"Theme" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was addressed to me almost as a question, I let it pass without response. I reverted to my original theme. ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... of his History must have been struck by his respect for all the manly virtues, even in those with whom he has otherwise no sympathy, and his corresponding contempt for weakness and self-indulgence. In his second and final Address to the students of St. Andrews he took Calvinism as his theme.* By this time Froude had acquired a great name, and was known all over the world as the most brilliant of living English historians. Although his uncompromising treatment of Mary Stuart had provoked remonstrance, his eulogy of Knox and Murray was congenial ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... at the time 'wasted in quenching the darts of the flesh.'[6] It is true that at D'Holbach's house, the headquarters of the dogmatic atheism in which the irreligious reaction culminated, this was the only theme on which freedom of speech was sometimes curtailed. But the fact that such a restriction should have been noticed, suggests that it was exceptional.[7] One good effect followed, let us admit. The virtuousness of ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... unwelcome theme; Nay every meditation, every dream, Th'inexplicable sentence held to view, 'They're not both mine,' was every morning new: For, till this hour, the Maid had never prov'd How far she was enthrall'd, how much she lov'd: In that ...
— Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs • Robert Bloomfield
... in a Man. Now, I want to see that Man; and if I see that Man I shall see in Him a revelation of what God's purpose is for men, and I shall see, therefore, a revelation of what the highest possibility of life is. Now this is a tempting theme. It is a temptation to begin to contrast Him with popular ideals of life. I want to see Him; I want, if I can, to catch the notes of the music that make up the perfect harmony which was the dropping of a song out of God's heaven upon man's earth, that man might ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... the repudiation of the "klippings," of which some people had complained, he asserted that he had thereby suffered far greater injury than his people. Sunnanvaeder's conspiracy was the thing that caused him most anxiety, and on the 9th of December he addressed the Dalesmen on that theme. "Dear friends," he suavely wrote, "report has reached our ears that Sunnanvaeder has gone among you with plots to throw the kingdom into strife once more. We beg you in the name of God give him no heed. He has made statements ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... his hands tragedy first became essentially dramatic. This is his great distinction, but his powerful genius wrought other changes. He perfected, if he did not discover, the practice of introducing three plays upon a connected theme (technically named a trilogy), with an after-piece of lighter character. He invented the tragic dress and buskin, and perfected the tragic mask. He improved the tragic dance, and by his use of scenic decoration and stage machinery, secured effects that were unknown ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 following poems also have death for theme. "On a Lock of my Mother's Hair" gives us reflections on growing old. These are the four poems written at the age of fourteen. There is not a wholly glad and joyous strain in the volume, and we might smile at the recurrence of broken vows, broken ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... Christian volume is the theme, How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed; How He who bore in Heaven the second name Had not on earth whereon to lay His head; How His first followers and servants sped; The precepts sage they wrote to many a land: How he, who lone in Patmos banished, Saw in the ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... dear princess and cousin, Catherine Semenovna," continued Prince Vasili, returning to his theme, apparently not without an inner struggle; "at such a moment as this one must think of everything. One must think of the future, of all of you... I love you all, like children of my own, as ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... already changed. He was remembering that he was a gentleman, one of Virginia's own kind. He already looked the part. Perhaps he was already on the way toward true regeneration. It was better that he should be, for Virginia's happiness. Her happiness—this had been the motive and the theme of Bill's work clear through: it was his one consolation now. In a few days the snow crust would be firm enough to trust, and hand in hand they would go down toward Bradleyburg. He would see the joy in their faces, the old luster ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... substantial things—in truth And sanctity of passion speak of these, That justice may be done, obeisance paid Where it is due. Thus haply shall I teach Inspire, through unadulterated ears Pour rapture, tenderness, and hope; my theme No other than the very heart of man, As found among the best of those who live, Not unexalted by religious faith, Nor uninformed by books, good books, though few In Nature's presence: thence may I select Sorrow that is not sorrow, but delight, And miserable love that is not pain To hear of, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... hand with wringing. Let us part, And leave this idle theme, this bootless chat: Remove your siege from my unyielding heart; To love's alarms it will not ope the gate: 424 Dismiss your vows, your feigned tears, your flattery; For where a heart is hard they ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... a space to foist the man's personality upon you as yours and call you scientific—that most abusive word. But here he is, indisputably, with me in Utopia, and lapsing from our high speculative theme into halting but intimate confidences. He declares he has not come to Utopia to meet again ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... that the conclusion of my last letter has led you to expect a renewal of the BOOK THEME: but rather, I should hope, as connected with those Bibliographers, Booksellers, and Printers, who have for so many years shed a sort of lustre upon Parisian Literature. It will therefore be no unappropriate continuation of this subject, if I commence by furnishing ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... otherwise to the national pride. No institution has been better known or more marked on the Continent and in England, not excepting the tramway and the Pullman cars. Her enterprise, her daring, her freedom from conventionality, have been the theme of the novelists and the horror of the dowagers having marriageable daughters. Considered as "stock," the American Girl has been quoted high, and the alliances that she has formed with families impecunious but noble have given her eclat as belonging to a new and conquering race in the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... that greeted him was tremendous. The orchestra played his theme and an army announcer introduced him as the Number One ventriloquist in the world. He walked out slowly from the wing, waving and grinning at the audience with Spud sitting ...
— The Second Voice • Mann Rubin
... written up by some one for their edification. The P.D.'s out-Wegg Mr. Wegg in the matter of dropping into poetry, and although its quality cannot be presumed to approach that selected by that famous individual for the delectation of Mr. Boffin, it being, not to mention the matter of theme, very often afflicted with a deplorable weakness or strength in its feet, yet it can be said of it, as in the case of Mercutio's wound, that ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Vol. 1, No. 10, October 1895. - French Farmhouses. • Various
... machinery is varied with wonderful fertility of invention, but one sentiment recurs very frequently. The great majority of Balzac's novels, including all the most powerful examples, may thus be described as variations on a single theme. Each of them is in fact the record of a martyrdom. There is always a virtuous hero or heroine who is tortured, and most frequently, tortured to death, by a combination of selfish intrigues. The commonest ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... weeks: but when she began to renew her ecstasies, warning of the happy event was conveyed over the whole country; thousands crowded about her house; and every word which she uttered was received with veneration, as the most sacred oracles. The covenant was her perpetual theme. The true, genuine covenant, she said, was ratified in heaven: the king's covenant was an invention of Satan: when she spoke of Christ, she usually gave him the name of the Covenanting Jesus. Rollo, a popular preacher, and zealous Covenanter, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... amiabilities of nature, however, in which Dorothea found inspiration. A harp of a single string, she sang as that minstrel might who was implored to make love alone his theme. ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... certainly for memorials and inscriptions. The age of Homer may be regarded as preceding the Christian era by about one thousand years. It synchronizes with the time of Solomon. Thus the greatest of poets and the wisest of kings coexisted—truly a noticeable fact, a theme for ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... the deep feeling of the occasion, and which consequently could be neither premeditated nor repeated. His text was taken from the Gospel of John, the declaration of Jesus: 'Behold, I call you no longer servants, but friends.' His theme was Jesus as a soul friend offered to ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... instant followed that rending explosion which (at different distances) has been twice presented to the reader, and with pardonable pride; for the story of Troy has now a catastrophe as well as episodes, and is vindicated as a theme. ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... abused idleness, and by implication the dilettante insurgency fostering it. However, he was compensatingly heterodox in his view of the Law's persecution of women; their pertinacious harpings on the theme had brought him to that; and in consideration of the fact, as they looked from yacht to shore, of their being rebels participating largely in the pleasures of the tyrant's court, they allowed him to silence them, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... while Your needle task you ply: At what I sing some maids will smile, While some, perhaps, may sigh. Though Love's the theme, and Wisdom blames Such ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Britain lurid tales were told of the colonists scalping the wounded at Lexington and using poisoned bullets at Bunker Hill. In America every prisoner in British hands was said to be treated brutally and every man slain in the fighting to have been murdered. The use of foreign troops was a fruitful theme. The report ran through the colonies that the Hessians were huge ogre-like monsters, with double rows of teeth round each jaw, who had come at the call of the British tyrant to slay women and children. In truth many of the Hessians became good Americans. In spite of the loyalty of ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... fear Of Phoebe's laughter, when she pass'd her sphere: 330 And so most ugly-clouded was the light, That day was hid in day; night came ere night; And Venus could not through the thick air pierce, Till the day's king, god of undaunted verse, Because she was so plentiful a theme To such as wore his laurel anademe. Like to a fiery bullet made descent, And from her passage those fat vapours rent, That being not throughly rarified to rain, Melted like pitch, as blue as any vein; 340 And scalding tempests made ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... commending her children to God. Susan—little Sue, as she was frequently called—young as she was, remembered a thousand incidents connected with the departed one, and seemed, so late as the time at which our story begins, to be never happier than when her mother was the theme of conversation. ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... control, and remain subject to the obligations of service. Germany, the state which beyond all others measures its strength by its fighting man-power, was most affected by this motive, which formed the chief theme of the colonial school among her politicians and journalists, and continued to be so even when the stream of her emigrants had dwindled to very small proportions. In a less degree, Italy was influenced ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... been his bride, and had he spoken to her of their future life and mutual duties, how she would have kindled to the theme! She would have knelt at his feet on the floor of the carriage, and, looking up into his face, would have promised him to do her best,—her best,—her very best. And with what an eagerness of inward resolution would she have determined to keep her promise. ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... much of his inspiration to Carlyle's tremendous prose epic. But the genius that depicted a moving and tragic story upon the red background of the Terror was Dickens's own, and the "Tale of Two Cities" was final proof that its author could handle a great theme in a manner that was worthy of its greatness. The work was one of the novelist's later writings—it was published in 1859—and is in many respects distinct from all his others. It stands by itself among Dickens's masterpieces, in sombre and splendid ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... The first theme of the gloomy orator was the display of his own virtues and his services as a patriot, distinguishing as enemies to their country all whose opinions were contrary to his own. He then reviewed successively the various departments ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... truthful picture of society and stage life written by one who is himself a conspicuous member of the Western millionaire class. Full of grim satire, caustic wit and flashing epigrams. "Is sensational to a degree in its theme, daring in its treatment, lashing society as it was ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... and with it came fresh apprehensions of the subversion of their liberties. Already the people fancied they could hear prisons building, chains and fetters forging, and see piles of fagots collecting. Society was occupied with this one theme of conversation, and fear kept no longer within bounds. Placards were affixed to houses of the nobles in which they were called upon, as formerly Rome called on her Brutus, to come forward and save expiring freedom. Biting pasquinades were published against the new bishops—tormentors ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... passed from mouth to mouth. Yes. Fat Taskinar! He was known well enough! His corpulence had been the theme of many an article in the ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... into the thick cold night of the earth, And clamoured to the waves and beat the rocks; And never found the way back to the seat Of conscious rule, and power to bear thy pain; But God had made thee stronger to endure For other ends, beyond thy present choice: Wilt thou not own her story a fit theme For poet's tale? in her most frantic mood, Not call the maniac sister, tenderly? For she went mad for love and not for gold. And in the faded form, whose eyes, like suns Too fierce for freshness and for dewy bloom, Have parched and paled the hues of tender spring, ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... this introduction seem, The obvious cause is clearly in the theme, And should not certainly be hurried o'er, But now for ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... but it is nevertheless an indubitable fact that the custom is widely prevalent, and that Hong Kong is a market for the buying and selling of women which the Government is powerless to touch. Exeter Hall in possession of these facts would indeed have a theme for pious lucubrations." ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... magic light of imagination. So, too, the poetic character of the Indian legend is preserved with conscientious care and fit monotony of rippling music in Hiawatha. But this is an accident and an incident. It is not the theme which determines the poet. All Scotland, indeed, sings and glows in the verse of Burns, but very little of England is seen or heard ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... his master. The lower intellect can buy at no cheaper price than the higher, and the hour of full intellectual emancipation comes only when the student has learned to serve—to turn the whole freshness and sharpness of his intellect on any needful theme of the hour; it may be the scale of a fossil fish, or the annual movement of a glacier, the disclosures of the spectrum, or the secrets of the arrow-headed tongue. All great explorers have been largely their own teachers, ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... was already far advanced toward maturity. Presently a man named Martin, Gabriel's brother, proposed religious services, caused the company to be duly seated, and began an impassioned exposition of Scripture, bearing upon the perilous theme. The Israelites were glowingly portrayed as a type of successful resistance to tyranny; and it was argued, that now, as then, God would stretch forth His arm to save, and would strengthen a hundred to overthrow a thousand. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... a very shocking fate, Caught and killed, and used as bait, To take those harmless little fishes To multiply man's dainty dishes." Now, as the Frog this sentence spoke, Each brother gave a solemn croak. The gentleman in bottle-green Was quite exhausted by his theme; He paused a moment, wiped his brow; Then said, "I think you will allow We've been a persecuted race, Since first on earth we had a place. There is, I'm told, a land called France, Where all the people sing and dance— And they acquire ...
— The Ducks and Frogs, - A Tale of the Bogs. • Fanny Fire-Fly
... or not? Was it fit that one of the Hellenes should arise to prevent it, or not? {72} If it was not fit— if it was fit that Hellas should become like the Mysian booty[n] in the proverb before men's eyes, while the Athenians had life and being, then I have lost my labour in speaking upon this theme, and the city has lost its labour in obeying me: then let everything that has been done be counted for a crime and a blunder, and those my own! But if it was right that one should arise to prevent it, for whom could the task be more fitting than for the people of Athens? That then, ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... has read from a paper. He has introduced here the discourse of some ladies in some section of the country, upon what they esteem to be their own rights, in illustration; that is all; not as argument; he does not offer it as an argument, but to illustrate his theme and to put us in an attitude, as he supposes, of embarrassment on that subject. He has read papers which are altogether foreign from his view of this subject, and which he for a moment will not indorse. He offers these as an illustration with ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... insurmountable reason why we should refrain from developing this brilliant theory. It would cause a digression from the main theme of our work. In the situation which we have supposed to be that of a married establishment, a man who is sufficiently unwise to sleep apart from his wife deserves no pity for the disaster which he ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... Soutien de Famille (1899)'; such is the long list of the great life-artist. In Le Nabab we find obvious traces of Daudet's visits to Algiers and Corsica-Mora is the Duc de Morny. Sapho is the most concentrated of his novels, with never a divergence, never a break, in its development. And of the theme—legitimate marriage contra common-law—what need be said except that he handled it in a manner most acceptable to the aesthetic and least offensive ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... surprise; it was uppermost in his thoughts, this hateful theme; but then how should she know it? He lost the self-possession he had been trying to maintain, the dignity of his judicial character broke down completely; he was now merely a kind-hearted man, a husband and father it is true, but for the moment those domestic ties ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... according to their several creeds, felt the full thunder of the psalm of life as they had never heard it before; MacIan felt God the Father, benignant in all His energies, and Turnbull that ultimate anonymous energy, that Natura Naturans, which is the whole theme of Lucretius. It was down this clamorous ladder of life that ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... renovating sway; The sheep-fed pasture, and the meadow gay; And trees, and shrubs, no longer budding seen, Display the new-grown branch of lighter green; On airy downs the shepherd idling lies, And sees to-morrow in the marbled skies. Here then, my soul, thy darling theme pursue, For every day ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... lying there inspires in the three Persians is, of itself, an instructive lesson on the difference between the two peoples. The sowars become inspired, as if touched by the magic wand of alchemy, to the discussion of their favorite theme; but the Afghans pay no more heed to their remarks about money than if they were talking in an unknown tongue. They really act as though they regarded the subject of money as ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... two sorts of evidence upon which many judges look askance—that sort of evidence which is circumstantial and that sort which purely is hearsay. In this connection, and departing for the space of a paragraph or so from the main theme, I am reminded of the incident through which a certain picturesque gentleman of the early days in California acquired a name which he was destined to wear forever after, and under which his memory is still affectionately encysted in the traditions of ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... doctrine. In the Gospel of John the beloved disciple writes by the Holy Spirit about the Son of God, how He came from the Father and was in the world and how He left the world to go back to the Father. The Son of God is also the theme of the Holy Spirit in the first Epistle of John. "Our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ" (i:3). This fellowship means that we share the Father's thoughts about His Son and to enjoy with the Son His own blessed and eternal ...
— The Lord of Glory - Meditations on the person, the work and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ • Arno Gaebelein
... credit and of commerce; our endless disquisitions on the balance of power and of parties, on the rights of suffrage and of conscience. While we reserve to the theorist the privilege of adorning his theme by allusions to the polity of Lycurgus and Numa, we are sensible that the practical statesman who trusts himself to such examples will be constantly liable to be deluded by false parallels and imperfect analogies. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... in the public room of this inn, ruminating over a beefsteak and a pint of port, when my imagination kindled up with ancient and heroic images. I had long wanted a theme and a hero; both suddenly broke upon my mind; I determined to write a poem on the history of Jack Straw. I was so full of my subject that I was fearful of being anticipated. I wondered that none of the poets of the day, in their researches after ruffian ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... showed her letters to me that she had writ whilst she wuz away South on this visit to her friend. One young man's name run through 'em like the theme to a great melody, and then all to once stopped, and though Maggie and I hadn't passed a word on the subject I mistrusted more than Maggie mistrusted I did about the cause of Molly ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... their cruel eyes and impassive faces were his wards. He spoke in French, and I translated first to the Hurons, then to the Ottawas. He called the tribes to aid him in brightening the covenant chain, and his rhetoric mounted with his theme till I felt my blood heat with admiration for him. He concluded with a plea for loyalty, and he gave each nation a ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... gradually warmed with her theme, as she described her confidence and blind credulity, and then, with a tragic gesture, as if she desired to drive away these cruel memories, she suddenly seized her glass and emptied it at ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... devoted and tenderest nurse was the father whom she had bitterly imagined thought more of his hobby than of his boys and girls. All Northbourne, as with one heart, sorrowed aloud for their favourite Miss Theedory; her grave condition was the sole theme of talk in the cottages ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... brother in the lonely cottage, talking on the old, old theme; the memory of that terrible night ...
— Po-No-Kah - An Indian Tale of Long Ago • Mary Mapes Dodge
... We hardly dare to give full expression to our feelings about this chorus (which during the past month has been continually singing itself over and over again in our recollection), lest it should be supposed that our enthusiasm has got the better of our sober judgment. The second theme, "He was brought as a lamb to the slaughter, yet he opened not his mouth," is quite Handel-like in the simplicity and massiveness of its magnificent harmonic progressions. With the scene of the denial, for which we are thus prepared, the dramatic movement ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... it that in speaking of his troubles we were led on to this heart-stirring theme? Yes, I have seen them, the sweet angels; and I tell you also that I have seen their mother. I insisted on going to her when I heard her ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... tenderly placing it on the strings. Faintly came the first measures of the theme. The melody, noble, limpid and beautiful, floated in dreamy sway over the vast auditorium, and seemed to cast a mystic glamour over the player. As the final note of the first movement was dying away, the audience, awakening from its ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... the long, slow cadence of the metre and the important gravity of the theme. She rolled out the verses with the intensity of a seer, and she looked a beautiful seer as well. Liberal applause greeted her as she sat down, though the clapping woman is apt to be a feeble instrument at best. ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... marines have theirs from Government. The boys sing a couple of hymns every evening, and repeat the Lord's Prayer. I mean to keep up this, and make this a Christian Expedition, telling a little about Christ wherever we go. His love in coming down to save men will be our theme. I dislike very much to make my religion distasteful to others. This, with ——'s hypocritical ostentation, made me have fewer religious services on the Zambesi than would have been desirable, perhaps. He made religion itself distasteful by excessive ostentation.... Good works gain the ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... of this book is to be sought in the point of view of the writer rather than in a sequence of chapters developing a single theme and arriving at categorical conclusions. Literature in a civilization like ours, which is trying to be both sophisticated and democratic at the same moment of time, has so many sources and so many manifestations, is so much involved with our social background, and is so much a question of life ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... my meaning," replied Mittie, pausing under a tree that shaded their path, and leaning against its trunk; "but I can feel it. Till you came, I knew not what feeling was; I read of it in books. It was the theme of many a fluent tongue, but all was cold and passive here," said she, pressing her hand on the throbbing heart that now ached with the intensity of its emotion. "Everybody said I had no heart, and I believed them. You first taught me that there was a vital ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... him a theme to work up, as thus: 'M. Lucilius tribune of the people violently throws into prison a free Roman citizen, against the opinion of his colleagues who demand his release. For this act he is branded by the censor. Analyse the case, and then take both ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... probable also that light would come to him from the talk of the rest of the company: the Colonel's queer habit, both as it affected his own situation and as it affected his wife, would be a familiar theme in any house in which he was in the habit of staying. Lyon had not observed in the circles in which he visited any marked abstention from comment on the singularities of their members. It interfered ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... homewards in greater pomp and with more festivity. For when he came to Mitylene, he gave the city their freedom upon the intercession of Theophanes, and was present at the contest, there periodically held, of the poets, who took at that time no other theme or subject than the actions of Pompey. He was extremely pleased with the theater itself, and had a model of it taken, intending to erect one in Rome on the same design, but larger and more magnificent. When he came to Rhodes, he attended the lectures of all the philosophers there, and gave to ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... chilling coldness. But when you gave me your warm hand and claimed something like kindred, I was grateful for that which does not always accompany kindred,—genuine kindness. This feeling was greatly increased when instead of making my diffidence and awkwardness a theme of ridicule, you evinced a delicate sympathy, and with graceful tact suggested a better courtesy to others. Do you think then, that, after this glimpse down such a beautiful vista in your nature, I can associate you with 'total ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... by reflection. No attempt is made to describe its processes or ally them systematically to natural changes. Its illusions, when noticed, are regarded as scandals calculated to foster scepticism. The spiritual world is, on the other hand, a constant theme for poetry and speculation. In the absence of ideal science, it can be conceived only in myths, which are naturally as shifting and self-contradictory as they are persistent. They acquire no fixed character until, in dogmatic religion, they are defined with reference to natural events, foretold ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... opportunities lost," he said. "The lost opportunities—how sad a theme, how melancholy a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... her wish, his fingers wandered over the organ-keys in a strain of solemn, weird, yet tender melancholy—the grand, rich notes pealed forth sobbingly—and she listened, her hands clasped idly in her lap. Presently he changed the theme to one of more heart-appealing passion—and a strange wild minor air, like the rushing of the wind across the mountains, began to make itself heard through the subdued rippling murmur of his improvised accompaniment. To his surprise and fear, she started up, pressing ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... Nelson has been written so often, that an explanation—almost an apology—seems due for any renewal of the attempt; but, not to mention the attractiveness of the theme in itself, it is essential to the completeness and rounding off of the author's discussion of the Influence of Sea Power, that he present a study, from his own point of view, of the one man who in himself summed up and embodied the greatness of the possibilities which Sea Power comprehends,—the ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... lady in her little room far up under the roof, where, though quite infirm, she lived comfortably, on her savings. Jacqueline, sitting beside her as she sewed, was soothed by her old nursery tales, or by anecdotes of former days. Her own relatives were often the old woman's theme. She knew the history of Jacqueline's family from beginning to end; but, wherever her story began, ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... those richer views among, Strong, rapid, fervent, flashing fancy's beam! Virtue and truth shall love your gentler song; But poesy demands th' impassion'd theme. Wak'd by heaven's silent dews at eve's mild gleam, What balmy sweets Pomona breathes around! But if the vext air rush a stormy stream, Or autumn's shrill gust moan in plaintive sound, With fruits and flowers she loads ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... BIG TIMBER; or, The Search for the Lost Tenderfoot. A serious calamity threatens the Silver Fox Patrol. How apparent disaster is bravely met and overcome by Thad and his friends, forms the main theme of the story. ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... evening or two he had worked very diligently at preparation. He had taken pains with his fractions, and looked out every word in his Caesar. He had got Oliver to look over his French, and Loman had volunteered to correct the spelling of his "theme;" and yet he stuck at the bottom of the class. Other boys went up and down. Some openly boasted that they had had their lessons done for them, and others that they had not done them at all. A merry time they had of it; but Stephen, down at the bottom, was in dismal dumps. ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... proved a brilliant stage success. Its matter was less contentious, and its technical execution was effective and brilliant. It was not in vain that Bjoernson had at different times been the director of three theatres. This play has for its theme the ethics of business life, and more especially the question of the extent to which a man whose finances are embarrassed is justified in continued speculation for the ultimate protection of himself and his creditors. Despite its treatment ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, 'may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!' To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave's point of view. Standing there, identified with the American bondman, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... the magnificent epilogue of the last two books, full of hopes of rescue for Poland, full of gaiety and courage. A large epic calm pervades the whole. The age-long conflict between Pole and "Muscovite" is the theme of the epic, but the tone is not that of passionate hatred and revolt such as fills The Forefathers; human kindliness breathes through the whole work; not indignation and rebellion, but faith, hope, and ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... reclined his head on the pillow with a more deliberate attempt to repose than he had yet exhibited. But Thomas de Vaux was no courtier; the phrase which had offered had risen spontaneously to his lips, and he knew not how to pursue the pleasing theme so as to soothe and prolong the vein which he had excited. He was silent, therefore, until, relapsing into his moody contemplations, the King demanded of him sharply, "Despardieux! This is smoothly said to soothe ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... transmitted to his readers in the years to come. If he did not sleep with head pillowed upon the grave of one of De Soto's faithful followers, he at least thought he did, and the fancy served him as the theme of verse. And those varying types of human nature and beast nature—do they not all appear ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... transport the reader in imagination to the Vale of the Tweed, that classic region—the Arcadia of Scotland, the haunt of the Muses, the theme of so many a song, the scene of so many a romantic legend. And there, where that most crystalline of rivers has attained the fulness of its beauty and splendour—just before it meets and mingles in gentle union with its scarce less beauteous sister, "sweet ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... paper over the etching, Plate 37, and with his pen to follow some of the lines of it as carefully as he can, until he feels their complexity, and the redundance of the imaginative power which amplified the simple theme, furnished by the natural scene, with such detail; and then let him observe what great mountain laws Turner has been striving to express in all ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... has lost the grace and beauty of the earlier dialogues. The mind of the writer seems to be so overpowered in the effort of thought as to impair his style; at least his gift of expression does not keep up with the increasing difficulty of his theme. The idea of the king or statesman and the illustration of method are connected, not like the love and rhetoric of the Phaedrus, by 'little invisible pegs,' but in a confused and inartistic manner, which fails to produce any impression of a whole on the ...
— Statesman • Plato
... longer on this theme than I intended, and I shall now conclude with what I ought to have begun. We were once friends,—nay, we have always been so, for our separation was the effect of chance, not of dissension. I do not know how far our destinations in life may throw us together, but if opportunity and inclination ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... him to divert him from his course for an hour, save by his own initiative. His mother's letter had changed it all. A few hours before he had had a struggle with Soolsby, and now another struggle on the same theme was here. Fate had dealt illy with him, who had ever been its spoiled child and favourite. He had not learned yet the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... hear you say so. How can we have too much beauty!' exclaimed Filey, receiving the new occupant of the seat as a soul worthy of high fellowship. Then he leaned across Miss Heriot and said to the lady in the corner, 'I'm making that the theme ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... Bill," says Jack to the next blank, "I got it from him." And when Bill gets his paper back finally—which is often only after much bush grumbling, accusation, recrimination, and denial—he severely and carefully re-arranges theme pages, folds the paper, and sticks it away up over a rafter, or behind a post or batten, or under his pillow where it will safe. He wants that ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... with God, I abode in those high thoughts of Him. There flowed into my soul so powerful a delight from these reflections upon God, that I took no further thought for all the anguish I had suffered, but rather spent the day in singing psalms and divers other compositions on the theme of His divinity. ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... preparation for sleep; but spent the night in a succession of the most violent bursts of passion. In some paroxysms he talked incessantly to his attendants so thick and so rapidly, that they were really afraid his senses would give way, choosing for his theme the merits and the kindness of heart of the murdered Bishop of Liege, and recalling all the instances of mutual kindness, affection, and confidence which had passed between them, until he had worked himself into such a transport of grief, that he threw himself ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... many excellent things might be said of thee, if, unfortunately, it did not happen that the theme is an old one, and has been much better sung than it can ever now be said. With thus much of apology for no more lengthened panegyric, let me beg of my reader, if he be conversant with that most moving melody—the Groves of Blarney—to hum the following lines, which ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... prince, the Gaikwar of Baroda, is a reversal of the theme. When that throne fell vacant, no heir could be found for some time, but at last one was found in the person of a peasant child who was making mud pies in a village street, and having an innocent good time. But his pedigree was straight; he was the true prince, and he has reigned ever since, with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sense it may be said that this glorious Elizabethan Era with its Shakspeare, as the outcome and flowerage of all which had preceded it, is itself attributable to the Catholicism of the Middle Ages. The Christian Faith, which was the theme of Dante's Song, had produced this Practical Life which Shakspeare was to sing. For Religion then, as it now and always is, was the soul of Practice; the primary vital fact in men's life. And remark here, as rather curious, that ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... We had stronger hope of their arrival before the evening, as we knew that every voyager uses his utmost endeavour to reach a post upon, or previous to, the jour de l'an, that he may partake of the wonted festivities. It forms, as Christmas is said to have done among our forefathers, the theme of their conversation for months before and after the period of its arrival. On the present occasion we could only treat them with a little flour and fat; these were both considered as great luxuries, but still the feast was defective from the want of rum, although we promised them ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... seem perhaps an odd instance, just because it is an odd instance, let us remember what a wonderful amount of hope and anticipation has been thrown by a great religious party into the restoration of the Jews. Rightly or wrongly, it is the one theme which sends a throb of excitement through the life of quiet parsonages and kindles a new fire even in the dreariest May meetings at Exeter Hall. But in point of actual fact there is not the slightest necessity to await any great spiritual revolution for the accomplishment of such ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... was long the delight of the young, No damsel could with her compare; Her charms were the theme of the heart and the tongue. And bards without number in extacies sung, The beauties ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... that night there was but one theme of conversation. It was not with regard to the plunder taken in the last village that had been sacked, and the great amount of corn that it was impossible to bring away, and consequently had to be destroyed, but of the wondrous ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... I flow thee, and make thy stream My great example, as it is my theme; Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull; Strong without rage; without ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... largely in retrospect, for the most important part of his task is to explain the long course of events that prepared and produced the catastrophe; while a writer who treats of more normal times will do well to plunge rapidly into his theme. ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... for liturgical purposes, and it was several centuries before "Corde natus" was adopted into the cycle of Latin hymns. Its elaborate rhetoric is very unlike the severity of "Veni, redemptor gentium," but again the note is purely theological; the Incarnation as a world-event is its theme. It sings the ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... of wrongs too long endured, Of sacred rights to be secured; Then from his patriot tongue of flame The startling words for Freedom came. The stirring sentences he spake Compelled the heart to glow or quake, And, rising on his theme's broad wing, And grasping in his nervous hand The imaginary battle brand, In face of death he dared to fling Defiance to a ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... theme, we are remained that one of the most unsaleable books of the present day is a Town History: and, yet, however crude or dry it may seem to be, it is in reality an exceedingly valuable contribution to our national annals. Such books are as a rule declined by regular publishing houses, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... his rifle on his shoulder. He could not have said to-day that he was nearer an inspiration, a hope, a "leading," than heretofore, but as he stood on the crag it was with the effect of a dislocation that he was torn from the solemn theme by an interruption at ...
— The Christmas Miracle - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... His meditations on this theme occupied him agreeably the rest of that week, during which time he overlooked his workmen and conferred with his architect. Besides, his horses, his books, his domestics, and his journals arrived successively to dispel ennui. Therefore he looked remarkably well when he jumped ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... generalizations to a presentation of Medora's mental and spiritual attributes. She said many things, in the tone of kindly, half-veiled patronage; after all she was talking to a country man about a country maid. She even praised Abner himself by indirection—as one strand in the general rustic theme. The children, who caught every word and put this and that together with marvellous celerity and precision, were vastly impressed by the attributes of the invisible paragon. They looked at Abner's bigness with their own big eyes—though ignored by him, his interest being, despite ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller |
