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More "Versatile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... opposition to it was ripening into disorganizing councils. Adams had prepared the way by securing the mediation of Alexander. Then, in that critical period, associated with Russell, Bayard, the learned and versatile Gallatin, and the eloquent and chivalric Clay, he negotiated with firmness, with assiduity, with patience, and with consummate ability, a definitive treaty of peace—a treaty of peace which, although it omitted the causes of the war already obsolete, ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... prevent her from looking at me, the most efficient way certainly was to apply a bandage to her eyes. Oh! woman, woman!" groaned Wacousta, in fierce anguish of spirit, "who shall expound the complex riddle of thy versatile nature? ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... teachable, so too those human races which are most precocious are most incorrigible, and while they seem the cleverest at first prove ultimately the least intelligent. They depend less on circumstances, but do not respond to them so well. In some nations everybody is by nature so astute, versatile, and sympathetic that education hardly makes any difference in manners or mind; and it is there precisely that generation, follows generation without essential progress, and no one ever remakes himself on a better plan. It is perhaps the duller races, with a long childhood ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Virginia Marini is well considered in Italy, and used to be the leading lady in the Salvini troupe. She now directs a company of her own, and has been succeeded in her former position by the estimable Signora Piamonti, whom Salvini declares to be one of the most versatile artistes he has ever known, equally good in the highest tragedy or the liveliest farce. Her Dalilla in Samson was much admired in America, but her rendering of the role of Francesca di Rimini in the tragedy of that name is perhaps ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... Mr. Lawson's versatile career which even those who are not censorious might well ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... twenty. He took to wife a relative of his, a niece of Mr. Cheng's wife, a Miss Wang, and has now been married for the last two years. This Mr. Lien has lately obtained by purchase the rank of sub-prefect. He too takes little pleasure in books, but as far as worldly affairs go, he is so versatile and glib of tongue, that he has recently taken up his quarters with his uncle Mr. Cheng, to whom he gives a helping hand in the management of domestic matters. Who would have thought it, however, ever since his marriage ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... that the forces of Nature which had been too strong for the "Albatross," might easily be evaded by this lighter and more versatile machine. It could abandon the sky where the elements were in battle and descend to the surface of the sea; and if the waves beat against it there too heavily, it could always find calm in the ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... reluctantly—more reluctantly than I can tell you—I declined, obliging them to send for Gen. Horace Porter and bring him over from across the ocean, where he was ably serving as Ambassador to France. I need not add how well that gifted and versatile gentleman discharged the ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... happened that this was the road which led from where Wedgwood lived to where lived his lady-love. Josiah and Sarah had many a smile over the fact that Cupid had taken a hand in road-building. Evidently Dan Cupid is a very busy and versatile individual. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... such things. They held it quite likely that the blood of Praxiteles or his compeers may still have flowed through his veins—certain at all events, that there hung about his person the traditions of the versatile colonists on the shores of Magna Graecia who, freed by legions of slaves from the trivial vexations which beset modern lives, were able to create in their golden leisure those monuments of beauty which are the envy and despair of our generation. On all that concerned ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... I bethought myself of my old friend and fellow-student, John Thorndyke, now an eminent authority on Medical Jurisprudence. I had been associated with him temporarily in one case as his assistant, and had then been deeply impressed by his versatile learning, his acuteness and his marvellous resourcefulness. Thorndyke was a barrister in extensive practice, and so would be able to tell me at once what was my duty from a legal point of view; and, as he was also a doctor ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... British Observatory in the East, a famous institution in olden days, which secured for Madras the honour—which is still hers—of setting the standard of time throughout the whole of India. The Madras Civilian was Mr. William Petrie, an extraordinarily versatile genius, who entered the service as a young man and rose to be a member of the Government, yet managed to find time for very serious astronomical pursuits in his house at Nungambaukam. Going home to England ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... difficulties that the ordinary exposition of Socialism seems to leave unsolved are at least equally not solved now. Only rarely does the right man seem to struggle to his place of adequate opportunity. Men and women get their chance in various ways; some of implacable temper and versatile gifts thrust themselves to the position they need for the exercise of their powers; others display an astonishing facility in securing honours and occasions they can then only waste; others, outside their specific gift, are the creatures of luck or ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... Subtle, accomplished, versatile, graceful even in his singular homeliness, and peculiar insolent style of address, he yet made himself so acceptable to the family as to dare to seek the hand of the second daughter of Colonel La Vigne, and, though ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... deep-lined, bearded face, now reeking with sweat and grimed with dust and coal. An ugly face—but not to her. For through that mask she read the dominance, the driving force, the courage of this versatile, unconquerable man. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... two-years' connection with the army, a man with the most ordinary capacity for garnering up the humorous stories of camp may find his repertoire overflowing with the most versatile of incidents. A connection with the daily press is, however, of great service, especially as a letter-writer is expected to know all that occurs in camp—and ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... is an extraordinary volume—especially welcome as an evidence of female genius and accomplishment—but it is hardly less disappointing than extraordinary. Miss Barrett's genius is of a high order; active, vigorous, and versatile, but unaccompanied by discriminating taste. A thousand strange and beautiful views flit across her mind, but she cannot look on them with steady gaze; her descriptions, therefore, are often shadowy and indistinct, and her ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... had lately resigned his post of one of the lords of the treasury, and gone again into opposition. [In Walpole's copy of the celebrated Diary of this versatile politician, he had written a "Brief account of George Bubb Doddington, Lord Melcombe," which the noble editor of the "Memoires" has inserted. It describes him, "as his Diary shows, vain, fickle, ambitious, and corrupt,' and very ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... The versatile genius of the poet was equally at home in the simpler lyric region of the Haynes Bayley school. Taking for his model the favourite drawing-room ballad of the period, "She wore a wreath of roses the night that first we met," he made a parody of its rhythmical cadence the medium ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... man she was an inexpressible comfort. I have written her name Maria, but she was also called Mar-i-a, Mari-a-a-a, Mari-uh, and oh-h-h, M-a-r-i-a. These names she was called from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof. I don't think I have ever known a more versatile genius than Maria. At times she was a steamboat, with loud blowing of the whistle; at other times she was a bear and devoured other children with grunts and growls of great ferocity; at other times, she was a horse of such high mettle and ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... Islanders. Some of them had large bushy whiskers, with no hair on their chins or upper lips, having the appearance of being regularly shaved. It would be almost impossible for any class of men to excel these fellows in the scheming and versatile cunning with which they strove to disguise their meditated treachery. In fine weather I always had our firearms standing out for them to see, and once or twice every night I fired off a pistol, to let them know we were on the lookout by night ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... as well as a romantic theorist!" I said, rather rudely. "How I wish I were as versatile! Come, Margot, we must be going now. The carriage ought to ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... Prayer-book of Edward VI. The translations of the Bible made no great advance on Wiclif. In the realm of verse, John Skelton was a powerful satirist with a unique manipulation of doggerel which has permanently associated a particular type of rhyme with his name; an original and versatile writer was Skelton, but without that new critical sense of style which was to become so marked a feature of the great literary outburst under Elizabeth. Herein, two minor poets alone, Surrey and Wyatt, appear as harbingers of the coming day. A hundred anonymous ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... song for their festivities. It goes to the tune of "One Bottle More," and is a wonderful illustration of his versatile powers, in the admirable bibulous sort of joviality which he distils, as it were, from the very dust of ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... December 9.—There is no place in the United States, so far as I know, where the cow is more versatile or ambidextrous, if I may be allowed the use of a term that is far above my station in life, than here in the mountains of North Carolina, where the obese 'possum and the anonymous distiller have ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... discriminations, was itself an education for the young who grew up to hear it and to speak it. In a genial yet invigorating climate, in a land where breezes from the mountain and the sea were mingled, the versatile Greeks produced by physical training that vigor and grace of body which they so much admired; and they developed the civil polity, the artistic discernment, and the complex social life, which made them the principal source of modern culture. Their ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... terms of praise to the industry of E. Evans, the versatile intellect of Taylor, and the thoroughness and conscientiousness of Debenham, Scott goes on to praise unreservedly the man to whom the whole expedition owed an ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... quite free from affectation, and had a warm sympathetic soul that drew me ever closer to him. I also remember hearing from him a very enthusiastic appreciation of my personality as a conductor. In spite, however, of being fellow- members of our versatile art club, we never attained a footing of real comradeship, for, after all, no one thought much of anybody else's talents. For instance, Hiller had arranged some orchestral concerts, and to commemorate them he was entertained at the usual ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... stopping, no cessation of the deep baying of the dog. Cherry was one of the best and most versatile that the police had ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... they are referred to, they are called in good Greek "foreigners" (-barbari-); in like manner among the appellations of moneys and coins, that occur ever so frequently, there does not once appear a Roman coin. We form a strange idea of men of so great and so versatile talents as Naevius and Plautus, if we refer such things to their free choice: this strange and clumsy "exterritorial" character of Roman comedy was undoubtedly due to causes very different from aesthetic considerations. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... did not begin where Wilson left off. He was also a pioneer, beginning his studies and drawings of the birds probably as early as Wilson did his, but he planned larger and lived longer. He spent the greater part of his long life in the pursuit of ornithology, and was of a more versatile, flexible, and artistic nature than was Wilson. He was collecting the material for his work at the same time that Wilson was collecting his, but he did not begin the publication of it till fourteen years after Wilson's death. Both men ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... in the midst of these accounts one finds such phrases as these: "What crop do you intend to sow in such a field next year?" "How is the mare?" "Has the cow a fine calf?" &c. No minds can be more versatile, and at the same time more constant. I have always thought that, after all, the peasantry were superior to all other classes in France. But these men are deplorably in want of knowledge and education, or rather ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... one reviews his career. His most thoughtful, though not his most eloquent verse, his richest vein of letter-writing, his most influential addresses to the public, came toward the close of his life. Precocious as was his gift for expression, and versatile and brilliant as had been his productiveness in the 1848 era, he was true to his Anglo-Saxon stock in being more effective at seventy than he had been at thirty. He was one of the men who die learning and who therefore are scarcely thought of as dying at all. I am not sure that ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... solid, unindented Southern Africa makes the inferior man. That the huge, heavy, massive, magnificent Asia makes the huge, heavy, massive, magnificent man. That Europe, indented by the sea on every side, with its varied scenery, and climate, and Northern influences, makes the varied intellect, the versatile power and life and action, of the master-man of the world. And it is so. Africa, with here and there an exception, has never produced men to compare with the men of Asia. For six thousand years, save the unintelligible stones of Egypt, she has had no history. Asia has had her ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... committees; it was well that they could not go back to Ripton into the offices on the square, earlier in December, where Mr. Hamilton Tooting was writing the noble part of that inaugural from memoranda given him by the Honourable Hilary Vane. Yes, the versatile Mr. Tooting, and none other, doomed forever to hide the light of his genius under a bushel! The financial part was written by the Governor-general himself—the Honourable Hilary Vane. And when it was all finished and revised, it was ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... impress and charm her, and at the same time to take off something of his burthen of forty years, by wearing the last fancy of the contemporary buck, a costume of elastic material with distensible warts and horns, changing in colour as he walked, by an ingenious arrangement of versatile chromatophores. And no doubt, if Elizabeth's affection had not been already engaged by the worthless Denton, and if her tastes had not had that odd bias for old-fashioned ways, this extremely chic conception ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... over with witty anecdotes, again exercising his power of graphic portraiture. His elixir vitae—animal spirits—humanized his effort, and, as Sir Robert Peel played upon the House of Commons "as on an old fiddle," so John B. Gough (for it was the versatile comic singer, actor and speaker) sounded the chords of ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... to Bacon's versatile POLITICAL behaviour. It has hitherto been supposed that sonnet lvii. was addressed to Shakespeare's friend, a man, not to any woman. But Mr. Holmes shows that the Queen is intended. ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... information from the Treasury Bench. This afternoon he learned from Mr. LONG that the Board of Admiralty was not created solely for the purpose of satisfying his curiosity; and from Mr. KELLAWAY that the equipment of even the most versatile Under-Secretary does not include the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... family. Georgy was very happy in the society of a companion who seemed really to have a natural taste for the manufacture of pretty little head-dresses from the merest fragments of material in the way of lace and ribbon. Diana had all that versatile cleverness and capacity for expedients which is likely to be acquired in a wandering and troubled life. She had learned more in her three years of discomfort with her father than in all the undeviating course ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... neo-Hebraic idiom from the ancient Hebrew," a distinguished modern ethnographer justly says, "confirms, by linguistic evidence, the plasticity, the logical acumen, the comprehensive and at the same time versatile intellectuality of the Jewish race. By the ingenious compounding of words, by investing old expressions with new meanings, and adapting the material offered by alien or related languages to its own purposes, it has increased and enriched ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... instinct in the human mind for the definite, the palpable, and the emphatic, as there is for the mysterious, the versatile, and the elusive. With some, method is a law, and taste severe in affairs, costume, exercise, social intercourse, and faith. The simplicity, directness, uniformity, and pure emphasis or grace of Sculpture ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... startling discoveries of these doctors, not the sophomoric essays of new-fledged Hippocrati now struggling manfully with buck-ague, snake bite and new babies at Nassawadox, Jones' Switch and elsewhere that constitute the chief charm of Jay Jay's versatile journal. The feature of most interest to the lay reader is the political homilies of the editor himself. Not only are they deeply interesting to the hoi polloi, but invaluable from a therapeutical standpoint, being successfully employed in cases of itch, smallpox, ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... perfect metrical form and evince high scholarship, but they are too learned to be popular. The lyrics of Menendez y Pelayo have also more merit in form than in inspiration and are lacking in human interest. Both authors turned soon to more congenial work: Valera became the most versatile and polished of all nineteenth century Spanish writers of essays and novels; and Menendez y Pelayo became Spain's greatest scholar in literary history. The popular novelist, Pedro Antonio de ALARCON (1833-1891), wrote lyrics in which there is a curious blending ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... journey was difficult for Giuliano, for the reason that his ceiling was not yet finished, and Pope Alexander would not let him go. He entrusted the finishing of it, therefore, to his brother Antonio, who, having a good and versatile intelligence, and coming thus into contact with the Court, entered into the service of the Pope, who conceived a very great affection for him; and this he proved when he resolved to restore, with new foundations and with defences after the manner of a castle, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... a given result? The French say that to have an omelet we must break our eggs; that is, the breaking of eggs is a necessary condition of the omelet. But is it a sufficient condition? Does an omelet appear whenever three eggs are broken? So of the Greek mind. To get such versatile intelligence it may be that such commercial dealings with the world as the geographical Hellas afforded are a necessary condition. But if they are a sufficient condition, why did not the Phoenicians ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... an educator is unparalleled in the history of England's public schools. For more than thirty-five years he served as inspector and commissioner, which offices he filled with efficiency. As inspector he was earnest, conscientious, versatile; beloved alike by teachers and pupils. The Dean of Salisbury likened his appearance to inspect the school at Kiddermaster, to the admission of a ray of light when a shutter is suddenly opened in a darkened ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... to keep it!" The baddish boy had registered a vow to the contrary, and proceeded to bleed his flint (for to do Christie justice the process was not very dissimilar). Flucker had a versatile genius for making money; he had made it in forty different ways, by land and ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... from Du Vair; but, instead of Montaigne's smiling agnosticism, we have a grave and formal indictment of humanity; we miss the genial humour and kindly temper of the master; we miss the amiable egotism and the play of a versatile spirit; we miss the charm of ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... that they two are alike in all things. They two only have succeeded in carrying the true ancient philosophy into the practice of the Forum. Never surely were two men more unlike than the stiff-necked Cato and the versatile Cicero. ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... Naturalist, and Historian, Who left scarcely any style of writing untouched, And touched nothing that he did not adorn; Of all the passions, Whether smiles were to be moved or tears, A powerful yet gentle master; In genius, sublime, vivid, versatile, In style, elevated, clear, elegant— The love of companions, The fidelity of friends, And the veneration of readers, Have by this monument honored the memory. He was born in Ireland, At a place called Pallas, [In the parish] of Forney, [and county] of Longford, ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... Among the others, the brilliant G. K. Chesterton, the facile Alfred Noyes, the romantic Rupert Brooke (who owes less to Masefield and his immediate predecessors than he does to the passionately intellectual Donne), the introspective D. H. Lawrence and the versatile J. C. Squire, are perhaps best known to ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... which of the followers of Bellini are we to assign it?—for the work is clearly of Bellinesque stamp. The name of Catena has been proposed, but is now no longer seriously supported.[25] If for no other reason, the colour scheme is sufficient to exclude this able artist, and, versatile as he undoubtedly was, it may be questioned whether he ever could have attained to the mellowness and glow which suffuse this picture. The latest view enunciated[26] is that "we are in the presence of a painter as yet anonymous, whom in German fashion we might provisionally name 'The Master ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... habit of my versatile guest was his fly-catching. It is already notorious that the golden-wing is giving up the profession of woodpecker and becoming a ground bird; it is equally patent to one who observes him that the red-head is learning the trade of fly-catching. ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... active, industrious and versatile Member of Congress for more than twenty years. He was born in Ohio, graduated at Brown University, was admitted to the bar, but, I believe, rarely practiced his profession. His natural bent was for editorial and political conflicts, in which ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... the sublime, and offer our art services for anything that may present itself. A bona fide painter is a rarity in the town I am describing, so Nicasio and I are comparatively alone in the fine art field. Our patrons are numerous, but we are expected by them to be as versatile as the 'general utility' of ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... insignificant numerically in the legislature, and could not affect the fortunes of the Liberal party in Lower Canada then distinguished by the ability of A.N. Morin, P.J.O. Chauveau, R.E. Caron, E.P. Tache, and L.P. Drummond. The recognized leader of this dominant party was Morin, whose versatile knowledge, lucidity of style, and charm of manner gave him much strength in parliament. His influence, however, as I have already said, was too often weakened by an absence of energy and of the power to lead at ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... despatched from Vienna nominally to explain away at Erfurt the Austrian armaments; in reality, to observe what was going on. Although he found no difficulty in winning the versatile Talleyrand to his cause, he was treated with scant courtesy by Napoleon, and sent back with a letter from him to Francis containing bitter reproaches and menaces. Stein, after his withdrawal, found, like Hardenberg, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... were graduates of Princeton, three of Yale, two of Harvard, four of William and Mary, and one each from the Universities of Oxford, Columbia, Glasgow, and Edinburgh. A few already enjoyed world-wide fame, notably Doctor Franklin, possibly the most versatile genius of the eighteenth century and universally known and honoured as a scientist, philosopher, and diplomat, and George Washington, whose fame, even at that day, had filled the world with the noble purity of ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... may regard him, it is certain that the German nation accepted him as their acclaimed leader. Clever, good-looking, versatile, imperious, fond of the romantic pose, Wilhelm was exactly the hero in shining armour that would capture the enthusiasm of this innocent people. They idolized him. And it is possible that their quick response confirmed him in his rather generous estimate of his own capabilities. He dismissed Bismarck ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... was. In vain Ellinor tried to plan how they could take Dixon with them to East Chester. If he had been a woman it would have been a feasible step; but they were only to keep one servant, and Dixon, capable and versatile as he was, would not do for that servant. All this was what passed through Ellinor's mind: it is still a question whether Dixon would have felt his love of his native place, with all its associations and remembrances, or his love for Ellinor, the stronger. But he was not put to the ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... rather than thought were worth running; for the inspectors, like the teachers and the children, were ever tending to become creatures of routine, and the vagaries of those who had the reputation of being tiresomely versatile could be provided against—largely, if not wholly—by increased ingenuity on the part of the teacher, and increased attention to tricky by-rules on the part of ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... any light to be seen in my dark heart. Yet I look up, I trust singly, to Him from whom it came yesterday; and thither may I look till again the day break. Can I say, in full sincerity, "more than they that watch for the morning"? Alas that I am so versatile! Christian and worldling within a day. Oh for a deeper sense that I am not my own,—that I have no right to disturb the sanctuary of my own spirit when God has made it such,—that there is no other ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... bombard a city into the conviction that further resistance is useless. After dinner the assistant editor of Der Drau comes around and pilots us about the city and its pleasant environments. The worthy assistant editor is a sprightly, versatile Slav, and, as together we promenade the parks and avenues, the number and extent of which appear to be the chief glory of Eszek, the ceaseless flow of language and wellnigh continuous interchange of gesticulations between himself and Igali are quite wonderful, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... the point of poor Goldsmith's epigram, and I leave to [——] the questionable praise of being their hack. For Bentley and Hatchard, alike with Rivington and Frazer, for Colburn and Nisbet, as well as Knight, Tilt, Tyas, Moxon, and Murray, I seem to be gratuitously pouring out in equal measure my versatile meditations; at this sign all customers may be suited; only, shop-lifters will be visited with the utmost rigour of that obnoxious monosyllable.—Well, poor Epic, good night to you, and my benison on ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... ever again revolt by weakness or by fear from within. And with this view He chose out five of His best captains—My five pickt men, He always called them—and placed those five captains and their thousands under them in the strongholds of the town. On the margin of this page our versatile author speaks of that step of Emmanuel's in the language of a philosopher, a moralist, and a divine. 'Five graces,' he says, 'pickt out of an abundance of common virtues.' This summing-up sentence stands on his stiff and dry margin. ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... such graces only in those whose vestibules are lined with ancestral mail, forgetting that a bear may be taught to dance. While this air of hers lasted, even the inanimate objects in the street appeared to know that she was there; but from a way she had of carelessly overthrowing her dignity by versatile moods, one could not calculate upon its presence to a certainty when she was round corners or in little lanes which demanded no repression of ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... Erasmus lived was a printing-outfit. Our versatile young monk learned the case, worked the ink-balls, manipulated the lever, and evidently dispelled, in degree, the monotony of the place by his ready pen and eloquent tongue. When he wrote, he wrote for his ear. All was tested by reading the matter ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... who think that, after all, the style is the man; justified, in very great varieties, by the simple consideration of what he himself has to say, quite independently of any real or supposed connection with this or that literary age or school. Let us close with the words of a most [16] versatile master of English—happily not yet included in Mr. Saintsbury's book—a writer who has dealt with all the perturbing influences of our century in a manner as classical, as idiomatic, as ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... ERVINE is a versatile author who exhibits that unevenness of quality which is generally the besetting sin of versatile authors. When he is good he is very good indeed, and in The Foolish Lovers (COLLINS) he is at his best. The Ulsterman is seldom either a lovable or an interesting ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... pretty face and a broken fiddle! and dreams for the restoration of the race are to end in a broken-down hovel by the sea, in darning the Cradlebow's socks, and dressing the clams for dinner, while the bucolic George Olver and the versatile Harvey, and all the rest of the awkward, moon-gazing crew, take turns in sitting on the door-step, and dilating on the weather! Ravishing idyll but it lacks substantiality. ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... stated in one of your remarkably versatile and "Graphic" journals that I have boasted of having come here with the idea of making some money in the United States. But bless your hearts and souls, gentlemen of the Lotos Club, I assure you ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... the sketch of Dr. Norman Macleod was in print, that genial, versatile, and accomplished Divine has gone over to the Great Majority. On Sunday forenoon, the 16th of June, he died rather suddenly, although, as he had been ailing for some time previously, his end was not altogether unexpected. In the public prints of both England and Scotland, the ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... bird," flapping horribly about with his three-cornered eyes glaring at them, they grasped our hands and shouted with the most exquisite mingling of horror and delight. They were consoled with a wrestling match to which my versatile friend challenged himself. Having shaken hands with himself, he then grasped himself in the most approved catch-as-catch-can manner, struggled desperately to throw himself and finally triumphed by flinging himself ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... their faces?" I asked, having a good time all to myself; for here was my chance to return an obligation in the matter of courtships which, if not cancelled, would furnish the versatile Tommy with an anecdote I ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... of Granada were a versatile, unsteady race, and exceedingly given to make and unmake kings. They had for a long time vacillated between old Muley Abul Hassan and his son, Boabdil el Chico, sometimes setting up the one, sometimes ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... met with in Leersia, Hygrorhiza and Bamboos. Each stamen consists of a very delicate long filament and an anther basifixed to the filament. But as the anthers are long and the connective is reduced to its minimum, they appear as if versatile when the stamens are out. When there are three stamens one stands in front of the flowering glumes and the other two in front of the palea, one opposite each edge of the palea. The relative positions of the parts of the floret are shown in the floral diagrams. ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar
... was then but of recent erection; the ancient temple had been thrown down in the earthquake sixteen years before, and the new building had become as much in vogue with the versatile Pompeians as a new church or a new preacher may be with us. The oracles of the goddess at Pompeii were indeed remarkable, not more for the mysterious language in which they were clothed, than for the credit which was attached to their mandates ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... the ark or the mule or whatever he did invent. The man with the wheel hoe is the man that is "It." A wheel hoe costs from $6 to $12, and will do the work of several men without breaking the heart or even the back of one of them. It has as many attachments as a summer girl and is equally versatile. It must be run between the rows as soon as the ground is dry after every rain, so as to slay the weeds before they are born. If you don't they will slay your profits, ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... understood (!), parsimonious, pious (twice), profound in opinion, prone to regret his acts, prudent, rash, religious, reverent, self-confident, sincere, singular in mode of thinking, strong, temperate, unreserved, unsteady, valuable in friendship, variable, versatile, violent, volatile, wily, and worthy.' Zadkiel concludes thus:—'The square of Saturn to the moon will add to the gloomy side of the picture, and give a tinge of melancholy at times to the native's character, and also a disposition to look at the dark side of things, and lead him to despondency; ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... called the Funeral Oration. He contrasts the activity and freedom and pleasantness of Athenian life with the immobility and severe looks and incessant drill of the Spartans. The citizens of no city were more versatile, or more readily changed from land to sea or more quickly moved about from place to place. They 'took their pleasures' merrily, and yet, when the time for fighting arrived, were not a whit behind the Spartans, who were like ...
— Laws • Plato
... upon which he founded that practice were still more odious and unpardonable. In his manner, indeed, of defending himself he is his own worst accuser—as there is no outrage of power, no violation of faith, that might not be justified by the versatile and ambidextrous doctrines, the lessons of deceit and rules of rapine, which he so ably illustrated by his measures, and has so shamelessly recorded with ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... as it had played itself out in Normandy inns, was here, in this Inn on a Rock, to give us a series of farewell performances. On no other stage, we were agreed, could the versatile French character have had as admirable and picturesque a setting; and surely, on no other bit of French soil could such an astonishing and amazing variety of types be assembled for a final appearance, as came up, day after day, to make the tour of ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... cashier's eye looking at him over the little mahogany rails of his pew, and he began wondering how on earth the cashier would behave when they loosed him out for the Bank Holiday. Then he set to and wrote hard at the Quarterly Catalogue. In all London there was not a more prolific or versatile writer than Savage Keith Rickman. But if in ninety-two you had asked him for his masterpiece, his magnum opus, his life-work, he would mention nothing that he had written, but refer you, soberly and benignly, to that colossal ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... Sertorius; namely, that each, while rebel against his Government, fought in the name of his Government. Mommsen says: "It may be doubted whether any Roman statesman of the earlier period can be compared in point of versatile talent to Sertorius," who, though in rebellion against Rome, did all he did in the name of Rome, fought battles, levied tributes, enfranchised cities, remodeled communities; in short, did in Spain what, in a later period, Julius Caesar did in Gaul. William the Silent for years carried on his ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... and, with a quick, light step and deeply-cogitating air, was traversing back and forth the open space between his table, in front of the president, and the closed door of the apartment. Both in form and feature, he was one of the handsomest men of his day; while a mind at once versatile, clear, and penetrating, with perceptions as quick as light, was stamped on his Grecian brow, or found a livelier expression in his lucid black eyes and other lineaments of his strikingly intellectual countenance. ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... tender fire, enough to set up half a dozen poets. Again, there was a fund of malignity, coldness, and subtlety adequate to the making an Iago. Here, too, were the clear sceptical intellect, the fertility and versatile power of brain, which only the loftier minds of ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... keeping him in a general line of consistency, throughout life, on certain great subjects, and helped him to preserve unbroken the greater number of his personal attachments. But, except in some few respects, he gave way to his versatile humour without scruple or check; and it was impossible but that such a range of will and power should be abused. Is it to be wondered at that in the works of one thus gifted and carried away we should find, without any design of corrupting on his side, evil ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... and versatile progeny of Japhet one small branch has kept itself aloof from the universal movement of the whole family; and, in the very act of accepting Christianity and taking a place in the commonwealth of Western nations, ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... how versatile Young Allison is. Years ago—twenty-six to be exact—he took the dry old subject of insurance and week in and out made it sparkle with such wit and brilliancy that every-day editorials became literary gems which laymen read with keenest enjoyment. Insurance writing might be said ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... coasting-vessels or ponderous East Indiamen, perhaps, as in the busy times of peace before the war began; but their place was taken by privateers and their prizes, or a ship from France, bringing large consignments of war material from the famous house of Rodrigo Hortalez & Co., of which the versatile and ingenuous [Transcriber's note: ingenious?] M. de Beaumarchais was the deus ex machina; and once in a while one of the few ships of war of the Continental navy, or some of the galleys or gunboats of Commodore Hazelwood's Pennsylvania ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... one song with a desperate intentness. That song was "The Rosary." The fish had presumed too far. "This," I shrewdly told myself, "is almost certainly a dream." The soundless words were magic. Gorge and stream vanished, the versatile fish faded to blue sky showing through the green needles of a jack pine. It was a sane world again and still, I thought, with the shadows of ranch house, stable, hay barn, corral, and bunk house going long to the east. I stretched in the hammock, I tingled with a lazy ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... worships and is swayed by the spoken word. As inevitably, the range and purposes of science daily more and more transcend the comprehension—even the educated comprehension—of the vulgar, who will of course elevate the nimble and versatile, speaking a familiar language, above dull ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... his class that have survived; there being no other play of so early a date wherein the part is used with so much skill. Before his master, who is the hero, Cacurgus commonly affects the simpleton, but at other times is full of versatile shrewdness and waggish mischief. He is usually called, both by himself and others, Will Summer; as though he were understood to model his action after the celebrated court Fool of Henry ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... peril, and of the necessity of trimming his vessel to the prevailing wind, if he would have her escape shipwreck in the storm. The nature of his talents, and the timorousness of disposition connected with them, had made him assume the pliability of the versatile old Earl of Northampton, who explained the art by which he kept his ground during all the changes of state, from the reign of Henry VIII. to that of Elizabeth, by the frank avowal, that he was born of ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... send me another ballad by Harry Clifton, on the front of which is his portrait and on the back a list of his triumphs—and they make very startling reading, at any rate to me, who have never been versatile. The number of songs alone is appalling: no fewer than thirty to which he had also put the music and over fifty to which the music was composed by others, but which with acceptance he sang. Judging by the titles and the first lines, which in ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... gaping Spanish laborers to haughty wives of dirt-train conductors, among whom it was not hard to distinguish in a far corner the uniformed sergeant in command of Gatun and the long lean corporal tied in a bow-line knot at the alleged wit of the versatile but solitary clown who changed his tongue every other moment from English to Spanish. But the end was already near; excitement was rising to the finale of the performance, a wrestling match between a circus man and "Andy" of Pedro Miguel ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... Shiel, the former consecrated by the applause of a Scott and a Byron, and the latter by the tears of some of the brightest eyes in the empire. The rich imagination of a Philips, who has courted more than one Muse. The versatile genius of a Morgan, who was the first that mated our sweet Irish strains with poetry worthy of their pathos and their force. But I feel I have already trespassed too long upon your patience and your time. I do not regret, however, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 12, No. 349, Supplement to Volume 12. • Various
... to business!" cried the versatile Ardan, "Why do you think, Barbican, that we are at present beyond the ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... sky. In winter the stars seem to have rekindled their fires, the moon achieves a fuller triumph, and the heavens wear a look of a more exalted simplicity. Summer is more wooing and seductive, more versatile and human, appeals to the affections and the sentiments, and fosters inquiry and the art impulse. Winter is of a more heroic cast, and addresses the intellect. The severe studies and disciplines come easier in winter. One imposes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... of a social character, may, he says, bring about serious consequences. Such exalted persons are apt to regard any intellectual cypher as a great military genius if he happens to be an agreeable and versatile talker, and then the military authorities have not always the courage to disturb the preconceived notions of their sovereign. Result: Society-generals for dinners and balls; after whom rank next the petticoat-generals. And then he referred to the female ascendency ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... shared by many thousands of young men moving resolutely and blithely forward into this, the hardest, the cruellest, and the least-rewarded of all the wars that men have fought. They are a whole history and revelation of Rupert Brooke himself. Joyous, fearless, versatile, deeply instructed, with classic symmetry of mind and body, ruled by high, undoubting purpose, he was all that one would wish England's noblest sons to be in days when no sacrifice but the most precious ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... have to do for an Admiral's cocked hat; it all depends on whether the amateur actor can swear like an Admiral. A hearth-rug may have to do for a bear's fur; it all depends on whether the wearer is a polished and versatile man of the world and can grunt like a bear. A clergyman's hat (to my own private and certain knowledge) can be punched and thumped into the exact shape of a policeman's helmet; it all depends on the clergyman. I mean it depends on his permission; his imprimatur; his ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... find in these days a more competent and sympathetic editor of Scott than his countryman, the brilliant and versatile man of letters who has undertaken the task, and if any proof were wanted either of his qualifications or of his skill and discretion in displaying them, Mr. Lang has furnished it abundantly in his charming Introduction to 'Waverley.' The editor's ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... my instruction was mainly set off by the periodic visits of my father with a large bag of battered fossils to lecture to us upon geology. I was one of those fortunate youngsters who take readily to school work, I had a good memory, versatile interests and a considerable appetite for commendation, and when I was barely twelve I got a scholarship at the City Merchants School and was entrusted with a scholar's railway season ticket to Victoria. After my father's death a large and very animated and solidly built ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... swindling prospectus has obtained credit ere now. At Plate 33, Robert is still a journalist; he brings to the editor of a paper an article of his composition, a violent attack on a law. "My dear M. Macaire," says the editor, "this must be changed; we must PRAISE this law." "Bon, bon!" says our versatile Macaire. "Je vais retoucher ca, et je vous fais en faveur de la ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... therefore, when they condemned him and his two disciples to the flames, decided that his confession should not be read aloud at the stake, according to custom, feeling certain that an this occasion also he would give it the lie, and that publicly, which, as anyone must see who knew the versatile spirit of the public, would be a ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... too! the idol of that versatile genius, Benvenuto Cellini:—an author! a goldsmith! a cunning artificer in jewels! a founder in bronze! a sculptor in marble! the prince of good fellows! the favored of princes! the warm friend and daring lover! as we gaze on his glorious ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... to Huskisson and George Canning, Liverpool once very nearly had the honour of sending to Parliament Henry Brougham, in days when the Chancellorship and the House of Lords could scarcely have been expected by that versatile genius, even in ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... his affairs, he thought of letting the enemy win the field, or of flying through Media and Armenia and seizing Cappadocia, but came to no resolution while his friends stayed with him. After turning to many expedients in his mind, which his changeable fortune had made versatile, he at last put his men in array, and encouraged the Greeks and barbarians; as for the phalanx and the Argyraspids, they encouraged him, and bade him be of good heart; for the enemy would never be able to stand them. For indeed they were ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... can we avoid worshipping images? or loving images? The actual living form of Christ on earth was still not Christ, it was but the image under which His disciples saw Him; nor can we see more of any of those we love than a certain more versatile and warmer presentment of them than an artist can counterfeit. The ultimate "them" ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... and the authors' names, Their stories and their lucubrations, Recall old literary aims And faded reputations; We wonder at the influence That SALA'S florid periods had on His fellows, and the vogue immense Of versatile Miss BRADDON. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 2, 1917 • Various
... formed, when the temperature all around them has altered. The ice-floes and the obsolete Church may be alike successful for a time in keeping up the ancient state of things within their own lessening limits, but both are eventually absorbed and disappear. While the more versatile ecclesiastical body, tossed by the cross currents and eddies of novel and uncertain change, loses its true course and makes shipwreck, the rigidly immoveable one, anchored over the worn-out peculiarities of bygone ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... sentiments were naturally so versatile that they could not be depended on for two days together; but it did not occur to her for the moment that a change had been helped on in the present case by a romantic talk between Mrs. Garland and the miller. But Mrs. ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... favorable location and the rich natural resources of the United States have furnished a substantial basis for industrial progress. On the other hand, we must note that the American people are energetic and versatile,—combining, to a happy degree, the qualities of initiative and originality, perseverance and adaptability. The great wealth and prosperity of the country as a whole have been the result of the combination of a favorable ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... where I had a delightful interview with Governor Hubbard, who, although much engrossed with the cares of State, seemed for the time to lay them all aside, and gave me his undivided attention. Certainly if "all the world's a stage, and men and women merely players," this versatile gentleman appeared as well in the role of courtier as in that ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... that telegraph poles twenty feet away could not be seen. Breathing was difficult, and the smoke made the eyes water. At Naples, however, a favorable wind had cleared the air of smoke, the sun shone brightly, and the versatile people were happy once more. The goggles and eye-screens had disappeared, but the streets were anything but comfortable, for some six thousand men were at work clearing the ashes from the roofs and main streets ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... Sergeant, in whose memory certain enormities of Dunshie had rankled ever since that versatile individual had abandoned the veterinary profession, owing to the most excusable intervention of a pack-mule's off hind leg, was not far out in his surmise, as subsequent history may some day reveal. But the telling of that story is still ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... the abstinent and chastely celibate are exceptionally healthy, energetic, immune. The wildest claims are made. But indeed it is true for all who can see the facts of life simply and plainly, that man is an omnivorous, versatile, various creature and can draw his strength from a hundred varieties of nourishment. He has physiological idiosyncrasies too that are indifferent to biological classifications and moral generalities. It is not true that his absorbent vessels begin ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... thing about it was that Jack Williamson was one of the most versatile science fiction authors ever to sit down at the typewriter. When the vogue for science-fantasy altered to super science, he created the memorable super lock-picker Giles Habilula as the major attraction in a ...
— The Cosmic Express • John Stewart Williamson
... which department he accomplished notable, if somewhat conventional, success. The Hamburg theater furnished a field for another somewhat famous figure in musical history, that of Johann Mattheson, a singularly versatile and gifted man, a native of that city (1681-1764). After a liberal education, in which his musical taste and talent became distinguished at an early age, he appeared on the stage as singer, and in one of his own operas, after singing his role upon the stage, came back into the ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... impart to his benefactor the composition of his extraordinary Powder. This English knight was at different periods of his life an admiral, a theologian, a critic, a metaphysician, a politician, and a disciple of Alchemy. As is not unfrequent with versatile and inflammable people, he caught fire at the first spark of a new medical discovery, and no sooner got home to England than he began to spread ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the Gallinazo, till that bird is compelled to vomit up the carrion it may have recently gorged. Lastly, Azara states that several Carranchas, five or six together, will unite in chase of large birds, even such as herons. All these facts show that it is a bird of very versatile habits ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... she actually did address that dignified body as "boys," and that the "boys" liked it. She had the brains of a man and the temper of an indignant but tender-hearted woman. This is an exact description of her literary style, which was not literary, but it was versatile in wit and sarcasm and outrageous veracity. She used it as an instrument of torture and vengeance in the public prints upon the characters of political demagogues, liquor interests, and the state treasury. And what she said was violently effective. Her victims might ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... Chambers is strikingly versatile. It must always be remembered that he started life as a painter. There is a story that Charles Dana Gibson and Robert W. Chambers sent their first offerings to Life at the same time. Mr. Chambers sent a picture and Mr. Gibson sent a bit of writing. Mr. Gibson's offering was accepted ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... from their source thou bring'st All good deeds and their opposite." He then: "To what I now disclose be thy clear ken Directed, and thou plainly shalt behold How much those blind have err'd, who make themselves The guides of men. The soul, created apt To love, moves versatile which way soe'er Aught pleasing prompts her, soon as she is wak'd By pleasure into act. Of substance true Your apprehension forms its counterfeit, And in you the ideal shape presenting Attracts the soul's regard. If she, thus drawn, incline toward it, love is that inclining, And ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... after the fever of anxiety and expectation that had seized hold of everybody present. This strange epistle furnished no clue whatever to the mystery; and the ray of hope that had sparkled for an instant in M. Segmuller's eyes speedily faded away. As for the versatile Goguet he returned with increased conviction to his former opinion, that the prisoner had the advantage over ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... source of weakness. But many of the causes which ruined Athens were in full operation at Florence. First and foremost was the petulant and variable temper of a democracy, so well described by Plato, and so ably analyzed by Machiavelli. The want of agreement among the versatile Florentines, fertile in plans but incapable of concerted action, was a chief source of political debility. Varchi and Segni both relate how, in spite of wealth, ability, and formidable forces, the Florentine exiles under ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... a new aspect of your versatile nature, Solomon. Must I regard you as a personally emancipated moral influence, not committed to the straight and narrow path yourself, but still close enough to it to keep my feet from straying?" he at ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... sake of what appeared to him the cause of religion and his country. On the whole, however, moderation and prudence were the governing principles of his mind and actions. The intellect of Burleigh was more versatile and acute, that of Bacon more profound; and their parts in the great drama of public life were cast accordingly: Burleigh had most of the alertness of observation, the fertility of expedient, the rapid calculation of contingencies, required in the minister of state; Bacon, of the gravity ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... might be appointed, and present that he might vote; went through the whole performance in less than an hour, absenting himself that he might be called in to be present, presenting himself though absent, voting ballots and signing certificates, showing himself to be as versatile and as agile ...
— The Vote That Made the President • David Dudley Field
... very entertaining memoir of one of the most gentlemanly, accomplished, and versatile actors who adorned the English stage. The life of R. W. Elliston, unlike that of the majority of his professional brethren, affords ample materials for a readable book, and this volume presents indubitable testimony in proof of ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... Taylor begins to be himself again; for with all his astonishing complexity, yet versatile agility, of powers, he was too good and of too catholic a spirit to be a good polemic. Hence he so continually is now breaking, now varying, the thread of the argument: and hence he is so again and again forgetting that he is reasoning against an antagonist, and falls into ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... sternest of poets, the free and mighty leader of European song, was, what is not ordinarily held to be a source of poetical inspiration—the political life. The boy had sensibility, high aspirations, and a versatile and passionate nature; the student added to this energy, various learning, gifts of language, and noble ideas on the capacities and ends of man. But it was the factions of Florence which made Dante ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... servants were grand; all was grand to Owen's bewildered imagination. Madame Duvet made such very decided attempts to talk to him, however, that he was obliged to cease wondering, and to bring his usually versatile genius into play, in the light of all the grandeur. He got on so well with the lady, that Howel wondered in his turn, and after dinner told Owen that he verily believed if he played his cards well, he might make an ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... outward show and a luxurious style of life among the students. The supervision of theology was entrusted by Frederick to Staupitz, whom personally he held in high esteem, and who, together with the learned and versatile Martin Pollich of Melrichstadt, had already been the most active in his service in promoting the foundation of the university. Staupitz himself entered the theological faculty as its first Dean. A constant or regular application to his duties was rendered impossible by the multifarious ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... Every impression of his life, whether deep or fleeting, was material for a poem or a cycle. He handled with consummate skill the odd or complicated metres of eastern and southern lyric forms, and he was most versatile as a translator of foreign poetry, ancient and modern, occidental and oriental. His unusual formal talent and mastery of language were a constant temptation to rapid and superficial versifying; but there are in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... upon. The adoption of the Chinese language, literature, and religions from ten to twelve centuries ago, was not occasioned by a military occupancy of Japanese soil by invaders from China. It was due absolutely to the free choice of their versatile people, as free and voluntary as was the adoption by Rome of Greek literature and standards of learning. The modern choice of Western material civilization no doubt had elements of fear as motive power. But impulsion through a knowledge of conditions ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... crowns the hill Where Boreas sweeps with icy chill, A masterpiece of studied art Conceived by genius versatile And fashioned with unerring skill, O'erlooks the busy, crowded mart, And, like a kingly domicile, Its burnished dome and sculpture thrill With admiration every heart; And strangers pause beyond the rill To view its grandeur, lingering still, ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... requires a definition of wit and humor unless he himself be lacking in all appreciation of them, and, if he be so lacking, no amount of explanation will avail to give him understanding. Borrow, in one of his sermons, declared concerning wit: "It is, indeed, a thing so versatile, multiform, appearing in so many shapes and garbs, so variously apprehended of several eyes and judgments, that it seemeth no less hard to settle a clear and certain notion thereof than to make a portrait of Proteus, or to define the figure of the fleeting wind." ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... pigtails—pirates, that is, of the upper crust (the Kidds and Flints and Morgans)—and at first this was a knotty problem. But he obtained a number of old stockings—stockings, of course, beyond the skill of that versatile person who mends the gaps—and he has wound them on wires, curling them upward at the end and tieing them with bits of ribbon. The pirate captain is allowed an extra inch of pigtail to exalt him ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... I fain would send my thoughts back longingly to an artist who flourished in the town where I was born and brought up. He was practically the only artist we had, but he was versatile in the extreme. He was several kinds of a painter rolled into one—house, sign, portrait, landscape, marine and wagon. In his lighter hours, when building operations were dull, he specialized in ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... temperament. If you don't, sooner or later you will fail. Compare myself, for example. All my life I have been in banks—I have got on in banks. I have even been a bank manager. But was I happy? No. Why wasn't I happy? Because it did not suit my temperament. I am too adventurous—too versatile. Practically I have thrown it over. I do not suppose I shall ever manage a bank again. They would be glad to get me, no doubt; but I have learnt the lesson of my temperament—at last.... No! I shall never ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... a versatile genius. Born in 1608, he was practically contemporary with Francesco Lana, and there is evidence that he either knew or was in correspondence with many prominent members of the Royal Society of Great Britain, more especially with John Collins, Dr Wallis, ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... was ten years of age her father removed to Litchfield, Conn., and her happy girlhood was passed in that place. Her bright and versatile mind and ready wit enabled her to pass brilliantly through her school days with but little mental exertion, and those who knew her slightly might have imagined her to be only a bright, thoughtless, light-hearted girl. In Boston, at the age of twenty, she took ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... concord between the old sacerdotal Egyptian party—strong in its unparalleled antiquity; strong in its reminiscences; strong in its recent persecutions; strong in its Pharaonic relics, regarded by all men with a superstitious or reverent awe—and the free-thinking and versatile Greeks. The occasion was like some others in history, some even in our own times; a small but energetic body of invaders was holding in subjection an ancient and ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... recall George William Curtis, a genius of the first brilliancy and remarkable withal for his versatile conversational powers. I was talking to him on one occasion when someone inquired as to his especial work in the co-operative fold of Brook Farm. His laughing reply was, "Cleaning door knobs." George Ripley was a distinguished ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... pushed so far the sale of indulgences to the overthrow of Luther's Catholicism, it was done after all for the not entirely selfish purpose of providing funds to build the metropolitan church of Christendom with the assistance of Raphael; and yet, upon another of those diverse outways of his so versatile intelligence, at the close of which we behold his unfinished picture of the Transfiguration, what has been called Raphael's Bible finds its place—that series of biblical scenes in the Loggie of the Vatican. And here, while he has shown that he could do something of Michelangelo's ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... I, and I was confirmed in my opinion along in the spring, when the cornet, and aught else, appeared to have palled upon the versatile Mary. She wrote that she had serious thoughts of taking ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... and France in 1856, but not to act. At that time he saw the famous English comedians Compton, Buckstone, Robson, and Wright, and that extraordinary actor, fine alike in tragedy and comedy, the versatile Samuel Phelps. In 1857 he was associated with Laura Keene at her theatre in New York; and from that date onward his career has been upon a high and sunlit path, visible to the world. His first part at Laura Keene's theatre was Dr. Pangloss. Then came Our American Cousin, in which ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... versatile individual for he is steward, doctor, postman, purveyor of news, and dictator in general. He alone makes the schedule of each trip, arriving and departing at will. Time in the Congo counts for naught. It is in truth the land of leisure. For the man who wants to move fast, water ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... Barrs' impassioned series, Les Bastions de l'Est, enjoy immense popularity, and within the last few months have appeared two volumes which fully confirm the views of their forerunners—M. Hallays' impressions of many wayfarings and Aprs quarante ans by M. Jules Claretie, the versatile, brilliant and much respected administrator-general ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... whose memory certain enormities of Dunshie had rankled ever since that versatile individual had abandoned the veterinary profession, owing to the most excusable intervention of a pack-mule's off hind leg, was not far out in his surmise, as subsequent history may some day reveal. But the telling of that story is still a long ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... year of the nineteenth century, and fated unfortunately never to see its close, Guy de Maupassant was probably the most versatile and brilliant among the galaxy of novelists who enriched French literature between the years 1800 and 1900. Poetry, drama, prose of short and sustained effort, and volumes of travel and description, each sparkling with the same minuteness of detail and brilliancy of style, flowed ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... boy. The charge for my instruction was mainly set off by the periodic visits of my father with a large bag of battered fossils to lecture to us upon geology. I was one of those fortunate youngsters who take readily to school work, I had a good memory, versatile interests and a considerable appetite for commendation, and when I was barely twelve I got a scholarship at the City Merchants School and was entrusted with a scholar's railway season ticket to Victoria. After my father's death a large and very ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... carefully backed in through a passage laid out by the versatile Fisheye. A door was opened in one of the unplaced cages and the little bears pushed out into a new world. They scrambled to a far corner, faced about, and waited ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... but he came down looking so like a chimney-sweep that Constance, whose versatile moods changed with the rapidity of lightning, flung herself on the bed in fits of laughter. The interrupted preparations were quickly resumed and completed; and when all was ready, and the boatman waiting at the Castle ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... debate, ambitious, adventurous in political diplomacy, a hard worker, incessant in activity for his party, temperate upon the slavery question, whole-souled in every measure or policy calculated to advance nationality, this versatile man may be put down as foremost among the leaders of the Whig Party from its origin ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... catch a straying weft And trace the hinted texture here or there, Of that stupendous loom weaving our fates. Two parents, late in life, are haply blessed With one bright child, a wonder in his years, For loveliness and genius versatile: Some common ill destroys him; parents, both, Until their death, are left but living tombs That hold the one dead image of their joy. A man, the flower of honour, who has found His well-beloved young daughter fled from home, Fallen from her ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... more than vigorous Italian princes. To that level they returned after the period of the Saxon Ottos (962-1002). In those forty years there were glimpses of a better future; the German Pope, Gregory V, allied himself to Cluny (996-999); as Sylvester II (999-1003) the versatile Gerbert of Aurillac—at once mathematician, rhetorician, philosopher, and statesman—entered into the romantic dreams of his friend and pupil, Otto III, and formed others on his own behalf which centred round the Papacy rather than the Empire. Sylvester saw in imagination ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... anyway," said I, and I was confirmed in my opinion along in the spring, when the cornet, and aught else, appeared to have palled upon the versatile Mary. She wrote that she had serious thoughts ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... love of enjoyment. Unusual bodily vigour enabled him to combine severe devotion to work with facile indulgence in sensual pleasures. His passion for wine and women was almost as well known as his learning. Versatile, light-hearted, boastful and pleasure-loving, he contrasts with the nobler and more intellectual character of Averroes. His bouts of pleasure gradually weakened his constitution; a severe colic, which seized him on the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... and the Duke of Saxony, should be present as witnesses at the marriage. Philip himself found the consent of these divines and of his most distinguished ally, John Frederick, indispensable. He succeeded first of all in gaining over the versatile Butzer, and sent him in December 1539, on ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... to our theme, the cries of the marchands. It would take a pen like Balzac's, as curiously versatile, as observant, as full of individual ink, to catch all the shades of these odd utterances. You may recollect as you lay in your sweet English bed in London, just as the fog was lifting over the great city early ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... Maltravers, which is indeed a splendid work." Now that we look back at Bulwer-Lytton's prodigious compositions, we are able to perceive more justly than did the critics of his own day what his merits were. For one thing, he was extraordinarily versatile. If we examine his books, we must be astonished at their variety. He painted the social life of his own day, he dived into spectral romance, he revived the beautiful ceremonies of antiquity, he evoked the great shades of English and of Continental history, he made realistic ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... Mr Jollyboy made Martin his head clerk; and then, becoming impatient, he made him his partner off-hand. Then he made Barney O'Flannagan an overseer in the warehouses; and when the duties of the day were over, the versatile Irishman became his confidential servant and went to sup and sleep at the Old Hulk; which, he used to remark, was quite a natural and proper and decidedly comfortable place to ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... perfect command of pitch and break, his beautifully easy action, which never varied with the varying pace, his great ball on the leg-stump—his dropping head-ball—in a word, the infinite ingenuity of that versatile attack. It was no mere exhibition of athletic prowess, it was an intellectual treat, and one with a special significance in my eyes. I saw the "affinity between the two things," saw it in that afternoon's tireless warfare against the flower of professional cricket. It was not that Raffles ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... Chronicle," if they were allowed to pursue quietly the "meditation" which I have thought fit, with, some amount of feasible excuse, to set in fair order, concerning the apotheosis of an evening service in musical form, from the versatile pen of Mr. Berthold Tours, in the key of D, which, with no inconsiderable eclat was in the sequence of events, produced at St. Raphael's Church, Bristol, on Sunday, the 12th inst. A companion to the graceful ...
— Original Letters and Biographic Epitomes • J. Atwood.Slater
... various philosophical systems without fear, but also through the vapours of science and scholarship, while remaining ever true to his highest self. And it was this highest self which exacted from his versatile spirit works as complete as his were, which bade him suffer and learn, that he might ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... similar gifts, though no others, so far as I know, are quite so versatile as these three. Several of the warblers, for example, have attained to more than one set song, notwithstanding the deservedly small reputation of this misnamed family. I have myself heard the golden-crowned thrush, ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... doubt, from a reminiscence of that passage—"It is possible to be a very great man, and to be still very inferior to Julius Caesar, the most complete character, so Lord Bacon thought, of all antiquity. Nature seems incapable of such extraordinary combinations as composed his versatile capacity, which was the wonder even of the Romans themselves. The first general; the only triumphant politician; inferior to none in point of eloquence; comparable to any in the attainments of wisdom, in an age made up of the greatest commanders, statesmen, orators, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... fellow-student, John Thorndyke, now an eminent authority on Medical Jurisprudence. I had been associated with him temporarily in one case as his assistant, and had then been deeply impressed by his versatile learning, his acuteness and his marvellous resourcefulness. Thorndyke was a barrister in extensive practice, and so would be able to tell me at once what was my duty from a legal point of view; and, as he was also a doctor of medicine, ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... current of thought. Deep down in our hearts we were going back to English days; the cumbrous, quaint, queer, old, picturesque times; the dim, haunted times between cock-crowing and morning; those hours of national childhood, when popular ideas had the confiding credulity, the poetic vivacity, and versatile life, which distinguish children ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... drunk with it. Never did I think I should have a good draught of poetry again." Ruskin somewhere considered it the greatest poem of the nineteenth century, "with enough imagination to set up a dozen lesser poets"; and Stedman calls it "a representative and original creation: representative in a versatile, kaleidoscopic presentment of modern life and issues; original, because the most idiosyncratic of its author's poems. An audacious speculative freedom pervades it, which smacks of the New World rather than the Old.... 'Aurora Leigh' is a mirror ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... Capitol that crowns the hill Where Boreas sweeps with icy chill, A masterpiece of studied art Conceived by genius versatile And fashioned with unerring skill, O'erlooks the busy, crowded mart, And, like a kingly domicile, Its burnished dome and sculpture thrill With admiration every heart; And strangers pause beyond the rill To view its grandeur, ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... ancients relegated to slaves will in course of time be more and more largely performed by inanimate machinery. Unskilled labour will for the most part disappear. Skilled labour will consist in the guiding of implements contrived with versatile cunning for the relief of human nerve and muscle. Ultimately there will be no unsettled land to fill, no frontier life, no savage races to be assimilated or extirpated, no extensive migration. Thus life ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... service in 1813, served for a number of years as a clerk, and settled down in Lower Fort Garry District in 1824. Farming, teaching, catechising for the church, acting precentor, a local encyclopaedia and collector of customs, he passed his versatile life, till in the year before the Sayer affair, 1848, he became clerk of Court, which place, with slight interruption, he held for twenty years. One who knew him says: "From his long residence in the Settlement, he has seen Governors, Judges, Bishops, and Clergymen, not to mention ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... Impeachment of Warren Hastings— which, by embodying the cause of a whole country in one individual, and thus combining the extent and grandeur of a national question, with the direct aim and singleness of a personal attack, opened as wide a field for display as the most versatile talents could require, and to Mr. Sheridan, in particular, afforded one of those precious opportunities, of which, if Fortune but rarely offers them to genius, it is genius alone that can fully ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... general intercourse with society; but, with those whom he loved and wished to please, he was gentle and insinuating; and when he chose to open the resources of his highly gifted mind, his conversational talents were more versatile and fascinating, than those of any individual whom I have ever known. There was a cast of deep thought, almost of melancholy, in his countenance, which was ascribed, I know not if correctly, to an early disappointment; but it was seldom banished, even from his smiles, and often increased ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... of the Convention are fluctuating and versatile, as will ever be the case where men are impelled by necessity to act in opposition to their principles. In their eagerness to attribute all the past excesses to Robespierre, they have, unawares, involved themselves in the obligation of not continuing the same system. They ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... Vaccinated a Vapouring, Verbose Varmit of a Vulgar Villainous Vagabond, who Very Verdantly Ventured on a Versatile, Veteran, Valueless Velocipede to Visit the Viceroy of Venice, instead of Visiting ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... charmed the spiritual woman he saw in Anne, so he laid himself out to flatter the natural man he saw in Majendie. And Majendie leaned back in his chair, and gazed at the Canon, the remarkable, the clever, the versatile little Canon, with half-closed eyelids veiling his contemptuous eyes. (He confided to Hannay, later on, that the Canon, in his after-dinner moments, made ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... especially recall George William Curtis, a genius of the first brilliancy and remarkable withal for his versatile conversational powers. I was talking to him on one occasion when someone inquired as to his especial work in the co-operative fold of Brook Farm. His laughing reply was, "Cleaning door knobs." George Ripley was a distinguished scholar and a ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... mother's sentiments were naturally so versatile that they could not be depended on for two days together; but it did not occur to her for the moment that a change had been helped on in the present case by a romantic talk between Mrs. Garland and the miller. But Mrs. Garland could not keep the secret long. She chatted gaily as she walked, ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... Colossae). At an early age he studied at Constantinople, and about 1175 was appointed archbishop of Athens. After the capture of Constantinople by the Franks and the establishment of the Latin empire (1204), he retired to the island of Coos, where he died. He was a versatile writer, and composed homilies, speeches and poems, which, with his correspondence, throw considerable light upon the miserable condition of Attica and Athens at the time. His memorial to Alexis III. Angelus on the abuses of Byzantine administration, the poetical ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... extent of a social character, may, he says, bring about serious consequences. Such exalted persons are apt to regard any intellectual cypher as a great military genius if he happens to be an agreeable and versatile talker, and then the military authorities have not always the courage to disturb the preconceived notions of their sovereign. Result: Society-generals for dinners and balls; after whom rank next the petticoat-generals. And then he referred ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... was a versatile gentleman, serving his country and generation in almost every useful capacity, from chaplain in the continental army to foreign ambassador. He was born in Redding, Ct., 1755, and died near Cracow, Poland, ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... an omelet we must break our eggs; that is, the breaking of eggs is a necessary condition of the omelet. But is it a sufficient condition? Does an omelet appear whenever three eggs are broken? So of the Greek mind. To get such versatile intelligence it may be that such commercial dealings with the world as the geographical Hellas afforded are a necessary condition. But if they are a sufficient condition, why did not the Phoenicians outstrip the Greeks in intelligence? ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... or the casualties on the part of the Diamond X forces would have been much heavier than it was. Even then several were hit, and Billee's hat was carried off his head by a bullet, which, if it had gone a few inches lower, would have ended the career of that versatile cowboy. ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker
... has a more nimble and versatile tongue as well as wit. In the older fiction and drama apparitions spoke seldom, and then merely as ghosts, not as individuals. And ghosts, like kings in drama, were of a dignity and must preserve it in their speech. Or perhaps the authors were doubtful as to the dialogue ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... is given to pigeons for the purpose of taming them, and a curious superstition is that of the "divining-rod," with "its versatile sensibility to water, ore, treasure and thieves," and one whose history is apparently as remote as it is widespread. Francis Lenormant, in his "Chaldean Magic," mentions the divining-rods used by ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... that the abstinent and chastely celibate are exceptionally healthy, energetic, immune. The wildest claims are made. But indeed it is true for all who can see the facts of life simply and plainly, that man is an omnivorous, versatile, various creature and can draw his strength from a hundred varieties of nourishment. He has physiological idiosyncrasies too that are indifferent to biological classifications and moral generalities. It is not ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... have ability enough, the rays of their faculties taken separately are all right; but they are powerless to collect them, to concentrate them upon a single object. They lack the burning glass of a purpose, to focalize upon one spot the separate rays of their ability. Versatile men, universal geniuses, are usually weak, because they have no power to concentrate the rays of their ability, to focalize them upon one point, until they burn a ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... that contained the list of the Speaker's committees; it was well that they could not go back to Ripton into the offices on the square, earlier in December, where Mr. Hamilton Tooting was writing the noble part of that inaugural from memoranda given him by the Honourable Hilary Vane. Yes, the versatile Mr. Tooting, and none other, doomed forever to hide the light of his genius under a bushel! The financial part was written by the Governor-general himself—the Honourable Hilary Vane. And when it was all finished and revised, it was put into a long envelope which bore this printed address: ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... dark heart. Yet I look up, I trust singly, to Him from whom it came yesterday; and thither may I look till again the day break. Can I say, in full sincerity, "more than they that watch for the morning"? Alas that I am so versatile! Christian and worldling within a day. Oh for a deeper sense that I am not my own,—that I have no right to disturb the sanctuary of my own spirit when God has made it such,—that there is no other way than whole-hearted and honest-hearted Christianity ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... life, as it had played itself out in Normandy inns, was here, in this Inn on a Rock, to give us a series of farewell performances. On no other stage, we were agreed, could the versatile French character have had as admirable and picturesque a setting; and surely, on no other bit of French soil could such an astonishing and amazing variety of types be assembled for a final appearance, as came up, day after day, to make the tour of ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... (Hamlet); 'Falstaff and Doll' (King Henry IV., Second Part); 'Macbeth meeting the Witches on the Heath' (Macbeth); 'Robin Goodfellow' (Midsummer Night's Dream). This gallery gave the public an opportunity of judging of Fuseli's versatile powers. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... approached semi-night replaced the day, the gloom being so deep that telegraph poles twenty feet away could not be seen. Breathing was difficult, and the smoke made the eyes water. At Naples, however, a favorable wind had cleared the air of smoke, the sun shone brightly, and the versatile people were happy once more. The goggles and eye-screens had disappeared, but the streets were anything but comfortable, for some six thousand men were at work clearing the ashes from the roofs and main streets and piling them in the middle of the narrow streets, making the passage of ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... broad and versatile mastery that it is difficult to analyze. Thus it is not easy to find salient traits in the art of M. Saint-Saens. We are apt to think mainly of the distinguished beauty of his harmonies, until we remember his subtle counterpoint, or in turn the brilliancy of his orchestration. The one trait that ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... is no place in the United States, so far as I know, where the cow is more versatile or ambidextrous, if I may be allowed the use of a term that is far above my station in life, than here in the mountains of North Carolina, where the obese 'possum and the anonymous ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... thy theme, for shrewdness famed And genius versatile, who far and wide A Wand'rer, after Ilium overthrown, Discover'd various cities, and the mind And manners learn'd of men, in lands remote. He num'rous woes on Ocean toss'd, endured, Anxious to save himself, and to conduct ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... the simple consideration of what he himself has to say, quite independently of any real or supposed connection with this or that literary age or school. Let us close with the words of a most [16] versatile master of English—happily not yet included in Mr. Saintsbury's book—a writer who has dealt with all the perturbing influences of our century in a manner as classical, as idiomatic, as ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... whistled and sang one song with a desperate intentness. That song was "The Rosary." The fish had presumed too far. "This," I shrewdly told myself, "is almost certainly a dream." The soundless words were magic. Gorge and stream vanished, the versatile fish faded to blue sky showing through the green needles of a jack pine. It was a sane world again and still, I thought, with the shadows of ranch house, stable, hay barn, corral, and bunk house going long to the east. ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... the opportunity. The result flattered him in spite of himself. To others she was courteous, affable and sublimely indifferent. When he approached it seemed almost as if a film passed from her eyes, that she awakened into a fuller life and became an enchantress in her versatile powers. He responded with as fine a courtesy as her own, although quite different, but there was a cool, steady self-restraint in eyes and manner which piqued ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... inclining against us—and because the opposition to it was ripening into disorganizing councils. Adams had prepared the way by securing the mediation of Alexander. Then, in that critical period, associated with Russell, Bayard, the learned and versatile Gallatin, and the eloquent and chivalric Clay, he negotiated with firmness, with assiduity, with patience, and with consummate ability, a definitive treaty of peace—a treaty of peace which, although it omitted the causes of the war already obsolete, saved and established and ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... fully realize that they were Angevins. To an English schoolboy Henry II. is little more than the murderer of Beket and the friend of Fair Rosamund. Even an English student finds it hard after all the labours of Professor Stubbs to lay hold of either Henry or his sons. In spite of their versatile ability and of the mark which they have left on our judicature, our municipal liberty, our political constitution, the first three Plantagenets are to most of us little more than dim shapes of strange manner and speech, hurrying to their island realm to extort money, to ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... vacancies, and so they wander on. If a man applies for temporary work, the choice of industry is disappointingly limited. One is tempted to think that the whole superstructure of cheap and free shelters has tended to the standardisation of a low order of existence in this netherworld that attracted the versatile philanthropist at the head of the Salvation Army twenty ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... kind of joyous sigh, "I like so many things! If a thing strikes me with a certain intensity I accept it. I don't want to swagger, but I suppose I'm rather versatile. I like people to be totally different from Henrietta—in the style of Lord Warburton's sisters for instance. So long as I look at the Misses Molyneux they seem to me to answer a kind of ideal. Then Henrietta presents ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... to take off something of his burthen of forty years, by wearing the last fancy of the contemporary buck, a costume of elastic material with distensible warts and horns, changing in colour as he walked, by an ingenious arrangement of versatile chromatophores. And no doubt, if Elizabeth's affection had not been already engaged by the worthless Denton, and if her tastes had not had that odd bias for old-fashioned ways, this extremely chic conception would have ravished her. Bindon ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... remarkable particular, William the Silent resembles Quintus Sertorius; namely, that each, while rebel against his Government, fought in the name of his Government. Mommsen says: "It may be doubted whether any Roman statesman of the earlier period can be compared in point of versatile talent to Sertorius," who, though in rebellion against Rome, did all he did in the name of Rome, fought battles, levied tributes, enfranchised cities, remodeled communities; in short, did in Spain what, in a later ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... and with harmless unconstraint chatted yet a long time with the shrewd and versatile ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... lacking in all appreciation of them, and, if he be so lacking, no amount of explanation will avail to give him understanding. Borrow, in one of his sermons, declared concerning wit: "It is, indeed, a thing so versatile, multiform, appearing in so many shapes and garbs, so variously apprehended of several eyes and judgments, that it seemeth no less hard to settle a clear and certain notion thereof than to make a portrait of Proteus, or to define the figure of the ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... causes which ruined Athens were in full operation at Florence. First and foremost was the petulant and variable temper of a democracy, so well described by Plato, and so ably analyzed by Machiavelli. The want of agreement among the versatile Florentines, fertile in plans but incapable of concerted action, was a chief source of political debility. Varchi and Segni both relate how, in spite of wealth, ability, and formidable forces, the Florentine ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... chapter of accidents, and a volume of motley incidents in various climes, and upon far seas. Being a very strong, active man, with gift of versatile hand and brain, and early acquaintance with handicrafts, Christopher Bert could earn his keep, and make in a year almost as much as he used to give away, or lend without redemption, in a general day of his wealthy time. Hard ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... to such a process? He avowed that he was deeply enamored of Enrica—a man in love is already half vanquished. Why should Marescotti throw away his chance of happiness for a phantasy—a mere dream? There was no real obstacle. He was versatile and visionary, but the very soul of honor. How, if he—Trenta—could bring Marescotti to see how much it would be to Enrica's advantage that he should transplant her from a dreary home, to ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... play." The use of the language, so lucid and so nice in its discriminations, was itself an education for the young who grew up to hear it and to speak it. In a genial yet invigorating climate, in a land where breezes from the mountain and the sea were mingled, the versatile Greeks produced by physical training that vigor and grace of body which they so much admired; and they developed the civil polity, the artistic discernment, and the complex social life, which made them the principal ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... moment, looking into the valley. The gray mists had lifted themselves into the upper air, and the atmosphere was so clear that the road leading to the mountain could be followed by the eye, save where it ran under the masses of foliage; and it seemed to be a most devious and versatile road, turning back on itself at one moment only to plunge boldly forward the next. Nor was it lacking in color. On the levels it was of dazzling whiteness, shining like a pool of water; but at points where it made a visible descent it was alternately red and gray. Something ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... the Transcendental group worthy of mention here is George William Curtis, a versatile and charming personality, not a genius in any sense, but a writer of pleasant and amusing prose, an orator of no small ability, and one of the truest patriots who ever loved and labored for his country. It is in this latter aspect, rather than ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... shall forget it;' or, 'A great personage, whom some of us knew;' or, 'It was a rule with a very worthy and excellent friend of mine, now no more;' or, 'Never was his equal in society, so just in his remarks, so lively, so versatile, so unobtrusive;' or, 'So great a benefactor to his country and to his kind;' or, 'His philosophy so profound.' 'Oh, vanity! vanity of vanities! all is vanity! What profiteth it? What profiteth it? His soul is in hell, O ye children of men! While thus ye speak, his soul is in the beginning ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... there had also descended to him the wonderful beauty, the matchless grace, of his ill-fated father. Great abilities, courage, fascination of manners, were also his; but he had not been endowed with firmness of character, and was at once energetic and versatile. Even at this age, the qualities which became his ruin were ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... often have occasion to remark the fidelity to early habits and tastes by which Lord Byron, though in other respects so versatile, was distinguished. In the juvenile letter, just cited, there are two characteristics of this kind which he preserved unaltered during the remainder of his life;—namely, his punctuality in immediately answering letters, and his love of the simplest ballad ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... feared no danger while she was with me, but that if my object was to prevent her from looking at me, the most efficient way certainly was to apply a bandage to her eyes. Oh! woman, woman!" groaned Wacousta, in fierce anguish of spirit, "who shall expound the complex riddle of thy versatile nature? ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... Although "a poet is naturally a religious animal," we find that the greatest of Roman poets Lucretius, was an Atheist, while even "some of our most brilliant notorieties in the modern world of song are not the most notable for piety." But our versatile Professor easily accounts for this by assuming that there "may be an idolatry of the imaginative, as well as of the knowing faculty." Never did natural historian so jauntily provide for every fact contravening his theories. ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... battle, and in the science of morality. Well-read in history and the Puranas and various branches of learning, and acquainted with the truths of the Vedas and their branches they acquired knowledge, which was versatile and deep. And Pandu, possessed of great prowess, excelled all men in archery while Dhritarashtra excelled all in personal strength, while in the three worlds there was no one equal to Vidura in devotion to virtue and in the knowledge of the dictates ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... Richard; "elegant in a lady's chamber, if you will. Oh, ay, Conrade of Montserrat—who knows not the popinjay? Politic and versatile, he will change you his purposes as often as the trimmings of his doublet, and you shall never be able to guess the hue of his inmost vestments from their outward colours. A man-at-arms? Ay, a fine figure on horseback, and can bear him well in the tilt-yard, and at the barriers, ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... human creature Chambers is strikingly versatile. It must always be remembered that he started life as a painter. There is a story that Charles Dana Gibson and Robert W. Chambers sent their first offerings to Life at the same time. Mr. Chambers sent a picture and Mr. Gibson sent a bit of writing. ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... Augustine united; a kind of Protestant pope, to whom everybody looks for advice and consolation. What a wonderful man! No wonder the Germans are so fond of him and so proud of him,—a Briareus with a hundred arms; a marvel, a wonder, a prodigy of nature; the most gifted, versatile, hard-working man of his century ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... running in the freshets, had gripped him so relentlessly that one of his legs was twisted to almost utter uselessness. With his crutches, however, he could get about after his fashion; and being handy with his fingers and versatile of wit, he managed to make a living well enough at the little odd jobs of mechanical repairing which the Settlement folk, and the mill hands in particular, brought to his cabin. His cabin, which was practically a citadel, stood on a steep cone of rock, upthrust from the bed ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... of the director of this amusement was Merbod. He could imitate the voices of all the birds, and was a merry, versatile fellow, who knew how to do a thousand things, and of whom ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... perceived by the eyes of the body. But in the reign of the younger Andronicus, these monasteries were visited by Barlaam, [41] a Calabrian monk, who was equally skilled in philosophy and theology; who possessed the language of the Greeks and Latins; and whose versatile genius could maintain their opposite creeds, according to the interest of the moment. The indiscretion of an ascetic revealed to the curious traveller the secrets of mental prayer and Barlaam embraced the opportunity of ridiculing the Quietists, who placed the soul in the navel; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... tranquillity of a never-varying countenance concealed a busy, ardent soul, which never ruffled even the veil behind which it worked, and was alike inaccessible to artifice and love; a versatile, formidable, indefatigable mind, soft, and ductile enough to be instantaneously moulded into all forms; guarded enough to lose itself in none; and strong enough to endure every vicissitude of fortune. A greater master in reading and in winning men's ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... a memoir of Archbishop Trench has sufficed to recall prominently to the public mind the virtues, endowments, and achievements of one of the most notable of latter-day divines. Richard Chenevix Trench was one of the most versatile of writers. He discoursed with equal knowledge and effect on Biblical and philological topics, and his prose work will always be respectfully regarded by the students alike of divinity and of language. But though, on these subjects, his pronouncements may in time grow stale or require correction, ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... Shakespearian forgeries. We shall never know the exact truth about the fabrication of the Shakespearian documents, and 'Vortigern' and the other plays. We have, indeed, the confession of the culprit: habemus confitentem reum, but Mr. W. H. Ireland was a liar and a solicitor's clerk, so versatile and accomplished that we cannot always trust him, even when he is narrating the tale of his own iniquities. The temporary but wide and turbulent success of the Ireland forgeries suggests the disagreeable reflection that criticism and learning ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... example. All my life I have been in banks—I have got on in banks. I have even been a bank manager. But was I happy? No. Why wasn't I happy? Because it did not suit my temperament. I am too adventurous—too versatile. Practically I have thrown it over. I do not suppose I shall ever manage a bank again. They would be glad to get me, no doubt; but I have learnt the lesson of my temperament—at last.... No! I shall never manage a ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... compelled to alter this desirable policy—for something in Lord Valleys' character made him fear that, in real emergency, he would exert himself to the point of the gravest discomfort sooner than be left to wait behind. A fellow like young Harbinger, of course, he understood—versatile, 'full of beans,' as he expressed it to himself in his more confidential moments, who had imbibed the new wine (very intoxicating it was) of desire for social reform. He would have to be given his head a little—but there would be ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the Cursory Observations as the three contemporary analyses of the poems which a reader should consult.[37] The pamphlet is now offered to twentieth-century readers as an illustration of the mature and versatile critical powers of one of ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone
... protection of a surgeon in the army, whose embraces she relinquished for those of her present illustrious possessor. How long she may keep him in captivation, is a surmise of rather equivocal import; however ardent at present, his attachment, Mrs. C*r*y must be aware of the versatile propensities of his R*y*l H*ghn*ss of Y**k, and sans doubt like her predecessor, Mary Ann C***ke, will make the most of a ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... work of significance, The Essay on Man, a professedly philosophical poem by an author who knew little of philosophy, was published in four epistles, in 1733-4. Bolingbroke's brilliant, versatile, and shallow intellect had strongly impressed Swift, and had also fascinated Pope. It has been commonly supposed that the Essay owes its existence to his suggestion and guidance. The poet believed in his philosophy, and had the loftiest estimate of his ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... was an active, industrious and versatile Member of Congress for more than twenty years. He was born in Ohio, graduated at Brown University, was admitted to the bar, but, I believe, rarely practiced his profession. His natural bent was for editorial and political conflicts, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... a highly-gifted one too. He sings beautiful songs of his own invention to the lyre; his ecstatic and versatile mind works him up into any frame of feeling; but his soul is perverted; it is soaked in wickedness as a sponge drinks up water. He is a vessel full of beautiful gifts, but he has forfeited all that was good ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... see that Dr. Ryerson's character was a many-sided one; while his talents were remarkably versatile. He was an able writer on public affairs; a noted Wesleyan Minister, and a successful and skilful leader among his brethren. But his fame in the future will mainly rest upon the fact that he was a distinguished Canadian Educationist, and the Founder of a great ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... to blame. I have read the expostulations of Mr. Finck about the untilled fields of Chopin. Yet his favorite Paderewski plays season in and season out a selection from the scheme I have just given, with possibly a few additions. The most versatile—and—also delightful—Chopinist is Pachmann. From his very first afternoon recital at old Chickering Hall, New York, in 1890, he gave a taste of the unfamiliar Chopin. Joseffy, thrice wonderful wizard, who has attained to the height of a true philosophic ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... by a stronger name—and curiously enough with him the usual conditions were reversed and he received a commission for a statue of his father, Judge Story, before he had made any definite turning toward the art of sculpture. A young man of versatile gifts and accomplished scholarship, sculpture was to him one among the many attractive forms of art rather than the supreme attraction; and it was the stimulus of the given work that determined him as a sculptor, rather ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... of recent erection; the ancient temple had been thrown down in the earthquake sixteen years before, and the new building had become as much in vogue with the versatile Pompeians as a new church or a new preacher may be with us. The oracles of the goddess at Pompeii were indeed remarkable, not more for the mysterious language in which they were clothed, than for the credit which was attached to their ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... the field, or of flying through Media and Armenia and seizing Cappadocia, but came to no resolution while his friends stayed with him. After turning to many expedients in his mind, which his changeable fortune had made versatile, he at last put his men in array, and encouraged the Greeks and barbarians; as for the phalanx and the Argyraspids, they encouraged him, and bade him be of good heart; for the enemy would never be able to stand them. For indeed they were the oldest of Philip's and Alexander's ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... stupendous results of this reign was the establishment of the "Manufacture des Meubles de la Couronne," or, as it is usually called, "Manufacture des Gobelins." Artists of all kinds were gathered together and given apartments in the Louvre and the wonderfully gifted and versatile Le Brun was put at the head. Tapestry, goldsmiths' work, furniture, jewelry, etc., were made, and with the royal protection and interest France rose to the position of world-wide supremacy in the arts. Le Brun had the same taste and love of magnificence as Louis, and had also extraordinary ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... the boy had been confided, Chu-koh Liang, is the most versatile and inventive genius of Chinese antiquity. As the founder of the house of Chou discovered in an old fisherman a [Page 115] counsellor of state who paved his way to the throne, so Liu Pi found this man in a humble cottage where he was hiding ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... went to Germany partly to study the new philosophy which was beginning to shine—though very feebly and intermittingly—in England. When he had returned he began to read Kant and Schelling, or rather to mix excursions into their books with the miscellaneous inquiries to which his versatile ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... Buddha by turns, and sometimes all at once. For Mr. Bellingham was a professed Buddhist and a profound student of Eastern moralities, and he was a thorough scholar in certain branches of the classics. The combination of these qualities, with the tact and versatile fluency of a man of the world, was a rare one, and was a source of unceasing surprise to his intimates. At the present moment he was a diplomatist, since he could not be a diplomat, and to his energetic suggestion and furtherance ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... was, he had accurately described a certain class of that versatile nation, the French, which are often met with in every country, wanderers or exiles from home. While we write, we have one in our own mind, well known to our good citizens who is familiarly designated by ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... reputation in the century he lives in has equaled this actor's. Talma and Rachel, if as great as he, were not so complete, so versatile. This sketch has mentioned but a few of his many marvelous creations, each so rich in individuality, each so marked and so distinct from the other, and each in its turn so original and novel. In his proud face, his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... [——] the questionable praise of being their hack. For Bentley and Hatchard, alike with Rivington and Frazer, for Colburn and Nisbet, as well as Knight, Tilt, Tyas, Moxon, and Murray, I seem to be gratuitously pouring out in equal measure my versatile meditations; at this sign all customers may be suited; only, shop-lifters will be visited with the utmost rigour of that obnoxious monosyllable.—Well, poor Epic, good night to you, and my benison on those who ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... rivers, and might answer very well, but I think it reather too low to venture a permanent establishment, particularly if built of brick or other durable materials, at any considerable expence; for so capricious, and versatile are these rivers, that it is difficult to say how long it will be, untill they direct the force of their currents against this narrow part of the low plain, which when they do, must shortly yeald to their influence; in such case a few years only ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... Changeable, versatile, inconstant Eusebius, where is now your burst of philanthropy—where is all your rage? Pretty havoc you would but now have made, had you been armed with thunder—thunder, I say, for yours would have been no silent devastation among ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... a rich song from the same fertile and versatile pen, which was sung at one of our Red Lion meetings. That is why I want you to look at it, not that you will understand it, because it is full of allusions to occurrences known only in the scientific circles. At Ipswich we had ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... with Turkey, and enabling Italy to return to normal life? Why should time and opportunity be given to the Turks and Kurds for the massacre of Armenian men, women, and children? This candid reminder is said to have had a sobering effect on the versatile delegates yearning for a holiday. The situation that evoked it will arouse the passing wonder ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... smoothly for Mr. Sheldon's family. Georgy was very happy in the society of a companion who seemed really to have a natural taste for the manufacture of pretty little head-dresses from the merest fragments of material in the way of lace and ribbon. Diana had all that versatile cleverness and capacity for expedients which is likely to be acquired in a wandering and troubled life. She had learned more in her three years of discomfort with her father than in all the undeviating course of the Hyde-Lodge studies; she had improved her ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... He went abroad, as he affirmed at the time, "for purposes of study," whereat we all smiled, for Ken, so far as we knew him, was more likely to do anything else than to study. He was a young fellow of buoyant temperament, lively and social in his habits, of a brilliant and versatile mind, and possessing an income of twelve or fifteen thousand dollars a year; he could sing, play, scribble, and paint very cleverly, and some of his heads and figure- pieces were really well done, considering that he never had any regular ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... she had not felt thirty; she could only accept the almanac and the rules of arithmetic. The interminable years of her marriage rolled back, and she was eighteen again, ingenuous and trustful, convinced that her versatile husband was unique among his sex. The fading of a short-lived and factitious passion, the descent of the unique male to the ordinary level of males, the births of her three girls and their rearing and training: all these things seemed as trifles to her, mere excrescences ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... Eastern question which would in effect have been the work of Russia only. The more daring policy of Canning, by which Great Britain had attempted to take the lead as opportunity offered, either in active co-operation with Russia or in active opposition to her, could only be directed by a more versatile statesman than the nation now possessed. The accession to office of Wellington, though it left Dudley at the foreign office, was really marked by a return to the policy of Castlereagh, a policy which, if not brilliant, was at least honourable, consistent, and considerate, and which in the ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... spiritual life is quite other, not harsh and constrained, but free and spontaneous—a wealth of feeling playing about a constantly shifting centre. Spirit is not consecutive and law-abiding, but capricious and wanton, seeking the beautiful in no orderly progression, but in a refined and versatile sensibility. If this be the nature of spirit, and if spirit be the nature of reality, then he is most wise who is most rich in sentiment. The Romanticists were the exponents of an absolute sentimentalism. And they did not ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... easily be supposed, the divines with whom he was subsequently engaged in controversy did not suffer to sink into oblivion. [229] A still more infamous apostate was Joseph Haines, whose name is now almost forgotten, but who was well known in his own time as an adventurer of versatile parts, sharper, coiner, false witness, sham bail, dancing master, buffoon, poet, comedian. Some of his prologues and epilogues were much admired by his contemporaries; and his merit as an actor was universally acknowledged. This man professed himself a Roman Catholic, and went to Italy in ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... cessation of the deep baying of the dog. Cherry was one of the best and most versatile that the police had ever acquired ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... of very versatile intelligence, and, besides being a great musician, he made organs of lead with his own hand. In S. Domenico he made one of cardboard, which has ever remained sweet and good; and in S. Clemente there was another, also by his hand, which was placed on high, with ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... big rough stone house, loop-holed for defence against the Indians. Under this one roof the enterprising owner assembled a variety of industries and performed a variety of functions that would dismay the most versatile man of any older community. Here he kept a general store, operated blacksmith and wheelwright shops, served as post-master, ran a hotel, and sat as justice of the peace. Indeed, he got so much in the ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... satisfaction that the Army Estimates of L506,500,000 would, if properly manipulated, work out at little more than a fourth of that amount. Between now and the Budget Mr. CHAMBERLAIN might do worse than get his versatile colleague to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 9, 1919 • Various
... but mixed in parties, where her conversational talents rendered her highly acceptable, and carried on, besides, a very extensive correspondence. History, biography, poetry, tales, local descriptions, foreign correspondence, didactic essays, even the culinary art, by turns employed her versatile powers. Most of these compositions were occasional pieces, furnished to periodical works; to some she attached her name, and a few were separately published. Amongst the latter is a very pleasing biographical sketch of Mrs. Maclean (formerly Miss Landon), ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... journalist; he brings to the editor of a paper an article of his composition, a violent attack on a law. "My dear M. Macaire," says the editor, "this must be changed; we must PRAISE this law." "Bon, bon!" says our versatile Macaire. "Je vais retoucher ca, et je vous fais en faveur de la loi UN ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... trials to determine the worth of these hypotheses to blend the wide array of technology available to the total joint force and according to bold new concepts. The results will determine the worth of Rapid Dominance concepts by judging whether they will permit even more balanced, versatile, and lethal combinations to fit known and anticipated future ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... mood this window was a kind of postern to the house for innocent deception, beyond the eye of both the sitting-room and cook. Sometimes it was the bridge of a lofty ship with a pilot going up and down, or it was a lighthouse to mark a channel. It was as versatile as the kitchen step-ladder which—on Thursday afternoons when the cook was out—unbent from its sober household duties and joined him as an equal. But chiefly on this sill the child read his books on summer days. His cousins sat inside on chairs, starched for company, and read safe and ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... Ravillac or a Damiens in Germany; but they have been common in France, and the Sovereigns of France cannot be too circumspect in their maintenance of ancient etiquette to command the dignified respect of a frivolous and versatile people.' ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 4 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... nor, whatever the range of thought we may justly concede him, may we, therefore, expect the sublime; he is below that. With the eloquence of an impassioned imagination, united to the unornamented vigor of a ready, versatile, and comprehensive reason, he reminds one of some colossal engine in forceful, though not ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... highest standard, the standard of Elektra, Don Quixote, and Till Eulenspiegel, not to mention the beautiful songs. Ariadne on Naxos was a not particularly successful experiment, and what the Alp Symphony will prove to be we may only surmise. Probably this versatile tone-poet has said his best. He is not a second Richard Wagner, not yet has he the charm of the Lizst personality, but he bulks too large in contemporary history to be called a decadent, although in the precise meaning of the word, without its ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... of the vegetable life of the globe; but his is a monotonous business, like the painting of miles and miles of palings: grass, grass, grass, trees, trees, trees, ad infinitum; whereas yellow leads a roving, versatile life, and is seldom called upon for such monotonous labour. The sands of Sahara are probably the only conspicuous instance of yellow thus working by the piece. It is in the quality, in the diversity of the things it colours, rather than in their mileage or tonnage, that yellow is distinguished; ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... Elizabeth (1558-1603) the progress of classic culture and the employment of Dutch and Italian artists led to a gradual introduction of Renaissance forms, which, as in France, were at first mingled with others of Gothic origin. Among the foreign artists in England were the versatile Holbein, Trevigi and Torregiano from Italy, and Theodore Have, Bernard Jansen, and Gerard Chrismas from Holland. The pointed arch disappeared, and the orders began to be used as subordinate features in the decoration ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... this most versatile lady made every drop of the soup that was prepared for the men herself, and she has, so a Belgian military doctor says, saved more lives than he has with her timely cups of hot, nourishing food. It is only the most seriously wounded men who are taken to the field hospital, ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... Luther as the instrument of Satan because he persecuted his Protestant subjects. When he died, his brother, [Sidenote: April, 1539] the Protestant Henry the Pious, succeeded and introduced the Reform amid general acclamation. Two years later this duke was followed by his son, the versatile but treacherous Maurice. In the year 1539 a still greater acquisition came to the Schmalkaldic League in the conversion of Brandenburg ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... too funny! Some of it was too rich to keep. Karl came here the day after he returned—wanted to hear me talk of Ernestine, you know. People in love aren't exactly versatile in their conversation. I did talk about her for two hours, and then I ventured to change the subject. 'Karl,' I said, 'what do you think of the colour they're painting the new Fifty-seventh ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... of poets, the free and mighty leader of European song, was, what is not ordinarily held to be a source of poetical inspiration—the political life. The boy had sensibility, high aspirations, and a versatile and passionate nature; the student added to this energy, various learning, gifts of language, and noble ideas on the capacities and ends of man. But it was the factions of Florence which made Dante ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... his pass, and returns to civil life, so they tell me, with a dangerous knowledge that he is a suckling Von Moltke, and may apply his learning when occasion offers. Given trouble, that man will be a nuisance, because he is a hideously versatile American, to begin with, as cock-sure of himself as a man can be, and with all the racial disregard for human life to back him, through any ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... magnanimous, modest, noble, not easy to be understood (!), parsimonious, pious (twice), profound in opinion, prone to regret his acts, prudent, rash, religious, reverent, self-confident, sincere, singular in mode of thinking, strong, temperate, unreserved, unsteady, valuable in friendship, variable, versatile, violent, volatile, wily, and worthy.' Zadkiel concludes thus:—'The square of Saturn to the moon will add to the gloomy side of the picture, and give a tinge of melancholy at times to the native's character, and also a disposition to look at the dark side of things, ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... one of England's oldest and most successful descriptive writers, talks very entertainingly regarding the emancipated slave. The first trip made to this country by the versatile writer referred to was during ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... brother, oddly enough, of the brilliant but infidel Lord Herbert of Cherbury; which lord was a versatile man of talent, but not a man of genius like ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... that if Babar had been immortal he might possibly have beaten back Sher Shah. But that admission serves to prove my argument. Babar was a very able general. So likewise was Sher Khan. Humayun was flighty, versatile, and unpractical; as a general of but small account. It is possible that the Sher Khan who triumphed over Humayun might have been beaten by Babar. But that only proves that the system introduced by Babar was the system to which he had been accustomed all his life—the ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... (irresolute) 605; oscillate &c 314; vibrate between, two extremes, oscillate between, two extremes; alternate; have as man phases as the moon. Adj. changeable, changeful; changing &c 140; mutable, variable, checkered, ever changing; protean, proteiform^; versatile. unstaid^, inconstant; unsteady, unstable, unfixed, unsettled; fluctuating &c v.; restless; agitated &c 315; erratic, fickle; irresolute &c 605; capricious &c 608; touch and go; inconsonant, fitful, spasmodic; vibratory; vagrant, wayward; desultory; afloat; alternating; alterable, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... disconsolate side-whisker. He was not quite used to that side-whisker yet, for it had only recently come within the margin of cultivation. In active service Grodman had been clean-shaven, like all members of the profession—for surely your detective is the most versatile of actors. Mrs. Drabdump closed the street door quietly, and pointed to the stairs, fear operating like a polite desire to give him precedence. Grodman ascended, amusement still glimmering in his eyes. Arrived on the landing he knocked peremptorily at the door, crying, "Nine o'clock, ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... state of India had for some time occupied much of the attention of the British Parliament. Towards the close of the American war, two committees of the Commons sat on Eastern affairs. In one Edmund Burke took the lead. The other was under the presidency of the able and versatile Henry Dundas, then Lord Advocate of Scotland. Great as are the changes which, during the last sixty years, have taken place in our Asiatic dominions, the reports which those committees laid on the table of the House will still be found ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... gamesters and courtezans, and was at length left with resources barely sufficient to enable him to return to Canada. Settling in Montreal, his extraordinary acquaintance with both schools of law, his impassioned and versatile eloquence, his ready repartee, his habitual, grim and grotesque humour, his outrageous sallies of wit, his unmerciful logic, his fierce invective, his irony, his sarcasm, and his deep, irresistible scorn, all heightened by his singularly expressive personal presence, ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... so changed Suzanna," she said at last; "I've disappointed her, I fear, about something or other. Dear me, what insight versatile children do demand in a mother. And Suzanna takes everything so very seriously. And Maizie stares at me too, with a little bewildered expression. It's strange that Maizie, with all her literalness, can understand at times Suzanna's disappointments when her fancies ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... December 18, 1813, Sarah Bedell, a lady of Huguenot descent, who made for him a happy home during fifty-seven years.[1] He bought a house in Hempstead, expecting to remain there; and in the household, as in business, he gave rein to his ardent and versatile inventive faculty. One of his domestic contrivances rocked the cradle, fanned away the flies, and played a lullaby to the baby. He sold the patent in Connecticut to a Yankee peddler for a horse and wagon, and the peddler's stock, including a hurdy-gurdy. Another invention ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond
... since those early days when you and I, who are of totally different tastes and temperament, first met and became friends. I was attracted by your wide knowledge, versatile vigour of mind, and engaging personality, which subsequent years have not diminished. You were strenuously engaged at that time in breaking down the weevilly traditions of a bygone age, and helping to create a new era in the art of steamship management, and, at the same time, ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... domestic restriction of machinery. A tea-cosy may have to do for an Admiral's cocked hat; it all depends on whether the amateur actor can swear like an Admiral. A hearth-rug may have to do for a bear's fur; it all depends on whether the wearer is a polished and versatile man of the world and can grunt like a bear. A clergyman's hat (to my own private and certain knowledge) can be punched and thumped into the exact shape of a policeman's helmet; it all depends on the clergyman. I mean it depends on ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... the time of the Five-Years War, the Foreign Policy conducted from Washington was almost entirely Pan-American, and the Monroe Doctrine was the beginning and end of it; for even if that versatile man, President Roosevelt, was fond of extending his activities to other spheres, as, for instance, when he brought the Russo-Japanese War to an end by the Peace of Portsmouth, the Panama Canal scheme remained his favorite child. But in the case of ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... were a versatile, unsteady race, and exceedingly given to make and unmake kings. They had for a long time vacillated between old Muley Abul Hassan and his son, Boabdil el Chico, sometimes setting up the one, sometimes the other, and sometimes both at once, according to the pinch and pressure ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... rarely met with, and we may trust Hawthorne's word that Constantino Bacci was one of them; not only a skilful driver, but a generous provider, honest, courteous, kindly, and agreeable. They went first to Siena, where they were entertained for a week or more by the versatile Mr. Story, and where Hawthorne wrote an eloquent description of the cathedral; then over the mountain pass where Radicofani nestles among the iron-browed crags above the clouds; past the malarious Lake of Bolsena, scene of the miracle which Raphael has ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... with short clubs, were not perfectly sure to be friendly. Coronado felt that, if ever he got his wife and his fortune, he should have earned them. He was resolute, however; there was no flinching yet in this versatile, yet obstinate nature; he was as wicked and as enduring as ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... reclaimed in large numbers, it is most likely they will become extinct as a race; but there is less difficulty with regard to the Mamelucos, who, even when the proportion of white blood is small, sometimes become enterprising and versatile people.Many of the Ega Indians, including all the domestic servants, are savages who have been brought from the neighbouring rivers— the Japura, the Issa, and the Solimoens. I saw here individuals of at least sixteen different ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... Fielding's discourse! So versatile; so bending to the changes of the occasion; so obsequious to my curiosity, and so abundant in that very knowledge in which I was most deficient, and on which I set the most value, the knowledge of the human heart; of society ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... editing a London daily at an early age, he had wisely determined to learn the whole business of newspaper journalism from the beginning. At the ago of eighteen he was sub-editor on a big provincial daily; but his brilliant and versatile intelligence soon wearied of the monotony of the life, and he came to London to demand the right ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... in its unparalleled antiquity; strong in its reminiscences; strong in its recent persecutions; strong in its Pharaonic relics, regarded by all men with a superstitious or reverent awe—and the free-thinking and versatile Greeks. The occasion was like some others in history, some even in our own times; a small but energetic body of invaders was holding in subjection an ancient ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... with horses and vans, so that the whole frontage of the premises was very considerable. A brass plate said, "R. Bartley, ship-broker and commission agent"; but the man was evidently a ship-owner and a carrier besides; so this miscellaneous shop roused hopes in our versatile hero. He rapidly surveyed the outside, and then cast hungry glances through the window of the man's office. It was a bow-window of unusual size, through which the proprietor or his employees could see a long way up and down the river. Through this window Hope peered. Repulses had made him timid. ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
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