"Keynote" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Commedia. Any attempt to explain it, by narrowing that interest to politics, philosophy, the moral life, or theology itself, must prove inadequate. Theology strikes the keynote; but history, natural and metaphysical science, poetry, and art, each in their turn join in the harmony, independent, yet ministering to the whole. If from the poem itself we could be for a single moment in doubt of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... church has turned aside for years to discuss "questions of the day," and has neglected the salvation of the world because they must go down to the "plain of Ono" and have a friendly discussion! Nehemiah struck a good keynote—"I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down." If God has sent you to build the walls of Jerusalem, you ...
— Men of the Bible • Dwight Moody
... even callous. His look merely seemed to say that he had set himself this task, and, so far, what he had done was satisfactory in view of his object. He turned from the heavy-slumbering men and his eyes fell upon the two small gold chests. Instantly his whole expression changed. Here was the keynote to the man's disposition. Gold! It was the gold he coveted. At all costs that gold was to be his. His eyes shone with greed. He moved towards the boxes as though he were about to handle them; but he paused abruptly before ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... and eloquent appeal with a sentence which sounds the true keynote of the regret felt by the Parsis at being merely compared with the natives when they felt themselves to be morally and intellectually their superiors. Why are they not provided with commissions in the army like the Germans ...
— Les Parsis • D. Menant
... Movement Immigration and Peace The Inefficiency of War Instead of War—What? International Arbitration International Justice and World Peace International Peace International Peace and the Prince of Peace Justice and Peace Justice by War or Peace The Keynote of the Twentieth Century The Lasting Wound The Law of Peace The Message of the Andes Military Selection and its Effect on National Life Modern Battlefields A Nation's Opportunity The New Anglo-Saxon The New ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... heart also, Edward. I think too there is a measured music, a central time and tune, in every life. Quick, melodious natures like Ethel's never wander far from their keynote, and are therefore joyously set; while slow, irresolute people deviate far, and only come back after painful ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... the universe does not stand for success unless there is set over against it the wealth of soul which Marcus Aurelius, that great apostle of plain living and high thinking, ever set forth as an antidote to the treadmill grind of commercial life. Shakespeare struck the keynote of this lofty conception of life, and pronounced a never-dying eulogy upon the supreme dignity of character when ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given
... that sentiment been re-echoed by millions of men and women acquainted with grief and affliction? The early Christians did not exactly live lives of luxury or even security, sheltered from contact with tragedy and horror; yet the keynote of primitive Christianity is the note of joy, while the background of early Christian experience is a radiant conviction of the Divine benevolence. And when we remember that the same holds true of so many eminently spiritual souls in all ages, who have combined a ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... and care. Sir Roland was devoted to her; he never left her. She took no more rides now on her favorite Sir Tristam, my father drove her carefully in the carriage; there were no more balls or parties; "extreme quiet and repose" seemed to be the keynote. Mamma was always "resting." ...
— My Mother's Rival - Everyday Life Library No. 4 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... topaz, the hair was so like such a cloud of gold as would be found on Joan of Are as seen by a mediaeval painter, that an air of faint artificiality surrounded what was in every other way a remarkable effort of nature to give this region, where she was so very busy, a keynote. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... lyrical prelude to the play, which he put on paper on March 16, 1892. It is said to have been his habit, before setting to work on a play, to "crystallise in a poem the mood which then possessed him;" but the following is the only one of these keynote poems which has been published. I give it in the original ...
— The Master Builder • Henrik Ibsen
... fourteen and seventeen were collected, and constituted her first published volume. Crude and immature as these productions naturally were, and utterly condemned by the writer's later judgment, they are, nevertheless, highly interesting and characteristic, giving, as they do, the keynote of much that afterwards unfolded itself in her life. One cannot fail to be rather painfully impressed by the profound melancholy pervading the book. The opening poem is "In Memoriam,"—on the death of a school friend and companion; and the two ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... happy ingenuousness of his youth undimmed by doubts of man or suspicions of woman, cannot help sympathizing with him when we see him cheated and betrayed, drinking the bitter cup of disillusion to the dregs. In "Lear" the angry brooding leads to madness; and it is only fitting that the keynote of the tragedy, struck again and again, should ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... am. Do you expect sincerity in man when hypocrisy is the very keynote of human nature? We are nurtured on it; we are schooled in it, we live by it; and we rarely realize it. You have seen it rampant and out of hand in France during the past four years—cant and hypocrisy on ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... unhesitatingly resolved to take should he think fit to declare himself. She was interested in him and his marvellous beauty, as she might have been in some fascinating panther or leopard—for some undefinable reason she shrank from him, even whilst she admired. The keynote of her nature, a warm 'precipitance of soul,' as Coleridge happily writes it, which Manston had so directly pounced upon at their very first interview, gave her now a tremulous sense of being in some way in ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... dead wrong, to start, or carry along, on the opposite track, and try to persuade men to do the right thing, by dwelling on the awful consequence of doing the wrong thing. Confidence, not fear, is the keynote of a ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... these facts that they have taken the trouble to find out. Once a girl has realised the outlook of Mary Queen of Scots or Elizabeth, and has learnt to impersonate her without glaring mistakes, she has the keynote to the history of the times. When she has spoken to 'Darnley,' 'Black Both-well,' 'Rizzio,' 'John Knox,' or to 'Bacon,' 'Raleigh,' 'Essex,' and 'Sidney,' she has turned mere names into real personages, and will be no more likely to confuse them than to mix up her friends. By supplying ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... in which they adjusted their hopes, fears, and aspirations to the new conditions, strikes the keynote of their respective characters. "Job," looking down upon the world from the tranquil heights of genius, is manful, calm, resigned. "Koheleth," shuddering at the gloom that envelops and the pain that convulses all living ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... frequently have a long mat, or scarf, of ruby, or some other colored plush, with fringed and embroidered ends, laid the entire length down through the center of the table. This affords a charming contrast to the snowy napery, and sets the keynote of color for the floral decorations. The center decorative pieces are now no longer high, thus rendering a glimpse of the person opposite almost impossible, but are low ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... so it was natural that Archelaus should feel hurt about it. At first Ishmael, with the quick generosity of his age, had wanted to give Cloom up to his brother there and then, but the Parson talked gravely to him, impressing on him for the first time what was to be the keynote of his teaching, that never, never must he forget that Cloom was the great trust of his life. What he made of Cloom was everything; he could not shift this thing God had put upon him. Thus the Parson, to whom what he was to make of Ishmael had become ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... itself seems as naturally ... to grow up out of the garden as the high keynote rises at the end ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... of thought their vassals are ranged. Davis, Toombs, Breckinridge, Yancey, Pryor, Wigfall, Wise, and others direct. Herbert, Keith, Lamar, Brooks, and a host of cavaliers are ready with trigger and cartel. The tone at Washington gives the keynote to the Californian agents of the Southern Rights movement. There are not enough Potters, Wades, and Landers, as yet. The Northern mind needs time to realize the deliberation ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... impression of a house and its occupants comes as one enters through the front door into the hall. Thus, nowhere in the entire house is it more important to strike the right keynote in furnishing and decoration. If there is no closet in the hall for wraps and umbrellas, it will be necessary to have in some obscure corner a wooden strip painted the same color as the woodwork, in which are solid brass hooks, placed low enough so that the ...
— Better Homes in America • Mrs W.B. Meloney
... rich class nor the anarchy of competition is so outstanding an evil as the poverty of the poor. We aim at making the rich poorer chiefly in order to make the poor richer. Our first tract, "Why are the Many Poor?" struck the keynote. In a century of abounding wealth England still has in its midst a hideous mass of poverty which is too appalling to think of. That poverty, we say, is preventible. That poverty was the background of our thoughts when the Society was founded. Perhaps we ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... the same city where Abraham Lincoln had first been nominated four years before, struck its keynote in opposition to his Administration. Mr. August Belmont, Chairman of the National Committee, opened the proceedings with a violent speech. "Four years of misrule," he said, "by a sectional, fanatical, and ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... I concluded, was the keynote of success in courtship. When the current became balanced in negative and positive qualities, the desirable equilibrium recognized by each pole as the real thrill of mutual romance, jealousy and despair would spark, blow out the fuse and short-circuit into a proposal ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... itself in purple to me; a pale one in blue. It was out of that spiritual sight that I built my theory of color. It took me years, but time after time have I proved to my own complete satisfaction that each individual has a keynote of color; a ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... confirmed by Mrs. Stevenson, who visited the Zunis, and writes with enthusiasm of the people. "Their domestic life might well serve as an example for the civilised world. They do not have large families. The husband and wife are deeply attached to one another and to their children." "The keynote of this harmony is the supremacy of the wife in the home. The house with all that is in it is hers, descending to her through her mother from a long line of ancestresses; and the husband is merely her permanent guest. The children—at ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... Elsewhere the servants wandered about restlessly, waiting for news from the front, to learn if they, too, were to join in the mad flight from the city. Few servants love masters in adversity. Self-interest is the keynote to their existences. ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... ever. But what idea? There is the touchstone of all philosophy! Amid the wreck of creeds, the crash of empires, French revolutions, English reforms, Catholicism in agony, and Protestantism in convulsions, discordant Europe demands the keynote, which none can sound. If Asia be in decay, Europe is in confusion. Your repose may be death, but ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... let me leave you Mary's keynote of comfort, 'Commit thy way unto the Lord, and He will bring ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... gladden the breakfast hour with its cheering rays. Let plants, flowers, birds, and pictures have a place in its appointments, that the association with things bright and beautiful may help to set the keynote of our own lives in cheerful accord. A dark, gloomy, ill-ventilated room brings depression of spirits, and will make the most elaborate meal unsatisfactory; while the plainest meal may seem almost a feast when served amid attractive surroundings. Neatness is an ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... of the next dance Betty and her partner finished up within a few feet of the camel. With the informal audacity that was the keynote of the evening she reached out and gently ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... longer version of the "Sick-bed" is the Egerton version of "Etain," which is a complete one, and makes a stately romance. It is full of human interest, love being its keynote; it keeps the supernatural element which is an essential to the original legend in the background, and is of quite a different character to the earlier Leabhar na h-Uidhri version, although there is no reason to assume that ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... her much time to develop her objections. He met her half way and stated them for her, and overwhelmed her with sympathy and understanding. She had been "too literal." "Too literal" was his keynote. He was a little astonished at the liberality of his own views. He had been getting along now for some years without looking into his own opinions too closely and he was by no means prepared to discover how far he had come to meet his daughter's scepticisms. ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... first article of the first number of this Periodical is suggestive. Esperanto! Hope is the Keynote of the whole movement. We hope, therefore we are moving. It is because we hope we publish this paper, we form Esperantist circles and we do all that we can to push a knowledge of Esperanto ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 1 • Various
... them. It may be shown by an analysis of Wycherley's Plain Dealer, a coarse prose adaption of the Misanthrope, stuffed with lumps of realism in a vulgarized theme to hit the mark of English appetite, that we have in it the keynote of the Comedy of our stage. It is Moliere travestied, with the hoof to his foot and hair on the pointed tip of his ear. And how difficult it is for writers to disentangle themselves from bad traditions is noticeable when we find ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... all along. The frivolous young wife, the flirtation with the friend?—all a blind, all pretence. I took the trouble which the police should have taken immediately, of finding out something about the finances of the Hazeldene menage. Money is in nine cases out of ten the keynote to a crime. ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... logic, passion, and eloquence; while Webster replied with an equal logic, a broader and higher ideal of nationality, a vindication of New England which thrilled all hearts, and a patriotism which gave the keynote to the ultimate triumph of the Union. Hitherto, Massachusetts and South Carolina had each stood stiffly at times for her own way, even at peril of the national bond; but in that hour the individuality of South Carolina was merged in the slave-holding States, and that ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... supposed, would surely hold this radical in check. Alas! they were all doomed, for once, to hear the naked truth, on every vital question of the day. Thinking this might be his only opportunity to rouse some liberal thought in conservative minds, he struck the keynote of every reform; defended labor strikes, the Nihilists of Russia, prohibition, woman suffrage, and demanded reformation in our prisons, courts of justice, and halls of legislation. On the woman question, ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... that may be briefly alluded to as eminently characteristic of the Sagas is their fatefulness. As we read we seem to hear the voice of Doom speaking continually. "Things will happen as they are fated": that is the keynote of them all. The Norse mind had little belief in free will, less even than we have to-day. Men and women were born with certain characters and tendencies, given to them in order that their lives should run in appointed channels, and their acts ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... him a running sketch of the chance guests, Graham heard scarce half she said, so occupied was he in trying to sense his way to an understanding of her. Naturalness was her keynote, was his first judgment. In not many moments he had decided that her key-note was joy. But he was dissatisfied with both conclusions, and knew he had not put his finger on her. And then it came to him—pride. That ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... appeared, its fate hung for days in the balance. Women had not made up their minds how to take it. It came into your hands for review. Well! you did not spare it, did you? It was you who turned the scale. Your denunciation became the keynote of popular opinion concerning me. The women for whose sake I had written it, that they might at least strike one blow for freedom, took it with a virtuous shudder from the hands of their daughters. I was pronounced ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Indeed, the keynote of government is injustice. With the arrogance and self-sufficiency of the King who could do no wrong, governments ordain, judge, condemn, and punish the most insignificant offenses, while maintaining themselves by the greatest of all offenses, the annihilation of individual liberty. ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... must she see her own; for if when thou laughest she weep, when thou mournest she giggle, the one is a manifest sign she delighteth in others, the other a token she despiseth thee.' John Lyly was a wise youth. He struck the keynote of the mode in which most incompatible marriages are played when he said that it was a bad sign if one's wife giggled when one was disposed to ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... dating from 1888 to 1890, a sort of calm despair seems to have settled down upon De Maupassant's attitude toward life. Psychologically acute as ever, and as perfect in style and sincerity as before, we miss the note of anger. Fatality is the keynote, and yet, sounding low, we detect a genuine subtone of sorrow. Was it a prescience of 1893? So much work to be done, so much work demanded of him, the world of Paris, in all its brilliant and attractive phases, at his feet, and yet—inevitable, ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... Gigadibs and the Germans, if I venture to indicate a touch inserted by Shakespeare for no other perceptible or conceivable purpose than to obviate by anticipation the indomitable and ineradicable fallacy of criticism which would find the keynote of Hamlet's character in the quality of irresolution. I may observe at once that the misconception involved in such a reading of the riddle ought to have been evident even without this episodical stroke of illustration. In any case it should be plain to any reader that the ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... them, still holds good, though it has declined in use, like all things chivalrous, in an age deafened by the clamour of industrial strife; an age grown blind to the beauty of service, that, in defiance of "progress," still remains the keynote of an ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... years. The very next night, I heard Anna Dickinson in the largest hall in New Haven, and before nearly 3,000 people, urge the women present to consider their duty to this vast Republic in which we dwell, and whose starry banner is as dear to women as to men. The keynote of her bugle-call to the rescue was the idea of duty, and that is the idea which inspires the women on this platform to-day, while thousands of hearts throughout our Union respond, with the same sentiment, to their appeals from the platform, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... of which are fifteen feet thick—there is a room, hidden in some unsuspected quarter, that contains a secret (the keynote to one, at least, of the hauntings) which is known only to the Earl, his heir (on the attainment of his twenty-first birthday), and the ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... upon it the whole theory of poetry depends. Neither on the formal nor on the essential sides of his art is he among the small company of the supreme. And no one understood this better than himself. He touched the keynote of his own power, though with too great modesty, when he said, "I am sensible that if there is anything good about my poetry ... it is a hurried frankness of composition which pleases soldiers, sailors, and young people of bold and active dispositions." The poet Campbell, ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... the keynote of the occasion. Ladies who had been at each other's back door a few hours previous borrowing starch or sugar now addressed each other in strained and distant tones while the men were frankly dumb. It was a relief to everybody ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... "I believe that just as soon as a man loses his sense of nationality, he loses a lot of his social force. Love of country—a man that hasn't it lacks something very fine, like family pride and honor. Jim's sense of race is the keynote to his character. And just as much as the New Englanders have lost that sense, have they lost their grip on the trend of the nation. They are the type that ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... purple. These with full blue breathed between them at the zenith, and green blue nearer the horizon, form the scales and chords of color possible to the morning and evening sky in pure and fine weather; the keynote of the opposition being vermilion against green blue, both of equal tone, and at such a height and acme of brilliancy that you cannot see the line where their edges pass into ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... from making any personal application of the test case suggested by the superintendent. But in a world which took its keynote from the harsh discords of the Red Desert, these little thoughtful talks with a man who was most emphatically not of the Red Desert were refreshing. And she could scarcely have been Martha Dawson's daughter or Frederic Dawson's sister without ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... The keynote of these books is manliness. The stories are wonderfully entertaining, and they are at the same time sound and wholesome. No boy will willingly lay down an unfinished book in ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... "Songs from the Southern Seas," "Songs, Legends and Ballads," and of other works. He died in 1890. All through life the voice and pen of Boyle O'Reilly were at the service of his Church, his native land, and his adopted country. Kindness was the keynote of his character. In 1896 Boston erected in his honor ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... the voice is its keynote, or governing note. It is that on which the voice usually dwells, and to which it most frequently returns when wearied. It is also the pitch used in conversation, and the one which a reader or speaker ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... should make their own rules for their own government, and they should also deal as a group with the infringement of their rules. This will solve the discipline problem of the Teacher. Responsibility should be the keynote of government, and the awakening of such a feeling in the ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... striking examples of Scotch music are the pibrochs and strathspeys. These compositions generally ring with a wild laughter that is almost harassing, especially when it is enhanced by the abrupt close with the fifth instead of the keynote. The ear, which has been longing for the rest, has a sense of being teased and deluded with the rollicking strain. As exponents of the cautious, cannie Scot we should think them a satire did we ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... Earth were made for a few, and not for all men!" In these few pertinent and indignant words Winstanley strikes the keynote of all his subsequent writings, as that of those of many other later students of social problems, from John Locke,[71:1] who may be regarded as his immediate successor, to Thomas Spence, Patrick Edward Dove,[71:2] Thomas Paine,[71:3] and ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... honor upon them when she considered them worthy. No one had ever voiced her belief that she was ready, although Nyoda knew how each one had coveted the title. She was able to read Agony clearly, and knew that the keynote of her life was ambition. She was pretty certain that Agony wanted to be a Torch Bearer because it was the highest rank to which a Camp Fire Girl could aspire, and she wanted to be on the top. As yet she had seen no evidence of a humble desire to lose herself so deeply in the joy of service ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... such trifling exceptions, the tone toward the skipper is universally one of earnest respect and sympathy, the keynote of every ballad being the frank, unconscious heroism of this "gude Sir Patrick Spens." In regard to the foundation for the story, Scott maintains that "the king's daughter of Noroway" was Margaret, ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... view the first verse strikes the keynote of the whole. In the beginning "Elohim [11] created the heaven and the earth." Heaven and earth were not primitive existences from which the gods proceeded, as the Gentiles taught; on the contrary, the "Powers" preceded ...
— Mr. Gladstone and Genesis - Essay #5 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... in the purpose of my will by the power of the Spirit, and I find it trying to sneak down and step into active control again to-morrow through some sly, subtle suggestion which it hopes may get past the vigilance of my sentinel. That word daily becomes, of necessity, my constant keynote—a daily conflict, a daily sleepless vigilance, and, thank God, a ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... but one to strike the keynote of respect and personal freedom in marriage; the other ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... the four little Japanese maids giggled, too; not that they understood a word of the language, but good humor is the keynote of the Japanese character and strangers are treated with a sympathetic courtesy and hospitality unequaled in any ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... greatest in literature. His heroes, little folk, artisans or rustics, bureaucrats or shopkeepers, prostitutes or rakes, he places them in faintly colored, but well-defined surroundings. And, immediately, the simplified landscape gives the keynote of ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... why did she take it into her head to air all sorts of independent notions that quite shocked her mother? and why was she for ever drawing plans to herself of a life that should be solitary, and yet crowded with interests—whose keynote should be sympathy for her fellow-creatures and large-hearted work among them? and, above all, why did she want to persuade herself and Michael that this was the sort of life best fitted for her? But no one could answer ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Puritan settlements in both Maryland and Virginia. But the life in the Southern states took on the more liberal tinge which had characterized that of the Royalists, even to the extent of affecting the Scotch Calvinists, while the asceticism of the Roundheads was the keynote of the Puritan character in New England. When this great country of ours began to develop, the streams moved westward; one over what became the plain states of Ohio and Indiana and Illinois, and the other across the Blue Ridge ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... approved her escort's manner and bearing as unexceptionable. No sooner had they entered into the implied intimacy of the tete-a-tete across a table than a subtle change manifested itself in his attitude. Gayety was still the keynote of his talk, but the note of the personal and insistent had gone. And, at the end, when he had paid the bill ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... as they may. The instruments of chastisement are foreign armies, and the chastisement itself is described with a striking figure as 'binding them to their two transgressions'; that is, the double sin which is the keynote of the chapter. Punishment is yoking men to their sins, and making them drag the burden like bullocks in harness. What sort of load are we getting together for ourselves? When we have to drag the consequences of our doings behind us, how shall ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... was the keynote of his modest remarks. Afterward he was escorted to the quay-side station, where a special train of the type labelled Semi-Royal was ready to make the express ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... a risen Saviour, was the keynote of his ministry. As he said: "Who of all the Saviours of the Indian people has risen from the dead? Not one." "Our fathers told us many things and gave us many customs, but they were not true." "I grew up believing in what my father taught me, but when I knew ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell
... was throbbing with the desire for progress. If she were a man with money and influence she felt she would so much like to go out into the world and make stupid people do the things for the country that ought to be done. Progress had been the keynote of her upbringing, and she was teeming with energy which she had no hope could ever be used to help along that for which she felt her ambitions rising. She wanted to see the world alive, and busy, the great cities ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... The big open scows, or "sturgeon-heads," which are to form our convoy have been built, the freight is all at The Landing, but for three days the half-breed boatmen drag along the process of loading, and we get our introduction to the word which is the keynote of the Cree character,—"Kee-am," freely translated, "Never mind," "Don't get excited," "There's plenty of time," "It's all right," "It will all come out in ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... photograph still more closely. It displayed a lady of twenty or thereabouts, with a weak face, small, vacant features, a feeble chin, a good-humoured, simple mouth, and a wealth of golden hair that seemed to strike a keynote. ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... Again, the keynote of success in football to-day is team work, perfect interlocking of all parts. In the old days play was individual, man against man, and this gave rise in many cases to personal animosity which frequently reduced great football contests to little more than pitched ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... $40,000 at one clip. For a time Pinchback was one of Warmoth's staunchest supporters, and when the party in Louisiana was split by the two factions, the Custom House ring and the Warmoth faction, Pinchback was elected permanent chairman of the Warmoth convention and made the keynote speech for the campaign. Subsequently, Warmoth's utter degeneracy alienated him and so they parted company. Warmoth's star descended, and he went down to ignominious defeat. Upon his name and memory were heaped derogations, curses and anathemas. And unfortunately these ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... uniform; he could see them only in outline, mere black silhouettes against the interior lights; but there was about them the ominous cut of the official, that Russian bird of ill-omen. And then, while yet he doubted, there sounded the very keynote of disaster. From somewhere within the silversmith's shop a woman ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... from every one else. Ralph had something of this same quality, this appearance of thinking that life was a matter of connoisseurship; but in Ralph it was an anomaly, a kind of humorous excrescence, whereas in Mr. Osmond it was the keynote, and everything was in harmony with it. She was certainly far from understanding him completely; his meaning was not at all times obvious. It was hard to see what he meant for instance by speaking of his provincial side—which was exactly the side she would have taken him most ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... relied strongly upon Miss Puffkin's judgment in the manuscript of romantic and sentimental fiction. Her taste represented the immense average of mediocre women who devour novels and stories of that type. The central idea and keynote of "Love Is All" was love at first sight—the enrapturing, irresistible, soul-thrilling feeling that compels a man or a woman to recognize his or her spirit-mate as soon as heart speaks to heart. Suppose he should impress this divine truth upon Miss Puffkin personally!—would she not surely indorse ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... Botticelli's painted statue and Perugino's "S. Michael" and "Warriors" of the Cambio seem to spread their legs because they are too puny to bear the weight of the body in any other manner, while with Signorelli, the attitude became the keynote of his resolute indomitable nature, and so much a part of his work, that one is apt to forget it did not ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... it is to our interest to make look well. People go to the post office all the same, be it a barn or a parthenon, but they will go, other things being equal, to the best hotel. Here comes in the American principle of Competition, the keynote of all our enterprise. Competition is to do for us what the hope of earthly immortality did for the builders of the Pyramids, what the desire to glorify God did for the builders of the cathedrals. It is to be the soul ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... puttin' up the lights," said the man at sight of some building superbly illuminated. This was the keynote of his being. All his fife he had worked, and the whole objective universe, as well as his own soul, he could express in terms only of work. "Coronations is some good," he went on. "They give ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... general criticism. Newspapers, except those for Crawford, denounced the old system; legislatures passed resolutions against it; public meetings condemned it; ponderous pamphlets were hurled at it; the campaigns of Jackson and Clay, in particular, found their keynote in hostility toward it. Failing to perceive that under the changed circumstances a caucus nomination might become a liability rather than an asset, the Crawford element pushed its plans, and on February 14, 1824, a caucus—destined ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... pale, citron hue, relieved with a crimson girdle, of the robe worn by the St. Catherine, a splendid Venetian beauty of no very refined type or emotional intensity. Perfect repose and serenity are the keynote of the conception, which in its luxuriant beauty has little of the power to touch that must be conceded to the more naive and equally splendid Madonna del Coniglio.[3] It is above all in the wonderful Venetian landscape—a mountain-bordered vale, along ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... Perhaps the keynote to the charm of George Sand's art is given in her preface to her exquisite novel "La Derniere Aldini." Here is none of the accuracy and patience of the scientific enquirer into the "mysterious mixture" man, which we find in George Eliot's preface to "Middlemarch." ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne
... Testament. Even in the psalms, which are perhaps the most spiritual and beautiful section, the psalmist, amid much that is noble, sings of the fearsome things which his God will do to his enemies. "They shall go down alive into hell." There is the keynote of this ancient document—a document which advocates massacre, condones polygamy, accepts slavery, and orders the burning of so-called witches. Its Mosaic provisions have long been laid aside. We do not consider ourselves accursed if we fail to mutilate our bodies, if we eat ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... The keynote was struck at once in the Quarterly Review by Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford. He declared that Darwin was guilty of "a tendency to limit God's glory in creation"; that "the principle of natural selection ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... to everybody I shall appear to sanction immorality. For the fact is that our civilization has upset all the original intentions of nature. Nature evidently meant Love, or the emotion we call Love, to be the keynote of the universe. But apparently Nature did not intend marriage. The flowers, the birds, the lower animals, mate afresh every spring, and this is the creed that the disciples of Naturalism nowadays are anxious to force ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... Everywhere nationalisation is the keynote of trade activity. Coal furnishes an instance: The collieries of the kingdom not only stoke the fires of myriad furnaces but drive the ships of a mighty marine. Through her control of coal England has one whip hand over her allies, for many of the ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... Henceforth I will devote myself to the only real powers which can enlighten us. Yet there is humiliation in failure after so many years of study. It is folly to follow a partial truth of which we miss the keynote, though we sometimes blunder ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... but he lowered rather than raised his voice, as after an impressive silence he showed the scared man the mark left on the wall and his enormity.... Life was keyed high in Mr. Durant's home, and the keynote was Wellesley College. While the walls were rising he kept workman's hours. Long before the family breakfast he was with the builders. At prayers I learned to listen night and morning for the prayer ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... remained in the House because it was the proper thing for a man of family to do. As a member of the coterie known as the "Souls" he was, so to speak, caviare to the general. Indolence was supposed to be the keynote of his character—a refined indolence, not, however, without cleverness of a somewhat ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... a Boorah always remind me of WILHELM MEISLER'S TRAVELS, where, at the school to which Wilhelm takes Felix, he learns, on inquiry as to the three attitudes assumed by the pupils, that these gestures inculcate veneration, which also seems to be the keynote of the eeramooun's instruction. The Boorah over, he too, 'Stands erect and bold, yet not selfishly isolated; only in an union with his equals (his fellow initiates) does he present a front towards ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... The keynote of the mass meeting on the landing was one of determined, almost aggressive smartness. The men wore bright overcoats with bands round the waist, the women those imitation furs which to the uninitiated eye appear so much ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... lines of your architecture and furniture. The mantelpiece is the connecting link between the architecture and the furnishing of a room. It is the architect's contribution to the furnishing, and for this reason the keynote for the decorator. ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... what he thinks are the criteria for the formation of judgment in these matters. Yet his interpretation is to be different from technical criticism, as his effort is primarily directed toward intention, meaning and effect. This thought is the keynote to the comments on the various sculptures illustrated in the work. While one may not agree with the author in his arrangement and may differ from his interpretation, it must be admitted that the book contains interesting information and is a bold step in ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... the first to declare that the keynote of every policy was the advancement of power. This term, however, has acquired, since the German Reformation, a meaning other than that of the shrewd Florentine. To him power was desirable in itself; for us "the State is not ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... occupies and obscures a certain space here, form is nonexistent when viewed from the standpoint of the Region of concrete Thought. Where the form was, a transparent, vacuous space is observable. From that empty void comes a sound which is the "keynote" that creates and maintains the form whence it appears to come, as the almost invisible core of a gas-flame is the source ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... keynote at once). No, no! Let me out—I am innocent! (He gives a gasp of relief as he realises the situation.) Free! It is true, then! I have escaped! I dreamed that I was back in prison again! (He shudders and helps himself ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... was the old keynote of suppressed hopeless pain: it somehow recalled to me the image of some helpless innocent bird struggling in a fowler's net. Her eyes looked at me with ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... mat-weaving could be continued until the children had a thorough knowledge of its principles, how much intelligence might be brought to bear on the actual weaving and how much more pleasure might the worker draw from labor that is often looked upon as so much mechanical drudgery!" The keynote for this is the thorough knowledge which is necessary, whether or not our children are to enter textile schools. Whatever they do, let them do it thoroughly. It should always be a ...
— Hand-Loom Weaving - A Manual for School and Home • Mattie Phipps Todd
... hand. "You are rich and he is poor," was the keynote of her thoughts, repeated from minute to minute. "And it is gold gives you the right in the world's eye to despise him!" she apostrophized the vanished Laura, clothing gold with all the baseness of that person. Now, when one really hates gold, one is ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith |
