"Keynote" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... possible to the happiness of all, and endeavoring to compensate by intelligence and kindness for the poverty of their surroundings. "One cheerful, bright, and contented spirit in a household will uplift the tone of all the rest. The keynote of the home is in the hand of the resolutely cheerful member of the family, and he or she will set the pitch for ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... must hit them at once, and hit hard! These reports here," and he gestured at the papers that Brevard had spread out under the lamp-light, "prove that, at the proper signal, every chance indicates that we can paralyze transportation—the keynote of the whole situation. ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... of the others. Nevertheless it has a distinctive charm of its own-a reposeful atmosphere and a simplicity of form that become more and more appealing with riper acquaintance. It is a good place to come to when one is satiated with the beauties of the other courts, for restfulness is the keynote. The simple massive style of the architecture and the simple planting scheme combine to produce a spirit of calm. The ideas of energy, achievement, progress, effort-so insistently emphasized elsewhere-are left behind, and everything breathes a sense of peace and orderliness, of things happening ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney
... But whether ministering at the altar or making the rounds of his parish, his spirit frequently found utterance in song. In 1880 he published a volume of poems, to which only a few additions were subsequently made. The keynote of his poetry is struck in the opening piece, Song of the Mystic. He dwelt much in the "Valley ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... Crawford, denounced the old system; legislatures passed resolutions against it; public meetings condemned it; ponderous pamphlets were hurled at it; the campaigns of Jackson and Clay, in particular, found their keynote in hostility toward it. Failing to perceive that under the changed circumstances a caucus nomination might become a liability rather than an asset, the Crawford element pushed its plans, and on February 14, 1824, a caucus—destined to be the last of the kind in the country—was duly held. ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... of his chief public service; (3) the fact by which he is most likely to be remembered by the casual reader. It is a good brief form to use in writing about most men and women. Model II is better if the subject is remarkable for many achievements. Its structure is as follows: (1) A keynote sentence; (2), (3), (4) three illustrations of the fact stated in (1); (5) dates. The same principles apply to notices of living people. In writing use one model or the other; do not deviate from them, unless you ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... keynote to Howard Frayberg's instructions: "Excitement! Sex! Mystery!" Frayberg cared little for inspiration or beauty. "I imagine," he said casually, "that you celebrate a number of interesting festivals? Colorful dancing? ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance
... the command of another. It seemed then to be shrouded or paralysed...MacGregor on his native heath was not more different from MacGregor in prison than was Jackson his own master from Jackson in a subordinate position. This was the keynote to his whole character. The hooded falcon cannot strike the quarry."* (* Battles and Leaders volume 2 pages ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... that she holds no dominion over a man, that it is only too perfectly clear that the impulse of loving is all on her side and that she has neither anything to expect nor anything to fear from him, since indifference is the keynote of his attitude to her, she will all the more readily believe that he loves elsewhere, worthily or unworthily the same to her. A woman is not a noble object in such a situation. All trusting feminine instincts, all sweet emotions of hope, all sentiment, all passion even, retreat ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... letter we find the keynote of all our subsequent troubles. The complete and almost absurd confidence of the British, supported as it was by valour without wisdom or activity, was a "voice" and nothing more. Deeply have we suffered since those words were written, for an arrogant ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... alone, alone with my thoughts. Often when all was quiet I knew she was sitting there beyond the curtain, sitting thinking, just as I was thinking. Quiet was the keynote of our life, quiet and sunshine. That little cabin might have been a hundred miles from the gold-born city, it was so quiet. Here drifted no echo of its abandoned gaiety, its glory of demoralisation. How sweet she looked in her spotless home attire, her neat waist, her white apron with bib ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... depositories of power, and to enable them to conclude an armistice, which would result in a Constituent Assembly, and would free them from the responsibility of concluding peace on terms rather than accept which they proudly asserted a few weeks ago they would all die. The keynote of the situation is given by the organs of public opinion, which until now have teemed with articles calling upon the population of the capital to bury itself beneath its ruins, and thus by a heroic sacrifice to serve as an example to the whole of France. ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... friends of this work the assurance that he to whom Mr. Muller left its conduct has also learned the one secret of all success in coworking with God. It sounds, as the significant keynote for the future, the same old keynote of the past, carrying on the melody and harmony, without change, into the new measures. It is the same oratorio, without alteration of theme, time, or even key: the leading performer is indeed no more, but another hand takes up ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... opened every kind of a meeting held in the church with religious exercises. Then Mamanowatum made his address, always good and suggestive, the keynote of which was thanksgiving and gratitude to God for the blessings of the year. When he had finished, he called on different Indians for addresses. Some of them were very good also. This is the night of all others, when Indian orators try to be humorous and witty. As a race they do not ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... State Library is doing its share toward the re-education of the blind adult, has been doing it for the past thirteen years. It provides the best books available in the various types. It has over eight thousand books in circulation, and its list of borrowers numbers more than one thousand. The keynote of this department is Service, and each borrower is made to feel that his success is of vital importance to the Library, and when a new reader is added to the list, a note is usually sent, welcoming ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley
... 30 feet from the street. The semicourt was flanked on the north and south by long and wide verandas and a veranda extended across the front of the cottage. The semicourt was a profusion of flowers and shrubbery. The keynote of the building was rest and comfort. The decorative and color schemes were restful and quiet and harmonious. The wainscoting and the grand staircase were finished in Flemish oak, and the furniture was the "mission style," which harmonized with the woodwork. Indian blankets ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... it 'the good ordering of the mind') is the keynote of technical control. Together with the principle of relaxation it provides the player with the most effective means of establishing precise and sensitive cooeperation between mental and physical processes. Muscular relaxation at will is one of the results ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... one to strike the keynote of respect and personal freedom in marriage; the other ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... the flesh, and the pride of life. The divine spark had disappeared. The spiritual nature had given way to the sensual. Ambition and pleasure were enthroned in the seats of justice and humanity. Selfishness was the keynote of aristocratic life. And with this fact kept in view, the short-sightedness of royalty in the presence of the rising tide of intelligent discontent is by no means strange. Indifferent to the fate of the masses in any struggle that might be precipitated, guided by none of the higher ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... first part of the musette copied (from memory, so I hope there's nothing wrong). Is it not angelic? But it ought, of course, to have the gavotte before. The gavotte is in G, and ends on the keynote thus (if ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... old friend, Professor Binstead. A stranger who had only encountered Mr. Brewster in the lobby of the hotel would have been surprised at the appearance of his sitting-room, for it had none of the rugged simplicity which was the keynote of its owner's personal appearance. Daniel Brewster was a man with a hobby. He was what Parker, his valet, termed a connoozer. His educated taste in Art was one of the things which went to make the Cosmopolis different from and ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... 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 of our art: what sort of a body it is to put on, we shall ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... is in vivid contrast to Jeremiah's sorrowful attitude of retrospection. The picture brings out clearly the fact that the keynote of Daniel's prophecy is hope. Looking into his rapt face, we may imagine that this is the message he is writing: "They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness, as the ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... character. The wife at the crisis of this other love, is killed in a street accident, and remorse ensues. But the book is a weary one; it bears upon its face the burden of sorrow. "How could this have been otherwise?" is the keynote of the story. ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... into the boy's head than you and I have got in a lifetime. Give you my word, Grig, when he was off his chump in the fever, he raved like a poet, and an orator, and he was only an ordinary sportsman when he left home in the spring! Cleopatra, he called her one day, and I fancy that was the keynote—she must have been one of those exceptional women we read of in ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... handsome and costly old furnishings, the room gave one a sense of space and comfort; its agreeable warmth was too equable to have been derived solely from the cheerful blaze in the veritable Adam's fireplace, which seemed to have provided the keynote to the general scheme of decoration. The great bay-window overlooked a long, gently sloping lawn, bounded on either side by shrubbery, trees, and hedges, terminated by shrubbery and hedges alone, the trees originally there having been long since removed to admit of a clear view ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... Republic, a sort of transpontine Ruritania; add a revolution fostered by the serpentine diplomats of a European power; let the American eagle issue a few screams, and there you have the environment in which The Unspeakable Perk lives and moves and has his unreal being. The keynote of SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS' story is what the Perk person would describe as a want of "pep." Even the villains turn out to be comparative gentlemen in the end, the dirty work being conveniently fastened ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 25, 1917 • Various
... the most of his opportunity. On his part, the king wanted a general badly. He had been grievously disappointed in Sir William Howe, whose victories seemed never bringing the war any nearer to an end. Burgoyne brought forward his plan at the right moment, shrewdly touched the keynote of the king's discontent by declaring for aggressive war, smoothed every obstacle away with easy assurance, and so impressed the ministers with his capacity, that they believed they had found the very man the king wanted ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... money in the last ten years in oil and he is going to build an estate up on the Hudson that will make the world gasp. I hadn't put in a bid, but this idea of the judge's and Greg's, with the whole village grouped about it, has given me the keynote to win the thing from the whole bunch of American architects. He wants the village built as well as the estate. That American garden idea will bowl him over. He's progressively and rabidly American. The bids don't close until December, so I'll have time to get real photographs and sketches. Me ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... what had befallen him in the Rogan power-house. "That lever, Dex!" he said swiftly. "It's the keynote of the whole business. It absolutely controls the pull of gravity, and Lord knows what else besides. If we could only get at it again! Perhaps we could not only shut it off so that Jupiter's pull would function again, but also reverse the process so ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... attended him; he died, and I dissected him" was the remark of a wit on reading her satirical pen portrait of the Marquise du Chatelet. This cold skepticism, keen analysis, and undisguised heartlessness strike the keynote of the century which was socially so brilliant, intellectually so fruitful, ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... the keynote. He felt that she had been in touch with life, and had got the better of it: that there had been drama in her past, born of contact with men and women. She had been dealing with such problems as securing food—and his experience of the last twenty-four hours had hinted ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... him. This intellectual courage made him fitted to be the leader in the battle for evolution and against traditional thought, and we shall find again and again in consideration of his work that it was the keynote of ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... him. He was made LL.D. of Edin., a life Governor of London Univ., and had the offer of the Lord Rectorship of Glasgow. He d. in the house of his son at Venice, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. The keynote of his teaching is a wise and noble optimism. His poems were collected in 2 vols. in 1896. Some vols. of his correspondence with Mrs. ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... have struck the keynote of the whole subject of recreation. The word comes from re-create. It means the refreshment of the strength and spirits by some diversion. The great difficulty with most people is that the recreation they take is really a burden to them; ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... newly finished wall. For one second I feared to see a blow follow the flash of Mr. Durant's eye, 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 for Wellesley—sometimes simply ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... pass on to the next plane higher. They hold that the planets and the countless fixed stars or suns, are but stages of abode for the evolving Spirit, and that beyond the Universe as we know it there are millions of others—in fact, that the number of Universes is infinite. The keynote of this doctrine may be stated as "Eternal Progression" toward the Divine Spirit. The Spirits do not insist upon any particular theory regarding the constitution of the soul—some of them speak merely of "soul and ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... as being at least a step in the right direction. Joshua R. Giddings was a member of the Republican Convention which nominated Lincoln. But Wendell Phillips, always an extremist among extremists, published an article entitled "Abraham Lincoln, the Slave-hound of Illinois," whereof the keynote was struck in this introductory sentence: "We gibbet a Northern hound to-day, side by side with the infamous Mason of Virginia." Mr. Garrison, a man of far larger and sounder intellectual powers than belonged to Phillips, did not fancy this sort of diatribe, though five months earlier ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... singing that in? La, la, la, la; mi, in E major, key of four sharps. By Jove, my little man! here is a fellow who sings B's and C's away up in the clouds; an E sharp, too!" he continued, with astonishment, while the singer made a hold upon the keynote an octave higher in a voice as ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... may once more be healed by the German nature, or character.) It came into vogue before the war. The Kaiser struck the keynote of the whole chorus of self-exaltation when he said (August 31, 1907): "The German people will be the granite block on which the good God may build and complete His work of Kultur in the world. Then will be fulfilled ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... is a squeezed orange, but for public good there is something to do, and I shall try—but it must be cautiously— to do it. You know my politics well enough to know what I mean when I say that for 'Europe' I shall be desirous now and then to read 'England.'" The closing sentence was the keynote of his policy. For years it had been customary for representatives of the powers to treat all important matters as "European questions," and England had become habituated to a diplomacy which kept English interests ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... 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 ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... weeping. He was losing the only friend he had. 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
... as if to stifle a sudden pain. That song had been the keynote to her new life, and it seemed now as if it were also to be the final benediction. All her spirit gathered itself up for a great resolution: she would not yield to this invading weakness, this misery of body ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... seems, at such a fortunate moment, as though we had been waiting for this revelation, although perchance the want of it had not been previously felt. Our sensations and perceptions test themselves at the touchstone of this living individuality. The keynote of the whole music dimly sounding in our ears is struck. A melody emerges, clear in form and excellent in rhythm. The landscapes we have painted on our brain, no longer lack their central figure. The life proper to the complex conditions we ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... wine-glasses being especially noticeable, for 800 guests are often invited at a time. Treasures of linen and costly embroidery, silken hangings and velvet banners, gorgeous carpets and mats of finest texture, are displayed to our admiring eyes, but possession rather than enjoyment is the keynote of Eastern character, and the bales and bundles of priceless value, kept in huge cabinets of fragrant cedar-wood, seldom see the light of day. Long counting-houses are crowded with native scribes, their brown bodies naked except for sarong ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... 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 Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... sequel to The Dark Forest, I felt so very disinclined to believe this statement that I consulted a Russian, who is very much alive, and received the opinion that, if Mr. WALPOLE has not succeeded in drawing the real average Russian, he has given us a type whose faults and virtues sound the keynote of the situation as it is to-day. Such an opinion is worth a thousand times more than any judgment of mine, and I am glad of the opportunity to record it. From a literary point of view it seems to me that Mr. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various
... the keynote of his writings in the 'Pall Mall Gazette.' He frankly recognises the necessity, and therefore does not discuss the advisability, of a large extension of the franchise. He protests only against the view, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... ceased to attend them. The other studies that he took up, especially logic and philosophy, seemed to him arid and unprofitable—mere conventional verbiage without any bed-rock of real knowledge. So he presently fell into that mood of disgust with academic learning which was afterwards to form the keynote of Faust. Outside the university he found congenial work in Oeser's drawing-school. Oeser was an artist of no great power with the brush, but a genial man, a friend of Winckelmann, and an enthusiast for Greek art. Goethe learned ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... few even sprawl out helplessly on all sides, quite broken-backed and dismembered. Nevertheless, in almost his very worst moods, there lies in him a singular attraction. A wild tone pervades the whole utterance of the man, like its keynote and regulator; now screwing itself aloft as into the Song of Spirits, or else the shrill mockery of Fiends; now sinking in cadences, not without melodious heartiness, though sometimes abrupt enough, into the common pitch, when we hear it only as a monotonous hum; of which hum the ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... 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
... loaded with honours by the conqueror as one who had been a valuable ally. Never was a position more equivocal occupied by a patriot. Yet never has there beaten in a human breast a heart more patriotic than Jeremiah's. Patriotism, strong as a man's passion and tender as a woman's love, is the keynote of every chapter of his prophecies. This is characteristic of all the prophets. They loved Israel, and especially the city of Jerusalem, with an ardour of affection such as has rarely, if ever, been bestowed ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... intermingled, he influenced the working of Doellinger's mind. But the plausible reading of his life which explains it by his connection with such public men as Montalembert, De Decker, and Mr. Gladstone is profoundly untrue; and those who deem him a liberal in any scientific use of the term, miss the keynote ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... 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
... the keynote of the whole Tractarian movement. A weapon was needed to smite liberalism. Nothing but a compact and powerful organisation could repel the foe. God must have provided such an organisation: a Divine society, certain of ultimate victory, must exist somewhere. ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... will astound the world when made known in full. I know that two German detachments of 1,000 men each, which were surrounded and cornered but which refused to surrender, were wiped out almost to the last man. The keynote of these operations was the tremendous attack of the Allies along the Ourcq Tuesday, which showed the German commander that his lines were threatened. Then came the ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... doctrine, with gentle leaning toward Catholicism in externals, held still firmly by the "Act of Supremacy" in the controlling hand of the Sovereign. Above all else desiring peace and prosperity for England, the keynote of Elizabeth's policy in Church and in State was conciliation and compromise. So the Church of England was to a great extent a compromise, retaining as much as the people would bear of external form and ritual, for the sake of reconciling ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... great city as it had been blown along the mountain slopes of Kiu Shiu. Nor did he wish the thought of gain or of personal ambition to creep into Tatsu's heart. Now he spent most of the day-lit hours secluded in his little study, painting those scenes and motives suggested by the keynote of his mood. Of late he had begun to read, with deep interest, the various essays on art, gathered in Kano's small, choice library. He would sometimes talk with his father about art, and let the eager old man demonstrate to him the different brush-strokes of different ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... girl 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
... stared, and stammered in mechanical accents, after Mr. Middlemass supplied him with the keynote, "Miss West, the very person, let us thank our stars!" But he soon recovered himself, and then shook her hand warmly, and declared, in his old, off-hand manner, "I shall see you home, Miss West;" for Miss West had no sooner recovered her breath and her ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... have wandered a little way from my principal theme, in order more fully to show why the old Greek life impresses us as so cheerful. Returning now to the keynote with which we started, let us state succinctly the net result of what has been said about the Athenians. As a people we have seen that they enjoyed an unparalleled amount of leisure, living through life with but little ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... Aztec social system. Unfortunately it inaugurated American aboriginal history upon a misconception of Indian life which has remained substantially unquestioned until recently. The first eye-witnesses gave the keynote to this history by introducing Montezuma as a king, occupying a palace of great extent crowded with retainers, and situated in the midst of a grand and populous city, over which, and much beside, he was reputed master. But king and kingdom were in time found ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... avoidance of the evil—is the keynote of the Epictetean philosophy. It has been summed up in the three words, [Greek: Anechou kai apechou], "sustine et abstine," "Bear and forbear,"—bear whatever God assigns to you, abstain from ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... The keynote of his conception, then, was his revolutionary substitution of the primitive Elizabethan and early seventeenth century method for the fetish of the single line. For some time it is true the established battle order had ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... a very good one the other day from old Bauldy Johnston," said Allan, opening his usual wallet of stories when the dinner was in full swing. At a certain stage of the evening "I heard a good one" was the invariable keynote of his talk. If you displayed no wish to hear the "good one," he was huffed. "Bauldy was up in Edinburgh," he went on, "and I met him near the Scott Monument and took him to Lockhart's for a dram. ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... worthy to be called Torch Bearer. Nyoda had herself conferred that 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 ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... my 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 dissonances and ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... justified his opposition to woman suffrage in a letter to Moncure D. Conway: "The keynote of my political creed is the axiom that 'Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed....' I sought information from different quarters ... and practically all agreed in the conclusion that the women of our state do not choose to vote. ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... it would be selfish to leave. Is it not right, though, and of necessity, that we think first of self?" He paused, then boldly sounded the keynote of the universe. ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... will grant you that greed is the keynote of this place; yet even that has its interesting side. Where else do you see it so developed? Where else could you see the same emotion actuating a number of very different people in ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... her soul was too gentle to keep in restraint hot, fiery youths like my brothers and myself. On the whole we were good boys, and I suppose caused her no more pain than the average youngsters. Perhaps the keynote of her character can best be found in the following incident, if that which was of daily occurrence could be called ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... a land, that is, not of Britons but of Englishmen. Even if a few of the vanquished people lingered as slaves round the homesteads of their English conquerors, or a few of their household words mingled with the English tongue, doubtful exceptions such as these leave the main facts untouched. The keynote of the conquest was firmly struck. When the English invasion was stayed for a while by the civil wars of the invaders, the Briton had disappeared from the greater part of the land which had been his own; and the tongue, the religion, the laws of his English conquerors ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... magnificent fables of King Arthur and his times which exercised so great an influence on the English mind, and were in fact, although originally Celtic, so thoroughly adopted and naturalised by the Saxon, as to reappear under different forms in every age, and form the keynote of most of our fictions, from Geoffrey of Monmouth and the medieval ballads, up to Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and at last Milton and Blackmore. This series of legends will, I think, as we trace its development, bring us ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... the outcome the Major had not waited to see. "Millais' Huguenot" was complete. Rosalind Graythorpe, or Palliser, stood there again with her husband's arm round her—her husband of twenty years ago! And in that fact was the keynote of what there was of unusual—of unconventional, one might almost phrase it—in her way of receiving and requiting his declaration. It hardly need be said that he was unconscious of any such thing. A man whose soul is reeling with the intoxication ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... in Homer as popular belief; the godhead interferes in human affairs, when crime becomes too wanton, and thus evil is overcome and the good gains more and more the upper hand. Of course that is kept in the background, when despair in realities becomes the keynote of the God-Consciousness, as with the Brahmans, and then with the much-praised apostles of annihilation, the Buddhists. You are quite right; it is a pity that I could not let the work appear all at once, for even you misunderstand me. When I say "we cannot pray ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... Give the people at least such liberty with their own collection of books as the bookseller gives them with his. Let the shelves be open, and the public admitted to them, and let the open shelves strike the keynote of the whole administration. The whole library should be permeated with a cheerful and accommodating atmosphere. Lay this down as the first rule of library management; and for the second, let it be said that librarian and assistants are to treat boy and girl, man and woman, ignorant ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana
... since Josephine and I were their age! More particularly that choicest section of it which we were taught to think and speak of as the land of the free and the home of the brave. As I look back now in philosophic mood, simplicity seems to me to have been the keynote of our day. Not merely had the gladsome flannel costume and the Indian pajamas not yet begun to force an issue with the oratorical black broadcloth coat and the up-and-down white nightgown. There were no shingle stains to speak of but those of time and ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... peculiar, 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 ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... performed the office himself. Once when some one inquired why he did not delegate such a disagreeable task to one of his deputies, he is said to have replied, "Simply because it is disagreeable." It was this elevated sense of moral responsibility which formed the keynote of ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... The keynote of her being throughout this last winter was one of unwonted seriousness. A certain startling intensity of thought and feeling showed itself every now and then. It was painfully evident that she was under a severe strain, both physical and mental. Again and again, as spring ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... dog on shore was the first to scent the coming strangers. He gave vent to a low growl. It was the keynote to the canine choir, which immediately sent up a howl of discord. Forthwith from every hut there leaped armed men, anxious women, and terrified children, which latter rushed towards the cliffs or ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... large, and arranged with that wonderful simplicity which Mrs. Hastings had adopted as the keynote of her New York parties. She had taken, in fact, simplicity under her wing and made a new thing of it. There were more flowers than silver, and cut glass than heavy plate. There seemed to be an almost ostentatious desire to conceal the fact that Mr. Hastings ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hit a man squarely in the eyes. Her beauty had that direct and almost aggressive quality that is like a challenge, and with sophisticated feminine art she had contrived that the dinner gown she chose for that evening should sound the keynote of her personality like a leitmotif in an opera. The costume was a creation of white satin, the folds caught here and there with strings of pearls. There was a single large rose of pink velvet among ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... be introduced and concluded, which we cannot explain here, but this leading up to and away from have for their purpose softening the harshness of the dissonance which was greatly feared in bygone times. Take if you please, the simple key of C natural. Do is the keynote, sol is the dominant. Place on this dominant two-thirds—si-re—and you have the perfect dominant chord. Add a third fa and you have the famous dominant seventh, a dissonance which to-day seems actually agreeable. Not so long ago they thought that they ought to prepare for ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... imitation of the almost invariable practice of the chivalry-romance authors, who were fond of tracing their books to some recondite source. In working out the new ideas, he soon found the value of Sancho Panza. Indeed, the keynote, not only to Sancho's part, but to the whole book, is struck in the first words Sancho utters when he announces his intention of taking his ass with him. "About the ass," we are told, "Don Quixote hesitated a little, trying whether ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... which the awful thunder of the elements breaks, came to us as out of the depths of an infinite repose. The youth of an untroubled world was in it. The joy of effortless activities breathed through it. We felt that we were once more in the morning of the world's day, and hope gave the keynote to all our thought. Life is divided between hope and memory; when memory holds the chief place, the shadows are lengthening ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... colonial agents and merchants trading to America were refused admission to hear the debates in the House of Commons. Upon that day Townshend was to develop his scheme. By way, as it were, of striking a keynote, he proposed that the province of New York should be restrained from enacting any legislation until it should comply with the "billeting act," against which it had heretofore been recalcitrant. He then sketched a scheme for an American board ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... the kind of dresses that were to be worn, but she decided everything herself; and when the time came she had all the young men ravaging the lanes and pastures for the goldenrod and asters which formed the keynote of her decoration for ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... leaders 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
... to inferior qualities only made bad worse, and, even as the Sergeot were steering the Salon Malakoff forth upon the waters of prosperity, there were nightly conferences in the household next door, at which impending ruin presided, and exasperation sounded the keynote of every sentence. The resplendent facade of Hippolyte's establishment, the tide of custom which poured into and out of his door, the loudly expressed admiration of his ability and thrift, which greeted her ears on every side, and, finally, the sight of Esperance, ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... holiness, which not all can appreciate. In her younger days, as Alan Merrick first saw her, she was beautiful still with the first flush of health and strength and womanhood in a free and vigorous English girl's body. A certain lofty serenity, not untouched with pathos, seemed to strike the keynote. But that was not all. Some hint of every element in the highest loveliness met in that face ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... 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 forbidden dishes, ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... processes of his mind; but there was in him no barrier to that larger emotional sympathy which we think of as sympathy of the soul. If this poem were true, 'One Word More' would be false, quite otherwise than in that approach to exaggeration which is incidental to the poetic form. The true keynote of 'Two in the Campagna' is the pain of perpetual change, and of the conscious, though unexplained, predestination to it. Mr. Browning could have still less in common with such a state, since one of the qualities for which he was ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... ideas exist for 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
... was Schilsky's mistress. What you didn't know, was this;" and now, without the least attempt at palliation, without a single extenuating word, there fell from his lips the quick and witty narration of an episode in which Louise and he had played the chief parts. It was the keynote of their relations to each other: the story, grossly told, of ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... company were pressing the young secretary for his answer, and one of them anxiously repeated the keynote, "An examination which prejudiced ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... a war or not. It is for the Canadian people, the Canadian Parliament and the Canadian Government alone to decide. This freedom is at once the glory and the honour of Britain which granted it and of Canada which used it to assist Britain. Freedom is the keynote of all British institutions?'" ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... are no words, into any depth and any hue of Tyrian crimson and Byzantine 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 ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... of Calhoun's political philosophy, the keynote of which was the necessity and means of defending the rights of minorities, cannot be understood without a brief glance at his political career. His birth in 1782 just after the Revolution, and in South Carolina, gave him the opportunity to share in the victory that the West ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... 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 ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... gateways among the hills, and the fertility of the broad vales and level plains which lie between them. The Kingdom of Israel, in its brief season of prosperity, was richer, more luxurious, and weaker than the Kingdom of Judah. The poet Isaiah touched the keynote of the northern kingdom when he sang of "the crown of pride of the drunkards of Ephraim," and "the fading flower of his glorious beauty which is on the head of the ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... Education is a lawyer; the Minister of Commerce, an author; the War Minister, a doctor; the Minister for the Navy, a journalist. Beaumarchais' epigram "The post required a mathematician—it was given to a dancing master!" strikes the keynote much more of a democracy than of ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... with ye," said the Virginian, slowly, "because comin' from over thar whar he's been dwelling at, ye kin kinderly give me facts thet ther Commonwealth would love ter know," and that utterance sounded the keynote of the attitude Turk meant to assume ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... of systematic political thought in our own day?" Mr. Webb announced that the Fabians proposed to fill in this void. It was primarily system and order rather than any particular principle at which he aimed. The keynote of his system was to be opposition to the individualistic theory of the philosophic Liberals whom the Fabians hoped to succeed rather than opposition to the principles of capitalism, which ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... was very great; for the keynote of all this scheme, according to Dr. Goodnow[12], was "centralization of power," a parrot-like phrase which has deluded better men than ever came to China and which—save as a method necessary during a state of war—should have no place in modern ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... self-expressional series that began with Sult. The discords of tortured loveliness are now resolved into an ultimate harmony of comely resignation and rich content. "A Wanderer may come to fifty years; he plays more softly then. Plays with muted strings." This is the keynote of the book. The Wanderer is no longer young; it is for youth to make the stories old men tell. Tragedy is reserved for those of high estate; a wanderer in corduroy, "such as labourers wear here in the south," ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... governing classes who 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 cynical and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... The keynote to the sailor's treatment in the Navy may be said to have been profane abuse. Officers of all ranks kept the Recording Angel fearfully busy. With scarcely an exception they were men of blunt speech and ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... stood before me transformed into a flaming incarnation of vindictive rage. In spite of the pace she had been keeping she was still very beautiful, and her anger served to heighten that physical charm which was the keynote ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... ages of 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 following poems also have death ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... of the house was as delightful as its outside was hideous. Here, neatness raised to the nth power chanced to strike the keynote of a certain beauty. The big living-room, with its stairway leading to the bedroom gallery above, was a repository of curios that would have set an antiquary mad. From the ancient clock to the priceless old blue china, three-fourths of the room's appointments might ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco |
