"Skilful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... since the myth told how two gods took the form of worms and were reborn of cows, the formula had to be altered. Both remain alive at the end of the combat, contrary to the usual formula, because both were males and both were reborn. The fusion is skilful, because the reborn personages preserve a remembrance of their former transformations,[1208] just as Mongan knows of his former existence as Fionn. In other cases there is no such remembrance. Etain had forgotten her former existence, ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... "they have brought no arms with them, at any rate. We are undoubtedly indebted to your honor's skilful management with them ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... proved to be the beginning of a six month's illness, forced him to leave home for the water-cure at Malvern. He returned in October and remained ill and depressed, in spite of the hopeful opinion of one of the most cheery and skilful physicians of the day. Thus he wrote to ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... be an elderly but robust Sioux warrior, and however he may have been when torture was going forward he wore just then a bland smile, although not much else. With wonderfully light and skilful hands he took off Will's bandage and replaced it with another. Will never knew what it was made of, but it seemed to be lined with leaves steeped in ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... determine; but it is to be remarked that the climate of California is a very trying one to people of his peculiar organization. The body was kindly taken in charge by a resident of the vicinity, and now lies in state in his back yard, where it is being carefully prepared for burial by those skilful meathounds, Messrs. Lassirator, Mangler, and Chure, whose names are a sufficient guarantee that the mournful rites will be attended to in a manner ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... virtue. And Richika begot Jamadagni. And the high-souled Jamadagni had four sons. And the youngest of them all was Rama (Parasurama). And Rama was superior to all his brothers in the possession of good qualities. And he was skilful in all weapons, and became the slayer of the Kshatriyas. And he had his passions under complete control. And Aurva had a hundred sons with Jamadagni the eldest. And these hundred sons had offspring by thousands ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... had been broken in its play. Aldebaran would have turned aside on yesterday to press the barbed thought still deeper in his heart that he had been denied the joy of fatherhood. But now he stooped as gently as if he were the child's own sire to wipe its tears and soothe its sobs. And when with skilful fingers he restored the toy, the child bestowed on him a warm caress ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... had been performed and Margaret had stolen back to the Bilkins mansion, as related, Mr. O'Rourke with his own skilful hands had brewed a noble punch for the wedding guests. Standing at the head of the table and stirring the pungent mixture in a small wash-tub purchased for the occasion, Mr. O'Rourke came out in ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... that not a word should come from either of our lips which could possibly give cause of offence. In fact, we required no further instructions to be cautious. Two prisoners desirous of communication are skilful enough to invent a language of their own, without the least danger of its being interpreted ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... church, neighborhood fellowship, and the Young Men's Christian Association provide the means for a moral and spiritual renaissance in the country. There is no easier way to obtain a healthy rural family life than by a skilful, serious, and large-hearted use of our moral institutions in concrete, courageous, and modern ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... employment had been worthy the ambition of men of honor. They had in various places arsenals, ports, and watch-towers, all strongly fortified. Their fleets were not only extremely well manned, supplied with skilful pilots, and fitted for their business by their lightness and celerity, but there was a parade of vanity about them, more mortifying than their strength, in gilded sterns, purple canopies, and plated oars, as if they took a pride and triumphed in their villany. ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... in the home which could amuse and instruct children. The eldest daughter was very handy at all sorts of entertaining occupations; she had a delicate sense of the artistic, and was quite skilful with her pencil. ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... 1077; came over with Lanfranc; also a great friend of Anselm; a skilful architect, rebuilt much of the cathedral, built the White Tower in London, St. Leonard's Tower and the nunnery at Malling, part of Dartford Church, and a tower at Rochester earlier than the present keep; ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... and at the early age of thirty-six he was appointed Governor of Madras. It was in the middle of his eight years' governorship that the French under Lally besieged Madras for sixty-five days; and Governor Pigot's untiring energy and skilful measures were prime factors in the successful defence. After the war he did great things for the development of Madras; and when he resigned office at the age of forty-five and went to England, the strenuous upholder of British honour in the East was rewarded ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... skilful prior their doctrines were indeed made to look vile and blasphemous and foolish in the extreme. Many persons shuddered at hearing what words had been used by them with regard to the holy sacraments; and most of the persons brought to their ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... hath dutifully done what he could to avoid it. It is possible for a Ship to sink at sea, notwithstanding the most faithfull endeavour of the most skilful Pilot under Heaven. And thus, as I suppose, it was with the Prophet that left his wife in debt to the hazarding the slavery of her children by the Creditors. {105c} He was no profuse man, nor one that was given to defraud, for the Text says he feared ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... despair—he offered himself to the powers of darkness. Evokers of Satan now flocked to him from every side, amongst them Prelati, an Italian, by no means the old and wrinkled sorcerer of tradition, but a young and attractive man of charming manners. For it was from Italy that came the most skilful adepts in the art of alchemy, astrology, magic, and infernal evocation, who spread themselves over Europe, particularly France. Under the influence of these initiators Gilles de Rais signed a letter to the devil in a meadow near Machecoul asking him for "knowledge, ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... revised version of Marionettes the character drawing is more skilful, and we incidentally notice the illuminating and characteristic English used in the works of MacDowell's mature period instead of the conventional Italian musical terms. The little comedy-drama is opened by a Prologue, ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... 213[f114]). Its value was appreciated by the early German and Italian book-illustrators, and in our own time has been used almost to excess by some of our younger designers, who have been largely influenced by Hokusai and other Japanese artists, who are always skilful in the use of ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... 'Oh, Fage the bookbinder here again!' and there would have followed a domestic scene; on all which Corentine reckoned when she threw in her artful speech. To-day, however, it was all-important that the master should not be irritated, but prepared by skilful stages for the intended petition. He was talked to, for instance, about the health of Loisillon, the perpetual secretary of the Academie, who, it seemed, was getting worse and worse. Loisillon's post ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... who doubts that there is a peculiar heel-tickling, smile-provoking, joy-awakening, response-compelling charm in Ragtime needs only to hear a skilful performer play the genuine article, needs only to listen to its bizarre harmonies, its audacious resolutions often consisting of an abrupt jump from one key to another, its intricate rhythms in which the accents fall in the most unexpected ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... choice, and gives the veiled Alcestis back to him as the new bride. Later Greeks tried to explain the story by saying that Alcestis nursed her husband through an infectious fever, caught it herself, and had been supposed to be dead, when a skilful physician restored her; but this is probably only one of the many reasonable versions they tried to give of the old tales that were founded on the decay and revival of nature in winter and spring, and with a presage running through them of sacrifice, death, and resurrection. Our own poet ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and a light appeared behind the blind of the adjoining window. The maid had shown the visitor into the sitting-room and lit the lamp. Upstairs, meanwhile, Susy was no doubt running skilful fingers through her tumbled hair and daubing her pale lips with red. Ah, how Lansing knew every movement of that familiar rite, even to the pucker of the brow and the pouting thrust-out of the lower lip! He was seized with a sense of physical ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... the most severe of all, brought, either owing to skilful treatment or to his own calm, the removal of the mischief, and the beginning of real recovery. Previously he had given himself no time, but had hurried on to exertions which retarded his cure, so as very ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... skilful goddess, train'd the maid To twirl the spindle by the twisting thread, To fix the loom, instruct the reeds to part, Cross the long weft, and close the web with art: An useful gift; but what profuse expense, What world of fashions, took its ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... Kothual, a Kharizmian. He was, however, obliged to surrender and was carried a prisoner before the sultan, who condemned him to a cruel death. Yussuf, in desperation, drew his dagger and rushed upon the sultan. Alp Arslan, the most skilful archer of his day, motioned to his guards not to interfere and drew his bow, but his foot slipped, the arrow glanced aside and he received the assassin's dagger in his breast. The wound proved mortal, and Alp Arslan expired a few hours after ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... At my entrance, an elderly person was smacking his lips with a zest which satisfied me that the cellars of the Province House still hold good liquor, though doubtless of other vintages than were quaffed by the old governors. After sipping a glass of port sangaree, prepared by the skilful hands of Mr. Thomas Waite, I besought that worthy successor and representative of so many historic personages to conduct me ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... surprising, no mortal e'er view'd Any one of the physical gentlemen stew'd. From the day that King Bladud first found out these bogs, And thought them so good for himself and his hogs, Not one of the faculty ever has tried These excellent waters to cure his own hide; Though many a skilful and learned physician, With candour, good sense, and profound erudition, Obliges the world with the fruits of his brain, Their nature and hidden ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... men, anxious to step into the inheritance of fathers, uncles, or brothers, resorted to poison. As it was quite free from taste, colour, and smell, it was administered without exciting suspicion. The skilful vendors compounded it of different degrees of strength, so that the poisoners had only to say whether they wanted their victims to die in a week, a month, or six months, and they were suited with corresponding doses. The vendors were chiefly ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... membership over sixty thousand dollars a year for the uplift of humanity, has made life a continual surprise; while the Samaritan Hospital's amazing growth, and the Garretson Hospital's dispensaries, have been so continually ministering to the sick and poor, and have done such skilful work for the tens of thousands who ask for their help each year, that I have been made happy while away lecturing by the feeling that each hour and minute they were faithfully doing good. Temple University, which was founded only twenty-seven years ago, has already sent out into a higher income ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... question profoundly disturbed the soul of Samuel Brohl. What! were all the skilful intrigues which he had spent four years in weaving, to come to nothing? For it was now four years since Samuel Brohl had entered into his strange partnership with the Polish nobleman. Brohl himself was the ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... astride the bar, now flying free; iron-jointed, supple-sinewed, unceasingly novel in his invention of new, unguessable attitudes; while above, below, and around him, a richly-dressed audience, painted in skilful perspective of stalls, boxes, dress-circle, and gallery, watched the thrilling performance with a stolidity which seemed to mark them out as made in Germany. Hardly versatile enough, perhaps, this Leotard; unsympathetic, not a companion for ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... got me," said he, beaming on me in a broadly complimentary way, as though I had actually circumvented him in some skilful play at words. "Fact is, thar' ain't never been no survey run down in that direction that I know on. We call it four miles, more or less. That's Cape Cod measure—means most anythin' lineal measure. Talkin' 'bout Cape Cod miles," he continued, with an irresistible air of raillery; "little ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... will be interesting to remember that the earliest existing impression taken from an engraved metal plate, is a "Coronation of the Virgin." Maso Finiguerra, a skilful goldsmith and worker in niello, living at Florence in 1434, was employed to execute a pix (the small casket in which the consecrated wafer of the sacrament is deposited), and he decorated it with a representation of the Coronation ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... world you can collect the harshness, greed, avarice, selfishness and vanity from a thousand men. With these sins you can, if you are very skilful, construct a Ralph Nickleby, a Scrooge, a Jonas Chuzzlewit, an Alderman Cute, a Mr. Murdstone, a Bounderby ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... Ella Farman, whose skilful editorial management of "Wide Awake" all acquainted with that publication must admire, shows that her great capacity to amuse and instruct our growing youth can take a wider range. Her books are exceedingly interesting, and ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... once more the agitated and brilliant court life stirred and fevered him,—that life, so wearisome when secure, became sweeter when imperilled. To counteract his foes, to humble his rivals, to regain the king's countenance, to baffle, with the easy art of his skilful intellect, every hostile stratagem,—such were the ideas that crossed and hurtled themselves, and ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of science. The folly which acute learned wise men will be guilty of the moment they turn to theological subjects, where they do not allow reason to act, is both ludicrous and melancholy. The victim of lycanthropy used to be burned alive; he is now placed under the careful treatment of skilful and humane physicians. But the heretic or infidel is still thought to be inspired by the devil, a fit subject for discipline here and hell hereafter. The light shed abroad by the rising spirit of rational investigation must gradually dispel the delusions which lurk ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... husband is. How proud I am of him. And not only brave but skilful. How did you manage to go through the smoke and flame and get no odor of smoke on your clothes, nor smut ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... "One thing is abundantly clear," says Mr. Honeyman, "to any one who intelligently studies the building, namely, that the whole design was carefully thought out and settled before a stone was laid. It is a skilful and homogeneous design, which could only be produced by a man of exceptional ability and great experience. Nothing has been left to chance, or to the sweet will of the co-operating craftsman, but the one master-mind has dictated every ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... was necessary to use horns of different pitch, and composers still respect this tradition, and designate the key of the horns which they wish to have employed; but so skilful have the players become that, as a rule, they use horns whose fundamental tone is F for all keys, and achieve the old purpose by simply transposing the music as they read it. If these most graceful instruments were straightened out they would be seventeen ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... would insure their lasting an appreciable time longer than they usually did. She would buy so and so many yards of percale for new shirt waists for the boys and Janie and Mag. She had intended to make the old ones do by skilful patching. Mag should have another gown. She had seen some beautiful patterns, veritable bargains in the shop windows. And still there would be left enough for new stockings—two pairs apiece—and what darning that would save for a while! She would get caps for the boys and sailor-hats ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... inside course, remembered every word of Jimmy Lawton's coaching. They had won the spring regatta at Miss Tolliver's school. But then they had rowed only against other girls. Now, they were to enter into a different kind of contest. They did not even know how skilful their feminine competitors were. The boys, of course, ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... lines had disproved all previous theories as to the possibilities of interference in a class of cases until recently considered hopeless after an early stage. It was indeed subject for confidence if Doctor Craig's skilful hands were ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... respect they like,—it was neither too deferential, nor too familiar; his foppery went no farther than a care for his personal appearance which made him agreeable; he showed consideration for rank; he allowed young men a certain freedom, to which his Parisian experience assigned due limits; though skilful with sword and pistol, he was noted for a feminine gentleness for which others were grateful. His medium height and plumpness (which had not yet increased into obesity, an obstacle to personal elegance) did not prevent his outer man from playing ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... ran high up upon the beach. The rowers seized the boys and, leaping out, carried them beyond the reach of the water, before the next wave broke upon them; and then triumphantly demanded a present, for their skilful management. This the lads were glad to give, for they considered that their ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... (Figs. 27-30), and is executed with a truth of drawing and a beauty of colouring that have never been surpassed. As has been pointed out, almost every object drawn is partly conventionalised, in the most skilful manner, so as to make it fit its place as a piece ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... one thing to render this instrument as powerful in my hands as it was capable of being. From my childhood, I was remarkably skilful at imitation. There were few voices whether of men or birds or beasts which I could not imitate with success. To add my ancient, to my newly acquired skill, to talk from a distance, and at the same time, in the accents of another, was the object of my endeavours, and this ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... a subordination of tribunals, and a power of appeal. No judge is so skilful and attentive as not sometimes to err. Few are so honest as not sometimes to be partial. Petty judges would become insupportably tyrannical if they were not restrained by the fear of a superiour judicature; and their decisions would be negligent or arbitrary if they were ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... them, and the captain had a half-defined suspicion that neither the pilot nor he himself knew exactly where they now were. That is a bad condition for a great ship to be in at any time, and especially when it was drawing so near a coast which calls for good seamanship and skilful pilotage in the ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... and I retreated to a corner of the room, where stood a heavy base-ball bat, which had been presented to me for skilful playing. That corner was ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... wanders a little at times; expects the period of prostration and the return of appetite; and has his measures and his palliatives ready for each successive phase of sickness and recovery. In like manner, too, the good and skilful parson comes by experience to know the signs and stages of the moral ailments and recoveries which some of them know how so tenderly and so wisely to care for. They, too, have ready—having often proved ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... you not going on to action, as generous men do, who are conscious of their power and of their aim? Well, to what purpose, then, is eloquence here? I have only to thank—and that is more eloquently told by a warm grasp of the hand than by all the skilful arrangement of words. ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... She carried what his skilful aim brought down from the tangled greenery above. Birds, squirrels, chipmunks, all were welcome. Noon found them in possession of more than thirty pieces of small game, including two hedgehogs. And for the first time in almost a week they tasted flesh ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... orders no copy has been found; but an abstract of them has been preserved by Van Dam in these words: "This Company, in the year 1609, fitted out a yacht of about thirty lasts burden and engaged a Mr. Henry Hudson, an Englishman, and a skilful pilot, as master thereof: with orders to search for the aforesaid passage by the north and north-east above Nova Zembla toward the lands or straits of Amian, and then to sail at least as far as the sixtieth degree ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier
... leeward of the line, and the intervals were irregular and ill-observed. These circumstances arose from several causes, neither of which proceeded from any fault in the commander-in-chief, who was both an experienced seaman and a skilful tactician. But his captains were new to each other, and some of them were recently appointed to their ships; it being just as much a matter of course that a seaman should ascertain the qualities of his vessel, by familiarity, as that a man should learn the character of his wife, in the ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... burns and show many interesting feats in handling fire. As they are nothing but skilful "fire jugglers" they deserve no mention here. The immunity of the participants in the savage fire ceremonies will ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... before the public. This, he thought, might be done under the guise of rehearsals for the Court. Possibly the Queen might even wink at regular performances before the general public when she understood that this would train the Boys to be more skilful actors, would provide Her Majesty with more numerous and possibly more excellent plays, and would enable the Master and his assistants to live in greater comfort ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... said they will come! Each eve said they have not come! One month from leaving Edinburgh found this army of Highland chiefs and their clans, Lowland Scots, a few Englishmen, a few Irishmen, and a few Frenchmen, led by skilful enough generals and by a Prince the great-grandson of Charles I, deep in England, but little advanced in bulk for all that. Old cavalier England stayed upon its acres. Other times, other manners! And how to know when an ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... originally from Holland, came over to England and married the daughter of a mathematical instrument maker, at whose house he lodged in Clerkenwell. The son was apprenticed to his maternal grandfather's trade, became very skilful at it, worked at it himself, employed a man and a boy, and supplied London shops, which sold his instruments at about three times the price he obtained for them. Baruch, when he was very young, married Marshall's elder sister, but she died at the birth of her first ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... once, his face beaming with a malicious grin. And the latter understood. But he was not prepared for the skilful trap which his archenemy was baiting for him, and into which he was to ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... the laurels of important discovery being won by foreign efforts. Flinders returned home in the Reliance in August, vigorous, eager for fresh work, and already, notwithstanding his youth, honourably regarded by naval men as an intrepid and skilful navigator. Lord Spencer, the head of a family eminently distinguished for the great administrators whom it has furnished for the furtherance of British polity, did a far wiser thing than attempting ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... Motion on the ground that he meant to resist any change in the Corn Laws. He made a very skilful use of the ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... the strenuous work of the movies. Fairbanks, in addition to being blessed with a strong, lithe body, has developed it by expert devotion to every form of athletic sport. He swims well, is a crack boxer, a good polo player, a splendid wrestler, a skilful acrobat, a fast runner, and an ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... to be a common opinion that the evidential value of such psychic communications, even under the direction of a skilful scientist, cannot be very great. But there are ways of knowing. It is not at all difficult for the investigator to confine his work, not only to incidents unknown to the medium, but to scientific facts ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... the forced draft of skilful exploitation, three years of high pressure passed quickly; years named by the promoters the period of development. In the Year One the very heavens smiled and the rainfall broke the record of the oldest inhabitant. Thus ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... old system the health and constitution of many of the young people were irretrievably destroyed. At present permanent loss of health is rarely entailed, and even when sickness does from any cause arise, skilful and prompt advice and medicine are provided at a ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the skipper. 'The pearl-divers of Persia are not more skilful. Why, we've got a fresh-water spring that comes out at the bottom of the sea. Our divers dive down and bring up the fresh water in skin bottles! Can your barbarian ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... time another broadside was poured into the schooner, who had not yet returned our fire, which, having foolishly remained hove to the wind, they could not do. The brig had now stern way, and O'Brien then executed a very skilful manoeuvre: he shifted the helm, and made a stern board, so as to back in between the two weather schooners and the one to leeward, bracing round at the same time ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... studied apart from their languages, industries, social organizations, lore and worships. Art was limited most of all by poverty in technical appliances. There were just as good materials and inspirations, but what could the best of them do without metal tools? One and all skilful to a surpassing degree—weavers, embroiderers, potters, painters, engravers, carvers, sculptors and jewellers,—they were wearied by drudgery and overpowered by a never-absent, weird and grotesque theology. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... authority without supposing infallibility. Now, if we analyze the source of this authority, we shall find that it comes, first, from the testimony of others, and, secondly, from our own experience. Leatherstocking comes recommended to the travellers as a skilful and faithful guide, and they trust him, at first, on the simple ground of that recommendation. But they do not trust him entirely or fully on that ground. They watch him while they trust him,—perhaps we ought rather to say, they try him, than that they trust him. But, after they have tried ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... a miller's son; and a certain monk or friar, named Tuck. He is likewise said to have been accompanied in his retreat by a female, of whom he was enamoured, and whose real or adopted name was Marian. His company, in process of time consisted of a hundred archers, "men," says Major, "most skilful in battle, whom four times that number of the boldest fellows durst not attack." His manner of recruiting was somewhat singular; for, in the words of an old writer, "wheresoever he heard of any that were of unusual ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 20, No. 567, Saturday, September 22, 1832. • Various
... organ, between which and the harmonium it forms a connecting link structurally, although not invented for some thirty years after the harmonium. The timbre of the accordion is coarse and devoid of beauty, but in the hands of a skilful performer the best instruments are not entirely without artistic merit. Improvements in the construction of the accordion produced the concertina (q.v.), melodion and melophone. las Accordion in kurzer Zeit richtig spielen ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... "Very skilful shift of topic," said Wade. "I admit everything. I guess we were bad enough; but you and Casey ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... enthusiasm, is pitch. He pitches everything he can lay hold of, - the pier, the palings, his boat, his house, - when there is nothing else left he turns to and even pitches his hat, or his rough-weather clothing. Do not judge him by deceitful appearances. These are among the bravest and most skilful mariners that exist. Let a gale arise and swell into a storm, let a sea run that might appal the stoutest heart that ever beat, let the Light-boat on these dangerous sands throw up a rocket in the night, or let them hear through ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... obviously nothing but the catastrophe of an antecedent drama that an attempt has actually been made to rectify Ibsen's supposed mistake, and to write the tragedy of the deceased Beata. It was made by an unskilful hand; but even a skilful hand would scarcely have done more than prove how rightly Ibsen judged that the recoil of Rebecca's crime upon herself and Rosmer would prove more interesting, and in a very real sense more dramatic, than the somewhat vulgar process of the crime itself. The play is not ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... pointing towards the south-eastern curvature of the sheet. In that direction, the distance to the shore, or to the termination of the lake, on the course the two were now steering, was not quite a mile, and, their progress being always swift, it was fast lessening under the skilful, but easy sweeps of the paddles. When about half way across, a slight noise drew the eyes of the men towards the nearest land, and they saw that the buck was just emerging from the lake and wading towards the beach. In a minute, ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... he are reared here and there in every generation of our peasant artisans—with an inheritance of affections nurtured by a simple family life of common need and common industry, and an inheritance of faculties trained in skilful, courageous labor; they make their way upward, rarely as geniuses, most commonly as painstaking, honest men, with the skill and conscience to do well the tasks that lie before them. Their lives have no discernible echo beyond the neighborhood ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... aback by a contrary drift; for, on descending again through a shower of snow, he found himself no further than Ben Howth, as yet only ten miles on his long journey. Profiting by his mistake, he thenceforward, by skilful regulation, kept his balloon within due limits, and successfully maintained a direct course across the sea, reaching a spot in Wales not far from Holyhead an hour and a half before sundown. The course taken was absolutely the shortest possible, ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... rivalry throws light upon the individual. The person has as many selves as there are groups to which he belongs. He is simple or complex as his groups are few and harmonious or many and conflicting. What skilful management is required to keep business and moral selves from looking each other in the eye, to prevent scientific and theological selves from falling into discussion! Most men of many groups learn, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... next evening, Lestrade was furnished with much information concerning our prisoner. His name, it appeared, was Beppo, second name unknown. He was a well-known ne'er-do-well among the Italian colony. He had once been a skilful sculptor and had earned an honest living, but he had taken to evil courses and had twice already been in jail—once for a petty theft, and once, as we had already heard, for stabbing a fellow-countryman. He could talk English perfectly well. His reasons for destroying the ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... had always been, the pleasures of the great out-of-doors. A yachtsman, his big yawl, the "Manana," was known in every club port from Gravesend to Bar Harbor. He motored. He rode. He played tennis, and golf, and squash, and racquets. He was an expert swimmer, a skilful fencer, a clever boxer. And, more wonderful than the combination of these things was the fact that he found time away from his work to do them all, and to enjoy them with the youthful, contagious, effervescent enthusiasm of a man of half ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... it was good for women reverently to approach art by painting with their needles. She always was seen in embroidered garments, and worked as well as wove them herself. She appeared to Ulysses in the steading of Eumoeus, the swineherd, as a "woman tall and fair, and skilful in ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... on nothing a year. They hold no government bonds, they possess no real estate (our neighbors did own their house), they toil not, neither do they spin; yet they reap all the numerous soft advantages that usually result from honest toil and skilful spinning. How do they do it? But this is a digression, and I am quite of the opinion of the old lady in "David Copperfield," who says, "Let us have ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... The man who had demanded $3.50 had a large, well-built boat, which should stand any wind and water. The man whom we had engaged had a canoe so narrow, low, and small that we doubted his ability to perform his contract; however, he assured us that all would be well, and showed himself so skilful in packing our stuff into his boat, that we ourselves embarked, and started down the little lagoon in his canoe. So long as we remained in this narrow, sheltered stream, all was well; but when he poled from its mouth out to the open river, we found it a different matter. More ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... acquired amongst the clergy and at the court of Louis XIII. sufficient importance to be charged with the duty of speaking, in presence of the king, on the acceptance of the acts of the council of Trent, and on the restitution of certain property belonging to the Catholic church in Warn. He made skilful use of the occasion for the purpose of still further exalting and improving the question and his own position. He complained that for a long time past ecclesiastics had been too rarely summoned to the sovereign's councils, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... are made abstract substantives, by adding the termination ness; and a few in hood or head, noting character or qualities: as white, whiteness; hard, hardness; great, greatness; skilful, skilfulness, unskilfulness; godhead, manhood, maidenhead, widowhood, knighthood, priesthood, ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... something to do with my intention of tackling Pethel? I rather thought it had. What this woman would dare daily because she was a mother could not I dare once? I reminded myself of this man's reputation for invariable luck. I reminded myself that he was an extraordinarily skilful driver. To that skill and luck I would pin ...
— James Pethel • Max Beerbohm
... from the lists, leaving them free for the younger knights to run a course at the ring. The first to enter the arena was Sir Thomas Wyat; and as he was known to be a skilful jouster, it was expected he would come off triumphantly. But a glance from the royal balcony rendered his arm unsteady, and he missed ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Pace, or the Colosseo. The boys from the studios and shops also play in the streets a sort of mongrel game called Pillotta, beating a small ball back and forth, with a round bat, shaped like a small tamburello and covered with parchment. But the real game, played by skilful players, may be seen almost every summer night outside the Porta a Pinti, in Florence; and I have also seen it admirably played under the fortress-wall at Siena, the players being dressed entirely in white, with loose ruffled jackets, breeches, long stockings, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... turbulent throng was a young man who, while he was no friend of the colored man, could not see Lucretia Mott harmed. With skilful ruse, as they neared the house, he rushed up another street, shouting at the top of his voice, "On to Motts!" and the wild crowd blindly followed, wreaking their ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... during the flattening or in the subsequent treatment with acid. The softness of the metal is restored by heating. In bullion assays the flatting of the buttons requires care and practice for its skilful working. The strips of alloy for parting should be of uniform thickness and condition so that the action of the acid shall be equal in all cases. The button is taken from the cupel, cleaned and placed on the anvil: it is then struck a heavy blow which widens it to about ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... of Erfurt, Napoleon had still found time to study the military situation in Spain with minuteness, and he finally wrote to Joseph that he was coming in person to end the war by one skilful stroke. This hope was founded on the position held by Blake, advanced as it was beyond the Spanish line, and remote enough to be exposed. By a swift blow that general's army might therefore be cut off from its support, and annihilated; the center and ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... and was so used by Spenser) there is a certain frank geniality of tone, the natural accompaniment of an easy conscience, which goes some way to redeem the nature of the subject. Still, the theme remains one which only an exceptionally skilful treatment can make sufficiently pathetic or perfectly comic. The lines had the desired effect; for within four days after his accession—i.e. on October 3rd, 1399—the "conqueror of Brut's Albion," otherwise King Henry IV, doubled Chaucer's pension of twenty ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... asked the amateur surgeon. To do him justice, he was very skilful, indeed, through ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... of the house he found a delightful dungeon. More modern occupiers of Hatton had used the dungeon as a wine-cellar and Sir Jacques had converted it to the purposes of a dark-room, for he had been a skilful and enthusiastic amateur of photography; but that it had at some period of its history served other ends, Paul's uncanny instinct told him. A sense of chill, not physical, indeed almost impersonal, attacked him as he entered, hurricane-lantern aloft. For the poet that informed his lightest ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... been drawn across the window, and the dim glow of a cindery fire scarcely gave sufficient light to discern the different pieces of furniture. Mr. Hamilton gave vent to a suppressed exclamation of impatience as he seized the poker, but I could not but notice the skilful and almost noiseless manner in which he manipulated the coals. Then he looked round for a match, and lighted a candle on the mantelpiece, in spite of a peevish remonstrance from ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... "Sexton's a skilful man, and I don't think she could be in better hands; however, Bryan, I shall feel obliged if you will send down occasionally to let me know how she gets ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... it too truly," replied Ellen; "but it was dreadful to see the ship on board which I knew him to be sailing away to attack so renowned and skilful a captain as Monsieur Thurot—then, to have to wait so long for the ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... near the truth, had cost him so little thought and sounded so sincere, that it won credence, and the steward's kindness seemed to him so worthy of gratitude that he made no objection when the courtier, without injuring the seal, pressed the roll of papyrus with a skilful hand, separating the layers and peering into the openings to decipher the contents. While thus engaged, the corpulent courtier's round eyes sparkled brightly and it seemed to the youth as if the countenance of the man, whose comfortable plumpness and smooth rotundity at first appeared like a mirror ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... been fought between these warlike and rival nations. Three days was the combat continued with the utmost rage and obstinacy; and Blake, who was victor, gained not more honor than Tromp, who was vanquished. The Dutch admiral made a skilful retreat, and saved all the merchant ships, except thirty. He lost, however, eleven ships of war, had two thousand men slain, and near fifteen hundred taken prisoners. The English, though many of their ships were extremely shattered, had but one sunk. Their ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... bath-chair," Mr. Fentolin continued. "Practice has made me remarkably skilful in its manipulation. You see, I ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Prosopis silently bearing her solitary little destiny in the midst of this vast universe charged with terrible forces. A certain number of her sisters, belonging to species already more skilful and better supplied with utensils, such as the well-clad Colletes, or the marvellous cutter of rose-leaves, the Megachile Centuncularis, live in an isolation no less profound; and if by chance some creature attach itself to them, and share their dwelling, it will either ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck |
