"Masterly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... forgotten to make the dressing for the chicken salad which had been prepared for the watchers. Steavens had never heard anything in the least like it; it was injured, emotional, dramatic abuse, unique and masterly in its excruciating cruelty, as violent and unrestrained as had been her grief of twenty minutes before. With a shudder of disgust the lawyer went into the dining room and closed the ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... influenced by sentiment. It was always interesting to discuss a "case" with him. I do not mean that he discussed his cases with me, but I used to ask him how to deal with some intellectual or moral problem, and his insight seemed to me wonderfully shrewd, sensible, and clear. He had a masterly analysis, and a power of seeing alternatives and contingencies which always aroused my admiration. He was less interested in the personal element than in the psychological; and I used to feel that his strength lay in dealing ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... which follows is not really one's own, for the wretched fellow who wrote the book is always trying to push his way in with his views on matrimony, or the Sussex downs, or whatever his ridiculous subject is. He expects one to say, "Mr. Blank's treatment of Hilda's relations with her husband is masterly," whereas what one wants to say is, "Putting Mr. Blank's book on one side we may consider the larger question, whether ——" and so consider it (alone) to the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... and march them to Boston, Rodney exclaimed, "He'll do it, too!" When Boston was evacuated he said, "I knew it." When Washington, in the face of all sorts of difficulties, led his scattering forces in masterly retreat before the victorious British, Rodney was to say, "He's doing all that man can do." But this is getting ahead of the story, for young Allison is now on his way to the home of Richard Henry Lee, who later was to propose ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... general; but he was stained with the arts of dissimulation and an intense ambition, and sacrificed public liberties and rights to cement his power. Even Diocletian, tyrant and persecutor as he was, was distinguished for masterly abilities, and was the greatest statesman whom the empire saw, with the exception of Augustus. Such a despot as Tiberius ruled with justice and ability. Constantine ranks with the greatest monarchs of antiquity. The vices ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... "His escape from the hotel might have been effected by any clever thief. What I think more remarkable is the means he took to prevent the Princess from screaming when he was just leaving her rooms: that really was masterly. Instead of trying to get her as far away as possible and shut her up in her bedroom, to take her with him to the very door opening on to the corridor, where the faintest cry might have involved the worst possible consequences, and to be sure that the terror he had ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... what they please, not caring whether True or False: Who can without pity see our Letter Writer accuse the Famous La Bruyere, for being accessary to the declining of the French Tongue, by his Affectation; when it is notorious, that La Bruyere is the most masterly Writer of that Nation, and that his Affectation was in the Turn of his Thought, which he did to strike his Readers, who had been too much us'd to dry Lessons to receive any Impression by them. He says, he has many Hundred New Words, not to be found in the ...
— Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712) • John Oldmixon
... he calls the peoples. Mountains, too, a regular camp-meeting of them. For the same reason, the same all-sufficiency of room, our shadows march and countermarch, going through their various drills and masterly evolutions, like the old imperial guard on the Champs de Mars. As for the hills, especially where the roads cross them the supervisors of our various towns have given notice to all concerned, that they can come and dig them ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... he said, "I have listened with great care to the masterly defence of that corporation on which our material prosperity and civic welfare is founded (laughter); I have listened to the gentleman's learned discussion of the finances of that road, tending to prove that it is an eleemosynary institution on ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... been, in fact, subsequently depicted by. the masterly pencil of J.M.W.TURNER, Esq. R. A: and the picture, in which almost all the powers of that surprising Artist are concentrated, was lately offered for sale by public auction. How it was suffered to be bought in for three hundred ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... shot and see McKie return to his home, and you know it was he killed the landlord. The tension of the last scene is almost unendurable. His wife's providential lie for McKie, her agony in her knowledge of his guilt when she sees his face on his return, the man's terror, are handled with masterly firmness and sureness. To see this scene on the stage in the hands of actors worthy of it must be to know real tragedy. In this play, too, brief as is the glimpse we have into these four lives of small farmer and his wife, his farmhand and his neighbor, a neighbor of alien race and hated faith, ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... masterly," said Leon, "and he knows his art, but Fourierism has killed him. You have just seen, cousin, one of the effects of ambition upon artists. Too often, in Paris, from a desire to reach more rapidly than by natural ways the celebrity which to them is fortune, artists borrow the wings of circumstance, ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... the two sculptors Antonini if they could help me in settling the question to whom the work should be assigned, and they agreed with me that it could not be given to Gaudenzio. It is too masterly, easy, and too like the work of Velasquez in painting, to be by one who is not known to have done more in sculpture than some two score or so of figures on the Sacro Monte now remaining, and a few others that ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... Then came a masterly stroke. Germany and France were induced to co-operate with Russia in driving Japan out of Manchuria, upon the ground that her presence so near to Pekin endangered the Chinese Empire, the independence of Korea and the peace of the Orient. So in the hour of her triumph Japan ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... distinctly stated it. Chemistry, Biology, and Sociology, leaving Astronomy and Physics aside for the present, are not yet Positive Sciences, in any such sense as Mathematics. The lack of exact analysis is apparent in all of Comte's generalizations, otherwise magnificent and masterly as they undoubtedly are. In respect to the matter under consideration, it renders his Classification unavailing for determining with sufficient precision and exactitude the character of any intellectual ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... woven into a symmetrical story of the progress from ignorance and theory to knowledge and the intelligent recording of fact is prodigious.... The 'goal' to which Mr. Clodd leads us in so masterly a fashion is but the starting point of fresh achievements, and, in due course, fresh theories. His book furnishes an important contribution to a liberal ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... Instilled with life, color and individuality, this story of true love cannot fail to attract and hold to its happy end the reader's eager attention. The word pictures are masterly; while the poise of narrative and ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... be one name which has been doomed to run the gauntlet, and against which every pert and insolent political declaimer has had his fling, it is that of this unfortunate writer; yet in his short but masterly and unanswerable "Advertisement to the Jurymen of England, touching Witches, together with a difference between an English and Hebrew Witch," first published in 1653, 4to., he has addressed himself so ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... St. Ouen 'surpasses the cathedral in size, purity of style, masterly execution, and splendid, but judicious decoration, and is inferior only in its historic monuments. It is one of the noblest and most perfect Gothic edifices in the world.' Thus it has been described ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... four months later, M. de Bragadin taught me another of his masterly lessons. I had become acquainted, through Zawoiski, with a Frenchman called L'Abbadie, who was then soliciting from the Venetian Government the appointment of inspector of the armies of the Republic. The senate appointed, and I presented him to my protector, who promised him ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... of all Peter Challoner's hard-gotten millions, the heiress, too, it was evident, of his attitude toward the world, the flesh and the devil; Peter Challoner, by profession banker and captain of industry, a man whose name was remembered the breadth of the land for his masterly manipulation of a continental railroad which eventually came under his control; an organizer of trusts, a patron saint of political lobbyists, a product of the worst and of the best of modern business! This girl who had fallen like a bright meteor across ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... and beribboned bosoms of his illustrious compatriots heaved with emotion; their faces—or such parts of their faces as were visible above the whiskerline—flushed with enthusiasm, and most vociferously they applauded his masterly phrasing and his tracing-out of the evolution of the tango, all the way from its Genesis, as it were, to its Revelation. I judge the revelation particularly appealed to them—that part of it appeals ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... Baxter's description of Isadore's rage. The furious cook took a cab and drove directly to Baxter's hotel. The wording of Monsieur Isadore's volcanic remarks I cannot state, but he butchered, cut up, roasted, carved, peppered, and salted Rounders's moral and social character in such a masterly way that Baxter laughed himself hoarse. The fiery cook would have left my service then and there if Baxter had not assured him that if the gilded reptile ever dined with him again Isadore should be informed beforehand, that he might have nothing ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... quiet, dear," said Mrs Verloc, with authority and tenderness; then turning towards her husband in an indifferent voice, the masterly achievement of instinctive tact: "Are you going out ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... KEENE's life-work is to be found in the innumerable cuts which he contributed to Punch during a period of nearly forty years; and still more in the originals of these, the masterly pen-and-ink drawings which are now for the first time shown in a collected ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... done, so far as is at present known, by the Sarvastivadins (Realists), who in the century before and after Christ produced a fresh set of seven Abhidhamma books. These are lost in India, but still exist in Chinese translations. The translations have been analysed in a masterly way by Professor Takakusu in the article mentioned below, They deal only with psychological ethics. In the course of further centuries these hooks in turn were superseded by new treatises; and in one school at least, that of the Maha-yana (great Vehicle) there was eventually ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... be brought into personal contact with Charlotte Lee Weyland, the grim and resolute collector. Various stratagems were proposed, amid much merriment. But the collector herself adhered to her original idea of a masterly waiting game. ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Elk, until the 26th of September when it entered Philadelphia, the campaign had been active, and the duties of the American general uncommonly arduous. The best English writers bestow high encomiums on Sir William Howe for his military skill, and masterly movements during this period. At Brandywine especially, Washington is supposed to have been "outgeneraled, more outgeneraled than in any action during the war." If all the operations of this trying period be examined, and the means in possession ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... was making an impression on, the unwilling judge. Every few minutes O'Connell would say: "Now, my lord, my learned young friend beside me, had your lordship heard him, would have informed your lordship in a more impressive and lucid manner than I can hope to do," etcetera, until he finished a masterly address. The Lord Chancellor next morning gave judgment in favour of ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... something to have done for your generation. To have moved the feelings and widened the knowledge of thousands by such delicate, such marvellous, such conscientious work as hers—there is an achievement so great, so masterly, that I for one will ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Ruville's important and masterly work, William Pitt, Graf von Chatham, 3 vols., Stuttgart and Berlin, 1905, appeared while this book was in ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... time the courts of the East India Company still followed the Muhammadan criminal law, as modified by the Regulations. The Indian Penal Code of 1869 placed the substantive criminal law on a thoroughly scientific basis. This code was framed with such masterly skill that to this day it has needed little material amendment. The first Criminal Procedure Code, passed in 1861, has been twice recast. The law of evidence was codified by Sir James FitzJames Stephen in the Indian Evidence ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... his masterly statement, the Prime Minister rose and complimented him on his zealous desire to benefit the people of Ireland, but at the same time declared that the Government did not think employment on the construction of railways the best suited to meet the general distress in that country; he did ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... this grand hymn of faith forgets the incident of Gladstone writing a Latin translation of it while sitting in the House of Commons. That remarkable man was as masterly in his scholarly recreations as in his statesmanship. The supreme Christian sentiment of the hymn had permeated his soul till it spoke to him in a dead language as eloquently as in the living one; and this is ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... the fall of Warsaw was sympathetically represented as a masterly operation, and the failure of the Germans to envelop and isolate the Russian armies as proof of the breakdown of their strategy. But all retreats in the war, with the exception of the Turks' before Allenby, ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... widening, it flowed seaward. We hurried down to the foot of Doe's garden, where a rustic boat-house sheltered his private vessel, the Lady Fal. Doe stepped into its stern, and I into its bows, and Radley took the oars. With a few masterly manoeuvres he turned the boat into midstream, and then pulled a rapid and powerful stroke towards Tresillian Creek, where we had decided to bathe. We touched the bank at a suitable landing-place, ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... while I tell thee of them," she replied with masterly diplomacy. "It is good, the omelet. Virginie made it for thee with her ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... is for the most part a masterly presence of mind, an absolute self-possession, which nothing can disturb. His repartees are involuntary suggestions of his self-love; instinctive evasions of everything that threatens to interrupt the career of his triumphant jollity and self-complacency. His very size floats him out ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... more godly, wiser and better than my mother and I, and all his masterly eloquence only proved the contrary to me; and yet I saw that my mother was servile to him and adopted from him what he again had adopted from the large group of his equals and kindred spirits, and that all this took place without their realizing it, through personal influence, ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... dangerous pits and bogs, when Maclean of Lochbuy, who led the van of the enemy's army, advanced and charged him with great fury. Mackenzie, according to his pre-arranged plan, at once retreated, but in so masterly a manner that, in doing so, he inflicted as much damage on the enemy as he received. The Islesmen speedily got entangled in the moss, and Duncan Mackenzie observing this, rushed forth from his ambush and furiously attacked them in flank and rear, killing ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... demanded, half-eagerly, half-masterly, "tell me about yourself. You are new to the Inside. Where were you before ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... society nor the critics ever forgave him, and did not even do justice to his genius. His espousal of the popular cause in Europe embittered the conservative element, and the freedom of speculation in such masterly works as 'Cain' brought upon him the anathemas of orthodox England. Henceforth in England his poetry was judged by his liberal and unorthodox opinions. This vituperation rose to its height when Byron dared to satirize George III., and to expose mercilessly in 'Don Juan' the hypocrisy ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... disposed to reject the whole, on the same plea. But if ever there was a poet who needed to be thus "parted"—the word is his own—it is he who wrote both narrowly for his time and liberally for all time, and who—this is the more important character of his poetry—had both a style and a manner: a masterly style, a magical style, a too dainty manner, nearly a trick; a noble landscape and in it figures something ready-made. He is a subject for our alternatives of feeling, nay, our conflicts, as is hardly another poet. We may deeply admire and wonder, and, ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... of the writing, which is infectious enough, and the music of certain passages in which we foretaste the masterly prose of Hazlitt's later Essays, I find in the book three merits which, as I study it, more and more efface that first ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... Clay's masterly conduct on this occasion added his name to the long list of gentlemen who were mentioned for the succession to Mr. Monroe in 1825. If the city of Washington had been the United States, if the House ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... Knut Hamsun's most significant work, but it gives the very best description available of life in Christiania toward the close of the century. A book of exquisite lyric beauty, of masterly psychology, and finished artistic form, it is so rich in idea and life that one must refrain from touching on the contents in order to keep within the narrow limits of this essay. A most superbly delicate delineation of the feminine soul is ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... impression it made was most profound. If the Catholic Church has figured on the influence of statuary and painting on the superstitious, as has been tauntingly said, she has reckoned well. The story of steadfast love and loyalty is masterly told in that first great work of Michelangelo. The artist himself often mingled with the crowds that surrounded his speaking marble, and the people who knelt before it assured him by their reverence that his hand had wrought well. And once he heard ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... husband happened to be rustier than usual. He was our professor in science. It was the general belief that he chose science for his life-work because it gave unusual opportunities for torture. He was believed to be a devoted vivisectionist; he certainly had methods of cruelty, masterly in their ingenuity. He could make a whole class raw with punishment in a few words; and many a scorching bit of Latin verse was written about his hooked nose and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... humble duty to your Majesty, and has the honour to report that in the debate of last night Viscount Palmerston defended the whole Foreign Policy of the Government in a speech of four hours and three quarters.[22] This speech was one of the most masterly ever delivered, going through the details of transactions in the various parts of the world, and appealing from time to time to great principles of justice ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... View of, it would perhaps, be one of the most Melancholy Prospects that ever he beheld. To look into our Modern Plays, and there to see the Differences of Good and Evil confounded, Prophaneness, Irreligion, and Unlawful Love, made the masterly Stroaks of the fine Gentleman; Swearing, Cursing, and Blaspheming, the Graces of his Conversation; and Unchristian Revenge, to consummate the Character of the Hero; Sharpness and Poignancy of Wit exerted with the greatest Vigor against the ...
— Representation of the Impiety and Immorality of the English Stage (1704); Some Thoughts Concerning the Stage in a Letter to a Lady (1704) • Anonymous
... be any person, at any future period, absurd enough to suspect that Johnson was a partaker in Lauder's fraud, or had any knowledge of it, when he assisted him with his masterly pen, it is proper here to quote the words of Dr. Douglas, now Bishop of Salisbury, at the time when he detected the imposition. 'It is to be hoped, nay it is expected, that the elegant and nervous writer, whose judicious sentiments and inimitable style point out ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... put under arrest. Morgan risks his life to save them. The final escape, the thrilling encounter with a squad of red coats, when they are exposed equally to the bullets of friends and foes, told in a masterly fashion, makes of this volume one of the most ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... dealing with the political situation which Gregory confronted, Catherine speaks without reserve. The suggestions concerning practical matters with which the letter closes are lucid and to the point. Altogether, it is a masterly document which the daughter of Jacopo Benincasa despatches to the Head of Christendom. Reading it, one finds no difficulty in understanding the influence which, as the sequel shows, she established over the sensitive and religious if weak spirit ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... due to the artistic treatment. The jealousy of Leontes, in 'The Winter's Tale', of Shakespeare, is nobility itself, in comparison with the Duke's. How distinctly, while indirectly, the sweet Duchess is, with a few masterly touches, placed before us! The poet shows his artistic skill especially ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... into their future, with a real future before them, with an unexplained life to live: not goblets whose contents have been drained, but fountains that still flow when the traveller who drank from them has passed on. Jarno, for example, a man of firm and definite outlines, and drawn here with masterly distinctness, without a blur or a wavering of the hand in the whole delineation, is yet the unexplained, unexhausted Jarno, when the book closes. He goes forward with the rest, known and yet unknown, a man of very definite limitations, and yet also of possibilities which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... absolutely fascinating. The background is Japanese. Mme. Charpentier is seated on a canopy surrounded by furniture, flowers; under foot a carpet with arabesque designs. She throws one arm carelessly over some rich stuff; the hand is painted with masterly precision. The other arm has dropped in her lap. She is an interesting woman of that fine maternal type so often encountered in real France—though not in French fiction, alas! Her gaze is upon her children, two ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... attacked, and its author accused of bidding for a place at Court, Defoe made a spirited rejoinder, and seized the occasion to place his arguments in still clearer light. Between them the two pamphlets are a masterly exposition, from the point of view of English interests, of the danger of permitting the Will to be fulfilled. He tears the arguments of his opponents to pieces with supreme scorn. What matters it to us who is King of Spain? asks ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... for Mary the cookmaid to vent her budget of nothings, and for Mrs. Harris to gossip with the deaf old housekeeper. Oh, when shall we have such another Rector of Laracor!—The Tale of a Tub is one of the most masterly compositions in the language, whether for thought, wit, or style. It is so capital and undeniable a proof of the author's talents, that Dr. Johnson, who did not like Swift, would not allow that he wrote it. It is hard that the same performance should stand in the way of a man's ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... for the gallant and hopeless assault upon Quebec in which he lost his life; Charles Lee for disobeying Washington's orders at the battle of Monmouth and provoking the great Virginian to an historic outburst of rage; Nathanael Greene for his masterly conduct of the war in the South; Horatio Gates, first for a victory over Burgoyne which he did very little to bring about, and second for his ill-starred attempt to supplant Washington ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... inevitably have perished had it not been founded and supported by a power altogether divine" (Pascal's Thoughts p. 95. Lond. 1886). Whoever wishes to see this comparison carried farther, may consult the masterly sermons of Professor White, preached before the University of Oxford at the Bampton Lecture. These contain a view of Christianity and Mahometanism, in their history, their evidence and their effects pp. ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... first time the foundation of Celtic research was laid; but the great philologist did not live to see the superstructure which never could have been raised but for him. Prichard was first to indicate the right path, and Bopp, in his monograph of 1839, displayed his incomparable and masterly sagacity as usual, but for want of any trustworthy record of Celtic words and forms to work upon, the truth remained concealed or obscured until the publication of the Gramatica Celtica. Dr. Arnold, ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... that time heard quite enough, Tolly Trevor effected a masterly retreat, and returned to the place where he had left the horses. On the way he recalled with satisfaction the fact that Paul Bevan had once pointed out to him the exact direction of Simpson's Gully at a time when he meant to send him on an errand thither. "You've on'y to go over there, lad," ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... masterly; every feminine weapon had been brought into effective action; and the surrender of Roddy was sudden, and complete. In ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... accompanied in some editions by observations of Wendrock (Nicole), likewise in the French language. Now such an assertion merely proves how carelessly some annotators will study the subjects they attempt to elucidate. Nicole translated into Latin the Provincial Letters; and the masterly disquisitions which he added to the volume were, in their turn, "made French" by Mademoiselle de Joncoux, and annexed to the editions ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 48, Saturday, September 28, 1850 • Various
... clique in Quebec whose family compact he had resolutely condemned. Yet he had builded better than England or Canada or himself then knew, and his tireless energy and imagination left behind him the material for a sound structure. Besides the masterly report of his commission, a visible, if less important, monument to his beneficent work for Canada still stands in the magnificent terrace at Quebec, known to-day under an improved form and by another name, yet in a larger measure his conception and his achievement. ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... be added after all that has been said about light and atmosphere in connection with Titian and Tintoretto, and their handling of real life, that Bassano's treatment of both was even more masterly. If this were not so, neither picture-fanciers of his own time, nor we nowadays, should care for his works as we do. They represent life in far more humble phases than even the pictures of Tintoretto, and, without recompensing effects of light and atmosphere, ...
— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson
... pretty picture: the workman, with his superb hand, brown and sinewy, yet elegant and shapely as a duchess's, and the fingers almost as taper, and his black eye that glowed like a coal over the model, which grew under his masterly strokes, now hard, now light: the enchanting girl who sat to him, and seemed on fire with curiosity and innocent admiration: and the simple rural beauty, that plied the needle, and beamed mildly with demure happiness, and shot a shy glance upward ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... not write the Fourth Gospel, at least his influence seems to be felt all through it. The probability is that he knew what was in it, and approved of it, although the actual composition may have been by another, possibly a very learned Greek. To me, the Fourth Gospel is the most masterly work ever composed by man. It stands absolutely alone. The criticism that John, being a Jew, could not have composed it, falls before the greater truth that, having become a Christian, he was no longer a Jew. He was a new creature. For how could he have been other, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... on the "Phrenological doctrines of Gall, their past and present status," is grand and masterly, and whets the appetite for what is promised in continuation. We hope our readers will give attention to this one article; it is worth the whole price of the magazine."—Medium ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... saying that he loved her, loved her. Did she understand? That he had been miserable? His defense was masterly. He played on her imagination delicately, as if she were a harp, and his fingers touched the strings. He realized what a cad he must have seemed. But she was a saint in a shrine—it will be seen that he did not hesitate to borrow from Randy. She was a saint in a shrine, and well, he knelt at ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... the state of things, it was determined to take the opinion of some eminent engineer, and Mr. Rennie was employed to survey the district and recommend a measure for the remedy of these great evils. He performed this service in his usually careful and masterly manner; but as the method which he proposed, complete though it was, would have seriously interfered with the trade of Wisbeach, by leaving it out of the line of navigation and drainage which he proposed to open up, the corporation of that town determined to ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... ideas of honour the head of a duke, whose heart could never be taught to feel its manly glow. Princes had flown to the arms of their favourite fair ones with more rapturous delight, softened by the masterly touches of his art: and these elevated personages, ever grateful to those from whom they receive benefits, were competitors in the desire of heaping favours upon him. But he, in all his advantages, never once lost for ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... F. Smith, Chief Engineer, I feel under more than ordinary obligations for the masterly manner in which he discharged the duties of his position, and desire that his services be fully ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... seen and pondered over the plan of campaign which Buonaparte had designed for the Army of Italy; and the vigour of the conception, the masterly appreciation of topographical details which it displayed, and the trenchant energy of its style had struck conviction to his strategic genius. Buonaparte owed his command, not to a backstairs intrigue, as was currently believed in the army, but rather to his own commanding powers. ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... pamphleteering Tolstoy's treatment of the second story, the national saga, is masterly at every point. If we could forget the original promise of the book as lightly as its author does, nothing could be more impressive than his pictures of the two hugely-blundering masses, Europe and Russia, ponderously colliding at the apparent dictation of a few limited brains—so few, ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... sorry to have been in the wrong, when one's errors are pointed out to one in so obliging and masterly a manner. Whatever opinion I may have of Shakspeare, I should think him to blame, if he could have seen the letter you have done me the honour to -write to me, and yet not conform to the rules you have there laid down. When he lived, there ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... kinds of expedients without success; and his invention, excellent though it was in principle, seemed doomed to failure, when his foreman, Henry Maudslay,[35] solved the problem in a simple but most masterly manner. He had a recess turned in the neck of the cylinder at the point formerly occupied by the stuffing-box, and into this a leather collar of U-section (marked solid black in Fig. 180) was placed with ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... boy's taste for adventure without being sensational. The pictures are handsomely executed. A Sunday-school lesson each week by Rev. Dr. Strobridge. Its articles on scientific subjects are of the best, its short stories good, and, in fact, it is a masterly combination of useful and ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... then went on to give in his masterly way the advantages and disadvantages of the several objectives open to him as the goal of his march, reserving to himself finally the choice between three,—Savannah, Mobile, and Pensacola,—trusting to Richmond papers to keep Grant well advised of ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... army of Italy had been unable to penetrate into Austria, and although the masterly strategy of Marlborough had hitherto warded off the destruction with which the cause of the allies seemed menaced at the beginning of the campaign, the peril was still most serious. It was absolutely necessary for Marlborough ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... said the Colonel drily. "I was about to tax her with it. Hence her masterly retreat. But she was not deliberately eavesdropping or she would not have given herself away so openly. I quite agree with you, my dear. A match between her and Sir Eustace would not be suitable. And I also think Sir Eustace would be the first to ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... Drinkwater, born in 1882, is best known as the author of Abraham Lincoln—A Play (1919) founded on Lord Charnwood's masterly and analytical biography. He has published several volumes of poems, most of them meditative and ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... political party, as was shown by the instance he cited where his own paper had exposed the corrupt Democratic ring in Pokono County and had put in its place a group of Republican patriots. Doctor Todd, however, said afterward that Boller had treated the subject in masterly fashion and that he was proud that McGraw had had its part in forming such a mind. While I had listened to Boller in all seriousness, the Professor's diatribe was too vividly in my memory for me to accept without reservation everything that our distinguished ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... "The masterly man has an eye to virtue, the common man, to earthly things; the former has an eye to penalties for error—the ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... "We perceive the same masterly and original analysis of character, the same truth of description as in the very remarkable story of West of Ireland life by which the author is ...
— Mr. Murray's List of New and Recent Publications July, 1890 • John Murray
... in particular to Mr. James Mill's Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, where the principal laws of association, along with many of their applications, are copiously exemplified, and with a masterly hand.(270) ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... yielding to a heroic and self-devoting impulse of humanity. Cimourdain, true to his temperament, insists on his instant execution. Gauvain, true also to his temperament, is seized with a thousand misgivings, and there is no more ample, original, and masterly presentation of a case of conscience, that in civil war is always common enough, than the struggle through which Gauvain passes before he can resolve to deliver Lantenac. This pathetic debate—"the stone of Sisyphus, which is ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... authorities, distant travel, the purchase of rare books and family papers, and sometimes years of busy reference, observation, and study, lucrative only in prospect. The same amount of culture and facile vigor of composition which less prosperous authors expend on a masterly review would suffice to make them famous historians, if blessed with the pecuniary means to seek foreign sources of information, or gather about them scattered and rare materials wherewith to weave a chronicle of the past. Hence, not only has ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... the title of The Sacred and Historical Books of Ceylon, translations of what professed to be authentic copies of the Mahawanso, the Rajaratnacari, and Rajavali; prepared for the use of Sir Alexander Johnston when Chief-Justice of the island. But Turnour, in the introduction to his masterly translation of the Mahawanso; has shown that Sir Alexander had been imposed upon, and that the alleged transcripts supplied to him are imperfect as regards the original text and unfaithful as translations. ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... Hair of the sage and eyes of the poet, Features perfectly drawn and as mobile As those of the inspired actor; With speech so much blander than honey And insight that maketh his staged stumbling in bargains Cover the shrewdness of a masterly trader. None better than he knoweth the crowd and its likings, As to using the patter of drama artistic, That's where he lives. With incense and color and scenery He refilleth the bottle of art so that the contents Go twice better than in the original package. Thanks be ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton
... relief depicting his birth, and Verrocchio that of his death, which is considered one of the most remarkable works of this sculptor, whom we are to find so richly represented at the Bargello. Before leaving this room, look for 100^3, an unknown terra-cotta of the Birth of Eve, which is both masterly and amusing, and 110^4, a very lovely intaglio in wood. I might add that among the few paintings, all very early, is a S. Sebastian in whose sacred body I counted no fewer than thirty arrows; which within my knowledge ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... they loved me, to pick up a certain darling of the gods named Nell. Only I made it stronger and more explicit than that, and knew they would comply if such a thing were humanly possible. But this pet scheme I intended to keep from Tommy. It would repay him for his masterly scheme of ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... dark, and Kitty felt not a little nervous as she guided Prue through the gate leading into the Manor grounds; for the turning was an awkward one, and the gate not wide. She managed it, however, and drove along the drive and drew up before the door in quite a masterly fashion. ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... Tartars, while not exhibiting the highest achievement of the author's power, nevertheless belongs in the group of writings wherein his peculiar excellences are fairly manifested. The obvious quality of its realism has been pointed out already; the masterly use of the principles of suspense and stimulated interest will hardly pass unnoticed. A negative excellence is the absence of that discursiveness in composition, that tendency to digress into superfluous ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... Sidney but a plain commoner, this was a most daring act. But this was not the limit of his daring. Incensed at the injustice done his father, Sidney indited a most memorable letter to the queen, which was at once a masterly defence of Sir Henry and a trenchant attack on the queen's favorite, Ormond. Strange to say, Queen Elizabeth seemed to be influenced by Sidney's plain and fearless statements, for she sometime thereafter treated his father ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... confidence of the commercial world." We now, however, quit the subject—interesting, indeed, and all-important—of the tariff, with the deliberate expression of our opinion, that it is, taken as a whole, a very bold, masterly, and successful stroke of policy. Now ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... a magnificent black animal called "Fire-eater." On horseback General Johnston appeared to distinct advantage. The masterly manner in which he sat his horse attracted the attention of the commander in chief of the army, Thomas J. Rusk, during the Texan Revolution, and procured him the appointment of adjutant general over several eager ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... business encouraged the outcry for the total abolition of big business, because they knew that they could not be hurt in this way, and that such an outcry distracted the attention of the public from the really efficient method of controlling and supervising them, in just but masterly fashion, which was advocated by the sane representatives of reform. However, we succeeded in making a good beginning by securing the passage of a law creating the Department of Commerce and Labor, and with it the erection of the Bureau of Corporations. The first ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... Marley replied. "So long as the man in the hospital remains unconscious I can do no more than pursue what Beaconsfield called 'a policy of masterly inactivity.' I have told you a good deal more than I had any right to do, but I did so in the hope that you could assist me. Perhaps in a day or two you will think better ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... had gone to find some good wars. At seventeen Edmund Spenser had first published. Before he was twenty, Alexander Farnese, Prince of Parma, and the greatest general of Sidney's time, had revealed his masterly genius. At twenty-one Don John of Austria had been commander-in-chief against the Moors. The Prince of Conde and Henry of Navarre were leaders while they were yet boys. At twenty Francis Drake sailed, a captain, with John Hawkins; and ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... same, he held on, and the House gave him that quiet sympathy and support that it can give when it likes a fellow. And gradually you could see the life come back into him—and the ambition. By George! he did well in that trade-union business before Easter; and the bill that's on now—it's masterly, the way in which he's piloting it through! The House positively likes to be managed by him; it's a sight worthy of our best political traditions. Oh yes, Ashe will go far; and, thank God, that wretched little woman—what has become of her, ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... nor school will raise a warning finger between a man and his hunger and his wife's catering. So on nearly every day in his life Mr. Polly fell into a violent rage and hatred against the outer world in the afternoon, and never suspected that it was this inner world to which I am with such masterly delicacy alluding, that was thus reflecting its sinister disorder upon the things without. It is a pity that some human beings are not more transparent. If Mr. Polly, for example, had been transparent or even passably translucent, then perhaps ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... manner; and there came to him on the spot a very great desire and so violent a love for that art, that without losing time he began to scratch drawings of animals and figures on walls and stones with pieces of charcoal or with the point of his knife, in so masterly a manner that it caused no small marvel to all who saw them. The fame of this new study of Andrea's then began to spread among the peasants; whereupon, as his good-fortune would have it, the matter coming to the ears of a Florentine gentleman named Bernardetto de' Medici, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... Native Infantry, and her Majesty's 13th Light Infantry, under Brigadier Sale. I ordered forward three troops of horse artillery, the camel battery, and one foot battery, to open upon the citadel and fortress, by throwing shrapnel shells, which was done in a masterly style under the direction of Brigadier Stephenson. My object in this was to make the enemy shew their strength in guns, and in other respects, which completely succeeded, and our shells must have done great execution, and occasioned great consternation. Being ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... portraits whose titles stand at the head of our notice, we have in one way and another all of the conditions we have spoken of fulfilled. Rowse's portrait of Emerson is one of the most masterly and subtile records of the character of a signal man, nay, the most masterly, we have ever seen. Those who know Emerson best will recognize him most fully in it. It represents him in his most characteristic mood, the subtile intelligence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... on Ruggles in this masterly manner, Bidwell sat down, slung one leg over the other, and relit his pipe. The oppressive silence was broken by a prodigious ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... language no other odes of the sublime kind than that of Dryden on St. Cecilia's Day; for Cowley (who had his merit) yet wanted judgment, style, and harmony, for such a task. That of Pope is not worthy of so great a man. Mr. Mason, indeed, of late days, has touched the true chords, and with a masterly hand, in some of his choruses; above all in the last ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... shows two large and graceful figures,—Mary and the Angel Gabriel, the subject being the Annunciation. A wreath of angels and flowers surrounds the whole, with small medallions representing the seven joys of the Virgin. It is a masterly work, and was presented by Anton Tucher in 1518. Veit Stoss was the leading figure among wood carvers of the Renaissance, although Albrecht Duerer combined this with his many ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... and repeat them one year differently than in another. Hence, choose whatever form you please, and adhere to it forever. But when you preach in the presence of learned and intelligent men, you may exhibit your skill and may present these parts in as varied and intricate ways and give them as masterly turns as you are able. But with the young people stick to one fixed, permanent form and manner, and teach them, first of all, these parts, namely, the Ten Commandments, the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, etc., according to the ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... light-hearted moods were those which she most resented. She was never sure whether he was in reality tactless, or frankly brutal. She inclined to the latter view of his character, because he always showed such masterly skill in excusing himself when he had gone too far. Neither his wisdom nor his love of jesting explained to her the powerful attraction he exercised over her whole nature, and of which she was, in a manner, ashamed. ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... can be no doubt that he would have acted with the Republican Party had he lived to the period of its organization. He was one of the three distinguished persons who were born in the county of Essex early in the century—Cushing, Choate and Rantoul. In masterly ability Choate was the chief, unquestionably. In the profession, neither Cushing nor Rantoul could compare with Choate, although in learning Cushing may have been his rival. In knowledge of diplomacy and international law neither Choate ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... "help" that watches the clock. These things exist—let us dispose of the subject by admitting it, and then emphasize the fact that freckled farmer boys come out of the West and East and often go to the front and do things in a masterly way. There is one name that stands out in history like a beacon light after all these twenty-five hundred years have passed, just because the man had the sublime genius of discovering Ability. That man is Pericles. ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... London life shows this talented and increasingly popular author at his best. The subtle character study of two sisters, Anna and Annabel, is masterly. The latter "got herself talked about" when she and her sister lived in Paris, and when Sir John Ferringham proposed to her, believing her to be Anna, she keeps up the delusion. The consequences of this bold deception Mr. Oppenheim has unfolded to us with remarkable ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... customs, and spirit pervade the book, either described at some length or indicated by a masterly allusion. All kinds of girls are depicted, as all kinds of girls go to college—girls poor and rich, clever, dull, and commonplace, refined and unrefined, the unsubstantial and the dilettante, and those with ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... him. And by good chance, too, the post brought a famed "Review," copying entire the brilliant fellow's essay on "American Politics," with the editor's comment of "masterly." ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... the deception practised upon Captain Severn. There was nothing for it but bravely to face this risk. As for that other fact, which many men of a feebler spirit would have deemed an invincible obstacle, Luttrel's masterly understanding had immediately converted it into the prime agent of success,—the fact, namely, that Gertrude's heart was preoccupied. Such knowledge as he possessed of the relations between Miss ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... life against the taste of his time, which was unable to appreciate his merit. He was too natural for an artificial age. Among the pictures exhibited here is one from his famous series of the Harlot's Progress. It is too well known by the engravings to need description; but when the eight masterly pictures which compose this series were sold at auction during Hogarth's life, they brought the sum of fourteen guineas each! The March of the Guards to Finchley, so admirable in composition, so full of incident and character, so rich in humor, could not be sold by the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... masterly letter-writer this account of him will, I feel, have already suggested. He was vivid, picturesque, and attractive to a high degree. The place he lived in when he was taking a country holiday was ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey |
