"Mastered" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his disgust he learned that the Labrador steamer, the Druro, would not sail until the following Thursday—a three days' wait. Apparently Labrador was a less-frequented locality than he had supposed. He mastered his impatience, however, and discovering a library presided over by a highly intelligent graduate of Edinburgh, he became so interested in various profound treatises on physics which he discovered that he almost ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... one thing, or be a man or woman of one idea; far from it. I simply mean that you must be select. Select your calling, and then bend all your energies in that direction. Let those branches of knowledge that bear most directly on your vocation be mastered first, then widen the circle as opportunity affords. Do not scatter your powers over so much territory that they are felt nowhere. It is only when the sun's rays are brought to a focus that they burn. The man who is one thing this year, another next; studies medicine a while, then ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... ventral; the bust still, the belly moving strongly. Presently he got from his bed, and ran for the door, with his head down not three feet from the floor and his body all on a stretch forward, like a striking snake: I say "ran," but this strange movement was not swift. Lloyd and I mastered him and got him back in bed. Soon there was another and more desperate attempt to escape, in which Lloyd had his ring broken. Then we bound him to the bed humanely with sheets, ropes, boards, and pillows. He lay ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... what ought not to give him pleasure, and therefore the beloved is to be pitied rather than envied. But if you listen to me, in the first place, I, in my intercourse with you, shall not merely regard present enjoyment, but also future advantage, being not mastered by love, but my own master; nor for small causes taking violent dislikes, but even when the cause is great, slowly laying up little wrath—unintentional offences I shall forgive, and intentional ones I shall try to prevent; and these are the marks ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... like these. Well, we turn to the obscure theater of Sweden, and the humble names of Olaf and Laurentius Petri—from the masters to the disciples—what do we find?... Scholars and theologians; men who have thoroughly mastered the whole system of gospel truth, and who win an easy victory over the sophists of the schools and the ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... lady tourist had kept up her Gattling fire of questions until she had thoroughly mastered the geography of the country. Then she ventured to ask the brakeman how he had ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... in the service of the Church, and are painted in fresco on plaster or in tempera on wood. In the Early Renaissance, however, a new impulse was seen. Artists were much better equipped for their work, nature-study progressed wonderfully, anatomy was studied, perspective was mastered, the sphere of art widened to take in history, portraits, and mythology; and in the latter part of this period, as we ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... may get into the hand of the operator.' Chauvignac then proceeded to apply his precepts by an example, and although the young man had no particular qualification for the art of legerdemain, he succeeded at once to admiration in a game at Ecarte, for he had already mastered the first process of cheating. Having thus, as he thought, sufficiently compromised his victim, Chauvignac left him to his temptations, and ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... announce, in return to this communication, that he would take that night to consider on what he had said with such kind intentions, and return him an answer the next morning. The feelings of the father mastered David on this occasion. He pressed Butler to spend the evening with him—He produced, most unusual at his meals, one, nay, two bottles of aged strong ale.—He spoke of his daughter—of her merits—her housewifery—her thrift—her affection. ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... followed his inclination, he would have fled from it, but he mastered himself still, and walked quietly out. The marquis was pacing, with downbent head and hasty strides, up the garden: ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... throwing the note across to Ralph. "Give the boy half a crown, will you? I suppose I may take Othello?" and before Ralph had mastered the contents of the note, and begun to fumble for a half-crown, Charles was saddling Othello himself, without waiting for the groom, and in a few minutes was clattering over the stones out of ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... how carefully its sides are rounded. But in the case of any given man no one knows his capacity until he has had a chance to show it. His nature may hold only a pint, or, as with the men who have mastered great occasions with still unexhausted powers, it may seem like the horn which the god Thor tried to drain but could not, for its base was connected with the ocean itself. Not every man can hope to be called to a responsibility that shall bring out his latent powers; most of us, if ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... medicine. Meanwhile, Dr. Cabell, who greatly loved him, went out upon the lawn, and in his grief threw himself down upon the earth under one of the trees, weeping bitterly. Soon, when he had sufficiently mastered himself, the doctor came back to his patient, whom he found calmly watching the congealing of the blood under his finger-nails, and speaking words of love and peace to his family, who were weeping around his chair. Among other things, he told them that he was thankful for that goodness ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... fatigue of his own violent agitations. And now some of the boldest of the spectators, taking courage, approached to his assistance, and throwing a well-twisted rope over his head, they at length, by the dint of superior numbers, completely mastered the furious animal, and bound him ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... who feels himself left out in the cold, who cannot stifle the greedy voice of the jealousy which he despises. No, the initiative had been wholly hers. And something irresistible must have moved her, driven her, to do what she had done. She must have been mastered by an impulse bred out of strong excitement. She had been mastered by ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... and "constructive" is Mr. Sidney Webb. No one has so thoroughly mastered the history of trade unionism, and no one has done more to promote "municipal Socialism" in England, both in theory and in practice, for he has been one of the leaders of the energetic and progressive London County council from the beginning of the present reform period. ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... the English language is confessedly very difficult to be mastered. Its rules and their exceptions are so numerous, that few become thoroughly acquainted with any general system of them. Nor, among the different systems which have been published, is there any which is worthy in all respects to be accounted a STANDARD. And, if we appeal to custom, the custom ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... made no farther comment, but presently requested his companion to rehearse to him once more the exact duties which were to devolve on him during the coming ceremony. Having mastered these he remained silent, fixing a dry speculative eye on the panorama of the brilliant streets, till the carriage drew up at the entrance ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... determined to make a halt of some weeks at Carlisle, to wait the effect of the large armies he had sent forward to overrun Scotland, and to receive intelligence of the measures they had already taken. Here, then, disease, as if enraged that he should have borne up so long, that his spirit had mastered even her, convened the whole powers of suffering, and compelled him not alone to acknowledge, but to writhe beneath her sway. His whole frame was shaken; intolerable pains took possession of him, and though the virulence of the complaint was at length so far abated as to permit him a short continuance ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... while Hebrew was almost as familiar a language; and as for his knowledge of Sanscrit, Ethiopian, Gothic, Chaldean, Syriac, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Danish, it was as perfect as could be. He had, in the truest sense, the gift of tongues. Sixteen languages, indeed, he had mastered besides his own. He had, in very truth, a perfect genius for them. And it was no slipshod attainment with him to learn any one of the sixteen; for by the time he had mastered a language he practically knew it inside and out. ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... strange fit of sickness; not one of them ever came back to the house to see her. A young Spanish woman who taught her dancing succeeded best with her, for she had a passion for that exercise, and had mastered some of the most difficult dances. Long before this period, she had manifested some most extraordinary singularities of taste or instinct. The extreme sensitiveness of her father on this point prevented any allusion ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of the kingdom. We shall now follow Louis of Tarentum in his arduous adventures in Apulia, the Calabrias, and the Abruzzi, where he recovered one by one the fortresses that the Hungarians had taken. By dint of unexampled valour and patience, he at last mastered nearly all the more considerable places, when suddenly everything changed, and fortune turned her back upon him for the second time. A German captain called Warner, who had deserted the Hungarian army to sell himself to the queen, had again played the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the sinner who would reconcile sin with salvation, is drawn with special subtlety; analysed, dissected rather, with the unerring scalpel of the experienced operator. Miranda is swayed through life by two opposing tendencies, for he is of mixed Castilian and French blood. He is mastered at once by two passions, earthly and religious, illicit love and Catholic devotion: he cannot let go the one and he will not let go the other; he would enjoy himself on the "Turf" without abandoning the shelter of the "Towers." ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... Chippy was as keen in practice as he was when chasing the thievish tramp for the lost basket. He had mastered the idea that it will not do to be keen by fits and starts: you must be on the spot all the time. So he took away from Locking that afternoon one fact which he had discovered about his grandmother's lodger—the boots from a London hotel—that the tips on his heels were screwed on, ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... great earth-stories—stories which have made the world what it is to-day—and we may well say with one of the most successful explorers of our times, "The future may give us thrilling stories of the conquest of the air, but the spirit of man has mastered ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... the doctrine which he controverts. It would make as many sorts of self-interest as there are appetites, and it is irreconcilably at variance with the system of association proposed by Mr Mill." "The admirable writer whose language has occasioned this illustration, who at an early age has mastered every species of composition, will doubtless hold fast to simplicity, which survives all the fashions of deviation from it, and which a man of genius so fertile has few temptations to ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... baffled, yet another shaft in the tenderest spot in his shoulder, that gave to the severed sinew and let him drop on it so heavily that it completed the mischief done. And now for the first time in his life the polar bear felt fear. His keen wit told him that in such war he was mastered. He ceased to rush madly onward. He settled slowly on his torn haunches, and swayed this way and that on his one sound foreleg, till that too gave way and he ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... anything to have been able to turn round and face his enemy, but to have made the slightest movement would have been to show that he had a kris beneath him, and his arm right through between the bamboos, so the young man lay perfectly still, mastered his emotion as best he could, and waited for what seemed an unreasonable space of time, till the Malay slowly moved off into the outer room, and sticking his torch in the floor, seated himself with his companions, and began ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... consequence of a return to classical literature was the worship of human greatness. Roman literature, which the Italians naturally mastered much earlier than Greek, dealt chiefly with politics and war, seeming to give an altogether disproportionate place to the individual, because it treated only of such individuals as were concerned in great ...
— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson
... so respectful and polite. Moreover, she felt sad to hear that he suffered in health. He would not ask her to do wrong and she felt certain that she might trust him. A trembling wish and a longing to comply with his request already mastered her mind. ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... And for the first time he saw he did not hold a book composed of pages but a type of box. The cover resisted his tugging. Then, as if some catch had been mastered, it opened so suddenly he almost lost his grip on the book. The core of those once separate pages had been hollowed out to contain a nest of raw cotton on which lay ... The ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... call up the watch who had been on deck all night, he roused out the carpenter, sailmaker, cook, steward, and other idlers, and, with their help, we manned the foreyard, and after nearly half an hour's struggle, mastered the sail, and got it well furled round the yard. The force of the wind had never been greater than at this moment. In going up the rigging, it seemed absolutely to pin us down to the shrouds; and on the yard, there was no such thing as turning a face to windward. Yet here was no ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... reached Narva, formed his Swedes into several attacking columns, led one himself, and favored by a sudden hurricane which drove showers of blinding snow into his adversaries' faces, threw himself into their camp and mastered the place in half an hour. The only resistance he met was offered by the two regiments of the guard. All the rest fled or surrendered. A few Russians were drowned in the Narva. "If the river had been frozen," said Charles discontentedly, "I do not know that we should have ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... twelve years of age before he had ever seen a school-house, having entered school in July, 1871, and mastered the alphabet the first day. Subsequently he attended a school of higher grade and in 1888 graduated from the New Orleans University from the regular classical course. Two years afterward he entered the Gammon Theological Seminary at Atlanta. Ga., graduating ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... Flint and Gibson's treatise on surveying and began to study it day and night under the eye of the kindly schoolmaster. In about six weeks he had mastered the ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... words, the other with his meaning. In Hudson's edition these two kinds of notes are kept separate. Surely it is the thought of Shakespeare that we want, and not the pedantry of minute scholarship regarding his material, useful as that is in its place. The reader who has mastered Hudson's introductions and has read Dowden's "Shakspere: His Mind and Art" or Brandes's "Critical Study" will have all that he will ordinarily need in the way of guidance. But remember that reading about Shakespeare is not reading Shakespeare; that ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... not care for her, although she could not help thinking that she had the power to make him care, and that she would be lacking in all that meant her true and best self should she give way to her unhappiness and let it master her. She therefore mastered it. In those days to Maria, who had a ready imagination, her unhappiness seemed sometimes to assume a material shape like the fabulous dragon. She seemed to be fighting something with tooth and claw, a monstrous verity; but she fought, and she kept the upper hand. ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... moment that she wasn't wanted for whatever she might have left to give up. Hasn't she moreover always been made to feel that she's ugly enough for anything?" It was even at this point already wonderful how my friend had mastered the case and what lights, alike for its past and its future, she was prepared to throw on it. "If she has seen herself as ugly enough for anything she has seen herself—and that was the only way—as ugly enough for Nina; and she has had her own manner of ...
— The Beldonald Holbein • Henry James
... why? Because the architect wished to compel all visitors to the building to admire a window of gaudy coloured glass half-way up the staircase. In this way they reason about nearly everything. They have not yet mastered the importance and due proportion of detail. Frequently what is to us a trifling detail is placed by them in the forefront as the most important point ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... of awkwardness with equanimity, even with amusement. But I was young then, I had not lived down my foolish shyness, and I would have run if, in my embarrassment, I had had the courage,—would have run anyhow, I do believe, if it had not been for Henley. He seized the situation and mastered it. He had the reputation of being the most brutal of men, but he showed a delicacy that few could have surpassed or equalled under the circumstances. He simply forced me to forget the presence of the objectionable Michael Finsbury, who at the other end of the table, I learned afterwards, was overwhelming ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... bottom. The assistant-surgeon and captain's clerk, who were at the time in the berth, each seized a pillow from the hammocks, which had just before been piped down, and cramming them into the port with tolerable effect, stopped the gush of water; but terror had too completely mastered the poor dominie to allow him to observe what was going forward. He shrieked out for mercy from every saint in the calendar, and entreated one or all of them to carry him on shore, even if it was but to the sandy coast of Africa. "Ah! misericordia, misericordia, misericordia!" was ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... to leave the room; mastered himself; stood for a moment silently looking at me—then looked away again, and said ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... while Doria had effected almost nothing against the Barbary Corsairs, he always mastered the Turks. The Sultan was eager to discover Kheyr-ed-d[i]n's secret of success, and counted the days till he should arrive in the Golden Horn. The Corsair, for his part, had heard enough of Doria's recent exploits ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... pleading his cause before his self-elected spiritual adviser,—the emotion which overcame him, when the young girl obeyed the sudden impulse of her feelings and pressed her lips to his cheek,—the thoughts that mastered him while the divinity-student poured out his soul for him in prayer, might well hurry on the inevitable moment. When the divinity-student had uttered his last petition, commending him to the Father through his Son's intercession, he turned to look upon him before leaving ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... school and chapel buildings. I again met the old padre, who showed us over the place. One could not help being favorably impressed with the general neatness and cleanliness of the place. In answer to our questions, the priest informed us that he had mastered the Indian language early in his work, and had adopted it in his ministry, the better to effect the object of his mission. There was something touching in the zeal of this devoted padre in his work amongst the tribe, and the recognition of the government had come as a fitting ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... entrance of the cave, her father going before her with the lamp. On she went, and out of it straight to her tent, where instantly she cast herself upon her bed and sank into deep slumber. It was as though the power of the drug-induced oblivion, which for a while was over-mastered by that other stronger power invoked by Jacob, had ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... with very little of the weakness of an invalid in the look of her face. But Sheila, when she had mastered her surprise and resolved not be angry, said calmly, "Whatever I have, whatever I might have, that belongs to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... which his work on the treatise led him at the end. Sidney Webb astonished and confounded our Individualist opponents by citing Mill against them; and it is probably due to Webb more than to any other disciple that it is now generally known that Mill died a Socialist. Webb read Mill and mastered Mill as he seemed to have read and mastered everybody else; but the only other prominent Socialist who can be claimed by Mill as a convert was, rather unexpectedly, William Morris, who said that when he read the passage in which Mill, after admitting that the worst evils of Communism are, compared ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... from the corpse he had mastered himself. Then Captain Edney saw, what none had noticed before, that blood was streaming down his arm—the same arm that had been grazed before; this time ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... performance of acts of the most audacious courage. A low, grave voice from the inner room said, 'Come in.' The maid, opening the door, announced, 'A person to see you, Miladi, on business,' and immediately retired. In the one instant while these events passed, timid little Mrs. Ferrari mastered her own throbbing heart; stepped over the threshold, conscious of her clammy hands, dry lips, and burning head; and stood in the presence of Lord Montbarry's widow, to all outward appearance as supremely self-possessed as her ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... one righteous course for Felix, namely, to discharge the prisoner. But he yielded to the same temptation as had mastered Pilate, and shrank from provoking influential classes by doing the right thing. He was the less excusable, because his long tenure of office had taught him something, at all events, of 'the Way.' He had too many crimes to venture on raising enemies in his government; he ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... amiable indifference which was a 'manner familiar' to her, and which invariably succeeded in making less graceful persons than she was, feel wretchedly awkward and unhappy about the management of their hands and feet. With a smiling upward and downward glance, she mastered Sir Morton Pippitt's 'striking and jovial personality,'—his stiffly-carried upright form, large lower chest, close-shaven red face, and pleasantly clean white hair,—"The very picture of a Bone-Melter"—she thought—"He looks as if he had been boiled all ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... of it now, after calm reflection," answered the Viscount, penitently. "But still you must make some allowance for me. I came suddenly upon the shepherd and my indignation and desire for vengeance so mastered me at the sight of him that I could not control myself. Nevertheless I gave him a chance for his life. We fought a desperate duel and he was wounded, but whether mortally or not it is impossible for me to say, as Vampa's men made ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... learned the value of the knowledge I had hitherto considered only as a burdensome task. It was the fashion to remain two years at his class, where we read Caesar, and Livy, and Sallust, in prose; Virgil, Horace, and Terence, in verse. I had by this time mastered, in some degree, the difficulties of the language, and began to be sensible of its beauties. This was really gathering grapes from thistles; nor shall I soon forget the swelling of my little pride when the Rector pronounced, that though many of my ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... to teach English, reading, writing, drawing, and other subjects. At the time the class was formed, they could only muster a few English words, conducting conversation for the most part by signs and indifferent German. But my pupils proved apt and industrious, and by the time I left they had mastered our tongue very effectively, as the many letters they sent me, before leaving Ruhleben, striving to thank me for what ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... good hiding what is wrong; we get worse from year to year. And if you take the gentry into consideration, they've grown feebler even more than the peasants have. The gentleman nowadays has mastered everything; he knows what he ought not to know, and what is the sense of it? It makes you feel pitiful to look at him.... He is a thin, puny little fellow, like some Hungarian or Frenchman; there is no dignity nor air about him; it's only in name he is a gentleman. ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... supreme effort that he mastered his overwhelming need of some physical outlet for the passion of disgust and anger which swept him bare of any gentler emotion as the incoming tide sweeps the shore bare of sign or footprint. His body grew taut and rigid with the pressure he ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... watercolours that covered the walls, in the curtains that were festooned rather stiffly in the doorways. He looked at some of the books and saw that his cousin read German; and his impression of the importance of this (as a symptom of superiority) was not diminished by the fact that he himself had mastered the tongue (knowing it contained a large literature of jurisprudence) during a long, empty, deadly summer on the plantation. It is a curious proof of a certain crude modesty inherent in Basil Ransom that the main effect of his ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... nothing; read that," said Pyotr Stepanovitch suddenly, throwing him a sheet of paper. Liputin went nearer to the candle. The paper was closely covered with bad handwriting, with corrections in every line. By the time he had mastered it Pyotr Stepanovitch had paid his bill and was ready to go. When they were on the pavement Liputin handed ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... he mastered his countenance, and, in as cool a tone as he could assume, replied: "Oh, a little more on them will be scarcely a perceptible addition. You know the old adage, 'In for a penny, in for a pound.' You need have no fear," said he, lowering his voice almost to a whisper; ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... trial of battle. A ring being formed, Farragut, after a short contest, succeeded in thrashing his opponent and regaining the pig, and with it a certain amount of complacency in that one Briton at least had felt the pangs of defeat. His grief mastered him again soon afterward, when asked by Captain Hillyar to breakfast with himself and Captain Porter. Hillyar, seeing his discomfiture, spoke to him with great kindness, saying: "Never mind, my little fellow, it will be your turn next perhaps"; to which, says Farragut, "I replied I hoped so, ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... with a Saxon at the rear of his company. At the present moment the usually firm yet gentle expression of the man's face had risen to a sort of tragic sublimity; his lips were pale as the rest of his face, indicating a tumult within him mastered by his Breton will; a slight sweat, which every one noticed and guessed to be cold, moistened his brow. The notary knew but too well that these signs might result in a drama before the criminal courts. In fact the cashier was playing a part in connection with Modeste Mignon, which ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... this country to young ladies doing that sort of thing," said Mrs. Atkins. Her evil temper mastered her. "And your pet cook, the fine lady who's too grand to ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... four rules? You would not attempt such a task. The first four rules are the physics of arithmetic; all beyond is the metaphysics of arithmetic. It flows out of them. Can you comprehend our system of metaphysics until you have clearly and completely mastered our physics? Would you not get into a ...
— Ancient and Modern Physics • Thomas E. Willson
... unknown tongues of Dutch and Malay. Ignorance of the former involves separation from the world as revealed by newspapers, and though a smattering of "coolie Malay" is picked up with the aid of a handbook, and the "hundred words" mastered, sanguinely asserted to suffice for colloquial needs, there are many occasions when even the practice of this elementary language requires a more extensive vocabulary. At a New Year's fete given by the proprietor of the hotel to his numerous Malay employes, we make ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... sought his healing hand. He mastered their infirmities, and soothed their sufferings. But the more the world honored and trusted him, the more bitter grew the hatred of the faculty. Each day brought him fresh blessings and fresh imprecations. The physicians, who, in Salzburg, ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... a more popular form of entertainment," Douglas answered drily. He was beginning to feel that there were many tricks in the entertainment trade which he had not mastered. And, after all, what was his preaching but an effort at entertainment? If he failed to hold his congregation by what he was saying, his listeners grew drowsy, and his sermon fell short of its desired effect. It was true that his position and hers had points ...
— Polly of the Circus • Margaret Mayo
... She felt it would be cruel not to do so; but Emily said, 'He wants to marry to get rid of me, and not because he loves you.' Then it was hard to deny herself the pleasure of telling the whole truth; but she mastered her desire of triumph, and, actuated by nothing but sincerest love and ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... to write or speak upon a subject of which the details have been mastered, I gather, after some inquiry, that the usual method among persons who have the gift of fluency is to think cursorily on topics connected with it, until what I have called the antechamber is well filled ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... A breastwork charged in vain; Eleven men of England Lie stripp'd, and gash'd, and slain. Slain; but of foes that guarded Their rock-built fortress well, Some twenty had been mastered, When the last ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... should take lessons from a painter and a sculptor. For an actor to represent a Greek hero it is imperative he should have thoroughly studied those antique statues which have lasted to our day, and mastered the particular grace they exhibited in their postures, whether sitting, standing, or walking. Nor should he make attitude his only study. He should highly develop his mind by an assiduous study of the best writers, ancient and modern, which will enable him not only to understand ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... General Pomeroy was anxious that she should have every possible advantage, and Zillah was glad enough to have a companion in her studies. The result is easily stated. Zillah was idle, Hilda was studious, and all that the teachers could impart was diligently mastered by her. ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... misfortune we managed to make another turn in the path, by which this awkward rock was avoided, and the remainder of the horses, with their loads, reached the tableland in safety. But so rocky was this country that, even after having mastered the ascent, we found great difficulty in getting the loaded ponies half a mile further to a point I had fixed on for our camp. We had this night a continued succession of heavy showers, accompanied with thunder ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... known me for over a year and, I think, seen enough of me to know what sort I am. We are not a couple of kids just out of school." His voice broke in a ridiculous quaver that somehow tempted her to laugh hysterically, but he mastered it and went on: "When shall it be? Next month? I'll buy that big car ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... differences, the little characteristic meannesses or felicities that distinguished one from another, did not count for very much in his estimation. When a knowledge of such individual traits was essential to his plans, he mastered them with singular keenness and quickness of comprehension. When such knowledge was unnecessary, or as soon as it ceased to be of service, he dismissed the extraneous personalities from his mind almost as completely as if they had ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... James Evans, the founder of this mission. These syllabics, as their name indicates, each represent a syllable. The result is there is no spelling, and just as soon as a pupil, young or old, has once mastered these characters he begins to read. Three weeks or a month is considered quite sufficient time, in which to teach a person of ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... different opinion of his memory, with the size of its appalling task. It can only be presented in his own words. In the pages quoted he had mastered somewhat of the problem, and had begun to take on airs. His chief was a constant menace ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... time to be lost. Now, or not at all. And so C. began. For half an hour, pausing occasionally for passing flocks of fog, he plied the brush with a rapidity not usual, and under disadvantages that would have mastered a less experienced hand. We were getting close down upon the berg, and in fearfully rough water. In their curiosity to catch glimpses of the advancing sketch, the men pulled with little regularity, and trimmed the boat very badly. We were rolling frightfully ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... announced, Steptoe had given up hope. Of Miss Walbrook as a woman he had nothing to complain. Walter Wildgoose reported her a noble creature, splendid, generous, magnificent, only needing a strong hand. She was of the type not to be served but to be mastered. Rashleigh Allerton would goad her to frenzy, and she would do the same by him. She was already doing it. For weeks past Steptoe could see it plainly enough, and what would happen after they were married God alone knew. For himself he saw no future but to hang on after the ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... and the day's work had to begin with the Psalms, and reading the Morning Lessons. Bessie was by far the best reader; and David did very well, though he made very long stops to look deliberately at any long new word, and could not bear to be told before he had mastered it for himself. Even Susan was sadly given to gabbling and missing the little words that she thought beneath her attention; and the other two stumbled so horribly, that it was pain to ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Nantucket he resolved to take a little respite from the hard work he was performing in a brass foundry, and attend. Previous to this he had felt the warm heart of Mr. Garrison beating for the slave through the columns of the "Liberator"; had received a copy each week for a long time, had mastered its matchless arguments against slavery, and was, therefore, possessed with an idea of the anti-slavery cause. At Nantucket he was sought out of the vast audience and requested by William C. Coffin, of New ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... lost; and the contest became that of man to man. I have no language adequate to describe what followed. For myself, I did what I could, cutting and thrusting at the multitudes about me, till at last I found myself fairly hemmed in by a crowd, and my sword-arm mastered. One American had grasped me round the waist, another, seizing me by the wrist, attempted to disarm me, whilst a third was prevented from plunging his bayonet into my body, only from the fear of stabbing one or other of his countrymen. I struggled hard, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... some of the more careless dressers who have neglected to provide themselves with it have suffered severely, and been roundly snubbed. While it is at best an ugly piece of facegear and extremely difficult for the uninitiated to adjust correctly, its intricacies should be mastered at the earliest opportunity by ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... of that gleaming ball hurrying across the carpet, all the nervousness, the distrust of herself, the vague spiritual alarms, which had beset her on first entering the room, returned on her with tenfold force. The superstitious terrors of the convent-bred girl mastered the light-hearted scepticism of the woman of the world, and regions of sinister possibility ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Blackburn's scowl, aware of the impotent rage the latter felt over the worst insult that could be offered an honest cattleman. For an instant he watched Blackburn keenly, his lips sneering; and then when he saw that Blackburn had mastered his ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... circumnavigated the Peloponnesus—the armistice of four months had expired—and, landing in Laconia, Tolmides burnt Gythium, a dock of the Lacedaemonians; took Chalcis, a town belonging to Corinth, and, debarking at Sicyon, engaged and defeated the Sicyonians. Thence proceeding to Cephallenia, he mastered the cities of that isle; and descending at Naupactus, on the Corinthian gulf, wrested ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... solar system, with a diameter roughly of four billion miles. Our ancestors knew that Kygpton was dying, that the store of our most precious element Sthalreh was dwindling. But already our ancestors had mastered the forces of our universe, had made inventions that are beyond your understanding, had explored the limits of our universe in space-cars that were propelled by the free energies in space and by the attracting-repelling influences ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei
... influential parties to members of both houses. By a judicious use of these, they managed to obtain a hearing before the scientific and geographical departments of the Smithsonian Institute. So thoroughly had Dr. Jones and Mr. Marsh mastered the details of the subject that they immediately made a favorable impression upon that learned body. After some weeks spent in investigation, they unanimously voted in favor of the project, and recommended that Congress grant appropriations for ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... his living throne, they, quaking, see their ruler sitting there, With sharp claw the painted cushion of his seat they see him tear. Restless the giraffe must bear him on, till strength and life-blood fail her; Mastered by such daring rider, rearing, plunging, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... a Hindoo is to us, with the terrible exception, that the positions were reversed; that the Teuton was not the conquered, but the conqueror. It is easy for us to feel humanity and Christian charity toward races which we have mastered. It was not so easy for the Roman priest to feel them toward a race which had mastered him. His repugnance to the 'Barbarian' must have been at first intense. He never would have conquered it; he never would have become ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... against her neck, and when she reared he clung to her till she lifted him off his feet. He got the best of her, though, and the first thing she knew he was on her back. Jove! how she did plunge! but he mastered her; he sat superbly. I felt Gifford had the making of a man in him, after that. He inherits his father's pluck. You know Woodhouse made a record at Lookout Mountain; he was killed ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... dark, fiery eyes and the pale, impassioned face? Was he some new prophet? If so, why should he not have cast a spell upon Nahoum? Had he not bewitched himself, Kaid, one of the ablest princes since Alexander or Amenhotep? Had Nahoum, then, been mastered and won? Was ever such power? In how many ways had it not been shown! He had fought for his uncle's fortune, and had got it at last yesterday without a penny of backsheesh. Having got his will, he was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of labour was still a subject of deep reflection; and from time to time I carried it to the Throne of Grace. Eventually my mind fixed upon the ministry as the desire of my whole heart. I had mastered the preliminary branches of English education, and was engaged in studying logic, rhetoric, and the Greek Testament, without a master. While thus struggling in my laudable work, an opening presented itself which was not less surprising than gratifying. Walking ...
— The Fugitive Blacksmith - or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington • James W. C. Pennington
... five or six of the big so-called blood-hounds of the southern States—not pure blood-hounds at all, but huge, fierce, ban-dogs, with a cross of the ferocious Cuban blood-hound, to give them good scenting powers—have by themselves mastered the cougar and the black bear. Such instances occurred in the hunting history of my own forefathers on my mother's side, who during the last half of the eighteenth, and the first half of the present, century lived in Georgia and over the border in what are now Alabama and Florida. ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... examined the antiquities in the Louvre for himself; he noted carefully the scenes depicted on monuments and sarcophagi; he traced the ornamentation in all its details; he studied the poses, the attitudes, the expressions; he marked the costumes, the accessories; in a word, he mastered his subject, and then only did he, with that facility and certainty that amazed Balzac, write in swift succession the chapters of the novel which appeared in the numbers of the "Moniteur Universel" from March 11 to ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... mention of her mate, as a means of comforting her and also of completing his deceit, and asked him, saying, "O my son Alaeddin what hast thou learned in the way of work and what is thy business? Say me, hast thou mastered any craft whereby to earn a livelihood for thyself and for thy mother?" The lad was abashed and put to shame and he hung down his head and bowed his brow groundwards; but his parent spake out, "How, forsooth? By Allah, he knoweth nothing at all, a child so ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... he had left the old life completely behind him, and had settled into the new with all the conviction and purpose he could summon, he was subject, especially when physically weary, as to-night, to a heaviness of heart which would not be mastered. ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... Anger almost mastered me. I wanted to cry out "So be it! Keep your silence! I know who you are, just as I know your machine, recognized at Madison, at Boston, at Lake Kirdall. Yes; it is you, who have rushed so recklessly over our roads, our seas and our lakes! Your boat is the 'Terror' ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... "she's bundled off. Father has borne it like a philosopher. I believe in his heart he is rather pleased that I should have turned her neck and crop off the premises. It was high time. She had mastered the old man, and could make him do what ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... we should meet it like men, effendi," said the Turk gravely. "That white squall last night saved our lives, for I was mastered." ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... conveyed a sense of very close conspiracy between all four, but from neither the lady nor any one else in Doom had he any passport to the friendship of this gentleman. It was only for a moment the difficulties of the situation mastered him. ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... with her resentment at being in any sense property, her self-reliant thought, her independence of standard, was the very prototype of that sister-lover who must replace the seductive and abject womanhood, owned, mastered and deceiving, who waste the world to-day. And she was owned, she was mastered, she was forced into concealment. What alternative was there for her? What alternative is there for any woman? She might perhaps have kept ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... calamity for the present. If she were to learn of it it would quite possibly throw her into a fever, and cost her life or the child's. You must not make any sound that she can hear, and you must not go near her until you have completely mastered ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... easel before him. Even through an opera-glass the painter looked like an ant on a house-top. He wore a broad-brimmed straw hat, and behind him a large umbrella was opened against the fierce rays of the Italian sun. Thus protected, he sat there busily at work. Blanka envied him: he had mastered the mighty Colosseum and caught its likeness. How had he set about it? Why, naturally enough, he had climbed the giddy height and conquered the giant from above. She resolved to come again, early the next morning, and follow his example. With that she tore the spoiled leaves ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... was welcomed with titters and guffaws. Zeke was red to the ears with mortification and anger, as he shut the valise, shouldered it, and strode to the door. But even in the time of that passing, he mastered his mood in a measure. He had no wish to make his farewell to these neighbors in bitterness of spirit. So, at the door, he turned and grinned amiably on ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... day of the execution, he wished to give himself up to justice, though his kinsmen told him that he could not save James, and would merely share his fate; but, nevertheless, he struggled so violently that his people mastered and bound him with ropes, and laid him in a room still existing. Finally, it is said that strange noises and knockings are still heard in that place, a mysterious survival of strong human passions attested in other cases, as on the supposed site of the murder ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... before leaving, Laurie took from his pocket the tiny revolver he had brought with him, and holding it in his palm, studied it in silence. Should he take it, or shouldn't he? He hesitated. Then habit mastered caution. He dropped it among the discarded heap of clothes, and picked up in its stead a small screw-driver, which he put into his ragged pocket. That particular tool looked as if ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... the translations of books of devotion, etc., into the native tongues gave no correct impression of those tongues. The ideas conveyed were foreign to the primitive mind, and the translations were generally by foreigners who had not completely mastered the idioms. Hence, the only true reflex of a language is in the words and thoughts of the natives themselves, in their ...
— A Record of Study in Aboriginal American Languages • Daniel G. Brinton |
