"Masterful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... through to the end, and as he read the sense of dominant, masterful self-control came back to him in waves. He got up, taking the paper with him, and went back into the deeper woods, moving warily and watchfully. As he went his mind, trained to take hold of problems and wring the essence out of them, was busy. Of the charred, grisly thing ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... was an outcast from his tribe, and, indeed, from the whole Indian brotherhood. I could not fathom him, for he seemed among savages to be held in deep respect, and yet here he was, the ally of the white man against his race. His lean, supple figure, his passionless face, and his high, masterful air had a singular nobility in them. To me he was never the servant, scarcely even the companion, for he seemed like a being from another world, who had a knowledge of things hid from human ken. In woodcraft he was a master beyond all thought of rivalry. Often, when time ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... yesterday was so impervious to a joke, honored me by giving me his baronial arm for dejeuner. I can't imagine why he did it, unless it were to get a lesson in English gratis, of which he was sadly in need. He struck me as being very masterful and weighed down with the mighty affairs of his tiny little kingdom. I was duly impressed, and never felt so subdued in all my life, which I suppose was the effect he wished to ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... rumoured that Bridget McCaura, of Moher Farm, had sheltered Dark Andy. Bridget was a warm woman, a "woman of three cows," a masterful old maid, who in her time had refused many a pretty fellow, perhaps because she suspected them of hankering after her live stock, her poultry, and her sixty acres of rocks. Then the old parish priest, Father ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... canst not daunten Death with thy stern voice and masterful eye, though thou canst quell a score of other foes with ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... bridge and now, having seen us through our immediate difficulties, has parted from us with a very civil bow and good-humoured smile, as one who is always civil and good-humoured, but with a certain triumphant masterful look in his eyes, which I have noted in men, even the best of them, when a woman gets into straits by attempting manly employments. He has done us great good though, and may be allowed his little feeling of superiority. The parting salute he bestowed on our steed, in the shape of an astounding ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... cursing, jerking their arms above their heads, rolling back their lips from their yellow teeth, were apparently so many lunatics whose frenzy was not to be stayed. But undisciplined natures whose excesses spring from lack of self control are all the more ready to respond to the masterful control ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... Morris," Emily answered, resenting the masterful tone which Alban's interference had assumed. "I have not done with Miss Jethro yet, I ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... but will the folk about him care to let him talk to you? I have heard say that he was but a puppet in their hands. Yea, you are a great lord, that is true, but will that great masterful Earl Warwick let you to him, or say all these thoughts of his and yours are but fancies ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lady who commanded, so he obeyed. They had drawn a green portiere across the curtain pole in the doorway until the little alcove with the bookcase was shut off from the larger room for all practical intents and purposes. Jimmy, the Southern Avenue boy, waxing more and more masterful, had appointed himself postmaster, and strutted beside the narrow opening which remained. And to hold that position in a game of "Post-office" is no slight thing. Not only is the postmaster the sole witness of all that transpires behind the secretive curtain, but he ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... here. You may rest at your ease at the Academy, in this big first room—at the upper end especially, on the left—because more than many other places it savours of old Florence. More for instance, in reality, than the Bargello, though the Bargello makes great pretensions. Beautiful and masterful though the Bargello is, it smells too strongly of restoration, and, much of old Italy as still lurks in its furbished and renovated chambers, it speaks even more distinctly of the ill-mannered young kingdom that has—as "unavoidably" as you please—lifted ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... inspiration of this high constancy they were indebted to Lord Nelson alone. Whatever earthly affection he abandoned or grasped, the great Admiral was always, before all, beyond all, a lover of Fame. He loved her jealously, with an inextinguishable ardour and an insatiable desire—he loved her with a masterful devotion and an infinite trustfulness. In the plenitude of his passion he was an exacting lover. And she never betrayed the greatness of his trust! She attended him to the end of his life, and he died pressing her last gift (nineteen prizes) to his heart. "Anchor, ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... a rough, uncared-for upbringing, which had made Esther perhaps a little masterful and grown-up in her ways and ideas, and Penelope, somewhat careless, had not checked Angela's nervousness or Poppy's independence, but they were all honest and truthful, and full of good instincts; and as they stood looking out of the windows of their new home at the new ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... Irish-American millionaires trying to ruin each other for trash. But the very pettiness of the pretext and even the purpose illustrates the same conception; which may be called the virtue of excitability. And it is really this, and not any rubbish about iron will-power and masterful mentality, that redeems with romance their clockwork cosmos and its industrial ideals. Being a live wire does not mean that the nerves should be like wires; but rather that the very wires ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... lifted his hand, in which was a tomtom of stretched goatskin, and pointed towards the oasis, rapidly moving his toothless jaws. The Count stepped back into the garden, dismissed his pensioners with a masterful wave of the hand, and himself ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... of triumph went up from thousands of sympathizing hearts, the contending forces were in a state of intense activity. Within the breastworks Prescott, cool, deliberate, masterful, watched every detail and directed every action. Warren, Stark, and Pomeroy put soul into every movement. Putnam defended his own line, and sent the good news outward to cheer the thousands who had ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... Gerard Malcolm with an actressy-looking girl! I wasn't over-pleased at the girl part of it, but it did my heart good to see Gerard. He drew up alongside the Manton and leaped out of the buggy, so splendid and handsome and cool and masterful, with a glisten in his eye which said: 'Bring on your gas-engine!'—that I loved him harder than ever, and could have almost torn the captain's ring off my finger. He didn't waste any time saying how-do-you-do, but just asked this and that and dived in. Then he pegged away for about five minutes, ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne
... slug must procreate its kind, or its kind will perish; and so I. The need being the same, the only difference is in the expression. In all life come times and seasons when the individuals are aware of dim yearnings and blind compulsions and masterful desires. The senses are quickened and alert to the call of kind. And just as the fish and the reptile glimmeringly adumbrate man, so do these yearnings and desires adumbrate what man in himself calls "love," spelled all out in ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... liking his masterful ways, though they're old-fashioned now that we're all supposed to think we need votes more than frocks; but this time it really would have been ungrateful of me to disapprove, as the whole fuss was being made for me. And I was dying to go ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... The masterful and varied treatment of these eight canvases show Brangwyn as the great painter he is known to be. We should rejoice to have such excellent examples of his brush ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... retorted Mallalieu, masterful and insistent as ever. "You have the power! D'ye think I've been a justice of the peace for twelve years without knowing what law is? You've the power to admit to bail in all charges of felony, at ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... surprised, for, as we have seen, she had read the girl's character truly, and warned Orange that some event of the kind would happen. But the pleasure she took in this confirmation of her own prophetic gifts was alloyed by the fear that Reckage, now at liberty, would prove a masterful, jealous, and embarrassing lover. Nor were her forebodings on this score lessened when he arrived, evidently in a strange mood, a quarter of an hour before the appointed time. His eyes travelled ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... a masterful lover, and Nancy Tremain was far too pretty, far too singular and charming, to become engaged in the course of nature to some commonplace young man. This big, ugly, clever, amusing artist was just the contrast which was needed ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... depended on foreign aid, and when left to itself has either died away or kept itself alive by maintaining a sort of Christian caste. The Eastern people are, to a certain extent, pliant and easily led. The somewhat masterful foreign missionary had bent the people to his will and his ways. The house has been built square and solid, and finished in appearance. But it is a building, not a plant. It has not within it the power of life and growth. There has been more building than ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... nicely with the children, did you? Of course you will have little to do here in comparison with what you must have had there. But my wilful Clement, I am afraid, you will find too much for you. He is a masterful lad." ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... to say prevented full-stops and commas from being of any use to her. Miss Annett was admirably suited as a companion, being long, thin and silent, and intended by nature to be subservient to the more masterful of her sex. With any man she was able easily to hold her own; with Mrs. Ridge ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... the boy merges into the man, and we must leave him. Strong of purpose, clear-headed and masterful, Louis the Fourteenth ruled as King of France for seventy-two years—the most powerful monarch in Christendom. Handsome in person, majestic in bearing, dignified, lavish, and proud; ruling France in one of the most splendid periods of its history—a period styled "the Augustan age" of ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... to talking about missing ships, and Goeltz insisted on Lying Bill telling of his own masterful exploit in bringing back a schooner from South America after the captain had run away with it and a woman. Pincher was mate of the schooner, which traded from Tahiti, and the skipper was a handsome fellow who thought his job well lost for love. He ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... old corks, scraps of writing-paper, old pens, and other things, afforded food for endless jokes amongst the rest of the girls. Cicely, on the other hand, was the exact opposite of her sister; but being the younger, and less masterful, she gave in to Rhoda, and on the day they were to go home she rose, at Rhoda's command, from her bed at six o'clock, very unwillingly though, for the saving of threepence on her journey was nothing to Cicely in comparison to the discomfort of ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... expecting to be beaten by a coalition vote of the extreme Left, Bonapartists and Legitimists. It was an insane policy on the part of the two last, as they knew perfectly well they wouldn't gain anything by upsetting the actual cabinet. They would only get another one much more advanced and more masterful. I suppose their idea was to have a succession of radical inefficient ministers, which in the end would disgust the country and make a "saviour," a prince (which one?) or general, possible. How wise their reasoning was time has shown! I wanted to go to the Chamber to ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... Braces, and had found consolation in it ever since. He would be strong, he told himself, like his braces. Hearts might snap beneath a sudden strain. Not so the 'Tried and Proven'. Love might tug and tug again, but never more should the trousers of passion break away from the tough, masterful braces ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... upon him quickly with an angry flash in his eyes, and he was about to burst out with some fierce retort; but in those brief moments it seemed to him that it was not Glyn's but the Colonel's masterful eyes that were gazing down into his, as, truth to tell, they had more than once looked down upon his father in some special crisis when in the cause of right the brave English officer had with a few words mastered the untutored Indian ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... chimneypiece and furniture. Gaunt and gray, too, was the figure seated in the rigid high-backed chair, a tall old woman in a black gown and a close muslin cap like that worn by the Shakers, with a black ribbon bound round her forehead. Her high features showed where great beauty, of a masterful kind, had once dwelt; her sunken eyes were cold and dim as a steel mirror that has lain long buried and has forgotten how ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... women who interest us most, for the men of the race, masterful and brave, heroic even in certain great crisis, have often ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... years after that night I dreamed it ower again, and aye I heard mysel' crying to God to keep that man awa' frae me. But I doubt I put up no sic prayer at the time; his masterful look fleid me, and yet it drew me against my will, and I was trembling wi' pride as well as fear when he made me queen. We danced thegither and fought thegither a' through the ball, and my will was no match for ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... brother's marriage had incensed her even more than Piotr Andreitch; she set herself to give the upstart a lesson, and Malanya Sergyevna from the very first hour was her slave. And, indeed, how was she to contend against the masterful, haughty Glafira, submissive, constantly bewildered, timid, and weak in health as she was? Not a day passed without Glafira reminding her of her former position, and commending her for not forgetting herself. Malanya Sergyevna could ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... sizes and of various colorings. Some were much larger than the bluejay, but none seemed so proud or masterful, and all deferred meekly to the commands of the acknowledged guardian ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... magnolia hid them from the rest of the world; he put masterful hands on her shoulders and turned her face toward ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... not think you will. Our Church can be loving and restful and harmonious and beautiful (thus the jargon of the heretic) but it can also be masterful and tyrannical and terrible, even cruel, so they say, although I do not go that far myself. And the call of it, the memory of it, the significance of it, the power and majesty and awfulness of it will draw you back. Oh! Have no fear, monsieur! If I may charge myself with your conversion ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... Laura herself had some vague remembrance of them. As the pony climbed the steep lane she shut her eyes and tried hard to recall them. The fair-haired boy—rather fat and masterful—who had taken her to find the eggs of a truant hen in a hedge behind the house—and had pushed her into a puddle on the way home because she had broken one? Then the girl, the older girl Polly, who ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... have assumed a more masterful tone if he had had an Empire at his back instead of undisciplined bands of Green Mountain Boys. Writing to the Continental Congress, he declares that unless the demands of Vermont are complied with "we will retire into the ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... no reply and the whispering ceased. Almost instantly the horn seemed grasped by a firm and masterful hand, and the rollicking voice of a man broke startlingly from the darkness in words so clear, so resonant, that all could ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... the giant air-liner and her crew of masterful adventurers on the Forbidden City had much the quality of a hawk's raid on a vast pigeon-cote. As Nissr, now with slowed engines loomed down the Valley of Sacrifice, a perfectly indescribable hurricane of panic, ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... would have carried out his intention if the council had come to a different conclusion I have not the slightest doubt, and I quite believe that his masterful spirit would have effected its purpose and borne down all opposition. Whether his action would have been right or wrong is another question, and one on which there is always sure to be great difference of opinion. ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... persuasive and convincing; and the Tribune was one of the great educational influences of the country. Beside it stood the New York Times, edited by Henry J. Raymond, an advocate of moderate anti-slavery and Republican principles, with less of masterful leadership than the Tribune, but sometimes better balanced; and the Herald, under the elder James Gordon Bennett, devoted to news and money-making, and ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... mothers and of wives, by his austerity, his loving-kindness,[42] his impetuous will and masterful activity, his absolute faith and remorseless logic, his lyric and passionate eloquence, carried all before him and became the dictator of Christendom. He it was who with pitying gesture as of a kind father, his eyes suffused with tender joy, received ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... least she thought so now—until that hateful woman had taken her husband from her. She had almost forgotten the Russian baroness. Now with a start of fresh interest she thought of the portrait and wondered where it was,—the masterful picture of the one who had ruined her happiness. She looked through the clutter again, thinking that it was probably with the Russian wherever she was. But the portrait was there with the rest, wrapped carefully in a piece of ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... stay. Both at Parker's hotel in Boston, and at the Westminster in New York, everything was arranged by the proprietors for his comfort, and tempting dishes to pique his invalid appetite were sent up at different hours of the day; but the influenza had seized him with masterful power, and held the strong man down till ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... before the wan girl, and the readjustment of life, in her masterful hands, seemed ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... against his shoulder. Martin leaned eagerly forward, and their eyes met. They both stiffened at that electric contact. His eyes were ablaze with passion, purposeful, masterful; and in her eyes he again glimpsed the fresh-awakened woman, beckoning, elusive, fearful. For a brief instant they stared at each other, man and woman, souls bared. But that blinding moment seemed to Martin to encompass ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... a masterful work, entitled, "The Science of Power," points out how Darwinism furnished Nietzsche with a scientific basis for his godless system of ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... drawn her into his arms as he spoke; but in his touch and his kiss Eleanor felt or fancied something masterful, which irritated her. ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... noticeable that these substantial successes were achieved, not by a religious fanatic, but by a jurist; not by a saint, but by a genial man of the world; not by force of intellect and will, but by adroitness; not by masterful authority, but by pliant diplomacy; not by forcing but by following the current of events. Since Gregory VII., no Pope had done so much as Pius IV. for bracing the ancient fabric of the Church and confirming ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... [1849] there appears upon the scene that vigorous and masterful spirit, whose arrival to take up the government of India had been greeted by events so inauspicious. No doubt from the beginning the Governor-General was desirous to let it be understood that although new to India he was, and meant to be, master;... Lord Dalhousie was by no means ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... masterful scheme, and it was steadily pursued during the years before the war. Austro-Hungary was easily influenced. The ascendancy of her ruling races—nay, the very existence of her composite anti-national empire—was threatened by the nationalist ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... hardened one upon the other, as he leaned over the stone sill and drew the night air sharply between his closed teeth; and he resolved then to leave Rome and to go on in search of strange lands and masterful deeds. On such nights, when the wind blew down the river in the spring, it brought to him all the hosts of fancy, spirit armies, ghostly knights, and fairy maidens, and the forecast shadows of things to come. There was a tragic note, also; for on his right, ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... governor-general and commander-in-chief of Canada. He and his wife were popular both in the West Indies and in Canada; and he undoubtedly deserved well of the Empire for having conciliated the French Canadians, who had been irritated by his predecessor, the abrupt and masterful Craig. The very important Army Bill Act was greatly due to his diplomatic handling of the French Canadians, who found him so congenial that they stood by him to the end. His native tongue was French. He understood French ways and manners to perfection; and ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... Nice, of Clark University, Worcester, Mass., finished and contributed to the Journal of Economic Entomology (Vol. III., No. 3) a masterful investigation of "The Food of the Bob-White." It should be in every library in this land. Mrs. Nice publishes the entire list of 129 species of weed seeds consumed by the quail,—and it looks like a rogue's gallery. Here is an astounding ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... had stopped with a word on his lips and stood gazing out the window. The new typist had learned to read faces and she followed his glance with a start. Who was this man that Andrew McBain was afraid of? He came riding in from the desert, a young man, burly and masterful, mounted on a buckskin horse and with a pistol slung low on his leg. McBain turned white, his stern lips drew tighter and he stood where he had stopped in his stride like a wolf that has seen a fierce dog; ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... the necessity of sternness from her previous experience with Princess Gertrude, for that lady, my mother, a fair, small, slim woman, who preserved her girlishness of appearance till the approach of middle age, was of a strong and masterful temper. Only Krak and Hammerfeldt had any power over her; Krak's seemed the result of ancient domination, the Prince's was won by a suave and coaxing deference that changed once a year or thereabouts ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... You're E flat—just as I thought, just as I hoped. You fit in exactly. It seems too good to be true!" His voice began to boom again, as it always did when he was moved. He was striding about, very alert, very masterful, pushing the furniture out of his way, his eyes more luminous than ever. "It's magnificent." He stopped abruptly and looked at the secretary with a gaze so enveloping that Spinrobin for an instant lost his bearings altogether. "It means, my dear Spinrobin," he said slowly, ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... these helpers was one who, from the first, had given his whole and undivided attention to the work in hand. After all is said and done Sir Clements Markham conceived the idea of this Antarctic Expedition, and it was his masterful personality which swept aside all ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... soul, a most serious charge, which, if sustained, would have thrown her into the clutches of the Inquisition. In two days she wrote a brilliant defense completely exonerating herself and exposing the spitefulness of the attack, a masterful production by reason of its vigorous dialectics, incisive satire, and noble enthusiasm for the cause of religion. Together with some few of her sonnets, this is all that has come down to us of her writings. She opened her vindication with ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... doubtful how far the children believed his stories; probably, not having acquired the habit of examining evidence, they were content to accept ideas that threw a pleasant glamour on life. But the coming of Jimmy Simpson altered this agreeable condition of mind. Jimmy was one of those masterful stupid boys who excel at games and physical contests, and triumph over intellectual problems by sheer braggart ignorance. From the first he regarded George with contempt, and when he heard him telling his stories he did not ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... said as I'd no relatives must tell the truth now, as I 'ave," said she rather incoherently, "for my sister, Tilly Junk, worked for someone in that there place for years. But we never got on well, she being upsettin' and masterful, so arsk her to my weddin' I didn't, and denied relatives existing, which they do, she bein' alive ten years ago ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... analysing understanding, that bustling and self-conscious person, who plays only on the surface of things and separates their elements from one another instead of penetrating to their centre; who is incapable of seeing the whole into which the various elements have combined—is too masterful for the poetry. It is not, then, imaginative, but intellectual pleasure which, as we ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... half-amused expression. I was so startled by the unexpected appearance of this remarkable figure that I had not, until now, noticed that a large lion had followed him into the room and was lying quietly at his feet. I was not afraid; indeed, the king of beasts seemed but a part of the man's masterful presence. I do not think I would have seen the animal but that his enormous body was lying directly before my eyes on the floor. My uncle had been sitting with his head resting upon his hand at the table. Suddenly he rose and a strange, guttural sound—it may have been a word ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... eyes lit upon that wondrous phrase, "the lord of the harvest." It caught fire in my heart at once. "Oh! there is a Lord of the harvest," I said to myself. I had been forgetting that. He is a Lord, a masterful one. He has the whole campaign mapped out, and each one's part in helping mapped out too. And I let the responsibility of the campaign lie over where it belonged. When night time came I went to bed to sleep. My pillow was this, "There is a Lord ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... in defending the right of her infant grandson, Otto III., to the German crown against the pretensions of Henry the Quarrelsome, duke of Bavaria. In June 984 the infant king was handed over by Henry to the care of the two empresses; but the masterful will of Theophano soon obtained the upper hand, and until the death of the Greek empress, on the 15th of June 991, Adelaide had no voice in German affairs. She now assumed the regency, in concert with Bishop Willigis and a council ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... quitted the house than M. Gandrin opened a door at the side of his office, and a large portly man strode into the room,—stride it was rather than step,—firm, self-assured, arrogant, masterful. ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... celebrated associates, Henry C. Frick and Charles M. Schwab, were younger men. Frick was cold and masterful, as hard, unyielding, and effective as the steel that formed the staple of his existence. Schwab was enthusiastic, warm-hearted, and happy-go-lucky; a man who ruled his employees and obtained his results by appealing to their sympathies. The men of the steel yards ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... were a delight to her. In their small rumpled pajamas they came into her room every morning, dewy from sleep, full of delicious plans for the day. Jim was a masterful baby whose continually jerking head was sure to bump his mother if she attempted too much hugging, but dark-eyed, grave little Derry was "cuddly"; he would rest his shining head contentedly for ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... constitutional struggle—party government had to be carried on by methods which involved various degrees of jobbery and bribery. The disease was certainly not peculiar to Walpole's age; though perhaps the symptoms were more obvious and avowed more bluntly than usual. As Walpole's masterful ways drove his old allies into opposition, they denounced the system and himself; but unfortunately although they claimed to be patriots and patterns of political virtue, they were made pretty much of the same materials as the arch-corrupter. When the 'moneyed men,' upon whom he had relied, ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... however, he displayed himself a masterful worker. I have never seen a better. He preferred to superintend, of course, to get down into the pit or up on the wall, and measure and direct. At the same time, when necessary to expedite a difficult task, he ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... Lord Baron's ears he would cut the tongue from out thy head and my head from off my shoulders for it. Dost thou think I am going to meddle in such a matter as this? Listen! these proud Baron folk, with their masterful ways, drive our sort hither and thither; they beat us, they drive us, they kill us as they choose. Our lives are not as much to them as one of my black swine. Why should I trouble my head if they choose to lop and trim one another? The fewer there are of them ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... a prosperous one for Arlt, as well. Upon several occasions, he had met with marked favor, and the little touch of success had reacted upon his personality, rendering him more at ease, more masterful with his audience. To be popular, art must be modest; but woe betide it, if it be in the least deprecating! However, Arlt was learning to face his public with a fairly good grace, and his public showed itself willing to smile back at him in ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... exhilaration of gallantry and motion. Manuel's first glance was at Pauline, his second at her companion; there was a shadow upon the face of each, which seemed instantly to fall upon his own as he claimed his wife with a masterful satisfaction as novel as becoming, and which prompted her to whisper, "You enact your role to the life, and shall enjoy a foretaste of your reward at once. I want excitement; let us show these graceless, frozen people the true art of dancing, ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... fever, and auto-intoxication, which have no dominating local disturbances to act as policemen to put the individual to bed and to make him refuse food that he may be in the most favorable position to combat the oncoming disease, in such cases in which these masterful and beneficent local influences are absent we postulate that headache has been evolved ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... door on 'em. 'The soul behind the wood and wire,' she murmurs. I looked closer then and what do you reckon it was? Just as true as I set here, it was Wilbur, leaning forward all negligent and patronizing on a twelve-hundred-dollar grand piano, his hair well forward and his eyes masterful, like that there noble instrument was his bond slave. But wait! And underneath he'd writ a bar of music with notes running up and down, and signed his name to it—not plain, mind you, though he can write ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... fortnight after these events, that a mounted gentleman rang at the wicket gate of the chateau de Saint-Geran, at the gates of Moulins. It was late, and the servants were in no hurry to open. The stranger again pulled the bell in a masterful manner, and at length perceived a man running from the bottom of the avenue. The servant peered through the wicket, and making out in the twilight a very ill-appointed traveller, with a crushed hat, dusty clothes, and no ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE COUNTESS DE SAINT-GERAN—1639 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... walked with her, written to her, and—no doubt—flirted with her. Doris, as she listened to her, disliked her heartily, and at the same time could not help being thrilled by so much knowledge, so much contact with history in the making, and by such a masterful way, in a woman, with the great ones of the earth. "What a worm she must think me!" thought Doris—"what a worm she does think me—and the ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... masterful manner, were assumed. And in the matter of his related adventures the girl was confident that they were mere repetitions ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... have hated him. There is a kind of condescension from man to woman, in which the man says, 'My good girl, not for me—but do take care of yourself,' which a woman of the least pride finds to be of all modes of treatment the most shameful and the most humiliating. The masterful overtures of such a lover as Dunborough, who would take all by storm, are still natural, though they lack respect; a woman would be courted, and sometimes would be courted in the old rough fashion. But, for the ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... herself was charming, debonnaire, masterful. She had smiled her way into power, and she smiled even in the face of death. "She felt it a duty to maintain to the end the pose of elegance which she had established for herself," say her French critics. "For the last time she applied the touch of rouge to her cheeks, by which she had hidden, ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... Empress died. Death must have been more or less a relief to this colourless personage, who had been entirely superseded on a stage on which by rights she should have played the leading part, and who had been terrorized during her last years by her more masterful colleague. ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... Monsieur Carre, is it not? And what may Monsieur Carre want here?" His tone was somewhat masterful, if not insolent. I felt an inclination to resent it, but bethought me in time that such could be no help to my plans, and that, moreover, nothing was to be gained ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... clean it out, as soon as I get the other things goin', or the dreen will be stopped up." Mrs. White's English was not irreproachable, but she was masterful. ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... wilful, calmly hectoring, winning as the wiles of a child; a voice of husky sweetness, like a fog-bound clarion at times; a learning which, if it embraced nothing wholly, had squeezed some spot of vital juice out of well-nigh everything; wise, loquacious, masterful, bon-vivant; the most perfect talker of his day in England; half parson and half journalist; loyal to the bone; courageous to the bone; not an originating man, but original; a receiver, and, through his own personality, a transmitter of great thoughts to the masses; ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... he'd be masterful, and order me about," she thought, still rather regretting the "blighted being" ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... cannot stir in the first instance, without Reason calling upon it to do so. In this case the torpor of the will deprecated above (n. 7) is not to be feared, because Reason is so vigorous and so masterful as to be adequate to range everywhere and meet all emergencies without the goad of Passion. This state is called by divines the state of integrity. In it Adam was before he sinned. It was lost at the Fall, and has not been restored by the Redemption. It is not a thing in any way due to ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... interrupted Steinmetz at this moment, breaking into the conversation in his masterful way and enabling Etta to get away. Catrina, at the other end of the room, was listening, hard-eyed, breathless. It was the sight of Catrina's face that made Steinmetz go forward. He had not been looking at Catrina, but at Etta, ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... fellow rode in his usual silence. Long since had Norman of Torn usurped by the force of his strong character and masterful ways, the position of authority in the castle of Torn. The old man simply rode and fought with the others when it pleased him; and he had come on this trip because he felt that there was that impending for which he had ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... seemed as if half the population of Scarhaven had gathered there. Men, women and children were swarming about the door in the curtain wall, all manifesting an eager desire to pass through. But the door was strictly guarded. Chatfield, armed with a new oak cudgel stood there, masterful and lowering; behind him were several estate labourers, all keeping the people back. And within the door stood Marston Greyle, evidently considerably restless and perturbed, and every now and then looking out on the mob which the fast-spreading rumour had called together. In one of these inspections ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... some dogs rush out at me, and a woman's voice calls them back; Agelan roars a welcome—he always shouts, and likes to put on masterful airs; for in years gone by he was a very unpleasant customer, until the man-of-war—but that is all ancient history, and now his bark is much worse than his bite. I have the honour of being in his good books, thanks to certain medical services I was able to render him; he has an ugly cough, ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... self-respect. The dark eyes above the high cheekbones were glowing clearly, as they stared in level interrogation on the prisoner. The features, coarse, yet of a pleasing harmoniousness, were set in lines of a strength that was at once calm and masterful. Whatever might be the blackness hidden in his heart, the half-breed's outer seeming was one to command respect... In quick appreciation of the truth, Donald was constrained to admit that his own ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... mould of the man. St. Gaudens's Farragut has the bearing of a seaman, balanced on his two legs, in a posture easy, yet strong. He is rough and bluff with the courage and simplicity of a commander; his eye is accustomed to deal with horizons, while the features are clean-cut and masterful. The inscription is happy: 'That the memory of a daring and sagacious commander and gentle great-souled man, whose life from childhood was given to his country, but who served her supremely in the war for ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... Macbeth. When I first saw him emerge with dishevelled hair and bloody hands from the apartment of the murdered king, I was, I confess, in mortal dread of the darkness. I have heard another since of even greater repute in that masterful impersonation, but with me to the last, John McCullough will remain the veritable Macbeth. His are ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... succeeded. The result is that to the frontier the American intellect owes its striking characteristics. That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy;[37:1] that dominant individualism, working for good and for evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom—these are traits of the frontier, or traits called ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... toward the dark doorway. She could see how the logs of the cabin had moved awry and what a big, dilapidated hovel it was. As she looked in, Colter loomed over her—placed a familiar and somehow masterful hand upon her. Ellen let it rest on her shoulder a moment. Must she forever be repulsing these rude men among whom her lot was cast? Did Colter mean what Daggs had always meant? Ellen felt herself weary, weak in body, and her spent spirit had not rallied. Yet, whatever ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... prison after pardon has reached him, because he is conscious that the pardon is undeserved. And it may be that there was still left within her bosom some remnant of that feeling of rebellion which his masterful spirit had ever produced in her. He was so imperious in his tranquillity, he argued his question of love with such a manifest preponderance of right on his side, that she had always felt that to yield to him would be to confess ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... plastered lock of black hair, seemed even greater than before. His black beard poured forward in a more impressive cascade, and his clear grey eyes, with their insolent and sardonic eyelids, were even more masterful than ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... she smiled at him now, then, realising, retreated, shrinking from him, her face averted. Man or woman had found in Leicester the delicate and intrepid gamester, exquisite in the choice of detail, masterful in the breadth of method. And now, as though his whole future depended on this interview, he brought to bear a life-long skill to influence her. He had determined to set the Queen against her. He did not know—not even he—that she had saved ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... 1: Friedrich Maximilian Klinger (1752-1831) was a fellow-townsman and friend of Goethe. His Sturm und Drang, which was at first named Wirrwarr, came out in 1776. The scene is 'America.' The speakers are Wild, a lusty and masterful man of action; Blasius, a blas worldling; and La Feu, a sentimental dreamer. They propose to try their fortunes in ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... stern voice if Mrs. Whyland was at home. The maid dropped the tray into the folds of her black dress; she seemed habituated enough to the sudden appearance of the cardless. She looked up respectfully, admiringly—she had opened the door for a good many gentlemen, but seldom for so magnificent and masterful a creature as Abner—and said yes. But alas for the credit of her mistress and of her mistress' household: here was a lordly person who had arrived with the open expectation of meeting a "man" ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... was said to be king of the twin isles; so I suppose he found means to oust his rival, and resume his sovereignty; though, how an American negro, as Sam undoubtedly was, ever managed to gain such a position, remains to me an unfathomable mystery. Certainly he did not reveal any such masterful attributes as one would have expected in him, while he served as harpooner on ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... they possess, of a number of the choicest of these old lays that turn essentially upon the strength or the weakness, the constancy or the inconstancy, the rapture or the sorrow of earthly love. Love in the ballads is nearly always masterful, imperious, exacting; nearly always its reward is death and dule, and not life and happiness. But as it spurns all obstacles, it meets its fate unflinchingly. No sacrifices are too great, no penance too dire, no shame or sin too black to turn aside for an instant the rush of this impetuous ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... she went on, "has never believed it, and that's her ladyship. I've heard strange talk from the people who've come under your masterful ways. You're a harder man than the Everard Dominey I remember. What if ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and the poet of perception come forward with heartiest approval and it is the supplication of the poet and the artist which the redman needs most of all. Science looks upon him as a phenomenon; esthetics looks upon him as a giant of masterful expression in our midst. The redman is poet and artist of the very first order among the geniuses of time. We have nothing more native at our disposal than the beautiful creations of this people. It is singular ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... Fred Ramer, self-willed, imperious, extravagant in his habits, greedy and unscrupulous; but he was handsome and masterful, with a compelling magnetism that made us admire him and bound us to him. He had never known what it meant to have a single wish denied him. And with his make-up, he would stop at nothing to have his own way, until his wilful ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... greatly resembled the portraits of the Empress Catherine of Russia, had, like her, a masculine character, great capability, and all the qualities necessary to control a vast empire. She also governed her husband as she did her states; she was a masterful woman, and when she saw the letter in my hands, addressed to the landgrave, she took it without further ado, as if it had been addressed her. She then told me quite frankly, that it had been on her advice that her husband had left on ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... to some new achievement. To him must be ascribed the monstrous progeny of writers on the detection of crime—"quorum pars parva fui!" Each may find some little development of his own, but his main art must trace back to those admirable stories of Monsieur Dupin, so wonderful in their masterful force, their reticence, their quick dramatic point. After all, mental acuteness is the one quality which can be ascribed to the ideal detective, and when that has once been admirably done, succeeding writers must necessarily be content for all ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... slender and beautiful, and when, as the Colonel presented us, she extended her fingers, I was not surprised to see Harley stoop and kiss them in Continental fashion; for this Madame evidently expected. I followed suit; but truth to tell, after that first glance at the masterful figure in the invalid chair I had had no eyes for Madame de Staemer, being fully employed in gazing at someone who ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... in his replies. Moreover, while by his manner he had pedestaled and prayed to her as to a goddess, when they were alone and before her mother came, Dorothy now observed that Richard carried himself in a manner easy and masterful, and as one who knows much in the presence of ones who know little. This air of the ineffably invincible made Dorothy forget the adoration which had aforetime glowed in his eyes, and she longed ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... Fillmore Flagg at the close of his oration. George Gerrish arose and paid a glowing tribute to the wisdom and eloquence of the orator; after which, grasping him by both hands, he said, "Fillmore, I am proud of you! Solaris is more than proud of the masterful way in which you have treated the entire subject! Your presentation of the theme, seemed to me to be so perfect, so exhaustive and eloquent, that in the future I may not expect to again ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... Lieutenant Ives Explores to Fortification Rock—By Trail to Diamond Creek, Havasupai Canyon, and the Moki Towns—Macomb Fails in an Attempt to Reach the Mouth of Grand River—James White's Masterful Fabrication ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... extraordinary as showing the masterful manner in which the poor German people are led astray that most of the men making these declarations for annexation are able at the same time to cry that Germany is fighting a defensive war and is prevented from making peace only by ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... was a bright-eyed, handsome little fellow, at once winning and masterful in manner. His favorite pastime was playing war. The boys he played with always made him chief and were as devoted to him as ever Indians ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... her obstinate championship as much as ever. At least she would always remain his good friend, helping him as far as lay in her power. She had deliberately selected her life partner and she would keep her part of the contract. He filled his to the letter, or as far as in him lay. If he were not the masterful superman of her dreams, at least he was quite obstinate enough to have his own way in many things, in spite of his unswerving devotion to her charming self. He was whitely angry when she received Bob Cheever one afternoon when ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... masterful as the human intellect is in guiding and controlling the ordinary forces of nature, how impotent and insignificant it appears in the presence of such a transcendent disaster! It is well nigh inconceivable that a great section throbbing with populous towns, and ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... of Cornbridge Manor House had not dared to open her lips. But that was her ladyship's way, and "Don't talk to me!" was a stock expression of hers. Few people were permitted to talk in her ladyship's presence. In Cornbridge they spoke of her with bated breath as a "rare masterful woman," and they had ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... of Henry VIII.'s reign can indeed only be solved by realising the misrule of the preceding century, the failure of parliamentary government, and the strength of the popular demand for a firm and masterful hand. It is a modern myth that Englishmen have always been consumed with enthusiasm for parliamentary government and with a thirst for a parliamentary vote. The interpretation of history, like that of the Scriptures, varies from age to age; and present political theories colour our views ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... said the smuggler, laughing. "Strong as he is, and masterful, he will never succeed, ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... the boy and thrust out a masterful jaw. There was a ring of sincerity no one could mistake when he ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... adventures, religious, picaresque, and amatory, are embroiled and disembroiled with very fair skill in character and fairer still in narrative. Nor is the Sancho-Partridge of the piece, Jerry Tugwell, a cobbler (who thinks, though he is very fond of his somewhat masterful wife, that a little absence from her would not be unrefreshing), by any means a failure. Both Scott and Dickens evidently knew Graves well,[11] and knowledge of him might ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... building. From day to day he had watched, with his hand on the key-board, the development and trend of events. They had resulted as he had planned, and he had become the most conspicuous, the best loved, and the most masterful of living man in the control of the future. In his death the Union lost its most sagacious and best trusted leader, and, the South its ablest, truest, and ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... "Look you, adorable and all-masterful Sesphra, I have followed noble loves. I aspired to the Unattainable Princess, and thereafter to the unattainable Queen of a race that is more fine and potent than our race, and afterward I would have no less a love than ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... the heads of the crowd toward the newcomers, and there he beheld Jotham and a retinue of nobles, laughing heartily, no doubt, at his masterful effort. ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... this way what had once been a race would tend to assume the character of a flight and a pursuit. The king would be given a start; he ran and his competitors ran after him, and if he were overtaken he had to yield the crown and perhaps his life to the lightest of foot among them. In time a man of masterful character might succeed in seating himself permanently on the throne and reducing the annual race or flight to the empty form which it seems always to have been within historical times. The rite was sometimes interpreted as a commemoration of the expulsion ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... which made one shiver and creep. Then I remembered distinctly all about it. That long-forgotten pamphlet came back with startling vividness to my mind. I had been a mere lad then, and Moreau was, I suppose, about fifty,—a prominent and masterful physiologist, well-known in scientific circles for his extraordinary imagination and his ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... "Listen!" Code's sharp, masterful tone put a sudden end to her sobbing. "Was there anything in the house he valued much?" Suddenly she drew ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... rather small but very black and regular hand, the result being serried rows marching like a regiment down the page, the hand of the man who is accustomed to do everything in an orderly and masterful way, and who can no more allow his words to straggle over a sheet of paper than he can permit his books to stand upside down upon the shelf, or the affairs of his every-day life to fall into confusion. Ferry wrote ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... about with Royal Lee. He is so efficient. Crowds seem to fall back for him. He has the attractive, masterful personality that everybody recognizes. I feel a reflected glory from his presence. We have grown to be great friends in an amazingly short time. Our music, our appreciation of each other's ability, has strengthened the bond between us. Mrs. Lee sends me many ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... hand still against my breast, I turned to feel my way through the darkness which now encompassed me. As I did this my other hand was caught by someone in a warm, eager clasp, and I was guided along with an infinitely tender yet masterful touch which I had no hesitation in obeying. Step by step I moved with a strange sense of happy reliance on my unseen companion—darkness or distance had no terrors for me. And as I Went onward with my hand held firmly in that close yet gentle grasp, my thoughts became ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... you will never get me to budge from that. But when you call me masterful, it seems to me you blame the blameless, as the poet says; for I am myself being dragged along by reason, until you bring up some other reason to release me from durance. And here is reason about to talk more masterfully still, you will see; but I suppose you will ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... put every possible obstacle in the way of the proposed union, but the masterful soldier had his way; and one August day in 1781 Captain Napier led his tarnished but loved and loving bride to the altar. For many years poverty was their lot; but they laughed at their empty purse and found their reward in mutual devotion ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall |
