"Mastery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... debauches of wine or women find it more difficult to apply themselves to things that are profitable, and to abstain from what is hurtful. For many who live frugally before they fall in love become prodigal when that passion gets the mastery over them; insomuch that after having wasted their estates, they are reduced to gain their bread by methods they would have been ashamed of before. What hinders then, but that a man, who has been once temperate, should be so no longer, and that he who has led a good life at one time should not ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... continue to prosper; but the King's financial methods were hardly more conducive to public industry and thrift than his personal example. Wolsey indeed was an able finance minister. In spite of the enormous expenditure on display, his mastery of detail prevented mere waste; and until the pressing necessities of a war-budget arose in 1523, enough money was found by tapping the sources to which Henry VII. had applied, supplemented by the ample hoards which that monarch had left behind. In 1523, the Cardinal's ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... after the great catastrophe which changed him from the mere exaggerated child, gratifying every passion with violence, I knew it depended on what hands he would fall into, whether the spiritual or the animal would have the mastery. Madam, it was into your hands that he fell, and I thank God for it, even more than for the deliverance that my dear pupil has gained ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to anger, and he remembered, while he choked back an impulsive exclamation, the rage for mastery he had once felt when he found a horse whose temper had more than matched his own. "Did she tell you ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... think of my incomparable Jenny and her astounding mastery of minutiae at "Crow's Nest"—her finesse and exquisite touch, her kittenlike delicacy, her catlike swiftness and sureness. The two beings involved were as children in her hands. Oh, precious phoenix of a woman, you and I were of the same spirit, kneaded into our clay! ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... moving to that island, and their son still increased in honour with the king, albeit he knew not that he was his brother. Now it chanced one night that the king sallied forth without the city and drank and the wine got the mastery of him and he became drunken. So, of the youth's fear for his safety, he said, "I will keep watch myself over the king this night, seeing that he deserveth this from me, for that which he hath done with me of kindly ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... pause to say that in the literary structure, language, and rhythm of the poem, Dryden had made a great step toward that mastery of the rhymed pentameter couplet, which is one of his greatest ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... failed to make good use of their gold. Dante descries among the victims tonsured polls, proving that monks themselves are not exempt from these sins. Meanwhile Virgil expounds how the Creator decreed nations should wield the mastery in turn, adding that these people are victims of Fortune, whose proverbial fickleness ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... benches. Leaving Bampton, one passes along a green and fertile valley, the fields interrupted at intervals by copses, where thickets of undergrowth and multitudes of young saplings are struggling for the mastery—a picture of prodigal wealth ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... fast attaining a mastery of his environment, and his religious creeds are becoming as irrational to him as the witchcraft delusion. Religion with its burden of fear ties him to the dead ages. But knowledge not only supplies him with power, but also furnishes him with courage, and that courage will aid him in freeing himself ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... a look of compassion upon him. "You will never know why, because you have never known what it is to live without the push and pull of many human beings striving for mastery all about you. In a well-populated land, this would all be very wonderful. Here ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... dramas, we have seldom had such fiery and vigorous verse. He blends the strong with the tender, in natural and sweet proportions. His genius, too, vaults into the lyric motion with very great ease and mastery. He is a minstrel as well as a bard, and has shown power over almost every form of lyrical composition. His sentiment is clear without being commonplace, original, yet not extravagant, and betokens, as well as his ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... American. There was about him that clean, strong, sweet look of the absolutely healthy man, the man who has buffeted the world and not been buffeted by the world. He was frank, bright, straightforward, and there was that always-to-be-feared yet ever-to-be-desired gleam of mastery in his eye. It may have been sometimes a wicked mastery, and more than one woman who admired him because she could not help herself had said, "There is a ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... Reumont, whose mastery in the field of Italian history is well known, brings out in full light the circumstances ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... talk riddles. I have not yet told you of her; and yet speak of fire and death. I will try to be more coherent, if only to show that the years have brought me some mastery over myself. One day—it was a fall day and beautiful as limpid sunshine and a world of yellowing woods could make it—I went to Miss Dudleigh's house to apologize for my friend, who had wished to improve the ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... passes and his mastery of English grows, he begins to read items in the daily papers and stories in the Sunday editions. Later he takes up the reading of books, perhaps first those related to his trade, or the subjects ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek
... goodness (26) she honours, but the wicked she thrusts aside from honour. If only men could know that she regards them, how eagerly would they rush to the embrace of toilful training and tribulation, (27) by which alone she is hardly taken; and so should they gain the mastery over her, and she should be ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... Ellen had forgotten utterly; she was deep in what was to her the most important of business. She did not see the bystanders smile; she did not know there were any. To her mother's eye it was a most fair sight. Mrs. Montgomery gazed with rising emotions of pleasure and pain that struggled for the mastery, but pain at last got the better and rose very high. "How can I give thee up!" was the one thought of her heart. Unable to command herself, she rose and went to a distant part of the counter, where she ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... of his dizzying exaltation, he marveled at the ease with which she spoke her inmost feeling; he, the great apostle of reason and self-mastery, was much slower in recovering lost voice and control. It was some time before he would trust himself to speak, and even then the voice that he used was not ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... diversity of opinion obtains among the very band of self-constituted elect! How few possess the requisite mastery of the rules, and what an immense number of the human race would thus be excluded from the elevating sources of enjoyment to be found in poetry and the fine arts! Such scholastic critics confound two things to be distinguished in every work in all branches of art; viz., the pure ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... would give a direction and purpose to the lad's thoughts and anticipations. He realized that he was set apart for a great mission in life. The brook heard the call of the sea. Besides which, he would acquire self-restraint, self-mastery. ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... view from which the distinction between law and morals becomes of secondary or no importance, as all mathematical distinctions vanish in presence of the infinite. But I do say that that distinction is of the first importance for the object which we are here to consider—a right study and mastery of the law as a business with well understood limits, a body of dogma enclosed within definite lines. I have just shown the practical reason for saying so. If you want to know the law and nothing else, ...
— The Path of the Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... sense the enemy of every other one. We do not mean that they often try to kill each other because of hate, as men do, but that they are after food to satisfy their hunger. Some of the higher animals as well as men fight for mastery, in addition to struggling for food. We hope that among men the unnecessary fighting will sometime cease, and that kindness ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... flaring up of strength he took quiet mastery of the situation. He kissed her tenderly, but sadly, not such a kiss as either could ever have imagined ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... existed in the days of Solyman the Magnificent, the era from whence it dates its decline. The possession of Aden was eagerly contended for by the two great powers, the Turks and the Portuguese, struggling for mastery in the East, and when they were no longer able to maintain their rivalry, it reverted into the hands of its ancient masters, the Arabs. The security afforded by its natural defences, aided by the fortifications, the work of former times, rendered it a suitable retreat for the piratical hordes ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... in expression and fixed. He let her hands drop, and once more returned to his old position, leaning upon the balustrade with his back to her, looking out over the sea. If it had been possible to have obtained the mastery he had dreamed of over her, mere animal mastery, the thought would have repelled him now. He might have dominated her senses, but her soul would only have been the more confirmed in its loathing of his life. He knew the ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... to mind the fact that she was among the earliest readers of Esmond, the first two volumes of which were sent to her in manuscript by George Smith, She read it, she tells him, with "as much ire and sorrow as gratitude and admiration," marvelling at its mastery of reconstruction,—hating its satire,—its injustice to women. How could Lady Castlewood peep through a keyhole, listen at a door, and be jealous of a boy and a milkmaid! There was too much political and religious intrigue—she thought. Nevertheless she said (this was in February 1852, speaking ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... parental authority. "You do as you're bid," said Sir George, "or you'll get the worst of it." Sir George suffered much from gout, and had obtained from the ill-temper which his pangs produced a mastery over his daughters which some fathers might ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... Heredity, spiritual anatomy and physiology is highest of all. The key to this study is your own soul. Study yourself; gain possession and mastery of your own spirit and you hold the key not only to the heights of liberty, but the key that unlocks imprisoned souls."—Mary Weeks Burnett ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... how to believe that, my dear, good husband," Violet said, gazing up into his face with fond, admiring eyes; "for I have never seen any evidence of it. If you have such a temper, you have certainly gained complete mastery of it. And that may well give ...
— Elsie's Kith and Kin • Martha Finley
... tobacco, mixed with a kind of weed prepared by himself. The white smoke from this soon mingles with the thicker volumes from the fire, which curl up through the branches into the sky, now shrouding him in their wreaths, and then, as the bright flame obtains the mastery, leaving his dark face and coal-black eyes shining in the warm light. No one enjoys a pipe more than an Indian; and Stemaw's tranquil visage, wreathed in tobacco smoke, as he reclines at full length under the spreading branches of the pine, and allows the white vapour to pass slowly out of his ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... Percy had instigated Violet's opposition, and she was in no charity with him. Jane saw there was annoyance, and turned the subject before her sister could open on it. With all her quiet ways, Jane had the mastery over the impetuous Georgina, whom she apparently flattered and cherished as a younger sister, but in reality made subservient to her own purposes. Indeed, Jane was like the Geraldine of Christabel; without ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his mind towards politics. It was, indeed, the rival of literature in his affections during all the early part of his life, and, at length,—whether luckily for himself or not it is difficult to say,— gained the mastery. ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... themselves; they are consistent; even when they are most absurd they are most real; we learn to love them. It is a really serious test paper; no one could answer any of it who had not read and re-read the Pickwick Papers, and acquired, so to speak, a mastery of the subject. No one could do well in the examination who had not gone much further than this and got to know the book almost by heart. It was a most wonderful burlesque of the ordinary College and Senate House ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... has moral demands—a new one, and establish them all more firmly. Man would then recognize in the animal world which surrounds him branches of his own natural pedigree, and exercise his right of mastery only in the sense which Alex. Braun expresses, when he says: "Man consents to the idea of being appointed master of animals; but then he must also acknowledge that he is not placed over his subjects as a stranger, but proceeded from the people ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... will follow later," assented Jose, who now craved solitude for the struggle for self-mastery ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... Russian were among them. The cook was a West India negro, and the captain—or their nearest approach to a captain—a Portland Yankee. Both were large men, and held their positions by reason of special knowledge and a certain magnetic mastery of soul which dominated the others against their rules; for in this social democracy captains and bosses were forbidden. The cook was an expert in the galley and a thorough seaman; the other as able a seaman, and a navigator past the criticism ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... Thorn been properly regulated, the insult so wounding to savage pride would never have been given. Had he enforced the rule to admit but a few at a time, the savages would not have been able to get the mastery. He was too irritable, however, to practice the necessary self-command, and, having been nurtured in a proud contempt of danger, thought it beneath him to manifest any fear of a crew of ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... of the Lake, the bald shore and jutting headlands, the fewness of the landing places, and the sweep of the waves make cruising in these waters a matter of supreme skill and farsightedness. Let the Viking learn with broad-beamed boat the mastery of the western shore before he turns his boat's ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... embracing benediction. The crowd, heavy-eyed, sodden, wondering, bent to him as the torch-fires bent to the breath of summer. With the subtle sense of the man who wrings his livelihood from human emotions, he felt the moment of his mastery approaching. Was it fully come yet? Were his fish securely in the net? Betwixt hovering hands he studied ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... old church, the oldest in Mexico, is certainly very interesting in its belongings, carrying us in imagination far into the dim past. "The earliest and longest have still the mastery over us," says George Eliot. This was the first church erected by the Spaniards in Mexico, and was in constant use by Cortez, who, notwithstanding his heartless cruelty, his unscrupulous and murderous deeds, his ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... slight and not always immediately perceived, is all-important. It distinguishes the artist from the artisan; a free spirit from a slave; a thinking, feeling man from a soulless machine. It makes the difference between life rich and significant, and mere existence; between the mastery of fate and the passive acceptance of things ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... sense. To have the mastery of an instrument elevates the aesthetic sense, in any case; and is even a help in life. And I, for my part, gentlemen ... I propose to read with the young person the CAPITAL of Marx, and the history of human culture. And to take up ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... his goal; the immense patience with which—again and again, and yet again—he "tries back," throwing the topic into fresh attitudes, and searching it to the marrow with a gaze so piercing as to be terrible;—all this gives an impression of power, of resource, of energy, of mastery, that exhilarates the reader. So many inspired prophets of Hawthorne have arisen of late, that the present writer, whose relation to the great Romancer is a filial one merely, may be excused for feeling some embarrassment ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... distinction was recognized between conqueror and conquered. There was, however, every element of confusion and perplexity in the theory and administration of the law itself, in the variety of systems which were contending for the mastery, and in the inefficiency of the courts in which they were applied. English law had grown up out of Teutonic custom, into which Roman tradition had been slowly filtering through the Dark Ages Feudal law still bore traces ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... a strong work ethic, mastery of high technology, and a comparatively small defense allocation (roughly 1% of GDP) have helped Japan advance with extraordinary rapidity to the rank of second most powerful economy in the world. One notable characteristic of the economy is ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... discriminate between the good and the bad, the true and the false art."[3] This may perhaps be the counsel of perfection of an enthusiast, but progress lies more along the lines of appreciation of music than in the personal performance of it. There are thousands who are able to appreciate the technical mastery of an instrument to every one who can accomplish it. Music as taught at present in the non-elementary schools is largely a snare and a delusion. A few are turned out with a musicianly equipment, largely in spite of the system rather than by ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... art, already winning an encore with a Bach fugue,—an unheard-of miracle. As Wieck wrote in the diary, which he and his daughter kept together, "This marked a new era in piano music." At the age of twelve, she played with absolute mastery the most difficult ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... similar—passes. As soon as it begins to walk on the head of the larva, the latter letting go its hold of the wall allows itself to fall to the bottom of the trap, dragging its victim with it. In this narrow prison it is easily able to obtain the mastery over its prey, and to suck out ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... insulated wire, through which the electric current was passed, he could at pleasure charge and discharge the iron core with magnetic power. Thus Henry produced the electromagnet which was the beginning of the mastery by man of the subtle fluid. He also discovered that the intensity and power of the electric current were materially augmented by increasing the number of the series of battery plates without increasing the quantity of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... pulled up by Foster, who was asking him to tell them exactly what it was that they were to discuss. Instinctively he looked at Martin as he spoke. As always, with the first word there came over him a sense of mastery and happiness, a desire to move people like pawns, a readiness to twist any principle, moral and ethical, if he might bend it to his purpose. Instinctively he pitched his voice, formed his mouth, spread his ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... picture was lighted up by two three-branched lamps on high stands; and Philostratus, a connoisseur who had described many paintings with great taste and vividness, gazed in absorbed silence at the lovely features, which were represented with rare mastery and the inspired devotion of loving admiration. At last he turned ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... with the cat's-paws playing upon the water within biscuit-toss of us, the helm was ported and the schooner headed straight for the fringe of delicate blue that marked the dividing line where the calm and the wind were contending together for the mastery. This was reached in about a quarter of an hour, when, after a feeble preliminary rustling, our canvas filled, the sweeps were laid in, and we began to move through the water at a speed of some two and a half knots per ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... time every one looking on understood Nilo's intent—that he meant to bide the lion's leap, and catch and entangle him in the net. What nerve and nicety of calculation—what certainty of eye—what knowledge of the savage nature dealt with—what mastery of self, limb and soul were ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... direct from God, an inalienable fief. It is the most potent of weapons in the hands of a paladin. If the people comprehend Force in the physical sense, how much more do they reverence the intellectual! Ask Hildebrand, or Luther, or Loyola. They fall prostrate before it, as before an idol. The mastery of mind over mind is the only conquest worth having. The other injures both, and dissolves at a breath; rude as it is, the great cable falls down and snaps at last. But this dimly resembles the dominion ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... was not content with setting her loose in the world of created things with the gift of beauty and holiness in her hand. It had veiled her also with the mysterious magic that was simple enough and directly compelling enough to rouse the beast of jealousy, the beast of mastery, in the hearts of men. She did not seem to him an Aphrodite, bearing in her hand the cup of love. There was something childlike about her, something as virginal as in Nan. He could believe she would be endlessly pleased with simple things, that she could be made to laugh delightedly over the trivialities ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... can be traced just as clearly in the history of painting. The great Italian painting had ended with the gorgeous magnificence of the Venetian school, with Giorgione and Titian and Tintoretto, and its mastery passed for a few years to Flanders, to Rubens and Vandyck; but in the painting of Spain and of the Low Countries in the later seventeenth century we find ourselves in another world. The little beggar ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... for mastery." Mr Burd points out that this passage is imitated directly from Cicero's "De Officiis": "Nam cum sint duo genera decertandi, unum per disceptationem, alterum per vim; cumque illud proprium sit hominis, ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... have almost invariably possessed qualities that would have made them successful mimics on the stage. For his mastery of oratorical artifices Alexander Wedderburn was greatly indebted to Sheridan, the lecturer on elocution, and to Macklin, the actor, from both of whom he took lessons; and when he had dismissed his teachers and become a leader of the English ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... prophetic. There was nothing dogmatic in them; nothing could be more simple and modest than his manner and utterance, but there was a clearness and quiet force in them which impressed me greatly. He was the first great general I had ever seen, and I was strongly reminded of his mingled diffidence and mastery when, some years afterward, I talked with Moltke ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... are in the international game—not in its Old World intrigues and burdens and sorrows and melancholy, but in the inevitable way to leadership and to cheerful mastery in the future; and everybody knows that we are in it but us. It is a sheer blind habit that causes us to continue to try to think of ourselves as aloof. They think in terms of races here, and we are of their ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... Colonel Mayson was genuine. Our real English military aeronaut was here, and he has disclosed to you, Maurice Korust, all that he ever knew. Henceforth, I presume your great country will dispute with us for the mastery ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... have remarked, which to us throw light on the nature of his original faculty for Poetry, and go far to convince us of the Mastery he has attained in that art: these we may here state briefly, for the judgment of such as already know his writings, or the help of such as are beginning to know them. The first is his singularly emblematic ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... nothing. Perhaps I shall discover some new species of antelope or some unknown plant. I may be fortunate enough to find a new waterway. That is all the reward I want. I love the sense of power and the mastery. What do you think I care for the tinsel rewards of kings ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... grand romances of 'Ivanhoe,' 'Old Mortality,' and 'Kenilworth,' with their terrible intricacies of crime and bloodshed, constructed with so fine a mastery of the art of exciting suspense and horror, let the reader pick out those two exceptional novels in the series which profess to paint contemporary manners and the scenes of common life; and remembering in ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... that belonged on the back of the cookstove. There was some cold oatmeal in the bottom of the kettle, and Johnnie also handed the longshoreman a spoon—with a glance toward the Prince, who seemed awed by Johnnie's complete mastery of the enemy. "Here!" the boy directed, giving the pot a light kick with a new shoe (which was brown). "Go ahead and eat. Eat ev'ry bite of it. It's ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... little. Only a little while before he had had one of those vivid dreams of Virginia which left their impression, but not their substance, to haunt him. On those rare days following the dreams her spirit had its mastery over his. He pictured her then with a glow on her face which was neither sadness nor mirth,—a glow that ministered to him alone. And yet, he did not dare to think that he might have won her, even if politics and war ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... unrequited affection and dissatisfaction with themselves. But they have not got the elements of consolation and encouragement that ought normally to renew their hopes or restore their self-respect. They have not got vision or conviction, or the mastery of their work, or the loyalty of their household, or any form of human dignity. Even the latest Utopians, the last lingering representatives of that fated and unfortunate race, do not really promise the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... she smiled a good-morning to Adams across the aisle. He came at once to ask how she had slept, and if she was beginning to feel the journey wearisome. Close upon the heels of her thrilling sense of gladness and mastery came the feminine instinct of concealment, and presently Adams began to notice in her manner a suggestion of reserve. There was certainly a difference, he said to himself, a little lessening of the frank comradeship she had shown toward him the day before. ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... locked in each other's arms and swaying from side to side, each doing his utmost to gain the mastery. ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... Him. I feel certain that, if the great light of culture be extinct in Europe, our horizon in the East will mourn in darkness. It does not hurt my pride to acknowledge that, in the present age, Western humanity has received its mission to be the teacher of the world; that her science, through the mastery of laws of nature, is to liberate human souls from the dark dungeon of matter. For this very reason I have realised all the more strongly, on the other hand, that the dominant collective idea in the Western countries is not creative. It is ready to enslave or kill individuals, ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... form. [See "The Pianoforte Sonata," by J. S. Shedlock: London, 1895. Mr Shedlock, by selecting for analysis some of the most characteristic sonatas, shows Haydn in his three stages of apprenticeship, mastery and maturity.] ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... civilization, the mastery of the basic, cosmic, power of the atom—being used to kindle a fire of natural fuel, to cook unseasoned meat killed with stone-tipped spears. Dard looked sadly at the twinkling little gadget, then slipped it back into its pouch. Soon it would ...
— Genesis • H. Beam Piper
... scarcely reached the deck when the line of foam was within half-cable's length. Then there came a sound unlike any I had ever heard before in the elements, beginning with a whistling sort of scream and deepening into a roar as of many angry voices, bestial and human, striving for the mastery; and then the Petrel staggered and reeled over almost on her beam-ends, in the midst of a white boiling caldron of mad water. She recovered herself, however, quickly, quivering and trembling as a live creature ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... shall no longer deceive me by approaching me lustfully. Evil produces good through the destiny or the acts of a former life. Roused (from the sleep of ignorance), I have cast off all desire for worldly objects. I have acquired a complete mastery over my senses. One freed from desire and hope sleeps in felicity. Freedom from every hope and desire is felicity. Having driven off desire and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... the female sex in high life, by which an estimate of character may be formed: for instance—if a lady take the reins of her husband, her brother, or a lover, it is strongly indicative of assuming the mastery; but should she have no courage or muscular strength, and pays no attention to the art of governing and guiding her cattle, it is plain that she will become no driver, no whip, and may daily run the risk of breaking the necks of herself and friends. If however she ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... sideways from the saddle, I caught her horse's bridle as by right of ownership. However, in spite of his enmity, I was sorry for Colonel Carrington. It must have been a trying moment, for he loved his daughter, but wounded pride gained the mastery, and his face grew livid. I made some protestation that we both regretted his displeasure, and that Grace should want nothing which I could give her, but again he utterly ignored me, and, wrenching on the curb, backed the horse a few ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... own fault!" David's temper was getting the mastery. "Going round with another boy and not paying me ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... me, Baron of Stramen!" she began, looking full at the noble, in whom surprise was gaining a temporary mastery over grief; "listen, for it is God's mercy that permits me to speak and you to hear! Twenty years ago I was young and beautiful. I was loved by your brother and by him ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... simply telling the facts. If Stonewall's proceedings had become Matter of common knowledge the world would have been—I must speak plainly—revolutionized. He held in his hands the means of realizing the wildest dreams of power, wealth, and human mastery over the forces of nature, that any enthusiast ever treasured in his prophetic soul. It was a part of his originality that he never entertained the thought of employing his advantage in any such way. His character was entirely free from the ordinary forms of avidity. He ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... tutors, and he learned at this time the facility in the use of the English and French languages which in after years was to be of great service to him. The education at school was of course chiefly in the classical languages; he acquired a sufficient mastery of Latin. There is no evidence that in later life he continued the study of classical literature. In his seventeenth year he passed the Abiturienten examination, which admitted him as a student to ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... of foreign loans, its sales of stocks by influential investors, and its importations on the eve of the war of horses and foodstuffs, a strong circumstantial case may be developed of a deliberate purpose to retrieve the Moroccan fiasco by an audacious coup which would determine the mastery of Europe. The levy in 1913 of an extraordinary tax upon capital, which virtually confiscated the earnings of the German people for military purposes, adds much support to this contention. According to Giolitti, the former Italian Premier, Austria sounded Italy in August, ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... finding, had a way of setting me thinking about serious things, and yet the thoughts were mainly pleasant ones. She was different from any one I ever knew. I found her presence so restful. I had the impression that some time in her life she had encountered storms, but the mastery had been gained; and now she had drifted into a peaceful harbor. Looking back now over longer stretches of years and experiences than I then had, I can recall a few other persons who impressed me in a similar fashion. But they ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... accepisset,'' Suet. Aug. 29) might with greater propriety have been uttered by Agrippa. He was again called away to take command of the fleet when the war with Antony broke out. The victory at Actium (31), which gave the mastery of Rome and the empire of the world to Octavian, was mainly due to Agrippa. As a token of signal regard Octavian bestowed upon him the hand of his niece Marcella (28). We must suppose that his wife Pomponia was either dead or divorced. In 27 Agrippa was consul for the third ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... wicked fellows were not undeserving of the punishment they received, yet Elisha was made to undergo a very serious sickness, by way of correction for having yielded to passion. (4) In this he resembled his master Elijah; he allowed wrath and zeal to gain the mastery over him. God desired that the two great prophets might be purged of this fault. Accordingly, when Elisha rebuked King Jehoram of Israel, the spirit of prophecy forsook him, and he had to resort to artificial means to re-awaken ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... his errors, and by their consequences. His victory on that day was chiefly due to his skilful dispositions, and convinced Europe that the prince who, a few years before, had stood aghast in the rout of Molwitz, had attained in the military art a mastery equalled by none of his contemporaries, or equalled by Saxe alone. The victory of Hohenfriedberg was speedily followed by ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... unlimited, transcending far all that collegians have called science, and all that they have deemed the limits of human capacities, for in psychometry the divinity in man becomes apparent, and the intellectual mastery of all things lifts human life to a higher plane than ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... of denial, and started forward to intercept the hand. But even as she moved, dismay visible on her face, the perverse devil which had been mounting in Stefan's brain attained the mastery. She had asked him to be nice to this jackass—very ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... Prior's right to be in the list, unless indeed the mastery over well-turned conceits is to be included within the border of humour. But Thackeray had a strong liking for Prior, and in his own humorous way rebukes his audience for not being familiar with The Town and Country Mouse. He says that Prior's epigrams have the genuine ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... is not without the ring of personal feeling. The speaker is a generous and estimable country gentleman, living in Arcadian retirement with his wife and children. Descended of a good family and born a gentleman, he narrates how his education was acquired at a public school, and extended to a mastery of the Latin, and a tolerable knowledge of the Greek, language. Becoming his own master at sixteen he soon left school, for, he tells his listeners, "being a forward Youth, I was extremely impatient to be in the World: For which I thought ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... action that was impure or unclean. Some critics maintain that the heroes and heroines of his books are impossibly pure and innocent young people. R. H. D. never called upon his characters for any trait of virtue, or renunciation, or self-mastery of which his own life could not ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... for its own sake, and often without much regard to any definite social utility served by it. This charge seems to find an instance in the handling of the subject of English so that 16.5 per cent of all the failures are contributed by it, without giving even the graduate a mastery of direct, forceful speech, as is so generally testified. Strangely enough, except in the light of such teaching ends, the pupils who stay through the upper years and to graduate have more failures in certain subjects than the non-graduates who more generally escape the advanced classes ...
— The High School Failures - A Study of the School Records of Pupils Failing in Academic or - Commercial High School Subjects • Francis P. Obrien
... Vibhishan eyed The giants' chief, and thus replied: "This Rama, this is Ravan's son: High fame his youthful might has won. He, best of warriors, bows his ear The wisdom of the wise to hear. Supreme is he mid those who know The mastery of sword and bow. Unrivalled in the bold attack On elephant's or courser's back, He knows, beside, each subtler art, To win the foe, to bribe, or part. On him the giant hosts rely, And fear no ill when he is nigh. This peerless chieftain bears the name Of Atikaya huge of frame, Whom ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... inevitably say of them in phase like that applied to the Puritans of old: "They entered the prison of socialism and had the key turned upon their spirit there for hundreds of years." Into that prison of socialism, with broken enterprise and broken energy, as serfs under the mastery of the State, while human personality is preferred to unreasoning mechanism, mankind must hesitate to step. When they shall once have entered within it, when the key shall have been turned upon their spirit and have confined them in narrower straits than even Puritanism could have ...
— The Altruist in Politics • Benjamin Cardozo
... performances were astounding, and even uncanny. I do not care how he was trained, nor by what process he received ideas and reacted to them! He was a phenomenon, and I doubt whether this world ever sees his like again. His mastery of figures alone, no matter how it was wrought, was enough to make any animal or ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... now, and you can soar away to Capri if there is any smoke or fuss. We have the pull of all the great things; the aeronauts are privileged and rich, the closest trades union in the world, and so are the engineers of the wind-vanes. We have the air, and the mastery of the air is the mastery of the earth. No one of any ability is organising against us. They have no leaders—only the sectional leaders of the secret society we organised before your very opportune ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... good as his word, and his gun was emptied and reloaded and emptied again, it was a hopeless contest—hopeless from the beginning. Tresler was bleeding seriously from a wound in his neck, and his aim was becoming more and more uncertain. But his will was fighting hard for mastery over his bodily weakness. Just as they headed again toward the bluff, Arizona gave a great yank at his reins and his pony was thrown upon its haunches. The Lady Jezebel, too, as though working in concert with her mate, suddenly ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... all the infantile monarchs of the house of Stewart, had been established at Stirling, always a favourite residence of the Scotch Kings, where he held his baby Court in peace while his mother pined in England, and the Scotch lords struggled for the mastery, and succeeded each other as Regents at home. The troubles of the world outside seem to have been kept far from the surroundings of the boy, to whom both the kingdoms looked as their heir, the child in whom the glories ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... still charged with the spirit poured into it by Christ; they were made great by the influence of His teaching and companionship; the power of the Holy Ghost, freshly descended, burned on their hearts; and they went forth on their mission with a force of conviction and a mastery of their task ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... time to hate. He had no time to indulge in foolish debates and struggle for rhetorical mastery—he had ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... uncertainty of fortune's greedily coveted favours, they are consequently, for the most part, very prone to credulity. (2) The human mind is readily swayed this way or that in times of doubt, especially when hope and fear are struggling for the mastery, though usually it is boastful, ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza
... examples and neglected facts, the need of a new approach to individual and social problems. Its central challenge is that civilization, in any true sense of the word, is based upon the control and guidance of the great natural instinct of Sex. Mastery of this force is possible only through ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... of flame flashed up ever and anon into the midst of the rolling cloud and rent it for a single instant; by degrees those tongues waged fierce war with the smoke. They shot through it more and more frequently, licked and twined round it—in and out—until they gained the mastery at last, and rose with a magnificent roar into the heavens. Then it was that Larry O'Hale gave vent to his excitement and admiration in an irrepressible shout, and his comrades burst into a mingled cheer and fit of laughter, as ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... military men are generally wrong. On the whole it is pleasanter as well as more intelligent to throw out this foolish notion of miraculous knowledge suddenly illuminating Mr. Lincoln with a thorough mastery of the art of war. It is better not to believe that he became at once endowed with acquirements which he had never had an opportunity to attain, and rather to be content with holding him as a simple human ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... represents Bertram as a very mixed character, in whom the evil gains for some time a most unhopeful mastery; and he takes care to provide, withal, the canon whereby he would have him judged: "The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipp'd them not; and our crimes ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... and she appears in a less amiable light than her lover. Benedick surrenders his whole heart to her and to his new passion. The revulsion of feeling even causes it to overflow in an excess of fondness; but with Beatrice temper has still the mastery. The affection of Benedick induces him to challenge his intimate friend for her sake, but the affection of Beatrice does not prevent her from risking ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... was the nursery of the Clyde. The flags which Poplar knew well would puzzle London now—Devitt and Moore's, Money Wigram's, Duthie's, Willis's, Carmichael's, Duncan Dunbar's, Scrutton's, and Elder's. But when lately our merchant seamen surprised us with a mastery of their craft and a fortitude which most of us had forgotten were ever ours, what those flags represented, a regard for a tradition as ancient and as rigorous as that of any royal port, ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... as the basis on which the provinces were ready to coalesce, was really to submit the whole issue to the crucial test. {64} Macdonald's motion reflects, in its careful and comprehensive phrasing, the skill in parliamentary tactics of which he had, during many years, displayed so complete a mastery. To commit the conference at the outset to endorsement of the general principle was to render subsequent objection on some detail, however important, extremely difficult for earnest and broad-minded patriots. The two small provinces might withdraw from the scheme, as they subsequently did, ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... crown that standeth at the end of the race. You know that all that run in a race do not obtain the victory; they all run, but one wins. And so it is here; it is not every one that runneth, nor every one that seeketh, nor every one that striveth for the mastery, that hath it (Luke 13). Though a man do strive for the mastery, saith Paul, 'yet he is not crowned, except he strive lawfully'; that is, unless he so run, and so strive, as to have God's approbation (2 Tim 2:5). What, do you think that every heavy-heeled ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... into parts for re-telling corresponds with the natural divisions of the plot into its main episodes, this telling in steps impresses the structure of the tale and is in harmony with the real literary mastery of the story.—The re-telling of each part drew attention to the visualization of that part. Each hesitation on behalf of a student telling a part, led the class to fill in the details for themselves, and impressed the remembrance of the exact words of the author. This resulted in the mastery ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... that went on for a brief time between the overmountain men and various detachments of Ferguson's forces, sometimes one side, sometimes the other, won the heat. But the field remained open. Neither side could claim the mastery. In a minor engagement fought at Musgrove's Mill on the Enoree, Shelby's command came off victor and was about to pursue the enemy towards Ninety-Six when a messenger from McDowell galloped madly into ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... not alone the musically intelligent who felt this, for his playing had a universal appeal. Thorough musicians marvelled at and envied him his mastery of the details of his art, but it seemed to me that those who knew least of its technique were equally ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... decisive events arrived. The Jugo-Slavs had learned that union meant victory, division foreign mastery. Petty politics and religious fanaticism were forgotten, and Jugo-Slav nationality was formed in the fierce fires of Austro-Magyar terrorism and forgery and in the whirlwind reaped ...
— The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement • Alexander Petrunkevitch, Samuel Northrup Harper,
... makes it dearer to our eyes and hearts, is a quality that came to him because he was an amateur, and that abided with him because he never ceased to be an amateur. He was a master through his lack of mastery. In the art of writing, too, he was a master through his lack of mastery. There is an almost exact parallel between the two sides of his genius. Nothing could be more absurd than the general view of him as a masterly professional on the one side and a trifling amateur on the other. He was, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... escape. Among all those who remained, not an individual was found who claimed to be in any authority. In a word, after five minutes of examination, both Beekman and Willoughby were satisfied that there no longer existed a force to dispute with them the mastery ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... Usna, and that Fergus Mac Roy would not permit them to be punished. Therefore, great and mighty as were the men, yet on this occasion they might be likened only to cattle who stand aside astonished when two fierce bulls, rending the earth as they come, advance against each other for the mastery of the herd. In the high King's face the angry blood showed as two crimson spots one on either cheek, and his eyes, harder than steel, sparkled under brows more rigid than brass. On the other hand, the face of the Champion darkened as the sea darkens when a black squall descends ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... term in Congress ending twelve years before he became President, but he had to grapple with the gravest problems ever presented to the statesmanship of the nation for solution, and he met each and all of them in turn with the most consistent mastery, and settled them so successfully that all have stood unquestioned until the present time, and are certain to endure while the ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... suppose it's the same old story: an explosive and a panic. Somebody probably tried to stir a fire with a stick of frozen dynamite, or some such foolery as that." The scorn in the words came from the effort at self-mastery. Then the professor rose and looked about him vaguely for his hat. When he had found it, "Come along," he bade Brenton shortly. "We've got to get it over, even if it kills her. I believe in anaesthetics and hypnosis in such ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... careful study, he was among the earliest of those who realised the utility of blank verse for dramatic purposes, he wrote the first English novel in our language, and finally he is not only deservedly recognised as the father of English comedy, but by his mastery of dramatic technique he laid such a burden of obligation upon future playwrights that he placed English drama upon a completely new basis. Of the three main branches of our literature, therefore, two—the novel and the drama—were practically of ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... watched with a mortifying dumbness the second meeting between the pleasure-dog and the little Doctor that was. But now pride sprang to her aid, stinging her into speech. For it was an unendurable thing that she should thus tamely surrender to him the mastery of her situation, and suffer her own fault to be glossed ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... dealing with each excitement of anger, train him in self-control. Self-mastery is a matter of learning to direct and apply our own powers at will. It is developed by habitual practice. It is the largest general element in character. The temper that smashes a toy is the temper that kills a human being ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... musing upon his restless couch. Doesn't he see that she is prettier and prettier every day and doesn't he know that there's many a boy that would be glad to call her "wife;" and isn't he sure there'll be bloody times if any of them attempt to take her from him! And as the sleep gets a faint mastery over him, and he dreams of a tussle with Mike Dugan—all on Nannie's account—the brawny arms strike outward, and the doubled fists come with such force against the innocent plastering, as to bring Mrs. Bates's nightcap to the bedroom door to see if thieves are ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... mournful idea which had so long distressed it. It was, to a certain extent, occupied with the marks on the teapot; it is true that the mournful idea strove hard with the marks on the teapot for the mastery in my mind, and at last the painful idea drove the marks of the teapot out; they, however, would occasionally return and flit across my mind for a moment or two, and their coming was like a momentary relief from intense ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... practice of nearly half a century had enabled the Athenians to attain consummate mastery in this new method of naval warfare; and they were now to give signal proof of their immense superiority over the other maritime ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... First get a mastery of the question, and then let your audience realize that you know what you are talking about. The great merit of a certain speaker of long ago, seems to have been that "he spake with authority." Remember truth is not decided by counting heads, and if ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis
... limestone that he turned in his hands, the slow moulding of the crude shapes to their place in the building, the rhythm and swing of the mallet in his arm, the zest with which he felt the impact of the chisel on the stone, the ring of forging steel, the consciousness of mastery over the work that lay to his hands—these were the things that seemed to him to give life a purpose and man a destiny. He would whistle a tune as he mixed the mortar with the broad shovel, for it gave him a feeling of the knitting of the building with the ages. He pitied the farmer who looked ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... still very imperfect knowledge and limited mastery of the brute forces of nature, men imagine that they have discovered the secrets of Divine Wisdom, and do not hesitate, in their own thoughts, to put human prudence in the place of the Divine. Destruction was denounced ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... precede him, and then turned out the lights. Other lights he also extinguished as they left the hall and ascended the stairs. The younger's pride was struggling for mastery; but he conquered it and ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... naturally led to think that a writer would not use such very decided language unless he had obtained a thorough mastery of his subject; and when he finds the notes thronged with references to the most recondite sources of information, he at once credits the author with an 'exhaustive' knowledge of the literature bearing upon it. It becomes important therefore to enquire whether the writer shows ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... comic are preposterous. The women, though they have some differentiating touches, are certainly not more dramatically and vitally imagined. In his later plays Marlowe makes gains in this respect, but he never arrives at full easy mastery and trenchantly convincing lifelikeness either in characterization, in presentation of action, or in fine poetic finish. It has often been remarked that at the age when Marlowe died Shakspere had produced ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... earthly, and blinding as ever, the mind can only be admitted to share in the communion which Jesus Christ unceasingly held with His Father and with the world invisible, by attaining some portion of that self-mastery which Adam lost by his fall. The physical nature must be subdued by the vigorous repetition of those many painful processes by which the animal portion of our being is rendered the slave of the spiritual, and the will and the affections are rent away from all creatures, ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... inconveniency to the rest. If the species of lions, bears, and tigers multiplied to a certain excessive degree, they would not only destroy the species of stags, bucks, sheep, goats, and bulls, but even get the mastery over mankind, and unpeople the earth. Now who maintains so just a measure as never either to extinguish those different species, or never to suffer them ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... men,—very many men,—who have felt this love, and have resisted it, feeling it to be unfit that Love should be Lord of all. Frank Greystock had told himself, a score of times, that it would be unbecoming in him to allow a passion to obtain such mastery of him as to interfere with his ambition. Could it be right that he who, as a young man, had already done so much, who might possibly have before him so high and great a career, should miss that, because he could not ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... evening-dress he had adopted, turned away to smile upon another of the officers, Archie joined hands at once with a slight, youthful-looking visitor also in evening-dress, who as the youths chatted together showed his mastery of the English language sufficiently to address the subaltern as "old chap," following ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... out!" and charged on the Danes who had broken our line thus, and I heard Olaf's voice shouting, and then I was inside our line behind the heels of the men who fought, and struggling with the Danish chief for mastery. ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler |
