"Masterpiece" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the spelling of Chaucer himself — has been discarded for that of the reader's own day. It is a poor compliment to the Father of English Poetry, to say that by such treatment the bouquet and individuality of his works must be lost. If his masterpiece is valuable for one thing more than any other, it is the vivid distinctness with which English men and women of the fourteenth century are there painted, for the study of all the centuries to follow. But we wantonly balk the artist's own purpose, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... being used as studio for this lady artist, although Her Majesty was out of patience with the portrait painting, and talked to us a great deal about it, yet when she saw Mrs. Conger and the others she was extremely polite and told them that the portrait was going to be a masterpiece. She was in an unusually good humor that day and told me to give orders to the eunuchs to open all the buildings and show them to her guests. Her Majesty led the way from one room to another and showed them her curios in the different rooms, until she came to rest in one of the bedrooms, when she ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... and there, in the bas-relief representing the "Passage of the Bridge of Areole," and the "Taking of Alexandra," some traces of balls are visible. On the whole, no irremediable hum is done here. Rude's masterpiece, "The Marseillaise," is untouched. ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... enough for the attendants. The walls were old gold silk, the curtains a tawny velvet of deeper tone, the cabinets and buffet of dark Italian walnut, inlaid with lapis-lazuli and amber. The fireplace was a masterpiece of cabinet work, with high narrow shelves, and curious recesses holding priceless jars of Oriental enamel. The deep hearth was filled with arum lilies and azalias, ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... shall they read at home? What part, if any, shall we read to them? What questions are necessary to insure appreciation? How many of the allusions need be run down in order to give the maximal effect of the masterpiece? How may the necessarily discontinuous discussions of the class—one period each day for several days—be so counteracted as to insure the cumulative emotional effect which the appreciation of all art presupposes? Should the story be sketched through first, and then ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... water down hill, Bigot! but, par Dieu! I would not have believed that New France contained two women of such mettle as the one to contrive, the other to execute, a masterpiece of devilment like that!" ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... and you will find Dr. Miles Breuer is most brilliant in his philosophy and clever in the application of that philosophy in his masterpiece of the science of communication.—Don L. Schweitzer, ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... he dwells, always thinks himself the biggest sinner, one most unworthy of eternal life. This is Satan's master argument; thou art a horrible sinner, a hypocrite, one that has a profane heart, and one that is an utter stranger to a work of grace. I say this is his maul, his club, 34 his masterpiece; he doth with this as some do with their most enchanting songs, sings them everywhere. I believe there are but few saints in the world that have not had this temptation sounding in their ears. But were they but aware, Satan by all this does but drive them to the gap out at which they ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and its penetrating insight it is quite a masterpiece, comparable only with Miss Alcott's 'Little ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... would hymn them to their mighty rest, and Hymen himself keep continual carnival at their amaranthine hearths. "Gentlemen of the jury (said the learned counsel in conclusion), I leave you with a broken heart in your hands! A broken heart, gentlemen! Creation's masterpiece, flawed cracked, SHIVERED TO BITS! See how the blood flows from it—mark where its strings are cut and cut—its delicate fibres violated—its primitive aroma evaporated to all the winds of heaven. Make that heart your ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 4, 1841 • Various
... after when Glasgow finally bought the masterpiece. Indeed, Whistler had little market for his works ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... was in a mood of deep depression. The artistic temperament is peculiarly subject to these moods, but in Paul's case there was reason why he should take a gloomy view of things. His masterpiece, "The Shot Tower from Battersea Bridge," together with the companion picture, "Battersea Bridge from the Shot Tower," had been purchased by a dealer for seventeen and sixpence. His sepia monochrome, "Night," had brought him an I.O.U. for five shillings. These were his ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... a brilliant mise en scene at the Opera- Italien, I cannot believe that it equalled that of Robert le Diable, the new five-act opera of Meyerbeer, who has also written "Il Crociato." "Robert" is a masterpiece of the new school, where the devils sing through speaking-trumpets and the dead rise from their graves, but not as in "Szarlatan" [an opera of Kurpinski's], only from fifty to sixty persons all at once! The stage represents the interior of a convent ruin illuminated by the ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... a little book which, in its curious way, is a masterpiece, Mrs. Oliphant shows us the dead of a provincial town suddenly waxing indignant over the conduct and the morals of those inhabiting the town which they had founded. They rise up in rebellion, invest the houses, the streets, the market-places and, by the pressure ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... artist o' that there masterpiece. The Spittin' Devil! I done it on a rainy mornin'. Genius is queer. ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... pray. It is this woman who is seeking to entrap us. She has played some little comedy, and she chooses to-day above all others for its dnouement. It is her stage climax; her masterpiece of treachery. ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... This masterpiece of conciliatory firmness, which had cost the "Firm" an hour's painful labour to concoct, brought out the angry spots on Pledge's cheeks and forced some ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... sort of chowder, too, of what fish I could not conjecture, which was so appetizing that I could have gorged on it. Just as provocative and alluring was one of the concoctions of the second course, apparently of lamb or kid, but indubitably a masterpiece. I certainly must see ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... of the Nymph over the bed. Given away with the Easter number of Photo Bits: Splendid masterpiece in art colours. Tea before you put milk in. Not unlike her with her hair down: slimmer. Three and six I gave for the frame. She said it would look nice over the bed. Naked nymphs: Greece: and for instance all ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... with India, Sir Charles, it will give me the utmost pleasure if you and her Ladyship will do me the honour to inspect those which Mr Lorenzo Darcy, my uncle, brought from that wonderful country. The Ivory Shrine is considered a masterpiece, and some have recommended that it should be in some public collection. But ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... Tea is the beverage—the masterpiece—of every meal, even if it be nothing but boiled rice. Every artisan and laborer, going to work, carries with him his rice-box of lacquered wood, a kettle, a tea-caddy, a tea-pot, a cup, and his chop-sticks. Milk and sugar are generally eschewed. The Japs and ...
— The Little Tea Book • Arthur Gray
... ran through the assembled natives. The ngob-burn boye, koom-bur bomb-gur, or exceedingly big-stone, extremely hard hit, was evidently regarded by them as a masterpiece of eloquence; and the contrast between this and the neyp bomb-gur, very gently struck, of Mr. Taalwurt, undoubtedly evinced its superiority in their estimation; but as Taalwurt was a stout able fellow, and one by no means given to deal gentle blows when in a passion, ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... documents was remarkable for its optimism, the second might justly be described as a {25} masterpiece of faith pure and undefiled by any contact with sordid facts. Its theme is the magnitude of the compensations which Greece might expect in return for her entry into the War: "I have a feeling," says the author, "that the concessions in Asia Minor suggested ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... one scene selected from a thousand. The landscape is always a background, more northern or more southern as the case may be, but penetrated with the feeling of the man who has been happy or has suffered there. This feeling, broadly, sensuously diffused, as in a masterpiece of Titian, prepares us for the human ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... Aeneas to her Dido, though with somewhat less tragic consequences. The Proem to the Decameron shews us the after-glow of his passion; the lady herself appears as one of the "honourable company," and her portrait, as in the act of receiving the laurel wreath at the close of the Fourth Day, is a masterpiece of tender and ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the masterpiece of Protestant English charity designed (by the founder) in his life; completed after his death, begun, continued and finished with buildings and endowments, solely at his own charges, wherein Mr Sutton appears ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... of the studio were distinctly "advanced." But, since the center of interest seemed to be the large canvas on the easel, the two moved to the edges of the group of spectators and began to examine this masterpiece. A very puzzled newspaperman joined them, bending ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... wine; the grossness of the earth must be evaporated, its marrow daily melted and refined for ages; until at length these clods that break below our footing, and to the eye appear but common earth, are truly and to the perceiving mind, a masterpiece of nature. The dust of Richebourg, which the wind carries away, what an apotheosis of the dust! Not man himself can seem a stranger child of that brown, friable powder, than the blood and sun in that old flask behind ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not wake up till midday. From his bed he saw the pictures, which had been brought in while he was asleep, leaning one against another on the opposite wall. While he examined them anew, recognizing each masterpiece, studying the manner of each painter, and searching for the signature, his mother had gone to see and thank her brother, urged thereto by old Hochon, who, having heard of the follies the painter had ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... style the work is a masterpiece of vivid, forceful, sinewy, Anglo-Saxon. The story never halts, one is never irritated by floridity and ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... that great impostor, has been a great masterpiece of the devil: she has confessed unnatural lust, which is known to some of your number; she sat near the door where the charm of hair was found, which the girl declared did keep up her tongue; and upon burning thereof, it was loosed. ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... "Idamante and Ilia have a short quarrel (near the close of the opera) in a few words of recitative which is interrupted by a subterranean noise, whereupon the oracle speaks also from the depths. The voice and the accompaniment must be moving, terrifying and most extraordinary; it ought to make a masterpiece of harmony.") ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the Monnaie announced that Her Majesty had come and that they could begin. Hugo's masterpiece was magnificently presented. The greatest artists filled even minor roles. Mounet-Sully surpassed himself, and Esperance drew cries of admiration from that ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... "sketch," not a history. My sketch, however, would be incomplete did I overlook his greatest production, or his visit to "that generous and polite nation," as he was pleased to call Ireland, for which nation his masterpiece was composed, and in which it ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... Petrarch—one of the first truly modern men. That clear soul—who first collected from the literature of all countries evidence of the origin and progress of the sense of natural beauty, and himself, in his Ansichten der Natur, achieved the noblest masterpiece of description—Alexander von Humboldt, has not done full justice to Petrarch; and, following in the steps of the great reaper, we may still hope to glean a few ears ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... "Institutio" entitles Calvin to the foremost place among the dogmatic theologians of the Reformed Church. This masterpiece of luminous argument presents a complete system of Christian faith, based on the Protestant principle that the Scriptures are the source of Christian truth. "Two things there are," says Hooker, in the preface to the "Ecclesiastical Polity," "which have ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... to me a masterpiece of military eloquence. While he lavished praises on his troops, he excited their emulation by hinting that the Russians were capable of disputing with them the first rank among the infantry of Europe, and he concluded his address by calling ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... his auspicious enterprise to the end, and so complete what he had begun so well.[124] Before a month had passed Vasari was summoned from Florence to decorate the hall of kings with paintings of the massacre.[125] The work was pronounced his masterpiece; and the shameful scene may still be traced upon the wall, where, for three centuries, it has insulted every pontiff that entered the ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... Bruttii. Partly by persuasion and partly by force they made their way to Rhegium, while the sea was still very stormy. The Carthaginian Admiral, who no longer expected the Corinthians, and thought that he was waiting there to no purpose, persuaded himself that he had invented a masterpiece of deceit. He ordered his sailors to crown themselves with garlands, decked out his triremes with Greek shields and wreaths of palm, and set out for Syracuse. As he passed the citadel they cheered loudly, and with uproarious merriment called out to ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... original author: of these things I have only the usufruct. To me the play owes nothing but the stiffening of civistic conscience that has been crammed in. Modest? Not a bit of it. It is my civistic conscience that makes a man of me and (incidentally) makes this play a masterpiece. ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... itself, for that had long before died out in Spain. What it did aim to do was to make ridiculous the romances of chivalry over which all Spain at the time of Cervantes seemed to have gone mad. How well Cervantes succeeded in his aim may be known from the fact that after the appearance of his masterpiece, no new romance of chivalry was ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... united with elegance, and energy of thought with harmony of versification. The example seems to have produced a strong effect. No poet, not even Settle (for even the worst artist will improve from beholding a masterpiece), afterwards conceived he had sufficiently accomplished his task by presenting to the public, thoughts, however witty or caustic he might deem them, clothed in the hobbling measure of Donne or Cleveland; and expression and ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... out that one of the Frohmans wanted to Dramatize the Masterpiece, and it was Rumored that Stuart Robson, Modjeska, Thomas Q. Seabrooke, Maude Adams, Dave Warfield, and Walker Whiteside had been requested to play the ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... Yet the incredible had happened; and England had found its worship once more—the necessary culmination of unimpeded subjectivity. From the provinces had come the like news. In cathedral after cathedral had been the same scenes. Markenheim's masterpiece, executed in four days after the passing of the bill, had been reproduced by the ordinary machinery, and four thousand replicas had been despatched to every important centre. Telegraphic reports had streamed into the London papers that everywhere ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... half-educated man, fluent with all the commonplaces of middle-class ambition, which are humorously called democratic opinions, but at heart a sycophant of the aristocracy. He represented, however, a large and important constituency, and his promotion was at first looked upon as a masterpiece of management. The Mountain, who knew Jorrocks by heart, and felt that they had in their ranks men in every sense his superior, and that he could be no representative of their intelligence and opinions, and so by degrees prepare for their gradual admission to the sacred ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... prototypes of the modern novel, from "Don Quixote" to "Tom Jones" and "Joseph Andrews," were little more than narratives of adventures on the road. "Joseph Andrews" in particular—perhaps Fielding's masterpiece—is simply the story of a journey from London to a place in the country some hundred and fifty miles distant. In these books all the adventures are associated with inns and the various characters, thrown together by chance, there assembled. ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... any event," I optimistically reflected, "I am a nickel in. If your dicta had emanated from a person in Peoria or Seattle, who hadn't bothered to read my masterpiece, they would have sounded exactly the same, and the clipping-bureau would have charged me five cents. Maybe I can't write verses, then. But I am quite sure I can groan." ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... something in this fashion, if I remember rightly: 'We find that the deceased met death while inadvisably attempting to stop a revolver bullet in motion' or words to that effect. I thought at the time it was a masterpiece of ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... I don't think anybody in the farthest corner missed a single clear-cut syllable from the first. As I may have indicated, I had never been a warm admirer of his, but with all my prejudice, I think I admired him when he stood up to his task that day. For the effect he intended, his speech was a masterpiece, no less. I saw it before he had finished three sentences. And he delivered it, knowing that even while he did so he was losing the woman he loved; for Hector did love Laura Rainey, next to himself, ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... making the discovery is that described by Franklin, and there is no masterpiece of literature better to practise upon than Ruskin's "The King of the Golden River." Unlike much beautiful and powerful writing, it is so simple that a child can understand it. Complete comprehension ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... standing," Maitland said, "before a masterpiece of sea and rock, such as only Richards can paint. It was a view of Land's End, Cornwall, and in the artist's very best vein. My admiration made me totally unmindful of my surroundings, so much so, indeed, that, although the gallery was crowded, ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... armies of Von Kluck—"General One O'clock," they called him, and said his fiercest attacks were at one o'clock—is considered a masterpiece of military precision. The strategy of General Joffre which foiled him is ...
— The Audacious War • Clarence W. Barron
... years Marcel had been engaged upon the famous painting which he said was meant to represent the Passage of the Red Sea; and for five or six years this masterpiece in color had been obstinately refused by the jury. Indeed, from its constant journeying back and forth, from the artist's studio to the Musee, and from the Musee to the studio, the painting knew the road so well that one needed only to set it on rollers and it would have been quite ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... man! That trick of yours with the table and the water-bottle was really splendid! A masterpiece, on my word! Only, ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... to him in the dark places of London, we should have had no "Hound of Heaven", and without that masterpiece what would modern poetry do? He sang to cover up his wounds with climbing music. That was his sense of beauty. He filled his hollowing cheek with finer things than moaning. He might have wept, but they ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... a distinct basis for comparison between Innocencia and the more famous Spanish American tale from Colombia; between these and Canaan, however, there is little similarity, if one overlook the poetic atmosphere that glamours all three. Aranha's masterpiece is of far broader conception than the other two; it adds to their lyricism an epic sweep inherent in the subject and very soon felt in the treatment. It is, in fact, a difficult novel to classify, impregnated as it is with a noble idealism, yet just as undoubtedly streaked with a ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... study. The citadel stood on ground but little, if at all, higher than that upon which the town was situated. It was pentagonal in form, and was built in 1565, and was the earliest fortification in Europe in this style, and was considered a masterpiece. It was separated from the town by its glacis. A deep fosse ran along the foot of the wall. The town itself was walled, and extended to the foot of the citadel, and was capable of offering a sturdy resistance even after the citadel had fallen, just as ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... effectual, for Janet hated The Oaks, and she recalled with disagreeable vividness one never-to-be-forgotten year spent there as a child. So she went to her room and wrote to the superintendent at Bethany that a sudden change in her plans would force her to give up her class. The letter, a masterpiece in its way, closed with expressions of the deepest regret, and was duly received by the excellent Mr. Bagby, who felt that both Bethany and himself ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... listened, half dressed, with a happy smile; for she knew the moods of his genius better than he knew them himself, and she understood that the song he was weaving with voice and lute would be worthy of him, as it is; for in the growth of music, the fine art, his masterpiece of oratorio are left behind and forgotten, being too thin and primitive for an age that began with Beethoven and ended in Richard Wagner; but his songs have not lost their hold on those simpler natures that are still responsive ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... sceptre and the ball were the world, with which his childish hands were playing. When on the eve of the battle of Moskowa, Napoleon was giving his final orders for the tremendous struggle of the next day, a courier, M. de Bausset, arrived suddenly from Paris, bringing with him this masterpiece of Grard's; at once the General forgot his anxieties in his paternal joy. "Gentlemen," said Napoleon to his officers, "if my son were fifteen years old, you may be sure that he would be here among this multitude of brave men, and not merely in a picture." Then he had the ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... is fifty years old, this little book of one hundred and fifty-four pages, this first fruit of a stately tree. In half a century the poet has altered much, and withdrawn much, but already, in 1830, he had found his distinctive note, and his "Mariana" is a masterpiece. "Mariana" is in all the collections, but pieces of which the execution is less certain must be sought only in the old volume of 1830. In the same way "The Strayed Reveller, and other poems, by A." (London: B. Fellowes, Ludgate Street, 1849) contains much that Mr. ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... mythologist and the modern, that while the Odyssey has been compared to a setting sun in respect to the Iliads, Rabelais' last work, which is this Voyage to the Oracle of the Bottle (by which he means truth) is justly thought his masterpiece, being wrote with more spirit, salt, and flame, than the first part of his works. At near seventy years of age, his genius, far from being drained, seemed to have acquired fresh vigour and new graces the more it exerted itself; like those rivers which grow more deep, large, majestic, and useful by ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... royal had a boned duck swimming in its centre. At the other end of the table scowled in death the grim countenance of a huge roast pike, flanked on one side by a leg of mutton a la daube, and on the other by the tempting delicacies of Bombarded Veal. To these succeeded that masterpiece of the culinary art a grand Battalia Pie, in which the bodies of chickens, pigeons, and rabbits were embalmed in spices, cocks' combs, and savoury balls, and well bedewed with one of those rich sauces of claret, anchovy, and sweet herbs in which our grandfathers delighted, ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... houses in which I have ever visited was one in which there was, from garret to cellar, so far as I discovered, not one article which was not of the period imitated, not one streak of color which was not "right." It was a masterpiece of correct furnishing, but it gave one a curious sense of limitation. One could not escape the scheme. The inelasticity of it hampered sociability—and there grew on one, too, a sense of unfitness. His clothes were an anachronism! ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... destined for simple offerings of fruit, cakes, and incense, which were consecrated to Venus. Besides the form of the altar, an inscription found there and a statue of the goddess, whose modest attitude recalls the masterpiece of Florence, sufficiently authorize the name, in the absence of more exact information, that has been given to this edifice. Others, however, have attributed it to the worship of Bacchus; others again to that of Diana, and the question has not yet been settled by the savans; but Venus being the patroness ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... differing considerably from the last as well as the first. He had brought together and compared all these forms of the poem, noting every minutest variation—a mode of study which, in the case of a masterpiece, richly repays the student. It was no wonder, therefore, that Richard had almost every word of it on the very ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... by east wind or west wind, north wind or south wind, according as each blew last and hardest; the other thirty-six—the rose: in its midsummer splendour with fold upon fold of delicate symmetric structures, making a masterpiece. ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... be reptile or quadruped, the spirit of repletion broods over the canvas with irresistible force. Mr. Thaddeus Tumulty sends some admirable drawings in pise de terre, one of which, called "The Pragmatist at Play," is a masterpiece ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various
... sentences, could be surpassed by nothing but the exultation with which he fell back and eyed him when he had finished this brilliant display of eloquence and sagacity; his great blue waistcoat heaving with the throes of such a masterpiece, and his nose in a state of violent inflammation ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... finished in the highest style of classic art. As she acts the part of a statue in the play, so she has a statue-like calmness and firmness of soul. A certain austere sweetness pervades her whole demeanour, and seems, as it were, the essential form of her life. It is as if some masterpiece of ancient sculpture had warmed and quickened into life from its ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... Montmolin, an officer of the Swiss Guard, allowing himself to be murdered on the 10th of August, sooner than give up the flag which was intrusted to his loyal care, a very small canvas, carefully mended up. That fragment is the principal figure in Leopold Robert's first picture, and his masterpiece, L'IMPROVISATEUR, which used to hang in the billiard-room at Neuilly. Either a salvage man, or a looter of enlightened taste, cut it out with a penknife, in the midst of the conflagration, and it is the only thing ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... one can gaze into the starry sky at night for five minutes and not believe in the existence of God. But to people who lack such appreciation the night sky is devoid of significance. There are teachers who never go forth to revel in the glories of this star-lit masterpiece of creation, because, forsooth, they are too busy grading papers in literature. Such a teacher is not likely to be the cause of a spiritual ignition in her pupils, for she herself lacks the divine fire of appreciation. If she only possessed this ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... a poet—author also of one lovely lyric—who treated our rivers after the fashion of his day, which ran to length and tedious excess. Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis is by pages too long; but that is nothing to Drayton's masterpiece. With the best dispositions in the world I have never been able to get right through the Polyolbion. His anthropomorphism is surprising, and a little ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... find the audience both large and attentive. One of the newspapers expressed the public appreciation in the following truly American fashion: "The first Darwinian, Wallace, did not leave a leg for anti-Darwinism to stand on when he had got through his first Lowell Lecture last evening. It was a masterpiece of condensed statement—as clear and simple as compact—a most beautiful specimen of scientific work. Dr. Wallace, though not an orator, is likely to become a favourite as a lecturer, his manner is ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... not gained in one swift breath. What's gained in a few moments is not worth having. All those who have through toil and pain entered into citizenship in the Celestial City will tell you that. Gods do not grow in one night like mushrooms. Every great masterpiece is an evolution, be it a statue, a poem, a painting, a man—or a god. If it is ever given to you to see my Albert of Cologne as I see him you will understand what I mean.' He turned round to me and I gave a start, I can tell you. Never have I seen such lurid gleams of light ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... cheek—the ivory temple—the eye of inspiration—the bereaved mourner thought he could trace, some faint resemblance to the lost Acme. Henceforward, it was his greatest pleasure, to remain with eyes fixed on that masterpiece of art. ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... Katy. It made her weep from the first line to the last. It was full of heartbreak, and Katy was too unobserving to notice how round and steady and commercial the penmanship was, and how large and fine were the flourishes. Westcott himself considered it his masterpiece. He punched his crony with his elbow as he deposited it in the office, and assured him that it was the techin'est note ever written. It would come the sympathies over her. There was nothing like the sympathies to fetch a woman to terms. He knew. ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... were easily caught by any warm and impassioned appeal. His imagination, however, quickly formed for him another magic wand; for as he, on account of his alliance with the highest of all beings, had a lofty opinion of man, he formed the design of physiognomically dissecting the masterpiece of creation, this favourite of heaven, and of allotting to him his interior qualities by means of his exterior appearance. Men of his character so frequently deceive themselves, that it is impossible to say whether some remaining ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... "A masterpiece of sentiment and humorous characterization. Nothing more individual, and in its own way more powerful, has been done in American fiction.... The story is a work of ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... production of nature that the country was known to possess at that time. Our time was divided between the American and Canadian sides, viewing the grand spectacle at all hours, from the rising to the setting of the sun; and, awed by the marvelous masterpiece of grandeur, we were held as if fascinated by its beauty, until we were forced to leave for the want of food and to replenish our commissary. When we boarded the cars to be whirled through the then wilds of Lower Canada, we ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... of utter fortuity. Actually it was a masterpiece of cunning calculation, a thing which clear-visioned persons might see to bristle with ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... than three hours the letters were composed and written. Betty was satisfied with my letter; and her own, which she translated for my benefit, was a perfect masterpiece of sensibility, which seemed to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... only as a masterpiece of romantic narrative, but for the spirited and natural device by which the hero is conducted to his adventure. R. L. Stevenson and other critics have been rather hard upon Scott's defects as an artist. ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... when, to his great wonder, there stood the shoes all ready made, upon the table. The good man knew not what to say or think at such an odd thing happening. He looked at the workmanship; there was not one false stitch in the whole job; all was so neat and true, that it was quite a masterpiece. ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... own room to add some final reverent touches to the masterpiece, and to meditate upon the delicate blonde beauty ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... school to its furthest excess. In its recondite obscurity it outdid Lycophron himself. More than one grammarian of the time made a reputation solely by a commentary on it. It throws much light on the peculiar artistic position of Catullus, to bear in mind that this masterpiece of frigid pedantry obtained his warm ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... was requested by the London booksellers to prefix prefaces to the "English Poets," part of which was issued the next year, and the rest in 1780 and 1781, as the "Lives of English Poets." This work has generally been regarded as Johnson's masterpiece. It nowhere, indeed, displays so much of the creative, the inventive, the poetical, as his "Rasselas," and many of his smaller tales and fictions. Its judgments, too, have been often and justly controverted. The book is, undoubtedly, a storehouse of his prejudices, ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... forward to greet the caller; saying as she gave him her hand, "You arrived just in time, Mr. Lagrange; Edward and I were discussing your latest book. We think it a masterpiece of realistic fiction. I'm sure it will add immensely to your fame. I hear it talked of everywhere as the most popular novel of the year. You wonderful man! How ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... since old Sechard retired, two presses were at work in the old house. The calendar was, in its way, a masterpiece; but Eve was obliged to sell it for less than a halfpenny, for the Cointets were supplying hawkers at the rate of three centimes per copy. Eve made no loss on the copies sold to hawkers; on Kolb's sales, made directly, she gained; but her little speculation was spoiled. Cerizet ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... whose equal, in all my former compositions, I never was lucky enough to hit on, and despair of ever doing so again; you have cast her rather in the shades of life; there is a certain Poet of my making; among your frolics it would not be amiss to attach him to this masterpiece of my hand, to give her that immortality among mankind, which no woman, of any age, ever more deserved, and which few rhymsters of this age are better ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... old squaw, who sits mutely amid her wares near the traffic gate? She declared this her choicest creation, her masterpiece, indeed. I am so glad ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... to suppose you could not have made that discovery for yourself, and you spend an amusing hour over the story again, for there are occasions when a book that is not "literature" will serve your purpose better than a masterpiece. The little book has entertained generations of German girls, and is presumably accepted by them, just as Little Women is accepted in America or The Daisy Chain in England. The picture was always a little exaggerated, and some of its touches are now out of date; yet as a picture ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... trek-waggon barricades, and the shelters panelled and roofed with corrugated iron. And your bomb-proof Headquarter Bureau, the iron skull that's to hold the working brain of the place ... with underground telegraphic and telephonic communications with all the forts and outposts. It's colossal! A masterpiece of cool, deadly, lethal forethought.... I thought I was incapable of the delicious shiver of expectation that the schoolboy enjoys, sitting in the stalls of dear Old Drury, waiting for the curtain to rise on the first act of the Autumn Drama. But you've ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... congratulated on the excellence of his latest story, 'The Seats of the Mighty,' and his readers are to be congratulated on the direction which his talents have taken therein.... It is so good that we do not stop to think of its literature, and the personality of Doltaire is a masterpiece of creative art."—New York ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... his pictures in the Ducal Palace, in the Academy, and a fine series in San Sebastiano, which represents legendary scenes in the life of St. Sebastian. Go to Santa Maria Formosa and look at Palma Vecchio's St. Barbara, his masterpiece. You will also find several of this artist's pictures in the Academy worth looking at. His style at its best is grand, as in the St. Barbara, but he did not always paint up to it, by ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... larger representations we mention the marble statue of a girl playing with astragaloi in the Berlin Museum, and a Pompeian wall-painting in which the children of Jason play the same game, while Medea threatens their lives with a drawn sword. The celebrated masterpiece of Polykletes, representing two boys playing with astragaloi, formerly in the palace of Titus in Rome, has unfortunately been lost. Another wall-painting shows in the foreground Aglaia and Hileaira, daughters of Niobe, kneeling ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... trailed off. He was wasting them, he saw. She was looking through his head. But he rejoiced as to one thing like a potter who opens the door of his oven and finds his masterpiece unbroken. And silence fell upon them, interrupted only by the intermittent humming of ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... left Rome; but it is composed as if it had been delivered immediately after the speech which provoked it. Never in all the history of eloquence has a traitor been so terribly denounced, an enemy so mercilessly scourged. It has always been considered by critics as Cicero's crowning masterpiece. The other Philippics, some of which were uttered in the senate, while others were extempore harangues before the people, were delivered in quick succession between December 44 B.C. and April 43 B.C. They cost the orator his life. When Antony and Octavius ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... man further from his primitive and proper condition, Popanilla triumphantly demonstrated that no such order as that which they associated with the phrase "state of nature" ever existed. "Man", said he, "is called the masterpiece of nature; and man is also, as we all know, the most curious of machines. Now, a machine is a work of art; consequently the masterpiece of nature is the masterpiece of art. The object of all mechanism is the attainment of utility; the object of man, who is the most perfect machine, is utility ...
— English Satires • Various
... a masterpiece of temper, dignity, strength of reasoning, and eloquence, and his enemies were ashamed of the decision to which they had driven the jury. He was therefore reprieved, and committed to the Tower, where his wife was allowed to bear him company, and where his youngest ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... well as grace in it, she swept aside the concealing curtain. Florian recoiled with an involuntary cry,—and then remained motionless and silent,—stricken dumb and stupid by the magnificent creation which confronted him. This Angela's masterpiece! A woman's work! This stupendous conception! This perfect drawing! This wondrous colouring! Fully facing him, the central glory of the whole picture, was a figure of Christ—unlike any other Christ ever imagined by poet or painter—an etherealised Form through which ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... was not simply seeking flattery. What he needed were sympathetic critics who could clothe in acceptable language statements which he would recognise as expressing the truth about his masterpiece. Hints of Prefaces, especially if read in the context of the numerous replies Richardson received, reveals very plainly the extent to which he was aware of what he wanted from his correspondents. Most, unfortunately, were sadly incapable of producing a critical account of ...
— Clarissa: Preface, Hints of Prefaces, and Postscript • Samuel Richardson
... daughter, who was wearing a brand-new pale blue cashmere frock, cut square in front, which left her neck bare as far as the freckles went, did not meet with as much success as could be expected from her dress, which the Gradewitz dressmaker had declared to be her masterpiece. And even Mariechen Rozycki, whose very red arms [Pg 93] and hands stuck out of a pink silk blouse, had to look on, while one man after another marched over to Mrs. Tiralla. ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... They involve the intense and complicated action of many and of complex powers. It may be hard physical work to break stones for a road-way, but the task itself is a simple one—the lifting of the arm and dropping it again with sufficient force to split a rock apart. But the writing of a prose masterpiece, such as the Areopagitica, involves the highest human faculties in harmonious action. If we add to the requirements of prose, the rhythm, the exalted imagery, and perhaps the assonance and rhyme of verse, we still further ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... is the masterpiece of a famous writer now living {67b}, intended for a complete abstract of sixteen thousand schoolmen ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... dainty carpet of La Savonniere, the silks of Tours, the tapestries of the Gobelins, the gold-work and the delicate chinaware of Sevres—the best of all that France could produce was centred between these four walls. Nothing had ever passed through that door which was not a masterpiece of its kind. And amid all this brilliance the master of it sat, his chin resting upon his hands, his elbows upon the table, with eyes which stared vacantly at the wall, a moody and ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... explanation is, I consider, due to the public, but whether I have been justified by results or whether, under the sacred mask of Drama, I have erred unpardonably, are points which, so long as this revival draws attention to a forgotten masterpiece, can be of no very ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... MITCHENER. A masterpiece of strategy. Let me explain. The Suffragets are a very small body; but they are numerous enough to be troublesome—even dangerous—when they are all concentrated in one place—say in Parliament ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... has certainly never given us in one novel so many portraits of intrinsic interest. Annie Kilburn herself is a masterpiece of quietly veracious art—the art which depends for its effect on unswerving fidelity to the truth of Nature.... It certainly seems to us the very best book that ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... hung from the roof of St. Lorenz? With such an example before him, what might not the boy hope to achieve through talent and persevering labor? And Gabriel felt his own heart burn as he looked with wistful eyes upon that masterpiece of rare and ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... been engaged in its composition? We see that he must have been bordering on 80, if not 90: consequently with impaired faculties, and thus altogether disqualified for producing such a vigorous historical masterpiece; for though we have instances of poets writing successfully at a very advanced age, as Pindar composing one of his grandest lyrics at 84, and Sophocles his Oedipus Coloneus at 90, we have no instance of any great historian, except Livy, attempting to ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... in 1834. Its authorship was attributed, among others, to Captain Marryatt, and so successfully did Scott himself conceal his identity with it that the secret was not known until after his death, which occurred at Glasgow on November 7, 1835. Of its kind, "Tom Cringle's Log" is a veritable masterpiece. Humour and pathos and gorgeous descriptions are woven into a thrilling narrative. Scott wrote many other things beside "Tom Cringle," but only one story, "The Cruise of the Midge" (1836), is in any way comparable with his first ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... stirred by an emotion that must thrill the hearts of all great artists when, in the pride of their youth and their first love of art, they come into the presence of a master or stand before a masterpiece. For all human sentiments there is a time of early blossoming, a day of generous enthusiasm that gradually fades until nothing is left of happiness but a memory, and glory is known for a delusion. Of all these ...
— The Unknown Masterpiece - 1845 • Honore De Balzac
... of lions filled the two circular spaces between the brackets in the middle. But although the loss of the work as a whole is to be regretted, the dancing boys remain, to be for ever an inspiration and a pleasure. The Luca della Robbia cantoria opposite is not quite so triumphant a masterpiece, but from the point of view of suitability it is perhaps better. We can believe that Luca's children hymn the glory of the Lord, as indeed the inscription makes them, whereas Donatello's romp with a gladness that might easily be purely pagan. Luca's ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... inferior subject for art, and if they are to be made attractive, much else must be combined with them. If the excellence of Hamlet had depended on the ethical qualities of Hamlet, it would not have been the masterpiece of our literature. He acts virtuously of course, and kills the people he ought to kill, but Shakespeare knew that such goodness would not much interest the pit. He made him a handsome prince, and a puzzling meditative character; these secular qualities relieve his moral excellence, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... for Mozart, was not long in visiting Garcia after his arrival here. He introduced himself as the author of "Don Giovanni," and Garcia, clipping the old man in his arm, danced around the room like a child in glee, singing "Fin ch'han dal vino" the while. After that the inclusion of Mozart's masterpiece in Garcia's repertory was a matter of course, with only this embarrassment that there was no singer in the company capable of singing the music of Don Ottavio. This was overcome by Da Ponte going to his pupils for money enough to pay an extra singer for the part. Many a tenor, before ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... doctrine of Christ,' marvellous as it may seem that anything in our poor lives can commend that fairest of all beautiful things—and to commend it to some hearts. Just as some poor black-and-white engraving of a masterpiece of the painter's brush may, to an eye untrained in the harmony of colour, be a better interpretation of the artist's meaning than his own proper work, so our feeble copies of the transcendent splendour and beauty may suit some purblind and untrained ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... have been considered, both by the Court and by his contemporaries, his masterpiece. And justly so; yet our pleasure at Charles's having shown, for once, good taste, is somewhat marred by Langbaine's story, that the good acting of the Oxford scholars, 'stately scenes, and richness of the Persian habits,' had as much to do with the success of the play as its 'stately style,' and ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... the day. It was in vain; despair endows every one with superhuman strength; no one can conquer, no one will give way. The art of war seemed to exhaust its powers on one side, only to unfold some new and untried masterpiece of skill on the other. Night and darkness at last put an end to the fight, before the fury of the combatants was exhausted; and the contest only ceased, when no one could any longer find an antagonist. Both armies separated, as if ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... for this loss. Where, however, a quiet refinement and delicacy of style is needed as in those sane and suggestive, atmospheric, critical or introspective studies, such as By the Ionian Sea, the unrivalled presentment of Charles Dickens, and that gentle masterpiece of softened autobiography, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (its resignation and autumnal calm, its finer note of wistfulness and wide human compassion, fully deserve comparison with the priceless work of Silvio ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... so long a lapse of time the verses still retain their hold on the minds of all classes. In spite of the fact that Matthew Arnold and other admirers have declared that the "Elegy" was not Gray's masterpiece, yet it was this poem that brought a man who accomplished but a small amount of work into such lasting fame. From beginning to end, as Professor Raleigh says of Milton's work, the "Elegy" "is crowded with examples of felicitous and exquisite meaning given to the infallible word." ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... provoked mirth to those who lived with me, and others who occasionally paid us visits. I persisted, and the next "masterpiece" was the figure of a soldier (afterwards Private Blobs, of "Fragments") sitting up a tree staring straight in front of him into the future, whilst a party of corpulent Boches are stalking towards him through the long grass and barbed wire. He knows there's ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... Coupeau told of a masterpiece of a weather vane made by one of his fellow workers which included a Greek column, a sheaf of wheat, a basket of fruit, and a flag, all beautifully worked out of nothing but strips of zinc shaped and ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... binds himself" (p. 227). Extremely subtle is also this remark: "Why, says I, did you ever know a pirate repent? At this he started a little and returned, At the gallows I have known one repent, and I hope thou wilt be the second." The character of William the Quaker pirate is a masterpiece of shrewd humour. He is the first Quaker brought into English fiction, and we know of no other Friend in latter-day fiction to equal him. Defoe in his inimitable manner has defined surely and deftly the peculiar characteristics of the sect in ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... was produced in Seventeen Hundred Thirteen, he occupied the first place in English letters. The play was a dazzling success; and it is a great play yet. It lives as literature among the best things men have ever done—a masterpiece! ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... ornamented; the chapel of Paul V., adorned with marble and precious stones; the chapel of Sforza, by Michael Angelo; and the sepulchres of Guglielmo della Porta and Algardi. In the square before the front is a Corinthian column, which is considered a masterpiece of its kind. The largest church in Rome next to St. Peter's was the Basilica di San Paolo fuori delle Mura, on the road to Ostia, burnt a few years since. The church of S. Lorenzo, without the city, possesses some rare monuments of antiquity. The church of San Pietro in ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... 1st, 1920) enclosing an essay, entitled, Is There a God, came duly to hand and I thank you warmly for it. The essay is a masterpiece and I hope you can let me keep this copy, or make another for myself, for reference when I am writing or conversing on its lines, ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... service of Elizabeth as are recorded in the Faerie Queene, the first three books of that great poem were finished." Spenser had spent the first three years of his residence at Kilcolman at work on this masterpiece, which had been begun in England, under the encouragement of Sidney, probably before 1580. The knightly Sidney died heroically at the battle of Zutphen, in 1586, and Spenser voiced the lament of all England in the beautiful pastoral ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... Volsung, which Mr. Morris justly considered his masterpiece, was contemplated early in the history of the Kelmscott Press. An announcement appears in a proof of the first list, dated April, 1892, but it was excluded from the list as issued in May. It did not reappear until the list of November ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris
... that story of his about a painter who was always striving to attain perfection, could never let a picture alone, was for ever adding new touches, painting details out and other details in? One day he called in his friends to see his masterpiece. When they came they found a mere mess of ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... non-resistance, vacuum, while conserving one's own strength for victory in the final struggle. In art the importance of the same principle is illustrated by the value of suggestion. In leaving something unsaid the beholder is given a chance to complete the idea and thus a great masterpiece irresistibly rivets your attention until you seem to become actually a part of it. A vacuum is there for you to enter and fill up the full ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... James Lane Allen is one of the gems of the season. It is artistic in its setting, realistic and true to nature and life in its descriptions, dramatic, pathetic, tragic, in its incidents; indeed, a veritable masterpiece that must become classic. It is difficult to give an outline of the story; it is one of the stories which do not outline; it must be ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... riches of the Church and the boundless superstition of the laity have left their traces here in every generation in forms of magnificence and beauty. Each of the chapels—and there are twenty-one of them—is a separate masterpiece in its way. The finest are those of Santiago and St. Ildefonso,—the former built by the famous Constable Alvaro de Luna as a burial-place for himself and family, and where he and his wife lie in storied marble; ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... the resources of our establishment, to endeavour to follow our distinguished townsman through the smoothly-flowing periods of his polished and highly-ornate address! Suffice it to observe, that it was a masterpiece of eloquence; and that those passages in which he more particularly traced his own successful career to its source, and warned the younger portion of his auditory from the shoals of ever incurring pecuniary liabilities which they were unable to liquidate, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... the scene in St. Ursula's history, where the 11,000 virgins are hurrying in single file along a winding road which disappears out of the picture. In the principal scene in the life of St. George, Carpaccio again achieves a masterpiece. The force and vivacity of the saint in armour charging the dragon, lingers long in the memory. The long, decorative lines of lance and war-horse and dragon throw back the whole landscape. The details ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... her from the foot of the bed, and could tell in a moment, by her face, whether the composition was good, bad, or indifferent. When bad, her face seemed to turn impassive, like marble; when good, to expand; and when she lighted on a masterpiece, she was almost transfigured, and her face ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... dully satisfied with its prisoned cage behind the bars, utterly unconscious of the vast world about it, grunting with pleasure, purring like a great cat, scornfully ignorant of what might lie beyond. The cell, moreover, I saw was a perfect masterpiece of mechanical contrivance and inventive ingenuity—the very last word in comfort, safety and scientific skill. I was in the act of trying to fit in my memory some of the details of its construction and arrangement, when I made a chance noise, and at ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... Ancients, a work which if it had proceeded from any other writer would have been considered as a masterpiece of wit and learning, was printed ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... not read that early in the seventeenth century there appeared in Paris the philosopher Descartes, accompanied by the figure of a beautiful woman? She moved, spoke, and seemed life itself; but Descartes declared she was an automaton, a masterpiece of mechanism he himself had made. Yet many refused to believe his story, declaring he had by sorcery compelled a spirit to serve him in this form. He called her Franchina, ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... he looks upon it as his masterpiece, and that it may be considered as the highest point of perfection to which his system of novel-writing can be carried. Not a single name is given in the work, down even to the rabble, for which he has not contemporary authority; but what he is ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... Tyrwhitt's Notes and Glossary to their proper places beneath the text; but has availed himself of the labours of Messrs. Craik, Saunders, Sir H. Nicolas, and our able correspondent A. E. B., to give completeness to what is a very useful edition of old Dan Chaucer's masterpiece. We have to thank the same publisher for a corresponding edition of Spenser's Faerie Queene; so that no lover of those two glorious old poets need any longer want a cheap and compact edition ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... believed upon his word that when the Stand By went down off Dusty Reef of the False Frenchman a great picture perished with her—a great picture done in crayon on manila paper in Tom Lute's kitchen at Out-of-the-Way Tickle. Cobden is committed to this. And whether a masterpiece or not, and aside from the eminent critical opinion of it, the tale of Terry Lute's last example will at least prove the once engaging quality ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... supposed, of several of the courts of Europe, advocating the claims of Charles of Austria to the vacant throne of Spain, in opposition to the grandson of Louis, and setting forth the injurious consequences of the policy of the French monarch, was hailed by his contemporaries as a masterpiece of historical learning and political wisdom. By his powerful advocacy of the cause of the Elector of Brandenburg he may be said to have aided the birth of the kingdom of Prussia, whose existence dates with the commencement of the last century. In the service ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... prison camp from which they had escaped he had carved his initials on fence and shack, but his masterpiece was the conversion of the N on this same glassless compass into a very presentable S (though turned sideways) and the S into a ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... back into their conception of things dreamed of but never seen, her eyes were as blue as the early snowflowers that came after the spring floods, and her voice was the sweetest sound that had ever fallen upon their ears. So these men thought when Cummins first brought home his wife, and the masterpiece which each had painted in his soul and brain was never changed. Each week and month added to the deep-toned value of that picture, as the passing of a century might add to a Raphael or a Van Dyke. The woman became more human, and less an angel, of course, but that only made her more real, and allowed ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... later the Air Force released its official report on the incident. To use a trite term, it was a masterpiece in the art of "weasel wording." It said that the UFO might have been Venus or it could have been a balloon. Maybe two balloons. It probably was Venus except that this is doubtful because Venus was too dim to be ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... waiting-woman of Marie Antoinette, has left an account of the toilet of the queen and of the little occurrences that might interrupt it. The whole performance, she says, was a masterpiece of etiquette; everything about it was governed by rules. The Lady of Honor and the Lady of the Bedchamber, both if they were there together, assisted by the First Woman and the two other women, did the principal service; but ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... is uneasy hesitation in these castaways' discussion of their tragedy, in the huge masterpiece of destiny that they are roughly sketching. It is not only the peril and pain, the misery of the moment, whose endless beginning they see again. It is the enmity of circumstances and people against the truth, the accumulation of privilege and ignorance, of deafness and unwillingness, the ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... masterpiece, "Don Quixote," Cervantes wrote a great number of plays which were not successful. When Cervantes speaks of his own dramatic works in his old age, his simplicity and gayety are very touching, because he was evidently deeply wounded at the neglect ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... rather neat, myself." He had some reputation in the under-world for his manner of dressing, and he regarded this latest achievement as his masterpiece. ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... royal palace—on ground granted by the Crown, and taken office as Lord Chamberlain. He wrote more verse than Roscommon and poorer verse. The Essay on Poetry, in which he followed the critical fashion of the day, he was praised into regarding as a masterpiece. He was continually polishing it, and during his lifetime it was reissued with frequent variations. It is polished quartz, not diamond; a short piece of about 360 lines, which has something to say ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele |
