"Masterly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... works professedly psychological, in particular to Mr. James Mill's Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, where the principal laws of association, along with many of their applications, are copiously exemplified, and with a masterly hand.(270) ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... filling great hampers of the finest rice, yams, and cassava, from the adjacent provision-grounds, to be used for subsistence during their escape, leaving only chaff and refuse for the hungry soldiers. "This was certainly such a masterly trait of generalship in a savage people, whom we affected to despise, as would have done ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... a white canvas suit and a pancake Panama hat, stands behind them and holds a long knotted whip, which he occasionally applies to their backs as a gentle reminder that time represents so many Spanish doubloons. This is the 'mayoral,' or overseer. He seems to pride himself upon his masterly touch with the thong, for when no black skin forms an excuse for the practice of his skill, he flicks at nothing, to keep his hand in. The sorrow of this sight is greatly augmented by the dead silence; for whenever the chastising ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... seen in it the origin of the more gorgeous and full-mouthed, if not more accomplished and dexterous, rhythm in which Mr. Swinburne has written "Dolores," and the even more masterly dedication of the first "Poems and Ballads." The shortening of the last line which the later poet has introduced is a touch of genius, but not perhaps greater than Praed's own recognition of the extraordinarily vivid and ringing qualities of the stanza. ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... Wilton; but the Arcadia and the Daphne is about Vernditch and Wilton; and these romancy plaines and boscages did no doubt conduce to the hightening of Sir Philip Sydney's phansie. He lived much in these parts, and his most masterly touches of his pastoralls he wrote here upon the spott, where they were conceived. 'Twas about these purlieus that the muses were wont to appeare to Sir Philip Sydney, and where he wrote down their dictates in his table book, though on horseback.* For ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... a certain darling of the gods named Nell. Only I made it stronger and more explicit than that, and knew they would comply if such a thing were humanly possible. But this pet scheme I intended to keep from Tommy. It would repay him for his masterly scheme ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... mind is masterly in appreciation of details, and Cosmo Versal's reasons for condemning the aero and the balloon as means of escaping the flood were promptly divined. In the first place it was seen that no kind of airship could be successfully provisioned for a flight of indefinite ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... than crossed when I knew that it would take all my skill to hold my own, even for a short time. Moore was, far and away, the best fencer I had ever encountered; and I thought I had faced about all the famous ones of first force. His agility was amazing; his wrist like steel; his anticipation masterly. For every time I touched him, he touched me twice; though none, on either side, would have been more than a scratch. Then, in the midst of a fierce rally, I forced a pretty opening and I thrust. No guard seemed possible—it ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... only. Ubaldino, in his second narrative, which he says was inspired by Drake,[3] relates that when Drake put out of Plymouth to receive Howard 'he sallied from port to meet him with his thirty ships in equal ranks, three ships deep, making honourable display of his masterly and diligent handling, with the pinnaces and small craft thrown forward as though to reconnoitre the ships that were approaching, which is their office.' Nothing, however, is more certain in the unhappily vague accounts of the 1588 ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... containing no ladies. Charlotte Cushman appeared as Meg Merrilies, Parodi and Dempster sang in concerts, Burton and Brougham convulsed their hearers with laughter, Booth gave evidence of the undiminished glow of his fiery genius by his masterly delineation of the "wayward and techy" Gloster, and Forrest ranted in Metamora, to the delight of his admirers. Colonel John W. Forney told a good story about a visit which he paid with Forrest to Henry ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... case of a disesteemed Profession requiring one to raise it and impose it upon the antagonistic senses for the bewildering of the mind. One has to sound it loudly; there is no treating it, as in the advocacy of the cases of flesh and blood, with the masterly pathos of designed simplicity. And Weyburn was Cuper's Matey Weyburn still in his loathing of artifice to raise emotion, loathing of the affected, the stilted, the trumpet of speech—always excepting school-exercises in the tongues, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Englishman of title, displays splendid qualities of courage, tact and restraint. As a study of American womanhood of modern times, the character of Bettina Vanderpoel stands alone in literature. As a love story, the account of her experience is magnificent. The masterly handling, the glowing style of the book, give it a literary rank to which very ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... day has come when the brain of the race must both direct its brawn and expose its brass. Ignorance and charlatanism will seek enlightenment or retreat only when intelligence and learning make a masterly array ...
— The Educated Negro and His Mission - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 8 • W. S. Scarborough
... the bebadged and beribboned bosoms of his illustrious compatriots heaved with emotion; their faces—or such parts of their faces as were visible above the whiskerline—flushed with enthusiasm, and most vociferously they applauded his masterly phrasing and his tracing-out of the evolution of the tango, all the way from its Genesis, as it were, to its Revelation. I judge the revelation particularly appealed to them—that part of it appeals to ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... the task of rescuing the fainting vegetation. I borrowed Mr. Tiltman's hose because it was the best and longest in the neighborhood and was provided with a patent nozzle which was so versatile that there was actually no detail in its business which it did not perform in a most masterly way. I shall never forget the feeling of exultation with which I stood on that expansive lawn and sprayed the parched grass and drooping shrubbery. I fancied I could see the thirsty blades and leaves reach up to drink in the restoring element. My thoughts while I was thus engaged were similar, ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... low, long, enticing divan, and onto this, with a gurgle of pleasure, she made a dive, placed two cushions for her head, put one little hand under her face, snuggled into an attitude of perfect comfort and deliberately went to sleep. It was masterly. ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... subject of a masterly criticism in the Grenzboten, in which justice is done him with that impartiality and moderation in respect to which a competent German is unequalled among critics. Among Dumas's dramas, the writer ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... and most masterly stroke of this great lawgiver, by which he struck a yet more effectual blow against luxury and the desire of riches, was the ordinance he made, that they should all eat in common, of the same bread and same meat, and of kinds that were specified, and should not spend their lives ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the sitting room and a third in his bedroom, where he could see it the first thing when he wakened each morning. His fellow villagers were very proud of him, in spite of the "knocking" of the Clarks. Skim was deeply mortified that Peggy's "bum pome" had been accepted and his own masterly composition "turned down cold." The widow backed her son and told all the neighbors that "Peggy never hed the brains to write thet pome, an' the chances air he stole it from the 'Malvern Weekly Journal.' Them gal edyturs wouldn't ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... to England, improved by travel and refined by education. On the road to London from the port where he landed, he accidentally found in the inn where he lodged Johnson's life of Savage, and was so taken with the charms of composition, and the masterly delineation of character displayed in that work, that, having begun to read it while leaning his arm on the chimney-piece, he continued in that attitude, insensible of pain till he was hardly able ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... that each one of those great writers often redeems all his errors by one grand and masterly stroke? But the strongest point of all is that, if you were to pick out all the blunders of Homer, Demosthenes, Plato, and all the greatest names in literature, and add them together, they would be found to bear a very small, or rather an infinitesimal proportion to the passages in which these ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... abandon of the Directoire period, and touch the whole with the romanticism and individualism of the coming century. In terrible contrast with these lovely and alluring women of the new age, is the grim figure caught in a few masterly strokes by David, as Marie Antoinette, proud and unbending as ever, but shorn of all the glory of Versailles, her face haggard, her hair gray, dishevelled, mutilated by scissors, passed by on the prisoner's cart ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... before the reader a constant succession of characters and incidents; to paint them in as vivid colours as he could command, and to render them, at the same time, life-like and amusing." All this he succeeded in doing with such amazing success that we have a masterly picture of English life of the period to be found in no other book. The secret of the book's popularity and fame is in its unaffected and flowing style, its dramatic power, and, ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... time on, to the day of Lincoln's death, Seward served his chief with hands and feet, with eyes and ears, and with brain and soul. When Lincoln was elected, his wisdom was at once manifest in securing Seward as Secretary of State. The record of those troublous times and the masterly way in which Seward served his country are too vivid in the minds of men to need reviewing here, but the regard of Lincoln for this man, who so well complemented his own needs, is worthy of our remembrance. Seward was the only member of Lincoln's first Cabinet who stood by ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... February 27, to Mr. Tucker, assistant secretary of war, to prepare means of transporting down the Potomac, troops, munitions, artillery, horses, wagons, food, and all the vast paraphernalia of a large army. He showed a masterly vigor in this difficult task, and by March 17 the embarkation began. On April 2 McClellan arrived at Fortress Monroe. On the very next day he was disturbed by the revocation of the orders which had left him in command of that place and had allowed him to ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... seemed to relieve the tension in the air. One by one the company became masters of themselves once more. Miss Trimble, that masterly woman, was the first to recover. She raised herself from the floor—for with a confused idea that she would be safer there she had flung herself down—and, having dusted her skirt with a few decisive dabs ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... nicely into the reticule. Felicia felt competent with it there. She used to take it out at night and write in it. It had double entry pages labelled grandly "INCOME" "EXPENDITURES." With the first pages Felicia wrote a letter to Margot, a masterly letter in which she bade her servant tell Zeb that the filthy dirty heathen were going to be sent away, a letter in which she warned Margot that unless Grandy were too unhappy she would not go back ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... is fault to be found in Chesterton's masterly study of Charles Dickens it lies in the fact that in parts of the book the meaning is not always clear, or, rather, it is not always so at a first reading. Whether this may be justly termed a fault depends largely upon what the reader of a critical ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... be wondered at in one who wrote: "No one is wicked voluntarily; but it is an evil habit of body and a faulty education that is the cause of every case of wickedness" (Timaeus, 86 E; cf. Laws, 731 C, D), which error receives a masterly confutation in Aristotle, Ethics, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... Age, have by long Search arriv'd at several remote Parts of Knowledge, by the helps of reading Conversation and Experience; but that all amounts to no more than faint Imitations, Apings, and Resemblances of what was known in those masterly Ages. ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... did not think any argument or inducement offered by Chase could change his mind on past dealings or his purpose of the present. But he believed by listening he might get some light on what had long puzzled him. The masterly effort Chase put forth to conquer his aroused passions gave Belding another idea of the ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... Epistle to the Ephesians (t. 11) were preached at Antioch; and though some passages might have received a higher polish from a second touch of the saint's masterly file, are a most useful and excellent work. From Hom. 3, p. 16, it {271} is clear that his predecessor Nectarius had not abolished canonical public penances, when he removed the public penitentiary; but that this office, as before the institution of such a charge, was exercised altogether by the ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... said His Excellency, in after seasons, with a twinkle in his eye. 'My inconsistency must always have been distasteful to such a masterly man.' ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... weak-eyed sensibility" caused him to describe his loyal, generous, high-bred friend Lord Houghton as a "nice little robin-redbreast of a man;" while Mrs. Basil Montagu, who cheered him and spared no pains to aid him in the darkest times, is now immortalized by one masterly venomous paragraph. Carlyle was great—very great—but really the cultivation of loyal friendships seems hardly to have been in his line. Men who know his works by heart, and who derived their noblest inspiration from him, cannot bear to read his memoirs ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... trembling, conscious of having forgotten the words which he had learnt beforehand, this unhappy young nobleman began: "Ladies and gentlemen, I haven't an idea—" He stopped, put his hand to his head, stared wildly, and sat down again; having contrived to state his own case with masterly brevity and perfect truth, in a ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... Mr. Buckland was afterwards better known as a bowler; Mr. Royle could also deliver a dangerous ball; the fast bowler was Mr. Foord Kelcey, but he, again, was lame, through an accident to his foot. For Cambridge Mr. Sharpe and Mr. Sims bowled. Lang and Webbe went to the wicket for Oxford, and made a masterly stand, the ball being cut and driven to the ropes in all directions. Mr. Webbe got 55, Mr. Lang 45, while Mr. Ridley contributed 21, Mr. Pulman 25, and Mr. Buckland 22. The whole score was 200, 86 for the first wicket. Mr. Longman's ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... according to his or her individual nature —Judy, with a sense of Romance called deathless; Tim, with a taste for Poetic Drama, a dash of the supernatural in it; and Maria, with a magnificent inactivity that ruled the world by waiting for things to happen, then claiming them as her own. Her masterly instinct for repose ran no risk of failure from misdirected energy. And to all three secrecy, of course, was essential: "Don't never tell the ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... and sustaining life by marauding; moreover, they numbered but sixty-five thousand, Lestocq not yet having come in from Mohrungen. The Russian general saw how he was entrapped, and that he could escape only by a swift retreat. His conduct of the movement was masterly, and on February sixth, though the French columns were not far behind, he had reached Heilsberg. During the day the Russian rear-guard was driven in, and Bennigsen, marching all night, found himself next morning before the town of Eylau, or, more precisely, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... coming down with the current? The leader of this superfluous endeavour was Lieutenant Wheeler, of the Topographical Engineers, who had been roaming the Western country for several years with a large escort. For some reason, Wheeler seems to have been disinclined to give Powell credit for his masterly achievement. On the map published in his Report, under the date 1879, TEN YEARS AFTER POWELL'S TRIUMPH, he omits his name entirely, and he also fails to give Ives credit on the river, though he records his land trail. In the text I fail to find any mention of Powell in the regular order, and ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... summoned the Scribes and men of science and Divines, but none of them could relieve her of this. Now I was present in the assembly; so I said to him, 'O King, I know a man called Sa'adu'llh the Babylonian, than whom there is not on the face of the earth one more masterly in these matters, and if thou see fit to send me to him, do so.' Said he, 'Go to him;' and quoth I, 'Bring me a piece of carnelian.' Accordingly he gave me a great piece of carnelian and an hundred thousand dinars and a present, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... "effeminate" because he was one of the greatest masters of etiquette who ever bore the most exalted honor that can be awarded by the people of the United States? Washington was completely a gentleman—and so was Abraham Lincoln. Because Lincoln's etiquette was self-taught it was no less masterly for that! Whether he happened to know a lot of trifling details of pseudo etiquette matters not in the least. Awkward he may have been, but the essence of him was courtesy—unfailing courtesy. No "rough, uneducated" man has command of perfect ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... then called upon to speak in arrest of judgment. His defence is said to have been a masterly piece of eloquence. It ended with a pathetic appeal, which fell powerless on those who ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... fight, won the highest praise from Morgan for the masterly manner in which he handled his regiment. It was greatly owing to the efforts of Colonel Duke that the victory ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... Campania; and the country-house of the elder Scipio at Liternum exhibited a lasting model of their rustic simplicity. [128] The delicious shores of the Bay of Naples were crowded with villas; and Sylla applauded the masterly skill of his rival, who had seated himself on the lofty promontory of Misenum, that commands, on every side, the sea and land, as far as the boundaries of the horizon. [129] The villa of Marius was purchased, within a few years, by Lucullus, and the price ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... the enthusiastic tone, he commenced a soft plaintive love-song, and then, after striking the chords for some time in a wild but masterly manner, retired. I confess I felt much interested in this poor fellow's performance, he seemed so deeply to feel every note he uttered, particularly at one time, when he touched upon his own misfortune, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... Poet. But This was but occasional, and for the sake only of perfecting the two other Parts, which were the proper Objects of the Editor's Labour. The third lies open for every willing Undertaker: and I shall be pleas'd to see it the Employment of a masterly Pen. ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald
... gratitude in a more practical way than by protestations. The German grammar was not wasted. Before long Mary undertook for practice to translate Salzmann's "Elements of Morality," and her exercise proved so masterly that she, with a few corrections and additions, published it. This gave rise to a correspondence between the author and herself; and after several years the former returned the compliment by translating the "Rights of Women" into German. Some idea will be ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... of this peculiar combination of images is so masterly, that it is sufficient to set this poem above censure; and, therefore, it is not necessary to mention many other delicate touches which may be found in it, and which would deservedly be ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... Mowbray one season, for the purpose of enjoying fox-hunting in the highest perfection, by alternately joining the Duke of Rutland's and the Quarndon pack of fox- hounds. Those hounds were hunted in such a masterly style, and the whole business was conducted in such a superior manner, that I never afterwards could bring myself to relish fox-hunting in Hampshire or Wiltshire. In truth, it was not like the same sort of sport, fox-hunting ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... acquaintance—not merely with Cicero and Virgil, but with the most interesting memoirs, state papers, and pamphlets of his own time"—a literature necessary to the Stratford lad, for his fictitious reputation's sake, since the writer of his Works would begin to use it wholesale and in a most masterly way before the lad was hardly more than out of his teens and ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... his nose swollen to twice its natural size, undertook a series of masterly retreats. It was then that Madame, at the keyhole, began to fear for her furniture, and considered interference. Chairs were overturned, the table went crashing. At last a foot-stool completed what Philip's fists had ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... effervescing mixture of talent, learning, vanity, childish petulance, inquisitiveness, sagacity, ecstatic patriotism, and ambition. He was a splendid orator, with the voice of an old coster-woman; a savant with the presumption of a school-boy; a kind-hearted man, with the irritability of a monkey; a masterly administrator, with that irresistible tendency to intermeddle with everything which is intolerable to subordinates. He had a sincere love of liberty, with the ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... mastery of this every-day material, commonly called sordid, a phantasmagoria intense with beauty. A clue to all Russian realism may be found in a Russian critic's observation about Gogol: "Seldom has nature created a man so romantic in bent, yet so masterly in portraying all that is unromantic in life." But this statement does not cover the whole ground, for it is easy to see in almost all of Gogol's work his "free Cossack soul" trying to break through the shell of sordid to-day like some ancient demon, essentially Dionysian. So that ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... temptation of caricature, out of place in a realistic book. Thus he names a half-penny paper, "The Daily Decorator," and a journalistic peer, "Lord Boom." Yet the few lines in which he hints at the tactics and the psychology of his Lord Boom are masterly. So much for the narrator, whose "I" writes the book. I assume that Wells purposely left these matters uncorrected, as being essential to the completeness ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... further development of some of the thoughts expressed in the Discorsi. The Prince, a short work, divided into twenty-six books, is the best known of all Machiavelli's writings. Herein he expresses in his own masterly way his views on the founding of a new state, taking for his type and model Caesar Borgia, although the latter had failed in his schemes for the consolidation of his power in the Romagna. The principles here laid down were the natural outgrowth ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... instantaneously withdrawing so wide a variety of readers from the perplexities and discomforts of actual existence, and making them for the time denizens of a new world. He has stimulating elements enough, and he exhibits masterly art in the wise economy with which he uses them; but he still stimulates only to invigorate; and when he enlivens jaded minds, it is rather by infusing fresh life than by applying fierce excitements, and there is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... of personal respectability among the leaders of the League; and lastly, the necessity and vast advantage of supporting the agriculture of Old England. The recent discussions on the Corn-Laws, in Parliament and elsewhere, the masterly expositions of the true principles on which they are really based, have thrown a flood of light on the subject, now made visible and intelligible to the lowest capacity. That some further alteration may not erelong be made on the scale of duties, no one can assert, though we have ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... show for art, and their fondness for poetry and music. King[255] says that "the art of carving is universally practised" by them, and he speaks of their models of men, animals, and utensils as "executed in a masterly style." Brinton indeed says they have a more artistic eye for picture-writing than any Indian race north of Mexico. They enliven their long winter nights with imaginative tales, music, and song. Their poets are held in high honor, and it is said ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... was plenty of time for the encounter to progress, with Aleck still calm and cool, warding off the blows struck at him most skilfully, and mastering his desire to retaliate when he could have delivered others with masterly effect. ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... by Oates' voice. The Doctor was arranging his plan of campaign with gusto. Bedloe was to disappear to the West Country till the time came for him to offer his evidence. Prance was to go about his peaceful trade till Bedloe gave him the cue. It was a masterly stratagem—Bedloe to start the ball, Prance to be accused as accomplice and then on his own account to give ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... it is like Kossuth's rising of what he calls the peoples. Mountains, too, a regular camp-meeting of them. For the same reason, the same all-sufficiency of room, our shadows march and countermarch, going through their various drills and masterly evolutions, like the old imperial guard on the Champs de Mars. As for the hills, especially where the roads cross them the supervisors of our various towns have given notice to all concerned, that they can come and ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... know it was he killed the landlord. The tension of the last scene is almost unendurable. His wife's providential lie for McKie, her agony in her knowledge of his guilt when she sees his face on his return, the man's terror, are handled with masterly firmness and sureness. To see this scene on the stage in the hands of actors worthy of it must be to know real tragedy. In this play, too, brief as is the glimpse we have into these four lives of small farmer ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... for an instant a school-masterly touch in Captain Hahn. "You see? They've got him; not a hitch anywhere. Organization, method, ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... not run away, because, of course, he was not really afraid; but even a bear might be allowed to conduct a masterly retreat. ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie
... have left behind a too painful and gloomy feeling, are softened down by this beautiful resort to the tenderest and holiest sources of emotion. And the pathos is rendered doubly effective, not only from the immediate contrast of the terror that preceded it, but from the masterly skill with which all display of the softer features in the character of Oedipus is reserved to the close. In the breaking up of the strong mind and the daring spirit, when empire, honour, name, are all annihilated, the heart is seen, as it were, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with so masterly a movement that there was no sound either from the hinges nor from the handle as he turned it, and peered out. The hall below was dark, but a long pencil of light came from the drawing room, which showed where the reckless brutes must be, and ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... the head he had drawn he understood himself better than others had understood him, for he saw on the corner of the paper the masterly sketch of an ideal Christ he had sought after for years without ever reaching it. He knew that that ideal had presented itself to his mind at the very moment when Paolo had proposed the work to him—the result perhaps, of the excitement under which he laboured at the moment. From that instant ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... where thirty men were sent home, after which we swept down the country and arrived at Great Bend during the last week in September. My active partner had handled his assignment of the summer's work in a masterly manner, having wholesaled my herd at Dodge City at as good figures as our other cattle brought in retail quantities at The Bend. The former point had received three hundred and fifty thousand Texas cattle that summer, while every one conceded that Great Bend's business as a trail terminal ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... This sudden and masterly movement of the Rebels was a cutting surprise to General Meade, and a source of mortification and chagrin to all. Gloriously successful as we had been, it was evident that hesitation and indecision had greatly detracted from our laurels. We had won a world-renowned ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... in which the singer imitated women's voices to perfection, were really most graceful and sad, and quite interesting were the musical recitatives with violin accompaniments which the Beluch render in quite a masterly way. ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... on the same side, of which Bekker's, published about a century later, was the most important. It is well reasoned, learned, and tedious to a masterly degree. But though the belief in witchcraft might be shaken, it still had the advantage of being on the whole orthodox and respectable. Wise men, as usual, insisted on regarding superstition as of one substance with faith, and objected to any scouring of the shield of ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... overcome. Science guided and protected the daring invasion; and true American hearts, at every bristling danger, supported it, with an ardent courage and a calm fortitude scarcely equaled in the wars of nations. On the 15th of August, General Scott, by a masterly movement, turned the strong works of the Penon and Mexicalzingo, on which the enemy had labored and relied. On the 17th the spires of Mexico were in sight. The attack upon Contreras took place. It was one of the most brilliant achievements of the American ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... himself in the wrong. Public opinion would say that benefits had been heaped upon him, that the correct thing had been done correctly with the knowledge and approval of the legal advisers of his family. It had been a masterly thing, that visit to Townlinson & Sheppard. He was obliged to aid his self-control by a glance at the eyelashes. She was a new sort of girl, this Betty, whose childhood he had loathed, and, to his jaded taste, novelty ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and sent you a dozen double prints of my eagle, which I have had engraved. I could not expect that any drawing could give you a full idea of the noble spirit of the head, or of the masterly tumble of the feathers: but I think Upon the whole the plates are not ill done. Let me beg Dr. Cocchi to accept one of each plate; the rest, my dear Sir, you will give away as ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... by far the most stirring and dramatic of all the author's Italian stories.... The plot is a masterly one, bringing at almost every page a fresh surprise, keeping the reader in suspense to the very end."—The Times, ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... are filled with portraits hit off in a masterly style. Mather was a true 'Porte Crayon,' and knew how to bring out salient points with a few happy touches. His picture-gallery is like an ancient Valhalla, full of demigods. Among their characteristics are strong contrasts. Here are piety and poverty and learning, hand in hand. ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... average mind rise in later years quite above the average and become a tower of steady reflection; while to itself it is a new life to gain a view of things as a whole, to find that nothing stands alone, but that the details which it grasps in so masterly a manner have their place and meaning in the ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... not write the Fourth Gospel, at least his influence seems to be felt all through it. The probability is that he knew what was in it, and approved of it, although the actual composition may have been by another, possibly a very learned Greek. To me, the Fourth Gospel is the most masterly work ever composed by man. It stands absolutely alone. The criticism that John, being a Jew, could not have composed it, falls before the greater truth that, having become a Christian, he was no longer a Jew. He was a new creature. For how ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... everywhere you play your part with masterly skill, and the world, which is your audience, applauds your ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... in his chain of conservation. In 1853 Mr. Waterston proposed, independently, the meteoric theory of the sun's heat, and in 1854 Professor William Thomson applied his admirable mathematical powers to the development of the theory; but six years previously the subject had been handled in a masterly manner by Mayer, and all that I have said about it has been derived from him. When we consider the circumstances of Mayer's life, and the period at which he wrote, we cannot fail to be struck with ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... it with perfect delicacy and success. Our own age is more fortunate, on this single score at least, having a larger and far nobler proportion of female writers; among whom, since the death of George Eliot, there is none left whose touch is so exquisite and masterly, whose love is so thoroughly according to knowledge, whose bright and sweet invention is so fruitful, so truthful, or so delightful as Mrs. ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... and scarlet mantle, who represents the genius of discovery; she presents the legendary mandrake root, or mandragora, to the learned man, while between them is the dog that has pulled the root, and falls dead, according to the fabulous story. This manuscript was painted by a masterly hand, and is curious and interesting; the plants, snakes, birds, and insects must have been painted from nature, and the ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... by Mrs. Florence Shepphird, is a masterly defense of those inactive amateurs whom we are all too prone to consider as delinquent. It is indeed true that authors would be useless were it not for some ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... due to the sly craft of Ambroise, who merrily explained how he had prepared it like a masterly coup de theatre. For a week past he had been lodging and hiding Dominique in his house in Paris; the young man having been sent from the Soudan by his father to negotiate certain business matters, and in particular to ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... bully and a tyrant, that roaring-voiced, truculent man. But those angry, red-veined grey eyes of his could look Death squarely in the face, and the brain behind them could conceive and plan stratagems and tactics that were masterly, and devise works that were marvels of Defensive Art. And the heavy hand that patted Mevrouw Brounckers' head, as that devoted woman sat disconsolate in the river-bed, surrounded by her children, and pots, and bundles, and the roaring ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... cent. interest; and $34,115,290 was held at home at six per cent. The total amount of interest was $2,415,956. No means were provided for the payment of either principal or interest. In July of the previous year Morris urged the wisdom of funding the public debt, in a masterly letter to the president of Congress. On December 16 a sinking fund was provided for by a resolution, which, though inadequate to the purpose, was at least a declaration of principle. In February, 1784, Morris notified Congress of his intended ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... keen insight into the essentials of literature led him to write an essay upon each of the two great founders of the latest period of English literature, Defoe and Steele, has pointed out in his masterly essay upon Steele that Swift denies having spoken of Steele as bridled by his friend, and does so in a way that frankly admits Steele's right to be jealous of the imputation. Mr. Forster justly adds that throughout ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... again for South Devon; but on the reassembling of Parliament the Liberal majority had dwindled from 314 to 107. It was during his election tour that he delivered an address at Totnes, which Greville described as not merely 'a very masterly performance,' but 'one of the cleverest and most appropriate speeches' he had ever read, and for which his friends warmly complimented him. It was a powerful and humorous examination of the Tories' professed anxiety for Reform, and of the prospects ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... pictures in one of the first apartments, which are by no means the most masterly compositions, the Swiss, who set up for a connoisseur, looking at a certain piece, pronounced the word with a note of admiration; upon which Mr. Pallet, who was not at all a critic in the French language, replied, with great vivacity, "Manufac, you mean, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... the porticos, I was astonished at the wonderful finish of the statues which embellished them. They were mounted on plinths of the burnished metal, and carved out of a sort of light blue chalcedony, which, joined with their masterly execution, gave them the appearance of life. I was surprised at the strange attitudes which the sculptors had chosen to represent, all more or less distorted, although the human proportions were admirable. Some appeared ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... for the king's safety during the voyage, though in secret many persons did not scruple to remark that in his chamber at Madrid his majesty would not have much cause to dread the storms at sea. Philip played his part with such masterly skill that the Belgian ambassadors at Madrid, Lords Bergen and Montigny, who at first had disbelieved in the sincerity of his pretended journey, began at last to be alarmed, and infected their friends in Brussels with similar apprehensions. An attack of tertian ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the butt of the whole company; being esteemed by them as next of kin to a natural, though of a peculiar kind—a talking natural. This fancy of theirs was stoutly resisted by the love-sick swain, but the regimental logic prevailed; for, whatever they could do, with masterly dexterity, he could not do at all, ergo, must he not be a natural? There was no man in the regiment who met with so many falls from his horse, as Silas Tomken Cumberbatch! He often calculated with so little precision his due equilibrium, that, in mounting on one side, (perhaps the wrong stirrup) ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... is so honorably perpetuated by his elaborate and masterly discussion of great principles in the Senate, he did not connect himself with a single historic measure. While Mr. Clay's speeches remain unread, his memory is lastingly identified with issues that are still vital and powerful. He advanced ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... That was masterly of the Canon, the subtle suggestion that Viola did no more than talk about Jevons, the still more subtle implication that if she could talk about ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... to whom we are indebted for a masterly sketch of the recent progress of this new line of research, followed up with so much success in Scandinavia and Switzerland, observes that the introduction of the first tools made of bronze among a people previously ignorant of the use of metals, implies a great advance ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... self-defence that, if I had a very long summer in which to keep coming and dwelling long hours in the company of these frescos, I think I might live back into the spirit which invented the fables, and enjoy even more the amusing taste that was never tired of their repetition. Masterly conception and incomparable execution are there in histories which are the dreams of worlds almost as extinct as the dead planets whose last rays still reach us and in whose death-glimmer we can fancy, if we will, a unity of life ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... windows. Mrs. Marston's black and white hens and the minorca cockerel pecked about the open door and came in inquiringly, upon which Martha, who sat near the door for that purpose, swept them softly out with the clothes-prop, which she manipulated in a masterly manner. ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... of the scholar, though the traveller is still present; for instance, in the Essay, "Amalfi, Paestum, Capri," and in the "Lombard Vignettes." In the Essay on the "Orfeo" of Poliziano, and that on the "Popular Italian Poetry of the Renaissance," we are again glad to recognize the author's masterly power in certain kinds of translation; and those the kinds in which the labourers are few, though the harvest is so large. In about seventy pages, close pages it is true, Mr. Symonds presents us with a sketch of Florentine history, the like of ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... short, it is Nature's method; the identification of beauty and use. But to resume. We may at this point continue our illustrations of the analytical power of moderate lenses by a beautiful instance. We are indebted to Albert Michael, of the Linnean Society of England, for a masterly treatise on a group of acari, or mites, known as the oribatidae. Many of these he has discovered. The one before you is a full grown nymph of what is known as a palmicinctum. It is deeply interesting as a form; but for us its interest is that it is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... from his apprehensions by the circumstance of Mr. Barton's falling into a profound sleep, was as affable and gracious as possible. Miss Teresa played the 'Fall of Paris,' as Mr. Sparkins declared, in a most masterly manner, and both of them, assisted by Mr. Frederick, tried over glees and trios without number; they having made the pleasing discovery that their voices harmonised beautifully. To be sure, they all sang the first part; and Horatio, in addition to ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... madness of Orestes in masterly fashion. But Orestes appeals to us still more poignantly in his sorrow than when he is distraught. What a fate was his! It was filial piety, obedience to a sacred obligation, drove him to commit ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... This pamphlet being virulently attacked, and its author accused of bidding for a place at Court, Defoe made a spirited rejoinder, and seized the occasion to place his arguments in still clearer light. Between them the two pamphlets are a masterly exposition, from the point of view of English interests, of the danger of permitting the Will to be fulfilled. He tears the arguments of his opponents to pieces with supreme scorn. What matters it to us who is King of Spain? ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... adoption of the new Constitution. Had this opposition been well-organized, it could unquestionably have defeated the Constitution, even against its brilliant protagonists, Hamilton, Madison, Jay, and a score of other masterly men. ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... family as settled down upon the land. The study of religion in the family, as we know it in historical times, is also that of the earliest organisation of religion, and of the most permanent type of ancient Italian religious thought. Aust, whose book on the Roman religion is the most masterly sketch of the subject as yet published, writes thus of this religion of the family:[132] "Here the limits of religion and superstition vanish ... and in vain we seek here for the boundary marks of various ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... Having Paul's masterly epistle to the Romans, in the first chapter of which he so distinctly portrays man's tendency to change "the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man," and worship and ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... defeat of the democratic armies at Leipsic, and the superb strategy of the campaign of 1814, the brilliant rally of what is called the Hundred Days, only served to emphasize the completeness of the apparent failure. For that masterly campaign was followed by Napoleon's first abdication, that brilliant rally ended in Waterloo and the ruin of the French army. When we consider the spread of Grecian culture over the East by the parallel military triumph of Alexander, or ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... contradicts another, and each has a tendency to become dominant, it is only in the harmonious equipoise of their several activities, in their due and just subordination, that any unity of action or consistency of feeling is possible. After a masterly analysis of all these tendencies (the most complete by far which has ever been made by any moral philosopher), Spinoza arrives at the principles under which unity and consistency can be obtained as the condition upon which a being ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... end of the plank, but it was too far below him and then again he would be exposed to their volleys of stones, and if he was hurt he might not get back on his craft. Tod, who had resigned command in favor of his henchman after Archie's masterly defence in the last fight, stood behind him. Thermopylae was a narrow place, and so was the famous Bridge of Horatius. He and his faithful Tod would now make the fight of their lives. Both of these close shaves for immortality were closed books to Tod, but Archie ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... human beings whose confidence he had won, and whose lives he was brightening from day to day, he seemed to Langham the very type and model of a man who had found his metier, found his niche in the world, and the best means of filling it. If to attain to an 'adequate and masterly expression of one's self' be the aim of life, Robert was fast achieving it. This parish of twelve hundred souls gave him now all the scope he asked. It was evident that he felt his work to be rather above than below his deserts. He was content—more than content—to spend ability ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fixed upon the speaker. She marvelled now how she could have been so blind. The cadaverous face was nothing but a splendid use of grease paint! The rags! the dirt! the whole assumption of a hideous character was masterly! But there were the eyes, deep-set, and thoughtful and kind. How did ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... us principally by the writings of his bitter enemies, and even modern historians, who should have taken a fairer view of his life, repeated the cry of the old English writers that he was a bloodthirsty robber. Mr. W. Burns, however, in his masterly and exhaustive work, The Scottish War of Independence, has torn these calumnies to shreds, and has displayed Wallace as he was, a high minded and noble patriot. While consulting other writers, especially ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... Antonio-Pericles snarled an end both to his advices and his prophetic disgust of the miserable tools furnished unto masterly minds upon this earth. He paced forward and back, murmuring in French, 'Mon Dieu! was there ever such a folly as in the head of this girl? It is her occasion:—Shall I be a Star? Shall I be a Cinder? It is tomorrow night her moment of Birth! No; she prefers ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the masterly ones of Frederick Schlegel, or those of the less powerful but not less rich mind of Augustus William Schlegel,"—those two wonderful brothers," as a modern litterateur has justly called them. Leigh Hunt, with perhaps more poetic originality, but with less accuracy of aesthetical perception, will ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... already recorded, still, the nature of the case and the exalted station of his client gave it a character of its own. Indeed, apart from the nature of the investigation which my friend had on hand, there was something in his masterly grasp of a situation, and his keen, incisive reasoning, which made it a pleasure to me to study his system of work, and to follow the quick subtle methods by which he disentangled the most inextricable ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... end of his brush he pointed to a study of the nude, suspended from the wall near the door. It was really magnificent, full of masterly breadth of colouring. By its side were some other admirable bits, a girl's feet exquisite in their delicate truthfulness, and a woman's trunk with quivering satin-like skin. In his rare moments of content he felt proud of those few studies, the ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... turn, Joe Hawkridge demanded to know the gossip of the Revenge. The storm had sobered Blackbeard, it seemed, and he had displayed the skill of a masterly seaman in bringing them safely through. In toiling for their own lives, the men had forgotten their brawls and plots and guzzling. And the great wind had blown the ship clear of Spanish fever. There were no new cases ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... was needed to show off the almost solitary splendour of Coriolanus. He is the proudest man in Shakespeare, and Sir Henry Irving is at his best when he embodies pride. His conception of the part was masterly; it had imagination, nobility, quietude. With opportunity for ranting in every second speech, he never ranted, but played what might well have been a roaring part with a kind of gentleness. With every opportunity for extravagant gesture, he stood, ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... rock and the shadows engulf us. The lad at my side, sick with waiting, has curled himself up upon a bed of stone and is half asleep; Seth Barker leans against a crag like some figure hewn out of granite; old Clair-de-Lune is all hunched up as a bundle. Nevertheless, masterly eyes scan the lapping waters. Will the night never speak to us? Will the day bring waiting? Ah, no! not that! A shot rings out clear on the still night air; a flash of fire leaps across the sea. We spring ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... (succeed) 731; make a virtue of necessity; make hay while the sun shines &c. (occasion) 134. Adj. skillful, dexterous, adroit, expert, apt, handy, quick, deft, ready, gain; slick, smart &c. (active) 682; proficient, good at, up to, at home in, master of, a good hand at, au fait, thoroughbred, masterly, crack, accomplished; conversant &c. (knowing) 490. experienced, practiced, skilled, hackneyed; up in, well up in; in practice, in proper cue; competent, efficient, qualified, capable, fitted, fit for, up to ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... which is sometimes on the verge of becoming wearisome. Indeed, even now, I should be inclined to cut out at least half a dozen of these variations of the original phrase. His short but sufficient representation of the effects of too much lunch on Uncle Gregory is masterly. So realistic, in the best sense of the word, is the impersonation of these two characters, that one is inclined to resent the brutality of Uncle Gregory, when one sees the change suddenly effected in the sweet and sympathetic nature of Benjamin Goldfinch, and when we see him suspicious ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... they did have the time of their lives. Chet refused to sit in the dining-room in lonely state, and in masterly ...
— Billie Bradley and Her Inheritance - The Queer Homestead at Cherry Corners • Janet D. Wheeler
... the wholesome refreshment of the field. Animals teazed by insects, the cruelty of docking horses, the insolence of the gander, the apathy of the swine, are drawn in a striking manner: and the Book concludes with masterly pictures of a twilight repose, a midnight storm of thunder and lightning, and views of the ancient and present mode ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... that it was much more difficult for Arsene Lupin to be Chief Detective—and a masterly Chief Detective he was—than to be Don Luis Perenna, to be decorated in the Foreign Legion, to be a hero, and even to be alive after he ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... Americanists held last July at Nancy, France, M. Leon de Rosny delivered a masterly address on the Maya hieroglyphics. He critically analyzed the attempts at decypherment by Brasseur de Bourbourg and H. de Charency. The Bishop de Landa first discovered a clue to their meaning. He made out seventy-one signs, which number Rosny has increased to ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... Among them are some masterly pieces of decoration, the most important being the superb candelabra made for the Duc de Montpensier. These have seated at their base nude figures of the three chief goddesses of classic mythology, whose noble proportions and ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... a giraffe could be persuaded or forced into a flower-pot): that this utterly impracticable, thoroughly hopeless, and profoundly preposterous box, had the remotest reference to, or connection with, those chaste and pretty, not to say gorgeous little bowers, sketched by a masterly hand, in the highly varnished lithographic plan hanging up in the agent's counting-house in the city of London: that this room of state, in short, could be anything but a pleasant fiction and cheerful jest of the captain's, invented and put in practice for the better ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... in a few words gives a most masterly description of Poppea: —"Huic mulieri cuncta alia fuere praeter honestum animum: quippe mater eius, aetatis suae feminas pulchritudine supergressa, gloriam pariter et formam dederat: opes claritudini generis sufficiebant: sermo comis, nec absurdum ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... cleverness soft and exquisite and delicate.... It is a mixture of naturalism and romance, and one detects in it the miraculous power ... of seeing things steadily and seeing them wholly, with relentless humor and pitiless pathos. The book is crowded with types, and they are all etched in with masterly fidelity of vision and sureness of touch, with feminine subtlety as well as virile audacity."—James Douglas in The ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... manipulative power the student may reach by pursuing the mode recommended to him in these letters, I will answer for it that he cannot go once through the advised exercises without beginning to understand what masterly work means; and, by the time he has gained some proficiency in them, he will have a pleasure in looking at the painting of the great schools, and a new perception of the exquisiteness of natural scenery, such as would ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... regulations were observed with great care. The engines were indicated in a masterly manner by a gentleman of great experience, as the cards—tracings of which we have seen—bear ample testimony. The temperature of the feedwater was 47 degrees; it should, in our opinion, have been heated, but we waive this point. The state of the barometer and temperatures of engine room and fire-room ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... remarks of Murphy will illustrate the value of the treatise, to modern Europeans and their descendants. "It is a draught of savage manners, delineated by a masterly hand; the more interesting, as the part of the world which it describes was the seminary of the modern European nations, the VAGINA GENTIUM, as historians have emphatically called it. The work is short but, as Montesquieu observes, it is the work of a man who abridged ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... It might seem vain, therefore, to try to do afresh what has been done before with unapproachable success; and instead of writing inferior things at great length about the Life of Reason, it might be simpler to read and to propagate what Aristotle wrote with such immortal justness and masterly brevity. But times change; and though the principles of reason remain the same the facts of human life and of human conscience alter. A new background, a new basis of application, appears for logic, and it may be useful to restate old truths in new ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... of the heavenly muse. The distinctive appearances of the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars; their functional importance as regards this terrestrial sphere; the splendour and lustre peculiar to each; and the glory displayed in the entire created heavens, are portrayed with a skill indicative of a masterly knowledge ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... am going to execute a masterly retreat, as they used to say when a fellow ran away. I am going to get behind my company. They claim, you see, that ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... would have acted with the Republican Party had he lived to the period of its organization. He was one of the three distinguished persons who were born in the county of Essex early in the century—Cushing, Choate and Rantoul. In masterly ability Choate was the chief, unquestionably. In the profession, neither Cushing nor Rantoul could compare with Choate, although in learning Cushing may have been his rival. In knowledge of diplomacy and international law neither Choate nor Rantoul could be compared to Cushing. ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... Saturday till Monday, having been at the Grove on Friday. George Villiers at the Grove showed me a Dublin paper with an attack on Stanley's proclamation, and also a character of Plunket drawn with great severity and by a masterly hand; it is supposed to be by Baron Smith, a judge who is very able, but fanciful and disaffected. He will never suffer any but policemen or soldiers to be hanged of those whom he tries. George Villiers came from Hatfield, where he had a conversation with the Duke of Wellington, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... durance in a brick wall. I cannot cast my eyes on his character without being religious. This is the only good effect I have derived from his writings; he brings into my mind the resurrection, and paints the tumultuous resuscitation of awakened men with a pencil of masterly confusion. I am fully convinced of one thing, either that he or his pen is intoxicated when he writes to me, for his letters seem to have borrowed the reel of wine, and stagger from one corner of the sheet to the other. They remind me of Lord Chatham's administration, lying ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 372, Saturday, May 30, 1829 • Various
... two of them in our district: the Chalicodoma of the Walls (Chalicodoma muraria), whose history Reaumur gives us in a masterly fashion; and the Sicilian Chalicodoma (C. sicula) (For reasons that will become apparent after the reader has learnt their habits, the author also speaks of the Mason-bee of the Walls and the Sicilian Mason-bee as the Mason-bee of the Pebbles and the Mason-bee of the Sheds respectively. ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... the Boxer troubles of 1900 were over, and Yuan, by the masterly way in which he had disregarded the imperial edicts, had protected and preserved the lives of all the foreigners in his province, keeping peace the while, that honours began to be heaped upon him. And this not without reason as we shall proceed ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... there exists a pen bold enough to denounce the evil complained of in so masterly a manner and in such vigorous English. If we mistake not, it will work great good in the ...
— From the Ball-Room to Hell • T. A. Faulkner
... Baptistery, of the Duomo of Pisa, and of the Duomo of Siena, it combines bas-reliefs and detached statues, carved capitals, and sculptured lions, in a maze of marvellous invention; but it has no rival in the architectonic effect of harmony, and the masterly feeling for balanced masses it displays. The five subjects chosen by Giovanni for his bas-reliefs are the "Nativity," the "Adoration of the Magi," the "Massacre of the Innocents," the "Crucifixion," and ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... equanimity. The refinements of hypocrisy, and the arts of insinuation, offered advantages too distant, and exacted attentions too subtle, for a moment so alarming; those arts and those attentions he had already for many years practised, with an address the most masterly, and a diligence the most indefatigable: success had of late seemed to follow his toils; the encreasing infirmities of his wife, the disappointment and retirement of Cecilia, uniting to promise him a conclusion equally speedy and happy; when now, by a sudden and unexpected ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... his forehead, and, finally, his whole head and neck, manipulating the huge handkerchief in a masterly manner almost worthy of ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... do not know, but we do know that in after years whenever he had the game of war to play, he played it in such a masterly manner that his name has come down to us as the most famous warrior of his age. And he won his spurs, remember, at the battle of Crecy, when only a boy of ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... affair with masterly frankness. More than once in varying phrase, she said: "You are very good to give us so much of your time, Mr. Colville, and I won't pretend I don't know it. You're helping me out with a very hazardous experiment. When I undertook ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... of Clarke's personality is given by a writer in the Sydney Bulletin: 'His wit was keen and polished, his humour delicate and refined, and his powers of description masterly.... His face was a remarkable one—remarkable for its singular beauty. Like Coleridge, the poet, he was "a noticeable man with large grey eyes," and one had but to look into them to perceive at once the light of genius.... He was one ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... likewise under deep obligation to Mr. A. E. Henderson, F.S.A., for the generous kindness with which he has allowed me to reproduce his masterly plans of the churches of SS. Sergius and Bacchus, S. Mary Panachrantos, and many of his photographs and drawings of other churches in the city. I am, moreover, indebted to the Byzantine Research and Publication ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... were protected by squadrons of horse on the wings and in the rear, while reserves both of horse and arquebusiers were stationed to act as occasion might require. The dispositions were made in so masterly a manner, as to draw forth a hearty eulogium from old Carbajal, who exclaimed, "Surely the Devil or Valdivia must be among them!" and undeniable compliment to the latter, since the speaker was ignorant of that commander's presence in ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... Raleigh, and Frobisher, and others to whom the Spanish main was a second home, the El Dorado of which Columbus and his followers dreamed in their stormy slumbers.... The first of her poems in this volume, Rosamund, is a masterly battle idyl." ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... Flitcroft. "Here it is in head-lines on the first page. 'Defence Scores Again and Again. Ridiculous Behavior of a Would-Be Mob. Louden's—'" She paused, removed her spectacles, examined them dubiously, restored them to place, and continued: "'Louden's Masterly Conduct and Well-Deserved—'" she paused again, ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... How to Train and Drive Him. | | | | With Reminiscenses of the Trotting Turf. A handsome 12mo, | | with a splendid steel-plate portrait of Hiram Woodruff. | | Price, extra cloth, $2.25. | | | | The New-York Tribune says: "This is a Masterly Treatise | | by the Master of his Profession—the ripened product of | |forty years' experience in Handling, Training, Riding, and | | Driving the Trotting Horse. There is no book like it in | | any language on the subject of which it ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... which are nearest this simple method: his representation of old Gerhardt and of Aaron Berchansky in The Hand of the Potter; numerous sketches of character in that broad pageant A Hoosier Holiday; the tenderly conceived record of Caroline Meeber, wispy and witless as she often is; the masterly study of Hurstwood's deterioration in Sister Carrie—this last the peak ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... get along very well together. Grace has always made a study of clothes, because it is the only way in which she can find an outlet for her artistic tastes. And she is interested in Delilah's methods. She says that they are masterly. ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... overlook the best, the surest foundation whereon to rest the existence of the Great Cause of causes, that Parent of Parents, whose wisdom shines so manifestly in nature, of which Clarke's work may be said to be such a masterly evidence. We shall follow, step by step, the different propositions in which this learned divine developes the received opinions upon the Divinity; which, when applied to nature, will be found to be so accurate, so correct, as to leave ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... writes the biographer, "he had found such subtle strokes of character as he had not anywhere else in later years discovered; the manner resembling himself but the matter fresh to a degree that had surprised him; the painting in all respects masterly and the wild rude thing painted a quite wonderful reality. I have rarely known him more ...
— Dickens in Camp • Bret Harte
... conclude these few hasty remarks without expressing a wish that one of your correspondents in particular would take up this subject, to handle which in a masterly manner, his position is a guaranty of his ability. I refer to the gentleman holding the office of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... friendliness with big men, and clever men, her calm assurance as to which hats she liked, and which hats she didn't, her utter belief in everything that was of Melrose or von Behrens, and her calm contempt for everything that was not, were masterly in Leslie's eyes. ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... two plotters had betaken themselves to the same house whither Nicholas had repaired for the first time but a few mornings before, and having obtained access to Mr Bray, and found his daughter from home, had by a train of the most masterly approaches that Ralph's utmost skill could frame, at length laid open the real object ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... evening, however, he paid us for this, by a series of sketches, in his finest style of railing and raillery, of modern French literature, not one of them, perhaps, perfectly just, but all drawn with the finest, boldest strokes, and, from his point of view, masterly. All were depreciating, except that of Beranger. Of him he spoke with perfect justice, because with ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... one's estimate of the characterisation. All through the ballad one wants to feel that, despite the bitterness of her speech, the heart of the relentless witch is breaking. Like The Broken Heart of Ford, the ballad with the amended line was a masterly picture of suppressed emotion. I hoped the new incident touched ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... slightly faster craft than the Covadonga, but she drew a good deal more water; and Captain Condell, with masterly skill, availed himself of this circumstance to the full, by running across shoals over which the Peruvian ship dared not follow him, and by keeping quite close in to the shore where she could not approach. Luckily, too, the Independencia's gunners were raw, and found ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... business of the Church is helped as absolutely as secular business by the development and use of material agencies for advancement. What is wanted is the good seed of the word. It is that—the light which shines forth from that—which gives life and growth and masterly power. We want faith in the promises. It shall be said, "The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ." The truth of it is not to be doubted or eclipsed. We want power from on high, and that is neither distant nor subject to unseasonable delay. What the ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 01, January, 1884 • Various |
