"Discordant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was thus engaged she hummed a little song, which Ragnar during their courtship had frequently sung beneath her window as a signal that he wished to see her alone. As Magde loved her husband above all other earthly things, his favorite song had never become discordant to her. This song she took most pleasure in singing when she was alone, for then she could give full rein to her fancy, and look forward to the time when her loved husband should become a captain, and command an elegant schooner in which he could receive his wife, ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... character. Since the commencement of my Administration the two dangerous questions arising from the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty and from the right of search claimed by the British Government have been amicably and honorably adjusted. The discordant constructions of the Clayton- Bulwer Treaty, which at different periods of the discussion bore a threatening aspect, have resulted in a final settlement entirely satisfactory to this government. The only question of any importance which still remains ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... defence, Whiles the big year, swoln with some other grief, Is thought with child by the stern tyrant war, And no such matter? Rumour is a pipe Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures, And of so easy and so plain a stop That the blunt monster with uncounted heads, The still-discordant wavering multitude, Can play upon it. But what need I thus My well-known body to anatomize Among my household? Why is Rumour here? I run before King Harry's victory; Who in a bloody field by Shrewsbury Hath beaten down young Hotspur ...
— King Henry IV, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Chiswick edition]
... backwards and forwards, in nervous exasperation. He went to the piano, and brought his hands down in a discordant clang ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... the reconciliation of races. One thing that must be done is to take this chaotic mass of dissimilar, discordant, suspicious, antipathetic racial elements and blend them into unity and brotherhood. The first Christians had a task of this nature on their hands; they had to bring together in one fellowship Jews and Gentiles. ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... crest of a granite hill that knows no footstep other than the tread of the stately musk-ox or the antlered reindeer, as they pass in single file upon their frequent journeys, and whose caverns echo to no sound save the howling of the wolves or the discordant cawing of the raven. He is a boy again, and involuntarily plucks the feathery dandelion, and seeks the time of day by blowing the puffy fringe from its stem, or tests the faith of the fair one, who is dearer to him than ever in this hour of separation, by picking the leaves from the yellow-hearted ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... nominated in the act was composed of two totally discordant elements, which soon distinguished themselves into permanent parties. One of the principal instructions which the three members of the Council sent immediately from England, namely, General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis, carried out with ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Designedly she chose the corner nearest the iron gate, through which we could command a portion of the sunny street; and here she lay and made me sing to her all the songs I knew, the while she dozed and waked again, and whiles teased her parrot into uttering discordant cries until for very anger I would sing ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... from the main topic of discussion to devote a chapter to an institution which has ceased to exist for forty years. But no one can fully comprehend the social and political character of the diverse and conflicting nationalities and discordant elements that for three hundred years constituted the Spanish empire without fully understanding the character and workings of the Inquisition, which, from "the Council of the Supreme" in Spain, extended, with its complicated ramifications, ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... the most discordant din it had ever been my fortune to hear. A mingling of honk and cackle, it manifested not excitement so much as curiosity. I walked among the boobies, and they never moved except to pick at me with ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... England. He was a small, quiet boy, in no way remarkable except in his passion for harmonies. So great was his love for music, that from his most tender years he could not listen unmoved to the singing of his sisters as they went about their homely work; and if the voices happened to be discordant he ran shuddering from the sound. The choir of untutored singers in church services made tears fall from his eyes upon his hymn-book while he joined ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... nerves of happy people. But two of us were not happy. I was sure enough of myself, for one. I was worse than sure,—I was wretchedly anxious about Phillis. Ever since that day of the thunderstorm there had been a new, sharp, discordant sound to me in her voice, a sort of jangle in her tone; and her restless eyes had no quietness in them; and her colour came and went without a cause that I could find out. The minister, happy in ignorance of what most concerned him, brought out his books; his ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... loads of hay in long processions like caravans are coming in from the country along with immense droves of cattle. In the orchard adjoining the chateau are already domiciled two hundred or more cows and the discordant melody from this hoarse-throated chorus, uninterrupted day or night, is driving us to madness. Indoors, we ourselves are laying in a supply of things in case of necessity and the kitchen is piled high with bags ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... the former a no less pleasant poetical foil to it. The comedy, I have said, is incongruous; a mixture of Congreve with sentimental incompatibilities: the gaiety upon the whole is buoyant; but it required the consummate art of Palmer to reconcile the discordant elements. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... secure we feel in this quiet place," he said; "while all above us is burning. I declare I feel quite merry, ha! ha!" And he forced a harsh and discordant laugh. ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... metaphysical abstractions too tenuous to grasp; of karna or action, of maya or illusion, and I know not what "tangled jumble of ghosts and demons, demi-gods, and deified saints, household gods, village gods, tribal gods, universal gods, with their countless shrines and temples and din of discordant rites." At last, in despair, I gave it up, and turned ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... your flute, Mr. Fairthorn." The musician again emitted his discordant chuckle, and, nodding his head nervously and cordially, shambled away without lighting a candle, and was engulfed in the shadows of ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... monarchical and religious solemnity; Lamartine, future founder of the Second Republic, published Le Chant du Sucre ou la Veille des Armes; Victor Hugo, the future idol of the democracy, sang his dithyrambic songs. Yet, in this concert of enthusiasm there were some discordant notes. Beranger circulated his ironic song Le Sacre ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... of beautiful women used to attend, alas, he mangled with shafts, will have inauspicious jackals, prowling over the field, to attend upon him today. He who was formerly roused from his slumbers by singers and bards and panegyrists, alas, he will today be surely awakened by discordant beasts of prey. That beautiful face of his eminently deserved to be shaded by the umbrella, alas, the dust of battle-field will surely befoul today. O child, unfortunate that I am, death forcibly takes thee away ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... ear would have been sharp enough to distinguish the voice of a single man amid the clash of arms and war-cries, the shrieks of women, the wails of the wounded, the discordant grunting of the camels, the blasts of horns and trumpets ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the Indian drum and shee-shee-qua or rattle. They range themselves in a circle and dance with violent contortions and gesticulations, some of them graceful, others only energetic, the squaws, who stand a little apart and mingle their discordant voices with the music of the instruments, rarely participating in the dance. Occasionally, however, when excited by the general gaiety, a few of them will form a circle outside and perform a sort of ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... dripping candles, placed in tin sconces along the bare walls, threw a dim and sickly glare over the motley throng. A couple of negro men, sitting on barrels at the head of the room, were drawing discordant notes from a pair of cracked, patched, and greasy fiddles. And there were men, whose red and bloated faces gave faithful witness of their habitual intemperance; and men, whose threadbare and ragged garments betokened sloth and ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown
... these lessons men awake To know they cannot bind Discordant will's in one, and make An ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... represent the Durmah Rajah, whose statue is supposed to give infallibility. Two bells were suspended, one from the centre, the other from the balcony, the tongues of which were long, of ivory, and moved by a string. The Rajah received us in state, amidst discordant sounds of horns, pipes, and drums; his followers for the most part were badly clothed, the few decent looking persons being only decent externally. He was seated on a raised dais and was well dressed. He is a stout Chinese looking man, about 50 years old, and his deportment was ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... not neglect it," replied the other, "but we practise it in a special place, inclosed in the most charming mountain-valley; and then again we take care that the different instruments are taught in places lying far apart. Especially are the discordant notes of beginners banished to certain solitary spots, where they can drive no one crazy; for you will yourself confess, that in well-regulated civil society scarcely any more miserable nuisance is to be endured than when the neighborhood inflicts upon us a beginner ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... the table and put a pair of phones to his ears. Then he began to tune. First there came to him a discordant confusion of static and other noises, including ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... the Pantheon at Rome, lighted only from above. And earthly passions in the form of gods were no longer there, but the sweet and thoughtful faces of Christ, and the Virgin Mary, and the Saints. Thus there was not one discordant thing in her; but a perfect harmony of figure, and face, and soul, in a word of the whole being. And he who had a soul to comprehend hers, must of necessity love her, and, having once loved her, could love no other ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... approached the dwelling-place of God, with their offerings of penitence and worship, the busy bustle of a market-place greets His ears. The noise of cattle and sheep being driven here and there, the pavement like an unkempt barnyard, loud, discordant voices of men handling the beasts and bargaining over exchange rates at the brokers' tables—strange scene. Is it surprising that His ear and eye and heart, perhaps fresh from a bit of quiet morning talk with His Father, were shocked? Here, where ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... dispose of them; the "British Queen," he said, was the earliest chance. The Pamphlet itself (or rather booklet, for Fraser has gilt it, &c., and asks five shillings for it as a Book) is out since then; radicals and others yelping considerably in a discordant manner about it; I have nothing other to say to you about it than what I said last time, that the sheets were yours to do with as you saw good,—to burn if you reckoned that fittest. It is not entirely a Political Pamphlet; ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... meek, or when all other employment failed, she would be coaxed into running up and down over a few scales; but, in the end, her fingers invariably became snarled up with her thumbs; and, after one or two discordant crashes on the keys, she gave it up and threatened to buy a hand-organ for her ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... at her after-school hour of practice, a small discordant crash broke suddenly in upon "Chaminade's Scarf Dance" and Mrs. Becker's rhythmic rocking above. Lilly had fainted, with her head in her arms and face down ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... the woeful sorrow's cry, The harsh, discordant melody, For lo, the power, we held for sure, Hath turned ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... at their forges Worked the red Saint George's Cannoneers; And the "villainous saltpetre" Rung a fierce, discordant metre Round their ears; As the swift Storm-drift, With hot sweeping anger, came the horseguards' clangor On our flanks. Then higher, higher, higher, burned the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... and proprietor are hurriedly passing out ordered drinks. The girls are flying around, executing orders and pocketing change. The piano-player bangs and thumps his hideously-wiry instrument. Glasses are clinking, chairs and tables moving, and altogether there is a discordant tumult well calculated to bewilder the coolest kind ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... longer groans but awful animal cries, unendurable, incredible. He tried to stop up his ears, but could not, and he fell on his knees, repeating unconsciously, "Marie, Marie!" Then suddenly he heard a cry, a new cry, which made Shatov start and jump up from his knees, the cry of a baby, a weak discordant cry. He crossed himself and rushed into the room. Arina Prohorovna held in her hands a little red wrinkled creature, screaming, and moving its little arms and legs, fearfully helpless, and looking as though it could be blown away by a ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the treble. A pure idealized negro dance-frolic is here. It is hard to follow all the pranks; lightly as the latest phrase descends in extending melody, a rude blast of the march intrudes in discordant humor. A new jingle of dance comes with a redoubled pace of bits of the march. As this dies down to dimmest bass, the old song from the Largo rings high in the wood. Strangest of all, in a fierce shout of the whole chorus sounds twice this same pathetic strain. Later ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... Children, on both sides, being really desirous of it, what reason is there but it should in due time come to perfection, and, without annihilating Time and Space, make four lovers happy? No reason. Rubs doubtless had arisen since that Visit of George I., discordant procedures, chiefly about Friedrich Wilhelm's recruiting operations in the Hanover territory, as shall be noted by and by: but these the ever-wakeful enthusiasm of Queen Sophie, who had set her whole ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... involved in its very nature a sustaining hope for the future. Among many alleviations, there was one, which, (not wisely, but overcome by circumstances) all were willing to admit;—that the event was so strange and uncouth, exhibiting such discordant characteristics of innocent fatuity and enormous guilt, that it could not without violence be thought of as indicative of a general constitution of things, either in the country or the government; but that it was a ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Tree Court had been partly built in Jacobean times by Dr. Perse, whose monument can be seen in the chapel; but in 1867 Mr. Waterhouse was given the task of rebuilding the greater part of the quadrangle. He decided on the style of the French Renaissance, and struck the most stridently discordant note in the whole of the architecture of the colleges. The tall-turreted frontage suggests nothing so much as the municipal offices of a flourishing borough. The present hall, built by Salvin in 1854, was decorated and repanelled by Edward Warren in 1909. Two ...
— Beautiful Britain—Cambridge • Gordon Home
... sentimental love, the direct precursor of our modern conception of love. Its peculiarity lay in the fact that although spiritual in its source, it yearned for psycho-physical unity, and was therefore always slightly discordant. Rousseau was the first exponent of this romantic nature cult and sentimental love of woman. He represents the sharp recoil from the frivolity of the ancien regime, and the beginning of the third stage of love. His Nouvelle ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... outrages of time has unfortunately accelerated the decay of several pictures by coarse repainting and bad varnish, by which much of the original work has been covered. Other motives, too, have conspired against the purity of the most beautiful compositions: a prelate has been seen to cause a discordant head of hair to conceal ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... harp sent forth such a melody of joyous music that it echoed thrilling through the hot discordant notes of the world beyond the sunset; and for a moment a chord of harmony ran through the ...
— The Strange Little Girl - A Story for Children • V. M.
... and sincerity. One has only to see her, to be convinced of this. Her dignified and graceful bearing, her slender figure, the smoothness and clearness of her forehead head, the soft and pure light of her eyes, all blend into a fitting harmony, in which there is not a single discordant note. ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... I've found The men you wanted. They will all be there, And at the given signal raise a whirlwind Of such discordant noises, that the dance Must cease ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... flitting about. Even Pauline's ugly blouse was forgotten. There was a sense of mystery in the air. Presently in the distance came the sound of a fiddle. It was the sound of a fiddle being tuned. The notes were discordant; but soon rich, sweeping melodies were heard. They came nearer and nearer, and Mr. Dale, still playing his fiddle, entered the room. He entered with a sort of dancing measure, playing an old minuet ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... narrow and imperfect aim, this is not true of divine laws, which are based upon the principles of human nature, and not framed to meet the exigencies of the moment. They have their natural divisions, too, answering to the kinds of virtue; very unlike the discordant enactments of an Athenian assembly or of an English Parliament. Yet we may observe two inconsistencies in Plato's treatment of the subject: first, a lesser, inasmuch as he does not clearly distinguish the Cretan ...
— Laws • Plato
... music, especially of melody, and the popular airs, especially the Neapolitan, are extremely beautiful and melodious; yet it is a fact, that the singing of the peasantry, particularly in the Roman and Neapolitan provinces, is most disagreeable and discordant. It is not melody at all, but a kind of wild chant, meandering through minor tones, without rhythm of any sort or apparent rule, and my daughters say it is very difficult to note down; yet there is some kind of method and similarity in it as one hears it shouted ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... sandy stretch, ending in a reedy marsh at the water's edge. The line of cultivation ended far to the south and north of it, though the soil was as arable as any bordering the Nile. A great number of marsh geese and a few stilted waders flew up or plunged into the water with discordant cries and flapping of wings as the presence of the young men disturbed the solitude. The sedge was wind-mown, and there were numberless prints of bird claws, but no mark of boat-keel or human foot. The place should have been a favorite haunt of fowlers, but ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... a little by the distance. A dozen or more bands were playing a dozen or more different tunes from a dozen or more different dance-halls, all near together along the levee and the neighboring streets; and, sometimes, high above even these discordant sounds, rose the human voice, in loud song, or boisterous shout, or peals of rough laughter. Around some of the near-by camp-fires men had gathered and were singing the loved home melodies; and from one of these groups came the voice of a ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... discordant seek To wreck what God in mercy saves, The struggle is as vain and weak As that of ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... a pipe Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures, And if so easy and so plain a stop The still discordant, wavering multitude ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... gaudy little paroquets, glittering in green, and orange, and crimson. These paroquets were the only land-birds we saw during the day. Max pronounced them "frights," because of their large hooked bills, and harsh discordant cries. They certainly gave Johnny, a terrible "fright," and indeed startled us all a little, by suddenly taking wing, with loud, hoarse screams, from a hibiscus, beneath which we were resting, without having observed that they were ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... middle of the room as his eye rested first on Ardworth, and then glanced towards Madame Dalibard. But Ardworth, jarred from his revery or resolves by the sound of a voice discordant to his ear at all times, especially in the mood which then possessed him, scarcely returned Varney's salutation, buttoned his coat over his chest, seized his hat, and upsetting two chairs, and very considerably ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... child," said he, "you will have to suffer an inharmonious son of Satan who makes a discordant Hades out of an execrable piano. He had the impudence to tell me that he came from the Conservatoire. He, with as much ear for music as an organ-grinder's monkey! He said to me—Paragot—that I played the violin not too badly! I foresee a hideous doom overhanging that young man, ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... government which used it had no support but a band of bigoted fanatics or political adventurers; without any legal authority over the nation, or any moral hold on the army, detested, threatened, discordant, exposed to the resistance of its own upholders, to the treachery of its own members, and living only from day to day, it could maintain itself only through a brutal absolutism and permanent terror, while the public power of which the first care ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... need scarcely be alluded to. Men of all parties, however discordant might be their opinions upon the point at issue, acknowledged and admired the intrepidity and splendid talents of Mr. ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 496 - Vol. 17, No. 496, June 27, 1831 • Various
... much that Nils burned to express; but the fiddle refused to obey him, and screeched something utterly discordant, as it seemed, ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... all the rooms. Among the pictures were full-length portraits in oils of two celebrated gondoliers—one in antique costume, the other painted a few years since. The original of the latter soon came and stood before it. He had won regatta prizes; and the flags of four discordant colours were painted round him by the artist, who had evidently cared more to commemorate the triumphs of his sitter and to strike a likeness than to secure the tone of his own picture. This champion turned out a fine fellow—Corradini—with ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... gulls rose up and came skimming along the rugged trough-like depression towards where he sat, with bird-covered ledges to left and right. When they caught sight of him they rose higher with a graceful curve, and began wheeling round, uttering their discordant cries, some of the more daring coming nearer and nearer upon their widespread spotless wings, white almost as snow, till a sway would send one wing down, the other up, giving the looker-on a glimpse of the soft bluish grey of their backs, save in the cases of the larger birds—the ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... hard, and impelled with force, the string breaks into shorter sections, and the discordant upper partials of the string, thus brought into prominence, make the tone harsh. If the hammer is soft, and the force employed is moderated, the harmonious partials of the longer sections strike the ear, and the tone ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... infernal glare grew brighter, and there came Unto mine ears the sound of many tongues, Mingling discordant curse with bitter cry Of lamentation. On the outer marge Of Hell's domains, set one at each of four Far sundered corners, four volcanoes grim Spewed up their flaming bowels into a sea Of blackness whence no light ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... corduroy collar. Then he pulled. The standard bearer came back easily to a sitting posture on the asphalt. The crowd was close in, noisily depriving other bearers of their standards. The Internationale had become blurred and discordant, like a bad phonograph record. The parade still came to break ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... regarded as very tempting, but very sure to undermine, and in time to destroy, the real spirit of independence and self-government. It was his belief, as he expressed it himself, that "We must begin with and mold from disorganized and discordant elements, nor is it a small additional embarrassment that we, the loyal people, differ among ourselves as to the mode, manner, and measure of reconstruction. As a general rule I abstain from reading the reports of attacks upon myself, wishing ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... disquisition as to the manner in which this continent was first peopled, still however, as many men eminent for learning and piety have devoted much labor and time to the investigation of the subject, it may afford satisfaction to the curious to see some of those speculations recorded. Discordant as they are in many respects, there is nevertheless one fact as to the truth of which they are nearly all agreed; Mr. Jefferson is perhaps the only one, of those who have written on the subject, who seems to discredit ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... she was worth watching. Her wonderful beauty, and the unconscious grace of her father's people, kept her from ever appearing countrified or awkward; her simplicity was that of a lovely child, and was in no way discordant with the higher nature she had shown in the bitter troubles and perplexities of the past year. She felt safe now and hopeful, inconceivably, absurdly hopeful—yet there was this difference between the happiness of long ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... odor of emptiness and decay mingling with the smell of honey. There are no longer sentinels sounding the alarm with their abdomens raised, and ready to die in defense of the hive. There is no longer the measured quiet sound of throbbing activity, like the sound of boiling water, but diverse discordant sounds of disorder. In and out of the hive long black robber bees smeared with honey fly timidly and shiftily. They do not sting, but crawl away from danger. Formerly only bees laden with honey flew into the hive, and they flew out empty; now they fly out laden. The beekeeper ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... a goblin elf; Why should he labour to help his neighbour Who feels too reckless to help himself? The wail of the breeze in the bending trees Is something between a laugh and a groan; And the hollow roar of the surf on the shore Is a dull, discordant monotone; I wish I could guess what sense they express, There's a meaning, doubtless, in every sound, Yet no one can tell, and it may be as well— Whom would it profit?—The ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... experience, and would have been satisfyingly sentimental and romantic but for the interruptions of the tug's pet parrot, whose tireless comments upon the scenery and the guests were always this- worldly, and often profane. He had also a superabundance of the discordant, ear-splitting, metallic laugh common to his breed—a machine-made laugh, a Frankenstein laugh, with the soul left out of it. He applied it to every sentimental remark, and to every pathetic song. He cackled it out with hideous energy after 'Home again, home again from a foreign ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... says one, "that I have been led, in the course of God's providence, to do so much as I have done, towards purging revelation from those doctrines and practices which were discordant with its teachings, and ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... over, the sorghum fire still burned beneath the great kettle, for the syrup was not yet made, and sorghum-boiling is an industry that cannot be intermitted. The fire in the midst of the gentle shadow and sheen of the night had a certain profane, discordant effect. Pete's ill-defined figure slouching over it while he skimmed the syrup was grimly suggestive of the distillations of strange elixirs and unhallowed liquors, and his simple face, lighted by a sudden ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... evening, however, the sounds would be more discordant, also the Student was running a Boys' Club, taking several Sunday services at the Mission, visiting some very sick people, and attending to a multifarious list of duties which left me breathless when I saw it, knowing too how many casual appeals always came to him ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... Gilpins a luxurious lodging for the night. They could scarcely go to sleep on turning in for their first real night in the bush, from the novelty of the scene and the prospects opening up to them. Before dawn they both started up, awoke by the strangest and most discordant sounds. ...
— The Gilpins and their Fortunes - A Story of Early Days in Australia • William H. G. Kingston
... is a retinue of mouldy gigs and chaise-carts in the street; and herds of shabby vampires, Jew and Christian, over-run the house, sounding the plate-glass minors with their knuckles, striking discordant octaves on the Grand Piano, drawing wet forefingers over the pictures, breathing on the blades of the best dinner-knives, punching the squabs of chairs and sofas with their dirty fists, touzling the feather beds, opening and shutting all ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... from this spot, before the chief entrance to the Gardens, a crowd had gathered; inveterate idlers jostling one another in the circle they had formed round a sordid individual, a miserable old man with a long white beard, who was drawing discordant sounds from an ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... that the owner of the old house was pining for his native air. Carpenters next appeared, making a tremendous racket among the outbuildings, strewing the green grass with pine shavings and chips of chestnut joists, and vexing the whole antiquity of the place with their discordant renovations. Soon, moreover, they divested our abode of the veil of woodbine which had crept over a large portion of its southern face. All the aged mosses were cleared unsparingly away, and there were horrible whispers about brushing up the external walls with ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... by about sixty Indians, who turned out in true Indian style in their beautifully coloured robes and making horrible discordant noises which were intended for music—all, of course, to show their appreciation of their "patron." Here, of course, we got all we required, and as there were any amount of fowls to be had, our bill-of-fare improved in accordance. There was nothing to do specially, and ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... the court circle. His verses were first read in tapestried chambers, and to the gracious ear of stately lords and ladies. It was because he wrote for such an audience that he avoids the introduction of any discordant element in the shape of the deeper and darker social problems of the time. The same reticence occurs in Horace, writing as he did for the ear of Augustus and Maecenas, and of the fashionable circle thronging the great palace of his ...
— English Satires • Various
... were all mad with the excitement of the chase. Uttering discordant ear-piercing yells, they rushed onward, impatient to witness the struggles of the multitudes of victims certain to be precipitated into a hole, towards which they were rushing heedless of all else but fear. Every demoniac ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... disappointed their expectations, on account of the shallowness of its channel. The river, however, was then at a low ebb; its banks were marshy, and its waters moved slowly and silently between forests of mangrove trees. The air was filled with the discordant croak of innumerable parrots, diversified somewhat by the notes of a few singing birds. As they proceeded, the river, instead of diminishing, seemed to increase in volume. At Embomma, much interest was excited among the natives, ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... were to rendezvous at Albany, and thence advance upon Montreal by way of Lake Champlain. Mutual jealousies made it difficult to agree upon a commander; but Winthrop of Connecticut was at length placed at the head of the feeble and discordant band. ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... new party was merely inchoate, its elements distrustful, jealous, and discordant; the feuds and battles of a quarter of a century were not easily forgotten or buried. The Democratic members, boldly nominating Mr. Richardson, the House leader on the Nebraska bill, as their candidate for Speaker, ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... in order to breathe comfortably. This was the preparatory fumigation, in order to remove the ranker seeds of plague, after which the milder symptoms will of themselves vanish in the pure air of the place. Several times a day we are stunned and overwhelmed with the cracked brays of three discordant trumpets, as grating and doleful as the last gasps of a dying donkey. At first I supposed the object of this was to give a greater agitation to the air, and separate and shake down the noxious exhalations we emit; ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... notwithstanding the declaration of the latter, were soon snoring like a brace of tops. They had had an early awaking by the bear-scrape of the previous morning; besides, they had been at work all day, and were wearied. This they must have been, to have gone to sleep with such a discordant howling around them—enough to have kept an opium-eater awake. Basil was wearied as well as they; and he soon began to feel what a painful thing it is to keep awake when one is sleepy. The eyes of the wolves continued to glare upon him from all sides; but he did not dread ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... quite aback, although it was by no means new to them; but they could not get used to it. And no wonder! Ten thousand paroquets shrieking passionately, like a hundred knife-grinders at work, is no joke; especially when their melodies are mingled with the discordant cries of herons, and bitterns, and cranes, and the ceaseless buzz and hum of insects, like the bagpipe's drone, and the dismal croaking of boat-bills and frogs,—one kind of which latter, by the way, doesn't croak at all, but whistles, ay, better than many a ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... which meant the sun told that it lacked but an hour of sunset, and the clouds seemed to be thickening rather than dispersing, the Black Beaver gave a long and hideous howl. His wife and daughter shuddered when they heard it, as would any one, for a more unearthly and discordant cry was never uttered by man or beast; but they had double reason to shudder; it was the death cry ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... cricket's sharp, discordant scream [5] Fills mortal sense with dread; More sorrowful it scarce could seem; ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... is the last I have, and eight miles of Lee way still to do!" He laughed at his own pun, and pricked up the horse. Just as the weary animal broke into a trot, the rider pulled rein once more and looked up at a signboard which had attracted his notice by giving a discordant creak as the ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... very plainly how she was set behind her more gifted sisters by the acquaintance and friends of the family; this, together with feeble health, and the discomfort which her own existence occasioned to her, put her in a discordant state with life and mankind. She was prone to think everything troublesome and difficult; she fell easily into a state of opposition to her sisters, and her naturally quick temper led her often into contentions which were not without their bitterness. All ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... to me that the exclusionists are still more emphatically conservators. It is not so much that they are inimical to all data of externally derived substances that fall upon this earth, as that they are inimical to all data discordant with a system that does ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... cruelty associated with fraud, or meanness with injustice. But here the case was far otherwise. It was the prerogative of this detested traffic to separate from evil its concomitant good, and to reconcile discordant mischiefs. It robbed war of its generosity; it deprived peace of its security: we saw in it the vices of polished society, without its knowledge or its comforts; and the evils of barbarism without its ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... this marriage-time of the black and white. Over in the Key West barracks a bugler would soon be blowing reveille; down in the sleeping town stumpy little street cars would squeak from their sheds and clang their discordant gongs through the narrow thoroughfares. But farther yet to the northeast, in the Florida I best knew and loved, a whooping crane would startle the solitude with its uncanny cry, the alligators would croak their guttural grunts at waking time, while, here and there in the shadowy forest, the whine ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... individual part and promontory, being compelled to assume the same symmetrical curves as its neighbors, and to descend at precisely the same slope to the valley, falls in with their prevailing lines, and becomes a part of a great and harmonious whole, instead of an unconnected and discordant individual. It is true that each of these members has its own touches of specific character, its own projecting crags and peculiar hollows; but by far the greater portion of its lines will be such as unite with, though ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... blue jay came next. Every one wondered what the charge against this bird with the beautiful blue plumage could be. Some thought that he was on trial for his discordant screeching, which alarmed all the inhabitants of the woods. The charge against the jay was, however, far more serious. He had been caught while making his breakfast of some baby birds which a mother robin had just hatched. The quail and every other ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... every system the most probable doctrines. [69] But their writings would have been less voluminous, had their choice been more unanimous. The conscience of the judge was perplexed by the number and weight of discordant testimonies, and every sentence that his passion or interest might pronounce was justified by the sanction of some venerable name. An indulgent edict of the younger Theodosius excused him from the labor of comparing and weighing their arguments. Five ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... standing quite alone, with many staring at me. The four men whom most I feared had turned their backs, and were busy with their mugs; but the rest of the assembly had eyes only for the terrible woman and for myself. Presently the discordant music began again. The hag, who had been bent double, reared herself up with a "Ho!" after the fashion of a Scottish sword-dancer, and began to make a wretched shuffle with her feet. Then she moved with a hobble and a jig to the far end of the room; and ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... received the unblushing sanction of at least one prelate. The answer of the Nation was confined to one indignant line. Proof was demanded and was not offered; but its very absence only deepened the malignity of the slanderers. Even in the midst of this storm the muse of Thomas Davis sang no discordant strain, nor did his pen trace one angry word. On the contrary, he summoned his whole energies to the task of harmonising the jarring elements around him. His inspiration rose to that unearthly height, whereon guidance becomes prophecy. Great, strong and unselfish convictions, ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... can marriage love exist between two partners belonging to different religions, because the truth of the one does not agree with the good of the other; and two unlike and discordant kinds of good and truth cannot make one mind out of two; and in consequence the love of such does not have its origin in any thing spiritual. If they live together in harmony it is solely on natural grounds.{1} And this is why in the heavens marriages are found only with ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... sound that makes! How pleasantly the click, click of these coins sounds to our ears. All music is discordant compared to that. Nightingales and thrushes, stop your concerts! we can sing better than you. I am an artist who plays your favorite air on his violin. Let us open ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... be gathered from the following pages, my title was obtained a a number of years ago, and the story has since been taking form and color in my mind. What has become of the beautiful but discordant face I saw at the concert garden I do not know, but I trust that that the countenance it suggested, and its changes may not prove so vague and unsatisfactory as to be indistinct to the reader. It has looked upon the writer during the past year ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... by a daring passion for the romantic, nerved men, and women too, to undertakings and endurances which shame our enfeebled ways. The partners in these enterprises were never homogeneous in character, as were eminently the Colonists of New England. They were of most mixed and discordant materials. Prisons were ransacked for convicts and desperadoes; humble artisans and peasants were accepted as laborers; roving mariners, whose only sure port of rest would be in the abyss, were bribed for transient service, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... approach to the true measure in its extreme limits, and the closer we can get to this, the more possible does it become to have an absolute means of comparison for the consideration of deviations. The great artist is thus able to recognize the beautiful in a detail even in the midst of other discordant details; and the more capable he is of possessing an absolute sense of the beautiful, the more readily will he perceive any ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori |
