident of that convention was the keynote speech of Martin H. Glynn, which was based on the text, "He kept us out of war." His recital of the long list of past occasions in American history when foreign violations of American rights and injuries to American interests had ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... pupil of Socrates, the fellow-student of Euclid, and a follower of Pythagoras, studied science in his travels in Egypt and elsewhere. He was held in so great reverence by all learned men that a problem which he set to the astronomers was the keynote to all astronomical investigation from this date till the time of Kepler in the sixteenth century. He proposed to astronomers the problem of representing the courses of the planets by circular and ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... bend the bow of Ulysses, and, apart from difference of personal capacity and historic tradition, he forgot that a territorial and commercial aristocracy cannot be dealt with in the spirit of the barrack and the drill-ground. But he made the attempt, and resistance to that attempt supplies the keynote to the first twenty-five ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... Institution, Joseph Henry articulated a program that included the following statement: "It is proposed to publish a series of reports, giving an account of the new discoveries in science, and of the changes made from year to year in all branches of knowledge." This keynote of basic research has been adhered to over the years in the issuance of thousands of titles in serial publications under the Smithsonian imprint, commencing with Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge in 1848 and continuing with the ...
— Agricultural Implements and Machines in the Collection of the National Museum of History and Technology • John T. Schlebecker
... the eye; and instead of forms and flashing lights, which need to be translated, the prophet hears words, the impressiveness of which is heightened by the absence of any designation of the speakers. This much is clear, that the first words are God's, addressed to the prophets. They are the keynote of the whole. Israel is comforted in the assurance that her trial is ended and her sin purged. Then there is silence, broken by a voice to which no personality is attached, the herald and forerunner ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... The keynote of the Irish homily is struck in this first section. It is the work of some scholar of Clonmacnois, with a warm enthusiasm for the dignity of his alma mater. The sermon is as much a eulogy of Clonmacnois as of Ciaran. In the preacher's ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... sermon in an English church preached before a congregation of Irish poor. The keynote was lofty, but beautifully sustained throughout. The range of thought was high, but the truths clarified by an abundance of happy illustration. That discourse was so classic in its beauty that it ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... their headlong eagerness, the men had mistaken some other thing for the whale-spout, as the event itself soon proved; for hardly had Ahab reached his perch; hardly was the rope belayed to its pin on deck, when he struck the keynote to an orchestra, that made the air vibrate as with the combined discharge of rifles. The triumphant halloo of thirty buckskin lungs was heard, as—much nearer to the ship than the place of the imaginary jet, less than a mile ahead—Moby Dick ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... gift is originality. Our English keynote is individuality. Let us cling to those precious heirlooms of our Celtic ancestry, and refuse to be Teutonised. Let us discard the lessons of the Potsdam grenadiers. Let us write on the pediment of our educational temple, "No German need apply." Let ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... a slow but steady growth of national sentiment in favour of securing for the poor a better life. The keynote of the whole movement is the protection of the weak. This appears especially in a recognition of the growing claims of children. Not only is this seen in the history of factory legislation, but in the long ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... united the Jews in every land. And this gave a catholicity to their development and a standard for their teaching which the scattered communities of Jews to-day do not possess. None the less Philo's ideal of Judaism as religion and life is an ideal for our time and for all time. Its keynote is that Israel is a holy people, a kingdom of priests, which has a special function for humanity. And the performance of this function demands the religious-philosophical ordering of life. From the negative side Philo stands for the struggle against Epicureanism, ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... happy anticipation is in vivid contrast to Jeremiah's sorrowful attitude of retrospection. The picture brings out clearly the fact that the keynote of Daniel's prophecy is hope. Looking into his rapt face, we may imagine that this is the message he is writing: "They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... they shed light into Mr. Sikes's mind, and became the keynote and the test to which he brought the various views and theories which he had previously met with. Doles and charities, though founded frequently on the most benevolent motives, were too often deteriorating to their recipients. On the other hand, if self-reliance and self-help—the ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... sufficient example of the pure chant of the Christian ages; which is always at heart joyful, and divides itself into the four great forms, Song of Praise, Song of Prayer, Song of Love, and Song of Battle; praise, however, being the keynote of passion through all the four forms; according to the first law which I have already given in the laws of Fesole; 'all great Art is Praise,' of which the contrary is also true, all foul or miscreant Art is accusation, [Greek: diabole]: 'She gave me of the tree and ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... gatherings of the Brotherhood flock the many to whom the Bible is still a source of spiritual food, and who demand a plain and practical interpretation of its teachings. An impromptu prayer, in which the keynote is the loving fatherhood of God, and its bearing on the brotherhood of man, precedes a homely address or sermon, closely packed with allusions to social and political questions. Or the address is entirely secular; a downright unbeliever has been invited ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... legend which we have. It is singular, by the way, how frequently one is impelled to use the epithet "noble" in praising MacDowell's work; in reference to the "Sonata Eroica" it has an emphatic aptness, for nobility is the keynote of this music. If the work, as a whole, has not the dynamic power of the "Tragica," the weight and gravity of substance, it is both a lovelier and a more lovable work, and it is everywhere more significantly accented. He has written few things more luxuriantly beautiful than the "Guinevere" movement, ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... The keynote of the general scheme of distribution, as set forth in these two volumes, may be expressed as an endeavour to compare the extinct and existing fauna of each country and to trace the course by which what is now peculiar to each region had come to assume its present character. The main ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... still more closely. It displayed a lady of twenty or thereabouts, with a weak face, small, vacant features, a feeble chin, a good-humoured, simple mouth, and a wealth of golden hair that seemed to strike a keynote. ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... daughter of the banker Selliere. Their house on the Esplanade des Invalides has been for years the centre of aristocratic life in Paris; not the most exclusive circle, but certainly the gayest of this gay capital, and from the days of Louis Philippe he has given the keynote to the fast set. ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... handsome and costly 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 view of the loch, ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... make their own rules for their own government, and they should also deal as a group with the infringement of their rules. This will solve the discipline problem of the Teacher. Responsibility should be the keynote of government, and the awakening of such a feeling in the boys ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... Newspapers, 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 kind in the country—was duly held. ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... Dick (striking the keynote at once). No, no! Let me out—I am innocent! (He gives a gasp of relief as he realises the situation.) Free! It is true, then! I have escaped! I dreamed that I was back in prison again! (He shudders ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... 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 Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... put an end, if possible, to the frightful and scandalous scene which had taken place. Aware how delicately the General felt on the subject of reputation, he assailed him with remonstrances on such conduct, in presence of so many witnesses. But the mind had ceased to answer to that once powerful keynote. ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... first part of the musette copied (from memory, so I hope there's nothing wrong). Is it not angelic? But it ought, of course, to have the gavotte before. The gavotte is in G, and ends on the keynote thus (if I remember):- ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... why he said it. It was impulse, and the impromptu suggestion of a half-thought. But the effect of his words upon the Rhamda and the nurse told him that, inadvertently, he had struck a keynote. Both started, especially the woman. Watson took note of this in particular, because of the ingrained acceptance of the feminine in matter ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... when they learned the conditions, discussed them angrily, and the keynote was refusal to sign the document. The financial clauses were stigmatized as masked slavery. The press urged that during the war less than one-tenth of France's territory had been occupied by their countrymen and that even of ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... keynote. But Ursula resented the stout, inflated prosperity implied everywhere. She made her father promise to chisel down the bulging oaken chimney-pieces, chisel them flat. That sort of important paunch was very distasteful ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... up in the carriage and turning about looked at the men. Then he fell upon his knees on the carriage seat and watched them eagerly, his soul crying out to something he thought must be hidden away among the black mass of them, something that was the keynote of their lives, something for which he had not looked and in which he ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... a desultory nature has passed between them; but they have now entered on a subject more interesting and particular, the keynote having been struck by De Lara. He opens by asking ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... 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 ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... the real "masses," had no political or social existence more than the horses with which they were sent to the river to drink. In any scheme of political economy Aristotle's words, in the first book of the "Politics," were the keynote: "The science of the master reduces itself to knowing how to make use of the slave. He is the master, not because he is the owner of the man, but because he knows how to make use ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... characteristics. The newspapers of the city, such as the Daily Call and the Chronicle, gave up large space to the services, debates and other features of the Convention, and they were always complimentary in their comments on individuals as well as on receptions and sermons and addresses. The keynote of the Convention was struck by the Right Rev. Benjamin Wistar Morris, D.D., Bishop of Oregon, in his sermon based on St. Luke, chapter v, verse 4:—"Now when He had left speaking, He said unto Simon, Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... in the first article of the first number of this Periodical is suggestive. Esperanto! Hope is the Keynote of the whole movement. We hope, therefore we are moving. It is because we hope we publish this paper, we form Esperantist circles and we do all that we can to push a knowledge ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 1 • Various
... 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 moral and philosophical side of the subject to the foreground. "Slavery is wrong" was the keynote of all his speeches. To Douglas's glittering sophism that the right of the people of a Territory to have slavery or not, as they might desire, was in accordance with the principle of true popular sovereignty, he made the pointed answer: "Then true popular ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... indeed would have seemed to any but the most acute observer to follow the conversation rather than to lead it. Ethel and Elsie chatted briskly of the current gossip of the day, and it was Mrs. Bodewin Ranger who was skilfully led on to strike the keynote of the talk ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... keynote of a true temperance reformation, Mr. Elliott," returned the host. "Give men pure wine instead of the vile stuff that bears its name, and you will soon get rid of drunkenness. I have always preached ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... every company is doing things in a much bigger way than in former years. But this must not be construed as meaning that the different companies are simply looking about for new ways to spend money. On the contrary, economy—sensible economy—is becoming more and more the keynote of film production. In every department, unnecessary expense is done away with. This applies to both the purchasing and the producing of photoplays. Better prices are being paid, yes; but stories calling for what appears to be unnecessarily expensive settings or costuming are usually ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... were growing darker and the way more thorny. She was gaining only in the power of endurance; she was unconsciously developing the trait that bade fair to become the keynote of her life—fidelity. It was her absolute loyalty to her long-cherished love that prevented her from accepting invitations to go with Belle and Roger. Through all disguises she saw that the latter was a lover and not a friend, and while she had learned to respect him much more, she shrank ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... but one will, and that is mine," said the Kaiser, addressing his soldiers; but it has been the keynote to his diplomacy wherever it has appeared, either in pushing a commercial treaty on Russia in her hour of distress, forcing Italy into the Triple Alliance, or dictating the terms of the Austrian ultimatum to Servia, so that it ...
— The Audacious War • Clarence W. Barron
... hardly grasp Cuvier's wide generalizations, and perhaps there was also some jealousy of the grandeur of his views. Whatever the cause, his principle of classification was not fully appreciated; but it opened a new road for study, and gave us the keynote to the natural affinities among animals. Lamarck, his contemporary, not recognizing the truth of this principle, distributed the animal kingdom into two great divisions, which he calls Vertebrates and Invertebrates. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... new phase through Charles Darwin's epochmaking work: "The Origin of Species." The keynote of Darwin's theory is Natural Selection, by which term the development of all living forms is referred to the working of certain laws which in the reproduction of plants and animals preserved those individuals which were best fitted to ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... is the keynote of this story, loyalty of the hero to his patriotic duty, loyalty of a daughter to her father, and loyalty of a lover to his sweetheart. The followers, of Mr. Harben will enjoy another of ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... bred people accepted the remark in sympathetic silence. There was not even an eyebrow raised, but I fancy that Isobel's words, calmly spoken and with obvious intent, struck the keynote of her future ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... attended him; he died, and I dissected him" was the remark of a wit on reading her satirical pen portrait of the Marquise du Chatelet. This cold skepticism, keen analysis, and undisguised heartlessness strike the keynote of the century which was socially so brilliant, intellectually so fruitful, ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... out, General Joubert never sent such a foolish message, but the rumour—possibly put about by Boer agents—served its purpose by inducing a timorousness in some minds, and men who had no fear for themselves began to get very anxious about the safety of wives and children. That was the keynote of a speech made by Mr. Farquhar at the public meeting yesterday, when he, as Mayor of Ladysmith, made official announcement of General Joubert's proposals. Mr. Farquhar is a cautious Scotsman, whose sense of responsibility in such a crisis would compel ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... finally gathered the meaning of the decree. It was the keynote to the Imperialist hopes. Its cause was the flight of Juarez across the border. Maximilian was surcharged anew with enthusiasm. Even the United States must now recognize his empire, he believed. And confounding flurry ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... 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 of Storm's lyrics. ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... received it; a thankless task. We seek the good of the greatest number, and you must bring your gods to earth if you would raise your worshippers to heaven. After all, simplicity rather than knowledge is the keynote of happiness." ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... Corsica—I had really heard that inappropriate sound, soon across the hillside on my left echoed an even stranger one—yet one I recognised at once as having mingled with my dreams; a woman's voice pitched at first in a long monotonous wail and then undulating in semitones above and below the keynote—a voice which seemed to call from miles away—a sound as dismal as ever fell on a ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... happy. He made a happy marriage in 1804; and his calm temperament enabled him to bear an amount of abuse which might have broken the health of a more irritable man. Cobbett's epithet, 'parson Malthus,' strikes the keynote. He was pictured as a Christian priest denouncing charity, and proclaiming the necessity of vice and misery. He had the ill luck to be the centre upon which the antipathies of Jacobin and anti-Jacobin converged. Cobbett's language was rougher ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... contrivances in Nature, he is told that this banishes God from the world, and is inconsistent with obvious facts. And that because of its implying that "He never interferes to guide the operation of physical causes. We italicize the word, for interference proves to be the keynote of Dr. Hodge's system. Interference with a divinely ordained physical Nature for the accomplishment of natural results! An unorthodox friend has just imparted to us, with much misgiving and solicitude lest he should be thought ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... of the 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 ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... truffle-seeking swine, as rooting by he went, 'What is the keynote of your life?' He ...
— Poems of Progress • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... there be four or five veilings every week, I conceive that the whole list will be exhausted in two years or so. And my enjoyment of the reported speeches will not be the less keen because I can so well imagine them.... In conclusion, Lord Rosebery said that the keynote to the character of the man in whose honour they were gathered together to-day was, first and last, integrity. (Applause.) He did not say of him that he had been infallible. Which of us was infallible? (Laughter.) But this he would say, that the great man whose statue they were looking on for the ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... unconsciousness of it—whether prattling 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, the fearful ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... 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 German ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... 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 of ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... first to declare that the keynote of every policy was the advancement of power. This term, however, has acquired, since the German Reformation, a meaning other than that of the shrewd Florentine. To him power was desirable in itself; for us "the State is not physical power as an end in itself, it is power to protect ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... "Simplicity is the keynote of beauty"—no one article of clothing should stand out too conspicuously, unless it is the hat. Nature uses bright colors sparingly. If you look at a plant, you find it dark near the ground, growing lighter near the top with its green leaves, and then the blossom; ...
— Make Your Own Hats • Gene Allen Martin
... intelligible and wholly dreary. It was that book of the eighteenth century which brought the lower races finally within the pale of right and duty in the common opinion of France. The engravings that face the title-page in each of the seven volumes give the keynote to the effect that the seven volumes produced. In one we see a philosopher writing on a column those old words of dolorous pregnancy, Auri sacra fames, while in the distance Spanish and Portuguese ships ride at anchor, and on the shore white men ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... distance of some fourteen miles. Indeed, as soon as they heard of our intention they invited us to walk. "We are so sorry not to bring you in the motor," they wrote, "but the roads are so frightfully dusty that we might get dust on our chauffeur." This little touch of thoughtfulness is the keynote of their character. ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... The keynote was struck at once in the Quarterly Review by Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford. He declared that Darwin was guilty of "a tendency to limit God's glory in creation"; that "the principle of natural selection is absolutely incompatible with ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... 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 ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... but one to strike the keynote of respect and personal freedom in marriage; the other will soon ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... keynote of the later history of the Italian cities. This it was, and not any real lack of patriotism, which made them choose a German emperor instead of an Italian king. There was no room at that time for the idea of Italian unity, as we now understand it: the nature of the people ...
— The Communes Of Lombardy From The VI. To The X. Century • William Klapp Williams
... course much in his descriptions, and his suggestions for decoration, that shows that he did not entirely free himself from the false taste of his time. But it is clear that he was one of the first to recognise what is, indeed, the very keynote of aesthetic eclecticism, I mean the true harmony of all really beautiful things irrespective of age or place, of school or manner. He saw that in decorating a room, which is to be, not a room for show, but a room to live in, we should never aim at any archaeological reconstruction of ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... as contained in the Declaration, and only then proceeding to search for the remedies which would square reality with the idea. Hence it was that the aspiration toward equal citizenship became the keynote of labor's earliest political movement. The issue was drawn primarily between the rich and the poor, not between the functional classes, employers and employes. While the workmen took good care to exclude from their ranks "persons not ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... keynote. He felt that she had been in touch with life, and had got the better of it: that there had been drama in her past, born of contact with men and women. She had been dealing with such problems as securing food—and his experience of the last twenty-four hours had ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett |
