"Masterful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... divil with all other reasons then. They don't matter with me at all. [He gets to his feet confidently, assuming a masterful tone.] I'm thinking you're the like of them women can't make up their mind till they're drove to it. Well, then, I'll make up your mind for you bloody quick. [He takes her by the arms, grinning to soften his serious bullying.] We've had enough of talk! ...
— Anna Christie • Eugene O'Neill
... Smallbones "weighed out" amid a circle of smiles, which suddenly seemed to light up the entire bar-room. Nor had he a single spoken word of protest. But he yielded himself up to the demands of the masterful doctor only to save himself the ducking he was certain awaited ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... had shown his intense amazement at the rapid and masterful progress of Holmes's investigation. At first he had shown some disposition to assert his own position; but now he was overcome with admiration and ready to follow without ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... shoulders above the table, and entertained the wild idea of asking him to evoke a blessing. To complete the confusion of his appearance, he was called "Senor" Perkins, for no other reason, apparently, than his occasional, but masterful, ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... encroaching upon the authority of the President, the Senate had also been signally successful in encroaching upon the authority of the House. The framers of the Constitution anticipated for the House a masterful career like that of the House of Commons, and they feared that the Senate could not protect itself in the discharge of its own functions; so, although the traditional principle that all revenue bills should originate in the ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... Barneveld, whose masterful statesmanship, following out the traditions of William the Silent, had ever maintained through good and ill report cordial and beneficent relations between the two countries, had always comprehended, even as a great cardinal-minister was ere long to teach the world, that ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... elements flamed up in her face and lighted her eyes with joy. She might have been a viking's daughter as her fair hair blew over her flushed face, while she patted her good steed and laughed aloud for very glee at the thought of conflict with the wild masterful storm and the cool gurgling rapid which her ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... The masterful man who puts on airs of command and leadership insults his fellow-creatures, and should be gently but ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... and stormy brine they ran, With hands a-cold plucked Winter by the locks! Masterful mastered great Leviathan And drove the foam ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... crisis is largely a matter of preparedness, and a man, who, having opened his door in the expectation of seeing a ginger-haired, bow-legged, grinning George Pennicut, is confronted by a masterful woman with eyes like gimlets, may be excused for not guessing that her piercing stare is an expression ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... into the fire: "As far as I can gather it must be your masterful ways at the Hospital Committee that have impressed her, and especially your unheard-of tyrannical methods with ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... and resume his sovereignty; though, how an American negro, as Sam undoubtedly was, ever managed to gain such a position, remains to me an unfathomable mystery. Certainly he did not reveal any such masterful attributes as one would have expected in him, while he served as harpooner on ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... spoken very sweetly, and are accompanied by the sweetest of smiles; but they are nevertheless commands, and somehow it does not occur to any one to disobey them. John—stern, masterful, authoritative John, who has never been approached with anything more dictatorial than a timid request since he left Merchant Taylors' School nineteen years ago, who would have thought that something had suddenly gone wrong with the laws of Nature if he had been—finds himself hurrying ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... the delegation of a State should cast the entire vote. This was the famous unit rule, the defeat of which was the first event of the convention. Garfield and Conkling were foremost in the fray because they were the most masterful men of the vast assembly—nearly twenty ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... as the present day situation offers no hope that politics will play any particular part in the solution. All three speakers made a very favorable impression upon the audience and so enlightened it by the masterful array of facts presenting their point of view as to make this one of the most interesting sessions ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... with the children, did you? Of course you will have little to do here in comparison with what you must have had there. But my wilful Clement, I am afraid, you will find too much for you. He is a masterful lad." ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... masterful ways of his own, was bent on convincing Anna that she was wrong in her estimate of Verity Keston, and he was very willing at this moment to tell her all he ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... that evening, might have degenerated into something like an orgy but for the masterful intervention of Denis who was not going to let Keith make a fool of himself. It took place in the most famous of all the caves of Nepenthe-Luisella's grotto-cavern dedicated, by common usage, to the worship of Venus ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... was a man of prompt decision, with a cool, comprehensive, far-reaching mind. He was genial, kind, never despondent, always resolute, resourceful, masterful, determined to overcome every obstacle. To him alone belongs the credit for solving the problem of the great canyons, and to Professor Thompson that for conducting most successfully the geographic side of the work under difficulties that can hardly ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... powerless to produce were telling on him; his straining bounds first this way and then that, were not now quite so strong, and the spray he snorted as he gasped was half a spray of blood. But his captor, relentless, masterful and cool, still forced him on. Down the slope toward the canyon they had come, every yard a fight, and now they were at the head of the draw that took the trail down to the only crossing of the canon, the northmost limit ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... behavior stirred her deeply. She had realized the power of his muscles under his slight build before—when he had held the Great Dane's throat in his grip—and she had seen his flexibility, in turning instantaneously from fury to suavity. Yet his masterful attack upon her assailant, followed by his sympathy and comprehension on the way home, thrilled her as with a revelation of unguessed capacities. John Derby could not have come to her rescue better, nor could she have felt more protected and calmed with ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... Ingenious and masterful as the human intellect is in guiding and controlling the ordinary forces of nature, how impotent and insignificant it appears in the presence of such a transcendent disaster! It is well nigh inconceivable ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... was unconsciously aided and abetted by her sister, Mrs. Otis, a large, magnificent woman of forty-five, who had a masterful and assured manner, as became a very rich and influential widow. Mrs. Otis had domineered Mrs. Salisbury throughout their childhood; she had brought up a number of sons and daughters in a highly successful manner, and finally she kept a houseful of ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... coat- sleeve. He looked at the flame while it burned from blue to yellow. "Well, I guess if anybody's been p'tic'lar, it's been him. There ain't any doubt but what he's got a takin' way with the women. They like him. He's masterful, and he ain't a fool, and women most gen'ly like a man that ain't a fool. I guess if he 's got his eye on the girl's prop'ty, she'll have to come along. He'd begin by havin' his own way about her answer; ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... neighbouring Monarchy, as an essential condition to a period of quiet internal consolidation. But this was the very thing which the controllers of Austrian foreign policy—the phantom Minister Berchtold, the sinister clique in the Foreign Office, and the Magyar oligarchy, led by that masterful reactionary, Count Tisza, the Hungarian Premier—were anxious to avoid. They had never reconciled themselves to the new situation in the Balkans; and having twice backed the wrong horse (Turkey in the first war, Bulgaria in the second) ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... of Margaret impressed her fellow pupil, Dr. Holmes, as he relates, with a kind of awe. It began loftily with the words, "It is a trite remark," a phrase which seemed to the boy very masterful. The girls envied her a certain queenliness of manner. "We thought," says one of them, "that if we could only come into school in that way, we could know as much Greek as she did." She was accustomed to fill the hood of her cloak with books, swing them over her shoulder, and march away. "We ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... this way by making special study of particular boy types. In the first place there are the psychological types—the choleric, the sanguine, the phlegmatic, and the hybrid. There are also the types of real life with which we are most familiar—the masterful, the weak, the mischievous, the backward, the shy, the bully, the joker, the "smartie," the echo or shadow, the quiet or reticent, the girl-struck, the self-conscious, the unconscious, and the forgetful. Lastly, we should also consider the different types of the unfortunate boys, including ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... by his clothes. And he said in a loud voice. 'Here's the man!'... The gambler looked startled, turned pale, and went for his gun. But Kells shot him!... He fell dead, without a word. There was a big shout, then silence. Kells stood there with his smoking gun. I never saw the man so cool—so masterful. Then he addressed the crowd: 'This gambler insulted my daughter! My men here saw him. My name's Blight. I came here to buy up gold claims. And I want to say this: Your Alder Creek has got the gold. But it needs some of your best citizens to run it right, ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... dominant notes of the Arts of the Exposition and pre-eminently of the sculpture. It proclaims with no uncertain voice that "all is right with this Western world" - it is not too much to claim that it supplies the humanized ideality for which the Exposition stands - the daring, boasting masterful spirits of enterprise and imagination - the frank enjoyment of physical beauty and effort - the fascination of danger; as well as the gentler, more reverent of our attitudes, to this ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... found anything that he did not know, and never found anything that he could not do. This Admirable Crichton was spangled all over well-earned badges, indicating his accomplishments. We really might have gone off, the whole lot of us, masterful staff officer, dainty registration clerks, highly efficient stenographer, etc., and had a good time; he would have run the show perfectly well without us—a Hirst, a Jimmy Wilde, a "Tetrarch," as he was ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... When you are sure of a majority, election is a fine system; but you can scarcely expect the Mahommedans, the most masterful and powerful minority in the country, to contemplate their own extinction with joy. The worst of it is that he and his co-religionists, who are many, and the landed proprietors, also, of Hindu race, are frightened and put out by this election business and by the importance we have bestowed on lawyers, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... undercurrent of irony in his replies. Moreover, while by his manner he had pedestaled and prayed to her as to a goddess, when they were alone and before her mother came, Dorothy now observed that Richard carried himself in a manner easy and masterful, and as one who knows much in the presence of ones who know little. This air of the ineffably invincible made Dorothy forget the adoration which had aforetime glowed in his eyes, and she longed ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... benefit did not accrue to the Montenegrin Government. Danilo may in other respects have been an incapable young man—the advice of his unmarried sister, Xenia, was always preferred to his; in fact, her father had such confidence in this masterful woman with the pallid face and large, black eyes—the "femme fatale," as her enemies have called her—that he never gave an audience but she was present, either openly or behind a screen. Danilo's incapacity, however, ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... said, of Lancashire folk—wealthy cotton-spinners, who still kept the broadened a and slurred aspirate of the old stock. She lived with an old masterful mother in an opulent world north of Lancaster Gate, where people in Society gave parties at a Mecca called ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... off the masterful old hand, but she would not. A sad passivity became her best unless she relinquished every possible result of the last ten minutes. And it must have had some result. Jeff had, at least, been partly won. Surely there was an implied intimacy ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... in anything approaching this manner, no one had ever so much as suggested that her existence could matter greatly, that in her woman's nature there was the magic power of awakening passion and devotion. He was so splendidly magnificent, so masterful and unrivalled, and he came thus to lay his being, as it were, in homage at her feet. It touched her a little, who knew so little of the real man. It cost her an effort to repulse him, and the effort was not ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... one of her naughty whimsies; and mayhap she had been so full of a playful happiness—as doth take the heart betimes—that she had made a little mystery where there did be no mystery; and this but to release her joy, and so to say masterful things unto me, out of her impudence; and afterward had meant that she tell me; but yet was gone unto slumber, ere ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... this of which thou talkest to me? If it should come to our Lord Baron's ears he would cut the tongue from out thy head and my head from off my shoulders for it. Dost thou think I am going to meddle in such a matter as this? Listen! these proud Baron folk, with their masterful ways, drive our sort hither and thither; they beat us, they drive us, they kill us as they choose. Our lives are not as much to them as one of my black swine. Why should I trouble my head if they choose to lop and trim ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... characters in Virginia history. Nathaniel Bacon is depicted as twenty-nine years of age, black-haired, of medium height and slender, melancholy, pensive, and taciturn. In conversation he was logical and convincing; in oratory magnetic and masterful.[508] His successful expeditions against the Indians and the swift blows he directed against the loyal forces mark him as a military commander of ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... and west, But two cannot go abreast, Cannot travel in it two: Yonder masterful cuckoo Crowds every egg out of the nest, Quick or dead, except its own; A spell is laid on sod and stone, Night and Day were tampered with, Every quality and pith Surcharged and sultry with a power That works its ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... ordered her life. Her sufferings, I say, had been great, but they had been encountered by a fortitude that was greater still. Throughout all her life, indeed, she was the most notable example that our time has produced of the masterful power of man’s spiritual nature when at its highest to conquer in its warfare with earthly conditions, as her brother Gabriel’s life was the most notable example of the struggle of the spiritual nature with the bodily when the ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... of holly, lay a flat-topped rock commanding all the spectacle of flood and fell. Mary guided him there; and then stood silent and flushed, conscious that she herself had brought the supreme moment to its birth. The same perception rushed upon Meynell. He looked into her eyes, smiling and masterful, all ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... But for me it would have been the despicable, broken-backed, disjointed, inharmonious figure five hundred and fifty-four. The whole artistic point would have vanished. The Mark of the Man would have disappeared from history. It was I who with a masterful hand seized the chisel and carved the hieroglyph—complete and perfect. I clutched the trembling hand of Destiny when it was about to make a dull square four and forced it to make a nice curly five. Why, but for me the ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... asked Nell, quick, as usual, to take him up if he seems inclined to be masterful. "I should think it would be more ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... truth. He could tell himself now that he never wished to see Adelaide Houghton again. But, before anything of this could be achieved, he would have to own himself a sinner before her. He would have, as it were, to grovel at her feet. Hitherto, in all his intercourse with her, he had been masterful and marital. He had managed up to this point so to live as to have kept in all respects the upper hand. He had never yet been found out even in a mistake or an indiscretion. He had never given her an opening for the mildest finding of fault. ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... before the wan girl, and the readjustment of life, in her masterful hands, seemed ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... spared to her. At first he was suspicious of her subdued manner and remorseful gentleness; and for a long time he watched her, very warily, with an eye for treachery. Then he understood that she had succumbed to his masterful handling of her, and he was ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... the lurid lights of the French Revolution with Scaramouche, or the brilliant buccaneering days of Peter Blood, or the adventures of the Sea-Hawk, the corsair, will now welcome with delight a turn in Restoration London with the always masterful Col. Randall Holles. ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... Wilcox's writings have been the inspiration of many young men and women. Her hopeful, practical, masterful views of life give the reader new courage in the very reading and are a wholesome spur to flagging effort. Words of truth so vital that they live in the reader's memory and cause him to think—to his own betterment and the lasting improvement ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... fortune's ladder to wealth and the governorship of his native State. Tom Seacomb begins life with a purpose, and eventually overcomes those who oppose him. How he manages to win the battle is told by Mr. Hill in a masterful way that thrills the reader and holds his attention ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... and straightforward in the human heart. Imagine the reverence felt for Warington by the young brothers when he came home from a sea voyage! Not only were there the broad square shoulders, the deep chest, and the bronzed face to compel admiration; but a masterful and commanding manner withal, a stern eye and a rousing voice—and the overwhelming and crushing fact that he was a British Naval officer! Warington had been born ten years before Ste, and it is a mighty good thing for B.-P. (and he would be the first to admit it) that this ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... his masterful voice, with the friendly intonation, gradually quieted the countess. Though still very weak, she gained a fresh sense of ease and security ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... first Pekingese were brought over in 1860, after the occupation of Pekin by the Allies. The first black ones came here in 1896, and now in 1914 there are thousands of these wholly alluring and adorable and masterful little big-hearted creatures in England, turning staid men and women into ecstatic worshippers and making children lyrical with cries of appreciation. The book before me is the finest monument yet ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 7, 1914 • Various
... this section make up a slumbrous, irresolute mass of persons who never utter any definite opinions," and perhaps have no definite opinions. Such activities as it displays are the work of a few exceptions. "No section has greater need of a masterful president." Having no leader, it is vague, somnolent, and takes little interest in current events. It lacks the corporate spirit. "The Genevese are strongly individualistic, and yet, unfortunately, we rarely find among them a strong individuality." We may add that they ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... great new Party? He had hoped to have five hundred thousand men at his back, but they had come in by beggarly hundreds. There was even talk of an insurance bonus to attract them. Lassalle had exaggerated both the magnetism of his personality and the intelligence and discontent of the masses. His masterful imagination had made the outer world a mere reflection of his inner world. Even in those early days, when he was scarcely known, and that favorably rather than otherwise, he had imagined himself the pet aversion ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... father. "Trotty," the eldest, was by this time a girl of eight, Melvin a stout sober youth of six, "Pinny" (Eugene, Jr.) a shrewd little rascal of four, and "Daisy" (Fred), his mother's boy, a large-eyed, sturdy youngster of nearly three masterful summers. The family was quickly settled in a small but convenient flat on Chicago Avenue, three blocks from the Lake, and a little more than a mile's walk from the office, a distance that never tempted Field to exercise his legs except on one occasion, ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... them, as vigorous as they, strode Adoniram Purdon behind his team, the reins tied together behind his muscular neck, his hands grasping the plow with the masterful sureness of the successful practitioner of an art. The hot, sweet spring sunshine shone down on 'Niram's head with its thick crest of brown hair, the ineffable odor of newly turned earth steamed up about him like incense, the mountain ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... Thoughtful, thoughtfully, masterful, masterfully, hard, hardly, cool, coolly, rapid, rapidly, ungainly, careful, carefully, eager, eagerly, sweet, ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... which they were to be buried 'with some respect to their Royal dignity, but avoiding damnable pomp and outrageous superfluities!' There was, as Frank remarked, a fine touch of the hot Tudor blood in the adjectives. One could guess where Henry the Eighth got his masterful temper. Yet it was an ascetic and priest-like face which looked upwards ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... the off-hand masterful tone he had hitherto spoken in, and becoming earnest; still holding her arm, however, as if she were his chattel to be taken up or put down at will. 'It is never too late to break off a marriage that's distasteful to you. ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... service, should be suppressed. The simple fact is that such a plan is futile. In operation it would do far more damage than it could remedy. The Progressive plan would give the people full control of, and in masterful fashion prevent all wrongdoing by, the trusts, while utilizing for the public welfare every industrial energy and ability that operates to swell abundance, while obeying strictly the moral law and the law of the land. ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... For months she had been telling herself that the unrest she felt when with Peabody was due to her not being able to appreciate the importance of those big affairs in which he was so interested; in which he was so admirable a figure. She had, as she supposed, loved him, because he was earnest, masterful, intent of purpose. His had seemed a fine character. When she had compared him with the amusing boys of her own age, the easy-going joking youths to whom the betterment of New York was of no concern, she had been proud in her choice. ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis
... than an increase; the weakened man or woman will find a toning up and a relief from the weakness which has heretofore depressed him or her. We do not wish to be misunderstood or misquoted on this subject. The Yogis' ideal is a body strong in all its parts, under the control of a masterful and developed ...
— The Hindu-Yogi Science Of Breath • Yogi Ramacharaka
... matter quite fairly, they have other objections to him:—he is masterful and rather unsociable, and he is concerned with trade, which has complaints of its own that I know nothing about. But what has that to do with the question whether it would not be a fine thing to establish here a more valuable hospital than any they have in the county? ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... here grew so frequent and so regular that it soon became whispered, and then openly discussed in Casterbridge that the masterful, coercive Mayor of the town was raptured and enervated by the genteel widow Mrs. Newson. His well-known haughty indifference to the society of womankind, his silent avoidance of converse with the sex, contributed a piquancy to what would ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... there appears upon the scene that vigorous and masterful spirit, whose arrival to take up the government of India had been greeted by events so inauspicious. No doubt from the beginning the Governor-General was desirous to let it be understood that although new to India he was, and meant to be, master;... ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... mansard-roof opinions, by virtue of sheer honesty and thorough-going human decency, develop into the unassuming "first citizen" of the town, trusted even by those who laughed at him, and honored most by his opponents. I saw his aggravating family of charming children grow around him—masterful Maria, aesthetic Charles Edward, pretty Peggy, fairy-tale Alice, and boisterous Billy—each at heart lovable and fairly good; but, taken in combination, bewildering and ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... they were in the restaurant of the Brevoort he insisted on ordering champagne—and left her for a moment to telephone for his automobile. It amused her to see a man so masterful thus pettily enslaved. She laughed at him, and he again denounced himself as a weak fool. "Money and luxury are too much for me. They are for everybody. I'm not as strong willed as I used to be," he said. "And it makes me uneasy. ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... that way can the truth be obtained). In my quest for criticism and advice, I fortunately decided to submit my manuscript to Professor William James of Harvard University, the most eminent of American psychologists and a masterful writer, who was then living. He expressed interest in my project; put my manuscript with others on his desk—but was somewhat reserved when it came to promising to read my story. He said it might be months before he could ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... challenged to show a single instance in which a masterful race such as ours, having been forced by the exigencies of war to take possession of an alien land, has behaved to its inhabitants with the disinterested zeal for their progress that our people have shown in the Philippines. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... to Harrigan. Plainly they were deep in doubt, and the Irishman made his second masterful move. He stepped forward, dropping his stool with a crash to the floor, and clapped a hand upon ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... long wash that led down from Jail Canyon, still musing on his masterful ways, but as she rounded the lower point and saw a light in the house a sudden doubt assailed her. Tellurium was her mule, to give to whom she chose, but he was matched to pull with Bodie when they needed a team and her father might not ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... eyes had failed her, that they had told him too much. An agony of shyness drenched her from head to foot, but there was no escape from his masterful insistence. ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... yes; I suppose so. That is, I may go. That is what you mean. Well, I suppose I had better go." Not a moment since he was towering with passion, and his voice, if not loud, had been masterful, determined, and imperious. Now it was low and gentle enough. Even now, could she have been tender to him, he would have relented. But she could not be tender. It was her profession to be a Juno. Though she knew that when he was gone from her her heart would be breaking, she ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... was to David just as charming as any of the other and milder apotheoses of the Susan he had come to know so well. It merely added a new tang, a fresh spice of variety, to a personality a less ravished observer might have thought unattractively masterful for ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... M—- returned from Ottawa, and we breakfasted together. We nearly missed the train at Toronto (not having Miss M—- to keep us in order; I call her Queen Christina, she is so masterful), but just managed to get ourselves and luggage in, and to see George Bunburg, whom I had made several attempts to see before, and who I hear is enterprising and likely to do well. We reached Owen Sound, and got into the steamer all right about three ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh
... any, Christians among these fine people. King Olaf and his masterful ways with the heathen were yet to come. And those who took on the new religion took it lightly. They cast it, like an outer garment, over shoulders still snug in the livery of Frey and Thor. It was not allowed to interfere with their customs, ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... men," he said, "however masterful and imperious, could withstand this torrent of martial ardour which rolls to- night through the souls of the children of Rury, still less I, newly come to this high throne, having been but as it were yesterday your comrade and equal, till Fergus, to my grief, resigned the sovereignty, ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... Irish mare, Peter sold the establishment and went into foreign parts in search of adventure, reappearing at intervals of five years from Australia, Texas, the Plate, Cape of Good Hope, assured and reckless as ever, but always straightforward, masterful, open-handed, and gallant. His exploits are over now, and all England read his last, how he sent on in safety a settler's household through a narrow pass in Matabele Land, and with a handful of troopers held the savages in ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... an illiberal puritanism, and to personal self-stultification. Reform must necessarily mean an intellectual as well as a moral challenge; and its higher purposes will never be accomplished unless it is accompanied by a masterful and ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa were in the agreeable key. The other note piped in the good-byes to South Africa and New Zealand, and in the registered blue-book phrase 'a dangerous man.' It was the ancient, merry way of regarding the Colonies; with, in conflict, a masterful Pro-Consul who, being on the spot, would there administer. Whether the see-saw had him up, or dropped him down, Sir George kept the good heart, as ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... reproducing what he saw, it not only casts light upon the spontaneous working of his genius, but it also shows how the young artist had already come to regard the inmost passion of the soul. When quite an old man, rhyming those rough platonic sonnets, he always spoke of love as masterful and awful. For his austere and melancholy nature, Eros was no tender or light-winged youngling, but a masculine tyrant, the tamer of male spirits. Therefore this Cupid, adorable in the power and beauty of ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... of the craft, however, was what Bluewater Bill termed "a masterful man." Despite the urgent entreaties of his depleted crew to put into some port and refit, he kept on, with favoring breezes, and soon entered what are called the "doldrums" in which fierce hurricanes alternate with periods of dead flat calm in which a ship will float on a rippleless sea "as idle ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... a special act of Congress, the President has invited all the nations to cooperate with us in properly commemorating the masterful achievements of a century ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... marshal all his forces. The man to defeat him now must defeat the entire Senate machine and the allies it could gain in an emergency; he must overcome the power of Standard Steel; he must fight the resourceful brain of the masterful Peabody himself. ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... stipulating only that no shepherd of souls should show himself drunk in public. But the bibulous parsons frequently had influential relatives, who exerted themselves with the government to thwart the bishop's reformatory schemes. If Tegner had not been the masterful, tireless, energetic prelate that he was, his ardor would have cooled; and he would have contented himself with drawing the revenues of his office, and left with the lukewarm government the responsibility ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... but we finished it in silence. Verplanck was, as I recalled, a large masterful man, one of those who demanded and liked large things—such as the estate of several hundred acres which we ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... interrupted Steinmetz at this moment, breaking into the conversation in his masterful way and enabling Etta to get away. Catrina, at the other end of the room, was listening, hard-eyed, breathless. It was the sight of Catrina's face that made Steinmetz go forward. He had not been looking at Catrina, but at Etta, who was perfect in ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... the women who interest us most, for the men of the race, masterful and brave, heroic even in certain great crisis, have often ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... and unprejudiced person that his great speech in England—there were five addresses, but the substance was the same—upon the American question (which directly involved the slavery issue) during our Civil War was far and away the finest exhibition of masterful eloquence that is to be credited to any of our countrymen. The world ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... plain that he was an outcast from his tribe, and, indeed, from the whole Indian brotherhood. I could not fathom him, for he seemed among savages to be held in deep respect, and yet here he was, the ally of the white man against his race. His lean, supple figure, his passionless face, and his high, masterful air had a singular nobility in them. To me he was never the servant, scarcely even the companion, for he seemed like a being from another world, who had a knowledge of things hid from human ken. In woodcraft he was a master beyond all thought of rivalry. Often, when time did not press, he would ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... is enough," she whispered. His only answer was to tighten the arm behind her. She sighed and let that masterful strength bear her where it would. She forgot that this man was little more than a savage, that they would part at dawn. The blood has no memories, no reflections, no regrets for the past, no consideration of ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... the extreme: Frank sat looking down haughtily, and his brother with deft fingers rapidly unbuckled and readjusted the stirrup leather, looking up once at the masterful black who could not speak but signified his commands with haughty looks and ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... wasted time, for you had no intention of putting any of this insanity on paper and mailing it. Yes, you know that, and confess it—but what were you to do? Where was your remedy? Will anybody contend that a man can say to such masterful anger as that, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... recur. Where, indeed, are we to look for any effective check? The rulers of India, whether they sit in Calcutta or London, may again be carried away by the partial views of an influential class, or of a few masterful individuals. It is absurd to speak of creating free institutions in India to control the Indian Government. Experience has shown that parliamentary action in England not infrequently degenerates into acrimonious discussion and recrimination dictated by party passion; in any case, it is generally ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... near the house, some dogs rush out at me, and a woman's voice calls them back; Agelan roars a welcome—he always shouts, and likes to put on masterful airs; for in years gone by he was a very unpleasant customer, until the man-of-war—but that is all ancient history, and now his bark is much worse than his bite. I have the honour of being in his good books, thanks to certain medical services I was able to render him; he has an ugly cough, ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... the pride of empire, all the intoxication of power, all the ardour, the energy, the masterful strength and the wonderful endurance and death-scorning pluck which are the very bone and fibre and marrow of the British ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... that M. Joyeuse should stand in such fear of her? By no means. A little stern, that was all, with a pretty smile that instantly forgave one. But M. Joyeuse was a coward, timid from his birth; twenty years of housekeeping with a masterful wife, "a member of the nobility," having made him a slave for ever, like those convicts who, after their imprisonment is over, have to undergo a period of surveillance. And for him this meant ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... as a Chinese box; but, at moments, one is still tricked by the deceiving appeal of the Siren; at times, too, one believes that one is listening to a captive spirit, struggling in the darkness of its masterful box, a box quivering with enchantment, like a devil immersed in a stoup of holy water; sometimes, again, it is in the air, at large, like a pure and supernatural creature that reveals to the ear, as it ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... a good lad," said the old lady when he had gone, "but he is getting a bit uppish. He's a masterful sort. He aint like ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... was a masterful sort of woman, and that night it seemed like she was possessed. The way she talked made me think of the Day of Pentecost and the gift of tongues. And finally she got to the minister! I'd been wonderin' all along if she was goin' to let ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... masterful self once more, and his voice was vibrant with that suppressed excitement which I knew well. Into the disorderly sleeping apartment of the baronet we hurried, and Smith made for the recess near the bed which concealed ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... a hundred thousand failures, a gray-haired, neat man, who had been everything and done nothing, and who now said evasively that he was "in the collection business." He read Dickens and played a masterful game of chess. He liked to have it thought that his past was brave with mysterious splendors. He spoke hintingly of great lawyers. But he had been near to them only as a clerk for a large law firm. He was grateful to any one for noticing him. Like most of the failures, ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... Roundabout Papers, Lowell's Hosea Biglow—a whole library of magazine and periodical literature of the first importance had appeared. But the Autocrat began again, after a quarter of a century, musical with so rich a chorus, and his voice was clear, penetrating, masterful, and distinctively ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... at her blankly, too bewildered even to wonder how she knew he was in Genoa; and she continued, with the kind of shy imperiousness that always made him feel, in her presence, like a member of an orchestra under a masterful baton; "Now please get right into this carriage, and don't keep me roasting here another minute." To the cabdriver she called out: ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... food, the old dormitory in which Charles slept, the new one then rising to replace it; breaking off to recognise some famous building, or to pause and gaze after a company of his Majesty's guards. Her own masterful carriage and unembarrassed mode of speech—"as if all London belonged to her," Charles afterwards described it—drew the stares of the passers-by; stares which she misinterpreted, for in the gut of the Strand, a few paces ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... which his nearest friend, Philip Bentley, had once said, "The Great Sculptor started to carve a masterpiece, choosing granite rather than marble as his medium, and was content to leave it rough hewn." Every feature was strong and rugged, which gave his countenance an expression masterful to the point of being almost surly when it was in repose; but it was a face which caused most men—and women over thirty—to turn ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... "frail." They are not artistic: they are only lascivious. They are not prosperous: they are only rich. They are not loyal, they are only servile; not dutiful, only sheepish; not public spirited, only patriotic; not courageous, only quarrelsome; not determined, only obstinate; not masterful, only domineering; not self-controlled, only obtuse; not self-respecting, only vain; not kind, only sentimental; not social, only gregarious; not considerate, only polite; not intelligent, only opinionated; not progressive, only factious; ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... upper hand at once, in her abrupt question, not without a spice of scorn; and note how Ahab answers, bemoaning himself, putting in the forefront his fair proposal, and making Naboth's refusal ruder than it really had been, by suppressing its reason. Then out flashes the imperious will of this masterful princess, who had come from a land where royalty was all-powerful, and who had no restraints of conscience. She darts a half-contemptuous question at Ahab, to stir him to action; for nothing moves a weak man so much as the fear of being thought weak. 'Dost thou govern?' implies, 'If ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren |
