"Mastering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... country in his life; he stood and gazed with all his eyes. He could see the cities, and the woods and fields, and the bright curves of the river, and far away to where the rim of the plain trenched along the shining heavens. An over-mastering emotion seized upon the boy, soul and body; his heart beat so thickly that he could not breathe; the scene swam before his eyes; the sun seemed to wheel round and round, and throw off, as it turned, strange shapes which disappeared with the rapidity of thought, and ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and consequently was counted as very small fry indeed. He was a quiet, undemonstrative chap but Peggy liked him from the moment she met him. He had mastered one important bit of knowledge: That a "plebe" does well to lie low, and as the result of mastering that salient fact he was well liked by the upper-classmen and found them ready to do him a good many friendly turns which a more "raty" fourth-classman would not have found ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... traditionally ascribed to English rustics, to English sailors, and to Irishmen universally. Fielding is open to the same stern criticism, as a deliberate falsehood-monger; and from the same cause—want of energy to face the difficulty of mastering a real living idiom. This defect in language, however, I cite only as one feature in the complex falsehood which disfigures Fielding's portrait of the English country gentleman. Meantime the question ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... could lead him about by a strap, and I made a little halter and a bridle for him. I didn't see why I shouldn't train him a little while he was young and manageable. I think it is cruel to let colts run till one has to employ severity in mastering them. Of course, I did not let him do much work. Colts are like boys—a boy shouldn't do a man's work, but he had exercise every day, and I trained him to draw a light cart behind him. I used to do all kinds of things to accustom him to unusual sounds. Father talked a good deal ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... Stillness and stars and over-mastering dreams Of Life and Death and Sleep; Heard over gleaming flats the old unchanging sound Of the old ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... meaning of her careful words, Jack felt rising in him an anger against the sense of a readiness prepared beforehand. "You describe it all very prettily, Imogen," he answered, mastering the anger. "But I don't agree ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the fact that my place of work was where I could see the happy children passing to and from school, morning and afternoons. Despite this disappointment, however, I determined that I would learn something, anyway. I applied myself with greater earnestness than ever to the mastering of what was in the ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... aloof from you are many, and to unloose all at once on a single victim would well-nigh brand you criminal. But you will make sure headway, and will be conscious besides that no other class of words in the language will so well repay the mastering. For these are words you do use, and need to use more, and more freely—words your own experience stamps as valuable, if not indeed vital, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Mastering the weakness of tears, she furtively dried her eyes and endeavoured not to think at all—not to dwell on the memory of her "Dad" whom she had loved so tenderly, and all the sweet surroundings of Briar Farm which already seemed so far away. Robin would be sorry she had gone—indeed ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... had guessed at the direction of Caldegard's research. Discharged at a moment when his hope of mastering a valuable secret was at its height, he had found means to track Caldegard's movements, and even, it seemed, to discover the hiding-place of the ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... noises to which his family had ever treated him, and thankful that the wet day had reduced the denizens of the reading-room to one deaf old gentleman, he hurried upstairs, and beheld through the open door of Mr. Froggatt's room, Bernard raying, roaring, dancing, and stamping, in an over-mastering passion, and tearing some paper up with teeth and hands. Just then Lance grasped his collar, and tried in vain to rescue the paper; but he fought with fists, bites, and kicks, like something frantic, until Felix, with a bound forward, suddenly captured him, and dragged ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fellow over the balcony," ordered Lucius, his sense of triumph and opportunity mastering every fear that Flaccus would execute his threat of prosecution. "See that he ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... was a natural one. Late in September, Thayer returned to New York, preparatory to a concert tour through New England. Exhausted by the long strain of mastering both himself and Lorimer, he threw himself into his work with a feverish intensity which astounded Arlt and roused his audiences to the highest pitch of enthusiasm. Thayer took his new honors quietly, however. In his secret heart, he ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... smoking, avoiding for the moment the subject nearest their hearts, Aymer, because he was fighting hard to get some mastering emotion under control, and he loathed showing his feelings even to his father; Mr. Aston, because he was aware of this and wanted ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... lavender were in full blossom; and the two scents mingled and separated and mingled in the warm air, like the notes of two instruments unlike, yet in harmony. The strong lemon odor of the balm, was persistently present like the mastering chords of the violoncello, and the fine and subtle fragrances from the myriad cells of the pale lavender floated above and below, now distant, now melting and disappearing, like a delicate melody. Dr. Eben ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... in which she succeeded in mastering her emotion, Diana began with the utmost volubility to explain the extortion that Daumon was endeavoring to practise upon her, magnifying, though there was but little need to do so, all the threats and menaces that he had made ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... the flashing eyes of the mate, and his fiery cheeks, you would have almost thought that he had really received the blaze of the levelled tube. But, mastering his emotion, he half calmly rose, and as he quitted the cabin, paused for an instant and said: "Thou hast outraged, not insulted me, sir; but for that I ask thee not to beware of Starbuck; thou wouldst but laugh; but let Ahab beware of Ahab; beware ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... his watches to keep at sea and his picket boat to run in harbour, while his spare time was fully employed in mastering the subtleties of gunnery, torpedo work, and electricity, and in rubbing up his rapidly dwindling knowledge of engineering and x and y. It was well that he did so, for at some distant period when the war ceased he would have ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... she broke into a light laugh. Her right hand involuntarily sought her fan which slowly opened across the lower half of her face and she shot a glance at him over its rim with an ease and grace which only Spanish women have ever succeeded in mastering. The effect of this deft bit of coquetry, simple and natural as were all her actions, was ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... woman in the kitchen now. Cynthia should have been mastering the high art of housekeeping, people thought, instead of running about so much and driving round in the pony carriage with Miss Winn, or a girl companion. Of course, there was plenty of money, but one never ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... put down by mind. The whole process he projects out of himself into two lines of movement: the first is the row of preternatural forms arranged as if in a gallery of antique sculpture, the second is himself passing through these forms, grappling with them, mastering them, or ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... has great opportunity for this correlation. She should be more than a teacher of household duties. She should lead the pupils to see the importance and necessity of mastering the other school subjects. Wherever interest in these subjects has already been established, this interest will form a basis for development in ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Management • Ministry of Education
... never felt it monotonous, nor did they complain of the hard work. They knew it was necessary, and here on the very fighting ground itself—in wonderful France—there was a greater incentive to apply oneself to the mastering of the lessons of ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... doth cease, And quenched is with Cupid's greater Flame; But faithful Friendship doth them both suppress, And them with mastering Discipline does tame, Through Thoughts aspiring to eternal Fame. For as the Soul doth rule the Earthly Mass, And all the Service of the Body frame; So Love of Soul doth Love of Body pass, No less than perfect Gold surmounts ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... established forms: and the prose versicles of Walt Whitman were achieved only after he had practised the ordinary rules of prosody. Not so with Moussorgsky, and while few youthful composers have been so carefully counselled, he either could not, or would not, take the trouble of mastering the rudiments ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... and so made of them a more friendly home. Just as, too, there come times of momentous progress in the physical world; the establishment of the Copernican theory, the discovery of a new continent, the mastering of electricity,—so there are periods of swift advance and discovery in the spiritual life, and such a birth-hour, of travail and of joy, ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... me. Though thought and feeling are beyond control, outward action is not. I hope never to lose a mastering grasp on the rein of deeds and words; and though I cannot understand how the feeling I have frankly avowed can ever change, I will try never, by look or sign, to ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... force or power in nature which every one knows so well as the force of habit. To say that a neurotic subject is like a person with a retentive memory, or that a diathesis gradually acquired is like an over-mastering habit, is at all events to make comparisons with things ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... charged with maintaining good order among the tribe established in the roofs of the Cathedral, looked upon the little Gabriel as a prodigy. When he could scarcely walk he could read easily, and at seven he began to recite his Latin, mastering it quickly, as though he had never spoken anything else in his life, and at ten he could argue with the clergy who frequented the gardens, and who delighted in putting ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... conversation with his brother he remarked, "that Blackstone's Commentaries would have saved him seven years' labor pouring over and delving in black letter." He appears to have formed a very correct judgment respecting the nature of professional education and the best means of mastering its abstruse details. He constantly inculcated upon the young men who came to study in his office the maxim, "that a lawyer ought never to be without a volume of natural or public law, or moral philosophy, on his table or ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... in this old Spanish house she loved so well! Incorrigible, the last of the Corbelans, the last of the Avellanos, the doctor had said; but she saw clearly the San Tome mine possessing, consuming, burning up the life of the last of the Costaguana Goulds; mastering the energetic spirit of the son as it had mastered the lamentable weakness of the father. A terrible success for the last of the Goulds. The last! She had hoped for a long, long time, that perhaps——But no! There ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... down the poor lad's cheeks and he stammered a few inarticulate sentences. But, when the judge repeated his question, he succeeded in mastering himself and replied, ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... could have been worse for the development of his mind than this school, as it was strictly classical, nothing else being taught except a little ancient biography and history. During his whole life he was singularly incapable of mastering any language. With respect to science, he continued collecting minerals with much zeal, and after reading White's "Selborne" he took much pleasure in watching the habits of birds. Towards the close of his school life he became deeply interested in chemistry, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... "While attending the University in Calcutta I made the acquaintance of a young Hindu, who was a student there also. He was in some respects the brightest of the students, for he had the faculty for mastering his studies quickly and perfectly, was also very original in character and full of resources. Though he was a born student, yet he was well-balanced and did not always have his head in books or in the clouds; neither did he indulge in social dissipation. While being social in his nature, he always ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... himself in the languages of which he already knew a little, and without a friend to guide him,—having saved up money enough to buy a grammar and dictionary,—he commenced the study of another; after mastering the chief difficulties of which he began still another; and so he had gone on through life, with the most determined perseverance, gaining even more than a smattering of the tongues not only of Europe but of the Eastern ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... tarsus folds back; and the antennae are held as in a vice. The suitor pulls; and the callous one is forced to raise her head. In this posture the male reminds one of a horseman proudly sitting his steed and holding the reins in both hands. Thus mastering his mount, he is sometimes motionless and sometimes frenzied in his demonstrations. Then, with his long abdomen, he lashes the female's hinder-parts, first on one side, then on the other; the front part he flogs, ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... do not regard housekeeping even as a serious occupation, and few have devoted as much time, thought, and energy to mastering the principles of domestic economy as of late years women of all classes of society have willingly given to the study of the rules and ever changing intricacies of auction bridge. Some consider their time too valuable to devote to domestic and culinary matters, and openly boast ...
— Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework • C. Helene Barker
... governess. The people in the street stopped and laughed; some of them jestingly advised a little wholesome correction; one woman asked Norah if she was the child's mother; another pitied her audibly for being the child's governess. Before Magdalen could push her way through the crowd—before her all-mastering anxiety to help her sister had blinded her to every other consideration, and had brought her, self-betrayed, to Norah's side—an open carriage passed the pavement slowly, hindered in its progress by the press of vehicles before it. An old lady seated inside heard the child's ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... Divine Justice, crossed him, as he heard the injury on the head defined, in almost the same scientific terms that had so often rung on his ears as the causes of Francis Axworthy's death; but this was no society where he could give vent to his feelings, and mastering himself with difficulty he answered, 'I know Him. He is ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... said, mastering her emotion with an effort, "that Julian Orden, whom we now know to be 'Paul Fiske', has escaped. Just what do ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... for those suffering women and children with all the politeness I was capable of mastering, with disgust boiling over. With stuttering and mumbling his dislikes, and shaking his head, with the feathers and straws waving and nodding in every direction, he took his pen and scribbled a pass ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... he added, "that, with our insight into your minds, we have little difficulty in mastering ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... it be recorded that John scamped his "prep" and "ragged" in form whenever a suitable chance presented itself. The Duffer and he bribed a "Chaw"[15] to throw gravel against the windows of the room where the boys were supposed to be mastering the problems of Euclid and algebra. The "tique"[16] master had been Third Wrangler, but he couldn't tackle his Division properly. Upon this occasion the "chaw" created such a disturbance that (on audacious demand) leave ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... really twins, born at the same time, of the same mother. They grow up together and work in perfect accord. The witnessing is that men may understand and believe. It's the servant leading up to the belief that shall become the mastering thing. The belief is servant, too, in turn, leading up to the witnessing that becomes the mastering passion ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... of his native town, and subsequently at the University of Edinburgh, he was called to the Scotch bar in 1835, being then only in his twenty-first year. He early discovered a peculiar aptitude for mastering knotty points of law, and during the whole of his long and distinguished legal career he has worked very hard, and spared no effort, to acquire that knowledge of dry, technical, and abstruse details with ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... men applied the whole force of their talents to mastering the difficulties of the life-giving process; and in due time, their ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... York, whose "Peek-a-Boo" hangs in a Chicago gallery side by side with cats of Madame Ronner and Monsieur Lambert. "Miss Kitty's Birthday" shows that he has genuine understanding of cat character, and is mastering the ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... down the young trees, crashing the branches in its progress, and in general dispersing whatever opposition was presented to it by the hunters. Sir John de Walton was the only one of the chivalry of the party who individually succeeded in mastering one of these powerful animals. Like a Spanish tauridor, he bore down and killed with his lance a ferocious bull; two well-grown calves and three kine were also slain, being unable to carry off the quantity of arrows, javelins, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... my mood have little connection. I have my foggy and my fine days within me; my prosperity or misfortune has little to do with the matter. I sometimes struggle against luck, the glory of mastering it makes me master it gaily; whereas I am sometimes surfeited in the midst ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... mastering the black horse that had reared, sitting his saddle easily, almost carelessly, his long, yellow-striped legs loosely graceful, his straight, slim figure perfect in poise ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... fern, And straggling clumps of tangled trees, With trunks that lean and boughs that turn, Bent eastward by the mastering breeze,— With spongy bogs that drip and fill A yellow pond with muddy rain, Beneath the shaggy southern hill Lies wet and low the Shawinut plain. And hark! the trodden branches crack; A crow flaps off with startled scream; ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the New Salem school-master. He it was who assisted Lincoln in mastering Kirkham's grammar, and later gave him valuable assistance when Lincoln was learning the theory of surveying. He taught in a little log school-house on a hill south of the village, just across Green's Rocky Branch. Among his pupils was Ann Rutledge, and ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... short, but only for a few moments, before mastering the sensation of dread, and plunging on as nearly as he could make out in the direction the ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... revolver. Then he slowly replaced it in his pocket. The Italian might only be bluffing, but it was best to take no unnecessary chances. Mastering his anger at Mascola's insubordination, Bandrist ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... Klopstock, is worth turning to. The pastor told them that Klopstock was the German Milton. "A very German Milton indeed," they thought. The Wordsworths remained for four wintry months at Goslar, in Saxony, while Coleridge went on to Ratzeburg, Goettingen, and other places, mastering German, and "delving in the unwholesome quicksilver mines of metaphysic depths." Wordsworth made little way with the language, but worked ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... After all, was it not a nobler conception of life to work away and not mind what people thought of you, than to be always caring whether you were popular? There was a certain joy in overcoming difficulties, and surmounting obstacles. She was already succeeding in mastering the lessons that had baffled her at first. Could she ever win a place for herself in the Form? It would undoubtedly seem almost a ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... in Treasure Island, and From Spy Glass Hill we've viewed the land; Through thickets dense we've followed Jim And shared the doubts that came to him. We've heard Cap. Smollett arguing there With Long John Silver, gaunt and spare, And mastering our many fears We've battled with ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... Pryor, mastering by an effort that tyrant timidity which made it difficult for her, even under present circumstances, to attempt the scrutiny of another's heart—"do you, at your age, fret yourself with cares for the future? Believe ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... their advantage of these disorders, and mastering Mamoya, changed the whole religion of the town. The prince himself was the only man, who continued firm in the Christian faith, notwithstanding all their threatening, and the cruel usage which he received from them. Not long after ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... smaller ones, and presupposes them; and that to present any of these compound concepts before the child is in possession of its constituent ones, is only less absurd than to present the final concept of the series before the initial one? In the mastering of every subject some course of increasingly complex ideas has to be gone through. The evolution of the corresponding faculties consists in the assimilation of these; which, in any true sense, is impossible without they are put into the mind in the normal order. ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... improve our indecisions a great deal by mastering their unhappy details, but we shall not finally overcome them until life rings true and until all our acts and thoughts become the solid and inevitable expression of a healthy growing regard for the best in life, a call ...
— The Untroubled Mind • Herbert J. Hall
... detail its influence upon the issue of the second Punic War; but the indications which remain are sufficient to warrant the assertion that it was a determining factor. An accurate judgment upon this point cannot be formed by mastering only such facts of the particular contest as have been clearly transmitted, for as usual the naval transactions have been slightingly passed over; there is needed also familiarity with the details of general naval history in order to draw, from slight indications, ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... Mr. Woolsey, mastering his emotion. "There's no use a-quarrelling, Mr. E.: we're not in love with each other, I know that. You wish me hanged, or as good, ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "How have you done In mastering ancient lore?" "I did so well," replied the son, "They gave me an encore; The Faculty like me and hold me so dear, They make me ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... 'By simplicity, by heedfulness, by cleansing the Soul, by mastering the passions, and by waiting upon aged seniors, O Sakra, a person succeeds in attaining to Emancipation. Know this, however, that one acquires wisdom from Nature, and that the acquisition of tranquillity also is due to the same cause. Indeed, everything else that thou perceivest ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... young bookbinder drifted into a little meeting and, buttoning his seedy overcoat to conceal his rags, in some way he found himself upon his feet and began to speak. The address that proved a pleasure to others was a revelation to himself. For the first time Gough tasted the joys of moving men and mastering them for good. Within a week that love of public speech and useful service had kindled his mental faculties into a creative glow. The new and higher love of the heart consumed the lower love of the body, just as the sun melts manacles of ice ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... indifferent to our modern ideas of race. Of nationality it knew nothing. It was concerned with the maintenance of the Catholic Church especially against the outer Pagan. This filled the mind. This drove all the mastering energies of the time. The Church, that is, all the acts of life, but especially record and common culture, came back into a Britain which had been cut off. It reopened the gate. It was refused aid by the Christian whom it relieved. It decided for the ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... High-stomached, proud, obstinate, and over-mastering, independence was the dream of his life. He would accept no favors, lest he should put himself under obligation; and although he could give generously, and even lavishly, he lived for the most part ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... lived, but he could remember no one. All at once the thought struck him that he himself might be the person accused, and the bare idea that such might be the case sent the blood to his heart and a cold shudder through his frame.—He was pale as marble, for a moment, and the rascals saw it. Mastering ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... traffic will bear. Pioneer-like, some or all of the family must turn to and cope with such situations. Doing so, whether temporary like closing a pipe valve to stop the cascading water until the plumber arrives, or permanent like mastering the idiosyncrasies of the furnace, has its reward. From oldest to youngest, after a year or so there comes a sense of ability to cope with the unforeseen rather than to stand meekly by waiting for ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... your secret," he answered, mastering his voice with an effort. "I understand when I am bowled out. What is it you ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... development of my mind than Dr. Butler's school, as it was strictly classical, nothing else being taught, except a little ancient geography and history. The school as a means of education to me was simply a blank. During my whole life I have been singularly incapable of mastering any language. Especial attention was paid to verse-making, and this I could never do well. I had many friends, and got together a good collection of old verses, which by patching together, sometimes aided by other boys, I could ...
— The Autobiography of Charles Darwin - From The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin • Charles Darwin
... orator, from speaking out, For silence deepens when you raise the shout; But when you hold your tongue we hear, at least, Your noise in mastering that little beast. ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... standeth higher, and stronger to defend it selfe. It should seeme, the fortifier made his aduantage of the commoditie, affoorded by the ground, and shot rather at a safe preferuing the Harbour, from sodaine attempts of little Fleetes, and the mastering of Pirates, then to withstand any ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... next best thing to the power of saying great things as easily as if they were little German learning, like the elephants of Pyrrhus, is always in danger of turning upon what it was intended to adorn and reinforce, and trampling it ponderously to death. And yet what do we not owe it? Mastering all languages, all records of intellectual man, it has been able, or has enabled others, to strip away the husks of nationality and conventionalism from the literatures of many races, and to disengage that kernel of human truth which is the germinating principle of them all. Nay, it has taught ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... conversations and discussions, what in letters and by mouth was a subject of repeated forebodings and warnings. Perhaps these pages may in some way explain a phenomenon almost unexampled in history,—that twenty millions of people, brave, highly intelligent, and mastering all the wealth of modern civilization, were, if not virtually overpowered, at least so long kept at bay by ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... charge confessed to a thrill of horror when, having with some difficulty made his way to his signal station at midnight and been handed the receiver, even as he uttered the preliminary "Hullo," the instrument suddenly sprang from his grasp and rushed off into the darkness. Mastering an almost overpowering desire to run for the redoubt, he assisted two signallers to investigate and discovered that the wire had caught in the foot of a straying camel, which had proceeded on its thoughtless ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... thee in rain, And with wide parent wing Shadowed thee, nested thing, Fed thee, and slaved for thy Impotent tyranny. Nature's broad thews bent Meek for thy content. Mastering littleness Which the wise heavens confess, The frailty which doth draw Magnipotence to its law— These were, O happy one, these Thy ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... in their egoism, constantly mistake for a deficiency of intelligence in woman is merely an incapacity for mastering that mass of small intellectual tricks, that complex of petty knowledges, that collection of cerebral rubber stamps, which constitutes the chief mental equipment of the average male. A man thinks ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... a quick resolve. Mastering himself with a great effort, he said hurriedly: "We cannot speak of it now. Meet me to-night at this spot, and the darkest tale you have to tell I will listen to. If you desire my life, I am weary of it, and would gladly ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... because he could not, know that he had dypso-mania in his blood were enticed to drink often at parties where wine is freely dispensed? Would he not be taken, so to speak, unawares? Would he be any more responsible for acts that quickened into life an over-mastering appetite than the young girl who, not knowing that she had in her lungs the seeds of a fatal disease, should expose herself to atmospheric changes that were regarded by her companions as harmless, but which, to her were fraught ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... qualified himself in the manner somewhat bombastically described. But even Lord Acton, who seemed to think that he could not write about anything until he knew everything, would scarcely have prepared himself for an article in The Nineteenth Century by mastering the history of the world. And if Froude had done so, it would have profited him little. He would have forgotten it, "with that calm oblivion of facts which distinguishes him from all other men who have taken on themselves to ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... and a slow reluctant smile played around the corners of his mouth, though there was sharp distress still in his eyes. He loathed losing his temper like that. It sickened him, filled him with spiritual nausea, a profound disgust for himself and his mastering weakness. ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... And there the frightful scene which had been enacted at La Rouche's at the time of Valerie's death was repeated. Reine, too, was dead—dead like her mother! And Morange, in a first outburst of fury threatened both Seraphine and Sarraille with the scaffold. For half an hour there was no mastering him, but all at once he broke down. To lose his daughter as he had lost his wife, it was too appalling; the blow was too great; he had strength left only to weep. Sarraille, moreover, defended himself; he swore that he had known nothing of the truth, that the deceased had simply come ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... all right," said Vince; and, mastering the feeling of scare that had come over him, he passed his hand along the wall, feeling the slimy cold sea anemones and the peculiar clinging touch of their tentacles. Then he pressed steadily on, till ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... obdurate. Part Saxon, part Hun, part Vandal and Visigoth, a creature of blood and iron, he utilized every force of nature to exterminate his enemies. The Negro knew how to exploit none of nature's elemental energies. But he did know that he could learn how by seizing and mastering the weapons ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... that there might be one at Vaner's, six miles away. Promptly after breakfast the next morning Lincoln set out in search of it. He brought the precious volume home in triumph, and with Graham's occasional help found no difficulty in mastering its contents. Indeed, it is very likely that he was astonished, and even a bit disappointed, to find so little mystery in it. He is reported to have said that if this was a "science," he thought he would like to begin ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... Margaret, almost in spite of himself. Margaret, have I startled you too much? Speak!' For he saw her lips quivering almost as if she were going to cry. She made a strong effort to be calm; she would not speak till she had succeeded in mastering her voice, ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... wild, from passion to passion, from cavern to star, are we borne, and as we travel there is music about us—music of the true tone, ringing with all the natural pathos of lyrical carelessness. There have been instances in literature of the music mastering the thought, but in the case under notice the proportions are justly ministered to. There is thought and witchery of measure. The ice of craftsmanship is mingled with the wine of passion."—NORMAN GALE, in The ...
— The Song of the Flag - A National Ode • Eric Mackay
... Damaris sitting very still, a little sunk together, as in weariness or dejection upon the stone bench. His eyes blazed fierce, for once, with questions he burned yet dreaded to ask. But on second thoughts—they arrived to him swiftly—he restrained his impatience and his tongue. Mastering his heat he looked down at the sheet of note-paper again. He would obey Damaris, absorb the contents of this extraordinary document, the facts it conveyed both explicitly and implicitly, to the last word before ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... a shrewd, political, strong man,—not without his generosities to white men. But no dreamer! He put down faction, but there was now less faction to put down. All had been united in mastering the Indian, and now with peace the getting of wealth was regularized. He had absolutely the ear of King Ferdinand, and help from Spain whenever he called for it. Yes, he was fairly liked by the generality. And had I noticed the growth in ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... long, interminably long. Once and again Johnson came down out of his perch, and spoke a few clumsy words of well-meaning encouragement, but found her unresponsive. Her brain was too busy with taking leave of old conceptions and in mastering new duties to be otherwise than vaguely grateful to her companions. Her mind was clear on one other point—this journey committed her to Marshall Haney. There could be no further hesitation. "Some time, soon, if he lives, I must marry ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... mastering herself; "I can understand. There must be much of sadness in such a landscape, only it never comes that way to me. The sombreness and the sternness of it appeal to me, but not ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... sister-in-law to see in what manner she struck him. The abbe, on the contrary, was seized at first sight with a deep and violent desire to possess this woman—the most beautiful whom he had ever met; but being as perfectly capable of mastering his sensations as the chevalier was incapable, he merely allowed such words of compliment to escape him as weigh neither with him who utters nor her who hears them; and yet, before the close of this first interview, the abbe had decided in his ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... fauns whose voices float vaguely through the twilight. Every scene in the drama is tinged with the same mysterious influence, until at the close the spirit-voices chant their primeval hymn over the bodies of the lovers in the gathering night. Miss Smyth's music has the same mastering unity. The voice of the forest is the keynote of her score. Perhaps it can hardly be said that she has altogether succeeded in translating into music the remarkable conception which is the foundation of her libretto. Had she ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... for all the officers going South to have some knowledge of navigation so that in emergency they would know how to steer a sledge home. It appears that "Cherry" thereupon commenced a serious and arduous course of abstruse navigational problems which he found exceedingly tough and now despaired mastering. Of course there is not one chance in a hundred that he will ever have to consider navigation on our journey and in that one chance the problem must be of the simplest nature, but it makes it much easier for me to ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... one last agonized glance. Yes, it was creeping down over the dyke, as no calf ever did or could creep. Reason fled before sudden, over-mastering panic. For the moment every one of the trio was firmly convinced that what they saw was Henry Warren's ghost. Carl sprang to his feet and bolted blindly. With a simultaneous shriek the girls followed him. Like mad creatures they tore up ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... ferns to still the furious exultations which almost consumed him during the moment when he marked his victim. He lay there breathing hard, gripping tightly his rifle, slowly mastering the passion that alone of all things might ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... explain it to you, put it aside entirely, and go back to that part of the subject which you do understand. When I was reading Mathematics for University honours, I would sometimes, after working a week or two at some new book, and mastering ten or twenty pages, get into a hopeless muddle, and find it just as bad the next morning. My rule was to begin the book again. And perhaps in another fortnight I had come to the old difficulty with impetus enough to get over ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... which these slabs were fixed is hardly worthy of such clever builders, and, in fact, the Assyrians seem to have never succeeded in mastering the difficulties inherent in the association of two heterogeneous materials. The slabs were of gypsum or limestone, the wall of pise, materials which are not to be easily combined. The Assyrians contented themselves with simply placing the one against the other. No ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... herself with iron diligence, and untiring enthusiasm, to her studies, which consisted, not only in the acquisition of languages, in music, and drawing, history and geography, but still more in the mastering the so-called bon ton and that aristocratic savoir vivre of which Madame Campan was a very model. While Hortense was thus receiving instruction on the harp from the celebrated Alvimara, in painting from Isabey, dancing from Coulon, and singing from Lambert, ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... done; in outdistancing these elders and in almost every case surpassing their achievement on the lines they had laid down, he did what only the greater artists succeed in doing. It is not in mere inventiveness and novelty but in first-hand energy of conception, in mastering for himself the old thought and the old form and uttering them with his personal stamp, in making them carry over to the reader with a new force or vividness or beauty, that the poet's originality consists. In these respects Burns's originality is no whit ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... Alas! the vacancy that begets fretfulness, and crude, capricious desires, the confusion of images that arises from partial understanding, are far more wearing to the nerves of an intelligent infant than the small labor the brain undertakes, if any, indeed, be needed, in mastering ideas properly presented, and suitable to the condition of the sufferer. One might as well forbid the hand to grasp, the eye to see, nay, more, it will not do to confound the child of genius with the fool, or to suppose that the ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... study and thought. I am convinced that he who thoroughly masters the contents of his book will feel no doubt and will entertain no misapprehension as to the vast role his Arm is called upon to fulfil in War, and he will realize how, in mastering the great essentials of which it treats, he will himself be assisting in the best possible manner to maintain the prestige and glory of the great Service to ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... there, thought it; but never did I see so great an instance of the use of grammar, and knowledge how to tell a man's tale as this day, Bland having spoiled his business by ill-telling it, who had work to have made himself notorious by his mastering Norwood, his enemy, if he had known how to have used it. Thence calling Smith, the Auditor's clerk at the Temple, I by the Exchange home, and there looked over my Tangier accounts with him, and so to dinner, and then set him down again by a hackney, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... the fire. What memories a fire gathered into it, with its flaky ashes, its little leaf-like flames, and that quiet glow and flicker! What tale of passions! How like to a fire was a man's heart! The first young fitful leapings, the sudden, fierce, mastering heat, the long, steady sober burning, and then—that last flaming-up, that clutch back at its own vanished youth, the final eager flight of flame, before the ashes wintered it to nothing! Visions and memories he saw down ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and the Wash, whilst the Belgians occupied the south coast, and pushed northwards towards the Somerset Avon. Nothing is known of the relations between the new-comers and the older Celtic inhabitants. Most likely those who arrived last contented themselves with mastering those whom they defeated, without attempting to exterminate them. At all events, states of some extent were formed by the conquerors. Thus the Cantii occupied the open ground to the north of the great forest which then filled the valley between the chalk ranges ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... we are able to understand the German history of the past two centuries. Prussia, an extra-German Power, grown up in colonized territory, organized itself into a bureaucratic, feudal and military State. It succeeded in mastering half Germany and in loosely linking up the remainder. By rigid organization, by its federated Princes and by the strongest army in the world, it supplied the place of the national character and will which were wanting. ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... to discover over-mastering sorrow; there was little. Indeed he looked relieved; his life for nearly a year must have been a trial and yet I mentally confessed to some disappointment at his want of deep feeling. I saw that he was ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... and ends of time may be worked up into results of the greatest value. An hour in every day withdrawn from frivolous pursuits would, if profitably employed, enable a person of ordinary capacity to go far toward mastering a science. It would make an ignorant man a well-informed one in less than ten years. Time should not be allowed to pass without yielding fruits, in the form of something learnt worthy of being known, some good principle cultivated, or some good habit strengthened. Dr. Mason Good ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... exclamation, together with a sound of shuffling and a slight thump, he looked round in mild curiosity to see Blensop staggered and astare, standing over a litter of documents which had slipped from his grasp to the floor. Mastering his emotion quickly enough, the secretary knelt with a mumbled apology and began to pick ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... boy!' was all he said. Harold shook himself as if to dislodge the bitter thoughts. Mastering himself he ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... a rapid glance scanned Kutuzov from head to foot, frowned for an instant, but immediately mastering himself went up to the old man, extended his arms and embraced him. And this embrace too, owing to a long-standing impression related to his innermost feelings, had its usual effect on Kutuzov and he gave ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... been slowly mastering his difficulties with the world. The circumstances of the family seem to have taken a favourable turn from the year 1724, when the small living of Wroote, four miles distant, and valued at L50 a year, was added ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... transgression—such were some of the descriptive phrases used of them.[190] Intelligent also must they be, of well-developed and well-trained minds.[191] The evolution carried on in the world life after life, developing and mastering the powers of the mind, the emotions, and the moral sense, learning through exoteric religions, practising the discharge of duties, seeking to help and lift others—all this belongs to the ordinary life of an evolving man. When all this is done, the man has become ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... now I can descry Thy fair creation with a mastering eye, And all awake! And now in fix'd gaze stand, Now wander through the Eden of thy hand; Praise the green arches, on the fountain clear See fragment shadows of the crossing deer; And with that serviceable nymph I stoop The crystal from its restless pool to scoop. I see ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... side, he was born in Vermont, September 16th, 1803; and, notwithstanding that he was brought up in poverty on a farm with small opportunity for education, contrived in later years to make himself a thorough scholar in various directions, mastering several languages, acquiring a wide knowledge of history, reading deeply in philosophy, and developing marked originality in setting forth new philosophical views. His bent in childhood was strongly ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... student," replied the oracle smiling. "One must not look for linguists everywhere. In my own especial case—if one may cite one's self as an example—I found no great, no insurmountable difficulty in mastering, in conquering either." ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... share this view of life, one may reject it, one may show its inaccuracy and its erroneousness, but we cannot judge of the Christian teaching without mastering this view of life. Still less can one criticise a subject on a higher plane from a lower point of view. From the basement one cannot judge of the effect of the spire. But this is just what the learned critics of the day try to do. For ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... beauty that goes with thee. Here is an insolence! Hast thou not wonder'd, Vashti, what gave thee into such a love, That in the brain of me, the chosen king, It is so loud, so insolent, thy love? O this shrill sweet heart-mastering love! ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... study during the evenings at the hostel, and any girl who could not accomplish her lessons in that time had to finish them as best she could in odd minutes during the day, or even in bed in the mornings if she happened to wake sufficiently early. Fil, who generally succeeded in mastering about half her preparation and no more, ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... and cried 'Hourra!' At the signal, a hundred soldiers crowded into the house. Mastering his fury, the Czar ordered the young officer to be taken to prison."—Art. "Romance ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... being told by a lady that she thought there ought to be erected in all great cities temples to the Will, so as to encourage mankind to develop the divine faculty. It has since occurred to me that an equal number of school-houses, however humble, in which the art of mastering the Will by easy processes seriatim should be taught, would be far more useful. Such a school-house is this work, and it is the hope of the author that all who enter, so to speak, or read it, will learn therefrom as much as he himself and others have done ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... the virtue of gratitude must be placed the deep-seated spirit of revenge which animates all classes. Though not enumerated among their own list of the Seven passions—joy, anger, sorrow, fear, love, hatred and desire—it is perhaps the most over-mastering passion to which the Chinese mind is subject. It is revenge which prompts the unhappy daughter-in-law to throw herself down a well, consoled by the thought of the trouble, if not ruin, she is bringing on her persecutors. Revenge, too, leads a man to commit ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... dull thud, and he fell a motionless heap on the floor. I struck straight in front of me with a rifle—and hit something—something that pushed past me. Then the front door opened and shut with a deafening clang. A sudden qualm of real fear took hold of my heart, but, mastering it as best I could, I opened the front door and tore madly down the drive. I looked down the hushed street. Past the lamp-posts, skipping from the gloom into the light and from light into shadow, with a series ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... his farm, Mr. Fulton, senior, removed to the town of Lancaster, where he died in 1768, and there young Robert grew up under the care of his mother. He learned to read and write quickly, but did not manifest much fondness for his books after mastering his elementary studies. He early exhibited an unusual talent for drawing, however, greatly preferring the employment of his pencil to the more serious duties of the school. His instructors and companions ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... expression stole over him. He seemed struggling with some disastrous necessity inkept. He made one or two attempts to speak, but words seemed to choke him. His companion stood in humane surprise, wondering what was to come. At length, with an effort mastering his feelings, in a tolerably ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... seemed to be the most serious obstacle in the way to success. With a good general knowledge of the language it seemed probable that we might be able to overcome our other deficiencies. Without it, we could see no way to mastering the mechanical knowledge which we supposed must be required as a foundation for the training of a military pilot. In this connection, it may be well to say that we have both been handicapped from the beginning. We have ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... manliness is not, as the flower of young womanhood is doing to-day.... I tell you, David, woman can make of man anything she wills—by withholding herself from him.... Through his desire for her!... This is her Power. This is all in man that electricity is in Nature—a measureless, colossal force. Mastering that (and to woman alone is the mastery), she can light the world. Giving away to it ignorantly, ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... know if the empire which man has over his affections is the effect of a moral force, till we have acquired the certainty that it is not an effect of insensibility. There is no merit in mastering the feelings which only lightly and transitorily skim over the surface of the soul. But to resist a tempest which stirs up the whole of sensuous nature, and to preserve in it the freedom of the soul, a faculty of resistance is required infinitely superior to the act of natural ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the town to resume my school-mastering, then the strain begins, and then the reign of complexities is renewed. When I am fully garbed in my town clothing I find myself the possessor of nineteen pockets. What they are all for is more than ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... earnest in mastering the task. Forrest regaled them with examples of the wonderful expertness of the Texans in reading brands and classifying cattle. "Down home," said he, "we have boys who read brands as easily as a girl reads a novel. I know men who can count one hundred head of mixed cattle, ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... truth of his origin, Pavonius Nasor never ran the risk of telling it. He kept his sinecure by mastering his tongue, preserving almost bovine speechlessness. When he and Commodus met face to face he never seemed to see the joke of the resemblance, never laughed at Commodus' obscenely vivid jibes at his ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... a strong light brings out with somewhat perilous force (indeed I recollect I was driven to compare his beamy head in my thoughts to that of the "golden image" which Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up), an idea new, sudden, and startling, riveted my attention with an over-mastering strength and power of attraction. I know not to this day how I looked at him: the force of surprise, and also of conviction, made me forget myself; and I only recovered wonted consciousness when I saw that his notice was arrested, and ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... free, with one foot in the rigging, and one somewhere behind you in the air. The sail would fill out Eke a balloon, with a report like a small cannon, and then collapse and sink away into a handful. And the feeling of mastering the rebellious canvas, and tying it down like a slave to the spar, and binding it over and over with the gasket, had a touch of pride and power in it, such as young King Richard must have felt, when he trampled down the ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... the light of the moon looking as pale as a girl. Take care! take care! Do you hear me? Another time God will not pardon you—you will sink into the lowest abyss! Ah! wretched piece of clay that you are, filth is mastering you!' ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... communicating with a common gallery that rose on its own pillars. Of course, I did not discover all this from the river, and in the moonlight. But, though I was there for many days, I did not succeed in mastering the inner topography of the building, so extensive ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... At thirty he looked at least ten years older. The life he led, with its ceaseless effort, endless mental work, perpetual anxiety, had made of him a fanatical worshiper at the shrine of trickery. He dried up visibly in body and grew old in mind, mastering all the difficult arts of his profession, and only gained confidence and serenity when he had reached the highest possible skill in every branch of his "work." From that moment he took a new lease of life; he grew younger, he became gay and self-confident, his ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... fraternities, and obtained their advantages. The society prospered in defiance of the government; nor would the government, though armed with all the powers of the Dublin police and of state thunder, have succeeded in mastering this society, but, on the contrary, the society would assuredly have surprised and mastered the government, had it not been undermined by the perfidy of a confidential brother. One instrument for dispersing ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... mastering himself with an effort—"a chance resemblance, that's all." He wiped the beads of perspiration from ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... mastered, is held by some to be the most distinctive element in genius. Most people have not this habit of concentration of the mind, but allow it to wander aimlessly on, flitting from subject to subject, without mastering any; but then, most people are not geniuses. The habit to be cultivated is that of thinking persistently of only one thing at a time, sternly preventing the ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... sensation of fainting came over her; but, mastering the weakness, she tilted the glass a little lower, until it reflected all the ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... minds—strong emotion, restlessness, and an unmanly excitement and extravagance of thought and feeling—are the tokens of that inscrutable Spirit, who is given us, not to make us something other than men, but to make us, what without His gracious aid we never shall be, upright, self-mastering men, humble and obedient children of our ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... Mastering his emotion with the utmost difficulty as Jonathan replaced the ball in his pocket, he drew a deep and profound breath and wiped the palm of his hand across his forehead as though arousing ...
— The Ruby of Kishmoor • Howard Pyle
... months while Miela, with uncanny rapidity, was mastering their language, the Newlands had of course learned from her all she had to tell them. The situation in Wyoming did not necessitate haste on their part, and so they had waited. And now, with a decision reached, they sent ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings |
