"Virtuoso" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or practice. His remarks on this question are of great interest and value, and are strangely modern. He pleads that "experiments will be beneficial to our wits and writers." Alas! the wits at least benefited in a way which Sprat did anticipate. Shadwell in his 'Virtuoso' found material for profane merriment in some of the unquestionably absurd inquiries made or suggested by the natural philosophers. "Science was then only just emerging from the Mists of Superstition." Astrology and Alchemy still infected Astronomy, Chemistry, ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... Savelli, the self-willed, temperamental daughter of an Italian violin virtuoso, furnished much of the interest of the book. The efforts of Grace and her chums to create in this girl a healthy, wholesome enjoyment for High School life, and her repudiation of their friendship, and subsequent attempts to revenge herself for fancied slights and insults, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... "Yes, a shaving virtuoso; really a comical and strange character, and has oddities enough to compensate one for the debasement of talking with a ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and six finger holes extemporized at the side. With this he sought the woods to emulate the trills and cadences of the song birds." Santa Claus's gift one year took the form of a small, yellow, one-keyed flute, on which simple instrument he would "practice with the passion of a virtuoso." Like Schumann, he organized an orchestra among his friends and young playmates. Simultaneously he was receiving his first initiation into the joy of literature. He would frequently retire from playing with his brother and other companions ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... was not the property and was not the production of a single person, but of the community. The work of the individual endured only as long as its delivery lasted. He gained personal distinction only as a virtuoso. The permanent elements of what he presented, the material, the ideas, even the style and metre, already existed. 'The work of the singer was only a ripple in the stream of national poetry. Who can say how much the individual contributed to it, or where in his poetical recitation memory ...
— The Book of Old English Ballads • George Wharton Edwards
... (fig.) drakino. Virgin virgulino. Virginal virga. Virginity virgeco. Virgin, The Blessed La Sankta Virgulino, Dipatrino. Virile vira. Virility vireco. Virtue virto. Virtuous virta. Virtuoso virtuozo. Virulent venena, malboniga. Virus veneno. Visage vizagxo. Vis-a-vis kontrauxulo. Viscera internajxo. Viscuous gluanta. Visible videbla. Visibly videble. Vision (sense) vido. Vision (apparition) ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... hand, was of a much more intensely organized musical temperament. His genius was of the greatest possible character. As a virtuoso he not only played upon the organ, the clavecin, and the violin better than most of his contemporaries, and upon the organ probably better than any; he also created works in these three departments which held the attention of his own ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... Your virtuoso looks with artistical delight on the figure of some nymph painted on an Etruscan vase, engaged in pouring out the juice of the grape from her classic urn. And the Parson felt as harmless, if not as elegant a pleasure in contemplating Widow ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... neglect the other resources of a skilful virtuoso. Every auction afforded some picture, in which, though it had been overlooked by the ignorance of the times, he recognised the style of a great master, and made a merit of recommending it to some noble friend. This commerce he likewise extended ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... story in a musical atmosphere. A picturesque, old German virtuoso is the reverent possessor of a genuine "Cremona." He consents to take for his pupil a handsome youth who proves to have an aptitude for technique, but not the soul of an artist. The youth has led the happy, careless life of a modern, well-to-do young American and he cannot, ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... Switzerland were written during the two years with which he prefaced his quarter-century of labor as composer, director, and virtuoso. They relate much to Italian painting, the music of Passion Week, Swiss scenery, his stay with Goethe, and his brilliant reception in England on his return. They disclose a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... want him. I make a virtuoso of him. He is my boy. I discover him. He's good boy; he work, work, work. Never do I see a boy work like dat. He is in earnest. Dat is de greatest t'ing a boy can have, to be earnest. It make him a great, good man. He's ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... are now selling no less than three of the principal collections, the Barberini, the Sacchetti, and Ottoboni: the latter belonged to the cardinal who died in the conclave. I must give you an instance of his generosity, or rather ostentation. When Lord Carlisle was here last year, who is a great virtuoso, he asked leave to see the cardinal's collection of cameos and intaglios. Ottoboni gave leave, and ordered the person who showed them to observe which my lord admired most. My lord admired many: they were all sent him the next morning. He sent ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... The Gnostics sought to establish or conserve associations in which the genius should rule, the genius in the way of the old prophets or in the sense of Plato, or in the sense of a union of prophecy and philosophy. In the Gnostic conflict, at least at its close, the judicial priest fought with the virtuoso and overcame him.] ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... I was afforded of this gentleman did not lessen my interest in him; increased it rather; it also served to make the extraordinary didoes of which he had been the virtuoso and I the audience more than ever profoundly inexplicable. My glimpse of him in the lighted doorway had given me the vaguest impression of his appearance, but one afternoon—a few days after my interview with Miss Apperthwaite—I was starting for the office and met him full-face-on ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... jealousy and envy, which tear the covetous mind; why may not the man whose object is money, be understood to lead a life of amusement and pleasure, not only more entire than that of the spendthrift, but even as much as the virtuoso, the scholar, the man of taste, or any of that class of persons who have found out a method of passing their leisure without offence, and to whom the acquisitions made, or the works produced, in their several ways, perhaps, are as useless as the bag to the ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... soil of Rome and its neighborhood are still rich in; seals, gems, small figures of bronze, mediaeval carvings in ivory; things which had been obtained at little cost, yet might have borne no inconsiderable value in the museum of a virtuoso. ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... god of bays, And let my friend apply it as he please: Beat not the dirty paths where vulgar feet have trod, But give the vigorous fancy room. For when, like stupid alchymists, you try To fix this nimble god, This volatile mercury, The subtile spirit all flies up in fume; Nor shall the bubbled virtuoso find More than fade insipid mixture left behind.[6] While thus I write, vast shoals of critics come, And on my verse pronounce their saucy doom; The Muse like some bright country virgin shows Fallen by mishap among a knot of beaux; ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... 9. The Havana Opera Company arrived in America with Luigi Arditi as conductor. The company included Fortunata Tedesco, prima donna, Perelli, tenor, Cesar Badiale, bass, also Bottesini, the noted double-bass virtuoso. ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... time.—What do you laugh at, Charlotte?—Why this poor man, or, as I should rather say, this lord and master of mine, has just left me. He has been making me both a compliment, and a present. And what do you think the compliment is? Why, if I please, he will give away to a virtuoso friend, his collection of moths and butterflies: I once, he remembered, rallied him upon them. And by what study, thought I, wilt thou, honest man, supply their place? If thou hast a talent this way, pursue it; since perhaps thou wilt not shine in any other. And the best any thing, you know, ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... and morbid even in the pursuit of health. I cannot lay my hands on the passage in which he explains his abstinence from tea and coffee, but I am sure I have the meaning correctly. It is this: He thought it bad economy and worthy of no true virtuoso to spoil the natural rapture of the morning with such muddy stimulants; let him but see the sun rise, and he was already sufficiently inspirited for the labours of the day. That may be reason good enough to abstain from tea; but ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... there was a long-haired and wild-looking foreign personage, who was the "lion" of the evening, and sat with half a dozen admiring women about him. Now he was escorted to the music-room, and revealed the fact that he was a violin virtuoso. He played what was called "salon music"—music written especially for ladies and gentlemen to listen to after dinner; and also a strange contrivance called a concerto, put together to enable the player ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... parts are finished. The text is a large lower-case gothic letter, very nearly a quarter of an inch in height. The ornamental or border illuminations have more grace and beauty than the subjects represented; although, to the eye of an antiquarian virtuoso, the representations of the unfortunate monarch will ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... of the ape, and then of revenge upon his benefactor through the son he idolized. That part of his scheme was crude and brutal—it lacked the refinement of torture that had marked the master strokes of the Paulvitch of old, when he had worked with that virtuoso of villainy, Nikolas Rokoff—but it at least assured Paulvitch of immunity from responsibility, placing that upon the ape, who would thus also be punished for his refusal longer ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... with fantastic pruning-hook, Dresses the borders of his book, Merely to ornament its look— Amongst philosophers a fop is: What if, perchance, he thence discover Facilities in turning over, The virtuoso is a lover Of coyer charms in ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... parish under my good friend's care is very pleasant. It is placed among meadows, washed by a clear trout-stream, and flanked on both sides with downs. His house, indeed, would not much attract the admiration of the virtuoso. He built it himself, and it is remarkable only for its plainness; with which the furniture so well agrees, that there is no one thing in it that may not be absolutely necessary, except books, and the prints of Mr. Hogarth, whom ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... Dennis, (says the virtuoso Gregoire,) where the National Club justly struck at the tyrants even in their tombs, that of Turenne ought to have been spared; yet strokes of the sword are still visible on it."—He likewise complains, that at the Botanic Garden the bust ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... 4. The Virtuoso, a Comedy; acted at the duke's theatre, printed at London 1676, in quarto, dedicated ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... so firmly that he could not have escaped had not a bravo whom he had hired to aid him come to his assistance. These, then, were the teeth that held so well in the death-grip of their owner! Some Florentine historically-minded virtuoso (!) appreciated the significance of the fact, and stole them from the head some three centuries and a half after that last bite of theirs. There were several gaps in the range of teeth still remaining in the skull of Alexander, which has appeared strange to some who remember that he was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... there in the midst of his books and casts and engravings, a true virtuoso, a subtle connoisseur, turning over his fine collection of Mare Antonios, and his Turner's 'Liber Studiorum,' of which he was a warm admirer, or examining with a magnifier some of his antique gems and cameos, 'the head of Alexander on an onyx of two strata,' or 'that ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... musician, directing the philharmonic and dramatic societies at Bergen. In 1829 he went to Cassel, on a visit to Spohr, who gave him no encouragement. He now began to study law, but on going to Paris he came under the influence of Paganini, and definitely adopted the career of a violin virtuoso. He made his first appearance in company with Ernst and Chopin at a concert of his own in Paris in 1832. Successful tours in Italy and England followed soon afterwards, and he was not long in obtaining European celebrity by his brilliant ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various |
