"Masterfully" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this showed a woman of vigour—although our conventions did not allow us to treat Clockie or any known wastrel so masterfully—and there was an evident anxiety ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... the other snapped some ashes from his sleeve, turned his back, slapped the cash-register shut, and strode masterfully down the room. "Not this ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... is responsible but you. A man must be very certain of his knowledge ere he undertake to guide a ticket-of-leave man through a dangerous pass; you have eternally missed your way in life, with consequences that you still deplore, and yet you masterfully seize your wife's hand, and, blindfold, drag her after you to ruin. And it is your wife, you observe, whom you select. She, whose happiness you most desire, you choose to be your victim. You would earnestly warn her from a tottering bridge or bad investment. ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of one people in Italy, and the lack of that power in another, we are driven to the conclusion that the source of the artistic gift is hidden and obscure. One may cite the opposite examples of Venice and of Genoa,—the one so masterfully artistic; the other so impotent. And yet the same favouring conditions, a priori, might have seemed to ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... the same sense that comes over so-called worldly people when oppressed suddenly by a great sorrow, or uplifted by a sudden great joy, an awareness of a divine power that moves masterfully and mysteriously through the events of life, provoking on the part of finite creatures a strange and compelling reverence. This "divinity that shapes our ends" may be variously conceived. It may be an intimately realized personal God, "Our Father which art in Heaven." It may be such ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... silvery folds"—"the apotheosis of womanhood." It is as if an unseen hand had suddenly drawn aside an invisible curtain and we, the children of earth, were for a moment permitted to view the interior of heaven itself. In this vision of a poet, so masterfully painted, the lover of ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... forth in their year-round habiliments of green. The days shortened steadily. The nights grew long, and bitter with frost. Snow fell, blanketing softly the dead leaves. Old Winter cracked his whip masterfully over all ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... was to forge a link between the bravos and the man who down-faced them so masterfully. The big jug seemed to jump from hand to hand, every mug was full in a twinkling, and every face was fixed steadfastly on Lagardere, waiting for his words. Lagardere lifted his brimming beaker with a voice of joyous mockery that carried at once defiance and respect to a distant man. ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... away from the blank scene with a little shudder. Thus had Justin Hare shut her out of his life. He had talked of his mother in Maine, of his hospital plans for the winter, but not a word had he said of those moonlight nights when he had masterfully swayed her by the force of his own passion, had wooed her, ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... contact, as its conscience, its better mind, its ideal—with the institutions of religion. What constitutes his distinguishing note as a writer is the recognition of the religious, the Catholic, ideal, intervening masterfully throughout the picture he presents of life, as the only mode of poetry realizable by the poor; and although, of course, it does a great deal more beside, certainly doing the high work of poetry effectively. For his background he has chosen, ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... difficult than those of the Czecho-Slovaks. Few have been handled so masterfully. Surrounded by powerful enemies which for centuries have been bent on destroying every trace of Slavic culture, they had learned how to defend themselves against every trick or ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... pair of grays that took the road with the spirit of racers. The young woman sat erect and handled the reins masterfully, the while Muir leaned back and admired the steadiness of the slim, strong wrists, the businesslike directness with which she gave herself to her work, the glow of life whipped into her eyes and cheeks by the exhilaration of ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... apparent when the train reached South Tredegar. There were twenty minutes for breakfast, and Tom bestirred himself manfully, and as if the awkward day at Crestcliffe Inn had never been; helping Ardea with her coat, steering her masterfully through the crowd, choosing the fortunate seats at the most convenient table, and commanding the readiest service in spite ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... wringing her hands, though the taste of the wine must long have gone from her mouth, and was stammering miserably, "Well, if yon stuff's a temptation to any poor folk—!" Again he felt that their relationship was on a proper footing; he moved towards her, walking masterfully. Oh, it was going to be ecstasy.... There was a loud knocking at ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... said, feeling for the trouble. "And so am I," she added, thoughtfully. She should have noticed his eyes at that last. He had developed a sort of controlled voracity for endearment, but he never asked for it. In the old days he had taken his own masterfully, with no doubts. Now he waited. He did not starve. She cajoled him and coaxed his appetite and patted the pillows, and made pretty, laughing eyes at him and fate quite in her habitual manner. Her touch and tone of affection had never ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... merely the instinctive voicing of an ever-present thought associated closely with the consciousness of the land somewhere ahead and of the great speed of the ship. Fair wind, fair wind! Who would dare to grumble at a fair wind? It was a favour of the Western King, who rules masterfully the North Atlantic from the latitude of the Azores to the latitude of Cape Farewell. A famous shove this to end a good passage with; and yet, somehow, one could not muster upon one's lips the smile of a courtier's gratitude. This favour was dispensed to you from under an overbearing scowl, ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... any account!" Peter said masterfully, "and don't tell wicked lies, or you'll get your mouth washed out with soap! Now, I'll put Miss Thornton on her car, and you talk to Hart here—Miss Brown, this is Mr. Hart—Gordon, Miss Brown—until I ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... that was, his saying that he did not want her to decide in haste, but to take time to know what she was doing! What other man would not have stayed to urge her, to hurry her, to impose his will on hers, masterfully to use his personality to confuse her, to carry her off? For an instant, through all her wretched bewilderment, she thrilled to a high, impersonal appreciation of his saying: "If I had stayed with you, I should have tried to take you by force—but you are too ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... specimens of their creator's gift for varying not only a simple dance form, but also in juggling with a simple melodic idea so masterfully that the hearer forgets he is hearing a three-part composition on a keyboard. Chopin was a magician. The first of the Mazurkas in C-sharp minor bears the early Op. 6, No. 2. By no means representative, it is nevertheless interesting and characteristic. ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... inspection a silver rosary from which depended a crucifix of ivory, the sad image of the dying Christ carved upon it. Even in Monsieur's chapel, even in the church at St. Quentin, was nothing so masterfully wrought as this figurine to be held in the palm of the hand. The tears started in my eyes to look at it, and I crossed myself in reverence. I bethought me how I had trampled on my crucifix; the stranger ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... and I believe I should have guessed it was a Dutch one, even if Cousin Robert hadn't told me; it made so little noise, yet moved so masterfully, and gave an impression of so much reserve power. Indeed, I might have thought out several nice similes if there hadn't been quantities of trams and heavy drays blundering about, or if the inhabitants of Rotterdam had not had ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... tramped masterfully up and down her little studio north of the cool green London park, and had said things ten times worse than continuez, before he snatched the brush out of her hand and showed her where the error lay. His last letter, Maisie remembered, contained some trivial ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... budge, any one of you," he breathed masterfully to his cowed regiment. "Get back there, you Shaw! An', Beetrice, if you don't mind me, I'll carve your ear off. You better be afraid of me, all of you, an' mind what I say, or I'll take this dagger, an' dag the life out of you! You're all my servants—you're ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... His eyes masterfully held hers, seeming to say: "I'm vague. But I was vague when I told you I'd see what could be done about your mother—and look at what I did, and how quickly and easily I did it! When I'm vague, it means a lot." And she entirely understood that his ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... especially for her minutest and seemingly most insignificant phenomena, is closely akin to religion; there is an infinite charm in his description of the mysterious life of apparently lifeless objects; he renders all the sensuous impressions so masterfully that the reader often has the feeling of a physical experience; and it is but natural that up to his thirty-fifth year, before he discovered his literary talent, he had dreamed of being a landscape painter. Hebbel's epigram, "Know ye why ye are such past masters in painting beetles and buttercups? ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... do it," said Amaryllis. "You know you're not strong yet." She spoke as if she had been his mother or his nurse, somewhat masterfully and reproachfully. ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... there had to be a light in the windows of the Tavern office; he knew that he had to be in time. That was the finger of a Something behind the whole day's developments which was directing it all so masterfully. And because he was so certain of it all—because he was positive that he was the agent who had been selected to mete out justice at last—he found himself possessed of a greater courage than he had ever known before as ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... thinks out the answer to great questions—there is a field before you compared with which the opportunities of Hamilton and Washington and Jefferson almost seem small, leviathan as those opportunities were and masterfully as ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... masterfully to drive and not be driven; but the delays were inexorable, and the impending strike threatened to turn the orderly charge into a rout. The governor had postponed the coup from day to day, waiting upon the leisurely movements of ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... what it was in him that she loved: the actor masterfully playing upon her emotions and enthusiasm, or the man. Janina did not think of this. She loved him because she loved him and because he personified the ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... realized his intentions, deftly caught Helen's hands in each of his own, tightening his grip on them masterfully, until he forced her to look up at him. Helen trembled as she met his eyes. The man had spoken no more than the truth when he said he could not help his nature, and, suddenly transformed, it was the former Geoffrey ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... the clash of primitive-hearted men for a good woman's love. Gone, perhaps, the greatest heart picture of a generation, the picture at which you laugh with a lump in your throat and smile with a tear in your eye, the story of plausible punches, a big, vital theme masterfully handled—thrills, action, beauty, excitement—carried to a sensational finish by the genius of that sterling star of the shadowed world, Clifford Armytage—once known as Merton Gill in the little hamlet of Simsbury, Illinois, where for a time, ere yet he ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... her promptly, firmly, masterfully. She seemed to feel the implied protection, and yielded to it gratefully, with the further breakdown of a sob. "There is no danger," he repeated cheerfully. "Wolves are not good to look at, I know, but they wouldn't have attacked you. The beast only scents some carrion on the plain, and ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... misjudged brother. Gladly would she have gone to the office with him and stood proudly by his side in presence of his oppressor, could such a thing be permitted. She marveled that Robert should now show so little of tenderness for her who had served him loyally, if masterfully, so very long. He merely laid his hand on hers and said he had been summoned to the commanding officer's, then went forth into the light ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... the mistress of the higher intelligences"; and Goethe, in his most oracular utterances, recalls us to the same truth. What imagination does, and what the personal vision of the individual artist does, is to deal successfully and masterfully with this "given," this basic element. And this basic element, this permanent common ground, this universal human assumption, is just precisely what, in popular language, we call "Nature"; that substratum of objective reality in the appearances ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... long-bearded democrats have the monopoly of patriotism just as the men in cassocks have the monopoly of religion. He spoke, in his turn, with a dogmatic tone, with the declamatory emphasis learned from proclamations daily posted on the walls, and he winded up with a piece of eloquence in which he condemned masterfully that "scoundrel of ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... you remember," said Manuel, very masterfully, "that they are my images, to do with as I wish. Also I would have you remember that, whatever you may pretend to be in Audela, here ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... extreme social turnabout in the circle that feels the power of Jesus' wooing. We turned from Jerusalem aristocrat to Samaritan outcast; now it's from gentle Roman official to a beggaring pauper. It is at the Tabernacles' visit. Jesus, quietly masterfully passing out from the thick of the crowd that would stone Him, noticed a blind ragged beggar by the roadway. One of those speculative questions that are always pushing in, and that never help any one is asked: ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... of the piano, with the first two ringing bars, masterfully, like a man; she seemed to lift it, and its sounding wires, with her two hands, with the strength and certitude of maleness. And then, as only he had heard men do it, she sank, or leaped—he could scarcely say which—to the ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... married a monk who had fled from his cloister in a red cap, and passed from the Bernardines to the Jacobins. She was dry, rough, peevish, sharp, captious, almost venomous; all this in memory of her monk, whose widow she was, and who had ruled over her masterfully and bent her to his will. She was a nettle in which the rustle of the cassock was visible. At the Restoration she had turned bigot, and that with so much energy that the priests had forgiven her her monk. She had ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... So masterfully ranged he the host; and they hasted back to the assembly from ships and huts, with noise as when a wave of loud-sounding sea roareth on the long beach and ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... man in more ways than his mere magnificent muscles. Besides, Romance had gilded him, this doughty, rough-hewn adventurer of the North, this man of many deeds and many millions, who had come down out of the Arctic to wrestle and fight so masterfully with the men ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... a young lady, richly robed in trailing silk and velvet and fur; with a face fair as a star-flower, haughty as the face of any duchess; with amber eyes that gazed upon them contemptuously, masterfully, fearlessly; with wave upon wave of golden brown hair, clustering about the temples and snowy neck; and with scarlet lips half ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... us, Abby; go on in!" commanded Miss Daggett masterfully. "I guess when it comes to that, her gravel ain't any better than ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... Thus masterfully does Sir Edwin Arnold depict the sentiment which provoked this Great Renunciator. The testimony of thousands of millions who, during the last twenty-five centuries, have professed the Buddhistic religion, proves that the secret ...
— The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons • H.S. Olcott
... in our individual affection, who played while he lived his conspicuous part on the great stage of public life, or who helped conspicuously to influence public thought. The selection is, within these limitations, inevitably arbitrary, and is given frankly as such. Certain names assert themselves masterfully, and of these Goldsmith's is one of the most masterful. He added images to daily life and common thought as Bunyan did or Shakespeare. There is no more need to explain Dr. Primrose than there is to explain Mr. Facing-both-ways, and if ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... masterfully commanding I have known: never one more remarkable. In the mere possession of him, rather than in his direct influence, all Cliftonians felt themselves rich. We were at least as proud of him as Etonians of the author of "Ionica." But no comparisons will serve. Falstaffian—with ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the black-and-gray dog pup thrived wonderfully in Desdemona's cave. Having keen sight now in addition to the wonderful sense of smell which was his at birth, the black-and-gray had become a definite person already. Young though he was, he already knew the taste of rabbit's flesh, and would growl masterfully at his own mother if she claimed his attention—say, for a washing—when he had stolen one of her bones, and was busily engaged in gnawing and scraping it with his pin-point teeth. When Finn appeared, this masterful youngster would waddle purposely forward, growling at times ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... I had ever realised what he so truly felt for Hedwig until I sat at my table with his letter before me, overcome with the sense of my own weakness in not having effectually checked this mad passion at its rise; or, since it had grown so masterfully, of my wretched procrastination in not having taken my staff in my hand and gone out into the world to find the woman my boy loved and bring her to him. By this time, I thought, I should have found her. I could not bear to ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... and plundered them; and because they had submitted to be so plundered, the Covenanting army came back and plundered them also. "Many of this company went and brack up the Bishop's yetts, set on good fires of his peats standing within the close: they masterfully broke up the haill doors and windows of this stately house; they brake down beds, boards, aumries, glassen windows, took out the iron stauncheons, brake in the locks, and such as they could carry had with them, and sold ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... zest and humor he entered upon the plans of his adversaries, accepting his trial and sentence like—like Socrates; for there is no simile for him, outside himself. He turned it all masterfully to the advantage of the Light he loved. You all know how he cracked his grand solemn joke when the death sentence was passed on him. By Athenian law, he might suggest an alternative sentence; as, to pay a fine, or banishment. ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... Therefore they took him under their protection. The first who came to see Stephen Fausch was the teacher, an enlightened young man, and accordingly more officious. He greeted the smith a little condescendingly, a trifle masterfully. Then he blurted out at once the errand that had brought him. "You must change your boy's name, Fausch. He can't let every one call him by a shameful name like Cain. Give him your own name, Stephen, or some name ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... Peggy lift her hand to any of the work that day. Mabel managed the babies masterfully. Arna moved quietly about, ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... and to realise the picture he presented—a dazed man confronting an extraordinarily lovely girl with her fist full of banknotes on a Broadway kerbstone. An interested cabby caught his eye, wagged his whip masterfully, wheeled up to them and with an apparently complete grasp of the situation whirled them off through a side street with never so much as ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... if pushed by some mighty force outside herself, leaned towards him, and he caught her in his arms. He tipped back her face and kissed her, and looked down at her masterfully. ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... play. The great artist is playing when his imagination finds expression on the canvas in color. If he did not love to paint he would never have become a great artist. The engineer is playing when he produces the great bridge; the financier when he masterfully organizes his capital. ...
— School, Church, and Home Games • George O. Draper
... comes from God. I would impress upon you the all-important necessity of placing yourself in a magnetically passive attitude towards the Universal Will and then of taking up a calm, positive attitude towards the phenomenal world—which is a projection of the lower nature and hence must be handled masterfully, fearlessly and confidently. Be positive to the external world. Be negative and receptive to the Lord's Will-force. Remember this. This brings me to the supremest and most solid truth contained in the Science ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... was an evening landscape of Volterra, a hill-town in Italy. The bolts of Priam's very soul started when he caught sight of that picture. On the lower edge of the rich frame were two words in black lettering: 'Priam Farll.' How well he remembered painting it! And how masterfully beautiful ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... with young men and women returning from business and ragged urchins ran here and there yelling out the names of the evening editions. The man passed through the crowd, looking on the spectacle generally with proud satisfaction and staring masterfully at the office-girls. His head was full of the noises of tram-gongs and swishing trolleys and his nose already sniffed the curling fumes punch. As he walked on he preconsidered the terms in which he would narrate the incident ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... in the face of all this public clamor about Eden, to show their concern. The chairman of the board rationalized it masterfully, without once mentioning that their real concern was to remain ascendant at the center of things at all costs, and thereby maintained the tradition of ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... she would die a thousand deaths rather than betray her solemn trust. But even as she spoke the fictitious flame of courage withered away in her shrinking frame; and at the mere touch of her brother's finger and thumb upon her wrist, the mere sight of his face bending masterfully over her with white teeth just gleaming between his twisting smile and half-veiled eyes of insolent determination, she allowed him, unresisting, to take the bag from her side; protesting against the breach of faith only by her moans and the ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... Wilson? What were his purposes? What his ideals? These questions were troubling and perplexing the delegates. Colonel Harvey, the commander-in-chief of the Wilson forces, when interrogated by us, refused to answer. How masterfully the Old Guard staged every act of the drama, and thus brought about the nomination of the Princeton president. The Convention is at an end. Wilson has been nominated by a narrow margin; the delegates, bitter and resentful, are about to withdraw; the ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... down at her, smiling masterfully, but very kindly. He took the mutinous hand, with its little sprig of heather, and held it between his own. He seemed to find her insistence adorable; mentally, he was contrasting her with all other women whom he had known, frowning at the memory of so many years in which she ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... But when you call me masterful, it seems to me you blame the blameless, as the poet says; for I am myself being dragged along by reason, until you bring up some other reason to release me from durance. And here is reason about to talk more masterfully still, you will see; but I suppose you will exonerate it, and ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... air wells into your lungs the while by voluptuous inhalations, and makes the eyes bright, and sets the heart tinkling to a new tune—or, rather, to an old tune; for you remember in your boyhood something akin to this spirit of adventure, this thirst for exploration, that now takes you masterfully by the hand, plunges you into many a deep grove, and drags you over many a stony crest. It is as if the whole wood were full of friendly voices calling you farther in, and you turn from one side to another, like Buridan's donkey, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... draw one of the window shades. It had become imperative that she should have time to think and an excuse for hiding her face from the eyes which seemed to be trying masterfully ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... lightning-like rapidity to HELEN and transfixes her with a withering look; harshly and masterfully.] ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann |
