"Consummate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... himself of them to such effect as to create quite an Otis sentiment in the meeting. This performance was, of course, a shocking offence in the eyes of those, whose plans it had disturbed. With one particular old fogy he got into something of a newspaper controversy in consequence. The "consummate assurance" of one so young fairly knocked the breath out of this Mr. Eminent Respectability; it was absolutely revolting to all his "ideas of propriety, to see a stranger, a man who never paid a tax in our city, and perhaps no where else, ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... Such indecent privileges must have originated in the worst of intentions; and when afterwards they advanced a step in more humane manners, the ceremonial was preserved from avaricious motives. Others have compelled their subjects to pass the first night at the top of a tree, and there to consummate their marriage; to pass the bridal hours in a river; or to be bound naked to a cart, and to trace some furrows as they were dragged; or to leap with their feet tied over the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... was reflected in its king. What his subjects saw in Charles the Second was a pleasant, brown-faced gentleman playing with his spaniels, or drawing caricatures of his ministers, or flinging cakes to the water-fowl in the park. To all outer seeming Charles was the most consummate of idlers. "He delighted," says one of his courtiers, "in a bewitching kind of pleasure called sauntering." The business-like Pepys discovered, as he brought his work to the Council-board, that "the king do mind nothing but pleasures, and hates the very sight or thoughts of business." That Charles ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... he was—low by instinct and inheritance, he had never heard of so brilliant and so gentlemanly a piece of fraud. The consummate boldness of it made Carpenter's eyes twinkle—a gentleman and in a race with gentlemen—who would dare to suspect? It was the boldness of a fine woman, daring to ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... Castle till late in the nineteenth century was mainly, though not wholly, ruinous, and some decades ago it was, at enormous expense, reconstructed by the late Lord Bute. All the lore of the architectural antiquarian was ransacked in order to consummate this feat. Indeed the wealth of detail accumulated and reproduced by him will be held by many people to have defeated its own ends. Ornaments, carvings, colorings, of which ancient castles may severally offer single or a few specimens, ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... 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
... sentiments about Gothic architecture as simply equivalent to barbarous, in Phillips's New World of Words, 1706, s.v. 'Gothick.'] called it 'Gothic,' meaning rude and barbarous thereby. We who recognize in this Gothic architecture the most wondrous and consummate birth of genius in one region of art, find it hard to believe that this was once a mere title of slight and scorn, and sometimes wrongly assume a reference in the word to the people among ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... which he brought to those conferences,—this all, while it withdrew him somewhat from the proper studies and proper cares of his office, created a necessity for the display of the very rarest qualities of temper, discretion, tact, and command, and he met it with consummate ability and fortune. One of his addresses to the students in the chapel at the darkest moment of the struggle, presenting the condition and prospects of the college, and the embarrassments of all kinds which surrounded its instructors, and appealing to the manliness and affection and good principles ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... his cruel whip with consummate ease, my host drove the unruly crew before him out of the precincts, then halted and bent down from his saddle to examine some slight prints in the snow which led, not the way I had come, but toward what seemed another avenue. In a second or two the hounds were gathered ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... before us the actors in many of the most thrilling of historic dramas. One excellent feature of his method is his balancing of evidences. Where Xenophon and Herodotus absolutely differ he tells what each asserts. With consummate skill also he arranges his recital like a series of dissolving views, showing how epochs overlap, and how as Babylon is fading Assyria is rising, and as the latter in turn is waning Media is looming ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... 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
... altogether out of the perspective, except as underpinning for an edifice of national prestige. It is, at least, a safe generalisation that the patriotic sentiment never has been known to rise to the consummate pitch of enthusiastic abandon except when bent on some work of concerted malevolence. Patriotism is of a contentious complexion, and finds its full expression in no other outlet than warlike enterprise; its highest and final appeal ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... peaceful present. I care for nothing but Yoletta; and if the old world was consumed to ashes that she might be created, I am pleased that it was so consumed; for nobler than all perished hopes and ambitions is the hope that I may one day wear that bright, consummate flower on my bosom." ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... history to know no such person as her 'Prince Tarpuin of the race of the last Kings of Rome', is resolved into a certainty that she is romancing fully and freely throughout. It is surely obvious that such a point does not so much demonstrate Mrs. Behn's untruthfulness as her consummate art. With all the nice skill of a born novelist she has so mingled fact and fancy, what did occur and what might have been, that any attempt to disentangle the twain would be idle indeed. The passages where she is most insistent upon the due sequence of events, most detailed in observation ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... of marriage. Vestiges of it still remain among savage nations. And all the romance and grace of the most refined modern marriage—the orange-blossoms, the bridal veil, the church service, the wedding feast—these are only the "bright consummate flower" reared by civilization from that rough seed. All the brutal encounter is softened into this. Nothing remains of the barbarism except the one word "obey," and even that ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... sentiment. She was afraid of him, and concluded it time to cease threats and abuse and come down to the more effective role of wronged and suffering womanhood,—a feat which she accomplished with the consummate ease of long practice, for the rows in the Clancy household were matters of garrison notoriety. The surgeon, too, had come, and, after quick examination of Clancy's condition, had directed him to be taken at once ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... where I shall differ from everybody else. I shall go on where they have stopped. Having made one individual ridiculous, I shall broaden the basis of operation. With consummate skill I shall gradually draw the public officials ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... backsheesh for showing it. Cook's tourists' office is but a few hundred yards from my hotel. I have passed it before, and know exactly where it is, but one of these dusky shadows glides silently behind me, until the office is nearly reached, when he slips ahead, points it out, and with consummate assurance demands backsheesh for guiding me to it. The worst of it is there is no such thing as getting rid of these pests; they are the most persevering and unscrupulous blackmailers in their own small way that could be imagined. People whom you could ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... Vasari relate that, during his apprenticeship to Ghirlandajo, Michelangelo demonstrated his technical ability by producing perfect copies of ancient drawings, executing the facsimile with consummate truth of line, and then dirtying the paper so as to pass it off as the original of some old master. "His only object," adds Vasari, "was to keep the originals, by giving copies in exchange; seeing that he admired them as specimens of art, and sought ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... with which the walls were peopled, or the present realities of actors who came in and out of the room. Although he was so much younger then, Mr. Pinero looked much as he does now. He played Rosencrantz very neatly. Consummate care, precision, and brains characterized his work as an actor always, but his chief ambition lay another way. Rosencrantz and the rest were his ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... must be a profound calculator to be a consummate dresser. One must not dress the same, whether one goes to a minister or a mistress; an avaricious uncle, or an ostentatious cousin: there is no diplomacy more subtle ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... visited the United States, when it was admitted by those who had heard him twenty years before that he had grown to a consummate and astounding virtuoso. His tone was firm, pure, and beautiful, though not large. Marsick and Ondricek had preceded him by a few weeks, but Sauret did not suffer ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... been autobiographical studies of the animal world; why not of the vegetable? This is a delightful monograph, executed with consummate skill and verisimilitude throughout. The author, who holds the Professorship of Cereal Metaphysics at the University of Tokio, has devoted the greater part of his life to the study of the vegetable kingdom; and we need hardly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various
... in Charleston; and yet it is as impressive, 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 signed ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... every one else, but practising his father's maxims upon him, and cheating him[1028]. JOHNSON. 'I am much pleased with this design; but I think there was no occasion to make the son honest at all. No; he should be a consummate rogue: the contrast between honesty and knavery would be the stronger. It should be contrived so that the father should be the only sufferer by the son's villainy, and thus there would be ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... brave. Thus between Hector, the son of Priam, and the high-spirited Achilles, the rage was of so capital a nature, that only the final destruction [one of them] could determine it; on no other account, than that valor in each of them was consummate. If discord sets two cowards to work; or if an engagement happens between two that are not of a match, as that of Diomed and the Lycian Glaucus; the worst man will walk off, [buying his peace] by voluntarily sending presents), when Brutus held as praetor the fertile Asia, this ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... bound, and he can never be freed from it nor set at rest. You see him quite wrong evidently, and would persuade me that he is a genial creature, full of sweetness and amenities, and superior to his talents; but I fear he is harnessed to them. He is too consummate an artist to have a thread of nature left. He daunts me. I have not the key." When Mr. Fields came in he repeated: "—— would persuade me that Dickens is a man easy to communicate with, sympathetic and accessible ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... your face and hands in a bowl of clear water, denotes that you will soon consummate passionate wishes which will bind you closely to some one who interested you, but ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... of Finance, then, as long before and now, the post of difficulty under Austrian administration. The Diet, meanwhile, went on to consummate the series of reforms which Kossuth had so ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... brilliant victory of King's Mountain, Col. Sevier, with his regiment, displayed the most consummate bravery. In June of the same year, he marched into South Carolina and assisted Col. McDowell and other officers in the successful battle of ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... Romano, who had himself seized all there was of the carnal in Raphael's genius. But if there is something to be desired in the composition and line of the cartoons of the Florentine factory, there is nothing lacking in the consummate skill of the weavers. ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... some made their advantage of, had accused Barradas of cheating. The latter's fury was, of course, proportioned to his guilt; an instant challenge while I looked was his natural answer. This, as he was a consummate swordsman, and had long earned his living as much by fear as by fraud, should have been enough to stay the greediest stomach; but St. Mesmin was not content. Treating the knave, the word once passed, as so much dirt, he transferred his attack to St. Germain, and called on him to return the money ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... him than the thrill of his hunt for Black Roger Audemard. Black Roger was a murderer, a wholesale murderer and a fiend, a Moloch for whom there could be no pity. Of all men the Law wanted Black Roger most, and he, David Carrigan, was the chosen one to consummate its desire. Yet in spite of that he felt upon him the strange unrest of a greater adventure than the quest for Black Roger. It was like an impending thing that could not be seen, urging him, rousing his ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... He addressed to her no language that could tranquillize her fears. On the contrary, to any but a Roman mother his valedictory words, taken in connection with the known determination of his character, were of a nature to consummate her depression, as they tended to confirm the very worst of her fears. He was then going to stand his chance in a popular election for an office of dignity, and to launch himself upon the storms of the Campus Martius. At that period, besides other and more ordinary dangers, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... assemble all the merchants and wayfarers in the land and enquire of them anent that castle. If we can find out where it is, we will journey thither and demand the Princess Shamsah of her people, and we hope in Allah the Almighty that He will give her back to thee and thou shalt consummate thy marriage.' Then he went out and, calling his four Wazirs without stay or delay, bade them assemble all the merchants and voyagers in the city and question them of Takni, the Castle of Jewels, adding, 'Whoso knoweth ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... the course of this tremendous fight, extending through the 29th and 30th of May, that the incident occurred which has long been familiar among the anecdotes of the Revolution, and which may be here recalled as a reminiscence not only of his own consummate mastery of the situation, but of a most dramatic scene in an epoch-making debate. Reaching the climax of a passage of fearful invective, on the injustice and the impolicy of the Stamp Act, he said in tones ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... virtue is stronger than a ram, but which really means, you idiot, that courage is stronger than a battering-machine. Yes, I honour, accept, respect, and revere our lords. It is the lords who, with her royal Majesty, work to procure and preserve the advantages of the nation. Their consummate wisdom shines in intricate junctures. Their precedence over others I wish they had not; but they have it. What is called principality in Germany, grandeeship in Spain, is called peerage in England and France. There being a fair show of reason for considering the world a wretched place ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... teachers, and preachers with work. This fact interferes in no way with the prosperity of each worker; rather does it represent an accumulation of power on his side which promotes the ease and welfare of the workers. Their liberated capacities of mind enable Christian Scientists to consummate much good or else evil; therefore their examples either excel or fall short of other religionists; and they must be found dwelling together in harmony, if even they compete with ecclesiastical ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy
... she saw the sudden stricture in the face that received her message, and the grimace with which it uttered, pallid with apprehension, its response to a pleasantry of General Worsley's. She was not consummate in her self-control, but she was able at all events to send the glance travelling prettily on with a casual smile for an intervening friend, and bring it back to her dinner-roll without mischief. It did not adventure again; she knew, and she set herself to hold her knowledge, to look ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... lectures were consummate art, done by a handsome, graceful and cultured man in a red necktie, but they did not carry enough caloric to make them go. They seemed to lack vibrations. Art without a message is for the people who love art for art's sake, and God does not care ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... have passed since I finished that entry with the most appropriate words, "I am." They fittingly express the consummate egoism with which I was then afflicted. I ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... sound in the early morning gave token of that calm solemn, most fearful uprising of the people which, at a later hour, was to make that day one never to be forgotten by any who took part in or witnessed its extraordinary events. The Executive Committee with consummate prudence had kept their ...
— A Sketch of the Causes, Operations and Results of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856 • Stephen Palfrey Webb
... for the contrast between the triviality of what he said and the horror of what she had felt brought an expression to her face which even her consummate art could not ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... It was his habit to watch his daughter's face when any guest arrived. He formed his impression on what he believed to be hers. That she was a consummate actress never entered into his calculations. The welcoming smile dissipated ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... For the rest, while there is in his writing every degree of fullness or brevity, there is no waste of words, no 'fine language' out of place. His language, indeed, is ordinarily simple—sometimes even colloquial; though in the arrangement of his words in their most telling order he shows consummate art, and his metaphors are often bold and sometimes even violent. In the use of the 'figures of speech' he excels; above all, in the use of antitheses (whether for the purpose of vivid contrast or of precise logical ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... the cruel cost of everything they wear,—a cost which in this country is artificially maintained by a high protective tariff,—and they are not to be cajoled by that delusive word "simplicity," being too well aware that it is, when synonymous with good taste, the consummate success of artists, and the crowning achievement of wealth. Some years ago there appeared in one of the English magazines an article entitled, "How to Dress on Thirty Pounds a Year. As a Lady. By a Lady." Whereupon ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... these brief and ill-starred colonial exploits, we may pronounce the First Consul's government and achievements eminently successful. Bonaparte had inspired public confidence by the honesty of his administration and by his choice of officials, for he was served by such a consummate diplomat as Talleyrand and by such a tireless chief of police as Fouche. His speedy and victorious termination of the War of the Second Coalition and his subsequent apparent policy of peace had redounded to his credit. His sweeping and thorough reforms in internal affairs had attracted ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... thought, has suddenly gone out. A radiant invention shines no more; the voice is hushed of a creative mind, expressing its fine imagining in this, our peerless English tongue. His expression was so original and fresh from Nature's treasure-house, so prodigal and various, its too brief flow so consummate through an inborn gift made perfect by unsparing toil, that mastery of the art by which Robert Louis Stevenson conveyed those imaginings to us so picturesque, yet wisely ordered, his own romantic life—and now, at last, so ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... plain, and their deep array reached to the banks of the Tyber, which covered their rear, and forbade their retreat. We are informed, and we may believe, that Constantine disposed his troops with consummate skill, and that he chose for himself the post of honor and danger. Distinguished by the splendor of his arms, he charged in person the cavalry of his rival; and his irresistible attack determined the fortune of the day. The cavalry of Maxentius was principally composed ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... assigned a greater velocity to light in glass and water than in air or stellar space; and that on this point it was at direct issue with the theory of undulation, which makes the velocity in air or stellar space greater than in glass or water. By an experiment proposed by Arago, and executed with consummate skill by Foucault and Fizeau, this question was brought to a crucial test, and decided in favour of the theory ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... ride their horses into the field without saddles, and often without bridles, guiding and controlling them by their voices, and keeping their seats securely by the exercise of great personal strength and consummate skill. These Numidian horsemen are often alluded to in the narratives of Hannibal's campaigns, and, in fact, in all the military histories ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... of it, and to explain it to her, and for two days Mrs. Fenelby worried about it. It was only by exercising the most superhuman wiles that a servant could be persuaded to sojourn in the suburb. To hold one in thrall it was necessary to practice the most consummate diplomacy. The suburban servant knows she is a rare and precious article, and she is apt to be headstrong and independent, and so she must be driven with a tight rein and strong hand, and yet she is so apt to leave at a moment's ...
— The Cheerful Smugglers • Ellis Parker Butler
... and the tastes, and the studies, and the woes, provided only they are healthy and manly, of Twenty-five. Unhappy is the person of whom it can be said that he neither has been, is, nor ever will be in the temper and circumstances of which Praed's verse is the exact and consummate expression; not much less unhappy he for whom that verse does not perform the best perhaps of all the offices of literature, and call up, it may be in happier guise than that in which they once really existed, the many beloved ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... exceedingly interesting in the ceremonious attendant upon the execution of one of these potent fiats: the manner is as follows. Having received the orders of "John Doe and Richard Roe," they proceed to the residence of their intended captive, and with consummate skill, like the Eastern tellers of tales, commence their business by the repetition of some ingenious story (called in the language of the captured, lie), wherein the Bumme Bayllyffe (such is their title) artfully represents himself "as a cousin from the country," an "uncle from town," ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 11, 1841 • Various
... experience of speaking the truth only slightly modified, for that very morning Ferdy Rothschild had produced a purchaser who was willing to pay forty-six thousand dollars for Rashkin's house. This deal the purchaser proposed to consummate by taking the property subject to a first mortgage of thirty-three thousand dollars, by executing a second mortgage of seven thousand dollars, and by paying the six thousand balance of ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... my prize to Baltimore, but my evil destiny overtook me at last. I was recognised by emissaries of Jamieson, arrested and brought hither, and here shall I consummate my fate and defeat the rage of my creditors ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... intellect and the imagination, its concrete works of art, its special and prominent personalities, with their profound aesthetic charm, but for its general spirit and character, for the ethical qualities of which it is a consummate type. ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... threatened to do it, and went so far as to make his solicitor write to that effect to Marmaduke, who had the consummate impudence to reply that he should in that case be compelled to provide for himself by contracting a marriage of which he could not expect his family to approve. Still, he added, if the family chose to sever their connexion with ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... Rio and Bodin, for instance, consider the incubi as masculine demons which couple with women and the succubi as demons who consummate the carnal act ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... day, scattered about in museums, some score of statues of this period, examples of consummate art,—the Khephrens, the Kheops, the Anu, the Nofrit, the Rahotpu I have already mentioned, the "Sheikh-el-Beled" and his wife, the sitting scribe of the Louvre and that of Gizeh, and the kneeling scribe. Kaapiru, the "Sheikh-el-Beled," was probably ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... I could not yet arrange a dinner, and he was impatient for an introduction. I like him extremely: he has everything in his favour that can be imagined ; sound judgment without positiveness, brilliant talents without conceit, authority with gentleness, and consummate knowledge of science with modesty. What a blessing that such a character should preside over these inexperienced youths ! Mr. Jacob has aided us to remove. Time is a plaything to the diligent and obliging, though a thief to the idle and capricious ; the first find it, in ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... devoted parents; thus prove your gratitude, love, obedience, by wrenching every tie asunder. Oh, shame, shame! If this be the fruit of such tender cares, such careful training, oh, where shall we seek for honour and integrity—in what heart find virtue? And why not consummate your sin? why pause ere your noble and virtuous resolution was put in force? why hesitate in the accomplishment of your designs? Why not fly with your honourable lover, and thus wring the fond hearts of your parents at once to the utmost? Why retract now, when it will be ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... the entire life of man. Wherefore as regards these which are the principal virtues, the act of perseverance is not accomplished until the end of life. It is in this sense that Augustine speaks of perseverance as denoting the consummate act of perseverance. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... and we may believe that he read over many a time the pages in which Condorcet delineated the Tenth Epoch in the history of human perfectibility, and traced out in words of finely reserved enthusiasm the operation of the forces which should consummate the progress of the race. 'All the grand sources of human suffering,' Mr. Mill thought, 'are in a great degree, many of them almost entirely, conquerable by human care and effort; and though their removal is grievously slow—though a ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... and application of Captain Cook were followed by a large extent of knowledge; a knowledge which, besides a consummate acquaintance with navigation, comprehended a number of other sciences. In this respect the ardour of his mind rose above the disadvantages of a very confined education. His progress in the different branches of the ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... did, that the man was a consummate rogue, who had probably invited me to his house in order to keep me under observation, and possibly to prevent my getting scent of the intrigues pursued by his friend and ally, Princess Y——, I was still at a loss to understand the reason ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... to deal with a bold adventuress, with a consummate actress, who, finding herself in a dangerous situation, had adopted this daring line of defence, and now by her personal charm sought to lure me from ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... judgment he acted, under the trying circumstances surrounding him, in good faith and with consummate courage, judgment, and discretion. The homicide was, in our opinion, clearly justifiable in law, and in the forum of sound, practical common sense commendable. This being so, and the act having been 'done * * * in pursuance of a law of the United States,' as we have already ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... floor of this ancient charnel-house of sacrifice, he came upon the device by which the Red One was made to send his call singing thunderingly across the jungle-belts and grass-lands to the far beach of Ringmanu. Simple and primitive was it as was the Red One's consummate artifice. A great king-post, half a hundred feet in length, seasoned by centuries of superstitious care, carven into dynasties of gods, each superimposed, each helmeted, each seated in the open mouth of a crocodile, was slung by ropes, twisted of climbing ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... 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 ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... it on the 10th; by which the whole was subjected to a miscarriage." What Washington politicly calls bad luck was French bad management, provoked and baffled by Howe's accurate strategy, untiring energy, consummate seamanship, and tactical proficiency. Clinton's army delivered, the forcing of New York frustrated, Rhode Island and its garrison saved, by a squadron never more than two thirds of that opposed to it, were achievements to illustrate any career; and the more ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... pleased to adopt, commemorative of the death of the most illustrious and most beloved personage this country has ever produced; and which, while it transmits to posterity your sense of the awful event, faintly represents your knowledge of the consummate ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... life, is not expected to walk a thousand miles in a thousand hours, or to excel as a performer on wind-instruments. We impute to him no fault for this sort of incompetence. We should rather charge him with consummate folly, if he undertook a line of exercises for which he is so clearly unfitted. We do not wonder, in fact, when this unfortunate pulmonary constitution sends its possessor to an early grave. Why not apply the same philosophy to the brain, which may partake of all the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... carefully. I saw his calm eyes sometimes perk up. In these polar seas forbidden to man, did he feel right at home, the lord of these unreachable regions? Perhaps. But he didn't say. He stood still, reviving only when his pilot's instincts took over. Then, steering his Nautilus with consummate dexterity, he skillfully dodged the masses of ice, some of which measured several miles in length, their heights varying from seventy to eighty meters. Often the horizon seemed completely closed off. Abreast of latitude 60 degrees, ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... at the expense of the accursed Uitlander; but there is no intention on Mr. Kruger's part to allow Germany or Holland to secure a permanent hold over the Republic, any more than he would allow England to increase hers. He has played off one against another with consummate skill. ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... Lord Byron. The extraordinary qualities with which he was gifted, both in heart and in mind, his genius, his amiability, his irresistible attractions, his almost supernatural beauty, are all set forth with consummate ability, and the greatest penetration. He has made all his other characters, which are for the most part imaginary, subservient to this end; and he has created some (such as Lady Annabel) which moralists ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... bar of the Old Bailey, a bar already proverbial for the licence of its tongue and for the coarseness of its cases. Jeffreys served his apprenticeship for the service that our two last Stuarts had in reserve for him so well, that he soon became, so his beggared biographer describes him, the most consummate bully that ever disgraced an English bench. The boldest impudence when he was a young advocate, and the most brutal ferocity when he was an old judge, sat equally secure on the brazen forehead of George ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... presents to us such variety of illustration of the two great antagonistic principles of human life—self-pleasing and self-abnegation, love of pleasure and the love of God more or less absolute and consummate—that it is no easy task to select from among them. But two figures stand out before us, each portrayed with such finished yet unlaboured art—living, moving, talking before us—contrasted with such exquisite yet unobtrusive delicacy, and so subtilely illustrating ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... that end he was careful never to be tempted into forming an unwieldy crew, no matter how large the prize. Of the present organization each was an expert. Larry la Roche had been a counterfeiter and was a consummate penman. His forgeries were works of art. "Have you ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... court, more especially to the theatrical folk behind the man with the white hair, the gesture was but one more subtle touch in an exhibition of consummate ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... precious gift. She dressed rapidly, then hastened away to make the chateau bright with flowers, to complete various preparations for the toilet of her aunt, to perform numerous offices which might be termed menial; but she entered upon her work with so much zest, she executed each task with such consummate skill, she took so much interest in the employment of the moment, that no labor seemed either tedious ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... monkish Knights of Santiago, who had won fame in a hundred bloody combats with the Moors of Andalusia. So fierce was their meeting that their spears shivered up to the very grasp, and the horses reared backwards until it seemed that they must crash down upon their riders. Yet with consummate horsemanship they both swung round in a long curvet, and then plucking out their swords they lashed at each other like two lusty smiths hammering upon an anvil. The chargers spun round each other, biting and striking, while the two blades wheeled and whizzed and ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... throne, he yet gave a whole and a full heart to his subjects, and sought to guide them solely for their good. From this purpose he never swerved; and though his somewhat too trustful methods were rapidly changed by stern experience, his people felt more and more the consummate wisdom of his guidance, and they became unconquerable by that truth and that faith. Almost on the first day of his reign, he invited Voltaire, the greatest of literary heroes, the most adroit and successful assaulter of king-craft and priest-craft ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... period, Catholic and Protestant, had united in this universal chorus. Clement of Alexandria declared Adam's naming of the animals proof of a prophetic gift. St. John Chrysostom insisted that it was an evidence of consummate intelligence. Eusebius held that the phrase "That was the name thereof" implied that each name embodied the real character and description of ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... schools of philosophy, we have followed the course of 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
... mocked he. It irritated him a little vividly to recall what a consummate fool he had made of himself for her, even though he had every reason to be content with ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... from the water's surface thou dost spring, Thyself upon his chamber ceiling fling, And there, in mazy dance and motion wild, Disport thyself—etherial, undefiled. Capricious, like the thinkings of the child! I am a child again, to think of thee In thy consummate glee. How I would play with thee, athirst to climb On sloping ladders of thy moted beams, When through the gray dust darting in long streams! How marvel at the dusky glimmering red, With which my closed fingers thou hadst made Like rainy ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... boasts over his cups that he has whipped five men through the lungs. He talks a detestable cant language, calling guineas "megs," and half-guineas "smelts." Money, with him is "the ready," "the rhino," "the darby;" a good hat is "a rum nab;" to be well off is to be "rhinocerical." This consummate scoundrel teaches young country Tony Lumpkins to break windows, scour the streets, to thrash the constables, to doctor the dice, and get into all depths of low mischief. Finally, when old Sir William Belfond, the severe old country gentleman, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... something in Lord Monmouth, when he pleased it, rather fascinating to young men; and as Coningsby had never occasioned him any feelings but pleasurable ones, he was always disposed to make himself delightful to his grandson. The experience of a consummate man of the world, advanced in life, detailed without rigidity to youth, with frankness and facility, is bewitching. Lord Monmouth was never garrulous: he was always pithy, and could be picturesque. He revealed a character in a sentence, ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... Miss Notman, that you are a consummate mistress of an art which is quite beyond poor me. Was Miss Eyrecourt present ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... Talkativeness, (which is the highest pitch Persons of the first Rank do commonly arrive to) was truly and solidly learned, and a real Encourager of Letters : wherein she had the ready Concurrence of her Ministers, who were no less conspicuous for their Learning, than for their Integrity and consummate Wisdom. But as fair as the Hopes of this famous College appeared in its Bloom, they were soon blighted by the Death of that ever-memorable Princess, like those Fruits, which for want of the Sun's genial Rays, cannot arrive ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... to his hotel, however, he began to realize how much he had dreaded this interview. He was a free man, after all. The spell was broken. He could think of her now as she deserved to be thought of, as a consummate woman of the world, selfish, heartless, conscienceless. He was well out of her toils. It was nothing to him if even he had known that at that moment she was lying upon the sofa to which she had staggered as he left ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a developing impulse of power imparted from the soul of the parent. And as the body is sustained by absorbing nutrition from matter, so the soul is sustained by assimilating the spiritual substances of the invisible kingdom. The most ethereal elements must combine to nourish that consummate plant whose blossom is man's mind. This representation is not materialism; for spirit belongs to a different sphere and is the subject of different predicates from matter, though equally under a constitution of laws. Nor does this view pretend to explain what is inherently transcendent: it ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Norderney harbour? Heavens, what a magnificent climax!—if only I could rise to it. My work here was done. At a stroke to rejoin Davies and be free to consummate ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... cheers, consoles, encourages, and supports us? Who associates himself with our sufferings, and winces under our pain, and as suddenly rallies as we grow better, and joins in our little sickbed drolleries? Who does all these?—a consummate actor, who takes from thirty to forty daily "benefits," and whose performances are paid at a ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... about him so lustily on all the abuses within reach of his newspaper, and which inspired the 'father of the English Novel' with the admitted motive,—"I declare, that to recommend Goodness and Innocence hath been my sincere Endeavour in this History"—if not with the consummate art of his pages. ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... from their value as scientific treatises, have some compensating advantages if we regard them as a means of education in philosophy; for in this point of view their very artlessness gives them something of the same stimulating, suggestive power which is attained by the consummate art of the Platonic dialogues." The importance of the work is evidenced by the influence it has exercised over the mind of a later generation; and many readers, to whom Hegel (see Vol. XIV) is little more than a name, will certainly ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... dime into the bootblack's hand. I went on up Broadway, loitering sometimes, sometimes walking straight ahead; always, away behind me, lost in the crowd, was my pursuer. It could no longer be doubted. He was really following me, though he did it so adroitly, with such consummate cunning, that I should never have seen him, never have suspected him, but for that fortunate ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... dragoon officers perform fencing and managing their horses so dexterously that every muscle seemed trained to its fullest power and efficiency, and perhaps had they been brought up as Makombwe they might have equalled their daring and consummate skill: but we have no sport, except perhaps Indian tiger shooting, requiring the courage and coolness this enterprise demands. The danger may be appreciated if one remembers that no sooner is blood shed in the water than all the crocodiles below are ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... had thus brought his speech to its proper, and what would have been a perfect close, he suddenly changed his tone, and, in a strain of consummate and powerful irony, began to rally his antagonist. He assented to the gentleman's eulogium upon Lord Mansfield. It was deserved. He acknowledged the justice of his remarks in relation to himself (Hamilton) and his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... linear series are by no means always akin. Thus, the comparative study, in recent years, of the social instinct in the different apidae proves that the instinct of the meliponines is intermediary in complexity between the still rudimentary tendency of the humble bees and the consummate science of the true bees; yet there can be no kinship between the bees and the meliponines.[69] Most likely, the degree of complexity of these different societies has nothing to do with any greater or smaller number of added elements. ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... 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 and social virtues; here are no Hottentots without religion, polity, or articulate language, no Chinese perfectly polite, and completely skilled in all sciences: he will discover, what will always be discovered by a diligent ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... and even the often dishonest intentions of the foreign settlers must be concealed under the veil of devotion. The streets, formerly so full of life and animation, are now deserted; games of all kinds, even the most innocent, are sternly prohibited; singing is a punishable offence; and the consummate profligacy of attempting to dance would certainly find no mercy. On Sundays, no cooking is permitted, nor must even a fire be kindled: nothing, in short, must be done; the whole day is devoted to prayer, with how much real piety may be easily imagined. Some of the royal attendants, on their ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... but up! To uses of a cup, The festal board, lamp's flash, and trumpet's peal, The new wine's foaming flow, The Master's lips aglow! Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needst ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... Beckett—R. Beckett. 'Mr. Beckett, Berkeley Square,' the card says; and, my faith! here's a watch and a bunch of seals; one of them with the initials 'R.B.' upon it. That servant, Lablais, must have been a consummate rogue!" ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... A few days after, this lad of twenty, who had never so much as entered a large factory in his life, was installed manager of an establishment which employed five hundred people. He conducted himself with consummate prudence and skill. For the first six weeks he went about the building grave, silent, and watchful, using his eyes much and his tongue little, answering questions very briefly, and giving no positive directions. When evening came, and ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... faculties and powers Here undeveloped, lying deep within, Crush'd by the weight of circumstance and sin; Latent, as germs conceal their hidden flowers, Till some new clime, with genial suns and showers Give them the force consummate life to win: Even so we, poor prisoners of Time, Victims of others' evil and our own, Cannot expand in this tempestuous clime, But full of excellences in us sown, Must wait that better life, and there, full blown, In spiritual perfectness sublime The prizes of our nature we shall ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the subject of education, and knowing that "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom," and that the Great Teacher, who "taught as one having authority," hath said, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness," can we regard it any thing less than consummate folly to enter upon the work of education in the open neglect of these precepts? Should we not rather cheerfully comply with them, and do what we can to encourage all teachers, and all who receive instruction, to regard this law of ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... taken in this section be true, it is easy to see the consummate folly of all violence, whether between individuals or collective bodies, whether it be by striking, duelling, or war. For if an individual or a nation has done wrong, will it annihilate that wrong to counteract it by another wrong? Is it not obvious ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... was crossing Stone River to attack the Confederate right, the strong Confederate left fell heavily on the weak Union right. At first the onset was irresistible. But Gen. Sheridan was there, and by his consummate valor held his ground until Rosecrans could recall the left, replant his batteries, and establish a new line. Upon this fresh front the Confederates charged four times, but were driven back with very great loss. Two days after, Bragg renewed the attack, but being unsuccessful, ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... openly declare for the medicine-man. Cheschapah with his woman came from the mountains, and Pretty Eagle did not dare to harm him. Then another coincidence followed that was certainly most reassuring to the war party. Some of them had no meat, and told Cheschapah they were hungry. With consummate audacity he informed them he would give them plenty at once. On the same day another timely electric storm occurred up the river, and six steers were struck ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... day was Sir Lumley Skeffington, who used to paint his face, so that he looked like a French toy; he dressed a la Robespierre, and practised other follies, although the consummate old fop was a man of literary attainments, and a great admirer and patron of the drama. Skeffington was remarkable for his politeness and courtly manners; in fact, he was invited everywhere, and was very popular with the ladies. You always knew of his approach by an avant-courier ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... and it had not that torrent-rush in which Carlyle so often indulged. It was far more restrained. It had neither the continuousness nor the range of Browning's many-sided conversation, nor did it possess the charm of the ethereal visionariness of Newman's. It lacked the fullness and consummate sweep of Mr. Buskin's talk, and it had neither the historic range and brilliance of Dean Stanley's, nor the fascinating subtlety—the elevation and the depth combined—of that of the late F.D. Maurice. But it was clear as crystal, and calm as well as clear. It was ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... to us in conjunction with that of Roscius, was playing the principal character. The great orator had been his pupil, and was evidently regarded by him as a personal friend. With all the force of his consummate art, he threw into Andromache's lament for her absent father his own feelings for Cicero. The words in the part were strikingly appropriate, and he did not hesitate to insert a phrase or two of his own when he came to speak of ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... were a number of earnest men who were not willing to yield the principle, and who would make a fight. It was the Centennial year, and the two Assemblies were meeting at the same time and in neighboring cities, ready to consummate the union if desired. But the previous discussion had stirred up the Southerners also, and they had discovered that the temper of the North was not all that had been represented. They were not at all sure that the color-line could be peacefully drawn. They ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 7, July, 1889 • Various
... Astrologo-Catholicum (Lugduni, 1616). It was published with the royal assent, but afterwards brought upon its author the charge of Atheism. He concealed the poison most carefully; for apparently he defended the belief in the Divine Providence and in the immortality of the soul, but with consummate skill and subtilty he taught that which he pretended to refute, and led his readers to see the force of the arguments against the Faith of which he posed as a champion. By a weak and feeble defence, by foolish arguments and ridiculous reasoning, he secretly exposed the ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... for a fool. He had been calling Mallalieu a fool, indeed, ever since the previous evening, when the police, conducting him to Norcaster, had told him of the Mayor's escape from the Town Hall. Nobody but an absolute fool, a consummate idiot, thought Cotherstone, would have done a thing like that. The man who flies is the man who has reason to fly—that was Cotherstone's opinion, and in his belief ninety-nine out of every hundred persons in Highmarket would ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... etc., without having any idea of replacing what they have taken away. This may be confirmed by anybody whose desk is not habitually sacrosanct, and he will agree that it is not slovenliness, but defective sense of property that causes women to do this, for even the most consummate housekeepers do so. This defective property-sense is most clearly shown in the notorious fact that women cheat at cards. According to Lombroso, an educated, much experienced woman told him in confidence that it is difficult for her sex not to cheat at cards. ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... so fierce and licentious as ours. They contend, that no adequate provocation has been given for so spreading a discontent; our affairs having been conducted throughout with remarkable temper and consummate wisdom. The wicked industry of some libellers, joined to the intrigues of a few disappointed politicians, have, in their opinion, been able to produce this unnatural ferment ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... This is a young tree, with a future before it, if barbarians do not meddle with it, more conspicuous for its spread than its circumference, stretching not very far from a hundred feet from bough-end to bough-end. I do not think I saw a specimen of the British Quercus robur of such consummate beauty. But I know from Evelyn and Strutt what England has to boast of, and I will not ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... signs of solitary vice are very few. Of course the most certainly positive of all is detection in the act. Sometimes this is difficult, with such consummate cunning do the devotees of this Moloch pursue their debasing practice. If a child is noticed to seek a certain secluded spot with considerable regularity, he should be carefully followed and secretly watched, for several days in succession if need be. Many children pursue ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... State, the proportion of negroes within her borders was small. It was otherwise with the three formidable States which still hung in the balance, Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland. That these were saved to the Union was due almost wholly to the far-sighted prudence and consummate diplomacy of ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... He was a consummate advocate, as well as a profound and accurate lawyer. He had extraordinary powers for a speech impromptu, and needed as little time for preparation for an address to a jury, or an argument to the Court, as ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... for England, where he distinguished himself by his writings. The best of his tragedies, "Ricciarda," is founded on events supposed to have occurred in the Middle Ages. While some of its scenes and situations are forced and unnatural, some of the acts are wrought with consummate skill and effect, and the conception of the characters is tragic and original. Foscolo adopts in his tragedies a concise and pregnant style, and displays great mastery over his native language. Marenco (d. 1846) is distinguished ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... philosophy. Hearken carefully, child. If one day you rise above your station and come to know yourself and the world about you, you will discover this, that men act only out of regard for the opinion of their fellows—and per Bacco! they are consummate fools for their pains. They dread other folks' blame ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... be little doubt now of the consummate tact of McClellan's retreat. It is the bright page in the northern annals of strategy. Beaten each day and driven from his well-chosen strongholds—clearly chosen with a view to such necessities—he still held his army thoroughly in his grasp and carried it off in such order ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... essential idea or principle. The same exactness and rapidity of operation, pervading as it did her sensitive as well as her mental faculties, would, with her gifts of feeling and imagination, have fitted her to be a consummate artist, as her fiery and tender soul and her vigorous eloquence would certainly have made her a great orator, and her profound knowledge of human nature and discernment and sagacity in practical life, would, in the times when such a carriere was open to women, have made her eminent among the ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... guilt? Whichever it may be—and I am ready to believe in either or both—she is a burdened creature, and the weight of her fears or her intentions lies heavily upon her. But she hides the fact with consummate address, and when under the eyes of people smiles so brightly and conducts herself with such a charming grace that half the guests that come and go consider her as lovely and more captivating than her daughter. What would ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... officers of the Philadelphia corporation would not receipt for $850,000 when they were to receive only $750,000, for the reason that they could not square the transaction with their stockholders, and the buyer's agent would not consummate the deal without such a receipt, because he could not square with his client and its stockholders the payment of $850,000 with the consideration of $750,000 mentioned in the deed. This story was told to illustrate the proposition that every action has its prompting motive, and ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... turned on me. I saw myself in a fearful trap and nothing but consummate coolness could keep them from questioning me. My heart beat fast, but with an affectation of indifference I saluted and said: "Buenos noches, senores." They all returned my salutation, but looked at each other eagerly, each waiting for the other to ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... the master-key, unlocking every door in the secret chambers of his heart: Bismarck, all his long life, kept himself in power by his consummate knowledge ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel |
