"Consummate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... appeared for a long time. He noted his impressions while touring the world; one fine morning he published them, and from the very first the reading public was won. He related his adventures and his own romance. The question could then be raised whether his skill and art would prove as consummate if he should deviate from his own personality to write what might be termed impersonal poems; and it is precisely in this last direction that he subsequently produced what are ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... without saying that a people who have assimilated all the foregoing tenets of good conversation are never disjointed in their talk. Their consummate art of listening is responsible for their skill in following the logical trend of the discourse. This may be considered a national trait. In decent French society there are no abrupt transitions of thought in the different speeches. ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... was told the first stone had been rightly laid on the birthday of Raffaelle. But what struck me most in this city, more than its galleries, temples, and palaces, its magnificent buildings, splendid paintings, and consummate statues, was the all-pervading presence and all-inspiring influence of living and breathing Art. In every street, a school: the atelier of the sculptor open, the studio of the painter crowded: devoted pupils, aspiring rivals: enthusiasm, emulation, excellence. Here the long-lost feudal-art ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... up. In these polar seas forbidden to man, did he feel right at home, the lord of these unreachable regions? Perhaps. But he didn't say. He stood still, reviving only when his pilot's instincts took over. Then, steering his Nautilus with consummate dexterity, he skillfully dodged the masses of ice, some of which measured several miles in length, their heights varying from seventy to eighty meters. Often the horizon seemed completely closed off. Abreast of latitude 60 degrees, every passageway had disappeared. Searching with care, Captain ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... of Paul's Epistles, with slight variations, is much the same. The outlines of these letters fall uniformly into six divisions. "First, a greeting sometimes very brief, sometimes extending over several verses, in which he generally manages with consummate skill to strike the keynote of the whole letter. Secondly, a thanksgiving to God for the Christian gifts and graces of his converts. Thirdly, a doctrinal part, in which he argues out or explains some great topic of Christian truth, ...
— Bible Studies in the Life of Paul - Historical and Constructive • Henry T. Sell
... said, 'There be no monkery in Al-Islam."' At this the King was transported to perfect joy; his breast was broadened and lightened; care and cark ceased from him and he turned to the Wazir and said, "Know thou, O Minister, that none shall fare about this affair save thou, by reason of thy consummate intelligence and good breeding; wherefore hie thee home and do all thou hast to do and get thee ready by the morrow and depart and demand me in marriage this maiden, with whom thou hast occupied my heart and thought; and return not to ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... The three other girls are charming little maidens. The eldest, though but in her early teens, is intellectual and studious; the second has a decided talent for painting, whilst the third, says her mother, laughing, 'is a consummate ...
— Mrs. Hungerford - Notable Women Authors of the Day • Helen C. Black
... probably wrote this without a chuckle; he believed what a good many people who have never read Wilhelm Meister believe still, namely, that it was a work full of pathos, of fine and tender feeling; yet a less consummate humorist must have felt that there was scarcely a paragraph in it from first to last the chief merit of which did not ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... Nova hove in sight, and was followed on the next day by the Morning. Both ships had experienced the most terrible weather, and everyone on board the little Morning declared that she had only been saved from disaster by the consummate seamanship ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... inaccessible, unless one knows the secret paths which have been hewn up the sides of the rocks, and through the otherwise impassable undergrowth of the forest, by the perseverance and labors of the robbers. The rude castle, which I would now describe to you, was built with consummate military skill, and the walls and bastions, though small and low, could hold out a long time against any strength that might be brought against it. Ever prepared for an enemy, too, was its cautious master and his outposts ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... proceeded to detail the peculiar power of fascination—snake-like, he called it—possessed by the plaintiff. Without any assistance from turgid rhetoric, or indignant denunciation, he depicted it in a manner so simple, yet so direct, that his audience shivered in response. Then, with consummate art, he played upon their sensibilities by picturing the simple homeliness of Amy Johnson's happy family circle, on to the fervour of Reg's devotion, the complete happiness of the young couple up to their disunion under the diabolical ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... chance of escape from the onset of an enterprising partisan corps, as had the Bavarian troops when attacked by the Tyrolese in the steep defiles of the Inn. General Mackay, however, had made his arrangements with consummate tact and skill, and had calculated his time so well, that he was enabled to clear the Pass before the Highlanders could reach it from the other side. Advancing upwards, the passage becomes gradually broader, until, just below the House of ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... and Mr. Van Buren soon became the directing spirit among the friends of General Jackson, although no one was ever able to quote his views. Taking Aaron Burr as his political model, but leading an irreproachable private life, he rose by his ability to plan and execute with consummate skill the most difficult political intrigues. He was rather under the medium height, with a high forehead, a quick eye, and pleasing features. He made attitude and deportment a study, and when, on his leaving the Senate, his household furniture was sold at auction it was noticed that the ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... Stagyrite display a more consummate knowledge of what men are made of, than in his contrasted characters of youth and age. I wonder how many of the old gentlemen who call themselves philosophers in this degenerate age, ever read or remember what he says on the subject. It is a great comfort, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... regard me as a consummate simpleton, or yourself a Goliath. This bottle is mine, and mine only. It is a great fortune for one, but of less value than a toadstool for two. I am willing to divide fairly. This secret would be of no service to a coward. He would not dare to use it. Your share of the robbery ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... self, one has found God as Companion, Friend, and Saviour. Where all these ways converge, and a soul enjoys the privilege of mystical contact, the compulsion of rational insight, and the moral reinforcement of personal Faith in Christ, religion comes to its consummate flower, and may with some right be called ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... fit to impose. He became conscious, in the first place, that the school-mistress was a much more attractive-looking young person than he had anticipated, and secondly, that she seemed rather amused than otherwise at his conditions. No man, and least of all a man so consummate as Mr. Barker—for he was a dapper little person with a closely cropped beard and irreproachable kid gloves—likes to be laughed at by a woman, especially by one who is young and moderately good-looking; and he instinctively drew himself up by way ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... life. Imposing no restraint on their passions, a shameless and universal concubinage exists, and a total disregard of morality, to which it would be impossible to find a parallel in any country calling itself civilized. A want of honorable principle, and consummate duplicity and treachery, characterize all their dealings. Liars by nature, they are treacherous and faithless to their friends, cowardly and cringing to their enemies; cruel, as all cowards are, they unite savage ferocity ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... have followed the course of two opposite streams of thought which had their common origin in one fundamental principle or law of the human mind—the intuition of unity—"or the desire to comprehend all the facts of the universe in a single formula, and consummate all conditional knowledge in the unity of unconditioned existence." The history of this tendency is, in fact, the history of all philosophy. "The end of all philosophy," says Plato, "is the intuition of unity." "All ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... however, to consummate such a measure, it is evidently most fitting and proper, that, in the preamble to an Act of Emancipation, there should be set forth, lucidly and succinctly, the causes and considerations which impelled to so solemn and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... handling the Eagle with consummate skill. He had brought the machine to an altitude that was nicely calculated to afford Jimmie just the opportunity needed without trailing the line upon the ground, yet not having it out ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... exclusion of all the others. It was odd how he contrived to produce this impression, but produce it he did. It was Arthur Carroll's great charm, the great secret of a remarkable influence over his fellow-men. He appealed with consummate skill to the selfish side of every one with whom he came in contact, he exalted him in his own eyes far above the masses with whom he was surrounded, by who could tell what subtle alchemy. Each man preened unconsciously his panoply of spiritual pride under this other ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... second, as Will landed feet first on the gravel panting for breath, Maga Jhaere arrived full gallop from the rear, managing her ugly gray stallion with consummate ease. Her black hair streamed out in the wind, and what with the dew on it and the slanting sun-rays she seemed to be wearing all the gorgeous jewels out of Ali Baba's cave. She was the loveliest thing to look at —unaffected, unexpected, and as untamed as the ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... reasons why the President should feel that success is within his grasp. He has used the opportunities that he found or created, and he has used them with consummate skill ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... the day, and, to Ruyler's satisfaction, Mrs. Thornton had fallen to his lot and he sat on the left of Isabel. In this little group at the head of the table, his chosen intimates, who were more interested in the affairs of the world than in Consummate California, Ruyler had forgotten his wife for a time and had not noticed with whom she had ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... alternate with each other in mutual support, until all is satisfied and filled with the Holy and the Infinite. Of this character is the influence of religious men upon one another; such is their natural and eternal union. Do not take it ill of them that this heavenly bond—the most consummate product of the social nature of man, but to which it does not attain until it becomes conscious of its own high and peculiar significance—that this should be deemed of more value in their sight than the political ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... Thalcave was a consummate horseman, and to see him on his prancing steed was a sight worth looking at. The saddle was adapted to the two hunting weapons in common use on the Argentine plains—the BOLAS and the LAZO. The BOLAS consists of three balls fastened ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... believe, been no important critical denial of the right of "The Manxman" to rank as a "strong" book. The plot is drawn with consummate skill—not in the sense of a Gaborian-like unravelment of mystery, but in its organic, natural, inevitable development, and in the abiding interest of its evolution. The details are worked in with the most scrupulous care. Rarely, in modern fiction, have certain elemental ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... man trust the first false step Of guilt. It hangs upon a precipice, Whose deep descent in last perdition ends. How far am I plung'd down, beyond all thought Which I this evening fram'd— Consummate horror! guilt beyond, a name!— Dare not, my soul, repent. In thee, repentance Were second guilt; and 'twere blaspheming Heav'n To hope for mercy. My pain can only cease When gods want power to punish.—Ha!—the dawn— Rise never more, O fun!—let night prevail: Eternal darkness ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... she met the graceful attentions of Clinton, after his fascinations had dispersed her natural shyness and reserve. She neither sought nor avoided him, flattered nor slighted him. She appeared neither dazzled nor charmed. Mittie thought this must be the most consummate art, when it was only the perfection of nature. Because the glass was so clear, so translucent, she imagined she was the victim of ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... harangues of aimless talkers and political wire-pullers would fall like snowflakes upon the waters. The papers of Prof. Kelly Miller and Prof. Du Bois have reached the circles of scholars and thinkers in this country. So consummate was the handling of Hoffman's "Race Traits and Tendencies" by Prof. Miller, that we may say that it was the most scientific defense of the Negro ever made in this country by a man of our own blood: accurate, pointed, painstaking, and I ...
— Civilization the Primal Need of the Race - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Paper No. 3 • Alexander Crummell
... survey of the more sublime parts of the human frame; when we behold man's internal make and structure; his mental faculties; his social propensions, and those active powers which set all in motion—the passions,—what an illustrious display of consummate wisdom is presented to our admiring view! What brighter mark—what stronger evidence need we of a God? The scanty limits of a few minutes, to which I am confined, would not permit me, were I equal to the ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... the home above is consummate wisdom. Hence the injunction of the Holy Apostle, "Set your affections on things above." This exercise of the heart can only be attained by first seeking an interest in the atoning blood and justifying righteousness of the ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... Jorge; "but of the diocese of hell! Well, we're off. I'll send a runner down the trail when I reach the Tigui river; and if you will have a letter in Simiti informing me of the status of things political, he can bring it up. Conque, adios, my consummate villain." ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... a gauge of six feet. Major Whistler rejoined in a report which is one of the finest models of an engineering argument ever written, and in which we have perhaps the best view of the quality of his mind. In this document no point is omitted, each part of the question is handled with the most consummate skill, the bearing of the several parts upon the whole is shown in the clearest possible manner, and in a style which could only come from one who from his own knowledge was thoroughly familiar with all the details, not only of the railroad, but ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... exercise of his consummate skill, endeavoured to solve a problem which for many years baffled the efforts of the ablest astronomers, viz., the determination of the parallax of the fixed stars. This had been so frequently attempted, and without success, that the results of any new observations were received ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... there is the consummate personal appeal of the poet, which, if we may judge by the matchless lyric, was answered by the same spirit that inspired the graceful scorner of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... been pretending throughout—a statement always denied by his mother and his brother Orion. This dispute was never settled, and never could be. Sam Clemens's tendency to somnambulism would seem to suggest that he really might have taken on a hypnotic condition, while his consummate skill as an actor, then and always, and his early fondness of exhibition and a joke, would make it not unlikely that he was merely "showing off" and having his fun. He could follow the dictates of a vivid imagination and could be as outrageous as he chose without incurring responsibility ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... command; to flourish where others give up the struggle defeated; to send its vigorous offspring abroad prepared for similar conquest of adverse conditions wherever met to attract myriads of customers to its department store, and by consummate executive ability to make every visitor unwittingly contribute to its success? Any one who doubts the dandelion's fitness to survive, should humble himself by spending days and weeks on his knees, trying ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... sides, that, wherever our armies have had occupancy, there slavery has been practically abolished. The fact was recognized by President Lincoln in his last appeal to the loyal Slave States to consummate emancipation. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the extent of his social ambition, the daring and impudent character of his attempts to gratify it, the skill, the consummate hypocrisy with which he played on the credulity of honest folk, and his flagrant employment of that weapon known and recognised to-day in the most exalted spheres by the expressive name of "bluff." He is remarkable, too, for his mirth and high spirits, his genial buffoonery; ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... still further verified? Chaucer wisely chose the epic form for his greatest poem, because he could introduce thereinto so many distinct qualities of composition, and the woof of racy humour as well as of sprightly satire which he introduces with such consummate art into the texture of his verse is of as fine a character as any in our literature. In Langland's great allegory, the satire is earnest, grave and solemn, as though with a sense of deep responsibility; that in Chaucer's ...
— English Satires • Various
... female Tartuffe (2 syl.), and consummate hypocrite of most unblushing effrontery.—Wycherly, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... there no sins for Satire's Bard to greet? Stalks not gigantic Vice in every street? Shall Peers or Princes tread pollution's path, And 'scape alike the Laws and Muse's wrath? Nor blaze with guilty glare through future time, Eternal beacons of consummate crime? Arouse thee, GIFFORD! be thy promise claimed, Make bad men better, or ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... conception than vigor of reasoning and wealth of erudition.... The method of Dr. Draper, in his treatment of the various questions that come up for discussion, is marked by singular impartiality as well as consummate ability. Throughout his work he maintains the position of an historian, not of an advocate. His tone is tranquil and serene, as becomes the search after truth, with no trace of the impassioned ardor of controversy. He endeavors so far to identify himself ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... compensation is a hundredfold. For dross I have gold. I and mine needed the discipline of misfortune, and it came through the perfidy of a friend. That false friend, selfish and grasping—seeing in money the greatest good—was permitted to consummate his evil design. That his evil will punish him, I am sure; and in the pain of his punishment, he may be led to reformation. If he continue to hide the stolen fox, it will tear his vitals. If he lets it go, he will scarcely venture upon a second theft. In either event, the wrong he was ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... fault with if they are not covetous, and if they fear neither gods, nor death, nor pain. And yet, what is the object of making any exception as to the luxurious, or of supposing any people, who, while living luxuriously, would not be reproved by that consummate philosopher, provided only they guard against all other vices. Still, would not you, Epicurus, blame luxurious men for the mere fact of their living in such a manner as to pursue every sort of pleasure; especially when, as you say, the chief pleasure of all is to be ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... marrow of the matter; always seizing the essential idea or principle. The same exactness and rapidity of operation, pervading as it did her sensitive as well as her mental faculties, would, with her gifts of feeling and imagination, have fitted her to be a consummate artist, as her fiery and tender soul and her vigorous eloquence would certainly have made her a great orator, and her profound knowledge of human nature and discernment and sagacity in practical life, would, in the times when such a carriere was open to women, have made her eminent ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... to the world, he summons up all his reason and deliberation to assist him; he searches, meditates, is industrious, and likely consults and confers with his judicious friends, as well as any that writ before him; if in this, the most consummate act of his fidelity and ripeness, no years, no industry, no former proof of his abilities can bring him to that state of maturity as not to be still mistrusted and suspected, unless he carry all his considerate diligence, all his midnight watchings, and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... field of battle are commendable; in his disposition of his forces there is nothing with which to find fault. Every arm of the service had full room to act; all were brought into play; if Alexander conquered, it was because he was a consummate general, while at the same time he commanded the best troops in the world. Arbela was not, like Issus, won by mere fighting. It was the leader's victory, rather than the soldiers. Alexander's diagonal advance, the confusion ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... clasping ankle and instep like a glove, were chosen to match the black satin dress laid out on the bed: but, like the dress, were not put on. The place of the black satin dress was supplied by a wrapper of very fine white muslin, edged with delicate lace, so shaped with consummate skill that, though the snowy folds seemed to lie loosely within the girdle that confined them at the waist, no part of the effect of the round elastic slimness of the waist was lost; open at the neck, from a point about a span beneath the collar-bone, it allowed the ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... not brought with him from Charleston the stores necessary for a long march, and he did not deem it expedient to leave South Carolina till he had suppressed that spirit of resistance to his authority which had extensively manifested itself in the province. In order to consummate, as he thought, the subjugation of the State, he resorted to measures of great injustice and cruelty. He considered the province as a conquered country, reduced to unconditional submission and to allegiance to its ancient sovereign, and the people ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... cords. I told the doctor all about the preliminary verbal skirmish and the needlessness of the fight. The superintendent had graduated at Yale over fifty years prior to my own graduation, and because of this common interest and his consummate tact we got along well together. But his friendly interest did not keep him from speaking his mind upon occasion, as his words at this time proved. "You don't know," he said, "how it grieves me to see you—a Yale ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... the consideration of the infinite pains it must have cost you to have been so elaborately wrong,—will not suffer me to attribute such numerous errors to any thing but real ignorance, joined with most consummate vanity." The following is a specimen of his acuteness in criticising the absurd style of his adversary:—"You leave it rather dubious whether you were most pleased with the glorious opposition to Charles I. or the dangerous designs of that monarch, which ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... luck it will be if you come back and present yourself at the Abbey while I am there! I am going to behave with consummate discretion and win golden opinions, But I shall run up to town now and then, just for a peep into Gad Eden. You see how far I have got in Hebrew lore—up with my Lord Bolingbroke, who knew no Hebrew, but "understood that sort of learning and what is ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... Berry was a consummate mimic as well as an excellent singer, and his fellows were never tired either of his drolleries or his songs. Few escaped his mimicry, and nothing was too sacred for his wit. When Nimbus first came in sight, he was convulsing his hearers by imitating ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... built by him with an excess of magnificence and elegance, even to ostentation: one would imagine everything that architecture can perform to have been employed in this one work. There are everywhere so many statues that seem to breathe so many miracles of consummate art, so many casts that rival even the perfection of Roman antiquity, that it may well claim and justify its name of Nonesuch, being without an equal; or as the post ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... resemblances greater than the differences, and the latter seldom amount to more than a greater or a less excellence of workmanship and style. The "literary" magazines, it is true, more frequently surprise one by a story told with original and consummate art; but then the "popular" magazines balance this merit by their more frequent escape from mere prettiness. In both kinds, the majority of the stories come from the same mill, even though the minds that shape them may differ in refinement and in taste. Their range is narrow, and, what is ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... doing his best to cure us, and can judge of our case better than we can; but we should conceal all illness if we were treated as the Erewhonians are when they have anything the matter with them; we should do as we do with our moral and intellectual diseases,—we should feign health with the most consummate art, till we were found out, and should hate a single flogging given by way of mere punishment more than the amputation of a limb, if it were kindly and courteously performed from a wish to help us out of our difficulty, and with the full consciousness on the part of the doctor that it was only by ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... aware that this praise expressed his deepest conviction. Had he been dissatisfied with the statue of Demeter, or even merely superficially touched by its beauty, he might have shrunk from wounding the unfortunate artist by censure, and remained silent; but only something grand, consummate, could lead him to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... This consummate work of science and skill reaches us in the midst of the discordant sounds of war, the prelude of that blessed harmony which will come whenever the jarring organ of the State has learned once more to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... workers. It was an outgoing wave of such life and animation as is apparent in the flight of a swarm of cell-dwellers, giving out a loud and sharp-toned hum from the action of their wings as they soar over the blooming heather and the "bright consummate flowers." And these human bees had their passions, too! their massacres; their tragedies; their "Rival Queens"; their combats; their sentinels; their dreams of that Utopian form of government realized in the communistic society ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... passed since I finished that entry with the most appropriate words, "I am." They fittingly express the consummate egoism with which I was then afflicted. I ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... poetry and romance, was not rather a PROSY affair, after all; and I more than once asked myself if a young man, of correct deportment and industrious habits, who could find some good and respectable business on shore, would not be a consummate fool to "go to sea." I deliberated anxiously on the subject, and finally determined to return to my home in New Hampshire, and visit my friends ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... without quality must have been thought evidence of elegance and generous hospitality! And the astounding part of the bad taste epidemic was that few if any escaped. Even those who had inherited colonial silver and glass and china of consummate beauty, sent it dust-gathering to the attic and cluttered their tables with stuffy and ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... walls were peopled, or the present realities of actors who came in and out of the room. Although he was so much younger then, Mr. Pinero looked much as he does now. He played Rosencrantz very neatly. Consummate care, precision, and brains characterized his work as an actor always, but his chief ambition lay another way. Rosencrantz and the rest ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... you must promise me to sustain me in any action that I may take. I shall go to see Monsieur Mouche the very first thing to-morrow morning; and if he turns out to be what I think he is—that is to say, a consummate rascal—I shall very soon find means of making him harmless, even if the devil himself should take sides with him. For everything depends on him. As it is too late this evening to take Mademoiselle Jeanne ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... conscious emotions of all mankind; crowning the deed by the expulsion of the professors of wisdom, [4] and the banishment of every liberal art, that nothing generous or honorable might remain. We gave, indeed, a consummate proof of our patience; and as remote ages saw the very utmost degree of liberty, so we, deprived by inquisitions of all the intercourse of conversation, experienced the utmost of slavery. With language we should have lost memory itself, ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... perform, achieve, carry through, effect, perpetrate, actualize, commit, execute, realize, bring about, complete, finish, transact, bring to pass, consummate, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... the confident assurance that one, whose death is recorded, has already passed into heaven; that another has now become an angel of Light, or is singing the praises of GOD before the throne, is, in short, in the full present enjoyment of consummate and final bliss. Thus it is that the Intermediate State between death and the final condition of happiness in heaven, which can only follow the Day of the Resurrection, is quite forgotten ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... Europe, seconded by the ablest generals, at the head of the bravest and best disciplined armies in the world, and wielding, without check or control, the unlimited resources of his empire. He was not a consummate general; military men will point out his errors; in that respect Fortune did not favour him, save by throwing the lustre of adversity over all his virtues. He sustained defeat after defeat, but always rose adversa rerum immersabilis unda. Looking merely ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... the old grit of our race, and the heavier the check the more his soul was set upon ultimate victory. I have been over that battle ground, and have looked at the positions taken up by Louis Botha. They were chosen with consummate skill, born of a thorough knowledge of the nature of the ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... upon an occasion when Lord Mortimer returned for a week or two to his Castle, the conduct of his chief huntsman was reported to him; but Charles with consummate art, so vindicated himself, and so contrived to disgrace his accusers, that when the young baron again left home, he stood higher perhaps than ever, in his confidence ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various
... the field; and, accordingly, he rather pleased and entertained the Athenians, than inflamed their passions; and marched forth into the dust and heat of the Forum, not from a weather-beaten tent, but from the shady recesses of Theophrastus, a man of consummate erudition. He was the first who relaxed the force of Eloquence, and gave her a soft and tender air: and he rather chose to be agreeable, as indeed he was, than great and striking; but agreeable in ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the "White Swan." Lights on the deck and a few glowing portholes showed unusual activity aboard. Shirley's hint to Warren about the contemplated trip to southern climes was the exact truth. Naked truth, he had found, was ofttimes a more valuable artifice than Munchausen artistry of the most consummate craft! The longshoreman, apparently befuddled in his bearings, wandered toward the dock, which protruded into the river, a part of the club property. He staggered, tumbled and lay prostrate on the ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... this salve and that, give the sufferer a little respite from anguish, and, after a brief interval, repeat the operation. Of all these physicians Henry Clay was the most skilful and effective. He both handled the sore place with consummate dexterity, and kept up the constitution of the patient by stimulants, which enabled him, at last, to live through the appalling operation which removed the cause of ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... gaze on Fra Pandolf's picture. . . . I call this piece a wonder, now! Scarce one of the monologues is so packed with significance; yet it is by far the most lucid, the most "simple"—even the rhymes are managed with such consummate art that they are, as Mr. Arthur Symons has said, "scarcely appreciable." Two lives are summed up in fifty-six lines. First, the ghastly Duke's; then, hers—but hers, indeed, is finally gathered into one. . . . Everything that came to her was transmuted into her own dearness—even his favour ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... painter be any the worse because, after having delineated with consummate art an ideal of a perfectly beautiful man, he was unable to show that any such man ...
— The Republic • Plato
... those superhuman fingers. How he twisted and turned them as though his bones were india-rubber. His palms were all joints, and his eyes all ecstasy. He seemed able to do what he liked with his violin. He played on his instrument, indeed, as he played on Guy—with the consummate ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... blue eyes wandered down the table and met it. Perhaps Madeline's own eyelids fluttered a little as she saw the sudden stricture in the face that received her message, and the grimace with which it uttered, pallid with apprehension, its response to a pleasantry of General Worsley's. She was not consummate in her self-control, but she was able at all events to send the glance travelling prettily on with a casual smile for an intervening friend, and bring it back to her dinner-roll without mischief. It did not adventure ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... a singularly objectionable type of journalist, who professed to be on intimate terms with everybody in Paris worth knowing, has a number of offensive and unjustifiable allusions to Lola Montez at this period of her career. He talks of her "consummate impudence," of her "pot-house wit," and of her "grammatical errors," and dubs her, among other things, "this almost ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... to the entire system a protection, of which convincing and brilliant evidence had been afforded during the then recent Seven Years' War. As a matter of political combination and adjustment, for peace or for war, the general result appeared to most men of that day to be consummate in conception and in development, and therefore by all means to be perpetuated. In that light men of to-day must realize it, if they would adequately understand the influence exercised by this prepossession upon ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... voluntary exile, when I settled in the extreme south of Algeria, I made the acquaintance, in the course of a hunting-expedition arranged by a big Arab chief, of a man whose geniality, whose charm of manner, whose consummate prowess, whose indomitable pluck, whose combined humour and depth of mind fascinated me in the highest degree. The Comte d'Andresy spent six weeks as my guest. After he left, we kept up a correspondence at regular intervals. I also often saw his name in the ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... subject was not one which presented the most graphic material for the brush of the painter. Mr. Moran chose the most thrilling incident of the fight in depicting the firing of the brig on the approaching row-boats of the enemy. This he has accomplished with consummate skill. He has herein, as in all his other battle scenes on the water, avoided the portrayal of carnage and destruction of human life in lurid colors as is the custom with most painters. He has left these abhorrent scenes to the imagination, and has thereby rendered his pictures, while suggesting ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro
... aid them; let us not lessen the victory they have won by affecting to claim a share in it.'" It is the self-denying nature of this chivalrous deed that I would apply to far other circumstances. The interfering spirit, which I deprecate, would come, not to consummate the victory, but ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... This nobleman rivalled the earl of Sunderland in his credit at the council-board, and was supported by Somers, lord chancellor of England, by Russel now earl of Orford, first lord of the admiralty, and Montague, chancellor of the exchequer. Somers was an upright judge, a plausible statesman, a consummate courtier, affable, mild, and insinuating. Orford appears to have been rough, turbulent, factious, and shallow. Montague had distinguished himself early by his poetical genius; but he soon converted his attention to the cultivation of more solid talents. He rendered ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... own situation been less serious, and the entire outlook less desperate, Venner would have laughed at the consummate dignity and soberness with which the two detectives co-operated in their exchange ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... his art is such as one would expect from a practical and resolute mind; but in the consummate simplicity of his technique it ceases to be perceptible. This is one of its greatest qualities, and like all the great virtues it is based ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... observed, that though the text should not be much mended thereby, yet it was no small advantage to know, that we had as good a text as the most consummate industry and diligence ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... smiled satirically, and after a pause answered with consummate coolness: "I believe thus much, that she loves her uncle, and that his influence, ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... and carpenter were the result of a suite of chambers, with the passages and staircases that lead to them. To make A the offspring of B, when the very existence of B as B presupposes the existence of A, is preposterous in the literal sense of the word, and a consummate instance of the hysteron proteron in logic. But if I reject the organ as the cause of that, of which it is the organ, though I might admit it among the conditions of its actual functions; for the same reason, I must reject fluids and ethers of all kinds, magnetical, ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... cause of the quarrel, and that St. Mesmin, putting into words what many had known for years and some made their advantage of, had accused Barradas of cheating. The latter's fury was, of course, proportioned to his guilt; an instant challenge while I looked was his natural answer. This, as he was a consummate swordsman, and had long earned his living as much by fear as by fraud, should have been enough to stay the greediest stomach; but St. Mesmin was not content. Treating the knave, the word once passed, as so much dirt, he transferred his attack to St. ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... die at twenty, dissipated wrecks, holding as a mere ceremony the marriage they expect eventually to consummate; or married, now and then produce a single child that had far ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... who comes up to his foes with holy assurance will fight with consummate skill. He will be quite "collected." All his powers will wait upon one another, and they will move together as one. He is as self-possessed upon the battlefield as upon parade, as undisturbed before Goliath ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... gentle words and kind, And this the cheerful semblance, I behold Not unobservant, beaming in ye all, Have rais'd assurance in me, wakening it Full-blossom'd in my bosom, as a rose Before the sun, when the consummate flower Has spread to utmost amplitude. Of thee Therefore entreat I, father! to declare If I may gain such favour, as to gaze Upon thine image, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... man, who had been one of her best teachers and with whom, when a pupil, she had had many an argument, was kindly received, and fulfilled his commission with consummate skill. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and walked in without having to trouble anybody in authority, Narayan Singh leading with the air of an old-time butler showing royalty to their rooms. He even ascertained in an aside, that the doctor of the day was busy operating, and broke that good news with consummate tact: ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... artist of the celebrated picture of the Trial of Queen Katherine, or the Kemble Family. The painter, it will be remembered, was a pupil of the late Sir Thomas Lawrence. He was a young man of consummate vanity, and having unwarrantably claimed the merit of painting the Newfoundland dog introduced in Lawrence's portrait of Mrs. Angerstein, the two artists quarrelled, and Harlow took ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... unprejudiced and impartial mind. He did not suspect that a man was guilty because he was charged: and the respectable and harmless manner of the accused was not interpreted by his Lordship as a piece of consummate acting, as it would be by some Judges who have seen much of the world as it is ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... she made such great sacrifices, think these things for himself. At the end of six months she could make him feel that a harmless kiss on her hand was a deadly sin; she contrived that every grace should be extorted from her, and this with such consummate art, that it was impossible not to feel that she was more an angel than ever ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... indirectly, from those institutions which they secured and reformed. We never turn to the annals of those times without feeling increased admiration of the patriotism, the energy, the decision, the consummate wisdom, which marked the measures of that great Parliament, from the day on which it met to the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sometimes for months. Long journeys must not unfrequently be made; and in a hundred ways large expenditures will be called for. We were told of a case where a treasury note of the government was counterfeited with consummate skill, and it became a matter of vital importance to obtain the plate from which the counterfeit was printed. One of the most successful detectives was employed to work up the case, who soon found that the cost of securing it ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... rather simple when you come to look at them, but I don't find them cheap." He was on excellent terms with Labour politicians, knew many of the old miners with real intimacy, and could handle large bodies of men with consummate tact. ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... It is dark, and the pair are covered in one cloak; and Rey only fires at them at six paces' distance: he fires at hazard, without disquieting himself as to the choice of his victim; and the soldier, who was bold enough to undertake this double murder, has not force nor courage to consummate it. He flies, carrying in his hand a useless whip, with a heavy mantle on his shoulders, in spite of the detonation of two pistols at his ears, and the rapid steps of an angry master in pursuit, which ought to have set him upon some better means of escape. And ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... full-grown, the birds never fly much,—never more, says Morris, "than six or ten feet above the water, and for the most part trailing their legs in it; but either on the water or under it, every movement is characterized by the most consummate dexterity, and facile agility. The most expert waterman that sculls his skiff on the Thames or Isis, is but an humble and unskillful imitator of the dabchick. In moving straightforward (under water?), the wings are used to aid its progress, as if in the air, and in turning it has an easy ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... self! you must! you must! But it is rarely any other than a Saul, an Abimelek, an Achitophel, or a Judas; rarely any other, than a very Reprobate, whom the Devil can drive, while the man is Compos Mentis, to Consummate such a Villany. Yea, no Child of God, in his Right Senses can go so far in this impiety, as to be left without all Time and Room for true Repentance of the Crime; 'tis thus done, by none but those that go to the Devil. A self-murder, acted by one that is upon other accounts a Reasonable ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... that they had only to show themselves to take possession of it. The result has been told. One half of these veteran troops fell in the streets of Laval—many of the remainder were taken alive; a few only escaped to consummate their disgrace by flying towards Antrames at their quickest speed, spreading panic among the republican troops who had not yet come up close to ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... brilliantly decorative effect. Other birds, such as the hammer-head of Africa, adorn the surroundings of their nests (which are built upon the ground) with shells, bones, pieces of broken glass and earthenware, or any objects of a bright and conspicuous character which they may happen to find. The most consummate artists in this respect are, however, the bower-birds; for the species of this family construct elaborate play-houses in the form of arched tunnels, built of twigs upon the ground. Through and around such a tunnel they chase one another; and it is always ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... an exciting moment, and the bravest heart beat fast. A signal came, but not the one they looked for. At the very moment of action, the man whom Rose had left at the floor-opening in the kitchen gave the danger-signal! The alert leader had, with consummate care, told every man beforehand that he must never be surprised by this signal,—it was a thing to be counted upon,—and that noise and panic were of all things to be avoided as fatal folly in their operations. ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... of the body. Their arms were immensely long in proportion to their lower limbs; from their build they appeared to be endowed with amazing strength, a suggestion which was fully confirmed by the consummate ease with which they flourished boughs of trees of formidable size with which they had ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... as human liberty. I know that war has its dreadful necessities, but the disturbances which have recently occurred in Paris have been put down with a barbarity unprecedented in our civil contests; and when we remember that this torrent of blood has been shed to consummate the violation of all law, we cannot but think that sooner or later it will fall back upon the heads of those who shed it. As for the appeal of the people, to whom Louis Napoleon affects to submit his claims, never was a more odious mockery ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... Donald, earl of Marre, a man of much inferior talents: the military spirit of the Scots, though still unbroken, was left without a proper guidance and direction: and a minor king seemed ill qualified to defend an inheritance, which it had required all the consummate valor and abilities of his father to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... sentiment on. A writer in the New Review said recently that of all the poets he remembered, only Shakespeare and Browning never drew a prig. It is this complete absence of the false note that gives to certain of Browning's poems the finality which is felt in all consummate works of art, great and small; the sense that they convey, if not the last word, at least the last necessary word, on their subject. 'Andrea del Sarto' is in its way the whole problem of the artist-ideal, the weak will and the inner failure, in all times and guises; and at the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... in haste, and will merely add that, to consummate these views, I shall for the present delay the article I had requested you to insert in your columns, and allow the various misrepresentations to remain yet a little longer unexposed, at the same time thanking you cordially ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse |
