"Consummate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the result of the undertaking Champlain, its guiding spirit, was eminently qualified for his position. Wise, as energetic; persevering, as enterprising; brave in reverse, as unassuming in. success, he laid his plans with consummate prudence and carried them out with unwavering constancy. Disinterested, honourable and patriotic, he suffered no secret view of personal advantage to narrow his mind or mar his usefulness. Looking on his work as the ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... to him from the Sultan; he put them on, and attended that prince at dinner, who saw him with pleasure. They discoursed on the different methods of making war, and the Sultan found his new general so consummate in the art, that he assured himself of victory: he then presented him to the chief men of his court. The rest of the day was employed in reviewing the troops that were in Almeria. As he was to go the next, he begged of the Sultaness by Sayda, ...
— The Princess of Ponthieu - (in) The New-York Weekly Magazine or Miscellaneous Repository • Unknown
... most consummate masters of the piano at the present time is Ignace Jan Paderewski. Those who were privileged to hear him during his first season in this country will never forget the experience. The Polish artist conquered the new world as he had conquered the old; his name became a household word, known ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... de l'Homme mort are, though scarcely shorter than Le Songe d'Or, slighter. The first is a pathetic but not quite consummate story of "love and madness" in a much better sense than that in which Nodier's eccentric employer, Sir Herbert Croft, used the words as his title for the history of Parson Hackman and Miss Ray.[86] The second ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... two opposite streams of thought which had their common origin in one fundamental principle or law of the human mind—the intuition of unity—"or the desire to comprehend all the facts of the universe in a single formula, and consummate all conditional knowledge in the unity of unconditioned existence." The history of this tendency is, in fact, the history of all philosophy. "The end of all philosophy," says Plato, "is the intuition of unity." "All knowledge," said the Platonists, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... Darius demanded what Patrick had this time said: and hearing that even then he had only spoken as before, "I thank him," and admiring and understanding his firmness, pronounced he the saint to be a man of consummate constancy, and that the word of his mouth was most excellent. "Truly," said he, "this is a magnanimous man and of unalterable mind, whose countenance and whose word could not be changed, whether the vessel be given ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... dropped slowly, with a consummate carefulness, his manner was pointedly courteous, yet there was an underpressure of force, of will, which made me see the danger of my position. He said that I was quite right; that he would wish no privilege of a woman which was not given with ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... "As to the Reformatory," she became impressed by its audacious cleverness. It would have been impossible to manage a tremendous shift in position with more consummate dexterity. Indeed, she was almost ready to take the Post's word for it that no shift at all had been made. From beginning to end the paper's unshakable loyalty to the reformatory was everywhere insisted upon; that was the strong keynote; the ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... streets. The need for stimulation of the ethical imagination is so great, however, that we must dare this perilous path and master its difficulties. Perhaps no one has been able to do this more effectively than Mr. Gould, of the Moral Education Committee of England, who has used the story method with consummate tact in building up from the lower motive and the more ancient condition a series of pictures of human greatness, which end always on some summit of personal devotion in universal conditions to universal laws of right.[18] His method leaves the pupil in a glow of admiration of excellence ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... the heroine are made the pivot of each turning point in the plot. When she yields to her lover's entreaties to consummate a hasty marriage; when fear of her father's displeasure induces her to keep their union a secret; when her love of luxurious grandeur at court persuades her to contract a more exalted match; when her terror of ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... refuge of tender and exalted souls, finding little solace in the domestic affections which played so small a role in their lives, they turned the whole force of their clear and flexible minds to this new species of sovereignty. Their keenness of vision, their consummate skill in the adaptation of means to ends, their knowledge of the world, their practical intelligence, their instinct of pleasing, all fitted them for the part they assumed. They distinctly illustrated ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... again and again. Again and again her eyes met his, as they had met them at that consummate moment, discovering her soul to him. Again and again he knelt before her, and kissed her hands, warm and soft, and sweet with that faint perfume which caused cataclysms in ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... 25th, General Johnston invited General Sherman to another conference, with a view to surrender. It now became the province of General Grant to take the lead in negotiations, but he preferred that Sherman should consummate the work. Nevertheless, General Johnston was afforded another interview. At this conference final terms were soon concluded, and the second grand army of the Confederacy was surrendered to ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear
... in its own way, as Warwick Castle, or Hurstmonceaux, or Loches, or Chinon, or Chenonceaux, or Heidelberg—not that it is so vast, that it has glowering battlements, or that it stuns the eye, but for precisely opposite reasons: because it is a consummate expression of republican cultivation, of a fine old American home, and of the fine old American gentleman who built it, and whose descendants inhabit it to-day: Charles Carroll of Carrollton, last to survive of those who ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... to me again—the lore I gladly had forgot comes like a ghost, And points with shadowy finger to the means Which best shall consummate my just design. The laboratory hath been closed too long; The door smiles welcome to me once again, The dusky latch ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... Tom with stunning vociferation, before King Richard could bind up his wounds. The amateur started, and betrayed consummate embarrassment, as if the horsewhip had actually made its entrance. Tom and his companion stole away, and left the astounded monarch with the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... went to Wall Street, where she had established confidential relations with a number of brokers. Together they planned the campaigns; she executed them with consummate skill and adroitness. ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... debate was the following; which is given to the public, not as being more worthy of its attention than others, (some of which were of consummate ability,) but as entering more into ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the deeds of our western pioneer as aggressive, barbarous, and unworthy of civilized men. But there is no truly noble heart that will not swell in admiration of the devotion and disinterestedness of Benjamin Logan, the self-reliant energy of Boone and Whetzel, and the steady firmness and consummate military skill of George Rogers Clarke. The people of this country need records of the lives of such men, and we have attempted to present ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... he depends for an orderly and lawful indulgence of his sex demands. The greatest longevity and best health are to be found among happily married fathers and mothers. No young woman should marry without a full knowledge of her sex duties to her husband. And she should never consummate ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... writer in the New Review said recently that of all the poets he remembered, only Shakespeare and Browning never drew a prig. It is this complete absence of the false note that gives to certain of Browning's poems the finality which is felt in all consummate works of art, great and small; the sense that they convey, if not the last word, at least the last necessary word, on their subject. 'Andrea del Sarto' is in its way the whole problem of the artist-ideal, the weak will and the inner failure, in all times and guises; and at the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... technical skill in cutting goes, was out and away beyond anything we could almost dream of at home, and all at 1s. 4d. a day, which is good pay here. One man cut with consummate skill geometrical ornaments on lintels to be supported by architraves covered with woodland scenes, with elephants foreshortened and ivory tusks looking out from amongst tree-trunks, and most naturalistic monkeys, peacocks, fruit, and foliage. All this we saw rapidly dug ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... mixt in the mass of general matters, they occupy but a common page; and while the chief of the successful partizans stept into power, the plundered multitude sat down and sorrowed. Few, very few of them are accompanied with reformation, either in government or manners; many of them with the most consummate profligacy.—Triumph on the one side, and misery on the other, were the only events. Pains, punishments, torture, and death, were made the business of mankind, until compassion, the fairest associate of the heart, was driven from its place; and the eye, accustomed to continual cruelty, ...
— A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal, on the Affairs of North America, in Which the Mistakes in the Abbe's Account of the Revolution of America Are Corrected and Cleared Up • Thomas Paine
... will be found to possess no less originality of conception than vigor of reasoning and wealth of erudition.... The method of Dr. Draper, in his treatment of the various questions that come up for discussion, is marked by singular impartiality as well as consummate ability. Throughout his work he maintains the position of an historian, not of an advocate. His tone is tranquil and serene, as becomes the search after truth, with no trace of the impassioned ardor of controversy. He endeavors so far to identify himself with the contending ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... doctors, and not until then. At first some of the surgeons would have nothing to say to her, and, though she was welcomed by others, the majority were hostile and suspicious. But gradually she gained ground. Her good will could not be denied, and her capacity could not be disregarded. With consummate tact, with all the gentleness of supreme strength, she managed at last to impose her personality upon the susceptible, overwrought, discouraged, and helpless group of men in authority who surrounded her. She ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... Bolton would, of course, have heard it; but nevertheless he walked boldly into the attorney's office. His fault at the time was in being too bold in manner, in carrying himself somewhat too erect, in assuming too much confidence in his eye and mouth. To act a part perfectly requires a consummate actor; and there are phases in life in which acting is absolutely demanded. A man cannot always be at his ease, but he should never seem to be discomfited. For petty troubles the amount of acting necessary is so common that habit has made it almost natural. But when ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... Hardie, smiled satirically, and after a pause answered with consummate coolness: "I believe thus much, that she loves her uncle, and that his ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... neither Moses nor Aaron was able to enter in, or to stand therein, because of the cloud, and of the glory of the Lord that at that time filled the house (Exo 40:33,34; 1 Kings 8:10,11). Thus you see this city descends in one measure of glory, and is consummate in another measure of glory. The glory of the Lord was upon the mount Sinai while the pattern of the tabernacle was giving, but it rested on the tabernacle when the work thereof was finished; to signify, I say, that the glory of God will ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... melancholy, he hated restraint of every kind and he gave way to dissipation, and his life is a wretched record of poverty and suffering. But the Bells, The Raven and Annabel Lee, his principal poetical works, are wonderfully melodious, constructed with great ingenuity, and finished with consummate art. He wrote several weird prose tales and some critical essays. He died at Baltimore, under circumstances of great ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... that all this doesn't matter. That is very true—and be hanged to you!—but those facts prove by every canon of literary art that Robinson Crusoe is either a coldly calculated flight of consummate genius or an accidental freak of hack literature. When De Foe wrote, it was only a century after Drake and his companions in authorized piracy had made the British privateer the scourge of the seas and had demonstrated ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... numbering on this spot which they had chosen for their games among the grass, standing singly, in couples, in whole companies, yellow as the yolk of eggs, and glowing with an added lustre, I felt, because, being powerless to consummate with my palate the pleasure which the sight of them never failed to give me, I would let it accumulate as my eyes ranged over their gilded expanse, until it had acquired the strength to create in my mind a fresh ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... English are consummate hypocrites. But there's only one objection to their hypocrisy—it so rarely covers any wickedness. It's such a disappointment to see a creature stalking toward you, laboriously draped in sheep's clothing, and then to discover that it's only a sheep. You, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... a consummate Artist in Speech, our Voltaire: that, if you take the word SPEECH in its widest sense, and consider the much that can be spoken, and the infinitely more that cannot and should not, is Voltaire's supreme excellency among his fellow-creatures; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... artist as a more or less harmless lunatic. When he succeeds it is willing to exalt him into a kind of god and to worship his eccentricities as a part of his divinity. So we arrive at a belief in the insanity of genius. What would Raphael have thought of such a notion, or that consummate man of the world, Titian? What would the serene and mighty Veronese have thought of it, or the cool, clear-seeing Velazquez? How his Excellency the Ambassador of his Most Catholic Majesty, glorious Peter ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... carries it through every fibre and cranny of Prussian Business, and so far as possible, of Prussian Life; so that Prussia is all a drilled phalanx, ready to the word of command; and what we see in the Army is but the last consummate essence of what exists in the Nation everywhere. That was Friedrich Wilhelm's function, made ready for him, laid to his hand by his Hohenzollern foregoers; and indeed it proved a ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... Athens and for Argos. The standing position, while not identical with that of the Doryphorus, the Diadumenos, and the wounded Amazon, is strikingly similar, as is also the form of the head. At all events, the statue is a fine example of apparently unstudied ease, of that consummate art ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... Queen and Raoul, based upon one of the most flowing of melodies, and the spirited and effective finale in which the nobles take the oath of allegiance ("Per la fe, per l'onore"),—each and every one of these is colored with consummate skill, while all are invested with ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... much perplexed respecting any decision she has had to make, as in the present instance. She has read Lord Stratford's Despatch (358) over several times, and she is struck, every time more, with the consummate ability with which it is written and argued; but also with the difficulty in which it places the person reading it to extract distinctly what the Porte will be prepared ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... 62 years old, of medium height, and with sandy hair and whiskers. An active, iron man, with a clear sharp eye. A man of consummate shrewdness—of great executive ability. He was born in the State of Vermont, and so by the way was Heber C. Kimball, who will wear the Mormon Belt when Brigham leaves ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... motion every day thence made unto them; You must Kill your self! you must! you must! But it is rarely any other than a Saul, an Abimelek, an Achitophel, or a Judas; rarely any other, than a very Reprobate, whom the Devil can drive, while the man is Compos Mentis, to Consummate such a Villany. Yea, no Child of God, in his Right Senses can go so far in this impiety, as to be left without all Time and Room for true Repentance of the Crime; 'tis thus done, by none but those that go to the Devil. A self-murder, acted by one that is upon ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... Socialists can characterize it, therefore, the actual municipal government of Rome is as antimonarchical as it is antipapal. But the syndic of Rome is a man of education, of culture, of intelligence, and he is evidently a man of consummate tact. He has known how to reconcile the warring elements, which made peace in his election, to one another and to their outside antagonists, to the Church and to the State, as well as to himself, in the course he holds over a very rugged way. His opportunities of downfall ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... youngest lady in the class—and Mr. Georgie Bassett one-two-three—glided with consummate technique for the better education of Penrod Schofield. It is possible that amber-curled, beautiful Marjorie felt that she, rather than Miss Rennsdale, might have been selected as the example of perfection—or perhaps her ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... such a treasure. Still, it was not only unnecessary but distinctly unwise to add that it should be placed in her wardrobe for safety, as being much too gorgeous for everyday use. Because all she gained by this consummate tact was another pincushion, not quite so ornate perhaps, but even cruder in colour, and this she was compelled to assign a prominent ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol 150, February 9, 1916 • Various
... is still writing of herself: 'She is too popular to need reviews. Besides, a large number of the critics—the "log-rollers" especially—are mad against her for her success, and the public know it. Clearness of thought, brilliancy of style, beauty of diction—all these are hers, united to consummate ease of expression and artistic skill. The potent, resistless, unpurchasable quality of Genius. She wrote what she had to say with a gracious charm, freedom, and innate consciousness of strength. She won fame without the aid of money, and was crowned so brightly and visibly ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... seven sons, will Jehovah forget them eternally? Will he abandon them to the corruption of the grave?[4] Worldly and incredulous Sadduceeism might possibly not recoil before such a consequence, and a consummate sage, like Antigonus of Soco,[5] might indeed maintain that we must not practise virtue like a slave in expectation of a recompense, that we must be virtuous without hope. But the mass of the people could not be contented with that. Some, attaching themselves to the principle ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... his habitation, and consisted chiefly of oatmeal-porridge, barley-broth, and potatoes, and milk. How the muse happened to visit him in this clay biggin, take a fancy to a clouterly peasant, and teach him strains of consummate beauty and elegance, must ever be a matter of wonder to all those, and they are not few, who hold that noble sentiments and heroic deeds are the exclusive portion of the gently nursed and ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... sketch shows something unique in a grille that adds to the appearance of a home furnished in mission style. When it is stained and finished to match the furniture, it gives a consummate tone that would be difficult to obtain by ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part 2 • H. H. Windsor
... this atrocity having been appeased by the princess, who possessed the most consummate skill in the art of persuasion, there was offered on the tower a burnt sacrifice to the infernal deities, the main ingredients of which were mummies, rhinoceros' horns, oil of the most venomous serpents, various aromatic woods, and one hundred ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... not but feel sad that I had not been in the city, and had had an opportunity to help them to ascertain whether her life had really gone out. But the girls seemed proud of the distinction of having had a sister of such consummate virtue. Numerous embroidered scrolls and laudatory inscriptions were sent her from friends of the Li family as well as of their own, and it is expected that the throne will order a memorial ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... it? Yet nothing short of its complete absorption into our own being can in the least satisfy us. No merely superficial temporary contact of exterior form to exterior form will serve us. The embrace must be consummate, not achieved by a mocking environment of draped and muffled arms that leaves no lasting trace on organisation or consciousness, but by an enfolding within the bare and warm bosom of an open mouth—a ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... muttered, in consummate amusement. "And since when has Babbiano been a republic—or is it your aim to make it one, and establish yourself ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... reasons why the President should feel that success is within his grasp. He has used the opportunities that he found or created, and he has used them with consummate ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... stay there and dream, but she seldom thinks of herself first. Cecil is sleeping soundly, and she glides down to talk a little, play a little, and sing a few songs. Listening to her, Eugene begins to consider himself a consummate fool. He would not marry madame if he could. If it were all to do over again,—but then he was not prepossessed with Violet when he first saw her, and now it is too late. He has no high and fine sentiments, he simply recognizes the fact that she ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Magdalen Graeme, "and may Heaven, too, have mercy upon us, who linger behind in this bloody land! His loss is indeed a perilous blow to our enterprise; for who remains behind possessing his far-fetched experience, his self-devoted zeal, his consummate wisdom, and his undaunted courage! He hath fallen with the church's standard in his hand, but God will raise up another to lift the blessed banner. Whom have the ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... first by a relation who turned him out for theft; afterwards by two sisters, his cousins, who were already beginning to take alarm at his abnormal perversity. This pale and fragile being, an incorrigible thief, a consummate hypocrite, and a cold-blooded assassin, was predestined to an immortality of crime, and was to find a place among the most execrable monsters for whom humanity has ever had to blush; his name ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... carried out her deep-laid and diabolical scheme, reads like an adventure from the "Arabian Nights." The personification of the Queen by a little dressmaker who happened to resemble her, the forgery of the Royal signature, the final attainment of the diamonds, all seemed so easy to this consummate trickster that it is small wonder she became intoxicated with success and blind to consequences. No sooner was the necklace in her possession than, of course, as fast as possible it was turned, not into money, but into money's worth. Houses and lands, equipages ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... higher rank, for Plato (see his Phaedo) was terribly puzzled over the question how one and one make two. After much puzzling he decided finally that one and one became two "by participation in duality." This was the first great step to introduce philosophy into mathematics. Let Prof. Harris consummate this great work either by ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... You will remember, however, that were you even to succeed in shaking the legitimacy of my young friend, the Earl of Byerdale here present, which cannot by any possibility be done, you would but convey the title and estates to his uncle, Colonel Sherbrooke, to whose consummate prudence, in favour of his nephew, it is now owing that these estates, having been suffered to rest for so many years in your hands, no forfeiture has taken place, which must have been the case if he had claimed them ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... that day was due not merely to the gallantry of General Scott upon the field. It must in part be ascribed to the patient, anxious, and indefatigable drudgery, the consummate skill as a tactician, with which he labored night and day, at the camp near Buffalo, to prepare his brigade for the career on which it was about to enter. After a brief interval he again led that ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... Mexico, Central America, Africa, Japan, Madagascar, and Jamaica. When the Indian indigo plant, Indigofera tinctoria, is in flower, it contains the largest quantity of coloring matter. The beautiful vegetable and animal dyes which were compounded with consummate skill are now largely supplanted by the chemical dyes which are easily obtained. But in years to come the commercialism of the present will probably give way to the restoration of the ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt
... number of The Current, in its article headed 'Books of the Month,' devoted about half a page to 'English Prose in the Nineteenth Century.' This notice was a consummate example of the flippant style of attack. Flippancy, the most hopeless form of intellectual vice, was a characterising note of Mr Fadge's periodical; his monthly comments on publications were already looked for with eagerness by that growing class ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... mortification, even while I could hardly believe I had understood aright. Madge had been so kind to me lately that I couldn't think she had been feeling as bitterly as she spoke. That such an apparently frank girl was a consummate actress wasn't to be thought, and yet—I remembered how well she had played her part on Hance's trail; but even that wouldn't convince me. Proof of her duplicity came quickly enough, for, while I was still thinking, ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... And the consummate prose of this our chapter moves us with the like rhythmical power upon the spirit, while from Abel and Enoch onwards we hear recited, name by name, the ancestors of the undying family of faith. No wonder that the chapter should have inspired to utterances formed in its own style ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... crude, and the girls of his age were "silly." Yet their lure and his own internal tensions dragged him to one place after another, hoping that he would find the perfect woman, able to understand him. At last he did find her, so he thought, in the person of a young woman of twenty-five, a consummate mistress of the arts of femininity. She sized him up at once, played on his vanity, extolled his fine tastes and never exposed a single crudity of her own, until she brought him to the point where his passion ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... secret paths which have been hewn up the sides of the rocks, and through the otherwise impassable undergrowth of the forest, by the perseverance and labors of the robbers. The rude castle, which I would now describe to you, was built with consummate military skill, and the walls and bastions, though small and low, could hold out a long time against any strength that might be brought against it. Ever prepared for an enemy, too, was its cautious master and his ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... was he. So he rode to the starting-post, happy in himself and modestly confident—the very model of what a well-to-do English countryman should wish to be—a Rugby and Balliol man, above suspicion for honesty, a busy man of affairs, a consummate horseman, a bad speaker, and a true-hearted Liberal, holding an equally unblemished record for courage in ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... events follow in strict chronological sequence); and how then is it possible to resist the conclusion, which is forced upon the mind by the concurrent testimony of so many able reviewers, the leaders of intellectual thought in this critical nineteenth century, to the consummate scholarship of the writer, that they must be referring to a different recension, probably more authentic and certainly far more satisfactory than the book which lies ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... go on we must say one word further as to Lady Arabella's character. It will probably be said that she was a consummate hypocrite; but at the present moment she was not hypocritical. She did love her son; was anxious—very, very anxious for him; was proud of him, and almost admired the very obstinacy which so vexed her to her inmost soul. No grief would be to her so great ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... heathens, where the very phrase is unknown. But had I not better partake more fully in their reproach? Does not thy advice stretch so far as to recommend me to take the turban? Methinks I want but apostasy to consummate my infamy." ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... incessant change. His watchword seemed to be "Whatever is is wrong," for against the existing order of things in state, society, or home he was ever ready to wage determined war. Armed with propensities such as these, a profound conviction of his own sense and sagacity and consummate distrust in those of everybody else, it is easy to see that once encouraged to break the ice and join in the current of conversation he could not readily be eliminated. A man of good education was Elmendorf, and during the European trip he had not been so much in the way, but ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... gave proof of consummate tact and taste, as well as of an unaffected personal modesty, in assigning to himself as one of the company of pilgrims, instead of a tale bringing him into competition with the creatures of his own invention, after ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... head. A young man was coming up the avenue. He was a very gallant figure, moderately tall and very straight; he held his head high, his features were strong in outline. But the noticeable thing about him at this early hour of the morning and in the wake of a great disaster was his consummate grooming. ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... so glitter in their stolen setting were cut and set by Sterne himself. Let us allow that the most expert of lapidaries is not justified in stealing his settings; but let us still not forget that the jewels are his, or permit our disapproval of his laxity of principle to make us unjust to his consummate skill. ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... plainly enough dressed,—in black; you would not notice what she had on; but you would notice instantly the consummate usedness to the world and the hardening into the mould thereof that was set and furrowed upon eye ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... topic, even when the Master had led to it. In short, he appeared at once pushed on by his desire of appearing friendly, and held back by the fear of intrusion. It was no wonder that the Master of Ravenswood, little acquainted as he then was with life, should have given this consummate courtier credit for more sincerity than was probably to be found in a score of his cast. He answered, however, with reserve, that he was indebted to all who might think well of him; and, apologising to his guests, he left the ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... of which to-day would suddenly make her face burn; hated him for the manner in which, somehow, as she felt, he had lowered her social tone; yet at the same time she admired him for an impudence so consummate that it had ended (in the face of mortifications, exposures, failures, all the misery of a hand-to-mouth existence) by imposing itself on her as a kind of infallibility. She knew he was an awful humbug, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... political philosophy. There, too, were Gibbon, the greatest historian, and Jones, the greatest linguist, of the age. Garrick brought to the meetings his inexhaustible pleasantry, his incomparable mimicry, and his consummate knowledge of stage effect. Among the most constant attendants were two high-born and high-bred gentlemen, closely bound together by friendship, but of widely different characters and habits; Bennet Langton, distinguished by ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Herring had nursed him bravely to the end. She tried to reconcile this with his death this afternoon in the Boer War, and decided that it didn't matter. He must have died somewhere, for no one had ever seen him. She was discovering slowly that this woman was a consummate liar, who lied as the birds sing, but forgot her many inventions, a born liar without a memory. Suddenly Mrs Herring said she must be going, and Ada got up to leave. She lurched as she stood, and pushed her chair over ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... in the least embarrassed by his superfluity of parents. He adjusted himself to the circumstances with tact and a sympathetic consideration which would scarcely have been expected of him. He managed the two fathers with consummate skill, divided his attentions honorably between them, and played the role of demigod to perfection. When Livinius and Eudemius were together, he was circumspect, careful lest he arouse parental jealousy on either side; but when he and Eudemius were alone, he cast ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... which for the present diminishes so greatly the incoming of fresh recruits for our schools, rung the knell of our missionary success? But to this question only one answer was possible. Even if, looking out from a stand-point of consummate Calvinism, we should venture to decide that the Lord's elect among the Chinese in California had all been gathered in, there were, nevertheless, these little flocks of Christ's own sheep and lambs already ...
— The American Missionary—Volume 39, No. 02, February, 1885 • Various
... carrying my arrogance to that point, I admire the conduct of our Chief, and do not disapprove that of his worthy Adversary; and far from forgetting the esteem and consideration due to persons who, scarred with wounds, have by years and long service gained a consummate experience, I shall hear them more willingly than ever as my teachers, and try to learn from them how to arrive at honor, and what is the shortest road into the secret of this Profession." ["Camp at Heidelberg, 11th September, 1734" ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the peculiar power of fascination—snake-like, he called it—possessed by the plaintiff. Without any assistance from turgid rhetoric, or indignant denunciation, he depicted it in a manner so simple, yet so direct, that his audience shivered in response. Then, with consummate art, he played upon their sensibilities by picturing the simple homeliness of Amy Johnson's happy family circle, on to the fervour of Reg's devotion, the complete happiness of the young couple up to their disunion under the diabolical arts of Wyckliffe. Gently, but still with a power that swayed ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... only of extreme misery and distress. The means had been concerted and prepared with so much secrecy and circumspection, that no one circumstance appeared to occasion the smallest suspicion of the impending calamity, the result of an act of piracy the most consummate and atrocious that was probably ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... His Phaedra is a consummate tragedy, and the success of it was as great as the most sanguine expectations of his friends could promise or foresee. The number of nights, and the common method of filling the house, are not always the surest marks of judging what encouragement ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... very just suspicion that Don Tacon was acting. He had formed, indeed, a perfectly just estimate of his consummate impudence and roguery, but still it was difficult to account for the reason of his ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... discovered—detected. I have watched you and overheard your conversation, for days past, at the house of Richard Crawford. What is more, I have the poisoned bandage in my pocket, after having had it analyzed by a chemist. If you leave at once, without attempting to consummate any more of your designs, you are safe from any exposure—I promise you so much, on the honor of a true woman. If you are not gone before to-morrow morning, without any further attempt at entangling Mary Crawford, I ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... To reach the consummate naturalness of the Life that is God, good, we must comply with the first condition [30] set forth in the text, namely, believe; in other words, understand God sufficiently to ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... never touch a romance or novel; these paint beauty in colours more charming than nature, and describe happiness that man never tastes. How delusive, how destructive are those pictures of consummate bliss! They teach the youthful mind to sigh after beauty and happiness that never existed; to despise the little good which fortune has mixed in our cup, by expecting more than she ever gave; and, in general, take the ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... last to Dieppe, But Dawn had made his way across the sea, And, as I climbed with heavy feet the cliff, Was even then upon the sky-built towers Of that great capital where nations all, Teuton, Italian, Gallic, English, Slav, Forget long hates in one consummate faith. ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... considered so; but it is by no means a patchwork. He talks of horse-racing, the Millerites, elm trees, Doctor Johnson, the composition of poetry and much else; but these subjects are introduced and treated with an adroitness that amounts to consummate art. He is always at the boarding-house, and if his remarks sometimes shoot over the heads of his auditors, this is only because he intends that they should. The first ten or fifteen pages of the "Autocrat" are written ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... been abandoned in York by an artful and consummate fiend; and found guilty of being art and part concerned in the most heinous atrocities, and, in his place, suffered what I yet shudder to think of I was banished the county, begged my way with my poor ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... was then a royal prison, it must appear almost marvellous that Carl Maria should have possessed sufficient equanimity to have occupied himself with his beloved art during his arrest. But so it was. He managed to procure a dilapidated old piano, put it in tune with consummate patience, by means of a common door-key, and actually, then and there, on the 14th of October, 1808, composed his well-known beautiful song, 'Ein steter Kampf ist ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... into the living-room to chat on less contentious subjects. After a time the women joined them, and Grant presently found himself absorbed in conversation with the old rancher's wife. Zen seemed to pay but little attention to him, and for the first time he began to realize what consummate actresses women are. Had Transley been the most suspicious of husbands—and in reality his domestic vision was as guileless as that of a boy—he could have caught no glint of any smoldering spark of the long ago. Grant found himself thinking of this dissembling quality as ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... had learned her own history for the first time was a night of consummate beauty in the natural world. When all the gates and doors of the farm and its outbuildings had been bolted and barred for the night, the moon, almost full, rose in a cloudless heaven and shed pearl-white showers of radiance all over the newly-mown and clean-swept fields, ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... than otherwise to learn this, for it was proof that, if he could secure possession of the little vessel—abundantly able to contain all the party—he would have the one of all others which he could manage with his own consummate skill. The paddle was there, only awaiting a claimant. But in making his reconnoissance, Lena-Wingo ascertained that an Iroquois sentinel was stationed within a dozen feet, where he was using his eyes and ears ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... will here find no regions cursed with irremediable barrenness, or blessed with spontaneous fecundity; no perpetual gloom, or unceasing sunshine; nor are the nations here described either devoid of all sense of humanity, or consummate in all private or social virtues. Here are no Hottentots without religious polity or articulate language[271]; no Chinese perfectly polite, and completely skilled in all sciences; he will discover, what will always be discovered by a diligent and impartial ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... of my manhood, perhaps (if allowed to me to attain it) he may be the consolation of my age. His poetry is the Book of Life. Without canting, and yet without neglecting religion, he has assembled all that a good and great man can gather together of moral wisdom clothed in consummate beauty. Sir William Temple observes, "that of all the members of mankind that live within the compass of a thousand years, for one man that is born capable of making a great poet, there may be a thousand born ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... dangers to which these princes were constantly exposed developed in them capacities of a remarkable kind. In so artificial a world only a man of consummate address could hope to succeed; each candidate for distinction was forced to make good his claims by personal merit and show himself worthy of the crown he sought. Their characters are not without dark sides; but in all of them ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... was away in Paris that Easter, and we had not met since my appearance in the Row; but I knew she would be in town again shortly, and with consummate diplomacy I began to excite Brutus's curiosity by sundry careless, half-slighting allusions to Miss Chetwynd's little mare, Wild Rose. 'She's too frisky for my taste,' I said, 'but she's been a good deal admired, though ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... the circumstances, it belonged to the man to whom it was addressed, and not to Mr. Belcher at all. His own act might be doubtful, but it was in the interest of fair dealing, and in opposition to the schemes of a consummate rascal, to whom he owed neither respect nor good-will. He would stand by it, and take the consequences ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... on in the school, and some new wrongs he introduces and invents. But nothing delights him so much as to instigate other boys to resist the authority of the masters. They know him to be a nucleus of disorder and wickedness, but he has acted with such consummate ingenuity as to avoid even laying himself open to any distinct ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... to Gresham House. He was a remarkably handsome, courteous man, excessively insinuating in his manners, at the same time with a firm and determined look. He was said to be a refined courtier and a consummate politician. Probably the Romanists had no more watchful enemy. His eagle eye was everywhere, and his great aim was to counteract all their plots and machinations, at this time especially so rife in England for the ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... the whole figure in the tragic scene that requires it; we are equally struck by both: we see nothing like either: and we admire the execution while we have no conception of the manner in which it is performed. The strength and heightening are alike admirable in each, and the consummate sweetness only to be rivalled by the expressive strength of the colouring. In the conduct and finish of their pieces, both have done wonders; and as the pictures of Corregio are so equal in their several parts, that, though the labour of years, they seem to ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... the streets in his red coat trimmed with gilt braid, his hat cocked upon one side of his bony head, pleasing himself with the belief that he was the object of universal admiration, and swelling with a vast and consummate self-satisfaction as he boasted, with strident voice and extravagant enunciation, of the magnificence of the palace ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... represent the Scotts of Raeburn), the agony of Mr. Somerville, suggested partly by the last illness of Scott's father, the sketches of Janet M'Evoy and Mrs. Bethune Baliol (Mrs. Murray Keith of Ravelston), the visit to the lost home,—all these things are treated not merely with consummate literary effect, but with a sort of sourdine accompaniment of heart-throbs which only the dullest ear can miss. Nor, as we see from the Diary, were the author's recent misfortunes, and his sojourn in a moral counterpart ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... said with all the assurance and cheerfulness he could command. But she instinctively detected a slight shade of anxiety or uncertainty in his tone. The physician must be a consummate actor who can deceive a patient whose perceptions are preternaturally acute as were Feodora's. He saw that he had not ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... analyse the roots of those names,—and various interpretations of their meanings. He brought before the bewildered audience all the intricacies of the different schools of metaphysics with consummate skill. Each letter of those names he divided from its fellow, and then pursued them with a relentless logic till they fell to the dust in confusion, to be caught up again and restored to a meaning never before imagined by the subtlest ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... to the principles of justice in the political and judicial language of the period, [Footnote: Compare the speech of the Doge Mocenigo, above,—"first justice, and then the interests of the state:" and see Vol. III. Chap. II Section LIX.] nothing more than a cloak for consummate violence and guilt; and it may easily be proved to have been so in myriads of instances. But in the main, I believe the expression of feeling to be genuine. I do not believe, of the majority of the leading Venetians of this period whose ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... Spermatorrhoea, forming the third stage of that disorder). Loss of Sexual Desire or Power, Imperfect or Rapidly Failing Erections, Too Early Emissions During Connection (denoting irritability), Delayed Emissions (denoting blunting of sensation), Failure to Consummate Marital Duties, Oozing of vital fluid, Unnatural Desire, but not sufficient power, Nervous Exhaustion, etc., Wasting of the Organs, ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... straight line to Vladivostok, across Chinese territory. It did not seem wise at this time to ask such a privilege, the patience of China being already strained by the matter of the Ussuri strip, that much-harassed country being also suspicious of the railroad itself. So with consummate tact Russia proceeded to build the road from the two extremities, leaving this gap to be adjusted by time and circumstances. She had not to wait long. In 1894 an unexpected event altered the whole face of the problem. War was declared between ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... to her feet "Oh, thank you! The most consummate artist in human nature that the time has given!" she added, with intensity. "There can be no question. Oh, I am so happy to have ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... in the island service, had been identified with the inner government circle since the days of the First Commission, and had been retained and promoted by each succeeding administration. Far-sighted, patient, wary, suave, he was the most consummate master of Island policy developed under the American regime. A press bitterly hostile to the idea of giving the Moros civil government had attested to his proven capacity by moderating its criticism following the announcement that he would ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... the Senorita Barenna under arrest unless she will hand to me the letter she has in her possession.' Julia looked at him with a smile. She was a brave woman, playing a dangerous game with consummate courage, and never glanced at Conyngham, who with an effort kept his hand away from the pocket where the letter lay concealed. The manner in which she trusted him unreservedly and entirely was in itself cunning enough, ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... up to his foes with holy assurance will fight with consummate skill. He will be quite "collected." All his powers will wait upon one another, and they will move together as one. He is as self-possessed upon the battlefield as upon parade, as undisturbed before Goliath as before a flock of ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... district bamboo fences and wooden partitions were in general use, and these too proved a source of calamity so ordained by fate (to consummate this decree). ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... other, about sixteen hundred. And in one case the general officer commanding has been insulted and attacked and defamed, while the officer responsible for the second affair is still regarded by the masses as a consummate ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... a young lady of consummate beauty; a brunette with colour in her skin and features of flawless perfection; with neither the serious air nor the statuesqueness of a great beauty, and with none of the negroid tone of most brunettes. When she smiled she showed her ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... "You are a consummate fool to bring him here!" cried Doctor Carey. "If she is too sick to realize the situation now, she will be different when she is normal again. Any sane girl that wouldn't love you, ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... some noon afar, — O life's top bud, mixt rose and star, How ever can thine utmost sweet Be star-consummate, rose-complete, Till thy rich reds ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... of Light and Life," the speaker went on, after a pause referable to his consummate knowledge of men, "has sent His Spirit down to the world, not once merely, or unto one people, but repeatedly, in ages sometimes near together, sometimes wide apart, and to races diverse, yet in every instance remarkable ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... Road" is a clever and poetic conception clothed in smart effective County Down dialogue with many bright and sparkling lines. The significance, the pathos, and inherent beauty of the concluding scene is a piece of consummate art.—Belfast Newsletter. ...
— The Turn of the Road - A Play in Two Scenes and an Epilogue • Rutherford Mayne
... You will begin early, and, as a boy, desire to be a man; and, as a man, think yourself as good as every other. You will choose freely to eat, freely to drink, freely to stagger and fall, freely, at last, to curse yourself and die. Death is the only real freedom possible to us; and that is consummate freedom, permission for every particle in the rotting body to leave its neighbor particle, and shift for itself. You call it "corruption" in the flesh; but before it comes to that, all liberty is an equal corruption in mind. You ask for freedom of thought; but if you have not sufficient ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... of those desiring the extension of slavery. The anti-slavery members of Congress met this in many instances by sober, candid discussion, but in others by sharp invective, dealt out by superior learning and consummate skill in the use of ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... inhabitants of what has been since that queenly city—along whose liquid and level streets the traveler passes, between palaces, churches, and fascinating squares, in constant delight—its first inhabitants fled before Attila, to the flooded lagoons which were afterward to blossom into the beauty of a consummate art. The fearful crash of blood and fire in which Aquileia and Padua fell smote Venice ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... sending to France, with all his family, this deeply perfidious man, who, by his consummate hypocrisy, has done us so much mischief. The government will determine how ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... discovered that his plans had been check-mated he concealed his indignation, but at the same time, he made every arrangement to stop the man who could thus throw off all dependence upon him with such consummate coolness. Cortes anchored at Macaca, to complete his stores, and found many of those who had accompanied Grijalva now hasten to serve under his banner: Pedro de Alvarado and his brothers, Christoval de Olid, Alonzo de Avila, Hernandez de Puerto-Carrero, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... elocution Emerson was a practised and consummate artist, who knew how both to command his effects and to conceal his means. The casual, practical, disarming directness with which he writes puts any honest man at his mercy. What difference does it make whether a man who can ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... works of a Phidias or a Praxiteles; and a palace for the painter, of which I was told the first stone had been rightly laid on the birthday of Raffaelle. But what struck me most in this city, more than its galleries, temples, and palaces, its magnificent buildings, splendid paintings, and consummate statues, was the all-pervading presence and all-inspiring influence of living and breathing Art. In every street, a school: the atelier of the sculptor open, the studio of the painter crowded: devoted ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... thought over the situation. The more I thought of it, the stranger it all seemed. I tried hard to persuade myself I was running some great danger in accepting the Cheritons' invitation. Certainly, I had behaved with consummate imprudence. Canada is a country, I said to myself, where they kidnap and murder well-to-do young Englishmen. How much easier, then, to kidnap and murder a poor weak stray English girl! I was entirely at the mercy of the ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... the centre, the vessels began to crowd together and friends to recognise and hail each other, so that the scene became very animated, while the risk of collision was considerable. Indeed, it was only by consummate skill, judgment and coolness that, in ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... and the ingeniously spun fabric of this Ballade have made it my pet. I do not dwell upon the loveliness of the first theme in F minor, or of that melodious approach to it in the major. I am speaking now of the composition as a whole. Its themes are varied with consummate ease, and you wonder at the corners you so easily turn, bringing into view newer horizons; fresh and striking landscapes. When you are once afloat on those D-flat scales, four pages from the end nothing can stop your progress. Every bar slides ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker |
