"Virtuoso" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... letter to The Spectator, John Hughes poked fun at a number of aspiring poets who had recently attempted to create works of art by utilizing what Hughes called "Contractions or Expedients for Wit." One Virtuoso (a mathematician) had, for example, "thrown the Art of Poetry into a short Problem, and contrived Tables by which any one without knowing a Word of Grammar or Sense, may to his great Comfort, be able to compose or rather erect Latin Verses." Equally ridiculous to Hughes, and more relevant ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany. Part 1 • Samuel Johnson [AKA Hurlo Thrumbo]
... is so deficient in its shadings and minor attractions, it is adapted only for concerts and chamber music." This dissertation closes as follows: "In order to judge a virtuoso, one must listen to him while at the clavichord, not while at ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover
... the curious statues to the captain of a ship, assuring him, 'that if any were lost or broken, he should procure others to be made in their stead,' by which it should seem (whatever may be pretended) that Mummius was no virtuoso.-P. W. ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... virtuoso; really a comical and strange character, and has oddities enough to compensate one for the debasement of talking with a man in ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... all Contractions or Expedients for Wit, I admire that of an ingenious Projector whose Book I have seen. [4] This Virtuoso being a Mathematician, has, according to his Taste, thrown the Art of Poetry into a short Problem, and contrived Tables by which any one without knowing a Word of Grammar or Sense, may, to his great Comfort, be able to compose or rather to erect Latin Verses. His ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... to perfection than the human hand. Mr. Arthur Whiting, considering the horseless pianoforte some time ago, was also enthusiastic. The h. p. is entirely self-possessed, and has even more platform imperturbability than the applauded virtuoso. "After a few introductory sounds, which have nothing to do with the music, and without relaxing the lines of its inscrutable face, the insensate artist proceeds to show its power. Its security puts all hand playing to shame; it ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... into horror and affright by the trenchant confidence of his spirit, the daring thoroughness and consistency of his dialectic, the lurid sarcasm, the vile penetration. He discusses a horrible action, or execrable crime, as a virtuoso examines a statue or a painting. He has that rarest fortitude of the vicious, not to shrink from calling his character and conduct by their names. He is one of Swift's Yahoos, with the courage of its opinions. He seems to give one reason for hating ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... like Schumann, he was spoiled for briefs by the stronger pull of music and the cacoethes scribendi. (Grandpa John Huneker had been a composer of church music, and organist at St. Mary's.) In the year mentioned he set out for Paris to see Liszt; his aim was to make himself a piano virtuoso. His name does not appear on his own exhaustive list of Liszt pupils, but he managed to quaff of the Pierian spring at second-hand, for he had lessons from Theodore Ritter (ne Bennet), a genuine pupil of the old walrus, and ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... is only a trickster! There is a fad nowadays among the ladies to run after him." He bowed to the three ladies in turn mockingly, "My friends here tried to get tickets last week in St. Petersburg, but the house was sold out. Bosh—I tell you! I wouldn't cross the street to hear a virtuoso like that!" ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... no learned virtuoso. But what does that matter? The real artist is seldom a patient collector or an encyclopedic authority. That is the role of Museum people and of compilers of hand-books. Many thoroughly uninteresting minds ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... The playing of many a virtuoso resembles the walk of an intoxicated person. Do not take such ...
— Advice to Young Musicians. Musikalische Haus- und Lebens-Regeln • Robert Schumann
... picked up the cloak and was holding it unconsciously against his immaculate shirt. It was the sentimental act of a virtuoso in the art of pleasing women—who are so easily pleased. At the moment he had achieved forgetfulness of boudoir trickery and so retained almost all his usual assumption of dignity. Even Joan, with her quick eye for the ridiculous, failed to detect the bathos of his attitude, ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... the youth who imagined himself a violin virtuoso, and fiddled all day long, varying his performance by pausing to pass around the hat for pennies, of which he had accumulated, it was said, more than ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... table, and after an excellent dinner they went into the library. Candide, seeing a Homer magnificently bound, commended the virtuoso on ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... anxious to know, I'm an architect on a holiday, and I'm sketching any old thing I come across. I don't pretend to be a painter, my youthful virtuoso, and that's why I go wrong sometimes on colour. Do you know what an ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... face the points did not suddenly slip up and stab the light from helpless eyes? How was it that men did not use their chances? He went lightly down the street, absorbed in a vision which was not like the reality; but it was evidence that his visit to Max Ingolby's house was not the visit of a virtuoso alone, but ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... fellow at the piano, with bulging watch-crystal eye-glasses and hair tucked behind his ears, was the well-known, all-round musician, Wenby Simmons—otherwise known as "Pussy Me-ow" —a name associated in some way with the strings of his violin. This virtuoso played in the orchestra at the Winter Garden, and occupied ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... of French literature; Verlaine, extremely unequal, often detestable and contemptible, but suddenly charming and touching or revealing a religious feeling that suggests a clerk of the Middle Ages; Catulle Mendes, purely romantic, wholly virtuoso, but an astonishingly dexterous versifier. To these poets some highly curious literary dandies set themselves in opposition, being desirous of renovating the poetic art by ascribing more value to the sound of words ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... the Somme the blue uniforms of the French in place of the British khaki hovered around the gun-emplacements; the soixante-quinze with its virtuoso artistic precision was neighbor to the British eighteen-pounder. Guns, guns, guns—French and English! The same nests of them opposite Gommecourt and at Estrees thundered across at one another from either bank of the Somme through summer haze over the green spaces of the islands edged with ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... Bergen. In 1829 he went to Cassel, on a visit to Spohr, who gave him no encouragement. He now began to study law, but on going to Paris he came under the influence of Paganini, and definitely adopted the career of a violin virtuoso. He made his first appearance in company with Ernst and Chopin at a concert of his own in Paris in 1832. Successful tours in Italy and England followed soon afterwards, and he was not long in obtaining European celebrity by his ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... tasteless versifier was born 25 A.D., or according to some 24 A.D., and died by his own act seventy-six years later. He is known to us as a copyist of Virgil; to his contemporaries he was at least as well known as a clever orator and luxurious virtuoso. His early fondness for Virgil's poetry may be presumed from the dedication of Cornutus's treatise on that subject to him, but he soon deserted literature for public life, in which (68 A.D.) he attained the highest success by being nominated consul. He had been ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... Hungarian piano-virtuoso who posed as a composer. That he lent money and thematic ideas to his precious son-in-law, Richard Wagner, I do not doubt. But, then, beggars must not be choosers, and Liszt gave to Wagner mighty poor stuff, musically ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... merely a man of the inferior class, held up the trophy which hung at his girdle to the examination of his chief. Metacom looked at the disgusting object with the calmness and nearly with the interest, that a virtuoso would lavish on an antique memorial of some triumph of former ages. His finger was thrust through a hole in the skin, and then, while he resumed his ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... sextuor of "Lucie," or the trio of "William Tell," or the duet of "Les Huguenots"? You listen attentively, and do at first detect a phrase here and a phrase there which vaguely recall the work of Donizetti, or of Rossini, or of Meyerbeer; but in an instant the virtuoso himself forgets all about them. You have nothing but volley after volley of notes, a musical storm, tempest, avalanche; the primitive idea is fathoms deep under water, and when it is caught again it is ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... father knew gave him a benefit concert. The money from that helped us to move to Sanford, and father has been writing articles off and on for the magazine ever since then. It's better for all of us to be here. Uncle John isn't quite like other people. When he was a young man he studied to be a virtuoso on the violin. He overworked and had brain fever just before he was to give his first recital. After he got well he never played the same again. He had spent all the money his father left him on his musical education, so he had to find work ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... persons to learn that it was through the efforts of Adolphe Henselt, piano virtuoso and composer, that Dostoievsky was finally allowed to leave Siberia and publish his writings. Henselt, who was at the time court pianist and teacher of the Czarina, appealed to her, and thus the ball was set rolling that ended in the ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... hand, was of a much more intensely organized musical temperament. His genius was of the greatest possible character. As a virtuoso he not only played upon the organ, the clavecin, and the violin better than most of his contemporaries, and upon the organ probably better than any; he also created works in these three departments which held the attention of his own time to an astonishing degree, considering the ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... Galen; and Hippocrates equals the flesh of puppies to that of birds. The humorous Dr. King, who has touched on this subject, suspects that many of the Greek dishes appear charming from their mellifluous terminations, resounding with a floios and toios. Dr. King's description of the Virtuoso Bentivoglio or Bentley, with his "Bill of Fare" out of Athenaeus, probably suggested to Smollett ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... the virtuoso Gregoire,) where the National Club justly struck at the tyrants even in their tombs, that of Turenne ought to have been spared; yet strokes of the sword are still visible on it."—He likewise complains, that at the Botanic Garden ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... the instincts of a virtuoso. That was really clever of you. The Duchess d'Izes sent him to mother two years ago. You must speak to him. I 'm afraid he feels he is not ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... in a musical atmosphere. A picturesque, old German virtuoso is the reverent possessor of a genuine "Cremona." He consents to take for his pupil a handsome youth who proves to have an aptitude for technique, but not the soul of an artist. The youth has led the happy, careless life of a modern, well-to-do young American and he cannot, with his meagre ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... some slight answer, that the spider was a sort of pet of an old virtuoso to whom he owed many obligations in his boyhood; and the conversation turned from this subject to others suggested by topics of the day and place. His Lordship was affable, and Redclyffe could not, it must be confessed, see anything to justify the prejudices of the neighbors ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a leisure hour at my disposal, I stepped into a new museum, to which my notice was casually drawn by a small and unobtrusive sign: "TO BE SEEN HERE, A VIRTUOSO'S COLLECTION." Such was the simple yet not altogether unpromising announcement that turned my steps aside for a little while from the sunny sidewalk of our principal thoroughfare. Mounting a sombre staircase, I pushed ...
— A Virtuoso's Collection (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Protector and the Council for reparation of some portions of his lost fortunes and for favour generally; but he seems to have gone about a good deal, visiting various people. "Came to visit me." says Evelyn, the naturalist and virtuoso of Sayes Court, in his diary, under date May 28, 1656, "the old Marquis of Argyle. Lord Lothian, and some other Scotch noblemen, all strangers to me. Note: The Marquis took the turtle-doves in the aviary for owls." It had been his characteristic ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... but they were now blended and arranged with a sense of tint and grouping, too often neglected by the dim grocers of those forgotten days. The wares were shown plainly, but shown not so much as an old grocer would have shown his stock, but rather as an educated virtuoso would have shown his treasures. The tea was stored in great blue and green vases, inscribed with the nine indispensable sayings of the wise men of China. Other vases of a confused orange and purple, less rigid and dominant, more humble and dreamy, stored symbolically ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... lore. Two concertos for piano and orchestra are dazzling feats of virtuosity; one of them is reviewed at length in A.J. Goodrich' book, "Musical Analysis." He has written also a book of artistic moment called "Twelve Virtuoso-Studies," and two books of actual gymnastics ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... Budapest virtuoso, will be the soloist at the concert this evening of the Philharmonic Society. He will play the Tschaikovsky Violin Concerto, Opus 35, and the remainder of the program will consist of Dvorak's Symphony, Aus der Neuen Welt, and ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... mark." He had an old inscription engraved on an unused bit of pewter—it was well begrimed and well battered, then exposed for sale in a broker's shop, where it was greedily purchased by the credulous virtuoso. The notion, by the way, of the Club button was taken from the Prince Regent, who had his Club and uniform, which he ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... actually beheld a live elephant there. But the unbelieving have ever since made all manner of fun at the good knight's expense. Take the following burlesque of this celebrated discovery as an instance. "Sir Paul Neal, a conceited virtuoso of the seventeenth century, gave out that he had discovered 'an elephant in the moon.' It turned out that a mouse had crept into his telescope, which had been mistaken for an elephant in the moon." [51] Well, we concede that an elephant and a mouse are very much alike; but surely Sir Paul was too ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... with fantastic pruning-hook, Dresses the borders of his book, Merely to ornament its look— Amongst philosophers a fop is: What if, perchance, he thence discover Facilities in turning over, The virtuoso is a lover Of coyer charms ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... produc'd by this glorious Tree, who after they had piss'd their Estates against the Wall (as the good Housewives term it) have by the Strength of true Hibernian Prowess rais'd themselves to the Favour of some fair Virtuoso, and being by her plac'd in a HOT-BED, have been restor'd to their pristine Strength, and flourish'd again; and like true Heroes, not envying the busy World, have been content to spend the remainder of their Days in an ...
— The Ladies Delight • Anonymous
... point—this Fortunato—although in other regards he was a man to be respected and even feared. He prided himself on his connoisseurship in wine. Few Italians have the true virtuoso spirit. For the most part their enthusiasm is adopted to suit the time and opportunity—to practise imposture upon the British and Austrian millionaires. In painting and gemmary, Fortunato, like his countrymen, was a quack—but ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Hamburg once a week—a distance for the round trip of 316 miles. In 1887 he went to Berlin and became fourth cornetist of the Philharmonic Orchestra and valet to Dr. Schweinsrippen, the conductor. In Berlin he studied violin and second violin under the Polish virtuoso, Pbyschbrweski, and also had lessons in composition from Wilhelm Geigenheimer, formerly third triangle ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... miles in a day. Twenty-two nations obeyed him, and he could speak the dialect of each. A veneer of Greek refinement was spread thinly over the savage animalism of the man. [Sidenote: Pseudo-civilisation of his court.] He was a virtuoso, and had a wonderful collection of rings. He maintained Greek poets and historians, and offered prizes for singing. He had shrewdness enough to employ Greek generals, but not enough to keep ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... bachelor; an old woman kept house and he always addressed her in the Hungarian tongue. His wants were simple, but his pride was Lucifer's. By no means a virtuoso, he had the grand air, the grand style, and when he sat down to play one involuntarily stopped breathing. He had a habit of smiting the keyboard, and massive chords, clangorous harmonies inevitably preluded his performances. I knew some conservatory girls ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... had gone, Lady Windermere returned to the picture- gallery, where a celebrated political economist was solemnly explaining the scientific theory of music to an indignant virtuoso from Hungary, and began to talk to the Duchess of Paisley. She looked wonderfully beautiful with her grand ivory throat, her large blue forget-me-not eyes, and her heavy coils of golden hair. Or pur they were—not ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... They should go to Donegal. The place is silent as the tomb, and if they would learn to do nothing they will there find many eminent professors of the science, who, having devoted to it the study of a lifetime, have attained a virtuoso proficiency. ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... Your virtuoso looks with artistical delight on the figure of some nymph painted on an Etruscan vase, engaged in pouring out the juice of the grape from her classic urn. And the Parson felt as harmless, if not as elegant a pleasure in contemplating Widow Fairfield brimming high a glittering can, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... the parish under my good friend's care is very pleasant. It is placed among meadows, washed by a clear trout-stream, and flanked on both sides with downs. His house, indeed, would not much attract the admiration of the virtuoso. He built it himself, and it is remarkable only for its plainness; with which the furniture so well agrees, that there is no one thing in it that may not be absolutely necessary, except books, and the prints of Mr. Hogarth, whom he calls a ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... des Sciences" at Paris. A great and gouty member of that philosophical body, on the departure of a stranger, would point to his legs, to show the impossibility of conducting him to the door; yet the astonished visitor never failed finding the virtuoso waiting for him on the outside, to make his final bow! While the visitor was going down stairs, this inventive genius was descending with great velocity in a machine from the window: so that he proved, that if a man of science cannot force ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the more limited sense of the term, which embraces personal as well as incorporeal goods; as, for instance, the labors of the doctor, teacher; virtuoso, of the statesman, judge, and of preachers, whose office it is, by way of eminence, to produce and preserve the immaterial wealth, known as the State and ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... fable about little fishes, doctor, you would make the little fishes talk like whales." No man surely ever had so little talent for personation as Johnson. Whether he wrote in the character of a disappointed legacy-hunter or an empty town fop, of a crazy virtuoso or a flippant coquette, he wrote in the same pompous and unbending style. His speech, like Sir Piercy Shafton's Euphuistic eloquence, bewrayed him under every disguise. Euphelia and Rhodoclea talk as finely as Imlac the poet or Seged, Emperor of Ethiopia. ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... his accomplishment in oil-painting and to seem to prefer his drawings and pastels to his pictures. We have seen that he was a supremely able technician in his pot-boiling days and that the color and handling of his early pictures were greatly admired by so brilliant a virtuoso as Diaz. But this "flowery manner" would not lend itself to the expression of his new aims and he had to invent another. He did so stumblingly at first, and the earliest pictures of his grand style have a certain harshness and ruggedness of surface and heaviness ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... Virago (fig.) drakino. Virgin virgulino. Virginal virga. Virginity virgeco. Virgin, The Blessed La Sankta Virgulino, Dipatrino. Virile vira. Virility vireco. Virtue virto. Virtuous virta. Virtuoso virtuozo. Virulent venena, malboniga. Virus veneno. Visage vizagxo. Vis-a-vis kontrauxulo. Viscera internajxo. Viscuous gluanta. Visible videbla. Visibly videble. Vision (sense) vido. Vision (apparition) ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... worse, would it cause him to strike wrong notes, and even to forget whole passages, so that his guests, and of course Barbara, would go away in the impression that they had heard a boastful person make an ass of himself? He was almost minded to begin his concert with an imitation of a virtuoso suffering from stage fright. If there was going to be laughter, let it be thought that he was not the irresponsible cause of it, but the deliberate and responsible. What should he play? Violent things to get his hands in and his courage ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... daughter and my nieces. Of the other marvels of this city, paintings, antiquities, &c., excepting the tombs of the Scaliger princes, I have no pretensions to judge. The gothic monuments of the Scaligers pleased me, but 'a poor virtuoso am ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... company we see: for which reason, I shall also just mention Sir George Stuart, a Scottish gentleman, with whom Mr. B. became acquainted in his travels, who seems to be a polite (and Mr. B. says, is a learned) man, and a virtuoso: he, and a nephew of his, of the same name, a bashful gentleman, and who, for that reason, I imagine, has a merit that lies deeper than a first observation can reach, are just gone from us, and were received with so much civility ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... informed as to the aims of kings and courts; to understand financial and diplomatic movements; briefly, as far as was then possible, to be an incarnate blue-book. He was to study literature and appreciate art, though he was carefully to avoid the excess which makes the pedant or the virtuoso. He was to cultivate a good style in writing and speaking, and even to learn German. Chesterfield's prophecy of a revolution in France (though, I fancy, a little overpraised) shows at least that he was ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... connoisseur of Painting this enlightened virtuoso is given over to Hogarth's hated ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... not only the scholar, but the virtuoso, who hoards the treasures which he loves, it may be chiefly for their rarity and because others who know more than he does of their value set a high price upon them. As the wine of old vintages is gently decanted out of its cobwebbed bottles with their rotten ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... reason to suppose that Tradescant's stuffed specimen was a fabrication. He used to preserve his own specimens; and there could be no motive at that period for a fabrication. I had hoped to have found some notice of it in the Diary of that worthy virtuoso Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach, who visited the Ashmolean Museum in 1710; but though he notices other natural curiosities, there is no mention of it. This worthy remarks on the slovenly condition and inadequate superintendence of our museums, and especially ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various
... writing he began to see progress. He was like a musical person beginning to learn an instrument; for, just as surely as there are scales to be run upon the piano before your virtuoso can weave music, binding the gallery gods with delicious meshes of sound, so in prose-writing there must be scales run, fingerings worked out, and harmonies mastered. For in a page of lo bello stile you will find trills and arpeggios, turns, grace notes, a main theme, a sub theme, ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... quindi a te supplichiamo afflitti: sia tu nostro sostegno, O Aciuto. Dite, loro rispose Visnu, quale cosa io debba far per voi; e gli Dei, udite queste parole, cosi soggiunsero: Un re per nome Dasaratha, giusto, virtuoso, veridico e pio, non ha progenie e la desidera: ei gia s' impose durissime penitenze, ed ora ha sacrificato con un Asvamedha: tu, per nostro consiglio, O Visnu, consenti a divenir suo figlio: fatte di te quattro parti, ti manifesta, O invocato dalle genti, nel seno delle quattro sue ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... with political as well as with military situations, and his success in holding even Grant at bay so long, Lee's masterful campaigns of 1862, 1863, 1864, and 1865 not only constitute him the foremost military virtuoso of his own land, but write his name high on the scroll of the greatest captains of history, beside those of Gustavus Adolphus, William of Orange, Tilly, Frederic the Great, Prince Eugene, Napoleon, Wellington, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... difference between that age and our own. The result of poetical activity was not the property and was not the production of a single person, but of the community. The work of the individual endured only as long as its delivery lasted. He gained personal distinction only as a virtuoso. The permanent elements of what he presented, the material, the ideas, even the style and metre, already existed. 'The work of the singer was only a ripple in the stream of national poetry. Who can say how much the individual ...
— The Book of Old English Ballads • George Wharton Edwards
... values,-but that which has had from beginning to end the greatest total of happiness. No other ultimate criterion for conduct can ever justify itself, and most theoretical statements reduce to this. To be virtuous is to be a virtuoso in life. All sorts of objections have been raised to this simple, and apparently pagan, way of stating the case; they will be considered in due time. The reader is asked to refrain from parting company with the writer, if his prejudices are aroused, until the ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... musicians' instruments, followed this tilted wagon. Some members of the orchestra would not part with theirs, and behind the saddle of many a mounted virtuoso or attendant was fastened a violin case or a shapeless bag which concealed ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Torricellius,[2] the inventor of the common weather-glass, made the experiment of a long tube which held thirty-two foot of water; and that a more modern virtuoso finding such a machine altogether unwieldly and useless, and considering that thirty-two inches of quicksilver weighed as much as so many foot of water in a tube of the same circumference, invented that sizeable instrument which is now in use. After this ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... air with variations, from the direction of the drawing room. It was sweet and tender, graceful and expressive, according to the character of the variations; and, when the last variation began with a crispness and delicacy that made me wonder what great virtuoso was at my pianoforte without my knowing it, I hurried to the drawing room and, entering it—found my fourteen year old daughter seated at a pianola. The instrument had arrived only a short time before from the house of a ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... styled Father Peter, and sometimes My Lord Peter. To support this grandeur, which he soon began to consider could not be maintained without a better fonde than what he was born to, after much thought he cast about at last to turn projector and virtuoso, wherein he so well succeeded, that many famous discoveries, projects, and machines which bear great vogue and practice at present in the world, are owing entirely to Lord Peter's invention. I will deduce the best account I have been able to collect of the chief amongst ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... scholarly and rare education, had given to this young woman all the gifts and virtues that made of a woman what the eighteenth century called a virtuoso, an accomplished model of the seductions of her time. Jeliotte had taught her singing and the clavecin; Guibaudet, dancing; Crebillon had taught her declamation and the art of diction; the friends of Crebillon had formed her young mind to finesse, to delicacies, to lightness of ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... teachers, numbered among his pupils, Liszt, Doehler, Thalberg and Jaell. The Clementi school was continued in that familiar writer of Etudes, Johann Baptist Cramer (1771-1858), and began to show respect for the damper pedal. Its most eminent virtuoso was John ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... a love-affair. There was a time when he too joined in the dance and song, as one might say; but all that is over for him. One morning he turned up late, his usual merry call changed to a croak like that of a bull-frog virtuoso. I peered between the curtains to make sure that it was not Number Five (as yet hypothetical); but no—it was Three, with a look on his face that could only bear one interpretation. Belinda had been perverse, unkind, icy—had, in fact, thrown him over. You could read it in the angle ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various |
