"Modulate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... guidance (there was a lawyer vaguely mentioned but he seems to have been singularly unobtrusive) for the obviously incompetent spouse whom he professes still to love? I am afraid it will not do. The one real point of weakness in the presentation was that Mr. EADIE could not modulate from the key of agreeable flippancy in which the comedy as a whole was set into that of the solemnly sentimental coda. Thus was the artistic unity of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 29, 1917 • Various
... ere the sun, Has, from behind yon hill, his course begun? Scarce has the swallow to the morning ray, Ventur'd to modulate his twittering lay. The early cock, whom richest plumes adorn Has yet but faintly hail'd the golden morn; Whilst thou, to some unknown attraction true, With hasty footsteps brush the silv'ry dew! What festival to-day, do you prepare, For fill'd with flowers, ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... heard The murmuring of a river, that doth fall From rock to rock transpicuous, making known The richness of his spring-head: and as sound Of cistern, at the fret-board, or of pipe, Is, at the wind-hole, modulate and tun'd; Thus up the neck, as it were hollow, rose That murmuring of the eagle, and forthwith Voice there assum'd, and thence along the beak Issued in form of words, such as my heart Did look for, on whose tables I inscrib'd them. "The part in me, that sees, and bears the sun,, In mortal ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... the players concealed behind the tall screen, an expectant hush fell upon the wine-flushed company. Hassan, who played the darabukkeh, could modulate ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... with fervor, and in apparent ecstasy. Second, the Moderate Singers, whose notes are slowly modulated, but without pauses or rests between their different strains. Third, the Interrupted Singers, who seldom modulate their notes with rapidity, and make decided pauses between their several strains, of which there are in general from five to eight or nine. Fourth, the Warblers, whose notes consist of only one or two strains, not combined ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... perfection; in a few years, in a year, perhaps, the change would come and crabbed winter set in. He particularly admired the oval of her face, her soft brown eyes, and the harmonious contour of her head. He saw her instantly with a painter's imagination—filmy lace must modulate about her head like a dreamy aureole; across her figure a scarf of yellow silk; in her hands he would paint a crystal vase, and in the vase one rose with a heart of sulphur. And her eyes would gaze as if she saw the symbol of her age—the days slipping away like ropes of sand from her grasp. ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... the Gospel. There are men who have a strange gift of taking all the sap and the fervour out of the word that they proclaim, making the very grapes of Eshcol into dried raisins. And I feel for myself that my ministry may well have failed in this respect. For who is there that can modulate his voice so as to reproduce the music of that great message, or who can soften and open his heart so as that it shall be a worthy vehicle of the infinite love ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... been done throughout the whole Rebel region: there is no image of a constitutional State left behind. Another authority, Aristotle, whose words are always weighty, says, that, the form of the State being changed, the State is no longer the same, as the harmony is not the same when we modulate out of the Dorian mood into the Phrygian. But if ever an unlucky people modulated out of one mood into another, it was our Rebels, when they undertook to modulate out of the harmonies of the Constitution into their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... difficult to find such a thing in Nagasaki; above all, very difficult to explain in Japanese what is a sailor's whistle of the traditional shape, curved and with a little ball at the end to modulate the trills and the various sounds of official orders. For three hours we are sent from shop to shop; at each one they pretend to understand perfectly what is wanted and trace on tissue-paper, with a paint-brush, ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... provisions, John asked permission to accompany her. There, by the bedside of the aged and the suffering, she saw the clear sincerity of his countenance warmed with rays of love, while he spoke to them words of kindness and consolation; and then she heard his pleasant voice modulate itself into deeper tenderness of expression, when he took little ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... is a rough ode, without falsehood or rant; a summer, with its harvest sown, reaped, and stored, is an epic song, subordinating how many admirably executed parts. Why should not the symmetry and truth that modulate these, glide into our spirits, and we participate the invention ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... opposition is not easy to gauge, but it bore fruit a few years later in the machinations of the official Bellinesque party to keep Titian out of the Ducal Palace when he was seeking State recognition,[144] Nevertheless, Giambellini, even at his age, found it advisable to modulate into the newer key, as may be seen in his "S. Giovanni Crisostomo enthroned," where not only is the conception lyrical and the treatment romantic, but the actual composition is on the lines of the essentially Giorgionesque equilateral triangle. This great altar-piece was painted ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... was supplied. If they had not a young man who could perform the part with a face that might pass for feminine, the character was acted in a mask, which was at that time part of a lady's dress so much in use that it did not give any unusual appearance to the scene: and he that could modulate his voice in a female tone might play the women very successfully. It is observed in Downes's Memoirs of the Playhouse, that one of these counterfeit heroines moved the passions more strongly than the women ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... softenest the tone of the more sublime virtues till they all melt into humanity! thou that spreadest the ethereal cloud that surrounding love heightens every beauty, it half shades, breathing those coy sweets that steal into the heart, and charm the senses—modulate for me the language of persuasive reason, till I rouse my sex from the flowery bed, on which they supinely ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... because he lacked Modern appliance, spread out phrase unracked By modulations fit to make each hair Stiffen upon his wig? See there—and there! I sprinkle my reactives, pitch broadcast Discords and resolutions, turn aghast Melody's easy-going, jostle law With license, modulate (no Bach in awe), Change enharmonically (Hudl to thank), And lo, up-start the flamelets,—what was blank Turns scarlet, purple, crimson! Straightway scanned By eyes that like new lustre—Love once more Yearns through the Largo, Hatred as before Rages in the Rubato: e'en thy March, My Avison, ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... earliest poets of the sixteenth century, more particularly to Clement Marot. A tinge of the expiring romanticism lingered in 'Les Amoureuses' with a much more substantial admixture of the spirit of an age which made pleasure-hunting its paramount occupation. The precocious child could modulate the 'Romance a Madame' as well as the page of Beaumarchais, if not better; but he could also laugh it down in Gavroche's sneering way; he could intersperse a song of love with the irony of the boulevard or the more genial humor of his native South. He ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... children," interposed Mrs. Lawrence. "Fred, I hope you will learn to modulate your ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... has come as near to expressing this unattainable something as any other poet. He is so purely poet that with him the meaning does not so often modulate the music of the verse as the music makes great part of the meaning and leads the thought along its pleasant paths. No poet is so splendidly superfluous as he; none knows so well that in poetry enough is not only not so good ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... matter to her? Her husband is faithful to her, with a fidelity that knows no hypocrisy; she is happy and is proud of her maternity; she can still dance and strike chords upon her krob, modulate a plaintive ditty on her ciniloi and sing whilst she beats on her bamboo sticks an accompaniment that tortures well-tuned ears. For the rest, if her beauty soon fades, her ugliness does not create the least feeling of disgust amongst the Sakais of the masculine ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti |
