"Dissonance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and powerful; the third considers the relation to the imagination, of the apprehension of nature by the understanding, and shows that it is only imperfect culture and ignorance which can suppose any dissonance between the two. He shows that the progress of science enriches, aggrandizes, and elevates the imagination. The fourth essay is, perhaps, the most interesting of all. Its theme is, "Superstition and Skepticism in their relation to Natural Science." The ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... prudence, and tossed by the discordant tempest, like those who, having violated certain laws of the divine Adrastia, are condemned to be scourged by the Furies, in order that they may be excited by a dissonance as corporeal through seditions, destructions, and plagues, as it is spiritual, through the forfeiture of harmony between the perceptive and enjoying powers; but it is aglow kindled by the intellectual sun in the soul, and a divine impetus which lends it wings, with which, drawing nearer ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... the tide that bore her on was too deep to let these things hurt her; she looked down and saw the soreness and humiliation of them pictorially, at the bottom, gliding smoothly over. They brought no stereotype to her smile, no dissonance to what she found to say. When at last she and Arnold sat down together her standpoint was still superior, and she herself was so aloof from it all that she could talk about it without bitterness, divorcing the personal pang from a social manifestation of some dramatic value. In offering ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... it, sounding the universal alarm. And Civilisation merely stared at the scarlet flood—gawked stupidly and unstirring—while the far clamour of massacre throughout Russia grew suddenly to a crashing discord in Berlin, shaking the whole world with brazen dissonance. ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... of created things, but a reed which thinks." How is this riddle of human nature to be explained? Only in one way—by a recognition of the truth taught by religion, that human nature is fallen from its true estate, that man is a dethroned king. And how is the dissonance in man's nature to be overcome? Only in one way—through union with God made man; with Jesus Christ, the centre in which alone we find our weakness and the divine strength. Through Christ man is abased and lifted up—abased ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... dirty, and threatening a continuance of what our transatlantic descendants would term a pretty-considerable-tarnation-strong blast of wind. The top-gallant-yards are on deck, the masts are struck, the guns double-breeched, and the bulwarks creaking and grinding in most detestable regularity of dissonance as the vessel scuds and lurches through a cross and heavy sea. The main-deck is afloat: and, from the careless fitting of the half-ports at the dockyard, and neglect of caulking in the cants, my fore-cabin is in the same predicament. A bubbling brook changing ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... calm that fall upon his tortured heart only light up an abyss of misery—a vault of darkness peopled by demons. He is already cut off from among the living, by the doom of inevitable fate, and while we pity him we fear him. His coming seems attended with monstrous shapes; he diffuses dissonance; his voice is a cry of anguish or a wail of desolation; his existence is a tempest; there can be no relief for him save death, and the death that ends him comes like the blessing of tears to the scorched eyelids of consuming misery. That is the Saul of ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... being his favourite study, to assist him in which he had an ivory skeleton. He returned the visit in great state, with six elephants, two of enormous size, going before him, and accompanied by his troops, with a wild, horrid dissonance of cannon and native music. Two thousand persons escorted the Rajah to the Bishop's tent, where he conversed very sensibly on various subjects, especially English history, or as he called it, "the Generations of English Kings." He was keeping up the good works he ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... May morning! All about Sweet influences of earth, and air, and sky, Harmoniously accordant. I alone, The troubled spirit that had driven me forth, In dissonance with that fair frame of things So blissfully serene. God had not yet Let fall the weight of chastening that makes dumb The murmuring lip, and stills the rebel heart, Ending all earthly interests, and I call'd (O ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... look'd on the spot in wrath, spleen, and despair, Rank, Beauty, Taste, Fashion, and Fancy were there, And the multitudes round such attractions preferr'd To a gambolling beast or a chattering bird. Now Envy first enter'd the fair feather'd race, And invective and dissonance rung round the place; Their pleasure, their pride, and contentment were o'er, And Discord presided where Peace ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... the diseased commonwealth, which Menenius has already set forth—that notion of parts and partiality, and dissonance and dissolution, which is a radical idea in the play, and runs into its minutest points of phraseology, breaks out at once ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... churme of discourse from passengers still abroad, and now and then the braggart flourish of a trumpet resounded from the royal masquing at the palace,—breaking upon the holiness of the night with the harsh dissonance of a discord in some solemn harmony.—And as he was meditating on many things, and grieving in spirit at the dark fate of poor Scotland, and the woes with which the children of salvation were environed, he was startled by the apparition of ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... mine art shall make thee know. As I was sitting on that ancient seat Of divination, where I might command Sure cognisance of every bird of the air, I heard strange clamouring of fowl, that screeched In furious dissonance; and, I could tell, Talons were bloodily engaged—the whirr Of wings told a clear tale. At once, in fear, I tried burnt sacrifice at the high altar: Where from the offering the fire god refused To gleam; but a dank humour from the bones Dripped ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... even the horrible and the monstrous are no more than an aesthetic game played with itself by the Will in the eternal plenitude of its joy." "The Will" is Schopenhauer's "Will," the vital principle. "If it were possible," says Nietzsche, in one of his astonishing figures of speech, "to imagine a dissonance becoming a human being (and what is man but that?), in order to endure life, this dissonance would need some admirable illusion to hide from itself its true nature, under a veil of beauty." This is the aim of art, as it calls ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... and as his footsteps sounded on the stair she felt as if she were doomed and hearing her own death-knell. What had she done? What would he do now? She stood there a dissonance of despair, and when the lower door clicked moved her hand out of the agony of ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... another man in all the world to whom I can speak with clear hope of getting adequate response from him. Truly Concord seems worthy of the name: no dissonance comes to me from that side. Ah me! I feel as if in the wide world there were still but this one voice that responded intelligently to my own: as if the rest were all hearsays ... echoes: as if this alone were true and alive. My blessings on you, ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... and then is persuaded that he has leaped down Dover cliff but has been miraculously preserved. Imagine this incident transferred to Othello, and you realise how completely the two tragedies differ in dramatic atmosphere. In Othello it would be a shocking or a ludicrous dissonance, but it is in harmony with the spirit of King Lear. And not only is this so, but, contrary to expectation, it is not, if properly acted, in the least absurd on the stage. The imagination and the ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... the hillside, serene in the afterglow of its one hundred and eighty-four years. The spotless white walls, the green blinds, the graceful Colonial spire, are meetly set in an environment which strikes no note of dissonance. On either side are quaint, narrow streets, lined with decent door-yards and houses almost as old as the church. Within the cool interior the cottagers, and representatives of a native aristocracy—direct descendants of the English of the sixteenth and ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... the flutes, or a dissonant mutter of the basses. The celesta, an instrument with keyboard and bell tone, contributes fascinating effects, and the xylophone is used;—utterances that are lascivious as well as others that are macabre. Dissonance runs riot and frequently carries the imagination away completely captive. The score is unquestionably the greatest triumph of reflection and ingenuity of contrivance that the literature of music can show. The invention that has been expended on the themes seems ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... around the echoing roof of that rock-ribbed prison; while the hoarse dash of the approaching waves, and the shrill screams of the sea-birds that filled the cavern, formed a concert of terrible dissonance, well suited for the requiem, of the hapless wretch who had been enclosed in that living grave! But the love of life, which makes us cling to it in the most hopeless extremity, was strong in Frank Costello's breast; ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... compassed round, And solitude; yet not alone, while thou Visitest my slumbers nightly, or when morn Purples the east: still govern thou my song, Urania, and fit audience find, though few. But drive far off the barbarous dissonance Of Bacchus and his revellers, the race Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard In Rhodope, where woods and rocks had ears To rapture, till the savage clamour drowned Both harp and voice; nor could ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... briared wood of austere brow, Believed of discord by thy timely word At intervals refreshing life: for thou Art verify Keeper of the Muse's Key; Thyself no vacant melodist; On lower land elective even as she; Holding, as she, all dissonance abhorred; Advising to her measured steps in flow; And teaching how for being subjected free Past thought of freedom we may come to know The music of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... While some essayed to frame the words of prayer, Or to articulate the stern command, And one, in most supreme authority, Declaimed a ponderous regal ordinance, But heard a sea of unfamiliar sounds, Confused and desultory turbulence, and dissonance of harsh, discordant tones, Instead of due attention and applause; Nor were his words and usual forms of speech Respected by the idle, wondering craft, Which ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... sang their war-songs all night, with the utmost power of their lungs, in order that the enemy, knowing them to be on their guard, might be deterred from an attack. The night was dark, and the hideous dissonance resounded far and wide; yet, regardless of the din, two Iroquois crept close to the palisade, where they lay motionless till near dawn. By this time the last song had died away, and the tired singers had left their posts or fallen asleep. One of the Iroquois, with the silence and agility ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... approve of his occasional violence, which not only threatened to crack the strings of the instrument, but the tympanums of those who were near, who longed to escape, and leave the princess to enjoy the dissonance alone, little thinking that the discord was raised that their souls' harmony might be undisturbed by the presence of others, and that the jarring of the strings was more than repaid to the princess, by the ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... always to read with the microscope of criticism, and employ their whole attention upon minute elegance, or faults scarcely visible to common observation. The dissonance of a syllable, the recurrence of the same sound, the repetition of a particle, the smallest deviation from propriety, the slightest defect in construction or arrangement, swell before their eyes into enormities. As they discern with ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... strange, that it is very difficult to subject them to the rules of grammar, to represent them by syllables, or to find in the alphabet letters which correspond to them." It is however remarkable, that, although he complains of the dissonance of the German language, he never ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... Nevertheless, a work of art, to be really deserving the name, must needs be moral, because it must be proportionable and true to Nature; thus attuning our inward forces to the voice of external order and law: otherwise it is at strife with the compact of things; a piece of dissonance; a jarring, unbalanced, crazy thing, that will die of its own internal disorder. If, then, a work be morally bad, this proves the author more a bungler than anything else. And if any one admire it or take pleasure in it, he does so, not from reason, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... chalice at a draught. Scarcely had he done so, when with a savage scream he fell prone on the ground, his limbs twisted in acute agony,—his features hideously contorted,—his hands beating the air wildly, as though in contention with some invisible foe, ..while in strange and terrible dissonance with his tortured cries, Lysia's laughter, musically mellow, broke out in little quick peals, like the laughter of a very ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... look in his usually guarded, irresponsive countenance. A painfully humiliating sense of her own personal incompetence to arouse the feeling, so legibly printed on her lover's features, jarred upon Leo's heart like a twanging dissonance breaking the harmonious flow of minor chords; but a noble pity strangled this jealous thrill, and she ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... court, where he saw some figures standing. As soon as the light shone from the window, the carol was resumed, and the familiar tones were louder and harsher, but he loved them, with all their rudeness and dissonance, and throwing up the window, called the singers by name, asking why they stood out in the snow, instead of coming ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in assonance and dissonance (of which 'Strange Meeting' is the finest example) may be left to the professional critics of verse, the majority of whom will be more preoccupied with such technical details than with the profound humanity of the self- revelation manifested in such magnificent lines ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen
... which found a worthy poet in Plato alone of all the ancients, has been celebrated by a chorus of the greatest writers of the renovated world; and the music has penetrated the caverns of society, and its echoes still drown the dissonance of arms and superstition. At successive intervals, Ariosto, Tasso, Shakespeare, Spenser, Calderon, Rousseau, and the great writers of our own age, have celebrated the dominion of love, planting, as it were, trophies in the human mind of that sublimest victory over ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... ancient minstrel, Let the aged try the harp-strings, Gave it to the young magicians, To the dames and to their daughters, To the maidens, silver-tinselled, To the singers of Wainola. When the young men touched the harp-strings, Then arose the notes of discord; When the aged played upon it, Dissonance their only music. Spake the wizard, Lemminkainen: "O ye witless, worthless children, O ye senseless, useless maidens, O ye wisdom-lacking heroes, Cannot play this harp of magic, Cannot touch the notes of concord! Give to ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... dissonance and pain That mortals must endure, Are changed in thine immortal strain To something great ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... events, rhythm and inevitableness (two words for one and the same thing) is not there. Elly's golden head, the back-ground of austere French Protestants, is sketched with a flowing water-colour brush, I do not know if it is true, but true or false in reality, it is true in art. But the jarring dissonance of her marriage is inadmissible; it cannot be led up to by chords no matter how ingenious, the passage, the attempts from one key to the other, is impossible; the true end is the ruin, by death or lingering life, of Elly and the remorse of ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... passions wove 45 A dance more wild than e'er was maniac's dream! Ye storms, that round the dawning east assembled, The Sun was rising, though ye hid his light!" And when, to soothe my soul, that hoped and trembled, The dissonance ceased, and all seemed calm and bright; 50 When France her front deep-scarred and gory Concealed with clustering wreaths of glory; When, insupportably advancing, Her arm made mockery of the warrior's ramp; While timid looks of fury glancing, 55 Domestic treason, crushed beneath her fatal ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of to-day are pale, Shall clang of armorers riveting our mail Rise in harsh dissonance where now the song In surging music sweeps the land along? No, Brothers, no! The Providence on high Stretches above us like the arching sky; As o'er the world that broad empyrean field, So o'er the nation ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... Forsaken Merman is not a perfect poem—it has tongueurs, though it is not long; it has its inadequacies, those incompetences of expression which are so oddly characteristic of its author; and his elaborate simplicity, though more at home here than in some other places, occasionally gives a dissonance. But it is a great poem,—one by itself,—one which finds and keeps its own place in the fore-ordained gallery or museum, with which every true lover of poetry is provided, though he inherits it by degrees. ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... Medoro, modulating a voice, that nature had made up of dissonance and horror, into the most gentle and soothing accent of which it was capable, and hanging over his couch, "wherefore this sorrow? What is it that has seemed to mar a happiness so enviable? Art thou not possessed"—"Talk not to me of possessions," exclaimed Roderic, ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... absorb the non-luminous rays of the earth. This incompetence of the vapour to absorb luminous rays is shared by water and ice—in fact, by all really transparent substances. Their transparency is due to their inability to absorb luminous rays. The molecules of such substances are in dissonance with luminous waves; and hence such waves pass through transparent bodies without disturbing the molecular rest. A purely luminous beam, however intense may be its heat, is sensibly incompetent to melt ice. We can, for example, converge a powerful luminous beam upon a surface covered with hoar ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... all faults, whether of omission or commission, to the luckless printer. Byrd, on the other hand, solemnly warns us that "in the expression of these songs either by voices or instruments, if there be any jar or dissonance," we are not to blame the printer, who has been at the greatest pains to secure accuracy. Then the composer makes a modest appeal on behalf of himself, requesting those who find any fault in the composition "either with courtesy to let the same be concealed," or "in friendly sort" point out the ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... thus nigh to heaven, And like a Prophet with the mark of god Set on him for an everlasting work, With outstretched hands, and earnest-hearted words, To speak unto the Nations. This calm spot, Emblem of Truth's serenity and peace, With no hoarse dissonance to stir the deep Of thought to passion, till the whirling waves Swallow the love-steered purposes of soul, And leave its being desolate—looks down On Earth, and all its jarring multitudes, Its miseries of soul and sense, as Earth Looks on the distant glory of the stars, All unparticipant of weal ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... the interpreter of music to be so thoroughly acquainted with the elements of which music is composed that he can promptly recognize the color, complexion and individual character of every interval, chord and chord-combination, every consonance and dissonance, every timbre and nuance, and every degree of phrasing and rhythm. He must have so complete a mastery of his materials and working forces that his imagination may be influenced unimpeded by the emanations ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... irresistibly from behind in all parts of the field, the whole dingy-gray mass broke from the "common time" step into that "dog-trot" known in the tactics of the present day as the "double-quick." At the same moment they broke into those shrieks of horrible dissonance, remarked in the fight of the morning, rising even above the din of the opening artillery, and more resembling the whoops of the copper-skinned warriors of the renegade Albert Pike, than soldiers of what is called a Christian nation, led on by a commander believing himself ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... even in the midst of the incomparable splendor of external nature. This contrast is sustained by a fusion of tones, a softening of gloomy hues, which prevent the intrusion of aught rude or brusque that might awaken a dissonance in the touching impression produced, which, while saddening joy, soothes and softens ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... bosom of Paolo the dark-wing'ed demons of care? Was it their magical tone that for many a shadowless day (So faith once believed) swept the clouds and the black-boding tempests away? Ah! never may Fate with their music a harsh-grating dissonance blend! Sure an evening so calm and so bright will glide peacefully on to the end. Sure the course of his life, to its close, like his own native river must be, Flowing on through the valley of flowers to its home in the bright ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... a type of the other idyls of love which form so large a part of the Dramatis Personae. The note of dissonance, of loss, which they sound had been struck by Browning before, but never with the same persistence and iteration. The Dramatic Lyrics and Men and Women are not quite silent of the tragic failure of love; but it is ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... with a brave, military air, and taking a seat as if a flourish of trumpets had heralded her approach. At first I was startled by the loud crash of the keys, as she threw her hands upon them with all her force, laughing at the wild dissonance of the sound; but as she continued, harmony, if not sweetness, rose out of the chaos. She evidently understood the science of music, and enjoyed it too. She did not sing, and while she was playing the most brilliant polkas, waltzes, ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... he said, sighing. "But after all, it is no fault of ours. There was a dissonance in our married life from the start, and for that reason there never could be any genuine harmony between us. This dissonance—well, at the present hour I may confess it to you, too—this dissonance simply was the fact that I never ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... millionaire soul—in the great drawing-room, with its bow-windows looking on to a clump of old trees powdered with snow, Christophe would find Colette sitting at her piano, repeating the same passage over and over again, delighting her ear with mellifluous dissonance. ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... Dr. Johnson, Sir W. Scott, Robert Peel and Lord Byron had no ear for music, and neither vocal nor instrumental music gave them the slightest pleasure. To the poet Rogers it gave actual discomfort. Even the harmonious Pope preferred the harsh dissonance of a street organ ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... particularly in the more recent works, are studded with examples of felicitous and dexterous counterpoint—poetically significant, and of the most elastic and untrammelled contrivance. Even in passages of a merely episodic character, one is struck with the vitality and importance of his inner voices. Dissonance—in the sense in which we understand dissonance to-day—plays a comparatively unimportant part in his technical method. The climax of the second of the "Sea Pieces"—"From a Wandering Iceberg"—marks about as extreme a point of harmonic conflict as he ever touches. Nor has he been profoundly ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... that passage in Nathaniel's song where a triumphant ascending scale in G rings out. She faltered and played D-flat instead of D-natural, the first dissonance that night—would it had been the last! Quickly she turned on the music-stool and on him, and spoke ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... pea-patch, nor any misgiving of approaching mutton marred their happy heyday. Straight through the piny forests, straight past the vocal orchards, right in among the robins and the jays and the startled thrushes, we dashed inexorable, and made harsh dissonance in the wild-wood orchestra; but not for that was the music hushed, nor did one color fade. Brooks leaped in headlong chase down the furrowed sides of gray old rocks, and glided whispering beneath the sorrowful willows. Old trees renewed their youth in the slight tenacious grasp of many a tremulous ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... is evidence conclusive, for the man who talks to himself habitually never hears himself. His words are only the echo of his thoughts, and they correspond so perfectly that, like a chord in music, there is no dissonance. It was thus with the art student I saw copying a picture at the Tate Gallery. "Ah, a little more blue," he said, as he turned from the original to his own canvas, and a little later: "Yes, that line wants better drawing." Several people stood by watching his work and smiling at his uttered ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... breaks loose in a hundred, a thousand answering voices, swelling into a yapping, growling, barking, yelling discord. A sudden silence cuts the tumult short, until once more the unknown misery, (or is it the secret joy), of the canine heart bursts out in long-drawn dissonance. ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke |
