"Versatile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were still more odious and unpardonable. In his manner, indeed, of defending himself he is his own worst accuser—as there is no outrage of power, no violation of faith, that might not be justified by the versatile and ambidextrous doctrines, the lessons of deceit and rules of rapine, which he so ably illustrated by his measures, and has so shamelessly ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... manner—want of colour in character and costume.' Such are your own and your friends' impressions; and behold! there starts up a little man, differing diametrically from all these, roundly charging you with being too airy and cheery—too volatile and versatile—too flowery and coloury. This harsh little man—this pitiless censor—gathers up all your poor scattered sins of vanity, your luckless chiffon of rose- colour, your small fringe of a wreath, your small scrap of ribbon, your silly bit ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... The versatile man who commands more than respect as the biographer of Poe and Wilde; as the (translator of and commentator on Remy de Gourmont; as a folklorist, has shown himself to be consecrated to the truth. The document that Mr. Ransome hurried out of Russia in the early days of the Soviet government ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... of the British Parliament. Towards the close of the American war, two committees of the Commons sat on Eastern affairs. In one Edmund Burke took the lead. The other was under the presidency of the able and versatile Henry Dundas, then Lord Advocate of Scotland. Great as are the changes which, during the last sixty years, have taken place in our Asiatic dominions, the reports which those committees laid on the table of the House will still be found most ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a good Irish scholar, and from Celtic MSS. had elicited some cross-lights upon his subject—not very bright or steady, I allow—but enough to delight the rector, and inspire him with a tender reverence for the indefatigable and versatile youth, who was devoting to the successful equitation of their hobby so many of his hours, and so much of his languages, labour, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the hill Where Boreas sweeps with icy chill, A masterpiece of studied art Conceived by genius versatile And fashioned with unerring skill, O'erlooks the busy, crowded mart, And, like a kingly domicile, Its burnished dome and sculpture thrill With admiration every heart; And strangers pause beyond the rill To view its grandeur, lingering still, And ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... Taylor begins to be himself again; for with all his astonishing complexity, yet versatile agility, of powers, he was too good and of too catholic a spirit to be a good polemic. Hence he so continually is now breaking, now varying, the thread of the argument: and hence he is so again and again forgetting that he is reasoning against ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... early age, he had wisely determined to learn the whole business of newspaper journalism from the beginning. At the ago of eighteen he was sub-editor on a big provincial daily; but his brilliant and versatile intelligence soon wearied of the monotony of the life, and he came to London to demand the right of admittance ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... shine—though very feebly and intermittingly—in England. When he had returned he began to read Kant and Schelling, or rather to mix excursions into their books with the miscellaneous inquiries to which his versatile intellect ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... captain is a versatile individual for he is steward, doctor, postman, purveyor of news, and dictator in general. He alone makes the schedule of each trip, arriving and departing at will. Time in the Congo counts for naught. It is in truth the land of leisure. For the ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... emotionality might be counterbalanced by studies of a strictly positive nature; a tutor was engaged to ground young Wilfrid in mathematics and the physical sciences. The result was that the tutor's enthusiasm for these pursuits communicated itself after a brief repugnance to the versatile pupil; instincts of mastery became as vivid in the study of Euclid and the chemical elements as formerly in the humaner paths of learning; the plan had failed. In the upshot Wilfrid was sent to school; if that did not develop the animal in ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... light to be seen in my dark heart. Yet I look up, I trust singly, to Him from whom it came yesterday; and thither may I look till again the day break. Can I say, in full sincerity, "more than they that watch for the morning"? Alas that I am so versatile! Christian and worldling within a day. Oh for a deeper sense that I am not my own,—that I have no right to disturb the sanctuary of my own spirit when God has made it such,—that there is no other way than whole-hearted and honest-hearted Christianity ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... lively, and sometimes brilliant. For several years after I left Cambridge I lived with him in his father's house in Dean's Yard, and thus made the acquaintance of some celebrities whom his fascinating and versatile talents attracted thither. As I shall return to this later on, I will merely mention here the names of such men as Thackeray, Tennyson, Frederick Locker, Stirling of Keir, Tom Taylor the dramatist, Millais, Leighton, and others of lesser ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... absent you will be attending to your duty as commander of the Chateaugay, for you will still be on the lookout for your prize," continued the versatile Frenchman. "You can run up twenty or thirty miles to the northward, on the east side of the islands, where all large ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... acquaintance, to judge from Mattheson's account; it stuck in Mattheson's memory for many years and he remembered especially the pastry-cook's boy who blew the organ for Handel and himself. Mattheson was four years older than Handel; he was one of those precociously gifted, versatile, attractive, and rather vain young men who are endowed with so many talents that they never achieve distinction in any branch of art. He is remembered now only by the literary work of his later life, in which he shows himself as a voluminous pedant and an embittered critic. He made ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... scholar, the wanderer, and the Priest of Buddha by turns, and sometimes all at once. For Mr. Bellingham was a professed Buddhist and a profound student of Eastern moralities, and he was a thorough scholar in certain branches of the classics. The combination of these qualities, with the tact and versatile fluency of a man of the world, was a rare one, and was a source of unceasing surprise to his intimates. At the present moment he was a diplomatist, since he could not be a diplomat, and to his energetic suggestion and furtherance of the plan he ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... such occasions was like his predecessor's coat, polychromatic. The Klosking read him, and wondered. "Alas!" said she, "with what versatile skill do you descant on a single circumstance not ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... him.[161] But if Luis de Leon was relatively poor in humour, he had an abundant store of mordant sarcasm and a faculty for ironic banter, as Medina and Castro learned to their chagrin.[162] Pacheco's opinion of Luis de Leon's versatile talent is borne out by the scrap of evidence given at the trial by Francisco de Salinas—the sightless dedicatee of El aire se serena. Salinas bore witness that some of Luis de Leon's admirers were persuaded that he could carry any University chair ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... human sentiment." But here fresh difficulties arise. Although "a poet is naturally a religious animal," we find that the greatest of Roman poets Lucretius, was an Atheist, while even "some of our most brilliant notorieties in the modern world of song are not the most notable for piety." But our versatile Professor easily accounts for this by assuming that there "may be an idolatry of the imaginative, as well as of the knowing faculty." Never did natural historian so jauntily provide for every fact ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... justified, in very great varieties, by the simple consideration of what he himself has to say, quite independently of any real or supposed connection with this or that literary age or school. Let us close with the words of a most [16] versatile master of English—happily not yet included in Mr. Saintsbury's book—a writer who has dealt with all the perturbing influences of our century in a manner as classical, as idiomatic, as ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... Darweshes, and have in this very manner for a long while wandered and roamed about; we bear our homes on our shoulders. There is a saying, that 'a pilgrim's home is where the evening overtakes him;' and all we have seen in this versatile world is too long ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... machinery. A tea-cosy may have to do for an Admiral's cocked hat; it all depends on whether the amateur actor can swear like an Admiral. A hearth-rug may have to do for a bear's fur; it all depends on whether the wearer is a polished and versatile man of the world and can grunt like a bear. A clergyman's hat (to my own private and certain knowledge) can be punched and thumped into the exact shape of a policeman's helmet; it all depends on the clergyman. I mean it depends on his permission; his imprimatur; his nihil obstat. ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... had been the round of the place, in search of lodgings, without the old tutor who had been their inseparable companion from their childhood. They had named him after the hero of their Latin exercise-book, which overflowed with anecdotes of that versatile genius—anecdotes whose vagueness in detail was more than compensated by their sensational brilliance. "Balbus has overcome all his enemies" had been marked by their tutor, in the margin of the book, "Successful Bravery." ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... and was good enough to pick me up at Bras d'Or. Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, who had previously shown me much kindness, permitted us to rendezvous at his house, and for a second time I enjoyed seeing some of the experiments of his most versatile brain. His aeroplanes, telephones, and other inventions were all intensely interesting, but among his other lines of work the effort to develop a race of sheep, which had litters just as pigs do, interested ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... Aucassin and Nicolette has been edited and translated into English, with much graceful scholarship, by Mr. F. W. Bourdillon. Still more recently we have had a translation—a poet's translation—from the ingenious and versatile pen of Mr. Andrew Lang. The reader should consult also the chapter on "The Out-door Poetry," in Vernon Lee's most interesting Euphorion; being Studies of the Antique and Mediaeval in the Renaissance, a work abounding in knowledge and insight on the ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... "as in ductile play." The use of the language, so lucid and so nice in its discriminations, was itself an education for the young who grew up to hear it and to speak it. In a genial yet invigorating climate, in a land where breezes from the mountain and the sea were mingled, the versatile Greeks produced by physical training that vigor and grace of body which they so much admired; and they developed the civil polity, the artistic discernment, and the complex social life, which made them the principal source of modern culture. ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... that I had to carry about all day Miss Jorgensen's letter and money. On returning home to dinner that afternoon, I found a stranger occupying Miss Jorgensen's place at table. He was a shrewd-looking man of about forty years, talkative, versatile, and what you might call "jolly." Nothing escaped his observation; nothing was uttered that he did not hear, often replying most unexpectedly to what was not intended for him—a practice that would have been annoying but for ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... many great orators, and so many noble philosophers, Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Socrates; so many heroes of former days, and so many generals after them, and tyrants; besides these, Eudoxus, Hipparchus, Archimedes, and other men of acute natural talents, great minds, lovers of labor, versatile, confident, mockers even of the perishable and ephemeral life of man, as Menippus and such as are like him. As to all these consider that they have long been in the dust. What harm then is this to them; and what to those whose names are altogether ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius
... fully realize that they were Angevins. To an English schoolboy Henry II. is little more than the murderer of Beket and the friend of Fair Rosamund. Even an English student finds it hard after all the labours of Professor Stubbs to lay hold of either Henry or his sons. In spite of their versatile ability and of the mark which they have left on our judicature, our municipal liberty, our political constitution, the first three Plantagenets are to most of us little more than dim shapes of strange ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... Napoleon, but his maturer years were devoted to domestic and academic interests. Every impression of his life, whether deep or fleeting, was material for a poem or a cycle. He handled with consummate skill the odd or complicated metres of eastern and southern lyric forms, and he was most versatile as a translator of foreign poetry, ancient and modern, occidental and oriental. His unusual formal talent and mastery of language were a constant temptation to rapid and superficial versifying; but there are in the vast mass of his production many genuine ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... with the army, a man with the most ordinary capacity for garnering up the humorous stories of camp may find his repertoire overflowing with the most versatile of incidents. A connection with the daily press is, however, of great service, especially as a letter-writer is expected to know all that ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... Hamlet's Father' (Hamlet); 'Falstaff and Doll' (King Henry IV., Second Part); 'Macbeth meeting the Witches on the Heath' (Macbeth); 'Robin Goodfellow' (Midsummer Night's Dream). This gallery gave the public an opportunity of judging of Fuseli's versatile powers. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... very smoothly for Mr. Sheldon's family. Georgy was very happy in the society of a companion who seemed really to have a natural taste for the manufacture of pretty little head-dresses from the merest fragments of material in the way of lace and ribbon. Diana had all that versatile cleverness and capacity for expedients which is likely to be acquired in a wandering and troubled life. She had learned more in her three years of discomfort with her father than in all the undeviating course of the Hyde-Lodge studies; she had improved her French ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... to keep it!" The baddish boy had registered a vow to the contrary, and proceeded to bleed his flint (for to do Christie justice the process was not very dissimilar). Flucker had a versatile genius for making money; he had made it in forty different ways, by land and sea, tenpence at ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... whose practice had been mainly in matters of legislation. He was, in 1876, a man of venerable appearance, with white hair, worn long, and a patriarchal beard. He was a familiar figure in Washington, and well known among the public men of his day. A versatile and entertaining companion, by turns prosperous and impecunious, and an optimist always, Gardiner Hubbard became a really indispensable factor as the first advance agent of ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... letting the enemy win the field, or of flying through Media and Armenia and seizing Cappadocia, but came to no resolution while his friends stayed with him. After turning to many expedients in his mind, which his changeable fortune had made versatile, he at last put his men in array, and encouraged the Greeks and barbarians; as for the phalanx and the Argyraspids, they encouraged him, and bade him be of good heart; for the enemy would never be able to stand them. For indeed they were the oldest of Philip's and Alexander's ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... appointment, very aptly characterized the relations of the new chancellor to the emperor, in contrast to the position occupied by Bismarck. "The Germany of William II.," it said, "does not admit a Titan in the position of the highest official of the Empire. A cautious and versatile diplomatist like Bernhard von Buelow appears to be best adapted to the personal and political necessities of the present situation." Count Buelow, indeed, though, like Bismarck, a "realist," utilitarian and opportunist in his policy, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... more concerned with the literary labors of this versatile and indefatigable genius. These, in the midst of his multifarious commercial and diplomatic concerns, he never intermitted. All the time the Review continued to give a brilliant support to the Ministry. The French expedition had lent a new interest to the affairs of Scotland, ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... be a very great man and to be still very inferior to Julius Caesar, the most complete character, so Lord Bacon thought, of all antiquity. Nature seems incapable of such extraordinary combinations as composed his versatile capacity, which was the wonder even of the Romans themselves. The first general—the only triumphant politician—inferior to none in eloquence—comparable to any in the attainments of wisdom, in an age made up of the greatest ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... elevation of his theme. The remark may serve to remind us of our modern disadvantage for a full appreciation of Demosthenes. The old world felt, as we do, his moral and mental greatness, his fire, his self-devotion, his insight. But it felt also, as we can never feel, the versatile perfection of his skill. This it was that made Demosthenes unique to the ancients. The ardent patriot, the far-seeing statesman, were united in his person with the consummate and unapproachable artist. Dionysius devoted two special treatises to Demosthenes,—one on his language and style ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... De Arch., ed. Schneider, X. 9. Insuper autem ad capsum redae loculamentum firmiter figatur habens tympanum versatile ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... Eastern question which would in effect have been the work of Russia only. The more daring policy of Canning, by which Great Britain had attempted to take the lead as opportunity offered, either in active co-operation with Russia or in active opposition to her, could only be directed by a more versatile statesman than the nation now possessed. The accession to office of Wellington, though it left Dudley at the foreign office, was really marked by a return to the policy of Castlereagh, a policy which, if not brilliant, was at least honourable, consistent, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... versatile, graceful even in his singular homeliness, and peculiar insolent style of address, he yet made himself so acceptable to the family as to dare to seek the hand of the second daughter of Colonel La Vigne, and, though at ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... maphri[a]n or catholicus of the Jacobite (Monophysite) Church in the 13th century, and (in Dr. Wright's words) "one of the most learned and versatile men that Syria ever produced." Perhaps no more industrious compiler of knowledge ever lived. Simple and uncritical in his modes of thought, and apparently devoid of any striking originality, he collected in his numerous and elaborate treatises the results of such research ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... all students of ghostology are aware, has frequently been the case; and it was precisely the case with the ghost seen by the famous Lord Brougham, the brilliant and versatile Scotchman, whose astonishingly long and successful career in England as statesman, judge, lawyer, man of science, philanthropist, orator, and author won him a place among the immortals both of the Georgian and of the ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... legislature, and could not affect the fortunes of the Liberal party in Lower Canada then distinguished by the ability of A.N. Morin, P.J.O. Chauveau, R.E. Caron, E.P. Tache, and L.P. Drummond. The recognized leader of this dominant party was Morin, whose versatile knowledge, lucidity of style, and charm of manner gave him much strength in parliament. His influence, however, as I have already said, was too often weakened by an absence of energy and of the power to lead at ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... his mind, keep way with the wheels of his fortune. For so Livy (after he had described Cato Major in these words, In illo viro tantum robur corporis et animi fuit, ut quocunque loco natus esset, fortunam sibi facturus videretur) falleth upon that, that he had versatile ingenium. Therefore if a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune: for though she be blind, yet she is not invisible. The way of fortune, is like the Milken Way in the sky; which is a meeting or knot of a number of small stars; not seen ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... not appear that the Reverend Mr. Colburn remained for a long time in this school, for at the close of the session in 1866 we have a record of an exhibition in Bank Hall under the charge of T. J. Ferguson. Ferguson was a versatile character among the Negroes at that time, participating extensively in politics during the reconstruction period, and contending for the enlargement of freedom and opportunity for their race. The next ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... of Pitt's personality charmed and overawed this impressionable Irishman from the time of their first interview in the summer of 1792. Always versatile and sometimes shifty, he seems instinctively to have felt in him the needed counterpart. As the Czar Alexander leaned on the rock-like Stein in the crisis of 1812, so Canning gained strength and confidence from reliance on Pitt. He on his ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... are fluctuating and versatile, as will ever be the case where men are impelled by necessity to act in opposition to their principles. In their eagerness to attribute all the past excesses to Robespierre, they have, unawares, involved themselves in the ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... undertook the task had perhaps the keenest scientific imagination and the most versatile profundity of knowledge of his generation—one is tempted to say, of any generation. For he was none other than the extraordinary Dr. Thomas Young, the demonstrator of ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... general favourites. Even Queerface and Polly and Nelly came in for some share of the favour they enjoyed, for although neither monkeys nor parrots can be said to be scarce in Africa, their talents were so great and of so versatile a character, that their society was welcomed almost, Adair declared, as much as that of their masters. Queerface more than once, however, got into disgrace. The three midshipmen were spending the day at the house of a kind ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... Buck trying to speak the truth as God gave him to see the truth and at the same time keep his artistic, literary, financial, and dramatic talents confined within the limits of a pastor's activities. So it is that some men are too meek and too small for the professions—others too aggressive, too versatile, and too independent for the routine of professional life. Still others have decided talents which qualify them for unusual success in other vocations. If a man has unusual intellectual attainment, he either does or ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... seen it stated in one of your remarkably versatile and "Graphic" journals that I have boasted of having come here with the idea of making some money in the United States. But bless your hearts and souls, gentlemen of the Lotos Club, I assure you that I have no such idea! [Laughter.] ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... thy theme, for shrewdness famed And genius versatile, who far and wide A Wand'rer, after Ilium overthrown, Discover'd various cities, and the mind And manners learn'd of men, in lands remote. He num'rous woes on Ocean toss'd, endured, Anxious to save himself, and ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... is no place in the United States, so far as I know, where the cow is more versatile or ambidextrous, if I may be allowed the use of a term that is far above my station in life, than here in the mountains of North Carolina, where the obese 'possum and the ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... to hear this, sir: he's the head of the French Intelligence, you know. He's outside now. Shall we have him in? Miss Mackwayte shall tell her story, and you can then hear what Lambelet has to say about this versatile young dancer." ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... partner, and the pair were in constant communication. Oscar was an adept at disguises, and he had found in Cad Metti a ready scholar, and between them they had studied the art of disguise as a science and both had become very versatile and proficient. ...
— Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist - Dudie Dunne Again in the Field • Harlan Page Halsey
... Even as officially narrated by Mr. MONTAGU it was sufficiently exciting. The most curious and reassuring fact was that all the actors in the drama, abductors and rescuers alike, were Afridis. It is to be hoped that this versatile community includes a cinematograph operator, and that a film will, like the lady, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... institution, gets his pass, and returns to civil life, so they tell me, with a dangerous knowledge that he is a suckling Von Moltke, and may apply his learning when occasion offers. Given trouble, that man will be a nuisance, because he is a hideously versatile American, to begin with, as cock-sure of himself as a man can be, and with all the racial disregard for human life to back him, through any ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... hesitate to risk the favor of the queen and his own continuance in office, for the sake of what appeared to him the cause of religion and his country. On the whole, however, moderation and prudence were the governing principles of his mind and actions. The intellect of Burleigh was more versatile and acute, that of Bacon more profound; and their parts in the great drama of public life were cast accordingly: Burleigh had most of the alertness of observation, the fertility of expedient, the rapid calculation of contingencies, required in the minister ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... versatile; and it may have been Springtime, after all, instead of Indian Summer, that ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... in good Greek "foreigners" (-barbari-); in like manner among the appellations of moneys and coins, that occur ever so frequently, there does not once appear a Roman coin. We form a strange idea of men of so great and so versatile talents as Naevius and Plautus, if we refer such things to their free choice: this strange and clumsy "exterritorial" character of Roman comedy was undoubtedly due to causes very different from aesthetic considerations. The transference of such social relations, as are uniformly delineated in ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... he had examined his mind for a short time. "I may meet with an ungraceful and objectionable death if I carry out your estimable instructions, but I shall certainly merit and receive a similar fate if I permit so renowned and versatile a person to leave without a fitting reception. In such matters a person can only trust to the intervention of good spirits; if, therefore, you will permit this unworthy individual to wear, while making the venture, the ring which he perceives upon your finger, ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... which were found in very deed somewhat later to be the infirmity of Greece as a whole, when, though its versatile gifts of intellect might constitute it the teacher of its eventual masters, it was found too incoherent politically to hold its own against Rome:—those evils of Athens, of Greece, came from an exaggerated assertion of the fluxional, flamboyant, centrifugal Ionian element in ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... underwent no change. "The development of the neo-Hebraic idiom from the ancient Hebrew," a distinguished modern ethnographer justly says, "confirms, by linguistic evidence, the plasticity, the logical acumen, the comprehensive and at the same time versatile intellectuality of the Jewish race. By the ingenious compounding of words, by investing old expressions with new meanings, and adapting the material offered by alien or related languages to its own ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... up Montaigne's 'Essais' for perusal we are presently under the spell of a feeling as though we were listening to the words of a most versatile man of the world, in whom we become more and more interested. We find in him not only an amiable representative of the upper classes, but also a man who has deeply entered into the spirit of classic antiquity. Soon he convinces us that he is honestly searching after truth; that he pursues the ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... for the greater bulk of the vegetable life of the globe; but his is a monotonous business, like the painting of miles and miles of palings: grass, grass, grass, trees, trees, trees, ad infinitum; whereas yellow leads a roving, versatile life, and is seldom called upon for such monotonous labour. The sands of Sahara are probably the only conspicuous instance of yellow thus working by the piece. It is in the quality, in the diversity of the things it ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... of the American quilt at its best is found in the "Indiana Wreath." Its pleasing design, harmonious colours, and exquisite workmanship reveal to us the quilter's art in its greatest perfection. This quilt was made by Miss E. J. Hart, a most versatile and skilful needlewoman, in 1858, as shown by the small precise figures below the large wreath. The design is exceedingly well balanced in that the entire quilt surface is uniformly covered and no ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... to Don Adriano de Arma'do, the fantastic Spaniard. He is cunning and versatile, facetious and playful.—Shakespeare, Love's Labor's ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Durant, or Henry Welles Smith as he was called in his boyhood, was born February 20, 1822, in Hanover, New Hampshire. His father, William Smith, "was a lawyer of limited means, but versatile mind and genial disposition." His mother, Harriet Fowle Smith of Watertown, Massachusetts, was one of five sisters renowned for their beauty and amiability; she was, we are told, intelligent as well as beautiful, "a great reader, and a devoted ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... Maurice Barrs' impassioned series, Les Bastions de l'Est, enjoy immense popularity, and within the last few months have appeared two volumes which fully confirm the views of their forerunners—M. Hallays' impressions of many wayfarings and Aprs quarante ans by M. Jules Claretie, the versatile, brilliant and much respected administrator-general of the ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Pacific for the benefit of my people my leading Minister had the audacity to obtrude upon my privacy at Tsarskoye Selo and demand that I withdraw the manifesto. This piece of impudence cost me the decision in that war. That magniloquent Minister, with his versatile Irish amanuensis, not only turned my mother against me, but he had the temerity to demand that I dismiss my best agent, Azeff, who alone kept me advised of the machinations of the Social Revolutionists, who, in turn, accused me of murdering my uncle Sergius—the greatest theologian of the age. ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... give us the impression of versatile ingenuity, and what is better, ingenuousness on the part ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various
... he frequently held Madame, Selina, and McIntosh spell-bound by his fairy-like descriptions and eloquent conversation. Of course, he only talked of the most general subjects to Mrs Villiers, and never by any chance let slip that he knew the seamy side of life—a side with which this versatile young gentleman was pretty well acquainted. As a worker, Gaston was decidedly a success. Being quick at figures and easily taught anything, he soon mastered all the details of the business connected with the Pactolus claim, and Madame found ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... contains a feast of fat things for the little folks, and folks who are no longer little find there lost childhood in its pages. We are not saying too much when we say that its versatile editor—Ella Farman, is more fully at home in the child's wonder-land than any other living American writer. She is thoroughly en rapport with her readers, gives them now a sugar plum of poesy, now a dainty jelly-cake ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... short of this, so no doubt did the king so greatly extolled, and much more so, probably, than the versatile Watt. ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... weft And trace the hinted texture here or there, Of that stupendous loom weaving our fates. Two parents, late in life, are haply blessed With one bright child, a wonder in his years, For loveliness and genius versatile: Some common ill destroys him; parents, both, Until their death, are left but living tombs That hold the one dead image of their joy. A man, the flower of honour, who has found His well-beloved young daughter fled from home, Fallen from her maidenhood, a nameless thing Tainting his blood. A youth ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... among the languages. There is no comparison to be instituted between his actual achievements as a builder and a versifier. The whole tenor of his life made him more competent to deal with architecture than with literature. Nevertheless, it is significant that the versatile genius of the man was henceforth restricted to these two channels of expression, and that in both of them his last twenty years of existence produced bloom and ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... he came down looking so like a chimney-sweep that Constance, whose versatile moods changed with the rapidity of lightning, flung herself on the bed in fits of laughter. The interrupted preparations were quickly resumed and completed; and when all was ready, and the boatman waiting at the Castle pier, Le Despenser went into the hall to bid farewell to his mother. She was sitting ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... it would have burst his breast; his head swam with a sort of pleasurable dizziness; his eyes were dim and suffused; and he scarce knew that he was talking, though he was indeed the life of the whole company, voluble, witty, versatile, and at times eloquent, so far as the topics of the day gave ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... guying in every direction. The placing of big, white candles upon it, however, strained the skill and self-control of the men to the last degree. If a candle prefers one set of antics to another, that set is certainly embodied in the versatile schemes for lopping over, which the wretched thing will develop on the best-behaving tree in the world. On a home-made tree the opportunities for a candle's enjoyment of this, its most diverting of accomplishments, are increased remarkably. The day was cold, but the men perspired from every ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... spent the night pretty well, though they complained of having been much disturbed at the time of high-water by the shaking and tremulous motion of their house and by the plashing noise of the sea upon the mortar gallery. Here James Glen's versatile powers were again at work in cheering up those who seemed to be alarmed, and in securing everything as far as possible. On this occasion he had only to recall to the recollections of some of them the former night which they had spent on the beacon, the wind ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a practiced writer. A very charming love romance runs through the story. This new and tasteful edition of "Nick of the Woods" will be certain to make many new admirers for this enchanting story from Dr. Bird's clever and versatile pen. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... was not of a versatile complexion. When his mind was quite made up he carried out the whole of it. But he could not now make up his mind upon either of two questions. Of these questions one was this—should he fight for ...
— Frida, or, The Lover's Leap, A Legend Of The West Country - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... the time of the Five-Years War, the Foreign Policy conducted from Washington was almost entirely Pan-American, and the Monroe Doctrine was the beginning and end of it; for even if that versatile man, President Roosevelt, was fond of extending his activities to other spheres, as, for instance, when he brought the Russo-Japanese War to an end by the Peace of Portsmouth, the Panama Canal scheme remained ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... who was now at the farm enjoying his vacation and worshipping at the shrine of the managing editor in the person of his versatile daughter, "are the most unreliable of any class in the world. So I've often been told, and I believe it. They come and go, by fits and starts, and it's a wonder the erratic rascals never put a paper out of business. But they don't. You never heard of a newspaper ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... She made it a duty to neglect no regular task, and much of her time was occupied as usual; but the feelings which she carried about to her employment, were very different from what they had been heretofore. It was her first taste of sorrow; well might her aunt deeply reproach Hazlehurst for his versatile conduct towards her beloved child. Elinor flattered herself that Miss Agnes knew not half of what she felt. In general she succeeded in being quite calm, and attentive to others; she was always sweet-tempered, and unrepining. But she could not read, herself, the expression of her ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... that as an orator "Beecher and Chapin were his only competitors. He was the admirer and friend of both, and both repaid his affection and his esteem. He had the superior charm of youth and novelty, with a nature more varied, and more versatile faculties and endowments than either. He had a far more artistic and formative nature and genius. His thoughts ran ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... or the only alternative will happen, the loss of our own liberties and the forfeiture of our national office as the leader of Progress combined with Order, on the planet. We have to deal with an implacable, a subtle, and a versatile enemy, wholly committed to the opposite cause; unscrupulous, inappreciative of magnanimity or concession of any kind; restrained by no considerations whatsoever short of the accomplishment of his absolute and tyrannical will. We have this enemy nearly prostrate under our feet, and we stand hesitating ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... is that versatile officer's own sketch of a man with whom he soldiered on one of his campaigns: "He has all the qualifications that go to make an officer above the ruck of them. Endowed with all the dash, pluck, and attractive force that make a born leader ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... tables thus turned on myself, and not willing to give Mr. Peac—any clew to poor Vivian (who thus appeared, to my great satisfaction, to have finally dropped an acquaintance more versatile than reputable), I contrived, by a few evasive sentences, to keep Mr. Peac—'s curiosity at a distance till he was summoned in haste to change his attire for the domestic drama. And so ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... before. He went abroad, as he affirmed at the time, "for purposes of study," whereat we all smiled, for Ken, so far as we knew him, was more likely to do anything else than to study. He was a young fellow of buoyant temperament, lively and social in his habits, of a brilliant and versatile mind, and possessing an income of twelve or fifteen thousand dollars a year; he could sing, play, scribble, and paint very cleverly, and some of his heads and figure- pieces were really well done, considering that he ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... most famous of living tenors, after Caruso, whom Mr. Conried thought it wise to carry over to the Metropolitan Opera House, thus precipitating a controversy, which, as such things go, was of real assistance to the manager whom the rival sought to injure; Maurice Renaud, the most finished and versatile of French operatic artists, whom the foresight of Maurice Grau had retained for the Metropolitan, but whose contract Mr. Conried canceled at the cost of a penalty; M. Charles Dalmors, a sterling dramatic ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... but with unkempt hair and with disconsolate side-whisker. He was not quite used to that side-whisker yet, for it had only recently come within the margin of cultivation. In active service Grodman had been clean-shaven, like all members of the profession—for surely your detective is the most versatile of actors. Mrs. Drabdump closed the street door quietly, and pointed to the stairs, fear operating like a polite desire to give him precedence. Grodman ascended, amusement still glimmering in his eyes. Arrived on the landing he knocked peremptorily at the ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... ERVINE is a versatile author who exhibits that unevenness of quality which is generally the besetting sin of versatile authors. When he is good he is very good indeed, and in The Foolish Lovers (COLLINS) he is at his best. The Ulsterman is seldom either a lovable or an interesting character. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... middle year of the nineteenth century, and fated unfortunately never to see its close, Guy de Maupassant was probably the most versatile and brilliant among the galaxy of novelists who enriched French literature between the years 1800 and 1900. Poetry, drama, prose of short and sustained effort, and volumes of travel and description, each sparkling with the same minuteness ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... versatile John Brooks close the pre-Chabert record and turn our attention to the fire-eaters of Chabert's day. Imitation may be the sincerest flattery, but in most cases the victim of the imitation, it is safe to say, will gladly dispense ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... among those who lead the normal type of life, that the abstinent and chastely celibate are exceptionally healthy, energetic, immune. The wildest claims are made. But indeed it is true for all who can see the facts of life simply and plainly, that man is an omnivorous, versatile, various creature and can draw his strength from a hundred varieties of nourishment. He has physiological idiosyncrasies too that are indifferent to biological classifications and moral generalities. It is not true that his absorbent vessels begin their task as children ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... reign was the establishment of the "Manufacture des Meubles de la Couronne," or, as it is usually called, "Manufacture des Gobelins." Artists of all kinds were gathered together and given apartments in the Louvre and the wonderfully gifted and versatile Le Brun was put at the head. Tapestry, goldsmiths' work, furniture, jewelry, etc., were made, and with the royal protection and interest France rose to the position of world-wide supremacy in the arts. Le Brun had the same ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... "O thrice-versatile Chou-hu!" exclaimed Tsae-che, whose eyes had reflected an ever-increasing sparkle of admiration as Yan unfolded the details of his scheme, "how insignificant are the minds of others compared with yours! Assuredly you have ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... vexation, and a little shame that he should have so easily surprised her secret; though, indeed, she preferred that Tinker should have discovered it rather than anyone else in the world. Then her sure knowledge of his discretion eased her anxiety, and the consideration of his able imagination and versatile ingenuity set a new and strong hope springing up ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... that versatile little book of short stories, "The Lower Bureau Drawer" is Emma Upton Vaughn, a Kansas City, Kansas teacher. These heart stories, showing keen insight of human nature—especially woman nature—deal with every day ...
— Kansas Women in Literature • Nettie Garmer Barker
... is so industrious, so changeable, and so versatile, as to be able to make himself like and adapt himself to many different persons, and not to laugh at the advice of Theognis, "Imitate the ingenuity of the polypus, that takes the colour of whatever stone it sticks to."[345] And yet the changes in ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... bride before she left her father's home. The son of a Pisan sculptor who had settled in Rome, Cristoforo's genius had attracted attention when he was quite a boy, and he had been sent to Milan by Cardinal Ascanio Sforza. The young Roman master was one of those brilliant and versatile artists who especially commended themselves to Lodovico. He sang and played the lute admirably, while his literary tastes made him the intimate friend of Bembo and Castiglione, and a great favourite with the cultured princesses of Mantua and Urbino. ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... preface, which was, indeed, characteristic of the fair creature, Aurora told Aunt Eliza of the bassoon, and as she spoke of his versatile accomplishments and admirable qualities her eyes glowed with an unwonted animation, and a carmine hue suffused her beautiful cheeks. It was plain that Aurora was deeply in love, and ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... take the poets' word for me—those low And scurvy fellows who lump all their spleen And call the mess my portrait! But in fact, I am more versatile, more broad, more kind Than they conceive. I venture to believe That I ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... Augustine united; a kind of Protestant pope, to whom everybody looks for advice and consolation. What a wonderful man! No wonder the Germans are so fond of him and so proud of him,—a Briareus with a hundred arms; a marvel, a wonder, a prodigy of nature; the most gifted, versatile, hard-working man of his ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... evaporation of Dr. Fortescue-Langley (with whom were amalgamated the Comte de Laroche-sur-Loiret, Mr. Higginson the courier, and whatever else that versatile gentleman chose to call himself) entailed ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen |
