"Mastery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... play: Dissolve the frozen purity of air; Let thy white shoulders silvery and bare 590 Shew cold through watery pinions; make more bright The Star-Queen's crescent on her marriage night: Haste, haste away!— Castor has tamed the planet Lion, see! And of the Bear has Pollux mastery: A third is in the race! who is the third, Speeding away swift as the eagle bird? The ramping Centaur! The Lion's mane's on end: the Bear how fierce! The Centaur's arrow ready seems to pierce 600 Some enemy: far forth his bow is bent Into the blue of heaven. He'll be shent, Pale unrelentor, ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... had no more than touched the new deck when I became electrified with a glorious feeling of possession, of mastery. Immediately I seemed to know just what to do, where to go; and my first move was another headlong rush at the companionway door, bursting it in with a kick and springing quickly aside—ready, listening; being for the time shielded from a fusillade of expected shots. And, because these were ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... had been no need to handle so plain a matter as this is with so many words, and so at length, if we had not to do with those men who, for a desire they have to strive and to win the mastery, use of course to deny all things, be they never so clear—yea, the very same which they presently see and behold with their own eyes. The Emperor Justinian made a law to correct the behaviour of the clergy, and ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel
... he said to the artist, with a mastery over his emotion rendered less difficult by the single glance at that tranquil face. "I wish you joy. All happiness to you, Miss Mordaunt. You ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not the first time that Fra Angelico had painted large mural frescoes. As he had already shown at Fiesole his mastery in that more minute style, which was to find more complete expression in the Roman pictures, so the convent of San Marco gave him scope to prove his genius also in this freer branch of art. In the cloisters, the corridors, the cells, and the rooms in which the monks met together, we ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... the men reached out and seized them, springing to their feet, and standing, with quivering muscles and tremulous hands, as the struggle between inherited instinct and acquired fear went on for the mastery of their beings. ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... chance on it, as their vessels were often merely hides stretched on wattles, resembling enlarged coracles. Yet with such rude ships as they had, they reached Orkney, Shetland, the Faroes and Iceland as hermits or missionaries.[10] In Norse times they never had the mastery of the sea, and the Pictish navy is a ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... moving also to form another link in the steel chain that was intended to bind the Confederacy in the west. Here again the mastery of the rivers was of supreme value to the North. Buell embarked his army on boats on Green River in the very heart of Kentucky, descended that river to the Ohio, passing down the latter to Smithland, where the Cumberland, ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... smallest sign of relenting from his grim purpose, had he so much as couched his question in terms of kindness, he might have melted her even then; for she was impulsive ever and quick to respond to any warmth. But the coldness of his question, the unyielding mastery of his manner, impelled her to final rebellion. In the moment that intervened between his question and her reply ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... possible for a clever man three hundred years ago to learn all that science could show him without interference with the acquisition of the special knowledge required to fit him for the attainment of eminence in a technical study, or the technical mastery in the working it out, but now the range of a liberal education is so great that those who are required to take respectable rank in a specialty must devote themselves exclusively to it, during the years in which alone technical mastery is possible of acquirement. ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... to take. No woman, I think, will be hard upon him because of his breach of faith to Mrs Hurtle. But they will be very hard on him on the score of his cowardice,—as, I think, unjustly. In social life we hardly stop to consider how much of that daring spirit which gives mastery comes from hardness of heart rather than from high purpose, or true courage. The man who succumbs to his wife, the mother who succumbs to her daughter, the master who succumbs to his servant, is as often brought to servility by a continual ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... gradually, for the wish to hear more gained the mastery. The old man closed his eyes, as if to see distant things more distinctly in his soul, and continued,—"When the disciples had lamented in this way, Mary of Magdala rushed in a second time, crying that she had seen the Lord. Unable to recognize him, she thought him the gardener: but He said, ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... "You demand mastery over the past, a conception of the future. Has not the art that is truly noble for its domain the future and the past? You would conjure the invisible beings to your charm; and what is painting but the fixing into substance the Invisible? Are you discontented with this world? This ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... and retaliation. One of these skirmishes has been more particularly dwelt on, by the historians of Kentucky, than any of the others; on account, probably, of the desperate and sanguinary struggle for mastery between the two contending parties, and the cruel desertion, at a time of need, of a portion of the whites; by which means the Indians had advantage of numbers, that otherwise would have been equally opposed. We allude to what is ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... no hope for me, no true repentance,—" Again that expression on Harry King's face filled Larry's heart with deep pity. An inward terror seemed to convulse his features and throw a pallor as of age and years of sorrow into his visage. Then he continued, after a moment of self-mastery: "No true repentance for me but to go back and take the punishment. For this winter I will live here in peace, and do for Madam Manovska and her daughter what I can, and anything I can do for you,—then I must return and give myself up. The ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... shouts of men who strive for mastery," and as he spoke, the fire of the warrior kindled ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... two angels within us forever struggling for the mastery: One is the angel of darkness, and the other of light—of ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... was a very innocent vanity, and he would have been willing to suffer for her mother and for herself, if she had let him. I have tried to insinuate how she would not let him, but freed him as much as possible from the stress of the situation, and assumed for him a mastery, a primacy, which he would never have assumed for himself. We thought this very pretty of her, and in fact she was capable of pretty things. What was hard and arrogant in her, and she was not without something of the kind at times, was like her mother; but even she, poor soul, had her ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... may we expect?" I said, Prove to me that I shall not be thwarted again, and I will shoot or do anything to create good-will. Then appointing three men as Sumunter's advisers to hold him in restraint in case any wrong-headedness on his part should get the mastery of him, I begged they would proceed. This proved successful for the time. Sumunter wrote me a letter, stating his intention of abject servitude, and ratified it by presenting his spear and shield, through the hands of the interpreter, for me to return to him as an acknowledgment that ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... existence of two equal first principles, Adonai and Lucifer, it regards the latter as the god of light and goodness, while the Christian Adonai is the prince of darkness and the veritable Satan. It is inferred from the condition of the world at the present time that the mastery of the moment resides with the evil principle, and that the beneficent Deity is at a disadvantage. Adonai reigns surely, as the Christian believes, but he is the author of human misery, and Jesus is the Christ of Adonai, but he is the messenger of ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... of business. She did not see the bystanders smile; she did not know there were any. To her mother's eye it was a most fair sight. Mrs. Montgomery gazed with rising emotions of pleasure and pain that struggled for the mastery, but pain at last got the better and rose very high. "How can I give thee up!" was the one thought of her heart. Unable to command herself, she rose and went to a distant part of the counter, where she seemed to be examining books; ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... over all. In his narrow berth in the cabin Joseph West lay dying. Scurvy had acted more rapidly on his delicate frame than had been expected. Despite Tom Singleton's utmost efforts and skill, the fell disease gained the mastery, and it soon became evident that this hearty and excellent man was to be taken ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... war as would aid him in solving the questions that he must face as Commander-in-Chief of the armies. With his quick mind and unusual power of logic he made rapid progress in learning the fixed and accepted rules on which all military writers agree. His mastery of the difficult science became so thorough, and his understanding of military situations so clear, that he has been called, by persons well fitted to judge, "the ablest strategist of the war." Yet he never thrust his knowledge upon his generals. He recognized that it was their duty, not his, ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... threw off his coat and vest. A few minutes later the lads were struggling on the wrestling mat, their faces dripping with perspiration, their supple young figures twisting and turning as each struggled for the mastery of the other. ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... education, which some boys will voluntarily and naturally give themselves, there needs, of course, another and more rigorous kind, which must be impressed upon them from without. The terrible difficulty of early life—the use of pastors and masters really is, that they compel boys to a distinct mastery of that which they do not wish to learn. There is nothing to be said for a preceptor who is not dry. Mr. Carlyle describes, with bitter satire, the fate of one of his heroes who was obliged to acquire whole systems of information ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... god's will hath the bird flown out on the right, for I knew when I saw him that he was a bird of omen. There is no other house more kingly than yours in the land of Ithaca; nay, ye have ever the mastery.' ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... inflammation was purely symptomatic, and as soon as he could subdue the continual nervous inclination to shrivel up the nose, which he trusted he could in time master, all would go well. But Sir Amyas attended every day for a month, yet never got the mastery of this nervous inclination. Lady Spilsbury then was persuaded it could not be nerves, it must be scrofula; and she called in Dr. Frumpton, the man for scrofula. He of course confirmed her ladyship in her opinion; for a week d——d nerves and Sir Amyas; threw in desperate ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... of this; I don't know. But we became acquainted; and I was carried away by him. Never had I met a man who showed so many brilliant sides of character; he could talk about anything, and in a way which indicated a mastery of the matter. Every ambition I cherished met with his approval; everything I longed for seemed within reach when he talked. It was a species of hypnotism, ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... one and all making ready to follow him to the colder plains of Castile, where existence was full of strife and ambition, of war and those inner wheels that ever jar and grind where politicians contend together for the mastery ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... her pretty head held high and her chin suspiciously aquiver. Colingraft hastened after her, but not without giving me a stare in which rage and wonder struggled for the mastery. ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... whole of this visit to Paris I deeply admired Gambetta, with whom I spent almost the whole of my three days. He showed to great advantage, sobered by power, rapid in his acquisition and mastery of new subjects. He had grasped the Danube difficulties and those of Newfoundland in a moment. How different from those about him, of whom Spuller, of all men in the world, was one day to be his successor—a heavy fellow, who, as long as Gambetta lived, used only to open ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... substitutions,—'cannot' in this case will be a suitable one. I find it is necessary to resume possession of the reins. Atalanta is retrograding and is rapidly losing that characteristic of speed which made her name a fitting one. There is a lack of mastery about a woman's handling of the ribbons which is quickly detected by horses, especially when they are ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... was presently seen that those who were near him fell under his dominion, and did as he bid them, and that the circle of deference to his will was always increasing around him; and soon it appeared that, tho he moved gently, he began to have mastery over a foe who was consuming his strength in mere anger. When he had conquered, he stood, as it were, with folded arms, and seemed willing to desist from strife. But also in the west there had been seen a knot of men possest for ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... what is each emblematic? The oak is emblematic of England, the life of whose people he so vividly depicted; the holly suggests his charming Christmas stories; the laurel signifies his mastery of the ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... grace, a lightness, a colloquial ease and frolic, which perhaps only heighten the effect of the serious parts, and serve as a foil to set off the unrivalled finish and melody of these latter. In these come out all Mr. Tennyson's instinctive choice of tone, his mastery of language, which always fits the right word to the right thing, and that word always the simplest one, and the perfect ear for melody which makes it superfluous to set to music poetry which, read by the veriest schoolboy, makes music of itself. The poem, we are glad to ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... Presidential campaign Mrs. Garfield had been under a mental strain, and when installed in the White House the struggle between the contending New York factions gave her great uneasiness, for she possessed a complete mastery of politics. At last she was taken ill, and called in a lady physician, a responsible middle- aged woman, homoeopathic in practice, who had sometimes attended the children. When she grew worse they summoned Dr. Pope, a homoeopath of skill and reputation, and ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... Bainrothe, and cast off all shackles of guardianship and minority, that I no longer feared the consequences of this revelation. In September we should meet on new ground. I, no more a minor, would be beyond the reach of his subtle mastery; and, until then—the time assigned for the expiration of his year of trust—he would remain in Europe, with the wide sea between us, and little probability of information through the medium ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... hands of their leaders—but upon the leaders themselves. One of these, without the least necessity, with a calculating coolness, to which he sacrifices all the feelings of a man, or under the sway of one of those ferocious instincts which at times gain the mastery over the soul, gives up a town, a village, to all the horrors of slaughter, pillage, and fire. The blood of the victims will scarcely, perhaps, have grown cold, the last gleams of the fire will not yet be extinct, ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... same memoranda, the only coolness that ever occurred between him and Scott. I need hardly repeat, what has been already distinctly stated more than once, that Scott never considered any amount of literary distinction as entitled to be spoken of in the same breath with mastery in the higher departments of practical life—least of all, with the glory of a first-rate captain. To have done things worthy to be written was in his eyes a dignity to which no man made any approach, who had only written things worthy to be ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... high-aspiring ladies like schoolgirls. Nor was there a lack of justification; for when they came down to his shouts in the passage, they hushed, and held a finger aloft, and looked altogether so unlike what they aimed at being, that Wilfrid's sense of mastery became almost contempt. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... ill, but as pertaining to one's own good, which man loves more than he hates another's ill. For it is naturally pleasant to overcome, inasmuch as it makes a man to appreciate his own superiority. Wherefore all those games in which there is a striving for the mastery, and a possibility of winning it, afford the greatest pleasure: and speaking generally all contests, in so far as they admit hope of victory. To contradict and to scold can give pleasure in two ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... Whenever two bodies of troops met, they had to call out to each other to find out whether they were friends or foes; then, if one body proved to be Americans and the other British, they delivered a volley, and rushed upon each other in a desperate struggle for mastery. ...
— Strange Stories from History for Young People • George Cary Eggleston
... fixed memories and the possible meeting of men; for all that makes life anything but an uncontrollable nightmare. We fight for the long arm of honor and remembrance; for all that can lift a man above the quicksands of his needs and give him the mastery of time." ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... that exists between the wild horse and the hyena; and that the quagga, though roused to fury at the sight of one of these animals, is very different in its behaviour towards man. So strong, in fact, is this antipathy, and so complete is the mastery of the ruminant over the carnivorous animal, that the frontier farmers often take advantage of these peculiar facts, and keep the hyenas from their cattle by bringing up with the herd a number of quaggas, who act as its guards ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... of miscellaneous traps, like canoe-poles and guns, without serious inconvenience and over a long portage. This quickly-gained power comes partly from a strengthening of the muscles of the neck, but more from a mastery of balance. A pack can twist you as suddenly and expertly on your back as the best of wrestlers. It has a head lock on you, and you have to go or break your neck. After a time you adjust your movements, just as after ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... political world, and from a definite inspiration to democracy becomes a dim and remote possibility of the future, Social Reform takes its place. Not only in Great Britain, but throughout Europe, the social reformers or "revisionists" are gaining the mastery over the scientific Marxian Socialists in democratic politics. In Great Britain where "practical," or experimental, politics have always prevailed over political theory, the passing of positive Socialist dogma is naturally more obvious. Social Reform is now the cry of Liberals ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... last to want is power, mastery; and, whether it be mastery over the subtleties of the intellect, as in Emerson himself, or over the passions and the springs of action, as in Shakespeare, or over our terrors and the awful hobgoblins of hell and Satan, as in Dante, or over ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... and closed in vain My transom, opening in the hall; Or close against the window-pane Have pressed my fevered face,—but all The day or night without held not A sight or sound or counter-thought To set my mind one instant free Of this man's silent mastery. ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... he bent his head to look at her. The moonlight played upon her pallid, quivering face, and showed that in her eyes which no man could look upon and turn away. Once more—yes, even then—there came over him that feeling of utter surrender to the sweet mastery of her will which had possessed him in the sitting-room of "The Palatial." Only all earthly considerations having faded into nothingness now, he no longer hesitated, but pressed his lips to hers and kissed her again and yet again. It was perhaps as wild and pathetic a love scene ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... every drop of blood in him striving for the mastery of his body, his vision, his strength. He tried to turn, but strong arms seized him from behind. A man's voice spoke to him, a man's strength held him. In an agony of appeal Marion's name burst from ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... studied the art with the zeal of a man pursuing a favourite hobby. He had always, as he told Sir Joshua Reynolds, made it a principle to talk on all occasions as well as he could. He had thus obtained a mastery over his weapons which made him one of the most accomplished of conversational gladiators. He had one advantage which has pretty well disappeared from modern society, and the disappearance of which has been destructive to excellence of talk. A good talker, even more than a good orator, implies a ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... are not so numerous as the Chimpanzees: the females generally exceed the other sex in number. My informants all agree in the assertion that but one adult male is seen in a band; that when the young males grow up, a contest takes place for mastery, and the strongest, by killing and driving out the others, establishes himself as ...
— Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... high esteem, and it is as a colourist that his admirers consider his claim to the future to be best founded. Beautiful passages of colour are frequently to be met with in his work, and yet it would be difficult to say what colour except grey he has shown any mastery over. A painter may paint with an exceedingly reduced palette, like Chardin, and yet be an exquisite colourist. To colour well does not consist in the employment of bright colours, but in the power of carrying the dominant note of colour through the entire picture, ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... great tongue of flame flashed up ever and anon into the midst of the rolling cloud and rent it for a single instant; by degrees those tongues waged fierce war with the smoke. They shot through it more and more frequently, licked and twined round it—in and out—until they gained the mastery at last, and rose with a magnificent roar into the heavens. Then it was that Larry O'Hale gave vent to his excitement and admiration in an irrepressible shout, and his comrades burst into a mingled cheer and fit of laughter, ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... imperilled by foreign powers, who have always desired a greater degree of uniformity and control than is tolerable to Britain. In order to keep their doors open the people of this island have been compelled to fight at sea, and have attained a measure of naval power which is sometimes called the mastery of the seas, but which, in essence, is no more than the obstinate and resolute assertion of their right to be the masters of themselves. They have been adventurers and pirates; they have never been tyrants. They fight desperately because ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... the lowest and most repulsive methods, to undermine the Boer policy in order to gain the mastery of the mining legislation and administration. They had persuaded themselves and the rest of the world that the Boers were as a body corrupt and tainted, so they armed themselves, with the power of money in order ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... eyes, never to hear that voice! Better die of the sweet poison than of the desolate exile! I rose, I opened the windows; I walked to and fro the room; I could decide nothing, think of nothing; all my mind was in an uproar. With a violent effort at self-mastery, I approached the table again. I resolved to force myself to my task, if it were only to re-collect my faculties and enable them to bear my own torture. I turned over the books impatiently, when lo! buried amongst them, what met my eye? Archly, yet reproachfully,—the ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Luckily Hammond was uppermost, with one hand at the enemy's throat and the other holding the band of the pistol with which the Rebel was trying to shoot him. As the two men were powerful, a fearful struggle ensued for the mastery of the pistol. Meantime up rode one of Hammond's boys, who, by his order, fired at the upturned face of the obstinate foe, the ball grazing his scalp and causing him to relinquish his hold of the revolver, when he was forced to surrender. Thus ended one ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... deep gloom prevailed; but Frona knew that somewhere up there, clinging and climbing and immortally striving, the long line of ants still twisted towards the sky. And she thrilled at the thought, strong with man's ancient love of mastery, and stepped into the line which came out of the storm behind and disappeared into ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... and brought The homage of young spring to praise This stately relic of old days, When France with Spain for mastery fought; And Philip over England sought ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... against flesh.' It was myself indeed in both the wills, yet more myself in that which I approved in myself than in that which I disapproved in myself. Yet it was through myself that habit had attained so fierce a mastery over me, because I had willingly come whither I willed not. Still bound to earth, I refused, O God, to fight on thy side, as much afraid to be freed from all bonds, as I ought to have feared being ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... the mastery over our own weak minds when a higher spirit standeth nigh and draweth ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... maintained her mastery of the situation. She was a riddle to him often, poor boy! One moment she would lend herself in bewildering unexpected ways to his passion, the next she would allow him hardly the privileges of the barest acquaintance, hardly the carrying of ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... than Magia naturalis, I'm thinking. Mesmerism and magic-lanterns, benj and opium, winna explain all facts, Alton, laddie. Dootless they were an unco' barbaric an' empiric method o' expressing the gran' truth o' man's mastery ower matter. But the interpenetration o' the spiritual an' physical worlds is a gran' truth too; an' aiblins the Deity might ha' allowed witchcraft, just to teach that to puir barbarous folk—signs and wonders, laddie, to mak them believe in ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... then, without failing him in proper respect, she so far surpassed him in superiority of mind and force of character that he became in fact the servant of his servant. Elderly child that he was, he met this mastery half-way by letting Flore take such care of him that she treated him more as a mother would a son; and he himself ended by clinging to her with the feeling of a child dependent on a mother's protection. But there were other ties between them not less tightly knotted. In the first place, ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... numerically a lean minority even in the South, but their mastery over their fellow-citizens was absolute. Nor was there any mystery about it. As the owners of four million slaves, on an average worth not far from five hundred dollars each, they formed the greatest industrial combination—what at this time we would ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... facts of labor's own responsibility for its pitiful condition, but sensible workingmen will remember that, as Renan told his countrymen after the Franco-Prussian war, "the first duty is to face the facts of the situation." There are no royal roads to an honest mastery of fortune, though there seem to be plenty of by-ways to dishonest success. Nature is a hard school-mistress. She allows no makeshifts for the discipline of hard work and of self-denial, for the culture of all the strengthful qualities. Her American school for workers ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... and redeem my shadow. Thus he became as irksome as he was hateful to me. I really stood in awe of him—I had placed myself in his power. Since he had effected my return to the pleasures of the world, which I had resolved to shun, he had the perfect mastery of me. His eloquence was irresistible, and at times I almost thought he was in the right. A shadow is indeed necessary to a man of fortune; and if I chose to maintain the position in which he had placed me, there was only one means of doing so. But on one point I was immovable: since I ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... that this clue, once known, unravels all the mysteries of his conduct, finds no countenance in the plays of Shakspeare. There man appears as he is, made up of a crowd of passions, which contend for the mastery over him, and govern him in turn. What is Hamlet's ruling passion? Or Othello's? Or Harry the Fifth's? Or Wolsey's? Or Lear's? Or Shylock's? Or Benedick's? Or Macbeth's? Or that of Cassius? Or that of Falconbridge? But we might go on ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... Thus, in "Ernest Bracebridge," an English story of school-life, the hero is a dreadfully unpleasant boy who is always successful and always right, and we are soon heartily weary of him. Besides, he is a horrible boy for mastery of all the arts and sciences, and delivers brief and epigrammatic discourses, being about twelve years old. However, the book is full of adventure and out-door games, and so ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... continues with the description of a perpetual motion wheel, "elaboured with marvellous ingenuity, in the pursuit of which invention I have seen many people wandering about, and wearied with manifold toil. For they did not observe that they could arrive at the mastery of this by means of the virtue, ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price
... with a resolution to be grave, will find this evening ample food for mirth. Johnson, who understands what he does as well as any man, exposes the impertinence of an old fellow who has lost his senses, still pursuing pleasures with great mastery. The ingenious Mr. Pinkethman is a bashful rake, and is sheepish, without having modesty with great success. Mr. Bullock succeeds Nokes in the part of Bubble, and, in my opinion, is not much below him, for ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... he had exercised over the king had been remarkable from their youth. The son of a Gascon knight, he had been brought up with Edward as his foster brother and playfellow, and in course of time the strong will of the favourite gained a complete mastery over the weaker will of the prince. But his arrogant behaviour soon raised such a storm among the nobles at Court that he was forced to leave England. When Edward succeeded to the throne, one of his first acts was to recall Gaveston, to whom he gave his own niece in marriage, after having bestowed ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... still as a fish at the Quaker meetings, he had enough to say at home, and at the parish meetings. He had such a spice of the tyrant in him, that he could not even entertain the idea of marrying, without it must be a sort of shift for the mastery. He, therefore, not only cast his eye on one of the most high-spirited women that he knew in his own society, but actually one on the largest scale of physical dimensions. If he had one hero of his admiration more than ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... information that several ships were fitting out at Toulon, with supplies for the besieged. This increased Nelson's anxieties, and at the same time emphasized the necessity which he had always urged of using speedier and surer means to reduce the place, while the undisputed mastery of the sea gave the opportunity. "What might not Bruix have done, had he done his duty?" was his own comment upon that recent incursion; and who could tell how soon as great a force might appear again ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... Will brought up the sheet to the lord, who said: "That was a good trick, I must confess. But if you want really to prove that you are a Master Thief bring to me the priest in a bag, and then I will own your mastery." ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... a strong work ethic, mastery of high technology, and a comparatively small defense allocation (1% of GDP) helped Japan advance with extraordinary rapidity to the rank of second most technologically powerful economy in the world after the US and the third-largest economy ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... not time to go through the record of all Dr. Johnson's uncles on the maternal side, and do full justice to Mr. Reade's industry and mastery of detail. I may, however, mention incidentally that the uncle who was hanged, if one was, must have been one of his father's brothers, for to the Fords that distinction does not seem to have belonged. ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... a second proposition to which we should attend as we endeavour to define the need for religion with reference to the scientific mastery of life. Consider why so often men are tempted to suppose that science is adequate for human purposes. Is it not because science supplies men with power? Steam, electricity, petroleum, radium—with what progressive mastery over ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... got out of bed feeling more composed than usual, with several new emotions struggling for the mastery. One of those emotions ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Marlanx the young Duke of Mizrox was announced. The handsome Axphainian came with relief and dismay struggling for mastery in ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... following exposition of the word interpreter as applied to Mark in his relation to Peter: "No valid ground of doubt can be alleged against it, provided only we do not understand the idea contained in the word interpreter to mean that Peter, not having sufficient mastery of the Greek, delivered his discourses in Aramaean, and had them interpreted by Mark into Greek; but rather that the office of a secretary is indicated, who wrote down the oral communications of his apostle (whether from dictation, or in the freer exercise of his own activity) and so became ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... the other, "and go not forth at the like of this hour." But he answered, "Needs must I go;" and the host said to him, "[Go] in the safeguard of God." So Noureddin went forth, and drunkenness had got the mastery of him, wherefore he threw himself down on [a bench before one of] the shops. Now the watch were at that hour making their round and they smelt the sweet scent [of essences] and wine that exhaled from him; so they made for it and found the youth lying on the bench, without sense or ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... first: "Why should woman be civilised?" and, second: "Why, if she is to be civilised, should she be civilised by man?" In the mere intellectualism of the matter, Meredith seems to be talking the most brutal sex mastery: he, at any rate, has not doubled Cape Turk, nor even passed Seraglio Point. Now why is it that we all really feel that this Meredithian passage is not so insolently masculine as in mere logic it would seem? ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... that all the conditions of life at sea, our mastery of the forces of Nature, and so on, seem to show that we have perfect freedom of will, and adapt everything to our desires. I believe just the contrary. The forces of Nature compel us to approach them in their own way, otherwise we are shipwrecked. It is in the ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... that we become "crankier" every year that we live. We are attending to only one aspect of the world. While this blinds us to other aspects of the world, it brings mastery in our individual fields. We can, then, by training and practice, get a general control over attention, and by working in a certain field or kind of work, we make it easy to attend to things in that field or ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... He died Feb. 1, 1875, and was buried in Westminster Abbey with distinguished honors. His musical ability was as widely recognized in Germany as in England,—indeed his profound musical scholarship and mastery of problems in composition were more appreciated there. Mr. Statham, in an admirable sketch, pronounces him a born pianist, and says that his wonderful knowledge of the capabilities of the piano, and his love for it, developed ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... and tossed about ever, like a battered shuttlecock, by the battledore currents, some four of which contend for the mastery throughout the livelong day in that wonderful waterway, the English Channel; two always setting east, relieving each other in turn, and two west, with a cross-tide coming atop of them, twice in every twenty-four ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... office, but too often alone. I therefore resolved that I would once more set off on my travels, as the only means by which I could act honourably, and get rid of the feeling which was obtaining such a mastery over me. I went to the house to state my intention, and at the same time bid them farewell; when, ascending the stairs, I slipped and sprained my ankle so severely, that I could not put my foot to the ground. This decided ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... impotent; he could not shake off the mysterious obsession. This man was more than a mere physical presence; he was a part of their very selves—the weaker, sensual impulses against which they had fought, but which now seemed gaining the mastery. The struggle went on in the soul of each as Millar's voice fell melodiously on ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... be carried out on the machine is of first importance. Free-hand designs must be made first in large, free movements on the machine until the arm muscles are thoroughly familiar with the curve, sweep, and feeling to be executed. After mastery of movement and sweep are acquired, the same designs may be reduced in size ten or twenty times and the pupil will still work them out in perfect rhythm. After the mastery of movement is acquired, the cording, braiding, and three-thread attachment work are easily learned by a pupil who has the necessary ...
— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman
... Whether the part played by Cato in the story be true or not, the lesson for us is the same, and we shall find it entirely confirmed in the course of this chapter. The main object of education was the mastery of the art of oratory, and the chief practical use of that art was to enable a man to gain a reputation as an advocate in ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... miss it, but meanwhile you will find that it has kindled all your thoughts.' The same effect was felt in its degree wherever he went, and he took pains not to miss it. He had made a study of his art, and was so skilful in his mastery of it that it seemed as if anybody might do all that he did and do it as well—if only a hundred failures had not ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... tall, he was vigorous and robust, having fair complexion, dark hair, and honest blue eyes that met one's glance squarely. His frank, serious face, his quiet manner, and his coolness and daring in the midst of danger gave him a mastery over others such as it is given ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... was not required of him. A sextant and quadrant told the American that the stolid Briton worked out his own reckonings. The sight of these things filled the boy with a respect for the uncouth fellow. He understood how doggedly Malone must have labored to acquire mastery over the instruments of navigation. Beyond this there were a number of flaring chromos on the walls, a decanter of wine and glasses in a chest. He found what he was looking for in the desk drawer, a roll of men checked off for watches. The coming night was arranged for, but for morning, the names ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... the truth. They at once raised him on an improvised throne, and caused the trumpets to proclaim him king: they were quite ready for such an exploit, not that they cared in the least for "that mad fellow." Jehu justified their confidence by his astounding mastery in treachery and bloodshed, but he placed his reliance entirely on the resources of his own talent for murder. He was not borne along by any general movement against the dynasty; the people, which he despised (x. 9), stood motionless and horrified at the sight of the crimes which ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... introducing the new tariff was well received and made a strong impression upon all who heard it. It was admitted, even by those who were opposed to the views he held, that he showed a great mastery of the details, and that he illustrated in a very clear manner the view that the country was suffering because the duties imposed upon foreign goods were not sufficiently ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay
... earth with at least a general outline of the larger story of the universe. No sensible man is humbled or dismayed by the vastness of the universe. When the human mind reflects on its wonderful scientific mastery of this illimitable ocean of being, it has no sentiment of being dwarfed or degraded. It looks out with cold curiosity over the mighty scattering of worlds, and asks how they, including our own world, came ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... management had recovered from its momentary panic. The trainer and half a dozen animal men (those whose duty it was to take care of the animals) rushed into the circle, and soon obtained the mastery of the lion, whose pain had subdued his fury, and who was now ...
— The Young Acrobat of the Great North American Circus • Horatio Alger Jr.
... of antiquity has taken a stronger hold upon the modern mind than Horace. The causes of this are manifold, but three may be especially noted: his broad human sympathies, his vigorous common- sense, and his consummate mastery of expression. The mind must be either singularly barren or singularly cold to which Horace does not speak. The scholar, the statesman, the soldier, the man of the world, the town-bred man, the lover of the country, the thoughtful and the careless, he who reads much, and he ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... more force of reservation than had Payne when mastery was used upon him, "mother's city property and mine, you know, contains some rather tumbledown buildings that are really good for a number of years yet, but which adverse municipal government might—might depreciate ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... visual shapes of trees and mountains and clouds, in the events of the life of man, even in the very omnipotence of Death—the insight of creative idealism can find the reflection of a beauty which its own thoughts first made. In this way mind asserts its subtle mastery over the thoughtless forces of Nature. The more evil the material with which it deals, the more thwarting to untrained desire, the greater is its achievement in inducing the reluctant rock to yield up its hidden ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell |
