"Discordant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... quiring, with a heartiness of joy That the high tide of song o'erbrims the grove, And far adown the meadow runs to waste; How would the soul, there floating, loathe to mark Sudden contention; sharp, discordant screams, From throats whose single duty ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... expended and the fire extinct, and then, as I said, we went away to sleep under the boats' awnings. We were in the act of depositing our loaded rifles by our sides in a place of security, when the unearthly war cry rose in the jungle, and in the stillness of the night these discordant screams sounded like the yelling of a legion of devils. Immediately afterwards a body of natives rushed from the jungle in the direction of the boats, in which we supposed that our European party were all assembled. Always on our guard against treachery, and not knowing ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... an indefinable thrill at the scene. The air seemed to reek with a mixed perfume and cigarette smoke—to resound with high-keyed youthful laughter, wild and sweet and vacant above the strange, discordant music. Then the flashing, changing, whirling colors of the dancers struck Lane as oriental, erotic, bizarre—gorgeous golds and greens and reds striped by the conventional black. Suddenly the blare ceased, ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... cricket's sharp, discordant scream [5] Fills mortal sense with dread; More sorrowful it scarce could ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... conducted a service, morning and evening, in the drawing-room. Christmas Day, which occurred three weeks after the wreck, was also observed as a holiday; and despite our forlorn and rather precarious situation, we contrived to make a fairly jolly day of it, the only discordant element being the boy Julius, who early became sulky for some unaccountable reason, and spent the entire day upon the topgallant forecastle with a rifle, shooting at sea-birds and wasting some two hundred rounds of ball cartridge. I felt strongly inclined ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... they vigorously excluded all intoxicating drinks. But they had been oppressed and exasperated by the impositions of corrupt officers until forbearance, with them, had ceased to be a a virtue. On their side was the spirit of liberty, animating the discordant multitude, but, unfortunately, without trained leaders, or a sufficiency of arms, going forth to make its first essay at battle on American soil. Redress of grievances was sought at first by the Regulators in ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... and impelled with force, the string breaks into shorter sections, and the discordant upper partials of the string, thus brought into prominence, make the tone harsh. If the hammer is soft, and the force employed is moderated, the harmonious partials of the longer sections strike the ear, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... too soon, and when Juliet heard the morning-song of the lark, she would have persuaded herself that it was the nightingale, which sings by night; but it was too truly the lark which sung, and a discordant and unpleasing note it seemed to her; and the streaks of day in the east too certainly pointed out that it was time for these lovers to part. Romeo took his leave of his dear wife with a heavy heart, promising to write to her ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... have been sharp enough to distinguish the voice of a single man amid the clash of arms and war-cries, the shrieks of women, the wails of the wounded, the discordant grunting of the camels, the blasts of horns and trumpets ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... instruments charm and delight the ear with their sweetness, are borne along by such celerity and delicacy of modulation, producing such a consonance from the rapidity of seemingly discordant touches, that I shall briefly repeat what is set forth in our Irish Topography on the subject of the musical instruments of the three nations. It is astonishing that in so complex and rapid a movement of the fingers, the musical proportions can be preserved, and that throughout ...
— The Description of Wales • Geraldus Cambrensis
... "Rather discordant music," answered the minister; "but I think we may as well accept your invitation—don't you, wife?" and taking the children with them, they descended to the dining-room. Ranged round the long table were eight ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... The discordant constructions of the Clayton and Bulwer treaty between the two Governments, which at different periods of the discussion bore a threatening aspect, have resulted in a final settlement entirely satisfactory to this Government. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... associations alien to Greek life: e.g. (Greek), 'jurymen,' (Greek), 'the bourgeoisie.' (d) The translator has also to provide expressions for philosophical terms of very indefinite meaning in the more definite language of modern philosophy. And he must not allow discordant elements to enter into the work. For example, in translating Plato, it would equally be an anachronism to intrude on him the feeling and spirit of the Jewish or Christian Scriptures or the technical terms of the Hegelian or ...
— Charmides • Plato
... the royal army in possession of the road before him. I shall not attempt to describe a conflict which has been rendered unintelligible by the confused and discordant narratives of different writers. The king's cavalry appears to have been more than a match for that of the enemy; but it could make no impression on the forest of pikes presented by the infantry, the greater part of which consisted of ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... In the morning, before the sun has arisen, and at the time when the dawn is making the city gray and leaden in color instead of somber and black, these sparrows begin to chatter and chirp and sing in discordant notes, and by this I know the day has come. Upon this morning it seemed to me the sparrows chattered with an unusual commotion; and as I listened I heard from another window near mine the voice of grief and lamentation. Then I knew that one who had long been sick had passed away. As ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... mingling their uproarious bathing with foaming beer; a picture framed in white sand and sounding sea, more than pleasant to the jaded taste of an Endicott. The roar of the surf drowned the mean uproar of discordant man. The details of life there were too cheap to be looked at closely; but at a distance the surface had sufficient color and movement. He found an exception to this judgment. La Belle Colette danced with artistic power, though in surroundings ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... strongly defined contrasts is nowhere better illustrated than here. The sharp discordant tones, which characterize the opening bars of the movement, are simply pushed aside by the new. It is the subjugation of the worldly by the spiritual, ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... bracelet as he sat rigidly in a camp chair in a suit of pyjamas. Upon the bed lay Birnier, nursing his bandaged left arm. Now and again the thrumming, chanting and the shrilling of the saturnalia without rose into discordant yells like a gust of ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... sixpences now! Come along... pay your sixpences now." Crowds of people were passing through the stile, jostling one another, pressing and pushing, but all apparently in good temper, for there was a great deal of laughter and merriment. From the other side of the fence came a torrent of sound, so discordant and so tumultuous that it was impossible to separate the elements of it one from another—screams, shrieks, the bellowing of animals, and the monotonous rise and fall of scraps of tune, several bars of one and then bars of another, and then everything lost together in the general babel; ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... with their exuberant Gothic rose the second storey of Greco-Romano and almost modern construction, causing Gabriel the same annoyance as would a discordant trumpet interrupting a symphony. Jesus and the twelve apostles, all life size, seated at the table, each under his own canopied niche, could be seen above the central porch, shut in by the two tower-like buttresses which divided the front into three parts. ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... gave a monosyllabic assent, and refrained from disturbing my friend's new-born enthusiasm by any discordant note; but I must confess that this sudden outburst of deafening noise and the dazzling light aroused in my heretical breast feelings of a warlike rather than a religious kind. For a moment I could imagine myself in ancient Moscow, and could fancy the people being called ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... all stages of his existence the world of which man is aware outside him, and the world of feelings and desires within him are in conflict. But the conviction lives within him that in some way they can be brought into harmony, and that a power exists which rules in both of these discordant realms and in which, if he can identify himself with it, he also will escape from their discord. If this be so, then this necessity to seek after a higher power must have begun to operate as soon as human consciousness ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... will undergo a corresponding process of modification. Creeds that are no longer in harmony with the general spirit of the time may long continue, but a new spirit will be breathed into the old forms. Those portions which are most discordant with our fresh knowledge will be neglected or attenuated. Although they may not be openly discarded, they will cease to ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... while afterwards the Canada's siren began to wail and squeal with a horrible mockery of painful cries. The tugs backed clear of her, and lent their shrill voices to the discordant concert. Presently the water astern of the transport turned from brown to foaming white, and her masts began to move past the farther shore. There was a faint sound of cheering from her, but she was soon out of sound and sight, and still the women stared into the mist that ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... with Little Handsome, out of spite. Only Miss Etty is too indifferent to care. I did but leave my old aunt to Flora, and step back to remark that it was a pleasant Sunday, that the sermon was homely and dull, and that the singing was discordant. Miss Etty assented, but very coldly, and presently she bolted into an old red house, and left me to go home by myself. When we started for church again, she was among the missing, and we found her in ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... valley appeared that of a mighty, virulent hand. Out of the depths arose a flock of dark-hued birds, soaring toward the morbific fog; not moving like other winged creatures, with harmony of motion, but rising without unity, and filling the vale with discordant sounds. Nowhere could these sable birds have appeared more unearthly than in the "dark valley," as it was called by the natives, where the mists moved capriciously, yet remained persistently within the circumference of this natural cauldron, now falling like a pall and again ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... nay, he seeks to eke out the insufficient harmony between himself and the things which he cannot command, the insufficient harmony between the uncontrollable parts of himself, by a harmony created on purpose in the things which he can control. To a large extent man feels himself tortured by discordant impressions coming from the world outside and the world inside him; and he seeks comfort and medicine in harmonious impressions of his own making, in his own strange inward-outward world ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... very well done. The old French gentleman was alone, and had it all to perform by himself. He began with calling his daughter, in various discordant keys, and with such a variety of impatient and exasperated intonation, that the whole room was full of laughter. His daughter not appearing nor answering, he next instituted a make-believe search for her, feigning to go into the kitchen, the buttery, her bedroom. Not finding her, and making ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... the peacock's plumes adorn, Yet horror screams from his discordant throat. Rise, sons of harmony, and hail the morn, While warbling larks on russet pinions float; Or seek, at noon, the woodland scene remote, Where the grey linnets carol from the hill. O let them ne'er, with artificial note, To please a tyrant, strain the little bill! ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... the immortal spirit grows 340 Like harmony in music; there is a dark Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles Discordant elements, makes them cling together In one society. How strange that all The terrors, pains, and early miseries, 345 Regrets, vexations, lassitudes interfused Within my mind, should e'er have borne a part, And that a needful part, in making up The calm existence ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... genuinely feeling soul has an insuperable repugnance alike for unfeelingness, for false feeling, and for false expressions of feeling. An Arabian courser cannot travel comfortably with a snail. A soul whose motions are musical curves cannot well blend with a soul whose motions are discordant angles. A woman is naturally as much more capricious than a man, as she is more susceptible. A slighter shock suffices to jostle her delicate emotions out of delight into disgust. She is therefore a severer personal ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... ceiling was broken by a series of beams radiating unevenly from one annular space, in all directions, and with no apparent design. The furniture was rattan and plush, upholstered and plain, and was crowded together with a few writing tables scattered here and there. It was a discordant orgie of decorative effects and the result ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... years, at least, Scribe was the salient figure in the French theater; and his influence endured more than twoscore years after his death. He can be considered from discordant standpoints; to the men of letters Scribe seems wholly unimportant, since his merits were in great measure outside of literature; to the men of the theater Scribe is a personality of abiding interest, since he put his mark on the drama of his own day in almost every one of its departments. In the ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... mean to say," said the lady, with a discordant laugh, "that you believe, because YOU didn't go there and break the news, that nobody else will? That he won't hear of it from ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... complain of his behavior." "Shelley and his girl-wife visited Windermere," we think are the words of De Quincey in alluding to their sudden apparition in the Lake district just after their union. And two more discordant natures could hardly have been bound ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... them a lesson on married life, with its daily discipline, its constant obligation of mutual forbearance. For a confirmed bachelor, he did it remarkably well; but it must be recorded that this was not by any means his first essay in lecturing discordant spouses from the Bench. Lord Rattley, whose own matrimonial ventures had been (like Mr. Weller's researches in London) extensive and peculiar, leaned back and followed the discourse with appreciation, his elbows resting on the arms of his chair, his finger-tips delicately ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... remained for them but to prepare, where they were, to meet the attack which would certainly be made upon them in the morning. The arrival of this trireme was thus of very essential service to the Greeks. It put an end to their discordant debates, and united them, one and all, in the work of making resolute preparations for action. This vessel was also of very essential service in the conflict itself which ensued; and the Greeks were so grateful to ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... not? Parents and Children, on both sides, being really desirous of it, what reason is there but it should in due time come to perfection, and, without annihilating Time and Space, make four lovers happy? No reason. Rubs doubtless had arisen since that Visit of George I., discordant procedures, chiefly about Friedrich Wilhelm's recruiting operations in the Hanover territory, as shall be noted by and by: but these the ever-wakeful enthusiasm of Queen Sophie, who had set her whole heart with a female fixity on this Double-Marriage Project, had smoothed ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... to the house, a wild, discordant voice suddenly broke forth somewhere in the darkness, singing in a high key, 'All ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord, praise Him and magnify Him for ever!' It was Mad Jack, who had his dwelling in the Court, and at all hours ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... dedicated to Heaven, and, like the Pantheon at Rome, lighted only from above. And earthly passions in the form of gods were no longer there, but the sweet and thoughtful faces of Christ, and the Virgin Mary, and the Saints. Thus there was not one discordant thing in her; but a perfect harmony of figure, and face, and soul, in a word of the whole being. And he who had a soul to comprehend hers, must of necessity love her, and, having once loved her, could love no ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... lighted before they were startled by a confused sound of shouting from the compound;—a blur of shrill and deep voices, punctuated by the strained discordant bark of a dog;—a bark unmistakable to ears that have heard it once. Desmond sprang out ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... their amours, but few by their constancy. There was a certain Italian at court, famous for the guitar: he had a genius for music, and he was the only man who could make anything of the guitar: his style of play was so full of grace and tenderness, that he would have given harmony to the most discordant instruments. The truth is, nothing was so difficult as to play like this foreigner. The king's relish for his compositions had brought the instrument so much into vogue, that every person played upon it, well or ill; and you were as sure to see a guitar on a lady's toilet ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... clear, beautiful morning when we first launched our little boat, and rowed out upon the placid waters of the lagoon. Not a breath of wind ruffled the surface of the deep. Not a cloud spotted the deep blue sky. Not a sound that was discordant broke the stillness of the morning, although there were many sounds, sweet, tiny, and melodious, that mingled in the universal harmony of nature. The sun was just rising from the Pacific's ample bosom and tipping the mountaintops ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... editor has refrained from expressing any opinions that would strike a discordant note in the reading of the text as De Morgan left it. The temptation is great to add to the discussion at various points, but it is a temptation to be resisted. To furnish such information as shall make the reading more pleasant, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... joyous fingers Strike out from your harps, one glad, resonant strain, And, if one discordant, harsh, jarring note lingers, Oh, strike for your country, together again! And then, when your hands and your hearts are united, When you kneel at one shrine, when you bow to one law. With a sea of glad brightness, your ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... office. Mutual distrust however again foiled his attempts; and the old ministry returned to office under the headship of Lord Liverpool, a man of no great abilities, but temperate, well informed, and endowed with a remarkable skill in holding discordant colleagues together. The most important of these colleagues was Lord Castlereagh, who became Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Time has long ago rendered justice to the political ability of Castlereagh, disguised as it was to men of his own day by a ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... become all-powerful? What contributes more to health or happiness than a vigorous will? A habit of directing a firm and steady will upon those things which tend to produce harmony of thought will bring happiness and contentment; the will, rightly drilled,—and divinely guided,—can drive out all discordant thoughts, and usher in the reign of perpetual harmony. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of forming a habit of cheerfulness early in life. The serene optimist is one whose mind has dwelt so long upon the sunny side of life ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... notice. He wrote: "This speech is singular; at least, I do not at present see into Shakespeare's motive, his rationale, or in what point of view he meant Brutus' character to appear. For surely ... nothing can seem more discordant with our historical preconceptions of Brutus, or more lowering to the intellect of the Stoico-Platonic tyrannicide, than the tenets here attributed to him—to him, the stern Roman republican; namely, ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... contemptuous pity. Whom, then, shall the soul turn to? Who will feel that to be affliction which each spirit feels to be so? If the soul shut itself within itself, it becomes morbid; the fine chords of the mind and nerves by constant wear become jarring and discordant; hence fretfulness, discontent, and habitual irritability ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... The whistling noise went on. It was vaguely discordant, and it was monotonous, and it was more than a little irritating. Again it changed timbre, going up to the shrillest of squealings, and back nearly to its original ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... that all three boys very soon tired of botanising, and were searching about the shady paths for anything or nothing, as the case might be. Now it was after butterflies; now the discordant cry of the jay told of its nest being, at hand; while every now and then the scampering rustle of a rabbit amidst the underwood would start the boys off in full chase, and in almost every instance the fruit of their hunt was, seeing the little ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... contest of an able British general and five thousand well drilled British and mercenary soldiers. It silenced the complaints which were growing loud against the inactivity of Washington. It once more harmonized the colonial counsels, which were becoming seriously discordant. It inspired new effort throughout the colonies. And it decided France to make open cause with the struggling patriots. To the masterly diplomacy of Franklin we owe it that the great European rival of England threw the weight of her sympathy and ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... discordant noises one canoe, larger than the others, and with a canopy over it, pushed alongside, and a naked warrior handed up a bunch of red and yellow feathers. This was, of course, supposed to be a sign of peace, but such was not ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne
... brier pipe, and filled and lighted it. The big white Syrian stars glinted down on him from a black velvet sky. Along the nearer peaks and hollows of the Moab Mountains, the knots of prowling jackals kept up a running chorus of yapping—a discordant chant punctuated now and then by the far-away howl of a hunting wolf; or, by the choking "laugh" of a hyena in the valley below, who thus gave forth the news of some especially delicious bit of carrion discovered among ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... of nothing more characteristic of his talking and his writing than that tragic poem in which, with his heart crying for the child he had adored and lost, he could compare himself to 'an old black rotter of a boat' past service, and could see, when criticised for it, nothing discordant in that slang rotter dropped into such verse!" A good deal of Henley is in both answers. This curious blend must have especially struck everybody who saw him and listened to him in his own home. I can recall summer Sunday afternoons at Addiscombe, with Henley ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... cord to run out. The albatross soon descried the tempting morsel, and sweeping down in graceful circles to seize it, was soon securely hooked. The only show of resistance it made to being drawn on board was to extend its wings, and utter loud discordant cries. Once on deck, its grace and majesty vanished. It showed no fear, and the hook, still fastened in its beak, did not seem to annoy it; but no landsman could have been more awkward than was the albatross on the smooth rocking deck. It staggered and waddled clumsily, and tried in vain ...
— Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... and Crown Street, and crossing Finsbury square, Mr. Sikes struck, by way of Chiswell Street, into Barbican: thence into Long Lane, and so into Smithfield; from which latter place arose a tumult of discordant sounds that filled Oliver Twist ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... in vain, with cries discordant, Clamorous round the Gothic spire, Screamed the feathered Minnesingers For the ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... simply stared at it in bewilderment. What did it mean? There was an attempt to draw the professor into the circle, to continue the conversation that had been so animated and interesting before his entrance. The effect was much like that produced in striking a discordant note in a hitherto faultless piece of music. Young men out of business needing help, needing an encouraging word, an out-stretched hand! Professor Ellis had words, and hands, but he might have been without either for all the help they gave him in responding to efforts ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... afforded similar adventures. In the midst of our supper, (which was by no means a bad one of the kind), in burst a fat German woman in a transport of fury, who thought herself ill-used in the allotment of the rooms; squabbling in a very discordant key with the landlady, who followed her "blaspheming an octave higher." Both were apparently viragos of the first order, and the keen encounter of their wits was so loud, that we turned a deaf ear to the German's appeal, and insisted on their choosing another field of battle. Battle however ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... has been wrong and discordant, and the wretchedness has been greatly increased by the way we have left, in the immediate past, the force of sex unregulated and unrecognized, thereby causing much of the modern companionship of ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... faction, and made him appear to Octavius and all the friends of the dead Dictator no less guilty of his death than those who had killed him. What could this end in but that which you and your friends had most to fear, a reunion of the whole Caesarean party and of their principal leaders, however discordant the one with the other, to destroy the Pompeians? For my own part, I foresaw it long before the event, and therefore kept myself wholly clear of those proceedings. You think I ought to have joined you and Cassius at Philippi, because I knew your ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... Canada, as in New Brunswick, the population was at first much at one. In time, however, discordant elements appeared. Religious, or at least denominational, differences began to cause friction. The great majority of the early settlers in Upper Canada belonged to the Church of England, whose adherents in the older colonies had nearly all taken the Loyalist side. Of the Ulster Presbyterians ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... crimes he commits. If they clearly perceive certain defects of execution, not he, but his victims, are in such cases made responsible. If he has caused the chorus-singers to fail in taking up a point in a finale, if he has allowed a discordant wavering to take place between the choir and the orchestra, or between the extreme sides of the instrumental body, if he has absurdly hurried a movement, or allowed it to linger unduly, if he has interrupted a singer before the end of a phrase, they exclaim: "The ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... nerves of happy people. But two of us were not happy. I was sure enough of myself, for one. I was worse than sure,—I was wretchedly anxious about Phillis. Ever since that day of the thunderstorm there had been a new, sharp, discordant sound to me in her voice, a sort of jangle in her tone; and her restless eyes had no quietness in them; and her colour came and went without a cause that I could find out. The minister, happy in ignorance of what most concerned him, brought out his books; his learned volumes and classics. Whether ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... connect distant countries far more closely, in modern times than in the ancient world. Yet there is always an element of unrest and insecurity underlying the position of imperial rulership over different and often discordant groups of subjects; and this has been one main cause of the immemorial weakness of Asiatic empires, and of the indifference of the people to a change of masters, because no single dynasty represented ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... gulls. Some were cleverly killed and, prepared in a certain way, made very acceptable water-game. Amongst large-winged birds, carried a long distance from all lands and resting upon the waves from the fatigue of their flight, I saw some magnificent albatrosses, uttering discordant cries like the braying of an ass, and birds belonging to the ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... intelligent artist, local colours, even the least agreeable, and those which have the least affinity among themselves, may become very agreeable to the eye, and contribute powerfully to the harmony of the picture through the interposition of some other colour, as in music discordant tones are happily united by means of intermediate ones." The translator appends to this a note in which he quotes from Mengs, that "The three primary colours being red, blue, and yellow, when any one of them is prominently used, it should be accompanied by one which unites the other two. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... principle. From the shade of a thick spruce bush near the bridge-end a moose calf lumbered lazily to her feet, and stood staring, her head low down and her big ears waving in sleepy interrogation. From within the cabin came a series of harsh screeches mixed with discordant laughter and cries of "Ebenezer! Ebenezer! Oh, by Gee! Hullo!" Then the cabin door swung wide, and in the doorway appeared MacPhairrson, leaning on his crutches, a green parrot on his shoulder, and beside his crippled ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... "As LIFE discordant elements arrests, Rejects the noxious, and the pure digests; Combines with Heat the fluctuating mass, And gives a while solidity to gas; 40 Organic forms with chemic changes strive, Live but to die, and die but to revive! Immortal matter braves the transient storm, Mounts from the wreck, ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... 2, cap. 77.—L. Marineo, Cosas Memorables, fol. 164.—The prodigious desolation of the land may be inferred from the estimates, although somewhat discordant, of deserted houses in Andalusia. Garibay (Compendio, lib. 18, cap. 17,) puts these at three, Pulgar (Reyes Catolicos, part. 2, cap. 77,) at four, L. Marineo (Cosas Memorables, fol. 164,) ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... together the jarring elements in the North which these jarring elements in his own Cabinet represented; and it was one of his great achievements that he kept together, for as long as was needful, able but discordant public servants who could never have combined together ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... Holland, it may suffice to state that such did exist, and in no very moderate degree. The countries had hitherto had but little community of interests with each other; and they formed elements so utterly discordant as to afford but slight hope that they would speedily coalesce. The lower classes of the Belgian population were ignorant as well as superstitious (not that these two qualities are to be considered as inseparable); ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... it was some comfort to me that I got 11 notches the 1st Innings and 7 the 2nd, which was more than any of our side except Brockman & Ipswich could contrive to hit. After the match we dined together, and were extremely friendly, not a single discordant word was uttered by either party. To be sure, we were most of us rather drunk and went together to the Haymarket Theatre, where we kicked up a row, As you may suppose, when so many Harrovians & Etonians met at one place; I was one of seven in a single ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... beleaguered by land, and threatened with direful desolation from without; while its very vitals are torn with internal faction and commotion! Never did historic pen record a page of more complicated distress, unless it be the strife that distracted the Israelites during the siege of Jerusalem, where discordant parties were cutting each other's throats at the moment when the victorious legions of Titus had toppled down their bulwarks, and were carrying fire and sword into the very sanctum ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... of Lord Nelson, during the whole of this arduous and perplexing service, were inconceivably great. He had, besides the usual cares of a commander in chief, the very difficult task of conciliating a variety of discordant states, from whom he was under the necessity of drawing constant supplies of fresh provisions and other requisites, which they were deterred from affording by the dread of a powerful and unprincipled enemy, perpetually menacing them with destruction, whatever degrees ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... be it that these things touch not to one way, nevertheless they touch to that, that I have hight you, to shew you a part of customs and manners, and diversities of countries. And for this is the first country that is discordant in faith and in belief, and varieth from our faith, on this half the sea, therefore I have set it here, that ye may know the diversity that is between our faith and theirs. For many men have great liking, to hear speak of strange ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown
... would have as a mark of his favor. The barbarian begged that he might have the principal pantomimist, and upon being asked why he made such an odd request, replied that he had many neighbors who spoke such various and discordant languages that he found it difficult to obtain any interpreter who could understand them or explain his commands; but if he had the dancer he could by his assistance easily make himself ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... little by the distance. A dozen or more bands were playing a dozen or more different tunes from a dozen or more different dance-halls, all near together along the levee and the neighboring streets; and, sometimes, high above even these discordant sounds, rose the human voice, in loud song, or boisterous shout, or peals of rough laughter. Around some of the near-by camp-fires men had gathered and were singing the loved home melodies; and from one of these groups came the voice of a woman in song, sounding singularly sweet and ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... fact turned out to be, when Britannic Majesty arrives; and it can now be discovered clearly, by any eyes, however flat to the head. And a terrible fact it is. Discordant Generals accuse one another; hungry soldiers cannot be kept from plundering: for the horses there is unripe rye in quantity; but what is there for the men? My poor traditionary friends, of the Grey Dragoons, were wont (I have heard) to be heart-rending on this ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... domestic muffin. To the Parks Drags the slow Ladies' School, consuming time In passing given points. Here glow the lamps, And tea-spoons clatter to the cosy hum Of scientific circles. Here resounds The football-field with its discordant train, The crowd that cheers but not discriminates, As ever into touch the ball returns And shrieks the whistle, while the game proceeds With fine irregularity well worth The paltry shilling.— Draw ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of poetry, which Coleridge defined as "the best words in the best order," is manifestly very different. A phrase which is harmonious or pregnant with fire in one language may become discordant, flat, and vapid when translated into another. Shelley spoke of "the vanity of translation." "It were as wise (he said) to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its colour and odour, as seek to transfuse from ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... treble. A pure idealized negro dance-frolic is here. It is hard to follow all the pranks; lightly as the latest phrase descends in extending melody, a rude blast of the march intrudes in discordant humor. A new jingle of dance comes with a redoubled pace of bits of the march. As this dies down to dimmest bass, the old song from the Largo rings high in the wood. Strangest of all, in a fierce shout of the whole ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... well finished reading the decree, the discordant blare of trumpets, bursting forth at a prearranged signal, drowned, to a certain extent, the murmurs that followed its proclamation, amid which Laubardemont urged forward the procession, which entered the great building already referred ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... as he spoke of my grandfather, grew suddenly shrill and discordant, while his eyes blazed up in furious wrath. In a second or two, however, he calmed himself again and went on ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a close union with beings so discordant in their nature, and to diffuse himself in a larger circle. He practised the smile of universal courtesy, and invited all to his table, but admitted none to his retirements. Many who had been rejected in his choice of friendship, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... that in the first instance we compare the conclusion of S. Mark's Gospel with the beginning of it. We did this before, when our object was to ascertain whether the Style of S. Mark xvi. 9-20 be indeed as utterly discordant from that of the rest of the Gospel as is commonly represented. We found, instead, the most striking resemblance.(314) We also instituted a brief comparison between the two in order to discover whether the Diction of the one might not possibly be found ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... they departed. They had roused the multitude of eider-ducks, and other sea-fowl, which thronged the islet, and which now, being roused, began their night-feeding and flying, though at an earlier hour than usual. When their discordant cries were left so far behind as to be softened by distance, the flapping of wings and swash of water, as the fowl plunged in, still made the air ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... birth and corporeal resurrection of Jesus as essential to Christianity has required brief discussion of these also, mainly with reference to the reasonableness of that demand. As to the latter miracle, it must be observed that in the Biblical narratives taken as a whole, whichever of their discordant features one be disposed to emphasize, the psychical element clearly preponderates over the physical ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... with him. I was wrong in thinking Miss Janie not a pretty girl. Hers is that type of beauty that escapes attention by its own perfection. It is the eccentric, the discordant, that arrests the roving eye. To harmony one has to ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... home of the famous wonder-working picture of the Madonna which hangs over the altar. The sagrestano pulled aside the curtains while another man pulled a cord which operated a wheel hung with bells of different sizes, thereby making a tremendous and discordant noise and signifying to all within earshot that the Madonna was being unveiled, in case any one might care ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... discordant note was struck, oddly enough, by his faithful satellite, William Irons, who, at his employer's entrance, abruptly left off an attempt to coax his red shock into lovelocks, slid his pocket mirror under a heap of papers, and fell to hammering the typewriter with unnatural energy. Shelby accepted ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... and left us here to starve." Rufus Dawes burst into a laugh so discordant that it made the other shudder. "We'll starve together, Maurice Frere," said he, "for while you've a crust, I'll share it. If I don't get liberty, at least ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... or thunder: for that there are huge and monstrous mountaines, whose greatest substance are stones, and those stones so shaken with some extraordinarie meanes that one is separated from another, which is discordant ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... vultures, quails, doves, wild deer, opossums, chickmuncks, white foxes, wild cats, wolves,—are ever and anon to be seen among the high palmetto brakes, and the alligators in the bayous arid swamps, "make night hideous" with their discordant bellowings and the vile odour which they emit. The tout ensemble of the place brings to recollection ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... painfully aware of an uproarious babble of loud and drunken voices and a continual clinking of glasses, which appeared to sound as from a tap-room beneath, these commingled now and then with oaths and scraps of discordant song bellowed out above the hubbub. His wounded head beat with tremendous and straining painfulness, as though it would burst asunder, and he was possessed by a burning thirst that seemed to consume his very vitals. He called aloud, ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... the most straightforward unconsciousness and unconcern. Her taste in dress was, as might have been expected, slightly eccentric, but, for a person with so great a perception of harmony of sound, her passion for discordant colors was singular. The first time I ever saw her she was dressed in a bright brimstone-colored silk gown, made so short as to show her feet and ankles, having on her head a white satin hat, with a forest of white feathers; and I remember her standing, with her feet wide apart and ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... JUDGMENTS AND DECISIONS.—The prattle of children may be grateful music to our ears when we are in one mood, and excruciatingly discordant noise when we are in another. What appeals to us as a good practical joke one day, may seem a piece of unwarranted impertinence on another. A proposition which looks entirely plausible under the sanguine mood induced by a persuasive orator, may appear wholly untenable a few hours later. Decisions ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... for the length of time which I have consumed upon these points. The case is complicated: the transactions have been much misunderstood, and the opinions regarding them are various and discordant. The true understanding of the case, however, and the vindication of the conduct of Government, would be matters of comparatively light importance, if censure or approbation for the past were the only ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... debated, awe-struck but discordant, a shout arose once more from the outer circle—a mighty shout of mingled surprise, alarm, and terror. "Taboo! Taboo! Fence the mysteries. Beware! Oh, great god, we warn you. The mysteries are in danger! Cut her down! Kill her! A woman! ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... despatched them to her favourite musician and attendant, Acota. Who was there in the whole kingdom of Souffra who could so sweetly touch the mandolin as Acota? Yet, who was there, not only in Souffra, but in all the adjacent countries, who struck such occasional discordant notes as Acota, and that in the ear of the beautiful princess Babe-bi-bobu, who, far from being displeased, appeared to approve of his occasional violence, which not only threatened to crack the strings ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... circle. His verses were first read in tapestried chambers, and to the gracious ear of stately lords and ladies. It was because he wrote for such an audience that he avoids the introduction of any discordant element in the shape of the deeper and darker social problems of the time. The same reticence occurs in Horace, writing as he did for the ear of Augustus and Maecenas, and of the fashionable circle thronging the great palace of his patron on the Esquiline. Is not the historic ...
— English Satires • Various
... ears would have found harsh and discordant sounded pleasantly enough to the listening Timothy, who nodded his head ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... not neglect it," replied the other, "but we practise it in a special place, inclosed in the most charming mountain-valley; and then again we take care that the different instruments are taught in places lying far apart. Especially are the discordant notes of beginners banished to certain solitary spots, where they can drive no one crazy; for you will yourself confess, that in well-regulated civil society scarcely any more miserable nuisance is to be endured than when the neighborhood inflicts upon us a beginner ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... for a moment inside the great hall at Stormly Park and looked round. It was quite beautiful. Peter Masters, having chosen the best man in England for his purpose, had had the sense to let him alone. There was no discordant note anywhere and Christopher was quite alive to its perfections. But coming straight from Stormly Town the contrast was too glaring and too crude. It was not that Peter Masters was rich and his people were poor. Poverty and riches have run hand in ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... a perfect hurricane of indignant outcries and yells. But he heeded them not, but calmly pursued his task. Above him wheeled the two ravens, who had never quitted the place since daybreak, uttering their discordant cries. When all was done, he descended a few steps, and, taking a black hood from his girdle to place over the head of his victim, called out in a voice which had little human in its tone, "I ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... sentries during the night. Not a person could pass, but he was hailed, and every half hour I was awakened by the guard yelling out some unintelligible words, which were caught up in every direction, in the most discordant tones, until echo herself grew hoarse and disgusted with the repetition. I was well guarded to be sure, but could have dispensed with the attention, and would have bargained for less honor, with ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... powerful, silvery, melodious, full, strong, natural, mellow, magnetic, expressive, carrying, and responsive. Endeavor to keep your voice free from such undesirable qualities as the harsh, breathy, sharp, rough, rigid, throaty, guttural, thin, shrill, nasal, unmusical, discordant, muffled, explosive, strained, inaudible, ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... assume that it was done out of regard to the pictorial possibilities of the street. We decide, therefore, to render, as faithfully as we may, the values of the clock-tower and its immediate surroundings, and to disregard the discordant elements; and we have no hesitation in selecting for principal emphasis in our drawing, Fig. 40, the shadow under the projecting building. This dark accent will count brilliantly against the foreground ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... the Master Workman announces the sunrise and calls the People to their work, in the recitative, "Awake! ye Workers, awake!" The summons is followed by the chorus, "To work," in which the vocal part is noisy, broken, and somewhat discordant, representing the hurry and bustle of a crowd of working-men,—with which, however, the orchestra and organ build up a powerful theme. The song of the Master Workman is also interwoven, and the chorus is finally developed with great vigor and splendid dramatic effect. Nimrod now appears, and ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... top of the staircase. The sensations attributed to divers on spring-boards, leading ladies on opening nights, and lumpy, husky young men on the day of the Big Game, crowded through her. She should have descended to a burst of drums or a discordant blend of themes from "Thais" and "Carmen." She had never been so curious about her appearance, she had never been so satisfied with it. She had been sixteen years old for ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... jangle of the telephone bell in the office ripped the stillness with a discordant suddenness which Farquaharson thought must arouse the household, but the snoring beyond the wall went on, unbroken, and there was no sound of a footfall on the creaking stair. At last Stuart, himself, irritated by the ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... and, joining the "goats" outside, I helped to organize a hostile demonstration. We began to march round the schoolhouse, howling Yankee Doodle. Our discordant noise drew a prompt response. The door opened ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... Rise of Curtain, NANETTE crosses to fireplace and shovels ashes into a pail. POTIN is heard outside, singing, in loud and discordant tones, "La Marseillaise." ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Paul Kauvar; or, Anarchy • Steele Mackaye
... resentment. If, on the other hand, they find us either destitute of an effectual government (each State doing right or wrong, as to its rulers may seem convenient), or split into three or four independent and probably discordant republics or confederacies, one inclining to Britain, another to France, and a third to Spain, and perhaps played off against each other by the three, what a poor, pitiful figure will America make in their eyes! How liable would she become ...
— The Federalist Papers
... no little interest; this mysterious name that had sounded so often in her young ears, and was associated with so many strange and high hopes, and some dark blending of doubt and apprehension and discordant thoughts. Hatton in his appearance realised little of the fancies in which Sybil had sometime indulged with regard to him. That appearance was prepossessing: a frank and even benevolent expression played upon ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... upon the subject of 'Pyrrhus his Toe,' they could not help smiling; and surely they were quite right. Browne, like an impressionist painter, produced his pictures by means of a multitude of details which, if one looks at them in themselves, are discordant, and extraordinary, and ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... enough for it to build in. Their young were just fledged when the Expedition descended into the western interior, and at sunset came out on the branches of the gum-trees, where they sat for several hours to be fed, making a most discordant noise every time the old birds came with a fresh supply of food, which was about every quarter of an hour. It was frequently impossible to sleep from the constant screeching of the young owls. Their food is principally mice, bats, and ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... danced. What gross, discordant movements! The play of her limbs was all false and artificial Her bounds were painful athletic efforts; her poses were angular and distressed the eye. I could bear it no longer; with an exclamation of disgust that drew every eye upon me, I rose from my seat in ...
— The Diamond Lens • Fitz-James O'brien
... up, still half asleep and wholly bewildered, when within a rod of him he heard the dreadful war-whoop. Then another more discordant voice took up the fearful cry. Joshua did very well considering that it was ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... known whether this effect was produced by the presence of a multitude, by shrill and discordant sounds, or by returning recollection, too powerful for his enfeebled frame. He was tenderly carried from the crowd, and restoratives having been applied, in vain, the melancholy burden was slowly and carefully conveyed to her who so ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... strange that a beautiful instrument like this should have a discordant note in it that no one seems to be able to explain away?" she asked, as they stood together near the window, losing themselves in ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... whimsical, something of it will come across him when he contemplates the figure of a fellow-creature in the daytime (in however distressing a situation) in a nightcap. Whether it be that this nocturnal addition has something discordant with daylight, or that it is the dress which we are seen in at those times when we are "seen," as the Angel in Milton expresses it, "least wise,"—this, I am afraid, will always be the case; unless, indeed, as in my instance, ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... hundred yards or so from shore, the little boat Lady Jane lay side up on the sea. To it clung a young girl, well above water; near her appeared the head of a young man, a swimmer. So far, so good. But there was something wrong about this swimmer, something grossly discordant in his position in the picture. It developed upon close examination that the interval between him and the overturned boat was not decreasing. It was widening indeed; widening quite steadily.... Yes, there it ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... quite a space of time before from just below I heard a discordant yell which thrilled through me, and actually for the moment made me loose my hold. But I was clinging fast again directly, as the yell was answered by a couple of score of throats; there was the rapid beat of feet, the crunching of dead sticks ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... way still to do!" He laughed at his own pun, and pricked up the horse. Just as the weary animal broke into a trot, the rider pulled rein once more and looked up at a signboard which had attracted his notice by giving a discordant creak as the now dying ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... feeling himself, and apparently unconscious that others could be troubled by any such sensitiveness. The disciplined spirit of Madame Roland triumphed over even these annoyances, and she gradually infused through the discordant household, by her own cheerful spirit, a great improvement in harmony and peace. It is not, however, possible that Madame Roland should have shed many tears when, on one bright autumnal day, this hasty tongue and turbulent spirit were hushed in that repose from which there is no awaking. ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... is imaged to us in their coarse conceptions. We dimly discover the precarious position of Wallenstein; the plots which threaten him, which he is meditating: we trace the leading qualities of the principal officers; and form a high estimate of the potent spirit which, binds this fierce discordant mass together, and seems to be the object of universal reverence ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... sanctioned the decisions of the general Chapter of the Trappists assembled in Rome, and ordered the fusion into one sole order, and under the direction of a sole superior, of the three observances of the Trappists, who were in fact ruled by discordant constitutions." ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... latter was a pleasant reality, the former a no less pleasant poetical foil to it. The comedy, I have said, is incongruous; a mixture of Congreve with sentimental incompatibilities: the gaiety upon the whole is buoyant; but it required the consummate art of Palmer to reconcile the discordant elements. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... absorb you at this moment. I have too sensitive a nature for a lawyer; I live by my heart only, I am forced to spend my time on the interests of others when I would fain let myself enjoy the sweet emotions which make life happy. I suffer deeply in being obliged to talk to you of subjects so discordant with your state of mind, but it is necessary. I have thought much about you during the last few days. It is evident that through a fatal delusion the fortune of your brothers and sister and your own are in jeopardy. Do you wish to save ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... porter, a good-natured fellow (I know him), tugged at her hand. "Here, I'll teach you to stop! On with you!" he repeated, as though in anger. She staggered, and began to talk in a discordant voice. At every sound there was a false note, both ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... continual inclination to slip off the owner's smooth, bald pate, and the Squire had frequently to adjust it. As his hair had been red, the wig did not accord with his face, and the hair ungrayed was doubly discordant with a ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... of the discussion without indicating what I deem is the fair inference or result from it. I do not claim that the age of the poet's friend can be certainly stated from anything contained in the Sonnets. It seems to me, however, that it mars the poetry and makes its notes seem inappropriate and discordant, to suppose that the poet had in mind a person below twenty-five years of age. To do so would make some, at least, of his terms of description inapt, subtract from the sparkle and force of his compliments, and cause his words of loving admonition ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... completely upon her own resources, if she had been compelled to step entirely out of her olden sphere, and earn her daily bread, there would have been a sharp, bitter fight, but the bracing mental atmosphere might have dispelled the thick darkness, the chilling vacuity, and evolved from the discordant elements a questioning and not easily satisfied soul, but one destined to develop into strength and nobler uses. But here, she said to herself, there was nothing. Friendship could not come to her ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... chiefs in respect to the farther prosecution of the war, were various and discordant. Colocolo and most of the Ulmens were of opinion, that they ought in the first place to endeavour to free their country from the remaining Spanish establishments within its bounds, before attempting to carry their incursions to the north of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... way!" cried Jude, and though it now rained steadily he seemed not to know it, and took them round to the theatre. Here they stood upon the straw that was laid to drown the discordant noise of wheels, where the quaint and frost-eaten stone busts encircling the building looked with pallid grimness on the proceedings, and in particular at the bedraggled Jude, Sue, and their children, as at ludicrous persons who had no ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... for guidance. Said Lincoln: "Unlike the case of a war between independent nations, there is no authorized organization for us to treat with. No one man has authority to give up the rebellion for any other man. We simply must begin with and mould from disorganized and discordant elements. Nor is it a small additional embarrassment, that we, the loyal people, differ amongst ourselves as to the mode, manner, and measure of reconstruction. Let us all join in doing the acts necessary to restoring the proper ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... place were the work of English hands: those before us are executed, for the most part, by workmen to whom the originals are native and familiar. In this feature of the interior of the Main Building we are amply compensated for the breaking up of the coup d'oeil by a multiplicity of discordant forms. The space is still so vast as to maintain the effect of unity; and this notwithstanding the considerable height of some of the national stalls, that of Spain, for example, sending aloft its trophy of Moorish shields and its effigy of the world-seeking ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... writing a worldly editorial has caused us to get tangled, but the piety that we have smuggled into our readers through the church music will more than atone for the wrath we have felt at the discordant music, and we have hopes the good brothers will not be averse to saying a good word for us when they feel ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... fundamental laws of all civil constitutions: namely, justice, veracity, and regard to common good. [Footnote: Dissertation on the Nature of Virtue.] Sir Leslie Stephen, writing in the latter half of the nineteenth, tells us that "in one sense moralists are almost unanimous; in another they are hopelessly discordant. They are unanimous in pronouncing certain classes of conduct to be right and the opposite wrong. No moralist denies that cruelty, falsity and intemperance are vicious, or that mercy, truth and temperance are virtuous." [Footnote: The Science of ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... ever knew to be killed by one of the Twenty-Sixth Alabama was named Hubbard, from Chicago, Ills., and a member of the Thirty-Eighth Illinois. He had lost one leg, and went hobbling about the camp on crutches, chattering continually in a loud, discordant voice, saying all manner of hateful and annoying things, wherever he saw an opportunity. This and his beak-like nose gained for him the name of "Poll Parrot." His misfortune caused him to be tolerated where another man would have been suppressed. By-and-by he gave still greater cause ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... of existence generally. As to doing the honours of his coach, his business, as I have said, is with the horses. The coach follows because it is attached to them and goes on wheels: not because you are in it. Sometimes, towards the end of a long stage, he suddenly breaks out into a discordant fragment of an election song, but his face never sings along with him: it is only his voice, and not ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... be profitable to know, that his happiness did not increase with his possessions. While his balance-sheets recorded increasing assets, his hearth-stone echoed louder and wilder echoes of discordant voices. He was jealous, arbitrary, and passionate; his unfortunate wife was resentful, fiery, and finally so furious that, in 1790, she was admitted as a maniac to an insane hospital, which she never left until she ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller |
