"Modulate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... honour to his life;—the great business of existence is an inglorious indolence, a lethargy of mind, and a continual suspense from all exertion. The very children catch the contagion from their parents; they are instructed in every effeminate art—to dance in soft unmanly attitudes; to modulate their voices by musical instruments, and to adjust the floating drapery of their dress. These are the arts in which both sexes are instructed from their infancy; but no one is taught to wield the arms ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... slightly vacant look in his face that had come from his boyhood incapacity had changed to a frank stare that demanded consideration and respect. He seldom asked a question twice now—once was usually enough. He had a fist that could smash the panels of a door, a voice that he could not modulate to conversational tones—so used was he to sending it against the wind. He did not use tobacco, nor did he drink, for these things cost money, and he was thinking of Minnie, most precious of all things in ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... strains had enticed our wild couple thitherward. They proved to be a vagrant band, such as Rome, and all Italy, abounds with; comprising a harp, a flute, and a violin, which, though greatly the worse for wear, the performers had skill enough to provoke and modulate into tolerable harmony. It chanced to be a feast-day; and, instead of playing in the sun-scorched piazzas of the city, or beneath the windows of some unresponsive palace, they had bethought themselves to try the echoes of these woods; ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... angelic bells; methought I 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 ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... two-way installation, however, comprising a generator of practically sustained waves, a good control system to modulate the output, and a ground system for radiating a portion of the modulated energy as well as a ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... which the sense is too subtle and evanescent to be fixed in a paraphrase; such are all those which are by the grammarians termed expletives, and, in dead languages, are suffered to pass for empty sounds, of no other use than to fill a verse, or to modulate a period, but which are easily perceived in living tongues to have power and emphasis, though it be sometimes such as no other ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 29, 1917 • Various
... how his lyre, though rude her first essays, Now skilled to sooth, to triumph, to complain, Warbling at will through each harmonious maze, Was taught to modulate the artful strain, I fain would sing: but ah! I strive in vain. Sighs from a breaking heart my voice confound. With trembling step, to join yon weeping train, I haste, where gleams funereal glare around, And, mixed with shrieks of woe, the ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... stand out noticeably in your bearing. Should you apply for a position of great trust, requiring the exercise of the finest discretion, be sure to look the other man frankly in the face and let him see into your eyes. Also modulate your tones to the pitch of discretion and confidence. Your manner, your expressions, your voice will all draw attention to your fitness for the ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... 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 ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... Inviters! I accept The courtesy ye have shown and kept From ancient ages for the bard, To modulate With finer fate A fortune harsh and hard. With aim like yours I watch your course, Who never break your lawful dance By error or intemperance. O birds of ether without wings! O heavenly ships without a sail! O fire of fire! O best of things! O mariners who never fail! Sail swiftly through your ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... step up to speak to him or walk with him into the enchanted house, pray modulate your voice a little musical though it is—for there is said to be an enchanted baby on the premises whose sleep must ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... Instead of the clanging noise of the latter, it gives out a muffled sound of a deep tone. The gong and tom-tom are used by the Dyaks and Malays in war, and for signals at night, and the Dyaks procure them from the Malays. I said that the music struck up, for, rude as the instruments were, they modulate the sound, and keep time so admirably, that it ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... time came when, turning full of hate And weariness from my remembered themes, I wished my poet's pipe could modulate Beauty more palpable than words ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... spectator of others?[105] The Bacchic and Corybantic dances one can also modulate and quell, by changing the metre from the trochaic and the measure from the Phrygian. Similarly, too, the Pythian priestess, when she descends from her tripod, possesses her soul in peace. Whereas the love-fury, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... of dogs are concerning their speech. Liebnitz reported to the French Academy of Sciences, that a dog had been taught to modulate his voice, so that he could distinctly ask for coffee, tea, and chocolate. After this we may believe that a dog was learning to say Elizabeth. I have often watched for such sounds, from energetic, clever dogs, who have evidently ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... always a pleasure to me to modulate these Italian syllables, to give them all their sonority, and I saw clearly, from the bewildered airs of these worthy islanders, how charmed and surprised they were to be introduced in such a manner into the high society of the Continent. But with the Turks, these pashas, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... "all lovely to the last." Mrs. Sinclair's health, delicate for years, had rapidly failed in the last few months, till her anxious husband and child, aware that a moment's acceleration of the pulse, a moment's quickening of the breath from whatever cause, might snatch her from their arms, learned to modulate every tone, to guard every look and movement in her presence. But they could not shut from her ears the boom of the cannon which heralded the approach of the foe—they could not hush the startling cries with which others met the announcement ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... directions for Exercise I. Sing quietly in a pitch that is easy for the voice, and modulate up or down ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... with woorkes, and deuises imitating the apparreling of princely bodies indewed as it were with an artificiall reason. For as to a large big and corpulent body strong legges, and broad feete, are necessarie to beare and carry the same: so in a modulate and well composed building, to sustaine great weights, Naues are appointed, and for beautie, columnes, Corinthies, and slender Ionices, are set vpon them. And this whole woorke euen after such sorte as was requisite for the harmonie thereof, ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... the subject. Poems, however humble in their kind, if they be good in that kind, cannot read themselves; the law of long syllable and short must not be so inflexible,—the letter of metre must not be so impassive to the spirit of versification,—as to deprive the Reader of all voluntary power to modulate, in subordination to the sense, the music of the poem;—in the same manner as his mind is left at liberty, and even summoned, to act upon its thoughts and images. But, though the accompaniment of a musical instrument be frequently dispensed with, the true Poet does not therefore abandon his privilege ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... scale. Hawkins gives pictures of a treble, a tenor, and a bass cornet, copied from Mersennus, who remarks that the sounds of the cornet are vehement, but that those who are skilful, such as Quiclet, the royal cornetist (i.e., of France, 1648) are able so to soften and modulate them, that nothing can ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... sender's chair, not even while the door was under attack. Only a carrier beam connected the Sword with the Altair. She continued doggedly to fumble with dials and switches, trying to modulate it ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson
... flinching from any ugliness. Compared with him Courbet is as sensuous as Correggio. He does not seek for the correspondences of light with surrounding objects or the atmosphere in which Eugene Carriere bathes his portraits, Rodin his marbles. The Cezanne picture does not modulate, does not flow; is too often hard, though always veracious—Cezannes veracity, be it understood. But it is an inescapable veracity. There is, too, great vitality and a peculiar reserved passion, like that ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... I could modulate my voice so as to be heard at quite a distance, and yet cause no jar to very sensitive nerves close at hand; and when I told my patient that I proposed to punish him now, while he was in my power, all heard and wondered; then every ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... women have their peculiarities, and in some respects they might be improved, is certain. Their principal fault in society is, that they do not sufficiently modulate their voices. Those faults arising from association, and to which both sexes are equally prone, are a total indifference to, or rather a love of change, "shifting right away," without the least regret, from one portion of the Union to another; ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... South Seas (a book he could not write because he had no paradigm and original to copy from), says that he longs for a "moment of style," he means that he wishes there would come floating through his head a memory of some other man's way of writing to which he could modulate his sentences. ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... literature in general, religion—I include religion because poetry and religion touch each other, or rather modulate into each other; are, indeed, often but different names for the same thing—these, I say, the visible signs of mental and emotional life, must like all other things keep moving, becoming; even though at present, when belief in witches of Endor is displacing the Darwinian ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... he did not articulate distinctly. He huddled his words together in the utterance, as if they were syllables of one long word, which he must get through with as speedily as possible. His pronunciation was bad, and he did not modulate his voice so as to bring out the meaning of what he read. Every sentence was uttered with a dismal monotony of voice, as if it did not differ in any respect from that which ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... is to say hydrogen in its normal form, not ionized as we find it in plasma in a star's atmosphere. Our problem is simply to locate the source of the peaks. Somewhere in the circuit there seems to be an effect that serves to modulate the incoming signal. Our antenna will be useless unless we eliminate this interference so that the signal ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... very 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, the addresses of the shops where ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... misantropo misanthrope. misericordia mercy. mision f. mission. mismo same, own, very; self; even. misterio mystery. misterioso mysterious. mistico mystic. mitad f. half. moderno modern. modo mode, manner. modular to modulate. mohino fretful, vexed, sullen. mole f. mass. momento moment. momia mummy. monada monkey-trick, grimace. monasterio monastery. moneda coin; monedilla (dim.). mono,-a monkey; mono, -a neat, pretty, charming. monolito monolith, ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... not tedious as our idyls are; a tempest 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 ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Ulrika in those harsh, monotonous tones which she had of late learned to modulate. "Nothing. The debt is all on my side." She stopped abruptly—a dull red color flushed her face—her eyes dwelt on Thelma ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... singular fact that some of the Insessores, such as ravens, crows, and magpies, possess the proper apparatus (37. Bishop, in 'Todd's Cyclopaedia of Anatomy and Physiology,' vol. iv. p. 1496.), though they never sing, and do not naturally modulate their voices to any great extent. Hunter asserts (38. As stated by Barrington in 'Philosophical Transactions,' 1773, p. 262.) that with the true songsters the muscles of the larynx are stronger in the males than in the females; but with this slight exception there is no difference ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... people. Intelligence and good manners are the only passport into the charmed circle. Self-control will enable us to become possessed of both. It will enable us to restrain ourselves from all rude, loud, hasty, ungentle speech and action, help us to modulate our voices, and even cultivate our laughter. It will also enable us, through mental application and effort, to acquire knowledge. So abundant are the intellectual treasures now brought within the reach of everyone by the cheapness ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... 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 that have since been brought ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... connected with this part of our subject, which is worthy of remark. A person who is playing on an instrument, and who is desirous to speak, finds himself, without long practice, totally unable to do so; but he may, if he pleases, sing what he has to say, provided only that he modulate his voice to the tune he is playing. The reason of this appears to be two-fold; first, that the mind, by following the tune in the articulation of the words, is relieved in a great measure from doing double duty; and secondly, and chiefly, because the person has ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... medicines and 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 children in ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... considerable length, and uttered 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 into ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... "you know you accuse me wrongfully, Dorothea; but now I think of it, would it not be better to modulate the tone of our conversation, seeing that our guest, (a circumstance which until now quite escaped my recollection,) was shown into the next room, for the purpose of washing his hands, the which, from ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... will possess yourselves of a copy of Quintilian or borrow one from any library (Bohn's translation will do) and turn to his 9th book, you will find a hundred ways indicated, illustrated, classified, in which a writer or speaker can vary his Style, modulate it, lift or depress ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... thrust itself into a personal talk; but during the last month she had adjusted herself to Page so that this no longer showed on the surface. She was indeed quite capable of taking an interest in the subject, as soon as she could modulate herself into the new key. "Yes, of course," she agreed, "it's like so many other things that are perfectly necessary to go on with, perfectly absurd when you look closely at them. My father nearly lost his position once for saying that all inheritance was wrong. But even he never ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... 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 ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... colour; it is possible to conceive that painters might produce pictures of pure colour, quite apart from any imitation of natural objects, in which colour might aspire more to the condition of music, and modulate ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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 as a feast, but is a beggarly parsimony. He spends himself in a careless ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... we presently came to consider sufficient in itself, dispensed him from exhibiting his nature in so articulate a thing as actual vocal utterance. This he was quite opposed to: he would never even try a hymn in church. But he could accompany; he could improvise; he could modulate; he could transpose any simple air. The ease and readiness with which he did all this made less obvious—indeed, almost imperceptible—his fundamental unwillingness to abandon himself before others (especially if members of his own circle) to ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... confronting each other. Enraptured, life given into her hand again, Cad Sills flung her arms about his neck and kissed him—a moist, full-budded, passionate, and salty kiss. Even on the edge of doom, it was plain, she would not be able to modulate, tone, or contain these kisses, each of which launched a fiery barb into ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... loud cry of sorrow which were uttered by the keeners and friends of the deceased—they, too, standing somewhat apart from the rest, joined in it bitterly; and the solitary wail of Mrs. Grimes, differing in character from that of those who had been trained to modulate the most profound grief into strains of a melancholy nature, was particularly wild and impressive. At all events, her Christian demeanor, joined to the sincerity of her grief, appeased the enmity of many; so true is it that a soft answer ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... now sold to boys, for the large sum of one-halfpenny, whistles formed in tin, of almost similar construction to those described. I never yet found anyone to make them "speak" properly; boys not knowing how to modulate or inspire the breath. I have now tried one of them against my silver whistle, and I cannot say ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... figures, who might, or might not, be a member of the Holy Court. Wilhelm thought that perhaps his visitor was the examiner, but the moment the silence was broken, in spite of the fact that the speaker endeavoured to modulate his tones as the others had done, the young man knew the incomer was not the person ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... perfect; and what poor Robson used to term the "horgan" of Triballos, was wonderful. That youth would be a nice young man for a small tea party. It is to be hoped that, like Bottom the weaver, he can modulate his voice, and roar as gently as ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... (a doughty battalion for the defence of ladies until they enter into difficulties and are shorn of them at a blow, bare as dairymaids), all the body-guard of a young gentlewoman, the drawing-room sylphides, which bear her train, which wreathe her hair, which modulate her voice and tone her complexion, which are arrows and shield to awe the creature man, forbade her utterance of what she felt, on pain of instant fulfilment of their oft-repeated threat of late to leave her to the last remnant of a protecting sprite. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... our more modern spirit of course, we would want to modulate this, we admit that we would not ask God to do a little thing like jumping on the necks of the wicked—just for us—nor would we care to break away from the other things we are doing and attend to it ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... stood with other young men within ear-shot and heard many remarks which plainly showed the affiliation of the sheriff and his friends to the Tory cause; and the party had dined so well that they were not particularly careful to modulate their voices so that others in the vicinity who might be of a different mind, should not overhear them. The sheriff was a pompous man who, when he spoke, commanded the attention of all about him. The dignity of his office ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... that he was destined to enjoy that rapture of requited affection, in longing for which his very soul had become sick. As she walked back with him to the vicarage her hand rested heavily on his arm, and when she asked him some question about his land, she was able so to modulate her voice as to make him believe that she was learning to regard his interests as her own. He stopped her at the gate leading into the vicarage garden, and once more made to her an ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... had paid particular attention to the cultivation of the speaking voice, and it was from her that Beth had learnt how to round hers to richness, and modulate it so that its natural sweetness and charm were greatly enhanced. There was considerable difference of opinion about her looks. She was always striking in appearance, but dress, for one thing, altered her very much, and the state of her mind still more. People who met her on one occasion ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... "Holy Child."—Many such miracles are set before us; but we recognise them not, or pass them by, with a word or a smile of short surprise. How leaps the baby in its mother's arms, when the mysterious charm of music thrills through its little brain! And how learns it to modulate its feeble voice, unable yet to articulate, to the melodies that bring forth all round its eyes a delighted smile! Who knows what then may be the thoughts and feelings of the infant awakened to the sense of a new world, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various |
