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Masterful   Listen
adjective
Masterful  adj.  
1.
Inclined to play the master; domineering; imperious; arbitrary.
2.
Having the skill or power of a master; indicating or expressing power or mastery. "His masterful, pale face."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Masterful" Quotes from Famous Books



... Lizzie Farnshaw on one hand, true to her innate nature she handled fate in so masterful a manner that even poverty could not cheat her youth of all its prerogatives. In order to sufficiently nourish the teams which must be used in seeding, Josiah Farnshaw had been obliged to use a part of his seed corn for feed. In despair at the thought of not being able to plant all the land ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger

... you think that?" says Joyce, subdued by the masterful manner of the other, and by something honest and above board about her that is her chief characteristic. There is no suspicion, either, about her of her questions being prompted by mere idle curiosity. She has said she wanted to know, and there was meaning ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... than on exported goods, and this naturally had a very bad effect on German manufactures. He would have liked to remedy all these deficiencies by making all railways the property of the Empire (we see again his masterful mind, which dislikes all compromise); in this, however, he was prevented by the opposition of the other States, who would not surrender the control of their own lines. In Prussia he was able to carry out this policy of purchase of all private lines by the State; by the time ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam

... Palace in the strict sense of the word. It was built (1649-1655), and for centuries was used, as a Town Hall. As such it is a masterpiece, and one's imagination can easily go back to the times when the powerful and masterful Burgomasters and Sheriffs met in the almost oppressing splendour of its vast hall. It is an ideal meeting-place for stern merchants, enterprising shipowners, and energetic traders. Every hall, every room, every ornament speaks of trade, trade, ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough

... wonderfully pretty, and her small, pointed chin, and her witch-like imperious ways. Was it her money, the sense that she could do as she liked with most people, that made her so domineering and masterful? Very likely. On the journey he had put it down just to a natural and very surprising impudence. That was when he believed that she was a teacher, earning her bread. But the impudence had not prevented him from finding it much more amusing to ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... travel the rim of the circle, yet wider and wider it grows, Yet farther and farther it reaches till Love conquers all of her foes, And Faith to the far journey beckons, and Truth with her promises sweet Sounds the call of the masterful ages and hurries the march of ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller

... have been retrogressions in the history of life, continued through unthinkably long ages, and although great races, the Flying Dragons for instance, have become utterly extinct, leaving no successors whatsoever, we feel sure that there has been on the whole a progress towards nobler, more masterful, more emancipated, more intelligent, and better forms of life—a progress towards what mankind at its best has always regarded as best, i.e. affording most enduring satisfaction. So we think of evolution going ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... had spread across him, gathering the top edge of it up under the front of his Eton jacket, offered luxurious bedding. But Camp was a typical conservative, slow-witted, stubborn against the ingress of a new idea. This tall, somewhat masterful stranger must prove himself a good man and true—according to bull-dog understanding of those terms—before he could hope to gain entrance to that faithful, though ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... Joe Bullitt now made his appearance at the other end of the porch. Mr. Bullitt, though almost a year younger than either William or Johnnie Watson, was of a turbulent and masterful disposition. Moreover, in regard to Miss Pratt, his affections were in as ardent a state as those of his rivals, and he lacked Johnnie's meekness. He firmly declined to be shunted by Miss Parcher, who was trying to favor William's cause, according to a promise he had won of her by strong pleading. ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington

... glimmered like a young joy through the tragic mask of Constance, and Sherringham's heart beat faster as he caught it in her face. It only showed her as more intelligent, and yet there had been a time when he thought her stupid! Masterful the whole spirit in which she carried the scene, making him cry to himself from point to point, "How she feels it, sees it and ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... flame alive. Thus do they unintentionally serve the State. So far as they are concerned their beneficence is quite adventitious, their service supererogatory. For they do not live to serve humanity, but to serve their masterful and inhuman passion; by serving that faithfully they save the world. Let them continue to think and feel, watching, untroubled, the cloudless heavens, till men, looking up from their beastly labours, again catch ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell

... well-dressed elderly man, with an expectant, masterful look, stood on the doorstep, glanced in with a smile, and knocked. Miss Marilla Hender blushed, smoothed her pretty hair anxiously with both hands, and stepped down from her little platform to answer the summons. There was hardly a shut mouth ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... only two true prophets, Calhoun and Clay—both men of equal might, and resolution, and intellect—gifted as beseems their vocation, masterful and heroic; and to these all other men are subordinate in the great ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... explained Palmerston, who seemed, since breaking the ice of his confession, to have grown some inches taller, and altogether more masterful. "She don't know why I put all these questions to her. She sets it down to curiosity: when, all the time, ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... evoked implicit obedience from his descendants for generations. Side by side in man's strange nature, with his self-will and love of independence, lies an equally strong tendency to obey and follow any masterful voice that speaks loudly and with an assumption of authority. The opinions of a clique, the dogmas of a sect, the habits of a set, the sayings of a favourite author, the fashions of our class—all these rule men with a sway far more absolute than is exercised ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... above the table, and entertained the wild idea of asking him to evoke a blessing. To complete the confusion of his appearance, he was called "Senor" Perkins, for no other reason, apparently, than his occasional, but masterful, use of the ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte

... they are very far apart. One has but to read their favorite scripture, to see the norm upon which the gorgeous art of Japan has been developed. Probably no single book in the voluminous canon of the Greater Vehicle gives one so masterful a key to Japanese Buddhism. Its pages are crowded with sensuous descriptions of all that is attractive to both the reason and the understanding. Its descriptions of Paradise are those which would suit also the realistic Mussulman. Its ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... lettering on a little buff-coloured pamphlet, to read which made one shiver and creep. Then I remembered distinctly all about it. That long-forgotten pamphlet came back with startling vividness to my mind. I had been a mere lad then, and Moreau was, I suppose, about fifty,—a prominent and masterful physiologist, well-known in scientific circles for his extraordinary imagination and his ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells

... With a masterful grace which others imitated, indeed, but could not copy, West extricated his lady from her gallants, and led her away to a pretty haven; not indeed, to a conservatory, since there was none, but to a bewitching ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... her face and throat in a torrent. She snatched her eyes away, and cowered back in the corner, going red and white by turns, now angry, now frightened, now bewildered, until his gaze, half masterful, half pleading, again conquered hers. Galen Albret had ceased tapping his chair. In the dim light he sat, staring straight before ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White

... race would tend to assume the character of a flight and a pursuit. The king would be given a start; he ran and his competitors ran after him, and if he were overtaken he had to yield the crown and perhaps his life to the lightest of foot among them. In time a man of masterful character might succeed in seating himself permanently on the throne and reducing the annual race or flight to the empty form which it seems always to have been within historical times. The rite was sometimes ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... but, of course, this with her was no uncommon sign: duty and prayer ordered her life. Her sufferings, I say, had been great, but they had been encountered by a fortitude that was greater still. Throughout all her life, indeed, she was the most notable example that our time has produced of the masterful power of man’s spiritual nature when at its highest to conquer in its warfare with earthly conditions, as her brother Gabriel’s life was the most notable example of the struggle of the spiritual nature with the bodily when ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... had a husband like that I would never have yawned," she went on; "and besides, Robert is too masterful and would be too jealous to let one ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn

... and colours, and chance-wise Doth daub, befouling walls and canvases, Is not a painter; but, unhelped by these, He who in art is masterful and wise. Cowls and the tonsure do not make a friar; Nor make a king wide realms and pompous wars; But he who is all Jesus, Pallas, Mars, Though he be slave or base-born, wears the tiar. Man is ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella

... your future husband is a masterful person who intends you to 'toe the line.' But if it's his heart line, it will be ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... soar beyond a short rest at the Base. Meanwhile it was pleasant to lie between real sheets and to watch real English girls making beds, taking temperatures, and looking after the newly wounded with a blend of tenderness and masterful competence. Their worst job appeared to be fighting the Somme mud. The casualties from the trench region were invariably caked with dirt until the nurses had bathed and cleaned them with ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott

... think for the first time. They opened their eyes and realized that they were in the world. Then, with a thrill of independence, they realized that they could look at the world critically. They did so and found it faulty. The intoxication of assuming the masterful position of a critic of the social system—which it is every man's right to assume—is unbalancing at first. The very young critic is very much unbalanced. He is strongly in favor of wiping out the old order and starting a new one. They actually managed ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford

... vowed to defend all orphans, maidens, and widows of good family, and wherever they heard of murderers, robbers, or masterful thieves who oppressed the people, to bring them to the laws, to the best ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... not to tarry long. For the Duke d'Andria had noted her beauty, and went straightway to pay his court to the Prince of Venosa. Encountering Dona Maria in the Palace with no other by, he did beseech her in right gentle, and withal gallant and masterful wise, that very favour she was herself well disposed and well resolved to grant him. She did lead him to her chamber instantly, and did there refuse him naught of all he was fain ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France

... women who interest us most, for the men of the race, masterful and brave, heroic even in certain great crisis, have often shown ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney

... They had drawn a green portiere across the curtain pole in the doorway until the little alcove with the bookcase was shut off from the larger room for all practical intents and purposes. Jimmy, the Southern Avenue boy, waxing more and more masterful, had appointed himself postmaster, and strutted beside the narrow opening which remained. And to hold that position in a game of "Post-office" is no slight thing. Not only is the postmaster the sole witness of all that transpires behind ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely

... lock of black hair, seemed even greater than before. His black beard poured forward in a more impressive cascade, and his clear grey eyes, with their insolent and sardonic eyelids, were even more masterful than of yore. ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle

... ended. Where Durham played the dictator, Sydenham preferred to intrigue and to manage men, to win them by his adroitness and to convince them by his energy and his business knowledge. He was well fitted for the transition tasks before him, though too masterful to fill the role of ornamental monarch which the advocates of responsible government ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton

... and fell. Mary guided him there; and then stood silent and flushed, conscious that she herself had brought the supreme moment to its birth. The same perception rushed upon Meynell. He looked into her eyes, smiling and masterful, all his ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... the Colonel's earnest invitation, returned to the Chace with her son Rupert, then five years old. There she ruled as mistress, for her disposition was a masterful one, and she was a notable housekeeper. The colonel gladly resigned the reins of government into her hands. The house and surrounding land were his; the estate whose rental enabled the household to be maintained ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty

... may as well marry Louise Merrick and settle down to a life of respectability. You've a dashing, masterful way which no girl of her sort can long resist. I propose that you make desperate love to Louise Merrick and so cut Arthur Weldon out of the deal entirely. My part of the comedy will be to attract him to my side again. Now you have the ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne

... populous[FN236] city, abounding in good; but he oppressed its people and used them foully, so that he ruined[FN237] the city; and he was named none other than tyrant and misdoer. Now he was wont, whenas he heard of a masterful man[FN238] in another land, to send after him and tempt him with money to take service with him; and there was a certain tither, who exceeded all his brethren in oppression of the people and foulness of dealing. So the king sent after him and when he ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne

... had a trick of running in for a few minutes at intervals during the day; he would come for a cup of tea; sometimes he would contrive to dine at home; whether he was at home or not, his presence, always alert, masterful, active, seemed to be everywhere in the place. She could scarcely realize that she would never see him again. And as she stood looking at his vacant chair she made an effort to realize what it all really meant to her, and suddenly, for the first time in her life, ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher

... Rollo's being alarmed at this, as another man might, it was answered by a certain humourous play of face; a slight significance of lip and air, quite difficult to characterize. It was not arrogant, nor arbitrary; I do not know how to call it masterful; and yet certainly it expressed no dismay and no apprehension. Perhaps it expressed that he intended to be in a different category from other men. Perhaps he thought Mrs. Bywank meant to read him a ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... to show a single instance in which a masterful race such as ours, having been forced by the exigencies of war to take possession of an alien land, has behaved to its inhabitants with the disinterested zeal for their progress that our people have shown in the Philippines. To leave the islands at this time would mean that ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... It is impossible. There was the Samuel Plimsoll of that line—now a coal hulk at Gibraltar—which must be named, for she was Captain Simpson's ship (he was commodore afterwards), the "merry blue-eyed skipper" of Froude's Oceana, but much more than that, a sage and masterful Scot whose talk was worth a ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson

... that now she too would have to talk about the war. He needn't be afraid, she added drily. She would look after Nelly. And she looked so masterful and vigorous as she said it, that Sarratt could only ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... and the whispering ceased. Almost instantly the horn seemed grasped by a firm and masterful hand, and the rollicking voice of a man broke startlingly from the darkness in words so clear, so resonant, that ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... to hit somebody, take a fellow your own size." He wrenched the stick from the man's grasp and threw it away. "Now," he said, "have it out if you will. I'm ready." He squared off, but the old man had neither strength nor desire to grapple with such a masterful opponent, and he slunk back ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard

... decade three of his greatest masterpieces: 'Splendeurs et miseres des courtisanes,' and 'La Cousine Bette' and 'Le Cousin Pons,' collectively known as 'Les Parents pauvres' (Poor Relations). And what a period of masterful literary activity the first decade presents! For the year 1830 alone the Vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul gives seventy-one entries, many of slight importance, but some familiar to every student of modern literature, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... was it some coincidence of his delirium, that he should have chosen this for his song? With moist eyes his friends looked back through the darkness, for well they knew that home was very near to this wanderer. Gradually the voice died away into a hum, and was absorbed once more into the masterful silence of ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle

... near the house, some dogs rush out at me, and a woman's voice calls them back; Agelan roars a welcome—he always shouts, and likes to put on masterful airs; for in years gone by he was a very unpleasant customer, until the man-of-war—but that is all ancient history, and now his bark is much worse than his bite. I have the honour of being in his good books, thanks to certain medical services I was able to render him; he has an ugly ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... making itself felt, however, is a desire to get the wage element in the ingot as thriftily, as efficiently, as nobly converted and used to the last ounce as is the profit element. There has been in the past a masterful individualism at work. Now there is a masterful aggressive humanism beginning to make itself felt, comparable in its spirit with the masterful venturing of the French explorers or the masterful faith of the French missionaries, that promises to constrain the city "to the saving and ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... masterful character, he will brook no opposition. I am powerless to sway him. Suggestions from myself as to the conduct of the paper would infuriate him. He believes that radical changes are necessary in the policy of Peaceful Moments, and he will carry them through if it snows. Doubtless he would gladly ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse

... slug must procreate its kind, or its kind will perish; and so I. The need being the same, the only difference is in the expression. In all life come times and seasons when the individuals are aware of dim yearnings and blind compulsions and masterful desires. The senses are quickened and alert to the call of kind. And just as the fish and the reptile glimmeringly adumbrate man, so do these yearnings and desires adumbrate what man in himself calls "love," spelled all out in capitals. I repeat, the need ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London

... raised, the masterful lady drew closer to the table, and concentrating energies of no mean order on the game, successfully played hands of unvarying goodness, aided by a method of pegging which might perhaps be best described as dot and ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs

... with him, which was boyishly intimate and affectionate, was that of all 'the apostles of the newness,' as they were gayly called, whose counsel he sought, Brownson was the most satisfactory to him. I thought then that this was due to the authority of Brownson's masterful tone, the definiteness of his views, the force of his 'understanding,' as the word was then philosophically used in distinction from the reason. Brownson's mental vigor and positiveness were very agreeable to a candid mind which was speculatively adrift and experimenting, ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke

... as I'd no relatives must tell the truth now, as I 'ave," said she rather incoherently, "for my sister, Tilly Junk, worked for someone in that there place for years. But we never got on well, she being upsettin' and masterful, so arsk her to my weddin' I didn't, and denied relatives existing, which they do, she bein' alive ten years ago when ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume

... a good lad," said the old lady when he had gone, "but he is getting a bit uppish. He's a masterful sort. ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade

... opportunity surpassed my expectations, and with a step full of nerve I pushed forward and took my stand again directly in front of her. She gave no token of seeing me; but I did not hesitate on that account. Exerting all my will power, I first subjected her to a long and masterful look, and then I spoke, directly and to the point, like one who felt ...
— The Bronze Hand - 1897 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)

... timidly, for she was beginning to fear this masterful man whose enthusiasm caught her to his very soul at ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy

... leave from my employment, and heard a portion of Mr. Bradlaugh's argument It gave me a new conception of his powers. That is the only impression I retain. The details have dropped out of my memory, but there remains as fresh as ever the masterful figure of ...
— Reminiscences of Charles Bradlaugh • George W. Foote

... girl's character truly, and warned Orange that some event of the kind would happen. But the pleasure she took in this confirmation of her own prophetic gifts was alloyed by the fear that Reckage, now at liberty, would prove a masterful, jealous, and embarrassing lover. Nor were her forebodings on this score lessened when he arrived, evidently in a strange mood, a quarter of an hour before the appointed time. His eyes travelled over her face with a consuming scrutiny to which she ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... poisoned javelin, and of humiliating the Prophet's companions by "sealing them in the necks and hands," that is he tied a thong upon the neck of each and sealed the knot with lead. In Irak he showed himself equally masterful, but an iron hand was required by the revolutionists of Kufah and Basrah. He behaved like a good Knight in rescuing the Moslem women who called upon his name when taken prisoners by Dahir of Debal (Tatha in Sind). Al-Hajjaj was not the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

... masterful, expressive. A sense of mental sickness seized upon Max; while the woman Lize suddenly braced herself, changing from the inert, half-hypnotized creature of a moment before into a ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... with the waiter her eyes wandered over the big room, taking in pretty dresses and becoming coiffures. Then she watched the leader of the little orchestra, who certainly wielded a masterful bow, and gave a ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick

... even a lover can fail to be bored at last by the constant lassitude of assent expressing itself in twin sentiments to his own. 'Coquetting with an echo,' Carlyle called it. For, tho it may make a man feel mentally masterful at first, it makes him feel mentally maudlin at last; and, as the Abbe says, to be bored one's self is a sure sign that ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin

... be done, whether it be leading a forlorn hope, or speaking to an angry husband,—in spite of fear. She would do it; but when the moment for doing it came, her very heart trembled within her. He had been so masterful with her, so persistent in repudiating her interference, so exacting in his demands for obedience, so capable of making her miserable by his moroseness when she failed to comply with his wishes, that she could not go to her task without fear. But she did feel that she ought not to be afraid, or ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... not daunten Death with thy stern voice and masterful eye, though thou canst quell a score of ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... she had looked at Severance; her eyes had rested on him long enough to make comparisons—Severance much improved, cool, suave, presentable, and deferential; her husband big and masterful, a brooding, preoccupied man, and a kind of Orson to be kept denned in his money caves. ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... something so imperative and masterful about him that I was quite beside myself—"rattled," as Furuseth would have termed it, like a quaking child before ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... criminally against his more fortunate brother is common to both Leisewitz and Klinger, but in neither is he an intriguing villain. In 'Julius of Tarentum' Guido is really the more masterful man of the two. He despises his brother as a weakling and asserts no other claim than that of the strongest. In Klinger's play, as we have seen, everything is made to turn upon Guido's cankering doubt of his brother's seniority. One gets the impression that if the ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... artist as of a vigorous thinker, a man of strong opinions and an intimate and comprehensive knowledge of men. The whole work, despite its irregularities and indifference to form, is full of brain stuff, the kind of active, healthful, masterful intellect that some men put into politics, some into science and a few, a very few, into literature. Both "Gloria Mundi" and "The Market Place" bear unmistakable evidences of the slack rein and the hasty hand. Both of them contain considerable padding, the stamp of the space writer. They ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather

... was simply matchless and superb; Jackson, a mystic meteor or firey comet; Longstreet and the two Hills, the "Wild Huns" of the South, masterful in tactics, cyclones in battle. Huger, Magruder, and Holmes were rather slow, but the courage and endurance of their troops made up for the shortcomings ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... be wholly chimerical. The doughty South Carolinian, from this moment a waning force in American politics, was supported by Hayne almost alone, the arguments of both melting into air before Webster's masterful handling of constitutional history and law. Not questioning the right of revolution, admitting the general government to be one of "strictly limited," even of "enumerated, specified, and particularized powers," the Massachusetts orator ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... reason, they cowered before a masterful mind. They knew the unbending quality of Kishimoto's will, his power to command, to punish. The number grew steadily less, leaving Page and Zura ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay

... the right chord in Marcia's nature. She is always ready to adore when opportunity offers. And though she has loved numberless times, she is ready to begin over again, and yields to the masterful force that experiments with her. The touch of her hand is soft and tremulous, and her kisses are delicate, sweet. He gives himself up to an idiocy he does not believe in, and really enjoys the blissfulness, as an Eastern despot might ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... us safely past his waggon, escorted us over the bridge and now, having seen us through our immediate difficulties, has parted from us with a very civil bow and good-humoured smile, as one who is always civil and good-humoured, but with a certain triumphant masterful look in his eyes, which I have noted in men, even the best of them, when a woman gets into straits by attempting manly employments. He has done us great good though, and may be allowed his little feeling of superiority. The parting salute he bestowed on our steed, in the shape ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford

... and opposition, which had successively given way before her husband's quiet, masterful good humor, here took the form of a neurotic fatalism. She shook her head ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte

... him human inventions, subject to the conditions of existence belonging to all organisms, its generous infancy capable of blind sacrifices, its self-contained and masterful manhood, in which the early sweetness was changed by the authoritative imposition of its power, and its inevitable age, with a long agony, in which the sick man, guessing his speedy end, clings to life with all ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... making the journey on the outside, while he is equally confident that before we arrive back in San Francisco I shall be on the inside of the earth. How he is going to get me through the crust I don't know, but Roscoe is ay a masterful man. ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London

... This masterful or domineering temper, so common among social mammals, is the cause of the persecution of the sick and weakly. When an animal begins to ail he can no longer hold his own; he ceases to resent the occasional ill-natured attacks made on him; his non-combative condition ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... stairway came my slender battalion in the last scene of the siege. Their eyes were wide with wonder, their feet slow with fear. The little captain of three years ran straight to Mrs. Bill an' lay hold of her gown, an' partly hid himself in its folds, an' stood peekin' out at me. It was a masterful bit of strategy. I wonder how he could have done it so well. She raised him in her arms an' held him close. A great music-box in ...
— Keeping up with Lizzie • Irving Bacheller

... as the heat grew more masterful, a slight wind came out of the east. It was so faint and doubtful in quantity that one could not be certain, as one stood on the deserted shore, whether it blew from just off the land or from the sullen level of the sea. It followed along the line ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc

... Judson, slowly, trying, still ineffectually, to break Gridley's masterful eyehold ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde

... reposing confidence. He has written that he had lost more than he was worth by trusting dependents with his purse and delaying to take their account. He was almost excessively resentful of frauds on his trustfulness when he detected them. He was masterful in small things, as in great. While in the Tower in August, 1592, he had appointed his 'man, John Meere,' Bailiff of the manor of Sherborne, with extensive powers of management. He had invested him with copyhold lands. Several years later, in ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... opening the office door and marshalling them outside, "we'd better go somewhere else if we are going to talk. It is important that my patient should be kept perfectly quiet." The doctor's air was so entirely respectful and at the same time so masterful that Maclennan found himself walking meekly toward the grub-house behind the doctor, with Fahey, the smile on his face broader than ever, bringing up the rear. Maclennan caught the smile, but in the face of the doctor's quiet, respectful manner he found it difficult to rouse himself to ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor

... which lasted until 1605, was almost contemporaneous with that of Queen Elizabeth. In reading his history one is impressed by the striking resemblance between him and the present Emperor of Germany. Beiram, who had been his father's prime minister, and whose clear intellect, iron will and masterful ability had elevated the house of Tamerlane to the glory and power it then enjoyed, remained with the young king as his adviser, and, owing to the circumstances, did not treat him with as much deference and respect as Akbar's lofty notions considered proper. The boy endured the slights ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... Something I heard of a collision with the law and of a forced assignment of his interests. All that is material to my story is that at forty-five years of age he returned to Ellan. He was then a changed man, with a hard tongue, a stern mouth, and a masterful lift of the eyebrows. His passion for wealth had left its mark upon him, but the whole island went down before his face like a flood, and the people who had made game of his father came crawling to his feet ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... to score him some fifty points in my estimate of him as a good workman, I was indifferent to this side of his character. The thing that impressed me most was a quality of leadership he seemed to possess. There was nothing masterful about it. You didn't look to see him lead in any especially good or great cause, but you could see readily enough that whatever cause he chose, it would be possible for him to gather about him a large personal following. I was attracted to this side of him in considering ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton

... answer at all," she murmured, aware of a species of fear of this big, masterful man: a fear rather fascinating in its tremors, like a novice's cringing to the vibration of electricity in a mildly pleasant form; a fear as opposed to her loathing of Robert Fenley as the song of a thrush to the ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

... which he captured, Sweyn was killed by stratagem on landing to receive payment of its ransom from the town, and the boy Hakon probably fell there with him in 1171. "And," the Saga adds, "it is the common saying of Sweyn that he was the most masterful man in the western lands, both of yore and now-a-days, among those men who had no higher rank than himself." Sweyn was, in fact the greatest man of his time. For he robbed whom he pleased, made and undid jarls and earls as he chose, and was the friend or tool of ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray

... this time he fought no more battles. He had not, as a soldier, given such evidence of military genius as to set his name alongside those of the great captains of history, but he had shown himself a strong and successful leader of men; in his masterful, often irregular and violent way, he had done his country good service. Were his place in history merely a soldier's, it would be a safe one, though not the highest. But his actions in the field soon gave him the leading part on a different stage. ...
— Andrew Jackson • William Garrott Brown

... of the flight in the night, and the subsequent trip through the bad lands. The one pleasant memory in the whole adventure had been the Texan—Tex, the devil-may-care, the irresponsible, the whimsical. And yet, withal, the capable, the masterful. He recollected vividly that there had been days of indecision—days when her love had wavered between himself and this man of the broad open spaces. Long before this adventure of the wilds Endicott had known her,—had loved her—and she had never ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx

... serenity that proclaimed an assured self-respect. The dark eyes above the high cheekbones were glowing clearly, as they stared in level interrogation on the prisoner. The features, coarse, yet of a pleasing harmoniousness, were set in lines of a strength that was at once calm and masterful. Whatever might be the blackness hidden in his heart, the half-breed's outer seeming was one to command respect... In quick appreciation of the truth, Donald was constrained to admit that his own conduct thus far had not been ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams

... than half a hundred plays produced by Strindberg during his lifetime, none has won such widespread attention as "Miss Julia," both on account of its masterful construction and its gripping theme. Whether liking or disliking it, critics have repeatedly compared it with Ibsen's "Ghosts," and not always to the advantage of the latter work. It represents, first of all, its author's ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg

... down at her fingers on the claret-colored table-cloth. Her aunt had summoned up an altogether too vivid picture of her father as the masterful man, overbearing, emphatic, sentimental, noisy, aimless. Why on earth couldn't he leave her to grow in her own way? Her pride rose at ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... Nils Lykke's name is never spoken save with the name of some woman whom he has beguiled and cast off. Some speak it in wrath, others with laughter and wanton jeering at those weak-souled creatures. But through the wrath and the laughter and the jeers rings the song they have made of you, masterful and insolent as an enemy's song of triumph. 'Tis all this that has begotten my hate for you. Your were ever in my thoughts, and I longed to meet you face to face, that you might learn that there are women on whom your soft speeches are lost—if you should ...
— Henrik Ibsen's Prose Dramas Vol III. • Henrik Ibsen

... hand that holds it More than the skull it scores; It doubles like a snake and stings, Yet he in whose hand it swings He is the most masterful of things, ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton

... The masterful wind was up and out, shouting and chasing, the lord of the morning. Poplars swayed and tossed with a roaring swish; dead leaves sprang aloft, and whirled into space; and all the clear-swept heaven seemed to thrill with sound like a ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame

... made sure he had been killed by Ajax son of Telamon, but it seems that one of the gods has again rescued him. He has killed many of us Danaans already, and I take it will yet do so, for the hand of Jove must be with him or he would never dare show himself so masterful in the forefront of the battle. Now, therefore, let us all do as I say; let us order the main body of our forces to fall back upon the ships, but let those of us who profess to be the flower of the army stand firm, and see whether we ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... that of their field guns, and saw far away upon the distant hill a great spurt of smoke and flame to show where the shell had struck. Another and another and another—and then they were troubled no more. Captain Hedworth Lambton and his men had saved the situation. The masterful gun had met its own master and sank into silence, while the somewhat bedraggled field force came trailing back into Ladysmith, leaving three hundred of their number behind them. It was a high price to pay, but other misfortunes were in store for us which made the retirement ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... his speech, his masterful manner, were assumed. And in the matter of his related adventures the girl was confident that they were mere repetitions of what ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper

... angry and disgusted at this woman. Oh, how she longed to tell her something that she would not soon forget. How she was tempted to place Jasper and Sammie side by side and compare them; the one an insignificant, brainless, useless, overdressed nincompoop; the other a strong, self-reliant, masterful man, fighting against fate with face to the front and ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody

... great sense in the estimate of a leading London correspondent that among the four most impressive and masterful personalities at the Geneva Assembly of the League, Rowell the Canadian was at least the fourth. This was not merely a personal or natural compliment. It was the sincere ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... before his masterful air, and everybody fell into line with sudden enthusiasm. Ethel smiled discreetly and moved along her pathway of inflexible originality with gentle triumph. The voyage down the river was delightful. The arrangements at the big white wooden hotel on the curving bay were rather primitive ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke

... there, too, the feeling was the same—that he had mastered his audience, taken possession of them, and held them to the end in an unrelaxing grip, as a great actor at his best does. There was nothing of the actor about him, except that he knew how to stand still; but masterful he ever was. ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley

... a shrewd-looking, keen-faced, sparely-built man, with somewhat aquiline nose and straight narrow forehead, not at all bad-looking or evil-looking and with an air of strong determination; in short, what one calls a masterful man. He was dressed well but quietly. A gold-bound hair watch guard that crossed his high-buttoned waistcoat was his only adornment; his slender hands, unlike the fat man's podgy fingers, were bare of rings. He was sitting alone, and after the fat man left him returned again to the reading ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller

... Sudden, with masterful, angry blare It howled from the watery west: The storm was up, he had left his lair! The night would be no jest! He turned: a lady sat in his chair! Through her loose dim robe her arm came bare, And ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald

... recent years, is largely, though not exclusively, recruited from Masonry; it works through the powerful Masonic apparatus, and, according to the evidence which has been put in, it has obtained a substantial and masterful control over the entire Fraternity. It has focussed the raw material of Masonic hostility towards the Catholic Church; as it is anti-Christian in religion, so is it revolutionary in politics; and once more, it is called ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite

... on in silence, Festus beating the grass with his switch in a masterful way. 'Did you speak, Mis'ess Anne?' ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... hill, where the cross has stood ever since, heard the cattle low and saw the spire of his church in the village where the vesper bells were ringing. Many months went by before his fellow-pilgrims reached home. Holy Andrew lived six hundred years ago. A masterful man was he, beside a holy one, who bluntly told the king the truth when he needed it, and knew how to ward the faith and the church committed to his keeping. By such were the old rovers weaned from their wild ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... surrounded by a rim, the water dropping through the wheel, reacting when reflected from the obliquely set vanes. American engineers and mechanics would pronounce these very crude, primitive and inefficient. A truer view would regard them as examples of a masterful grasp of principle by some, man who long ago saw the unused energy of the stream and succeeded thus in ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King

... shuddering from head to foot, and his lips were stiff and blue, yet there was an odd, masterful ring in his voice as he cried, "Make haste, will ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller

... approaching this manner, no one had ever so much as suggested that her existence could matter greatly, that in her woman's nature there was the magic power of awakening passion and devotion. He was so splendidly magnificent, so masterful and unrivalled, and he came thus to lay his being, as it were, in homage at her feet. It touched her a little, who knew so little of the real man. It cost her an effort to repulse him, and the effort was not ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... truth to Nature in his 'gummy' chestnut-buds, and to Art in the 'long green box' of mignonette—and that masterful touch of likening the first intrusion of love into the virgin bosom of the Miller's daughter to the plunging of a water-rat into the mill-dam—these are beauties which, we do not fear to say, equal anything ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... brief reign of two years and three months, too short to show character. The other now sits at the foot of the throne, while his adoptive mother sways the sceptre. Both have been overshadowed by the Empress Dowager and controlled by her masterful spirit. ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

... to have a great, masterful man like this take charge of one, and Ma sighed gratefully as she lay back. "It does kinda feel like a bird's nest," she declared. "And you kinda look like a robin, too; you're allus ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... masterful as the human intellect is in guiding and controlling the ordinary forces of nature, how impotent and insignificant it appears in the presence of such a transcendent disaster! It is well nigh inconceivable that a great ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... seem extraordinarily early to have to get up, even though Bee is to be married at eleven o'clock to-day," she murmured. "Certainly, Martha is a most masterful person. Well, I don't mind so much, as it is for ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade

... its hasty terrified repentance—he had entrusted Lionel to his elder brother's care. At the time Oliver was seventeen and Lionel twelve. But Oliver had seemed by so many years older than his age, that the twice-widowed Ralph Tressilian had come to depend upon this steady, resolute, and masterful child of his first marriage. It was into his ear that the dying man had poured the wretched tale of his repentance for the life he had lived and the state in which he was leaving his affairs with such scant provision for his sons. For Oliver he had no fear. It was as if with the prescience ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... importance were the railway and mining concessions granted during the same year (1898). The Chinese government had been generally disposed to railway construction since the conclusion of the Japanese War, but hoped to be able to retain the control in their own hands. The masterful methods of Russia and Germany had obliged them to surrender this control so far as concerned Manchuria and Shan-tung. In the Yangtsze valley, Sheng, the director-general of railways, had been negotiating with several competing syndicates. One of these ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... I judge, of considerable value," she said. "This is an exquisite little ruby. The locket is quaintly enamelled. The miniature is of masterful workmanship; whose portrait is it?" she asked, raising her eyes ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin

... a wise but masterful ruler, and it seems to have been based on the view that all the bishops of the West were directly under his jurisdiction. Similar cases of interference are to be found in regard to the churches of Istria, and to the great sees of Ravenna and Milan. ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton

... personal qualities are of so distinguished an order that he has come to be regarded as a statesman of the first rank (applause). The world watches His Majesty's movements with breathless interest. Under his masterful touch international difficulties which seem insuperable are solved, political sores are healed. His presence seems to breathe the spirit of peace and of goodwill, so that when he undertakes a journey it needs no strong imagination to picture to oneself the Angel of Peace hovering ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring

... and this is especially true in mankind, where growth is not completed for a long period of years. In this connection we have an explanation of the alleged greater variability of the male. Instead of an insignificant addendum to the reproductive process, he becomes larger than the female, masterful, jealous, a fighting specialization—still an attache of the female, but now a defender and provider. This is the general condition among mammals; and among mankind the longer dependence of children results in a correspondingly lengthened and intimate ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas

... to being considered as swayed by any other influence than his own that has led the emperor on so many occasions to adopt a course diametrically opposed to that urged upon him by his clever and masterful mother, a woman with the most powerful intellect and the least tact to be found in all Old World royalties. It was this, too, that led the emperor to banish, just a trifle unjustly, the pretty and dashing Countess Hohenau from his court. She had been ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy

... as yours. I care not for fine bread nor glutton-like do I long for dainty dishes. I look to somewhat nobler and higher: indeed I would desire nothing less than to be married by the King and become the mother of a beautiful Prince, a model of form and in mind as masterful as valorous. His hair should be golden on one side and silvern on the other: when weeping he should drop pearls in place of tears, and when laughing his rosy lips should be fresh as the blossom new-blown." The Shah was amazed with exceeding amazement to hear the wishes of the three sisters, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... Phillis, in her clear decided voice. "Mother will wonder what conspiracy we are hatching, and why we leave her so long alone." And then Dorothy took up her candlestick, grumbling a little, as she often did, over Miss Phillis's masterful ways, and the girls went laughingly into ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... the Clayhanger series to the extent that its hero, George Cannon, is the stepson of Edwin, who himself makes a perfunctory appearance at the close of the tale. The scene is, however, now London, where we watch George winning fame and fortune, quite in the masterful Five-Towns manner, as an architect. The change is, I think, beneficial. That quality of unstalable astonishment, native to Mr. BENNETT's folk, accords better with the complexities of the wonderful city than ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various

... nodded To the blue sea; and lo, The sea was rent with fruitful heave! And the Sun's island rose With a thousand beauties crowned; And makers lived upon the island, Beings above all men; And they made statues masterful, All beautiful like gods ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas

... grunt, Mr. Bross clamped a warm, moist hand round the plump arm of his charmer, and with masterful address propelled her from the curb in front of the theatre, where the little party had paused, to the northwest corner of Broadway: their progress consisting in a series of frantic rushes broken by abrupt pauses to escape annihilation in the roaring after-theatre crush of motor-cars. ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance

... of their choice was not entirely to the liking of the village. Digby Popham had married into the rival church and as his betrothed was a masterful young lady it was feared that Digby would leave Mr. Larrabee's flock to worship with his wife. Another had married without visible means of support, a proceeding always to be regretted by thoroughly prudent persons over fifty; and the third, Deacon Todd's eldest son, had somehow ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... wanted it. His attitude toward Argyl was at all times deferential, eloquent of respectful admiration. Hapgood was nothing if not urbane. Toward Conniston, however, he did not once glance. To his way of thinking, evidently, there were but three people in the room—the wonderfully masterful Mr. Crawford, the radiantly beautiful Argyl, the deeply appreciative ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory

... he said with a tremendous dignity. And there was something so comical about the little mite of a child, something so masterful in the tiny figure, something so commanding in the loud, deep-toned baby voice, that every one laughed, and somehow or other Adam forgot his obstinacy and made his obeisance like ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel

... of the sort," returned Mr. Phelps, in his masterful way; "you promised to go to the photograph place, and that's where we're going. I don't propose to give you up to any young ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells

... permanent resident; glossy black, with a metallic shimmer on the shoulders, long-tailed, sharp of bill and masterful. He has a scolding tongue, and if a hawk hovers over the bloodwoods he tells without hesitation of the evil presence. He is the bully of the wilderness of leaves, bouncing birds vastly his superior in fighting weight and alertness ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... selfishness or greed."[160] "England may well be proud of possessing in Wentworth a nobler if a less practical statesman than Richelieu, of the type to which the great cardinal belonged."[161] Again Wentworth was "the high-minded, masterful statesman, erring gravely through defects of temper and knowledge."[162] From Macaulay we carry away the impression that Wentworth was very wicked and that Cromwell was very good. Gardiner loved Cromwell not less than did Macaulay, but thus he speaks ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes

... returned to her room. And Lancelot followed her with his eyes and heart until she reached the door; but she was not long in sight, for the room was close by. His eyes would gladly have followed her, had that been possible; but the heart, which is more lordly and masterful in its strength, went through the door after her, while the eyes remained behind weeping with the body. And the king said privily to him: "Lancelot, I am amazed at what this means: and how it comes about that the Queen cannot endure the sight of you, and that she is so unwilling to speak ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes

... vol. ii., p. 77, for a reminiscence of masterful King Kulayb and his Hima or domain. Here the phrase would mean, "None could approach them when they were wroth; none were safe from their ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... about to fly off, at some immense tangent, into an outer space hitherto unknown even in dreams. And so singular was the result produced upon me that I was uncommonly glad to anchor my mind, as well as my eyes, upon the masterful personality of the doctor at my side, for there, I realised, I could draw always upon the forces ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... Bible and prayer-book, sermon and tract. From all this it results that there is scarcely a language ever spoken among men that has not some representative in English speech. The spirit of the Anglo-Saxon race, masterful in language as in war and commerce, has subjugated all these various elements to one idiom, making not a patchwork, but a composite language. Anglo-Saxon thrift, finding often several words that originally expressed the same idea, has detailed them to different parts of the common territory ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... as Dick had remained cheerfully masterful, and picturesquely flamboyant, without even an occasional betrayal of the bitterness which makes the one attribute savour of insolence, and the other of oppression, his wife had regarded him as exactly fulfilling the part for which he had obviously been cast—of ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... roof of Ringsted church, lie Denmark's greatest dead. Not half an hour from the ferry landing at Korsoer, your train labors past a hill crowned by a venerable cross, Holy Anders' Hill. So saintly was that masterful priest that he was wont, when he prayed, to hang his hat and gloves on a sunbeam as on a hook. And woe to the land if his cross be disturbed, for then, the peasant will tell you, the cattle die of plague ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis

... motionless, and then, opening his arms, he surrounded her with his embrace, and pressing her with all his strength close to his bosom, kissed her forehead, and her cheeks, and her lips, and her eyes. His will was so masterful, his strength so great, and his motion so quick, that she was powerless to escape from him till he relaxed his hold. Indeed she hardly struggled, so much was she surprised and so soon released. But the moment that he left her he saw ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope

... Kearny was the first fruits of the new policy, and here Crazy Horse was chosen to lead the attack on the woodchoppers, designed to draw the soldiers out of the fort, while an army of six hundred lay in wait for them. The success of this stratagem was further enhanced by his masterful handling of his men. From this time on a general war was inaugurated; Sitting Bull looked to him as a principal war leader, and even the Cheyenne chiefs, allies of the Sioux, practically acknowledged his leadership. Yet during the following ten years of defensive ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... secret be unveiled. Was, then, a very formidable person, Bonne Maman, that M. Joyeuse should stand in such fear of her? By no means. A little stern, that was all, with a pretty smile that instantly forgave one. But M. Joyeuse was a coward, timid from his birth; twenty years of housekeeping with a masterful wife, "a member of the nobility," having made him a slave for ever, like those convicts who, after their imprisonment is over, have to undergo a period of surveillance. And for him this ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... factories. In Paris, they have completely vanished from sight. The prohibition of the drinking and sale of absinthe, not only in Paris, but throughout France, was also due to the foresight of the Military Governor. General Michel, although a rigid disciplinarian and a masterful organizer, is extremely affable and agreeable. He was born at Auteuil in 1850, and after graduation from Saint-Cyr, the French West Point, served in the war of 1870-1871 as second lieutenant of infantry. In 1894 he ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard

... not long for me, for they were full of study and anticipation. Long chats with the eccentric but masterful man whose friendship and love for my father had brought us together were the entertainment and stimulus of my existence—a man who knew nothing of science, except that he was master of it in his own way; who knew all about navigation, and to whom the northern seas were as familiar as the ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... as he was told, quite meekly, looking up with a good deal of curiosity at this tall athletic creature, with the handsome head and masterful manner. Reay caught his enquiring glance and ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... yourself, Mr. Morris," Emily answered, resenting the masterful tone which Alban's interference had assumed. "I have not done with Miss Jethro yet, I can ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins

... remarkable figure that I had not, until now, noticed that a large lion had followed him into the room and was lying quietly at his feet. I was not afraid; indeed, the king of beasts seemed but a part of the man's masterful presence. I do not think I would have seen the animal but that his enormous body was lying directly before my eyes on the floor. My uncle had been sitting with his head resting upon his hand at the table. Suddenly he rose and a strange, ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller

... Both Bolivar and San Martin were sons of country gentlemen, aristocratic by lineage and devoted to the cause of independence. Bolivar was alert, dauntless, brilliant, impetuous, vehemently patriotic, and yet often capricious, domineering, vain, ostentatious, and disdainful of moral considerations—a masterful man, fertile in intellect, fluent in speech and with pen, an inspiring leader and one born to command in state and army. Quite as earnest, equally courageous, and upholding in private life a higher standard of morals, ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd

... estimate at its true worth; but in the development of the theme Dave soon becomes almost insignificant beside the greater figure of the cowboy, Monte Latarette. For him alone I should regard the book as one not to be missed by anyone who values a handling of character at once delicate and masterful. ...
— Punch, Volume 156, January 22, 1919. • Various

... Sir George," said I, making a masterful effort against anger. "That is true, for I knew that Dorothy would not consent; and had I been inclined to the marriage, I repeat, I would marry no woman against her will. No gentleman would ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major

... spared to her. At first he was suspicious of her subdued manner and remorseful gentleness; and for a long time he watched her, very warily, with an eye for treachery. Then he understood that she had succumbed to his masterful handling of her, and he was masculinely proud of ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... Who would not hate and revile the book or the preacher who prophesied such rough things as that? Who could love the author or the preacher who told him to his face that his eyes and his ears and all the passes to his heart were already in the hands of a cruel, ruthless, and masterful enemy? No wonder that you never read the Holy War. No wonder that the bulk of men have never once opened it. The Downfall is not a favourite book in ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte

... emergency. His confidence, moreover, communicated itself to her. She saw that he did not jerk or saw on the reins at first, but, bracing his large powerful frame, drew steadily back, and that the horses yielded somewhat to his masterful grasp. ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... is largely a matter of preparedness, and a man, who, having opened his door in the expectation of seeing a ginger-haired, bow-legged, grinning George Pennicut, is confronted by a masterful woman with eyes like gimlets, may be excused for not guessing that her piercing stare is an expression of admiration ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... changed you, being at the schools so long, as I thought it would," she said wistfully, stroking his hair with mature gentleness, though he was older than she. "Why, Note; you look just as brown, and hearty, and masterful ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... not make her husband see it so. Yet—and she looked up at him with a sudden passion of love in that gaze—it was this big, sanguine, restless, masterful spirit in him that had won her. From the narrow, restricted conditions of a provincial gentlewoman's life, she had looked out into a bigger world for living, through the eyes of this masterful yeoman, his heart big with desire to conquer and ambition to achieve. Was her ...
— A Warwickshire Lad - The Story of the Boyhood of William Shakespeare • George Madden Martin

... The masterful man who puts on airs of command and leadership insults his fellow-creatures, and should be gently but firmly lifted ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford

... Cousin Elizabeth's children? Laura herself had some vague remembrance of them. As the pony climbed the steep lane she shut her eyes and tried hard to recall them. The fair-haired boy—rather fat and masterful—who had taken her to find the eggs of a truant hen in a hedge behind the house—and had pushed her into a puddle on the way home because she had broken one? Then the girl, the older girl Polly, who had cleaned her shoes for her, and lent her a pinafore? No! Laura opened her ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... to the impression of quiet confidence which he always gives. You feel you are safe with French. Nothing, you know, will ever upset the cool sanity of his reasoning, the balanced decision of his judgments. This impression of certainly is strengthened by the distinctly masterful carriage of the man. His short, stocky figure, like General Grant's, suggests that fatigue is unknown to him. This is indeed the case. The story has often been told of how the General and his staff once decided, after an exhausting day, to spend the night in a lonely farm in ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm

... of the hermit's abode opened before Mr. Max's masterful knock, and the bearded little man appeared on the threshold. He was clad in a purple dressing-gown that suggested some woman had picked it. Surely no man could have fallen victim to that riot ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers



Words linked to "Masterful" :   virtuoso, consummate



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