"Masterly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... came up. Alcide seized the horse's head, and, in an instant, his strong wrist mastered it. His companion and he had seen Michael's rapid stroke. "Bravo!" cried Alcide; "for a simple merchant, Mr. Korpanoff, you handle the hunter's knife in a most masterly fashion." ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... before beheld one killed by pestilence. While every mind was full of dismay at its effects, a craving for excitement had led us to peruse De Foe's account, and the masterly delineations of the author of Arthur Mervyn. The pictures drawn in these books were so vivid, that we seemed to have experienced the results depicted by them. But cold were the sensations excited by words, burning though they were, and describing the death and misery of thousands, ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... being obtained by a careful avoidance of any strong black notes in the rendering, which would have intensified the whites and lighted up the picture. Fig. 3, by the same artist, is even more notable by reason of the masterly breadth which characterizes the treatment of a most complicated subject. A comparison of these with a drawing of the Restoration House, at Rochester, England, Fig. 4, is instructive. In the latter the method is almost painfully ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... subject world in the same lofty strains, and that they will listen with as dutiful an awe to the authoritative exposition of his own genius and glory. What might have been the success of the experiment, if the execution had been as masterly as the design is bold, we shall not trouble ourselves to conjecture; but the contrast between the greatness of the praise and the badness of the poetry in which it is conveyed, and to which it is partly applied, is abundantly decisive of its result in the present instance, as ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... By black and white I mean, of course, that excess or absence of pure color which when translated into pure black and white would express the meaning of the subject-matter, as one of Raphael Morghen's engravings on steel gives you the feeling and color in his masterly rendering of Da Vinci's ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... psychological, in particular to Mr. James Mill's Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, where the principal laws of association, along with many of their applications, are copiously exemplified, and with a masterly hand.(270) ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... How masterly is he in all the points of his profession as evinced in a criminal court. With what "becks, and smiles, and wreathed nods," he passes by his brethren on the prosecuting side, and takes his seat of ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... do not become poetical. The extract which we have made from Irving is not poetical. Accurate, vivid, life-like, it is. We cannot read it without a feeling of pleasure. We admire the genius of the writer; we wonder at the magnificence of the spectacle which, by a few masterly touches, he has raised up before us. But there is no more poetry in it than in his description of Herr Van Tassel's supper table, covered with all the luxuries of Dutch housewifery. It is true, there may be more of beauty and sublimity in the ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... he sits in his window day after day he has only one thought and one wish,—to ruin Isaac D. Worthington. And he will do it if he can. Those who know—and among them is Mr. Balch himself—say that Jethro has never conducted a more masterly campaign than this, and that all the others have been mere childish trials of strength compared to it. So he sits there through those twelve weeks while the session slips by, while his opponents grumble, and while even his supporters, eager for the charge, complain. The ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Shower. But by far the ablest criticism it provoked was that of Francis Atterbury, then a young student of Christ Church and on the threshold of his turbulent career. His Rights, Powers and Privileges of an English Convocation Stated and Vindicated not only showed a masterly historic sense in its effort to traverse the unanswerable induction of Wake, but challenged his position more securely on the ground of right. The historical argument, indeed, was not a safe position for ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... Lopez bears a distant resemblance to "honest Iago" in Othello, though Molire has only faintly shadowed forth what Shakespeare has worked out in so masterly ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... prophets. If there be one name which has been doomed to run the gauntlet, and against which every pert and insolent political declaimer has had his fling, it is that of this unfortunate writer; yet in his short but masterly and unanswerable "Advertisement to the Jurymen of England, touching Witches, together with a difference between an English and Hebrew Witch," first published in 1653, 4to., he has addressed himself so cogently and decisively to the main fallacy of the arguments in favour of witchcraft ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... their late entrance would attract marked notice to them, and now he felt a desire to avoid such attention; but she would make of it a special event, a function. Despite Prescott's efforts, she marshaled himself and herself in such masterly fashion that every eye in the room was upon them as they entered, and none could help noticing that they came as an intimate pair—or at least the skilful ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... from one central engine to other small vacuum engines attached to the several machines which they were employed to work. "This vacuum method," he says, "of transmitting power dates from the time of Papin; but it remained a dead contrivance for about a century until it received the masterly ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... a flight," said Shif'less Sol. "It's just a masterly retreat. But I'll tell you, boys, I don't like to run away from dogs. It humiliates me to run from a brute, an' an inferior. Hark to ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... mountain-landscape; "a glory" above; and in the arch of the window a half-figure representation of God the Father. The composition, drawing and disposition of this design, which I had subsequently an opportunity of examining in the cartoon, is truly masterly. The figure of the Virgin, with long flowing locks of the richest and most sunny auburn, is of very great beauty and quite Peruginesque in style and conception. Her figure and the others in the immediate foreground are somewhat above life-size, so that the Virgin would be, if standing, about ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... was the reason why visible, audible, sensible things glowed so brightly, why there was such luxury in sounds, words, rhythms, of the new light come on the world, of that wonderful freshness. With a masterly appliance of what was near and familiar, or again in the way of bold innovation, he found new words for perennially new things, and the novel accent awakened long-slumbering associations. Never before had words, single words, meant so much. What expansion, what liberty of heart, ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... Suetonius, equally with the masterly pencil of Tacitus, may convince us of the cruel depravity of Nero or Tiberius: But what a difference of sentiment! While the former coldly relates the facts; and the latter sets before our eyes the venerable figures ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... this time, if you are capable of learning any thing, whether any white troops are needed in the Indian Country. The brilliant result of Gen. Hindman's profound calculations and masterly strategy, and of his long-contemplated invasion of Missouri, is before the country; and the disgraceful rout at Fort Wayne, with the manoeuvres and results on the Arkansas, are pregnant commentaries on the abuse lavished on me, for not taking "the line of the ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... have been her teacher? To whom did she owe this masterly training? As if by a miracle, he knew not whether from looking or listening, he found a combination of notes which he had long been seeking for the motet on which he was working. When he had registered it, and she sang a few passages from it, what ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... capturing his audience with his first sentence and bearing them along on the powerful pinions of his masterly oratory; and when his peroration was over the audience drew its breath and cheered wildly for many, many minutes. He then proceeded to deliver the valedictory to the class. After he had been speaking for some time, his voice began to ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... Fraisier, and could not note his satanic countenance and glittering eyes. But two words whispered by Fraisier in La Cibot's ear had prompted a daring piece of acting, somewhat beyond La Cibot's range, it may be, though she played her part throughout in a masterly style. To make others believe that the dying man was out of his mind—it was the very corner-stone of the edifice reared by the petty lawyer. The morning's incident had done Fraisier good service; but for him, ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... knowledge of the laws of his own country, as well as of those which govern nations, united to his discretion, his great tact and experience, he has saved the country from a ruinous war with Great Britain. And by his masterly skill and energy among the Cherokees, united to his noble generosity and humanity, he has not only effected what everybody supposed could not be done without the most heartrending scenes of butchery and bloodshed, but he has effected ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... St. Dominic (which had already been treated in a masterly manner by Fra Guglielmo, in the "arca" at Bologna, and by Traini in his picture at Pisa), Fra Angelico has, in some scenes, given a fuller development, but with less dramatic sentiment; exactly the ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... dollars. All was accomplished. The old house of worship was now entirely refitted. No heart was happier than the pastor's the day the church was reopened.[132] The new and elegant organ sent forth its loud peals of music in obedience to the masterly touch of the "faithful one," who for more than twelve years was never absent from her post of duty, and whom none knew but to love ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... now fatherly, now masterly, now with a professorial sarcasm: "Come on, Monkey, there's a good girl! Get out of that, you Fox! Dern you! You call that pulling? It's my notion of layin' off for the day." Even at its most urgent, his voice was soft, hushed by the great loneliness of this canon up which ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... all occasions, that his sentiments were understood to be conveyed in Mr. Fox's words; and he wished, as amongst the greatest benefits he could wish the country, an eminent share of power to that right honourable gentleman; because he knew, that, to his great and masterly understanding, he had joined the greatest possible degree of that natural moderation, which is the best corrective of power; that he was of the most artless, candid, open, and benevolent disposition; disinterested in the extreme; of a temper mild and placable ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... Princesse Lointaine. I shall remember that afternoon as long as I live! From the first line my attention was riveted and my senses were charmed. What struck me as even more remarkable than the piece was the masterly power and finish with which the boyish author delivered his lines. Where, I asked myself, had he learned that difficult art? The great actress, always quick to respond to the voice of art, accepted the play then ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... Marshals created by the Emperor Napoleon. He was unquestionably possessed of extraordinary abilities, fitting him for eminence in many and diverse capacities, but it cannot be said that he was of the first rank of illustrious generals, as the world has been led to suppose, chiefly by the masterly but partial delineations of his career in the Peninsula by General Napier. He had a genius for war which qualified him for every position in connection with it but that of leader in the field. The subtle and irreversible decisions ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... degree?— Absolutely, brave, cloudless, cold, conclusively, continually, entirely, essentially, extreme, faultless, French, fundamental, golden, happy, impregnable, inaudible, incessant, incredible, indispensable, insatiate, inseparable, intangible, intolerable, invariable, long, masterly, round, sharp, square, sufficient, unanimous, unbearable, unbounded, ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... certain demonstrations which he made on the great black-board beside him, occupied nearly an hour. When he had finished there was another murmur, which this time was wholly of applause, for this part of the lecture had not only been masterly but entirely orthodox. Then silence fell again, the silence of expectant waiting, for every one felt that the "Examination" was coming now. He began again in ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... with us Down-Easters; an expression of frankness, candor, and confidence, that gave him from the start a very strong and permanent hold on our people, and, as the foundation of all, a pure character and a masterly ability equal to ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... one gesture of her stout hand of these principles and of the Marquis de Gemosac's masterly ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... masterly creation; a thing of wonderful and imperishable beauty; it is a great success—as such the world will receive it—and hundreds will proclaim your triumph. I am proud of it, and doubly proud ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... me most," he said at last. "His escape from the hotel might have been effected by any clever thief. What I think more remarkable is the means he took to prevent the Princess from screaming when he was just leaving her rooms: that really was masterly. Instead of trying to get her as far away as possible and shut her up in her bedroom, to take her with him to the very door opening on to the corridor, where the faintest cry might have involved the worst possible consequences, and to be sure that the terror he had ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... taken, and though with some considerable loss of life, it might have prevented much subsequent greater loss. However, it appeared that he had resolved to attack the lines by regular approaches. General Washington, seeing the inevitable result, made a masterly retreat with the whole garrison across the sound to New York during the night, favoured by calm weather and a thick fog. Notice was brought in the morning to General Howe of what had occurred, and when one of his aides-de-camp, who was sent ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... human nature than our writers dare. Her turning away her lover now is just the act of what the French call a masterly woman—maitresse femme. She has got rid of him to close the mouth of scandal; that ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... they are registered, and can be calmly read whenever the mind is in activity. It was so now. I suddenly, as if now for the first time, saw that the addresses on Bourgonef's letters were written in a fluent, masterly hand, bold in character, and with a certain sweep which might have come from a painter. The thrill which this vision gave will be intelligible when you remember that Bourgonef had lost or pretended ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... his work, and that of Hawthorne in his. The great Puritan singer cannot create persons: his Satan is Milton himself in singing-robes, assuming for mere argument's and epic's sake that side of a debate which he does not believe, yet carrying it out in the most masterly way; his angels and archangels are discriminated, but still they are not divested of his informing quality; and "Comus" and "Samson Agonistes," howsoever diverse, are illustrations of the athletic prime and the autumnal strength of the poet himself, rather than anywise dramatic evolutions ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... it all over slowly and carefully, weighing every word. Presently he handed back the paper. "Your honour, it is complete and masterly," he said. "It puts the crushing of the revolt into the hands of Mr. Calhoun, and nothing could be wiser. He has the gifts of a leader, and he will do the job with no mistake, and in a time of crisis like this, that is essential. You have given him the right to order the militia ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Cornwallis took the field and hurried to attack Greene, who, too weak to fight him, began a masterly retreat of 200 miles across Carolina to Guilford Courthouse, where he turned about and fought. He was defeated, but Cornwallis was unable to go further, and retreated to Wilmington, N.C., with Greene in hot pursuit. Leaving the enemy ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... and incidents; to paint them in as vivid colours as he could command, and to render them, at the same time, life-like and amusing." All this he succeeded in doing with such amazing success that we have a masterly picture of English life of the period to be found in no other book. The secret of the book's popularity and fame is in its unaffected and flowing style, its dramatic power, and, of course, ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... you yesterday's Daily Mail," he said; "I thought it would amuse you to read the description of your escape. It is quite entertaining; and besides that there is a masterly little summary of your distinguished career prior to its unfortunate interruption." He laid the paper on the bed. "First of all, though," he added, "I will just look you over. I couldn't find much the matter with you last night, but we may as ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... painters as well, some of them very eminent painters. Daumier, who passed in general for a contributor to illustrated journals, even such journals as Le Petit Journal pour Rire, was not only a genius of the first rank, but a painter of the first class. Monvel and Montenard at present are masterly painters. But in their illustration as well as in their painting, they show a notable change from the illustration of the days of Daumier and Dore. The difference between the elegant (or perhaps rather the handsome) drawings of Bida, ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... knowledge.—You are a very remarkable man, with a very remarkable gift. In your own field, I take off my hat to you. If you knew yourself as science knows you, you might make the greatest doctor living. Your handling of Mrs. Beeler's case was masterly. But—come right down to it—you didn't ...
— The Faith Healer - A Play in Three Acts • William Vaughn Moody
... after dinner, made her father take her to the circus so that Francie should be left alone to receive her intended, who would be sure to hurry round in the course of the evening. The girl herself expressed no preference whatever on this point, and the idea was one of Delia's masterly ones, her flashes of inspiration. There was never any difficulty about imposing such conceptions on poppa. But at half-past ten, when they returned, the young man had not appeared, and Francie remained only ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... a very striking and interesting way by Sturla's other work, his essay in foreign history, the Life of King Hacon of Norway. The Hkonar Saga, as compared with Sturlunga, is thin, grey, and abstract. It is a masterly book in its own kind; fluent and clear, and written in the inimitable Icelandic prose. The story is parallel to the history of Iceland, contemporary with Sturlunga. It tells of the agonies of Norway, a confusion ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... better accustomed to boats than any of the dramatis personoe, caught him by the arms as he was about to step in, pointed out the perils, weighted the frail vessel, and given him a lesson in paddling it to and fro, with such a masterly hand, that, had there been time for a change of dress, the part of Charon would have been unanimously transferred to him; but the delay could not be suffered, and poor Mericour, in fear of a ducking, or worse, of ridicule, balanced himself, pole in hand, in the midst of the river. To the right of ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... travel: indeed, he describes himself as a traveller who has "surveyed most of the terrestrial angles of the globe." In similar vein, he next produced two volumes of "Tales of a Traveller," narrating legends of the continent, with masterly sketches of the scenery of the respective countries; the incidents of the Tales being fraught with points of grotesque humour, and abounding with pathos ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 584 - Vol. 20, No. 584. (Supplement to Vol. 20) • Various
... emblems of peace. This led the hunted man, when he had reached the frontier of Tigre, to leave the rest of his army to their fate, and to throw himself, with a small guard of horsemen, into his newly acquired coast possessions. Arrived there, with masterly rapidity he concentrated all his available troops in the coast fortresses, which he hoped, with the help of the fleet, to be able to defend long enough to give time for a possible diversion in his favour among the ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... touch again the line of that masterly retreat of Soult's before the superior forces of Wellington, to which Napier has done such ample and ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... silent inspection that had preceded them, the cool, deliberate, masterly tone in which they were said, ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... on the highroad, Blantyre had given me my head; but now, with a light hand and a practiced eye, he guided me over the ground in such a masterly manner that my pace was scarcely slackened, and we were ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... the shelves, last not least, are less numerous than choice. Among them still are to be found the most masterly writings of the most masterly minds in the three learned professions, and the noblest treatises on the nobler of the arts and sciences. There are many 'chronicles of eld,' which, if not true, as the Frenchman said, at any rate 'meritent bien de l'etre.' There are such few fictions ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... if the female assistant had put them in proper order for the day, when, with that wonderful eye for detail that had wafted him to his present height of power, he pounced upon the powder-sprinklers and found them, as he expected, empty; when, with masterly judgment, he had made up and ticketed a basket of misfits and odd sizes to attract the eyes of women who were their human counterparts, he felt himself bursting with the pride and pomp of circumstance. ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... calm assurance as to which hats she liked, and which hats she didn't, her utter belief in everything that was of Melrose or von Behrens, and her calm contempt for everything that was not, were masterly in Leslie's eyes. ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... received and sent you a dozen double prints of my eagle, which I have had engraved. I could not expect that any drawing could give you a full idea of the noble spirit of the head, or of the masterly tumble of the feathers: but I think Upon the whole the plates are not ill done. Let me beg Dr. Cocchi to accept one of each plate; the rest, my dear Sir, you will give away as ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... experiment on the expansibility of the air is at least plausible and highly ingenious. But the merit, which will secure both to the book and to the writer a high and honourable name with posterity, consists in the masterly force of reasoning, and the copiousness of induction, with which he has assailed, and (in my opinion) subverted the tyranny of the mechanic system in physiology; established not only the existence of final causes, but their necessity and efficiency to every system that merits the name of philosophical; ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... again for the night, not half a mile farther than yesterday. An island in process of formation, covered at high water, separates the two anchorages. We had to go back, &c., and ended the day's work by getting through a very tight place in a most masterly manner; leadsmen sounding at the bow and stern, as well as at the two paddles, and the 'Lee' and 'Cruiser' stationed as pivots at the edges of the shoal. We had to perform a sort of letter S round them, and we passed by the latter so near, that we might have shaken hands with ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... beautifully written, lay before him. It was a fine document, clear, masterly, detailed, nothing slurred, nothing concealed, nothing omitted; a complete review of the company's position; it ended with the words: ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... in "The Blind Musician" that Korolenko attains perfection. This masterly psychological study does not present a very complicated plot. From the very start the reader is captivated by a powerful poetic quality, free from all artifice, fresh, spontaneous, and breathing forth ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... it, and about a dozen yards away Maputa's pony was grazing. With a swift movement, he seized the Martini and five seconds later he was on the back of the pony, heading for the Crocodile Drift at a gallop. So quickly indeed did he execute this masterly retreat, that occupied as they all were in binding Nahoon, for half a minute or more none of the soldiers noticed what had happened. Then Maputa chanced to see, and waddled after him to the top of ...
— Black Heart and White Heart • H. Rider Haggard
... had formerly enacted her dreadful penance, and then, seeing Hester pass along the street, from watching at a sick-bed, with little Pearl at her side, calls them both to come and stand there beside him—in this masterly episode the effect is almost spoiled by the introduction of one of these superficial conceits. What leads up to it is very fine—so fine that I cannot do better than quote it as a specimen of one of the striking pages of ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... desire and so violent a love for that art, that without losing time he began to scratch drawings of animals and figures on walls and stones with pieces of charcoal or with the point of his knife, in so masterly a manner that it caused no small marvel to all who saw them. The fame of this new study of Andrea's then began to spread among the peasants; whereupon, as his good-fortune would have it, the matter coming to the ears of a Florentine gentleman ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... the same corridor is a splendid picture of Charles I. on horseback, by Vandyke, a most masterly performance, and appearing in its position almost like a reality. Poor Charles had rather hard measure, it always seemed to me. He simply did as all other princes had done before him; that is to say, he lied steadily, invariably, and ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... in all the churches for the king's safety during the voyage, though in secret many persons did not scruple to remark that in his chamber at Madrid his majesty would not have much cause to dread the storms at sea. Philip played his part with such masterly skill that the Belgian ambassadors at Madrid, Lords Bergen and Montigny, who at first had disbelieved in the sincerity of his pretended journey, began at last to be alarmed, and infected their friends in Brussels with similar ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... then went on to give in his masterly way the advantages and disadvantages of the several objectives open to him as the goal of his march, reserving to himself finally the choice between three,—Savannah, Mobile, and Pensacola,—trusting to Richmond ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... many things at Paris, Cologne, and Naples, he was also educated by Chrysostom, by Augustine, and Ambrose. "It is impossible," says Cardinal Newman, and no authority is higher than his, "to read the Catena of Saint Thomas without being struck by the masterly skill with which he put it together. A learning of the highest kind,—not mere literary book knowledge which may have supplied the place of indexes and tables in ages destitute of these helps, and when they had to be read in unarranged and fragmentary manuscripts, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... were blown by the favouring breath of their plebeian patrons into reputation and a competence. Each of them passed through the thick of the fight, and well knew that ugly corner where the artist is exposed to cross fires, his own idea of masterly work on the one hand and the necessity for pleasing the rabble on the other. When any man is awake to the fact that the public is a vile patron, when he is conscious also that his bread and his fame are in their gift—it is a stern passage for his soul, ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... see how our generals will carry to-day's work out, my lad. That's it: Cracis has calculated upon its being like this, and this place will be instead of a retreat a masterly scheme which ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... ancient periodical literature used to be. A very much better authority than myself on such a subject has lately informed us that the majority of the old essays in the Edinburgh Review, at the very time when it was supposed to be most 'trenchant,' 'masterly,' 'exhaustive,' and a number of other splendid epithets, are so dull and weak and ignorant, that it is impossible that they or their congeners would now find acceptance in any periodical of repute. And with regard ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... time the courts of the East India Company still followed the Muhammadan criminal law, as modified by the Regulations. The Indian Penal Code of 1869 placed the substantive criminal law on a thoroughly scientific basis. This code was framed with such masterly skill that to this day it has needed little material amendment. The first Criminal Procedure Code, passed in 1861, has been twice recast. The law of evidence was codified by Sir James FitzJames Stephen in the Indian Evidence Act ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... Quebec whose family compact he had resolutely condemned. Yet he had builded better than England or Canada or himself then knew, and his tireless energy and imagination left behind him the material for a sound structure. Besides the masterly report of his commission, a visible, if less important, monument to his beneficent work for Canada still stands in the magnificent terrace at Quebec, known to-day under an improved form and by another name, yet in a larger measure his conception and his achievement. He ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... your son, even at the price of shocking your wife by his lack of respect for that magnificent compromise, the Establishment, or you by his Socialism or by his Catholicism or Darwinism, or even by his erroneous choice of ties and collars. Boys who are to be free, masterly men must hear free men talking freely of religion, of philosophy, of conduct. They must have heard men of this opinion and that, putting what they believe before them with all the courage of conviction. They must have an idea of will prevailing ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... Master Chobei," said he. "I always had heard that you were a man of mettle, and I wanted to see what stuff you were made of; so I bade my retainers put your courage to the test. That was a masterly throw of yours. Well, you must excuse this churlish reception: come and sit ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... what is more important still, weaves it subtly into the daily life of some human being to whom it has been slowly and always painfully introduced. Or, to vary the metaphor, this new controversy is an inoculation performed by one who possesses a masterly acquaintance with the circulatory system of the spiritual anatomy, and is enabled thereby to describe with unerring accuracy the precise effects of the new ideal at every stage of its progress through the soul. You see before you the experiment of a new ideal, ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... the energy and sagacity of the young district attorney. A murder had been so cunningly done that suspicion could fasten nowhere, until Byington laid his finger upon a man of so unspotted a name that no one else had had the mental courage to point to him. Through a long and masterly untangling of contradictions the state's counsel had so overwhelmingly proved him guilty that he had confessed without waiting for ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable
... the boulder slides off. These ice-pillars, crowned with masses of rock, form a very picturesque feature in the scenery of the glacier, and are represented in many of the landscapes in which Swiss artists have endeavored to reproduce the grandeur and variety of Alpine views, especially in the masterly Aquarelles of Lory. The English reader will find them admirably well described and illustrated in Dr. Tyndall's work upon the glaciers. They are known throughout the Alps as "glacier-tables"; and many a time my fellow-travellers and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... hundred years hence, would inform the reader of the trend of thought and feeling in this present day. But in reality to do this kind of thing well is to do a very difficult thing. It needs a full knowledge, a full imagination and a masterly execution. Yet when we read the poem, it seems as natural as the breaking out of blossoms. This is that divine thing, ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... Epistle to the Ephesians (t. 11) were preached at Antioch; and though some passages might have received a higher polish from a second touch of the saint's masterly file, are a most useful and excellent work. From Hom. 3, p. 16, it {271} is clear that his predecessor Nectarius had not abolished canonical public penances, when he removed the public penitentiary; but that this office, as before the institution ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... elders so willingly gave. They asked questions instead of answering them. They began to throw themselves, against Father Cahill's express wishes and commands, into the fight for Home Rule under the masterly statesmanship of Charles Stuart Parnell. Already more than one prominent speaker had come into the little village and sown the seeds of temporal and spiritual unrest. Father Cahill opposed these men to ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... If he followed her to Frinton he would inevitably discover that Jane Foley was at Frinton, and the sequel would be more imprisonment for Jane. Therefore Audrey must not return to Frinton. Having by a masterly process of ratiocination reached this conclusion, she began to think rather better ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... "I have listened with great care to the masterly defence of that corporation on which our material prosperity and civic welfare is founded (laughter); I have listened to the gentleman's learned discussion of the finances of that road, tending to prove ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... which were exhibited in 1874. A powerful picture, shown in 1875, of the Egyptian Slinger,[4] is illustrated later in this volume, but no reproduction can quite suggest the striking colouring of the original, and the masterly treatment of its light and shade, in the presentment of this lonely figure posed high on its platform against the clear evening sky. The delightful Little Fatima, and the Grand Mosque, Damascus, enlarged from the ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... complete realization of a definite and perfectly elaborated scheme. There are no happy accidents or lucky flukes in his painting. It is as stark and solid as the work of Ingres or Mantegna. Some people call that sort of thing dry and intellectual; others call it masterly. ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... in a wretched condition, badly clothed, and sustaining life by marauding; moreover, they numbered but sixty-five thousand, Lestocq not yet having come in from Mohrungen. The Russian general saw how he was entrapped, and that he could escape only by a swift retreat. His conduct of the movement was masterly, and on February sixth, though the French columns were not far behind, he had reached Heilsberg. During the day the Russian rear-guard was driven in, and Bennigsen, marching all night, found himself next morning before the town of ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... impression, that the men who were mainly instrumental in calling it into existence and sustaining its infancy, were actuated by the purest motives. To be sure, Fenianism can scarcely be said to be the embodiment of a new idea, or the exponent of new principles; but, then, there was a masterly grouping of energies and sentiments in connection with it, which possessed the merit of originality, and which tended so largely, not only to popularize it, but to give it a foothold on every Irish national hearthstone. ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... a masterly stroke, and those who knew Robert Moncton in a moment would recognize the man. The adroitness with which he mingled truth with falsehood, almost made me doubt the evidence of my senses, and to fancy that the events of the past ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... style, and forcible in argument, this treatise is distinguished by great felicity of illustration ... a masterly specimen of reasoning ... a most valuable contribution of the theological ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 39. Saturday, July 27, 1850 • Various
... Fourth Gospel, at least his influence seems to be felt all through it. The probability is that he knew what was in it, and approved of it, although the actual composition may have been by another, possibly a very learned Greek. To me, the Fourth Gospel is the most masterly work ever composed by man. It stands absolutely alone. The criticism that John, being a Jew, could not have composed it, falls before the greater truth that, having become a Christian, he was no longer a Jew. He was a new creature. For how could he have been other, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... the time I used to wonder in what element lay the charm. Partly, of course, in his own profound appreciation of the author's meaning, partly also in his clear and correct emphasis, but most of all in the wonderful word-painting with which, by a few masterly strokes, he placed the whole scene before the mental vision. In theatrical representation, a man with a bush of thorn and lantern must 'present moonshine' and another, with a bit of plaster, the wall which divides Pyramus from his Thisbe; but in Mr. Lanier's readings, a poet's quick ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... with masterly pencil, where Von Bethmann-Hollweg himself is charged by the All-Highest to be schoolmaster. It is a grim department of the training. Think of the unseen as well as that shown. What you do see is the lordly, truculent Kaiser, raising ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... the "Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex," and the "Expression of the Emotions in Men and Animals"—a series to which we may hope other volumes may in due time be added. We would rather, if space permitted, attempt an analysis of the less known, but not less masterly, subsidiary essays, upon the various arrangements for insuring cross-fertilization in flowers, for the climbing of plants, and the like. These, as we have heard, may before long be reprinted in a volume, and ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... treating of Indian poetry, observes: 'Kalidasa, the celebrated author of the [S']akoontala, is a masterly describer of the influence which Nature exercises upon the minds of lovers. This great poet flourished at the splendid court of Vikramaditya, and was, therefore, cotemporary with Virgil and Horace. Tenderness ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... sixty-eighth annual meeting of the New York Female Auxiliary Bible Society, the Rev. Dr. William M. Taylor, in his earnest masterly address ...
— 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
... system and probably no individual has so effectually contributed towards this important end as Dr. Latham, the third edition of whose masterly and philosophical volume, entitled The English Language, is mow before us. Dr. Latham has ever earnestly and successfully insisted on the disciplinal character of grammatical studies in general, combined with the fact, that the grammatical study of one's own language ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 52, October 26, 1850 • Various
... who in our time has had the chief part both in writing the German choral hymns, and in setting them to tunes; as may be seen, among others in the German Sanctus (Jesaia dem Propheten das geschah) how masterly and well he has fitted all the notes to the text, according to the just accent and concent. At the time, I was moved by His Grace to put the question how or where he had got this composition, or this instruction; whereupon the dear man laughed at my simplicity, and said: I learned ...
— The Hymns of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... knowledge necessary to these council officials, and which found no place in the lectures on law, were formed into a special body of doctrine. After such men as Morhof and Thomasius had prepared the way,(148) Frederick William I., himself a clever cameralist, and author of the masterly financial system of Prussia, took the important step of founding, at Halle and Frankfurt on the Oder, special chairs of economy and cameralistic science; which, considering the time, were very ably filled by Gasser ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... Clarke's personality is given by a writer in the Sydney Bulletin: 'His wit was keen and polished, his humour delicate and refined, and his powers of description masterly.... His face was a remarkable one—remarkable for its singular beauty. Like Coleridge, the poet, he was "a noticeable man with large grey eyes," and one had but to look into them to perceive at once the light of genius.... He was one of the best talkers I have ever met. Like Charles Lamb, he ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... stream, the Fal, as, widening, it flowed seaward. We hurried down to the foot of Doe's garden, where a rustic boat-house sheltered his private vessel, the Lady Fal. Doe stepped into its stern, and I into its bows, and Radley took the oars. With a few masterly manoeuvres he turned the boat into midstream, and then pulled a rapid and powerful stroke towards Tresillian Creek, where we had decided to bathe. We touched the bank at a suitable landing-place, disembarked, ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... numerous, and of very varied degrees of excellence. Amongst the pianists is Miss Teresa Malderton, who nearly fell a prey to that gay deceiver Mr. Horatio Sparkins (S.B.T. 5). Her contribution to a musical evening was 'The Fall of Paris,' played, as Mr. Sparkins declared, in a masterly manner. ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... landed a few miles above Throg's Neck in the hope of cutting off Washington from retreat northward, only to find Washington still north of him at White Plains. A sharp skirmish followed in which Howe lost over two hundred men and Washington only one hundred and forty. Washington, masterly in retreat, then withdrew still farther north ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... winters they roamed the forests and the prairies, and assiduously hunted for furs which eventually were to clothe and adorn the aristocracy of America, Europe and Asia. When in the spring they came in with their spoil, they were, with masterly cunning, artfully made intoxicated and then robbed. Not merely robbed in being charged ruinous prices for merchandise, but robbed additionally in the weight of their furs. Forsyth relates that for every dollar in merchandise that the Astor company exchanged ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... likewise under deep obligation to Mr. A. E. Henderson, F.S.A., for the generous kindness with which he has allowed me to reproduce his masterly plans of the churches of SS. Sergius and Bacchus, S. Mary Panachrantos, and many of his photographs and drawings of other churches in the city. I am, moreover, indebted to the Byzantine Research and Publication Fund for courteous permission to present here some of the ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... great gallery were masterly paintings of great folk, globes showing all the stars fast in the sky, and drawings of the world and all its parts, so real that one could see the savages in the New World hanging to the under side ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... Constantinople, the peninsula of Cyzicum, formerly an island in the Propontis, to which it was united by Alexander the Great; and the districts of Brusa and Nice. The antiquities of the peninsula, but especially the botany of the countries he visited, are treated of in a masterly manner. ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... masterly letter-writer this account of him will, I feel, have already suggested. He was vivid, picturesque, and attractive to a high degree. The place he lived in when he was taking a country holiday was always the most wonderful place in the world and the ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... heroic line, they have to be separated with something of a jerk. And this adding—as, for instance, of a line of four syllables preceding or following one of six—occurs now and then, and even in such a masterly measure of music as A Farewell. It is as when a sail suddenly flaps windless in the fetching about of a boat. In The Angel in the House, and other earlier poems, Mr. Coventry Patmore used the octosyllabic stanza ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell |
