"Mastered" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they moved nimbly over the keys, striking out with a will the few tunes she had learned during her two quarters' instruction. She had acquired a great deal of knowledge in a short time, for she was passionately fond of music, and every spare moment had been devoted to it, so that she had mastered the scales with innumerable exercises, besides learning several pieces, of which Money-musk was one. This she now played with a sprightliness and energy which brought Andy to his feet, while the cowhides moved to the stirring music in a fashion which would have utterly ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... in his shoulder, that gave to the severed sinew and let him drop on it so heavily that it completed the mischief done. And now for the first time in his life the polar bear felt fear. His keen wit told him that in such war he was mastered. He ceased to rush madly onward. He settled slowly on his torn haunches, and swayed this way and that on his one sound foreleg, till that too gave way and he sank in a ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... still a creature of impulse, and his pleasures had not yet become business. It would be a long time before he could be like the majority of these men of the road, who roamed until the hunger for drink and for women mastered them, and then went to work with a purpose in mind, and stopped when they had the price of ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... knowledge of human nature, and the deeper insight into, and greater sympathy with, the feelings and prejudices of Asiatics, which those possessed in a remarkable degree who proved by their success that they had mastered the problem of the best form of government for India. I allude to men like Thomas Munro, Mountstuart Elphinstone, John Malcolm, Charles Metcalfe, George Clerk, Henry and John Lawrence, William Sleeman, James Outram, Herbert Edwardes, John Nicholson, and many others. ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... little tractable as spasms of physical pain. But I can at least keep silent about their true cause. The first step toward the cure of egoism is to lock away one's Journal. I shall add no more to this till I have mastered my present state. And I wonder what that mastery will mean? Are ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... sincerest sympathy, his eyes full of emotion, "Don't you forget, little Lydia, that nobody's sorrier for you than I am! And I don't want anything that—" he cried out in sudden passion—"Good Lord, I'd be cut to bits before I'd even want anything that wasn't best for you!" He looked away and mastered himself again to quiet friendliness, "You know that, don't you, Lydia? You know that all I want is for you to have the most successful ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... this book the artist of a cultural epoch. This man has mastered the plastic messages of modern Europe: he has gone deep in the classic forms of the ancient Indian Dance. But he is, still, not very far from Ryder. He is always the child—whatever wise old worlds he contemplates—the ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... her outstretched hand, folded it in his, which trembled violently, and a look of anguish mastered his features, as his eyes searched ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... expected to find it. He supervised the whole of West's work for a time, but he soon suffered this vigilance to relax, for the man's shrewdness far surpassed his own. He settled to the work with a certain grim relish, and it was a perpetual marvel to Babbacombe that he mastered it from the outset with ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the direct and isolated acts of evil spirits. Feeling them continually near him, he will naturally endeavour to enter into communion with them. He will strive to propitiate them with gifts. If some great calamity has fallen upon him, or if some vengeful passion has mastered his reason, he will attempt to invest himself with their authority, and his excited imagination will soon persuade him that he has succeeded in ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... cattle over the very spot where she now stood, before the thieving Americans came here! But he would be calm; yes, the senora should find him calm, even as she was when she told him to go. He would not speak. No, he—Miguel—would contain himself; yes, he HAD mastered himself, but could he restrain others? Ah, yes, OTHERS—that was it. Could he keep Manuel and Pepe and Dominguez from talking to the milkman—that leaking sieve, that gabbling brute of a Shipley, for whose sake she had cast off her old servant that ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... Burns," he said, his voice low, but intense with the emotion that mastered him, "I'll give no word of honor regarding anything. Between you and me there is a lot to be settled. You have almost ruined me, and, by Heaven, before I get through with you, you'll ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... Slovakia has mastered much of the difficult transition from a centrally planned economy to a modern market economy. The DZURINDA government made excellent progress during 2001-04 in macroeconomic stabilization and structural reform. Major privatizations are nearly complete, the banking ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... feel himself dwindle and dwarf to microscopic insignificance. But it is not well for one to see himself truly, nor can one so see himself for long and live; and only for that flashing moment did Percival Ford see himself and his brother in true perspective. The next moment he was mastered by his ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... own concerns," Lucas answered lightly, arming himself with his insolence against the other's disdain. In a moment he had mastered the excitement that brought him so stormily into the room. He was once more the Lucas who had entered that ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... Eve, however, the mother felt symptoms of a return of her old sickness. Immediately she grew anxious, realizing how necessary it was that she should keep well. This nervous apprehension hastened the result that she most dreaded. Her pain and her weakness grew worse hour by hour. Mastered by her memories of what she had been through before, she was in no mood to throw off the attack. That evening, crawling to the barn with difficulty, she amazed the horse and the cattle by coaxing them to drink again, then piled their mangers with a two-days' store of hay, and scattered ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... mind was by no means peculiar to myself. Indeed I believe it to have been shared by the great majority of my classmates. The result was that we were sent forth into the world without having mastered any subject whatsoever, or even followed it for a sufficient length of time to become sincerely interested in it. The only study I pursued more than one year was English composition, which came easily to me, and which in one form or another I followed throughout my course. ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... wonderful progress with our French, in spite of our want of books. Indeed, I have reason to believe that information attained under difficulties, is not only acquired more rapidly, but most certainly more completely mastered, than with the aid of all the modern appliances of education, which, like steam-engines at full speed, haul us so fast along the royal road to knowledge, that we have no time to take in half the freight prepared for us. We ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... praised by the Greeks is of like quality, with a further reference to the reasonableness which it fosters. A prudence which is mastered, which has become a spontaneity, delivers reason from bondage, and makes the whole of life easily conformable to it. Thus Castiglione, who is so often reminiscent of Plato and Aristotle, draws a contrast between continence, as the "conquest" of ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... she was a fighter she mastered the sob and vowed that rather than be sucked in to the woe of the world she would find out about the world. Certainly she would sit apart no longer. She would study. She would see. ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... speak, for I felt—well I felt as most boys would under the circumstances; but I mastered my moral cowardice, as I thought, and determined ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... had possessed the necessary supplies, tools, and rugged soldiers, but lacked the grit and resolution of Bonaparte, who did not shrink from mere difficulties, however great, but out of his very need made and mastered his opportunity. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... and Tronchet plead, with brief eloquence: brave old Malesherbes pleads for it with eloquent want of eloquence, in broken sentences, in embarrassment and sobs; that brave time-honoured face, with its grey strength, its broad sagacity and honesty, is mastered with emotion, melts into dumb tears. (Moniteur in Hist. Parl. xxiii. 210. See Boissy d'Anglas, Vie de Malesherbes, ii. 139.)—They reject the Appeal to the People; that having been already settled. But as to the Delay, what they call Sursis, it shall be considered; shall be ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... the entrance to the town, drawn up under their governor, Don Pedro de Moralis, and supported by Don Christopher de Sasi Arnoldo, the former Spanish governor of Jamaica, with a reserve of 500 more. The Spaniards fled before the first charge of the Jamaicans, and the place was easily mastered. ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... see?" Sylvia said in a low troubled voice. For once distress had mastered her and she spoke without her usual reticence. "There can be no friendship between those two. No real friendship! You have but to see them side by side to be sure ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... opulent in good advice, as becomes a man of his station; for he has mastered most of the obstacles in a business career, and by leading a prudent and temperate life has established himself so well that he owns his own house and furniture, and is only slightly behind on his license. It would be indelicate to give statistics as to his age. Mr. Hennessy says he was a "grown ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... best qualified men are taken away so that they will become better qualified, either by taking an officers' course or through specialist training. Their places are taken by men who may have an equal native ability, but haven't yet mastered the tricks of the trade. This piles high the load of ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... his fury so mastered him that he could not speak. Then, suddenly, the storm passed and he found himself cool and venomous. He looked at Ruth curiously. It seemed incredible to him that he had ever ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... doctor shook his head. Money was not what was lacking to his peace. His bag had fallen from the seat to the ground. He looked towards it, and opened his mouth-O-shape. The catch was not a difficult one, and when I had mastered it, the doctor's right forefinger was sawing the air. With an immense caution, I extracted from the bag such a knife as they use for cutting collops off legs. The doctor frowned, and with his first and second fingers imitated the ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... from a painter and a sculptor. For an actor to represent a Greek hero it is imperative he should have thoroughly studied those antique statues which have lasted to our day, and mastered the particular grace they exhibited in their postures, whether sitting, standing, or walking. Nor should he make attitude his only study. He should highly develop his mind by an assiduous study of the best writers, ancient and modern, which will enable him not only ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... located not far from the head of Main Street extended in Weston. A local historian believes also that one Doctor Gordon's daughter taught in the same school. It does not appear that Owens was a man of exceptional intellectual attainment, but he had well mastered the fundamentals of education when working in the printing office of Horace Greeley in New York, where he learned to manifest interest in the man far down, and to make sacrifices for his cause. His work was so successful that ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... very much, from his usual life on board ship; he had not the same objection to the Spaniards as had his followers, and as he had now sufficiently mastered their language to converse with ease, he was never at a loss for amusement, and was able to obtain all the information he required about the country. Three days were consumed in reaching his destination; the French, he found, had lately been in that part of the country, but had retired northward. ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... no longer Sa'adi's houri but the young woman who had mastered the lion in the railway train. Rage supplanted the passion in his heart. Since she would not bend, she should break. As her arm sank he sprang forward like a cat and seized her wrist. He was not gentle. The dagger tinkled as it struck the marble ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... one of those intelligent persons who pull the triggers of supposititiously unloaded guns. By a supreme effort she mastered her emotion and remarked— ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... deeply moved, seeing the Platypus in such sorrow, and Dot mastered her aversion to touching cold, damp fur, and stroked ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... fallen on his knees to her; and yet that stoical habit which was the boast of his life, which was the sole wisdom he taught to his only and beautiful daughter, was slowly stealing back round his heart,—and he pressed his lips together, resolved that no word should escape till he had fully mastered himself. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... and the contest became that of man to man. I have no language adequate to describe what followed. For myself, I did what I could, cutting and thrusting at the multitudes about me, till at last I found myself fairly hemmed in by a crowd, and my sword-arm mastered. One American had grasped me round the waist, another, seizing me by the wrist, attempted to disarm me, whilst a third was prevented from plunging his bayonet into my body, only from the fear of stabbing one or other of his countrymen. I struggled hard, but they ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... in the pure and impartial reflections of De Tocqueville a new source of pride in our institutions of government, and sound reasons for patriotic effort to preserve them and to inculcate their teachings. They have mastered the power of monarchical rule in the American Hemisphere, freeing religion from all shackles, and will spread, by a quiet but resistless influence, through the islands of the seas to other lands, where the appeals of De Tocqueville for human rights and liberties ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... consulted her frequently and made no secret of his friendship. The mother knew her awful son well, and was afraid of nothing wrong in that direction. Lord Fawn had suffered a disappointment in love, but he had consoled himself with blue-books, and mastered his passion by incessant attendance at the India Board. The lady he had loved had been rich, and Lord Fawn was poor; but nevertheless he had mastered his passion. There was no fear that his feelings towards the governess would ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... had been tried and failed and he summed up his conclusion by saying: "The reforms of the last century have come from women. Man has few to his credit because he could not measure them by the only standard he had mastered, that of the dollar. Witness the movement for female education led by Mary Lyon, the birth of the Red Cross in the work of Florence Nightingale, the institution of modern prison methods under the inspiration of Elizabeth Fry and the campaigns for temperance ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... below as if a wind swept the people, and the little man in his chair cowered for shame of himself. He had meant to do a great thing; he had thrilled so strongly with it; it had promised to master others as it had mastered him; and now he was shamed by the one true ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... feeling is the specific reaction of a particle of the sensorium when stimulated, just as contraction, etc., is the specific reaction of a muscular fibre when stimulated by its nerve. The psychologists make the fools of themselves they do because they have never mastered this elementary fact. But I am not sure whether I have put it well, and I wish you would give your mind to it. As for me I have not had much mind to give lately—a fortnight's spoon-meat reduced me to inanity, and I am only just picking up ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... delight in the study of the languages, and soon mastered the Latin, Greek and German. He was also proficient in the French. The classics were not neglected by him, and the general literary knowledge which he possessed caused Mr. Ellicott to regard him as the most learned man in the town, ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... was from this respectable man that I first learned the value of the knowledge I had hitherto considered only as a burdensome task. It was the fashion to remain two years at his class, where we read Caesar, and Livy, and Sallust, in prose; Virgil, Horace, and Terence, in verse. I had by this time mastered, in some degree, the difficulties of the language, and began to be sensible of its beauties. This was really gathering grapes from thistles; nor shall I soon forget the swelling of my little pride when the Rector pronounced, that though ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... and a great part of the men upon it fell into the river, and all the ethers fled, some into the castle, some into Southwark. Thereafter Southwark was stormed and taken. Now when the people in the castle saw that the river Thames was mastered, and that they could not hinder the passage of ships up into the country, they became afraid, surrendered the tower, and took Ethelred to be their king. ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... fixed his eyes upon his son, and cast them once more upon the company. The affectionate father's heart was full; his breast heaved, and the large tears rolled slowly down his cheeks. By a strong effort, however, he mastered his emotion; and taking the glass again, he said in ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... to his head, drunkenness mastered him and he knew not hand from head, so that he swayed about for mirth, inclining anon to this one, to kiss him, and anon to another. Then he fell to glorying in himself and his case and the goodliness of his entertainment and his ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... nerves also, but all the thunder that ever roared could not affect them so powerfully as Amy's head bowed upon his shoulder, and the appealing words of her absolute trust. He mastered himself instantly, however, for he saw that he must be strong and calm in order to sustain the trembling girl through one of Nature's most awful moods. She was equally sensitive to the smiling beauty and the wrath of the great mother. The ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... grandly-formed features still suggested the idea of imperial beauty—perhaps Jewish in its origin. When Emily said, "I never heard him speak of you," the color flew into her pallid cheeks: her dim eyes became alive again with a momentary light. She left her seat on the bed, and, turning away, mastered ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... with the buyers. The crew hid their delighted grins behind rough palms when Captain Epps Candage bawled out bidders who were under market quotations; they gazed with awe on Captain Mayo when he read from printed sheets—print being a mystery they had never mastered—and figured with ready pencil and even corrected the buyer, who acknowledged his error and humbly apologized. No more subservient paltering at ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... had a long letter from Lyell, who starts ingenious difficulties opposed to Natural Selection, because it has not done more than it has. This is very good, as it shows that he has thoroughly mastered the subject; and shows he is in earnest. Very striking letter altogether and it rejoices the ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... several of General Gordon's transactions Sir Henry was closely mixed up, especially with the Congo mission; and I should like to say, of my own knowledge, that he was thoroughly in sympathy with all his projects for the suppression of the slave trade, had mastered the voluminous Blue Books and official papers, from the time of Ismail to the dark days of Khartoum, in so thorough a manner that the smallest detail was fixed in his brain, and had so completely assimilated his brother's views that an hour's consultation with ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... chose one of Wordsworth's sonnets, not one of his best by any means, but suitable for my purpose—the one entitled, "Composed during a Storm." This I gave him to read, telling him to let me know when he considered that he had mastered the meaning of it, and sat down to my own studies. I remember I was then reading the Anglo-Saxon Gospels. I think it was fully half-an-hour before Tom rose and gently approached my place. I had not been uneasy about the ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... had no sooner mastered the first principles of science than they began to throw off their retired habits and uncommunicative manners. Being not utterly ignorant of some of the rudiments of knowledge, and consequently having completed their education, it was now their duty, as members of society, to instruct ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... distinguished people without withholding from them their due share of high-sounding titles and epithets; and, be it whispered, these same distinguished people, however broad-minded and magnanimous they may be in other respects, are sometimes extremely sensitive in this respect. And even after one has mastered all the rules and forms, and can appreciate and distinguish the various nice shades which exist between "His Serene Highness", "His Highness", "His Royal Highness", and "His Imperial Highness", or between "Rt. Rev." and "Most Rev.", one has ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... Jacopo's friend. Jacopo did not at first mind this talk, but one evening he saw Manuelita fly at Parlo and offer him her sweet lips to kiss, and it enraged him to think that the people were in the right. He mastered with superhuman exertion all the thoughts that surged within him, and nobody might know that he was aware of the disgrace of his wife, nor that he contemplated an awful revenge. Why Manuelita betrayed ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... elementary nature, ranging over the elements of the subjects of instruction of the time. Poetry, arithmetic, astronomy, the writings of the Fathers, and theology are mentioned as having been studied. Charlemagne learned to read Latin, but is said never to have mastered the art of writing. It was not an easy position for any one to fill. To ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... for a second in his or hers, as the case may be. At such times it seems for that instant difficult to disentangle one's gaze. But neither of these two thought of the other much, after hurrying away. Each was too fully mastered by personal mood. ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... English Basques. How was it I did not speak it? This was a sore point with me. I assured her of the shameful fact that the English Basques had lost their own tongue; they were degenerate. I had some thoughts of learning it in order to re-introduce it into England. As soon as Mariquita had mastered this astounding story she hurried to the kitchen, and as I heard her relating something with great excitement, I have little doubt that a legend of English Basques is now well on its way past historic doubt. Leaving her to consider the ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... 'I have heard thee, while remote I went My rounds among the unfinished stars.' A message: 'I have left thee to thy ways, And mastered all thy vileness, for thy hate I have made to serve the ends of My great love. Hereafter will I chain thee down. To-day One thing thou art forbidden; now thou knowest The name thereof: I told it thee in heaven, When thou wert sitting ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... broken; Luther heartily laughed at his wife's lesson, and her ingenious way of presenting it. "I observed," he remarked, "what a wise woman my wife was, who mastered my sadness." ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... son stood helplessly by, their manner showing that their wish to be polite was almost mastered by their disgust. Hemstead, who was trying to get De Forrest up, had just given a stern rebuke to one of the ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... and less capacity for effort, and as that single enjoyment, which at first rendered a man indifferent to other pleasures,—the delight of being alone with tropical Nature,—becomes more difficult to indulge. When lethargy has totally mastered habit and purpose, and you must at last confess yourself resigned to view Nature from your chamber, or at best from a carriage window,—then, indeed, the want of all literature proves a positive torture. It is not a consolation to discover that you are an almost solitary sufferer,—from ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... schoolmaster, and I remember at one time bribing a slow and unintelligent class into some sort of concentration by promising that I would tell a story for a few minutes at the end of school, if a bit of work had been satisfactorily mastered. It certainly produced a lot of cheerful effort; my story was simple enough, description as brief and vivid as I could make it, and brisk tangible incidents. But the silence, the luxurious abandonment of small minds to an older and more ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... first displayed his scarlet coat and arbitrary commission, he and his fellows were marched to the town-house and thence to prison. All the cry was against Andros and Randolph. The castle was taken; the frigate was mastered; the ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... that with a guard over him, he would be as easy to lay hands on as if he were down at the hotel with the rest, the sheriff gravely considered the matter and was disposed to yield the point. As Seagreave remarked, he certainly had not mastered the art of flying and he knew no other way by which he might ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... the most intelligent mind, that Jonathan would take him back to skimmed milk, apple-dumpling, broad beans, and pork. And he had found a paradise in his brother's shop. It was a difficult matter to use force with Jacob, for he wore heavy nailed boots; and if his pitchfork had been mastered, he would have resorted without hesitation to kicks. Nothing short of using guile to bind him hand and foot would have made all ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... of warmth and passion streamed from her large, dark eyes, while the gentle, love-enticing smile that played around her mouth revealed the tender feminine gentleness and amiability of her disposition. Bonaparte had never mastered the art of flattering women in the light, frivolous style of the fashionable coxcomb; and when he attempted it his compliments were frequently of so unusual and startling a character that they might just as well contain an affront as ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... by us, and threatening to drive the canoe on to the rocks just behind, or else to capsize us, and sweep the party headlong down the long water slope up which we had been so toilsomely drawn. And I believe we should have been mastered, for what with three passengers and the chests, the canoe was heavily laden; but Gunson suddenly pressed himself close to the last Indian, reached out one strong arm, and grasped his paddle, ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... contented pride. In one room we had supped. Presently, from the other, as Kinney and I sat without, there burst a volume of sudden and brilliant music. If I could justly estimate the art of piano-playing, the construer of that rollicking fantasia had creditably mastered the secrets of the keyboard. A piano, and one so well played, seemed to me to be an unusual thing to find in that small and unpromising ranch- house. I must have looked my surprise at Rush Kinney, for he laughed in his soft, Southern way, and nodded at me through ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... tried to turn a docile face toward old Kano; but the deepening glory of her husband's look drew her as light draws a flower. Sullenness and anger fell from him like a cloth. His countenance gave out the fire of an inward passion; his eyes—deep, strange, strong, magnetic—mastered and compelled her. ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... gathered, consumed with voracious appetite, and thoroughly digested. Supplied at last with the required means, he braced himself for a systematic curriculum of law, and pursued it with marked constancy and success. While at the university he also took up the German and French languages and mastered them, and he perfected his scholarship in Latin and Greek. Until his death he read all these languages with great facility and accuracy, and he always kept his Greek Testament lying on his ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell
... of art. So many people judge works of art as if they could assimilate them immediately, without any knowledge of their purpose and technique. They fail to recognize that a work of art has a language, with a vocabulary and grammar, which has to be mastered through study. A work of art is a possibility of a certain complex of values, not a given actuality that can be grasped by merely stretching out the hand. Very little of any work of art is given—just a few sense stimuli; the rest is an emotional and meaningful reaction, which has to be completed ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... finished his story he picked up the blue foolscap on which was inscribed the sprawling report of the churchtown sergeant. With a severe effort he mastered the matter contained under the flowing curves ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... took pity on our little one and yielded something to childish importunity. The quaint old copy was garnished, according to a fashion of the time, with rude wood-cuts, having explanatory legends underneath. The young philologer tugged at these until he had mastered one or two words. Then the book was thrown by in despair as impracticable to further investigation. Then, after one or two weeks had elapsed, for want of other employment, it was taken up again, and a little more progress made. And so by degrees, in the course of a year, a considerable knowledge ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... difficulty in teaching the dog his lesson, the fault lies as often with the master as with him; or they are, generally speaking, both in fault. Some dogs cannot be mastered but by means of frequent correction. The less the sportsman has to do with them the better. Others will not endure the least correction, but become either ferocious or sulky. They should be disposed of as soon as possible. The majority of dogs are exceedingly sagacious. They possess ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... habitually escaped lessons and skipped difficulties, he occasionally became nettled by a perplexing problem or task, and would work at it with a sort of vindictive, unrelenting earnestness, as if he were subduing an enemy. Having put his foot on the obstacle, and mastered the difficulty that piqued him, he would cast the book aside, indifferent to the study or science of which it formed but ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... because more civilised, could not, nevertheless, view the appearance of the sun without dismay, but as their elders were accustomed to watch the sky, and to deduce from its aspect the proper time for nesting, they were not so over-mastered with terror as the enemy; but they were equally subjected by the mysterious desire of rest which seized upon them. They could not advance; they could scarce float in the air; some, as already observed, sought the branches of the beeches. Ah Kurroo, however, bearing up as well as ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... that Louis Rey is not the murderer, much more, that Peytel is? Look at argument No. 1. Rey had no need to kill two people: he wanted the money, and not the blood. Suppose he had killed Peytel, would he not have mastered Madame Peytel easily?—a weak woman, in an excessively delicate situation, incapable of much energy, at ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... distress. I found, indeed, some intervals of reflection; and the serious thoughts did, as it were, endeavour to return again sometimes; but I shook them off, and roused myself from them as it were from a distemper, and applying myself to drinking and company, soon mastered the return of those fits - for so I called them; and I had in five or six days got as complete a victory over conscience as any young fellow that resolved not to be troubled with it could desire. But I was to have another trial for it still; and Providence, as ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... state of freedom fight for supremacy, the weaker does not stay to be overthrown and speared to death by the victor. As soon as he feels that he is mastered he releases his antlers at the first opportunity, flings himself to one side, and either remains in the herd as an acknowledged subject of the victor, or else seeks fresh fields and ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... in the name of Christ. Do not whimper or whine; do not lament or murmur; do not fear or tremble. Face your trials boldly, and the Spirit of the Lord will come mightily upon you as it did upon Samson, and you will conquer. And then, ah, it is then that the sweetness will come: after you have mastered the trial, in the days that follow, sweetness will come, and you will bless God that he ever permitted you to ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... are written are no longer spoken. The knowledge of them, like that of all dead languages, is locked up in books—grammars, lexicons, ancient versions, and various subsidiary helps—and can be mastered only by severe and protracted study. It is not indeed necessary that the great body of Christians, or even all preachers of the gospel, should be able to read the Bible in the original languages. But it is a principle of ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... more attention, than the pearl-diver who quietly dives in quest of treasures to the bottom. The vast acquirements of the new Governor were the theme of marvel among the simple burghers of New Amsterdam; he figured about the place as learned a man as a Bonze at Pekin, who had mastered one-half of the Chinese alphabet, and was unanimously pronounced a ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... affected by French models, and by the methods of the naturalists, but he is trying to combine them with his own simpler traditions of rustic realism.... The author felt himself greatly moved by fermenting ideas and ambitions which he had not completely mastered.... There is a kind of uncomfortable discrepancy between the scene and the style, a breath of Paris and the boulevards blowing through the pine-trees of a puritanical Norwegian village.... But the book is a most interesting link between the early peasant-stories ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... as to be ignorant of the rudiments of two dead languages. All honour to the said two languages. Ignorance of them is a serious weakness; for it implies ignorance of many things else; and indeed, without some knowledge of them, the nomenclature of the physical sciences cannot be mastered. But I have got to discover that a boy's time is more usefully spent, and his intellect more methodically trained, by getting up Ovid's Fasti with an ulterior hope of being able to write a few Latin verses, than in getting up Professor Rolleston's "Forms of Animal Life," or any other of the ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... handed him by Nimbus, and read, slowly and with evident difficulty; but as he mastered line after line the look of incredulity vanished, and a glow of solemn joy spread over his face. It was the first positive testimony of actual freedom—the first fruits of self-seeking, self-helping manhood on the part ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... much before, and I must admit that his words gave me keen pleasure, for I had often been piqued by his indifference to my admiration and to the attempts which I had made to give publicity to his methods. I was proud, too, to think that I had so far mastered his system as to apply it in a way which earned his approval. He now took the stick from my hands and examined it for a few minutes with his naked eyes. Then with an expression of interest he laid down his cigarette, and carrying the cane to the ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... me with an overwhelming power. But I mastered it. I kept it to myself. That is, as far as words were concerned. For the expression of his face, for involuntary glances, no man can ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... mastery. Same system with the historians: nor did he disdain the use of coloured inks. Then the brilliant creature drew lists of all the hard words he encountered in his reading, especially in the common books, and read these lists till mastered. The stake was singularly heavy in his case, so he ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... talk of Browning, whom she felt it a "positive duty" to know from end to end. Had Miss Bride really mastered "Sordello?" ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... where I saw the continual struggle of material substances to evolve themselves into more volatile, less palpable and coarse forms. My imagination, naturally vivid, stimulated by such repasts, nearly mastered me. At times I could scarcely tell where the material ceased and the immaterial began (if I may so express it); so that once and again I walked, as it seemed, from the solid earth onward upon an impalpable ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... November Imlay went to Paris with the woman for whom he had sacrificed wife and child. Mary felt that the end had now really come, as is seen in the few letters which still remain. Once the first bitterness of her disappointment had been mastered, the old tenderness revived, and she renewed her excuses for him. "My affection for you is rooted in my heart," she wrote fondly and sadly. "I know you are not what you now seem, nor will you always act and feel as you now do, though I may never be comforted by the change." And in another ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... believe I have told you, heaven seeks me alone; me alone has it condemned. Methinks, I hear already the deadly hissing of its minister, who even now draws nigh. My dread pictures him to me, ever offers him to my view. Fear has mastered all my feelings; under its influence I see him on the summit of this rock; I sink for very weakness, and my fainting heart scarce keeps up a remnant of courage. Farewell, Princes; flee, ...
— Psyche • Moliere
... teach it to the rest of us, then," declared Peggy, and for the next hour the drilling went forward relentlessly. The company repeated each verse in chorus till there was no sign of doubt or hesitation, and then sang it through. When the verses had been mastered separately, the entire song was rendered with telling effect. Aunt Abigail clapped ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... illustrious warrior of his ages." No doubt, had Egmont ever listened to these aspirations, he might have taken the field against the government with an invincible force, seized the capital, imprisoned the Regent, and mastered the whole country, which was entirely defenceless, before Philip would have had time to write more than ten despatches ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... his second and last teacher, George got a little insight into English grammar, read some history, became well acquainted with geography, completely mastered arithmetic, and made handsome progress in geometry and trigonometry; which, as you must know, are higher branches of mathematics than arithmetic, and far more difficult to comprehend. In connection with the two latter, he studied surveying; by which is ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... kept well in advance, thinking it the best place in case the pursuit should be energetic. But there was no pursuit. When Paddy was holding the Countess prisoner she could only choke and stammer, and I had no doubt that she now was well mastered by exhaustion. ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... and anon shrinking from outlay as though not entitled to spend the money which was nominally hers. Nathan's parable did not strike more humiliating conviction to Israel's erring king than Bertie Payne's "ower true tale." At length she mastered these painful thoughts, and sought relief ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... a pleasant young face with a good forehead and frank eyes. The indeterminate sweetness of the mouth and chin hinted that this was a man in the making, his strength to be wrought out, his weakness to be mastered. Like the blue plush the photograph was faded, as were alas, the roses in Persis' cheeks. It was twenty years since they had kissed each other good-by in that very room, boy and girl, sure of themselves and of the future. Justin was going ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... have mastered the situation, jumped forward, and fixing his teeth in the top rung, ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... Spanish temper which he had never entirely mastered, flamed like a scorching blast across Benito's mind. He saw again McTurpin smiling as he won by fraud the stake at cards which he had laid against Benito's ranch; he seemed to hear again the gambler's sneering laugh as he, his father and Adrian had been ambushed ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... of the staircase the trunk had mastered him and charged with him into the room. As he lay sprawled on the floor with a foolish grin on his face, the discomfited lover turned on him with ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... a pawnshop a second-hand mandoline, which he had mastered by the aid of a sixpenny handbook, and he would play on it accompaniments to sentimental ballads which he sang ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... in the neighborhood of Norwood. No vicinity more secure from espionage and remark. He wrote to Riccabocca, and communicated the address, adding fresh assurances of his own power to be of use. The next morning he was seated in his office, thinking very little of the details, that he mastered, however, with mechanical precision, when the minister who presided over that department of the public service sent for him into his private room, and begged him to take a letter to Egerton, with whom he wished to consult relative to a very important point to be decided in the cabinet that day. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... is good for men to climb unaided out of the whirlpool on to the rock of deliverance in the very presence of the temptations which have hitherto mastered them, and to maintain a footing there with the same billows of temptation washing over them. But, alas! with many this seems to be literally impossible. That decisiveness of character, that moral nerve which takes hold of the rope thrown for the rescue and keeps ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... singing voice, vivacity, and gift for mimicry. Admired first as a singing actress, Miss Rafter in 1731 gave unequivocal notice of her considerable talent as a comic actress in the role of Nell in Coffey's The Devil to Pay, one of several hundred she mastered. Her specialties: Flora in The Wonder, Lady Bab in High Life Below Stairs, Lappet in The Miser, Catherine in Catherine and Petruchio, Mrs. Heidelberg in The Clandestine Marriage, and the Fine Lady in Lethe. Mrs. Clive's (on 4 Oct. 1733, Miss Rafter married ...
— The Case of Mrs. Clive • Catherine Clive
... been hesitating and timid, like Charlotte's lover, I do not doubt that she would have found time to gather within herself the force necessary to resist him, but she felt herself mastered before even she had recovered from her terror ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... up with the archbishop, part of them being shut up, and part overcome with terror, were immediately slain or thrown alive out of the windows of the palace, at which the archbishop, the two Jacopi Salviati, and Jacopodi Poggio were hanged. Those whom the archbishop left below, having mastered the guard and taken possession of the entrance occupied all the lower floors, so that the citizens, who in the uproar, hastened to the palace, were unable to give either advice or ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... had been brought there in her childhood, and trained to play upon the lute and accompany her voice with the instrument. To this little damsel Bhanavar gave her heart, and would listen all day, as in a trance, to her luting, till the desire to escape from that bondage and gather tidings of Almeryl mastered her, and she persuaded one of the blacks of the harem with a bribe to procure her an interview with the porter Ukleet. So at a certain hour of the night Ukleet was introduced into the garden of the harem, and he was in the darkness of that garden a white-faced porter with knees that ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of the strolling Jews "took upon them to name over them that had the evil spirits the name of the Lord Jesus, saying, I adjure you by Jesus, whom Paul preacheth." When two of the sons of Sceva undertook to do this, the man possessed of the evil spirit "leaped on them and mastered both of them, and prevailed against them, so that they fled out of the house naked and wounded." There were stirring times in Ephesus in those days. Fear fell upon the people, "and the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified." Many of the believers "came confessing, ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes
... marvel, and he tried it until he learned its use, and a line was drawn across the board, and when he failed to guide it the Professor smilingly corrected him, and he could not be induced to lay it aside until he had mastered the art ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... John Foterell, a white-bearded, red-faced man of about sixty years of age, was seated before the log fire in the dining-hall of his great house at Shefton, spelling through a letter which had just been brought to him from Blossholme Abbey. He mastered it at length, and when it was done any one who had been there to look might have seen a knight and gentleman of large estate in a rage remarkable even for the time of the eighth Henry. He dashed the document to ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... rendered my departure necessary. Northmour spoke hotly, I remember, and I suppose I must have made some tart rejoinder. He leaped from his chair and grappled me; I had to fight, without exaggeration, for my life; and it was only with a great effort that I mastered him, for he was near as strong in body as myself, and seemed filled with the devil. The next morning we met on our usual terms; but I judged it more delicate to withdraw; nor did he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... novice, as she crossed the fatal threshold and disappeared within the building. The throng poured in with cowl, and cross, and minstrelsy; the lover paused for a moment at the door. I could divine the tumult of his feelings; but he mastered them, and entered. There was a long interval. I pictured to myself the scene passing within: the poor novice despoiled of her transient finery, and clothed in the conventual garb; the bridal chaplet taken from her brow, and her beautiful head shorn ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... to the point where his emotions were mastered by his will. But Val had seen Ricky enjoy full tantrums, and the last occasion was not so long ago that the scene had become misty in his memory. Generous to the point of self-beggary, loyal to a fault, and incurably romantic, that was a ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... amusement. But I was young then, I had not lived down my foolish shyness, and I would have run if, in my embarrassment, I had had the courage,—would have run anyhow, I do believe, if it had not been for Henley. He seized the situation and mastered it. He had the reputation of being the most brutal of men, but he showed a delicacy that few could have surpassed or equalled under the circumstances. He simply forced me to forget the presence of the objectionable ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... roguishness he feigned to subscribe to all that the professors thought important, and every professor adored him. True, he was outspoken to the authorities, but they none the less respected him. Besides disliking and despising the sciences, he despised all who laboured to attain what he himself had mastered so easily, since the sciences, as he understood them, did not occupy one-tenth part of his powers. In fact, life, as he saw it from the student's standpoint, contained nothing to which he could devote himself wholly, and his impetuous, active nature (as he himself often said) demanded ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... never deigned to examine, to be the Son of God. That, they said, was blasphemy, as it was, unless it were true,—an alternative which they did not look at. So blinded may men be by prejudice, and so mastered by causeless hatred of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... mediaeval legend, that of teaching dunderheaded mortals the First Conjugation. So Eros donned cap and gown, took lodgings with a quiet musical family, and set amo as the first model verb; and ever since this period has the verb 'to love' been the first to be mastered in all well-constituted grammars, as it is ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... was proved that, after a little study, one could distinctly detect and recognise the crepitations in relation to each individual. They increased or decreased in every phase of health, thought, or excitement, and were extinct the moment death had mastered its victim. About twenty years later, experiments were made with a man in Paris, who had an abnormally acute sense of sound (Nature's compensation for want of sight, as he had been born blind). In a very short time this ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... began to take hope for better things. Under the charge of Kent, one of the coaches and an old Harwell half, Joel was instructed in catching punts till his arms ached and his eyes watered, and in kicking until he seemed to be one-sided. Starting with the ball he no longer dreaded, since he had mastered that science and could now delight the coach by leaping from a stand as though shot from ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... said, is composed of rather estimable people. Who can forget Lydgate in "Middlemarch"? There is a type drawn by a woman of transcendent genius; and the type represents only too many human wrecks. Lydgate was thrown into a respectable provincial society; he was mastered by high ambition, he possessed great powers, and he felt as though he could move the mocking solidities of the world. Watch the evolution of his long history; to me it is truly awful in spite of its gleams of brightness. The powerful ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... courtier stood, not irresolute, but overcome with the passions that shook to their centre a nature, the stormy and stern elements of which the habit of years had rather mastered than quelled. At last, with a fierce cry, he suddenly grasped the prince by the collar of his vest; and, ere Philip could avail himself of his weapon, swung him aside with such violence that he lost his balance and (his foot slipping on the polished floor) fell ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and to thank you for being so beautiful. And if it doesn't displease you, Kamala, I would like to ask you to be my friend and teacher, for I know nothing yet of that art which you have mastered in the ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... of no ordinary character you must exercise; if you have it not it will come to you, but through experience alone, through failures, through catastrophes innumerable. But what then? These things that have mastered you stand mastered in turn in the excellent result of to-day, so let yesterday go to ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... sense of his helplessness that sharpened his antipathy. There had never been anything in her that one could appeal to; but as long as he could ignore and command he had remained indifferent. Now she had mastered him and he abhorred her. Mattie was her relation, not his: there were no means by which he could compel her to keep the girl under her roof. All the long misery of his baffled past, of his youth of failure, hardship and vain effort, rose ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... You play also in your way, but not so intelligently (pardon me), for you deceive yourself from day to day that your particular object, your temporary mood, is the one eternal thing in life. After all, you have mastered but one trick—the trick of being loved. With that trick you expect to take the world; but, alas! you capture only an old man's purse ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... of making himself popular, he shook hands in the most brilliant manner with the whole company, and even said to Bar, 'I hope you were not bored by my pears?' To which Bar retorted, 'Eton, my lord, or Parliamentary?' neatly showing that he had mastered the joke, and delicately insinuating that he could never forget it while ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... thing to get accustomed to telling the truth. You never know where it'll lead you. Here was I—just a clever little lie or two and the dear old Bishop would be happy and contented again. But no; that fatal habit that I've acquired of telling the truth to Fred and you mastered me—and ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... or of his subsequent work. He prepared no account of it until 1817. This appeared in the Eclectic Repertory. It was so meagre and so startling that surgeons hesitated to credit its truth. He had not mastered his mother tongue. The paper was thought to bear internal evidence of its author's having "relied upon his ledger for his dates and upon his memory for the facts." The critics from far and near fell upon him. The profession at home cast doubt upon the narrative. The profession ...
— Pioneer Surgery in Kentucky - A Sketch • David W. Yandell
... got home very nicely. He wanted to jump the gate again, but I checked him with the curb. After pulling the rope to open the gate I must have got the reins mixed once more, for as I was nearing the house, calm in the feeling that I had mastered the animal, and intent upon cantering up to the porch in fine style, Dr. Bell swerved suddenly off to the stable, went into the door, and, before I could stop him, entered ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... who left his leg on a later field, carried his company into this fight. During the pursuit he led it through a by-path to intercept a battery spurring down the road at full speed. They overtook it, mastered the gunners and turned the horses out of the press. In the deepening twilight, he turned to thank the company, and found it composed of three of his own men, two "Tiger Rifles," a Washington artilleryman, three dismounted cavalry of the "Legion," a doctor, ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... true in the case of the woman learning to operate the sewing machine. It is quite difficult at first, but gradually it grows to "run itself." Those who have mastered the typewriter have had the same experience. At first each letter had to be picked out with care and effort. After a gradual improvement the operator is enabled to devote her entire attention to the "copy" and let the fingers pick out the keys for themselves. Many operators ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... new to her as Mrs. Rexford's sewing machine, which she had not yet been allowed to touch. Yet had she been shut up alone with the machine, as she was now shut up to revise her own conduct within herself, she would, by sheer force of determined intelligence, have mastered its intricacy to a large degree without asking aid. And so with this strong idea that she must learn how to act differently to this young man; dim, indeed, as was her idea of what was lacking, or what was to be gained, she strove with it ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall |
