"Masterful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... before she had time to decide which of the unlively men, loitering round the carriages or helping stout old dowagers up slim iron ladders, was sufficiently lugubrious to be identified as the martyr of the ballot-box, she was absorbed by a tall, masterful figure, whose face had the radiance of easeful success, and whose hands were clapping at some nuance of style which had escaped the palms of the ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... intuition as well as experience taught her that he was unusual enough to be one of ten thousand. No young Greek god's head could have risen more superbly above the brick-tanned column of the neck than this close-cropped curly one. Gray eyes, deep and unwavering and masterful, looked out of a face as brown as Wyoming. He was got up with no thought of effect, but the tigerish litheness, the picturesque competency of ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... with respiration, produces in that part in which it respires a lively desire of emission, and thus creates in us the love of procreation. Wherefore also in men the organ of generation becoming rebellious and masterful, like an animal disobedient to reason, and maddened with the sting of lust, seeks to gain absolute sway; and the same is the case with the so-called womb or matrix of women; the animal within them is desirous of procreating children, and when remaining unfruitful long beyond its proper time, gets ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... A swift, fierce, masterful man, harsh and ruthless making war without kid gloves—that it might end the sooner and be the longer remembered by the survivors. The flag was to be kept flying in Gungapur, the women and children were to be saved, all possible damage ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... cautious and versatile diplomatist like Bernhard von Buelow appears to be best adapted to the personal and political necessities of the present situation." Count Buelow, indeed, though, like Bismarck, a "realist," utilitarian and opportunist in his policy, made no effort to emulate the masterful independence of the great chancellor. He was accused, indeed, of being little more than the complacent executor of the emperor's will, and defended himself in the Reichstag against the charge. The substance of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... upon him quickly with an angry flash in his eyes, and he was about to burst out with some fierce retort; but in those brief moments it seemed to him that it was not Glyn's but the Colonel's masterful eyes that were gazing down into his, as, truth to tell, they had more than once looked down upon his father in some special crisis when in the cause of right the brave English officer had with a few words mastered the untutored Indian chief, and maintained ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... do not think you will. Our Church can be loving and restful and harmonious and beautiful (thus the jargon of the heretic) but it can also be masterful and tyrannical and terrible, even cruel, so they say, although I do not go that far myself. And the call of it, the memory of it, the significance of it, the power and majesty and awfulness of it will draw you back. Oh! Have no fear, monsieur! If I may charge myself with your conversion I will ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... intimate and affectionate, was that of all 'the apostles of the newness,' as they were gayly called, whose counsel he sought, Brownson was the most satisfactory to him. I thought then that this was due to the authority of Brownson's masterful tone, the definiteness of his views, the force of his 'understanding,' as the word was then philosophically used in distinction from the reason. Brownson's mental vigor and positiveness were very agreeable to a candid mind which was speculatively adrift ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... was a strong man; adventurous days and nights spent in the open had coarsened the masculine side of his character, perhaps at expense to his finer nature, for it is a human tendency to revert. He was masterful and ruthless; lacking obligations or responsibilities of any sort, he had been accustomed to take what he wanted; therefore the gaze he fixed upon the sleeping woman betrayed an ardor calculated to deepen the color in her ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... her blankly, too bewildered even to wonder how she knew he was in Genoa; and she continued, with the kind of shy imperiousness that always made him feel, in her presence, like a member of an orchestra under a masterful baton; "Now please get right into this carriage, and don't keep me roasting here another minute." To the cabdriver she called ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... belief all women should be sensitive and fastidious, especially as to who are, and who are not, their social equals. But it was clear he had not quite understood her. And this man whom they had picked up was undoubtedly handsome, strong and masterful, of the kind that the natural woman admires. But then he—Delaine—had never thought of Elizabeth Merton as the natural woman. ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... probably, not having acquired the habit of examining evidence, they were content to accept ideas that threw a pleasant glamour on life. But the coming of Jimmy Simpson altered this agreeable condition of mind. Jimmy was one of those masterful stupid boys who excel at games and physical contests, and triumph over intellectual problems by sheer braggart ignorance. From the first he regarded George with contempt, and when he heard him telling his stories he ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... the dazzling intellect and masterful will of the first Pitt controlled the fortunes of England, and the spirit of the nation was beginning to awake. Burns and Wilberforce and the younger Pitt were born that year; Minden was fought; Wolfe saw with dying eyes ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... Lorrigan boys grew up. They thought Belle the most beautiful, the most wonderful woman in the world,—though they never called her mother. Belle would not have it. She refused to become a motherly, middle-aged person, and her boys were growing altogether too big and too masterful to look upon a golden-curled, pink-cheeked, honey-throated Amazon as other Black Rim sons looked upon their faded, too often shrewish maternal parent. She was just Belle. They knew no other like her, no one with whom they might compare her. We do not compare the sun and the moon with other ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... was too masterful a man to keep his silence altogether; he was, besides, so content upon the whole that he was sure he could hold his temper in check, and the better to take breath for a long speech, he took the ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... whimsical, and singularly tactful in spite of his absent-minded lapses. To Olive, indeed, he seemed to be the only man at all well worth the while. Nevertheless, as now, it sometimes became imperative to be a little masterful in summoning him back to present consciousness just long enough to extract an answer from him. Therefore she tapped the table sharply with the corner ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... Mother" monument, by Charles Grafly, is a permanent bronze, a tribute by the people of the West to the women who laid the foundation of their welfare. It is to stand in the San Francisco Civic Center, where its masterful simplicity will be more impressive than in this colorful colonnade. It is a true addition to noteworthy American works of art and fully expresses the spirit of this courageous motherhood, tender but strong, ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... as usual, was in full and resplendent regalia with Tom in attendance, displaying a satisfied and masterful manner that told its own tale. Her amazing encounter with Tempie had remained a secret between her and the discreet old negro and her manner to Caroline Darrah was so impressively cordial that Phoebe actually ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... myself: 'This is the stuff of which was formed the masterful race that overran the world under the names of a dozen different peoples. Ice and snow made the tough fiber, mental and physical, which the hot sun of southern climes afterward melted into the viciousness of more luxurious nations. Man is scourged into ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... President-elect Stoddard, with masterful hand, began at once the organization of the new administration. Among the appointees whom he early announced was that of Stanley Winslow, to the position ...
— In the Clutch of the War-God • Milo Hastings
... his face on them like a fawning dog. Ghanim is another "softy" lover, a favourite character in Arab tales; and by way of contrast, the girl is masterful enough. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... that he did not know, and never found anything that he could not do. This Admirable Crichton was spangled all over well-earned badges, indicating his accomplishments. We really might have gone off, the whole lot of us, masterful staff officer, dainty registration clerks, highly efficient stenographer, etc., and had a good time; he would have run the show perfectly well without us—a Hirst, a Jimmy Wilde, a "Tetrarch," as ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... tell in simple fashion the story of some Americans who showed that they knew how to live and how to die; who proved their truth by their endeavor; and who joined to the stern and manly qualities which are essential to the well-being of a masterful race the virtues of gentleness, of patriotism, and of lofty adherence to ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... in the coming of the Divine Order in the world. His followers share His fearless and masterful attitude towards physical forces; when they appear opposed to God's purpose of love, the Christian is confident that they are not inherently antagonistic to it: "to them that love God all things work ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... sheepish with embarrassment; not until accosted had he himself realized what a stray he had become from his pastor's flock and fold. And he felt that he ought instantly to tell the pastor this was the case. But the pastor had reseated himself and regripped his masterful monologue. The lad was more than embarrassed; he felt conscious of a new remorseful tenderness for this grim, righteous man, now that he had emancipated mind and conscience from his teaching: so true it often is that affection is possible ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... special grudge against Allen and Payson, whom they held to be accountable for the sudden disappearance, about a year before, of their leader, Buck McKee, a half-breed from the Cherokee Strip. However, no other leader had arisen equal to that masterful spirit, and their enmity expressed itself only in such petty depredations as changing brands on stray cattle from the Bar One and Sweetwater Ranches, and the slitting of the tongues of young calves, so that they ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... had deserved. She was as a prisoner who would fain cling to his prison after pardon has reached him, because he is conscious that the pardon is undeserved. And it may be that there was still left within her bosom some remnant of that feeling of rebellion which his masterful spirit had ever produced in her. He was so imperious in his tranquillity, he argued his question of love with such a manifest preponderance of right on his side, that she had always felt that to yield to ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... said the smuggler, laughing. "Strong as he is, and masterful, he will never succeed, ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... wonderfully different. Read Scripture, if you will, and then turn to your 'Paradise Lost.' Turn then to whatever poet you chance to love of Greek antiquity or of Roman. Turn to Dante himself.... Then turn back to Milton. Different you will find him, no doubt, in the austere isolation of his masterful and deliberate Puritanism and learning; but that difference does not make him irrevocably lesser. Rather you will grow more and more to feel how wonderful his power proves. Almost alone among poets, he could take the things for which he had need ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... the name of some woman whom he has beguiled and cast off. Some speak it in wrath, others with laughter and wanton jeering at those weak-souled creatures. But through the wrath and the laughter and the jeers rings the song they have made of you, masterful and insolent as an enemy's song of triumph. 'Tis all this that has begotten my hate for you. Your were ever in my thoughts, and I longed to meet you face to face, that you might learn that there are women on whom your ...
— Henrik Ibsen's Prose Dramas Vol III. • Henrik Ibsen
... a man at all. I tell you I have talked with men as good as you, and heard them protest as you do—yes, with all the gentle condescension that you use, all of your confidence and masterful advice. Sooner or later all have proved the same," she shrugged; "——proved themselves ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... gypsy ways. An adventure of hers in the North, for instance—when, panic-struck, she had fled to him by a midnight train, had sought him through the dales and over limestone mountains through a day and night, and cried herself to sleep, and been found by him in the dewy dawn and soothed by his masterful cool sense— wasn't this romantic? It had drawn her to him as she had never before been drawn to a man. She felt that here at last was a man indeed to be trusted. For she had been there with him, and not ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... of mind to trust him as implicitly, and humor him as tenderly, as the great admiral had done. It is not every one that can handle an instrument of such trenchant power, yet delicate temper, as Nelson's sensitive genius. The combination in St. Vincent of perfect professional capacity with masterful strength of character, had made the tactful respect he showed to Nelson's ability peculiarly grateful to the latter; and had won from him a subordination of the will, and an affection, which no subsequent commander-in-chief could elicit. He wrote ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... she went on, "has never believed it, and that's her ladyship. I've heard strange talk from the people who've come under your masterful ways. You're a harder man than the Everard Dominey I remember. What if you should be ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... substantial soundness or interest of an article. In a man of weakish literary vanity—Jeffrey was evidently full of it—there may well be a constant itch to set his betters right in trifles, as Gifford thought that he could mend Southey's adjectives. To a vain editor, or a too masterful editor, the temptation under the anonymous system is no doubt strong. M. Buloz, it is true, the renowned conductor of the Revue des deux Mondes, is said to have insisted on, and to have freely practised, the fullest editorial prerogative ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... remarkable figure that I had not, until now, noticed that a large lion had followed him into the room and was lying quietly at his feet. I was not afraid; indeed, the king of beasts seemed but a part of the man's masterful presence. I do not think I would have seen the animal but that his enormous body was lying directly before my eyes on the floor. My uncle had been sitting with his head resting upon his hand at the table. Suddenly he rose and a strange, ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... sentiments to those of the elders of the conspiracy, when his mouth was open in their midst, was severe and masterful, for the young man rose instantly without a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... somewhat violent and commonplace emotion. In American drama especially, the duels of Wall Street, the combats of bull and bear, form a very popular theme, which clearly falls under the Brunetiere formula. Few American dramatists can resist the temptation of showing some masterful financier feverishly watching the "ticker" which proclaims him a millionaire or a beggar. The "ticker" had not been invented in the days when Ibsen wrote The League of Youth, otherwise he would doubtless ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... qualities of the orator in general Otis added the power of applying himself to the facts; also the power of cogent reasoning and masterful search for the truth which gained for him at length the fame of first orator of the revolution. The passion and vehemence of the man made him at times censorious and satirical. His manner towards his opponents was at times hard to bear. His wit was of that sarcastic kind which, like ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... seemed to vanish before his masterful air, and everybody fell into line with sudden enthusiasm. Ethel smiled discreetly and moved along her pathway of inflexible originality with gentle triumph. The voyage down the river was delightful. The ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... you do then?" demanded the stranger, rising from his seat with sudden energy, his voice deep, insistent, masterful. ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... masterful statesmanship, following out the traditions of William the Silent, had ever maintained through good and ill report cordial and beneficent relations between the two countries, had always comprehended, even as a great cardinal-minister was ere long to teach the world, that ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... those rules alone it is easy to see how thoroughly the masterful spirit of Jonson ruled in the Apollo room. His air was a throne, his word a sceptre that must be obeyed. This impression is confirmed by many records and especially by Drummond's character sketch. The natural consequence was that membership in the Apollo Club came to be regarded ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... lifetime crowds the brain of a drowning man; that same crowded my brain during the few moments which swung in to us Daniel, scowling, masterful, his raw bulk and his long shambling stride never before ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... what manner of man this knight errant could be; but his very self-possession fluttered her; she had been so accustomed to think and act in her own defense that she experienced a subtle fear of this calm, cool-headed, masterful person whom she must learn to ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... 9, 1839, as Desdemona in "Otello," which had been the vehicle of Malibran's first introduction to the English public. The reminiscence of an eminent critic, who was present, will be interesting. "Nothing stranger, more incomplete in its completeness, more unspeakably indicating a new and masterful artist can be recorded than that first appearance. She looked older than her years; her frame (then a mere reed) quivered this way and that; her character dress seemed to puzzle her, and the motion of her hands as much. Her voice was hardly settled even within its own after ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... cannot stir in the first instance, without Reason calling upon it to do so. In this case the torpor of the will deprecated above (n. 7) is not to be feared, because Reason is so vigorous and so masterful as to be adequate to range everywhere and meet all emergencies without the goad of Passion. This state is called by divines the state of integrity. In it Adam was before he sinned. It was lost at the Fall, and has not been restored by ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... would pass the long hours by its aid, so that it had come to be part of his very self. He was beautiful also, swarthy and eager, with a head like Adonis, and in strength there was no one who could compete with him. But all was ruined by his disposition, which was so masterful that he would brook no opposition nor contradiction. For this reason he was continually at enmity with all his neighbours, and in his fits of temper he would spend months at a time in his stone hut among the mountains, ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... collar hanging limply over an unknotted cravat, displaying fully the muscular neck that rose like a pillar from his massive shoulders. He swung a cane that was almost a club in his left hand, and there was a cockade in his biscuit-coloured, conical hat. He carried himself with an aggressive, masterful air, that great head of his thrown back as if he ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... answered in a masterful voice. "Will you walk a little way along the bank? There's a picturesque island farther on, ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... the women who interest us most, for the men of the race, masterful and brave, heroic even in certain great crisis, have often ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... There was something masterful and delightful in David's voice, and Marcia with a happy laugh took her candle and got up saying, with a ring of joy in her voice: "All right!" She went to her room with David's second good-night ringing in her ears and her heart so light she wanted ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... VIII.'s reign can indeed only be solved by realising the misrule of the preceding century, the failure of parliamentary government, and the strength of the popular demand for a firm and masterful hand. It is a modern myth that Englishmen have always been consumed with enthusiasm for parliamentary government and with a thirst for a parliamentary vote. The interpretation of history, like that of the Scriptures, varies from age to age; and present political theories colour our views ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... regret. Were I to answer you now, I should answer you selfishly—so, please, you must give me time to think, for both our sakes. Love has never come near me before, and now I am a little afraid, for love is not little and tender and babyish, but great and strong and very fierce and masterful—that is why I am afraid of it. So I must go away from you, from the sound of your voice, the touch of your hand—to think it all out. My work will take me to Englewood to-morrow, and I want you to wait for your answer until I come back, for then I shall have decided one way ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... judge, of considerable value," she said. "This is an exquisite little ruby. The locket is quaintly enamelled. The miniature is of masterful workmanship; whose portrait is it?" she asked, raising her eyes to Anne's ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... the altered course of her policy alike in France, Ireland, and Scotland. In Ireland, for instance, an incomplete yet serious and high-purposed effort is made to bring, if not justice, at least law to the hapless populations beyond the Pale. Henry VIII again, like Edward I, is a masterful king. In politics, in constructive genius, he even surpasses Edward I. He abandons the folly of an empire in France, and though against Scotland he achieves a triumph signal as that of Edward, he has no thought ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... Clapham McGavack leads the list with a clarity of style and keenness of reasoning unsurpassed in the association. His "Dr. Burgess, Propagandist" is an amateur classic. Edgar Ralph Cheyney is an extreme radical, but is none the less a masterful essayist. His articles take a very high rank both for thoughtfulness and for diction. A third writer of unusual power and analytical depth is Arthur W. Ashby, whose essays on the varied aspects of Nature command our serious attention. ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... United States the need of legislation was far less urgent. Employers could not be so masterful in the treatment of their employees or so parsimonious in their distribution of wages, because the laborer always had the option of leaving the factory for the farm, and land was cheap. Women and children were not exploited in the mines as in England, pauper ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... mountain-ridge to which he formed an isolated and towering outpost, there was a fertile valley which had just been invaded by settlers. On every hand awoke the sharp barking of the axe. Rifle-shots startled the echoes. Masterful voices and confident human laughter filled all the wild inhabitants with wonder and dismay. The undisputed lord of the range was an old silver-tip grizzly, of great size and evil temper. Furious at the unexpected trespass ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... Mallalieu, masterful and insistent as ever. "You have the power! D'ye think I've been a justice of the peace for twelve years without knowing what law is? You've the power to admit to bail in all charges of felony, at ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... word of reply, however, to this demand; but those strange, magnetic eyes remained fixed upon him with the same intense, masterful expression. ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... fair—had lightly rested or, more helpless, clung; and save for that worn trail of the generations that followed up the dull, dark treads. But even these had much to tell of the passings for nearly two centuries and a half up and down this household highway: of the masterful tread of spur-shod boots, the dancing of the belle's slim-slippered feet, the pompous double steps of bumpy baby shoes, the gouty stump of old grandsire, and the faithful shamble of the ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... the same statement would have applied to Cromwell. While those two great ministers held office, each of them towered immeasurably above all his fellow-subjects: though each knew that the brilliant boy had hardened into a masterful King who could hurl him headlong with a nod. But when Cromwell had fallen, none took his place; there is no statesman who stands out conspicuous. Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, brother of Jane Seymour, showed ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... sat down to his solitary dinner at his club, he was very tired with his day's work. Attending to the affairs of such gentlemen as Mr. Hart and Captain Stubber,—who well know how to be masterful when their time for being masterful has come,—is fatiguing enough. But he had another task to perform before he went to bed, which he would fain have kept unperformed were it possible to do so. He had written to a third friend to make an appointment for the evening, ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... face. "I wish I knew what you know. I wish to Heaven I might go with you. But I'm married now—and respectable. If I ''ear the East a-callin'' and daren't answer, it's my own fault for ever being fool enough to have heard it. Well...." He proceeded to take charge of the situation with his masterful habit. "The morning train leaves Nokomis at seven-thirty. You can make that, if you ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... the work of Browning once more in the prose essay on Shelley which was written to a volume of spurious letters of that poet published in 1851. In this is summed up in a masterful paragraph reflecting Browning's unusual penetration into the secret paths of the poetic mind, the characteristics of a poet of Shelley's order. The paragraph is ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... usual poise by this time, however, and was quite prepared to keep Alan Massey in due subjection if necessary. She did not like masterful men. They always roused her own ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... he loved display and ostentation and was proud, wilful and self-confident; nevertheless, there were times when for a moment he feared, but in spite of that timidity, he went on in his masterful way: ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... Bodley ever wrote, now extant, is one to Bacon; but it has no reference to the library, only to the Baconian philosophy. We do not get many glimpses of Bodley's habits of life or ways of thinking, but there is no difficulty in discerning a strenuous, determined, masterful figure, bent during his later years, perhaps tyrannously bent, on effecting his object. He was not, we learn from a correspondent, 'hasty to write but when the posts do urge him, saying there need be no answer to your letters till more leisure breed him opportunity.' 'Words are women, deeds ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... Take off his tattooing, make him white, and clothe him! With his masterful carriage, his soft, cultivated voice, and his attitude of absolutism, he might have been Leopold, King of the Belgians, a great ambassador, a man of power in finance. Nevertheless, I thought of the death ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... now. His big armchair was drawn up beside the table and the papers and writing materials were in the place where I had seen them. A half-burned cigar lay in the ash tray. But the strong fingers which had placed it there were weak enough now and the masterful general of finance was in his room upstairs fighting the hardest battle of his life, fighting for that life itself. A door at the end of the library, a door which I had not noticed before, was partially open and from within sounded at intervals a series ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... monstrous progeny of writers on the detection of crime—"quorum pars parva fui!" Each may find some little development of his own, but his main art must trace back to those admirable stories of Monsieur Dupin, so wonderful in their masterful force, their reticence, their quick dramatic point. After all, mental acuteness is the one quality which can be ascribed to the ideal detective, and when that has once been admirably done, succeeding writers must necessarily be content for all time ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... not a nook or corner we had not visited by night. It was a lovely place, with broad shady walks through which we raced, or Willie drove us as two spirited young colts, for like most boys he was rather masterful. ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... Thoughtful, thoughtfully, masterful, masterfully, hard, hardly, cool, coolly, rapid, rapidly, ungainly, careful, carefully, eager, eagerly, sweet, sweetly, ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... services rendered to the cause of fiction. In Miss MAY WYNNE'S A Spy for Napoleon (JARROLD) his misdeeds and those of his minions are made to serve the purpose of emphasizing the loyalty of the heroine to her lover. This lover was an Englishman of a type sufficiently familiar in novels—cold and masterful, but, for some reason not apparent to me, extremely attractive. As he seemed to be roaming about France with the object of getting NAPOLEON out of the way by any means available, I am not certain that he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 8, 1917 • Various
... resented all other interference. This troubled Rose and made her feel as if caught in a snare, for, while she owned to herself that Charlie was the most attractive of her cousins, she was not ready to be taken possession of in this masterful way, especially since other and sometimes better men sought her ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... earliest effect upon its devotees was to create, through flattery of human character, a feeling of good-natured complacency. Against this optimism the traditional school reacted in two ways,—derisive and hortatory. Pope, Young, and Swift satirized with masterful skill the inherent weaknesses and follies of mankind, the vigor of their strokes drawing from the sentimentalist Whitehead the feeble but significant protest, On Ridicule, deprecating satire as discouraging to benevolence. On ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... thirty-eight year old infirmity rises yet higher in the scale of power seen at work. The Roman's child was an acute case; this an extreme chronic case of long standing. The acute case of illness may be most difficult and ticklish, demanding a quick masterful use of all the physician's knowledge and skill. The chronic case is yet more difficult eluding his best studied and prolonged and repeated effort. Clearly the power at work is accomplishing more; and so ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... When you are sure of a majority, election is a fine system; but you can scarcely expect the Mahommedans, the most masterful and powerful minority in the country, to contemplate their own extinction with joy. The worst of it is that he and his co-religionists, who are many, and the landed proprietors, also, of Hindu race, are frightened and ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... east and west, But two cannot go abreast, Cannot travel in it two: Yonder masterful cuckoo Crowds every egg out of the nest, Quick or dead, except its own; A spell is laid on sod and stone, Night and Day 've been tampered with, Every quality and pith Surcharged and sultry with a power That works its will ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... at my staff of the year 1300, [Footnote: Page 33 in my second lecture on Engraving.] adding the names of Dante and Orcagna, having each their separate masterful or prophetic function. ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... the boy merges into the man, and we must leave him. Strong of purpose, clear-headed and masterful, Louis the Fourteenth ruled as King of France for seventy-two years—the most powerful monarch in Christendom. Handsome in person, majestic in bearing, dignified, lavish, and proud; ruling France in one of the most ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... fair proportions, though in girth and weight he outstripped the rest. On a strong neck like a broad column his full round head rested, and frank and straight his wide-open eyes gazed forth on men, masterful and proud. ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar
... my chance now," said Dan, in his easy, masterful way. "You will be too old for this by next year. Why, you will be in long dresses then, and Virginia—have you noticed, by the way, what a beauty Virginia ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... I can vanish when you are not good to me. Shall I disappear again? I have but to say a mystic word and your Highness will clasp empty air.' She was play-acting, as she often did, and she looked up at him with such dazzling eyes that he caught her to him with masterful passion. ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... centred in Calcutta read into the Partition was a direct attack upon the primacy of the educated classes that had made Calcutta the capital of the Bengalee "nation." The Universities Act of 1904, it was alleged, had been the first attempt on the part of a masterful Viceroy to reduce their influence by curtailing their control of higher education. Partition was a further attempt to hamper their activities by cutting half the "nation" adrift from its "intellectual" capital. ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... above the table, and entertained the wild idea of asking him to evoke a blessing. To complete the confusion of his appearance, he was called "Senor" Perkins, for no other reason, apparently, than his occasional, but masterful, ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... has the bearing of a seaman, balanced on his two legs, in a posture easy, yet strong. He is rough and bluff with the courage and simplicity of a commander; his eye is accustomed to deal with horizons, while the features are clean-cut and masterful. The inscription is happy: 'That the memory of a daring and sagacious commander and gentle great-souled man, whose life from childhood was given to his country, but who served her supremely in the war for the Union, 1861-1865, may be preserved and honored, and that they who ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... lights of the French Revolution with Scaramouche, or the brilliant buccaneering days of Peter Blood, or the adventures of the Sea-Hawk, the corsair, will now welcome with delight a turn in Restoration London with the always masterful Col. ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... masterful work, entitled, "The Science of Power," points out how Darwinism furnished Nietzsche with a scientific basis for his godless system of philosophy and ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... than that he was painstaking and careful to a degree, and particularly in criminal cases formed one of the most conscientious Judges on the Bench. Hanging Judge! Why, we have seen the tears start to his eyes when sentencing a prisoner to death, and, owing to emotion, only by a masterful effort could his voice be heard. Above all, he is ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... characterized New England stock. Her father was strongly set in his ways, narrow and intense in his religious faith. Mary Baker was a nervous, high-strung girl, unusually attractive in personal appearance, proud, precocious, self-conscious, masterful. She was subject to hysterical attacks which issued in states of almost suspended animation. Her family feared these attacks and to prevent them humoured her in every way. In due time she joined the Tilton Congregational Church. She says herself ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... masterful gesture from Herrick stopped her. He did not wish to know anything about this. He trusted her entirely, he approved of her entirely, they must never speak of these ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... a very grand duck!" in his usual loud and masterful tone, he exclaimed to Widow Precious. "I understand your question now as to my ability to pay for him. Madam, he is worth a man's last shilling. A goose is a smaller and a coarser bird. In what manner do you ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... great spurt of smoke and flame to show where the shell had struck. Another and another and another—and then they were troubled no more. Captain Hedworth Lambton and his men had saved the situation. The masterful gun had met its own master and sank into silence, while the somewhat bedraggled field force came trailing back into Ladysmith, leaving three hundred of their number behind them. It was a high price to pay, but other misfortunes were ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in Ardevora, of all places!—where the womenkind be that masterful already, a man must get into his sea-boots before he can call his soul his own. Why, there was a woman here once that never asked for a vote in her life, and yet capsized an Election for Parliament—candidates, voters, and the whole apple-cart—as easy as ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... at once, in her abrupt question, not without a spice of scorn; and note how Ahab answers, bemoaning himself, putting in the forefront his fair proposal, and making Naboth's refusal ruder than it really had been, by suppressing its reason. Then out flashes the imperious will of this masterful princess, who had come from a land where royalty was all-powerful, and who had no restraints of conscience. She darts a half-contemptuous question at Ahab, to stir him to action; for nothing moves a weak man so much as the fear of being thought weak. 'Dost thou govern?' ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Tribune was one of the great educational influences of the country. Beside it stood the New York Times, edited by Henry J. Raymond, an advocate of moderate anti-slavery and Republican principles, with less of masterful leadership than the Tribune, but sometimes better balanced; and the Herald, under the elder James Gordon Bennett, devoted to news and money-making, ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... just got used to themselves, perhaps, have at marriage to get used to each other. It may be that they could succeed better in this great task if they had not so often to adjust themselves during the first year to the needs and masterful claims of a baby. There is no form of tyranny equal to that of the infant, who, assured of his right to unlimited service from all in sight, makes his demands at all times and in all ways. He pays for his subjection of parents and grandparents and they are ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... the ruin - Whichsoever thou mayst be Of the masterful of Europe That contrived our misery - Hear the wormwood-worded greeting From each city, shore, and lea Of thy victims: "Conqueror, all ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... are no waves, almost no ripples—smooth, oily patches. Jean-Christophe does not see it; he has closed his eyes to hear it better. The ceaseless roaring fills him, makes him giddy; he is exalted by this eternal, masterful dream which goes no man knows whither. Over the turmoil of its depths rush waters, in swift rhythm, eagerly, ardently. And from the rhythm ascends music, like a vine climbing a trellis—arpeggios from silver keys, sorrowful violins, velvety and smooth-sounding flutes.... ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... and I have come,' she answered humbly, like an obedient familiar in the employ of some great enchanter. Indeed, the Baron's power over this innocent girl was curiously like enchantment, or mesmeric influence. It was so masterful that the sexual element was almost eliminated. It was that of Prospero over the gentle Ariel. And yet it was probably only that of the cosmopolite over the recluse, of the experienced man over the ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... properly be after the turn of the year, by which time the first Mrs Balwhidder would be dead more than twelve months; and when I mentioned my design to write a book, he said, (and he was a man of good discretion), that the doing of the book was a thing that would keep, but masterful servants were a growing evil; so, upon his counselling, I resolved not to meddle with the book till I was married again, but employ the interim, between then and the turn of the year, in looking out for a prudent woman to be my second wife, strictly intending, as I did perform, not to mint ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... is so real it is impossible to resist him. He seems to have the masterful quality of taking a few scattered peasant families, and giving to them a universal import.... His plays are alive. They are real plays in real persons, and not the least of their charm lies in the dialogue.... He is tilling what is practically virgin soil, and ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... illustrations, while her cheeks grew hotter and hotter under Arthur's gaze. He knew that he was a detestable coward thus to revel in her confusion, when he ought to be trying to cover it, but it was such a novel sensation to occupy this masterful attitude towards a young lady that he yielded basely to the temptation. After all, it was but fair. Had she not caused him a very embarrassing quarter of ...
— A Love Story Reversed - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... in his life Gerald had wished he might have been a masterful man, capable of the like things. But already a vague sickness of soul had succeeded his momentarily dominant mood. Distrust filled him—of his own character, his aims, his talent, his health, and his destiny. His dreams had ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... adventures, religious, picaresque, and amatory, are embroiled and disembroiled with very fair skill in character and fairer still in narrative. Nor is the Sancho-Partridge of the piece, Jerry Tugwell, a cobbler (who thinks, though he is very fond of his somewhat masterful wife, that a little absence from her would not be unrefreshing), by any means a failure. Both Scott and Dickens evidently knew Graves well,[11] and knowledge of him might with ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... showing the masterful manner in which the poor German people are led astray that most of the men making these declarations for annexation are able at the same time to cry that Germany is fighting a defensive war and is prevented from making peace only by the ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... the invitation with alacrity. Colette's sidelong glance noted a certain masterful look about his chin, and there was a warning, metallic ring in his voice that denoted a determination to overcome all obstacles and triumph by sheer force of will. She was not ready to listen to him yet, and, a ready evader of issues, chatted ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... enterprising, and drains away the water, carp and all, and makes a potato-garden of his old haunts. So the carp makes a new study of life under altered circumstances in other waters; and to pass the time he wonders about it all. It happens even to men of masterful character, accustomed to directing events. An illness takes such a man out of his sphere for a few months. He comes back and finds his pond turned into a vegetable-garden and his ploughed field into a swamp; and then for a time he is fain ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... safely be challenged to show a single instance in which a masterful race such as ours, having been forced by the exigencies of war to take possession of an alien land, has behaved to its inhabitants with the disinterested zeal for their progress that our people ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... help to explain some of those in his poetry, they may also throw light on a certain lack of imagination in Crabbe's dealings with his fellow-men in general and with his parishioners in particular. His temperament was somewhat tactless and masterful, and he could never easily place himself at the stand-point of those who differed from him. The use of his imagination was mainly confined to the hours in his study; and while there, if he had his "beaux moments," he had also his ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... more important and pressing daily business, we spasmodically bethink ourselves, and for a little while seek for the light of God's felt presence to shine upon us, we shall not get it. But if we lay a masterful hand, as we ought to do, on these divergent desires that draw us asunder, and bind ourselves, as it were, together, by the strong cord of a resolved purpose carried out throughout our lives, then we shall ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... [1849] there appears upon the scene that vigorous and masterful spirit, whose arrival to take up the government of India had been greeted by events so inauspicious. No doubt from the beginning the Governor-General was desirous to let it be understood that although new to India he was, and meant ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... They opened their eyes and realized that they were in the world. Then, with a thrill of independence, they realized that they could look at the world critically. They did so and found it faulty. The intoxication of assuming the masterful position of a critic of the social system—which it is every man's right to assume—is unbalancing at first. The very young critic is very much unbalanced. He is strongly in favor of wiping out the old order and starting a new ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... with his family life. "One of the most wearing things about being President," a President once said to me, "is the incessant publicity of it. For four years you have not a moment to yourself, not a moment of privacy." And yet Roosevelt, masterful in so many other things, was masterful in this also. Nothing interfered with the seclusion of the family breakfast. There were no guests, only Mrs. Roosevelt and the children, and the simplest of food. At Oyster Bay he would often chop trees in the early morning, and sometimes, while he was President, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... eldest, was by this time a girl of eight, Melvin a stout sober youth of six, "Pinny" (Eugene, Jr.) a shrewd little rascal of four, and "Daisy" (Fred), his mother's boy, a large-eyed, sturdy youngster of nearly three masterful summers. The family was quickly settled in a small but convenient flat on Chicago Avenue, three blocks from the Lake, and a little more than a mile's walk from the office, a distance that never tempted Field to exercise his legs ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... "You are too masterful," she said gently. "I will not marry you. I will not give myself body and soul to any man. Yet that is what you ask. I am not a girl. My opinions are as dear to me in their way as yours are to you. You want me to close my eyes while you drop sugar plums into my mouth. ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... stripping off her bracelets, she piled them in a heap before her, selected a Greek coin dangling from the end of one of them, propped it up on the table and began to paint; the men, all of whom were too astonished to resume their work, crowding about her, watching the play of her brush; a brush so masterful in its technique that before the picture was finished the room ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the Jews from 175 B.C. to 135 A.D., and the intellectual and religious life of the times in which Jesus lived, with the Jewish literature of Palestine and the dispersion, are all treated with thoroughness and masterful learning. W. Baldensperger, Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu im Lichte der messianischen Hoffnungen seiner Zeit (2d ed. 1892), furnishes in the first part a survey of the Messianic hopes of the Jews which ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... morning, and all the woods lay asleep in the shadow, and only the weather-cock on the uppermost gable of the roof was turning in the light wind of dawn), it seemed to him that the time favoured a bold deed and a masterful entrance. ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... more. The embroidered couvre-pieds, which Dickie had spread across him, gathering the top edge of it up under the front of his Eton jacket, offered luxurious bedding. But Camp was a typical conservative, slow-witted, stubborn against the ingress of a new idea. This tall, somewhat masterful stranger must prove himself a good man and true—according to bull-dog understanding of those terms—before he could hope to gain entrance to ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... disease; and in the call of the colossal will-power which created the German empire and launched her on the career of industrial greatness. Nietzsche's Superman is, above all, a being of colossal and masterful will, and Zarathustra, the prophet of superhumanity, is only an incarnation of the will that for Schopenhauer moved the world. The moment at which the prestige of will began definitely to overcome that of reasoning is marked, as Aliotta has pointed out, by the appearance ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... have learned, was a bright little girl, who spoke her mind, and had no great awe for the Bonapartes—not even for the mighty Canon Lucien, the all-powerful Nurse Saveria, nor the masterful little Napoleon. ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... the domestic charges of it on her own shoulders. She now consented to leave us to ourselves. There is no question that her exodus was a relief to my Mother, since my paternal grandmother was a strong and masterful woman, buxom, choleric and practical, for whom the interests of the mind did not exist. Her daughter- in-law, gentle as she was, and ethereal in manner and appearance— strangely contrasted (no doubt), in her tinctures of gold hair and white skin, with my grandmother's bold carnations ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... not get away from them. He seeth that a greyhound bitch had hold of his sword, and she had hands like a woman, and was fain to slay him. And it seemed him that he snatched the sword from her and slew the greyhound bitch and the biggest and most masterful of the ban-dogs and the little cur. He was scared of the dream and started up and awoke, and felt the scabbard of his sword by his side, that the damsel had left there all empty, the which he perceived not, and soon thereafter he fell on sleep again. The dwarf that had stolen his horse cometh ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... 1857 Borrow came to see him and had the loan of the "Rubaiyat" in manuscript, and Fitzgerald showed his readiness to see more of the "Great Man." In 1859 he sent Borrow a copy of "Omar." He found Borrow's "masterful manners and irritable temper uncongenial," {209} but succeeded, unlike many other friends, in having no quarrel with him. Near the end of his life, in 1875, it was Borrow that tried to renew the acquaintance, but in vain, for Fitzgerald reminded ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... was finished, and Bob would come in with his bucket to find Jim just in, and lighting the fire—"Major," not being the milking hand, worked in the paddocks a little longer. Tea required little preparation, since the only menu that occurred to old Joe seemed to be bread and jam. Jim, being a masterful soul, occasionally took the matter into his own hands and, aided by Bob, made "flap-jacks" in the frying-pan; they might have been indigestible for delicately-constituted people, but at least they had the merit of being hot and comforting on a biting winter night. Old ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... mused that hour. The Demon of his House beside him stood Upon that iron coast, and whispered thus: "Masterful man art thou for wit and strength; Yet girl-like standst thou brooding! Weave a snare! He comes for gold, this prophet. All thou hast Heap in thy house; then fire it! In far lands Build thee new fortunes. Frustrate thus ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... me yesterday was so impervious to a joke, honored me by giving me his baronial arm for dejeuner. I can't imagine why he did it, unless it were to get a lesson in English gratis, of which he was sadly in need. He struck me as being very masterful and weighed down with the mighty affairs of his tiny little kingdom. I was duly impressed, and never felt so subdued in all my life, which I suppose was the effect he wished to produce ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... itself felt, however, is a desire to get the wage element in the ingot as thriftily, as efficiently, as nobly converted and used to the last ounce as is the profit element. There has been in the past a masterful individualism at work. Now there is a masterful aggressive humanism beginning to make itself felt, comparable in its spirit with the masterful venturing of the French explorers or the masterful faith of the French missionaries, that promises to constrain the city "to the saving ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley |
