"Mastery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wonder? Ten centuries of victory over nature and over men may give a race the right to boast—ten centuries of victory with never a defeat! The English tongue is an arrogant tongue, we grant. Command, mastery, lordliness, are bred into its tones. The old tongue of the Romans was never deeper marked in those respects than our own. It is a freeman's speech, this mother language. A slave can never speak it. He garbles, clips, and mumbles ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... revolt of my soul refusing to leave the world in which a young girl lived! The vast twilight seemed to take the impress of her image like wax. What did Seraphina think of me? I knew nothing of her but her features, and it was enough. Strange, this power of a woman's face upon a man's heart—this mastery, potent as witchcraft and mysterious like a miracle. I should have to go and tell her. I did not suppose she could have understood all of Sebright's argumentation. Therefore, it was for me to explain to what a pretty pass I had ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... and for a moment stood letting her eyes travel about the walls, the furniture, the pictures. As they wandered, the husband's gaze followed them, and when they rested for an instant on the open strong box and the untidy papers, his alarm gained a brief mastery so that he stepped hurriedly forward, placing himself between her ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... seen how early was the bias of his mind towards politics. It was, indeed, the rival of literature in his affections during all the early part of his life, and, at length,—whether luckily for himself or not it is difficult to say,— gained the mastery. ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... every passenger forward into the bows of the vessel, out of the reach of the heat and suffocating smoke. The crew then attempted, with hose and pump, to keep the fire in hand; but already, it appeared, the flames had obtained the mastery, and their attempts came too late. The cargo, I believe, was tow, or some other oily substance difficult to extinguish once the fire had secured a firm hold upon it. Moreover, the smoke and heat were such that it was impossible for the workers to approach near enough ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... conquer self till we have learned to love. My Christian brethren, let us remember our high privilege. Christian life, so far as it deserves the name, is victory. We are not going forth to mere battle—we are going forth to conquer. To gain mastery over self, and sin, and doubt, and fear: till the last coldness, coming across the brow, tells us that all is over, and our warfare accomplished—that we are safe, the everlasting arms beneath us—that is our calling. Brethren beloved, ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... to depart at sunrise, as there was no rest for him there; and would lie down again, to be troubled by the vision of his journey, and the old monotony of bells and wheels and horses' feet, until another came. This lasted all night. So far from resuming the mastery of himself, he seemed, if possible, to lose it more and more, as the night crept on. When the dawn appeared, he was still tormented with thinking, still postponing thought until he should be in a better state; the past, present, and future all floated confusedly ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... his hand. He drove his blade again, this time to the bull's heart. As the wild life sighed itself out, and vanished, Pete crouched down like an animal, and drank the warm, red fluid streaming from the victim's throat. As he did so, the ebbed tide of warmth, power, and mastery flooded back into his own veins. He drank his fill; then, burrowing half beneath the massive body, he lay down close against it to rest ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... and to crown all, Goethe's Faust, excited and stirred me deeply. The Opera was giving the first performances of Marschner's Vampir and Templer und Judin. The Italian company arrived from Dresden, and fascinated the Leipzig audience by their consummate mastery of their art. Even I was almost carried away by the enthusiasm with which the town was over-whelmed, into forgetting the boyish impressions which Signor Sassaroli had stamped upon my mind, when another miracle—which also came to us from Dresden—suddenly ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... mastery of fear—not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward, it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word. Consider the flea!—incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage. Whether you are asleep ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the pulpit that Beecher was seen at his best. His mastery of the English tongue, his dramatic power, his instinctive art of impersonation, which had become a second nature, his vivid imagination, his breadth of intellectual view, the catholicity of his sympathies, his passionate enthusiasm, which made for the moment ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... wisdom will be transformed into sound philosophy without losing its deepest impulse. The realistic conviction that even the mind is completely controlled by natural laws and the idealistic inspiration that the mind of man has in its freedom mastery over the body, are thus most curiously mixed in the popular psychotherapy of the day, and too few recognize that the real meaning of mind is an entirely different one in these ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... study of Heredity, spiritual anatomy and physiology is highest of all. The key to this study is your own soul. Study yourself; gain possession and mastery of your own spirit and you hold the key not only to the heights of liberty, but the key that unlocks imprisoned souls."—Mary Weeks Burnett ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... gracefully beautiful, with slender, oval face, red lips, a faint color in the cheeks, and blue eyes of the chameleon sort that at will stare wide with the innocence of childhood, go hard and gray and brilliantly cold, or flame up in hot wilfulness and mastery. ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... distress by her own. She little knew the terrible struggle which raged in the breast of this beautiful woman, how all that was good and bad in her, all those latent forces which lie in the heart of everyone, sprang into life and fought equally for the mastery. It was not the Princess who was first in her thoughts from dawn to dark, or whose image passed incessantly through her restless dreams. It was the man who was beside the Princess, who had fought desperately for her whether he loved ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... amid those stores of knowledge he courted the Muses ardently, all the while cultivating diligently the acquaintance of the leaders of society, uniting the character of the scholar with that of the man of the world, and becoming as accomplished in politeness and as profound in mastery of the human heart as in scholarship and learning;—qualities conspicuous in his acknowledged writings, no less than in that extraordinary masterpiece, ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... in the rising desires of a young heart but obstacles to the teaching of reason. In my eyes, these are the right means to make him obedient to that very teaching. Only through passion can we gain the mastery over passions; their tyranny must be controlled by their legitimate power, and nature herself must furnish us with ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... have heard a judicious violist positively affirm, that if a Scholar can but attain to the playing of Quavers with his Wrist, keeping his Arm streight and stiff in the Elbow-Joint, he hath got the mastery of the Bow-Hand. Others contend that the motion of the Wrist must be strengthened and assisted by a compliance or yielding of the Elbow-Joint unto it; and they, to back their Argument, produce for instance a person famous for the excellency of his Bow-Hand ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... that said, "there shulde lande at Walborne hope the proudest prince of Christendome, and so shall come to Moshold heethe, and there shuld mete with other ij kinges, and shall fyght and shalbe put down: and the whyte lyon shuld optayne" the mastery. And yet this prophecy goes much further back, for the Danes are said to have landed at Weybourne Hope in their invasions, and the old rhyme is still remembered ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... have been a mild enough set of people while in their own country, speedily caught the infection from their surroundings. Thus, from one generation to another, various rival claimants to the throne strove for the mastery during successive centuries. The land was always more or less on the rack of civil war, and so to-day the largest State in the Peninsula carries a population of only some four human beings to ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... war. At least three new contests in the grand manner are plainly insight—one between Germany and France to rectify the unnatural tyranny of a weak and incompetent nation over a strong and enterprising nation, one between Japan and the United States for the mastery of the Pacific, and one between England and the United States for the control of the sea. To these must be added various minor struggles, and perhaps one or two of almost major character: the effort of Russia to regain her old unity and power, the effort of the Turks to put down ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... and firm that God called him to the ecclesiastical state. He closed the books of human law, renounced the prospects of worldly success, and resolved to prepare by study and seclusion, by prayer and self-mastery, for the awful dignity of ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... feelings and energies of free political life. Roman literature drives home the same, or a similar, moral. "The greatness of Rome was as entirely civic in its origin as that of any Greek city, and, like the Greek cities, Rome in the days of her freedom, and while she was still fighting for the mastery, preserved a system of political education, both in the hearth and the Senate, which was suited to her character. Cato, the Censor, according to Plutarch, 'wrote histories for his son, with his own hand, in large characters; ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... clear up many things for Sarka, though it piled higher upon his shoulders the weight of his responsibilities. The other-worldliness of Lunar, called now Luar, explained her mastery of the Gnomes, and through them the cubes, and her knowledge of the omnipotent qualities of the white flames of the Moon's core, which might have been, it came to Sarka in a flash, the source of all life on ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... the line and take his chance with the rest—and he did. Later on, he was invalided to the Base with some organic disease. I do not know where he is now, but he conquered; and like many another soldier in the great crusade will be the better for all eternity for his self-mastery. ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... man of like passions with ourselves, and made him a pattern of what he could do for one who was the chief of sinners. And Paul, the man who, more than any other, has set his mark on the Church, has ever been appealed to as a pattern man. In his mastery of Divine truth, and his teaching of it; in his devotion to his Lord, and his self-consuming zeal in His service; in his deep experience of the power of the indwelling Christ and the fellowship of his cross; ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray
... made him hand Barber the big, black, three-legged, iron kettle that belonged on the back of the cookstove. There was some cold oatmeal in the bottom of the kettle, and Johnnie also handed the longshoreman a spoon—with a glance toward the Prince, who seemed awed by Johnnie's complete mastery of the enemy. "Here!" the boy directed, giving the pot a light kick with a new shoe (which was brown). "Go ahead and eat. Eat ev'ry bite of it. It's got kerosene ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... know just how much longer he could hold in; for he wanted to yell. Still, he did not do it. Since coming to this wonderland country of the Southwest he had learned many lessons in the way of self control; and every day he was gaining more and more of a mastery over himself. ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson
... possible while evil and good contend for mastery, and the spiritual conflicts of man are, and will be, as terrible as any physical conflicts. While mankind stands where it does now, it is well that against corruption of spirit and thought, we can use our ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser
... up by Foster, who was asking him to tell them exactly what it was that they were to discuss. Instinctively he looked at Martin as he spoke. As always, with the first word there came over him a sense of mastery and happiness, a desire to move people like pawns, a readiness to twist any principle, moral and ethical, if he might bend it to his purpose. Instinctively he pitched his voice, formed his mouth, spread his ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... me when I ought to have philosophized, and my philosophical mind when I wished to poetize. Even now it frequently enough happens that imagination intrudes upon my abstractions, and cold reason upon my poetical productions. If I could obtain such mastery over these two powers as to assign to each its limits, I might yet look forward to a happy fate; but, alas! just when I have begun to know and to use my moral powers rightly, illness seizes me and threatens to undermine my physical powers. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... translation. She also records reading Shakespeare in Wieland's rendering, but as she speaks later still of peeping into the English books which Herder had sent Merck, it is a hazardous thing to reason from her mastery of English at that time to the use of original or translation on the occasion of ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... the lid raised, listening for Jarette's uneasy step as he came and went, and thinking of how easy it was to make plans, and how difficult to carry them out. I knew that if we were going to try and obtain the mastery once more we must act at once, for a fresh breeze would separate us at once, and the chance be gone. But how could we do ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... of Normandy and Britainy swarmed with soldiers, who threatened to invade England; arms, money, and men were sent to America; and the navy of France set out to contend with the navy of Great Britain, for the mastery of the seas between the two countries. On the 18th of March, the French king issued an edict to seize all British ships in the ports of France, and shortly after our government laid an embargo on all French ships in British ports. This, with the mutual ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... of the college with zeal and with mastery. From his letters it is seen that he read such of the Greek and Latin classics as were generally studied in American colleges at that time. He mastered mathematics beyond any man of his class, and became interested in philosophy and ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... message to Admiral Wong-lih, suggesting that he should bring up the southern fleet, so that, together, the united squadrons might seek the Japanese fleet and once more give battle, in an attempt to recover the mastery of the sea, which was of paramount ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... building, one of the granges of the Abbey, presenting a long flank unbroken by door or window. The horse stretched itself into a gallop, and headed straight for that craggy thirty-foot wall. He would break in red ruin at the base of it if he could but dash forever the life of this man, who claimed mastery over that which had never ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... therefore, they say, he ordered them to extinguish as quickly as possible the fire that was burning, and to bring down Croesus and those who were with him from the pyre; and they using endeavours were not able now to get the mastery of ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... flesh." Do not give it a chance of mastery! And, therefore, do not feed it with illicit thought. Turn the mind away from the subjects in which the body will find exciting stimulant. It is thought which awakes passion, and thought can do much to destroy it. "Set your mind on things which are ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... stages of man, and in observing them in their own haunts, we shall understand something of the immensity and the delicacy of man's task in gaining his ascendancy in the animal world and acquiring a greater mastery over his surroundings. ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... shine by their own light, belong to no class, have neither equal nor counterpart, and of which we say that no one but the author could have written them! There is neither the same boldness of design, nor mastery of execution in Johnson. In the one, the spark of genius seems to have met with its congenial matter: the shaft is sped; the forked lightning dresses up the face of nature in ghastly smiles, and the loud thunder rolls far away from the ruin that is made. Dr. Johnson's style, on ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... desirable than specialized training. Must be willing to leave country, never to return; for which he will be well remunerated. Have no close family ties, and willing to submit to certain amount of danger. Will be isolated with few members of own race, but will have great opportunity to develop mastery of huge machines. Come prepared to leave for post immediately, without preparation. Every want will be taken care of by employers. This position is for lifetime, without opportunity of turning back after having accepted ...
— Wanted—7 Fearless Engineers! • Warner Van Lorne
... "In grasp and mastery of the subject, and clearness and attractiveness of style, the book seems to us an excellent example of what such a book should be. We beg once more to thank Mr. Murray for his interesting book—with the gratitude which consists partly in an expectation ...
— Mr. Murray's List of New and Recent Publications July, 1890 • John Murray
... temperance has a direct influence on the health and vigor of both mind and body. The most eminent physicians bear uniform testimony to its propitious effect. And the Spirit of inspiration has recorded, He that striveth for the mastery, is temperate in all things. Many striking examples might be adduced. The mother of Samson, that prodigy of human strength, was instructed by an angel of God to preserve him from the slightest touch of "wine, or strong drink, or any ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... tactics, for the first time the palm was awarded by Englishmen to Americans over Englishmen. Without fortuitous advantage the Americans proved too much for the redoubtable English, though superior in number, therefore universally arrogating to themselves even with inferior numbers, a mastery but faintly questioned by most Americana; no accident to depreciate the triumph of the younger over the older nation; no more fortune than ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... kind which can contribute to our safety no less than any walled town one might mention, and with that as our base must carry on the war from there if anyone should attack us. And if we shew ourselves brave men, we shall lack nothing in the way of provisions. For those who hold the mastery over their enemy are lords also of the enemy's possessions; and it is the way of victory, first to invest herself with all the wealth, and then to set it down again on that side to which she inclines. Therefore, for you both the chance of safety and of having an abundance of good things lies in ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius
... Sir, that is just what I do not want to try. What, try the strength of the Government! and do so at the end of an administration in which corruption and treason and every evil principle have been contending for the mastery, when our ships are all away beyond sea, when our arms and our fortifications are out of our hands, when our treasury is bankrupt, our people divided, insolvency and ruin threatening our country, and all the Gulf States defying the authority of the Government? ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... With the mastery of English, and learning to read in the ordinary way, the work is very much slower. Still even here there is some progress, and the visitors were all pleased with the intelligence and aptitude of the scholars, both boys and girls. Mr Ross, who understood their language perfectly, at Mr Evans's ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... started the horses and turned them partly around. They were inclined to be fretful, but he gave them no chance to gain the mastery. He spoke to them in a voice they could not help but notice, and was ready to turn them up the mountain side again at the first indication ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... down over India he was conscious of the knowledge that in all human probability he would never look upon this drear land again. His time was up, he was about to be set on the shelf, life was over. And he had all his powers yet—all his marvellous quickness at the mastery of tongues, all the restless energy which had urged him on to overrun the race, to dodge and bore and break his stride instead of holding ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... from the bare uprising ribs—all that was left of him looking like the framework of a schooner yacht. His heart lay amongst the offal, and my knife came out to cut a meal from it, but I could not do it. Three times I essayed the task, hunger and disgust contending for mastery; three times turned back in loathing. At last I could stand the sight no more, and, slamming the knife up again, turned on my heels, and fairly ran for fresh air and the shore, where the sea was beginning to glimmer in the light a few score yards through the forest stems. ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... almost extinct. The nation which, in its early and struggling days, had given to the world a race of seamen as adventurous as the Norse Vikings had, in the days of its greatness and prosperity turned its eyes away from the sea and yielded to other people the mastery of the deep. One living in the past, reading the newspapers, diaries and record-books of the early days of the Nineteenth Century, can hardly understand how an occupation which played so great a part ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... curious mental mixture. The military instincts and ideals are as strong as ever, but are confronted by reflective criticisms which sorely curb their ancient freedom. Innumerable writers are showing up the bestial side of military service. Pure loot and mastery seem no longer morally avowable motives, and pretexts must be found for attributing them solely to the enemy. England and we, our army and navy authorities repeat without ceasing, arm solely for "peace," Germany and Japan it is who are bent on loot and glory. "Peace" in military mouths ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... of Cromlix, the brother of the Earl of Mar's first wife, and of George, seventh Earl of Kinnoul, succeeded in obtaining mastery over his subdued nature. The lady of Colonel Hay, Margery, the third daughter of Viscount Stormont, was said, also, to have possessed her own share of influence over the mind of the Chevalier. Of the real existence of any criminal attachment between the Prince ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... is cursed with a number of "orators"—men regarded as "eloquent"—"silver tongued" men—fellows who to the common American knack at brandishing the tongue add an exceptional felicity of platitude, a captivating mastery of dog's-eared sentiment, a copious and obedient vocabulary of eulogium, an iron insensibility to the ridiculous and an infinite affinity to fools. These afflicting Chrysostoms are always lying in wait for an "occasion" It matters not what it is: a "reception" to some great man from abroad, ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... that Shakspeare and Plato knew or did not know. If I should be jostled out of my drowsiness, who can tell what may be given me to see, to say, or to do? Let us make ready and get upon some high ground from which we may overlook the work of the world; for the secret of all mastery is dormant, yet breathing and stirring ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... Crowded with consultations as was almost every hour of the day not actually spent in open business in court—from the earliest period in the morning till the latest at night—it was really amazing that he contrived to obtain that perfect mastery of his ponderous and intricate briefs, which secured him his repeated and splendid triumphs in court. Till within even the last eighteen months, or two years, if you had gone down one morning at half-past nine to Westminster, you might have heard ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... Goethe. He has not the breadth and repose, and the calm development which belongs to Goethe's style, for they are foreign to his mental character; but he excels Goethe in susceptibility to the manifold qualities of prose, and in mastery over its effects. Heine is full of variety, of light and shadow: he alternates between epigrammatic pith, imaginative grace, sly allusion, and daring piquancy; and athwart all those there runs a vein of sadness, tenderness and grandeur ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... do with the navy, but it has much, indeed, as a part of unfathomable, complicated business of guards within guards, intelligence battling with intelligence, deceiving raiders by land or sea, of those responsible for the safety of England and the mastery of the seas. ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... than the ea of mead; or that the final s of a word like heads is not the full, buzzing z sound of the s in such a word as please. It is the frequent failure of foreigners, who have acquired a practical mastery of English and who have eliminated all the cruder phonetic shortcomings of their less careful brethren, to observe such minor distinctions that helps to give their English pronunciation the curiously elusive "accent" that we all vaguely feel. We do not ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... the breast of the Indian hunter, as though pride and want were contending for the mastery; but the latter prevailed, and in a ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... upon the road a-head; and ever the great car flew onward faster, and faster; yet not so fast as the beating of her heart, wherein shame, and anger, and fear, and—another feeling strove and fought for mastery. ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... and rearranged them on the sofa with motherly solicitude, while Mr. Todhunter watched her gravely, his national politeness and his reportorial instinct each struggling for the mastery. Finally he began tentatively: "I say, Miss Wyatt, do—er—the young ladies spend much time playing ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... written it if he had lived today. It is a labor which calls for extreme diligence, and for the utmost in artistic integrity. A single slip could mar the re-creation. As you can see, it calls for a preliminary mastery of Conrad's vocabulary, themes, plots, characters, mood, approach, and so on. All this goes in, and yet the book cannot be a slavish repeat. It must have something new to say, just as Conrad would ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... certain so-called entertainers. There is no need for me to detail to you the successive steps by which I at length attained my present knowledge of the marvellous powers of the science. Let it suffice me to say that by diligent study of it I eventually acquired such a mastery of it that it has enabled me to— well, to put it mildly—succeed where but for it I must have failed. And a large measure of this success is due to the fact that I have discovered an infallible method of instantly hypnotising a patient without that patient's knowledge. ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... struggle in France. King and barons, lords and vassals, were warring against each other for the mastery. Castles were besieged, cities sacked, and fertile fields laid waste; and in that northern section of France known as the Duchy of Normandy the clash and crush of conflict raged the fiercest around the person of one brave-hearted but sorely ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... said she, after a brief silence, during which she was striving for the mastery over her weakness. As she spoke, she leaned over the sick man, and looked at him lovingly, and with the smile of an ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... their mouths his almost complete mastery of the situation was conveyed to the Prince's defenders. In every instance the representative from a village sorrowfully admitted that Marlanx's men were in control. Ganlook, an ancient stronghold, had been taken without a struggle by a handful of men. The Countess's husband ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... fall upon me; and several times had planned a departure from Ispahan unknown to anybody, in order that the burden might fall upon the akhon and my mother, to whom I had intended the honour of payment; but my better feelings got the mastery, and reflecting that by acting thus I should render myself fully entitled to the odious epithet peder sukhteh[86] (one whose father is burnt) without further combat, I went round to each of the attendants, namely, mollahs, mourners, and washers of the ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... Their shapely tools and vessels are handled with a deftness that shames our clumsy ways, and everything that they use is kept quite clean. This skilful orderliness is essential to fine craftmanship, and is a sign of mastery. ...
— Wood-Block Printing - A Description of the Craft of Woodcutting and Colour Printing Based on the Japanese Practice • F. Morley Fletcher
... commercial position of the United States, and a plea for the immediate construction of a railroad from Missouri River to Puget Sound." It opens with a review of the great events in the world which have had a direct and all-important bearing upon the United States. Hitherto, since the modern mastery of the ocean through the mariner's compass and the science of navigation, the Atlantic had been the domain of sea power. The Pacific was in future to be the scene of greater opportunities and grander commercial developments. ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... just that it should rule the world, since it only had the power to do so. This "telurian germanization" was to be of immense benefit to mankind. The earth was going to be happy under the dictatorship of a people born for mastery. The German state, "tentacular potency," would eclipse with its glory the most imposing empire of the past and ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Janardana for his counsellor, and who hath for a brother that Dhananjaya who is the foremost of wielders of weapons? How wilt thou vanquish that son of Pandu, of severe austerities, who hath for his allies so many Brahmanas, endued with intelligence and mastery over their senses? In accordance with what a prosperity-wishing friend should do when he sees his friends sinking in an ocean of distress, I again tell thee, there is no necessity for war. Make peace ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... irresistible power of which has forced me to disclose the hateful mystery to you, but the fact is this, beginning like a speck, this one idea has gradually darkened and dilated, until it has filled my entire mind. The solitary consciousness of the gigantic mastery it has established there had grown intolerable; I must have told it. The sense of solitude under this aggressive and tremendous delusion was agony, hourly death to my soul. That is the secret of my talkativeness; my sole excuse for plaguing you with the dreams ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... be excellent. It would give a direction and purpose to the lad's thoughts and anticipations. He realized that he was set apart for a great mission in life. The brook heard the call of the sea. Besides which, he would acquire self-restraint, self-mastery. ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... to the cabin, and collect what we can here, and record the sentences as they obtain the mastery, at either ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Of Temperance, pursues the subject, and represents the internal conquests of self-mastery, the conquests of a man over his passions, his violence, his covetousness, his ambition, his despair, his sensuality. Sir Guyon, after conquering many foes of goodness, is the destroyer of the most perilous ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... sigh had awakened her from a blissful dream, and once more her weary heart sank desolate to the earth. But with an expression of tenderest pity she turned toward him and smiled. Then her music changed; it pealed out in rich harmony, fit for mortal ears. She saw her complete mastery over the archduke's soul; his eyes grew bright and joyful once more, and from his countenance beamed the ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... once it comes to be a trial of skill, contest for mastery betwixt you and your child, you must be sure to carry it, whatever blows it costs, if a nod or words will not prevail.' He continues:—'A prudent and kind mother of my acquaintance was, on such an occasion, forced to whip her little ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... enumerate some particular commercial advantages due to our mastery of the sea, and sums up in ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... commonwealth depended on the success of that great movement which had called it into being. Losing ground in France, fluctuating in England, Protestantism was apparently more triumphant in vast territories where the ancient Church was one day to recover its mastery. Of the population of Bohemia, there were perhaps ten Protestants to one Papist, while in the United Netherlands at least one-third of the people were still ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... themselves; they are consistent; even when they are most absurd they are most real; we learn to love them. It is a really serious test paper; no one could answer any of it who had not read and re-read the Pickwick Papers, and acquired, so to speak, a mastery of the subject. No one could do well in the examination who had not gone much further than this and got to know the book almost by heart. It was a most wonderful burlesque of the ordinary College and Senate House examination, ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... there was a depth to his passion that achieved patience, the calmness of unassailable fortitude. She gazed at him often with a surprise that bordered on fear; again she would delight in his mastery, beg him to hold her forever safe against the past. He reassured her of his ability and determination to accomplish that; there was not the shadow of a doubt in his own mind. He was more troubled now than formerly; but he was eager ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... southern quarter, forsaking their maces and spears and swords and clubs and axes. And then there stood, holding in his hands darts and maces, the broad-chested and mighty-armed friend of Vaisravana, the Rakshasa named Maniman. And that one of great strength began to display his mastery and manliness. And seeing them forsake the fight, he addressed them with a smile, 'Going to Vaisravana's abode, how will ye say unto that lord of wealth, that numbers have been defeated by a single mortal in battle?' Having said this unto them that Rakshasa, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... high functionaries, each with bitterness in his heart against his fellows, nevertheless co-operated earnestly and loyally in the service of their sovereign and for the advantage of their country. Their common patriotism had the mastery in them of their mutual hatred and jealousy. Ardt's line: "Sein Vaterland muss groesser sein!" was the watchword and inspiration of all three, and dominated ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... hero of the play, and the main interest culminates in the Jew's trial and discomfiture. The bold transition from that solemn scene which trembles on the brink of tragedy to the gently poetic and humorous incidents of the concluding act attests a mastery of stagecraft; but the interest, although it is sustained to the end, is, after Shylock's final exit, pitched in a lower key. The 'Venesyon Comedy,' which Henslowe, the manager, produced at the Rose on August 25, 1594, was probably the earliest ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... fury pass through his veins. The old Celtic quickness to resent insult swept over him. The ire of his forefathers waked in him. This outrageous old Caliban, to attempt to sneer at him! For an instant he was Kilkenny let loose, and then the cool, trained brain reasserted its mastery, and he replied: ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... hear the short peremptory tones of the surgeons, and those worse things—the stifled groan of one in the extremity of physical anguish, and the grate of a saw. These maddened her with pity, almost with rage. She feared that now, as then, she might lose her self-mastery and do some wild and desperate thing. She tried to keep her attention fixed on the quick irregular rise and fall of the linen sheet expressing the broad, full curve of the young man's chest, as he lay flat on his back, his eyes closed, but whether in sleep or in unconsciousness she did not know. ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... the entire elimination of doctrinal matter from his studies. I should have guided him to a thorough investigation of the principle of all the Natural Sciences, with especial devotion to one single branch, as Botany or Conchology, and an entire mastery of its terminology I should have urged our gifted but destitute of all scientific method friend to the observation and definition of objective phenomena, rather than to subjective analysis, ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... in Congress ending twelve years before he became President, but he had to grapple with the gravest problems ever presented to the statesmanship of the nation for solution, and he met each and all of them in turn with the most consistent mastery, and settled them so successfully that all have stood unquestioned until the present time, and are certain to endure while ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... threw off his coat and vest. A few minutes later the lads were struggling on the wrestling mat, their faces dripping with perspiration, their supple young figures twisting and turning as each struggled for the mastery of the other. ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... its institutions, the welcome hand will be heartily extended; but to those whose influence will be prejudicial to religion and good morals, no protracted stay can be allowed; since the success of an educational institution is strictly proportional to its moral tone." "Self-mastery, symmetrical character, high ideals and purposes are regarded as the chief ends of education. Special attention is given to the spiritual needs of the students. In the life and discipline of the school, constant effort is made to inculcate Christian principles." These are some of the typical ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... the more amiable-looking of the two mules with side- saddles, dismissed one of the guides after a brief consultation, and helped Miss Denham to mount. In attending to these preliminaries Lynde had sufficient mastery over himself not to make any indecorous betrayal of his intense satisfaction at the turn affairs had taken. Fortune had given her into his hands for five hours! She should listen this time to what he had to say, though the ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... would hate it—stand hypnotised, spellbound the while—and hate it, for they are a serious sort, your painters of pictures, and they couldn't appreciate an art which made fun of art; they would execrate the uncanny mastery and utterly miss the gay perversity of the performance, and Duane knew it and laughed wickedly. What a shock! What would sober, seriously inclined people think if an actor who was eminently fitted to play Lear, should bow to his audience and earnestly perform a very ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... with blues as rich and deep as an organ chord, and yellows rich as the gold with which they embroidered their Virgin's robes, their pictures show, with touching lapses in some of the details, a large technical mastery, coupled with an intensity of ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... such as blotted out nations and changed the mastery of the world, were trifles to them, if perchance they came to their knowledge. Of what Herod was doing in this city or that, building palaces and gymnasia, and indulging forbidden practises, they occasionally heard. As was her habit in those days, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... eyelids, but firm heart, on the silent but eloquent offspring of his brain and hand, the Artist in him was coincident with the Man,—clear, unswerving, productive, the sphere extending, the significance multiplying, and the mastery becoming more and more complete through resolute practice, vivid intuition, and candid ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... amazement struggling for the mastery on her glowing little face. "Why, that's the game! You're playing the glad game, and don't know it—only you're playing it ever and ever so much better than I ever could! Why, I—I couldn't play it at all, I'm afraid, if I—I didn't have enough to eat, ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... indulge in hopes of foreign aid. The States must depend upon themselves, and their only hope lay in a National Bank. There had been some diffidence in his previous letter. There was none in this, and he had a greater mastery of the subject. In something like thirty pages of close writing, he lays down every law, extensive and minute, for the building of a National Bank, and not the most remarkable thing about this letter is the psychological knowledge it betrays ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... and strength, she was a match for the man, and two pairs of hands searched for a throat, two bodies strained and struggled for the mastery. It seemed that the noise of the conflict, the snapping of dry dead wood, the swish and crash of leafy brush, must draw attention from the camp, but it was too engrossed in its own mad hilarity to heed so small ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... this tacked on to me—this immense mystery which I can neither understand nor control? I know not where it may lead me or I lead it. I cannot see what is happening, nor am I consulted about what is going to happen, and yet I have to keep up an appearance of mastery and pretend ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... to take refuge in a light-ship, from which he is involuntarily transferred to an outward-bound convict-ship. After a series of exciting events, in which Bowkitt, an innocent convict, plays a brilliant part, the convicts and mutinous crew obtain the mastery under the leadership of a fanatical gold-seeker. The officers, Ned, and Bowkitt are set adrift in the cutter, and eventually land on a desert island, to which also the mutineers find their way. By the want ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... simplified. She had been torn in pieces; and in putting herself together again she had left out the dangerous, disintegrating, virile element. Whatever happened now, she would no longer suffer from the presence in her of two sexes contending for the mastery. Through it all, through all her dreadful virility, she had always been persistently and preposterously feminine. And lying quiet she was more than ever what George Tanqueray had said she was not to ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... Contempt and hatred struggled for the mastery in her tone. "Richard, Richard! in your chains and toil, do you hear this? This woman meant to earn ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... thinks of the tremendous forces of the upper and the nether world which play for the mastery of the soul of a woman during the few years in which she passes from plastic girlhood to the ripe maturity of womanhood, he may well stand in awe before ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... of military insight and knowledge which solves the question before it upon its own merits and without conscious comparison with historical examples, through a power of judgment and perception ripened and broadened by the mastery of principles which have ruled the great campaigns of the world. He was fond of conviviality, loved to banter good-humoredly his staff officers and intimates, and was altogether an attractive and companionable man, with ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... sure, but at the same time with respect and awe! There lay the ultimate cause of the fundamental difference of opinion respecting the colonial policy to be followed [*]. Van Diemen dreamt a bold dream of Dutch supremacy in the East and of the East India Company's mastery "of the opulent Indian trade." To this end he deemed necessary: "harassing of the enemy [**], continuation and extension of trade, together with the discovering or new lands." But if he had lived to read the missive [***], his grand projects would have received ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... reverence wilt thou be kind; and e'en for hate thou canst but kill; and all are killed. No fearless fool now fronts thee. I own thy speechless, placeless power; but to the last gasp of my earthquake life will dispute its unconditional, unintegral mastery in me. In the midst of the personified impersonal, a personality stands here. Though but a point at best; whencesoe'er I came; wheresoe'er I go; yet while I earthly live, the queenly personality lives in me, and feels her royal rights. ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... old,— Will Harvest, who could haul the ropes and fight All day, and sing a foc'sle song to cheer Sea-weary hearts at night; brave old Tom Moone The carpenter, whose faithful soul looked up To Drake's large mastery with a mastiff's eyes; And three-score trusty mariners, all scarred And weather-beaten. After these there came Some two-score gentleman adventurers, Gay college lads or lawyers that had grown Sick of the dusty Temple, and were fired With tales of the rich Indies and those tall Enchanted ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... After much time spent in these frivolous pursuits, the difficulty will be to retreat; but it will be then too late; and there is scarce an instance of return to scrupulous labour after the mind has been debauched and deceived by this fallacious mastery. ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... n. 1. A derogatory play on 'UNIX wizard', common among hackers who use UNIX by necessity but would prefer alternatives. The implication is that although the person in question may consider mastery of UNIX arcana to be a wizardly skill, the only real skill involved is the ability to tolerate (and the bad taste to wallow in) the incoherence and needless complexity that is alleged to infest many UNIX programs. "This shell script tries to parse its arguments in 69 bletcherous ways. ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... the steamboats and the flatboats still struggled for the mastery, was the most picturesque period of Mississippi River life. Then the river towns throve most, and waxed turbulent, noisy, and big, according to the standards of the times. Places which now are mere ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... and for the rise of an emperor destined to play a part in the history of the world quite different from that performed by any of his predecessors. This was Constantine, in whose character, throughout his life, opposing elements seemed to contend for mastery, as was shown in his treatment of the perplexing questions that arose during his reign concerning Christianity, which was persecuted under Diocletian and the old Roman religion. Of his statesmanship and his further transformation of the empire, in ways which Diocletian could not have foreseen, history ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... of these manipulations makes the method seem rather intricate, yet but little practice is required to obtain an easy and sure mastery over it. We have felt compelled to describe the method minutely, since preparations so often come under our notice which, although made by scientific men, who pursue haematological investigations, are only to be described ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... clouds were observed to roll down the lower slopes of the glacier and, reaching the shore, rise into the air in columns. They then sailed away northward at a higher altitude, almost obscuring the sun with a fine fog. On the same night the "south" had gained the mastery, and the wind blew ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... entering the portals of a university; they feel themselves inadequate to cope with the wisdom of the ages garnered in the solid walls. They envy alike the smiling sureness of the genial charlatan (to whom professors are a set of fools), and the easy mastery of the man of brains. They have a cowering sense of their own inefficiency. But the feeling of uneasiness presently disappears. The first shivering dip is soon forgotten by the hearty breaster of the waves. But ere you breast the ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... therefore, not of furnishing instruction to the hungry and inquiring mind—ah, no!—but of a desperately sustained struggle in which, with every faculty on the alert to discover the truest expedients, with every nerve strained to the utmost, I strove for the mastery over this antic, untamed animal, until I could throw the reins loose at night, and drop my head down on my desk in the ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... stand pat and spank the kid if he doesn't fight like a tartar. He hates the war—perhaps we all hate it, in a way—but he'll buy Liberty Bonds and help win a victory. I know that sort; they're not dangerous; just at war with themselves, with folly and honesty struggling for the mastery. Let him alone and in a few months you'll find ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... musician, a Bohemian, who would make no objections to an unworldly match. He was an orphan with a little patrimony of four or five thousand dollars, enough to live on until the world recognised his genius as a poet and his mastery as ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... the poets of England have had an easy and royal mastery of prose; and in the case of Robert Southey there are some, and they are not the worst critics, who anticipate that his prose will long outlast his poetry in ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... perhaps of half the service. The phrase is obviously a degradation of the opening enunciations in Nelson's memoranda, a degradation due to time, to superficial study, and the contemptuous confidence of years of undisputed mastery at sea. ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... billows of angry passion about to sweep over his soul, "O, Lamb of God, calm my perturbed spirit," we feel that but for such interceding prayer and that watchfulness which accompanied it, the insanity to which he was temporarily subject would have won the same mastery over the mighty powers of his mind as over those of Swift, and the glory of his "wide fame" as well as the peace of his "humble hope," would have been exchanged for the vagaries of the madman or ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... may appear, the idea of marrying her had occurred to him. Then he said to himself that this weakness was in direct contradiction to his principles, and that she would cause him to lose forever his mastery over himself, and throw him back into the nothingness of his past life. Yet with the corrupt inspirations of his depraved soul he foresaw that the moment he touched her hands with the lips of a lover a new sentiment would ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... skill in differentiating the sundry "strains" of medicine, there is specific witness in each section. Osler's wide culture and control of the best available literature of his subject permitted him to range the ampler aether of Greek medicine or the earth-fettered schools of today with equal mastery; there is no quickset of pedantry between the author and the reader. The illustrations (which he had doubtless planned as fully for the last as for the earlier chapters) are as he left them; save that, lacking legends, these have been supplied and a few which could not be identified ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... absorbing subject of interest to think of in his absence. I noticed a change in him the moment he entered the room. When he told me of the funeral, and of his parting with Armadale on board the yacht, though he spoke with feelings deeply moved, he spoke with a mastery over himself which is new to me in my experience of him. It was the same when our talk turned next on our own hopes and prospects. He was plainly disappointed when he found that my family embarrassments would prevent our ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... and the love we bear the dead is mingled with pity. Of course the life of a man of letters is more perilous than the life of a farmer; more perilous than almost any other kind of life which it is given a human being to conduct. It is more difficult to obtain the mastery over spiritual ways and means than over material ones, and he must command both. Properly to conduct his life he must not only take large crops off his fields, he must also leave in his fields the capacity of producing large crops. It is easy to drive in your ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... design, as though he had a difficulty in commencing—a difficulty, let us say, in choosing a subject out of a world which seemed all equally living and significant to him; but once he had the subject chosen, he could cope with nature single-handed, and make every stroke a triumph. Again, his absolute mastery in his art enabled him to express each and all of his different humours, and to pass smoothly and congruously from one to another. Many men invent a dialect for only one side of their nature—perhaps their pathos or their humour, or the delicacy of their senses—and, for lack of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of a perpetual motion wheel, "elaboured with marvellous ingenuity, in the pursuit of which invention I have seen many people wandering about, and wearied with manifold toil. For they did not observe that they could arrive at the mastery of this by means of the virtue, or power of ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price
... must have his share. Such a position of things was the inevitable death-blow, not only to all friendship, but to all confidence, and ultimately to all intercourse. We see in sacred history that Joab's participation in David's guilty secret gave him the absolute mastery over his own sovereign; we see repeatedly in profane history that the mutual knowledge of some crime is the invariable cause of deadly hatred between a subject and a king. Such feelings as King John may be supposed to have had to Hubert de Burgh, or King ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar |
