"Masterpiece" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... language of pure genius and of discerning simplicity. It is the most simple picture of a refined and ingenious idea; a masterpiece of art in him in whom it is ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... The great masterpiece of the Mound Builders is known as Fort Ancient. Its colossal size, ingenuity in design and perfection in construction give it first rack in interest among all prehistoric fortifications, and it represents the ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... France? Did it dare pass over without protest the establishment of monarchy on American soil by foreign arms? Between these horns of a dilemma, the Government maintained its precarious position during another year. Seward's correspondence with Paris was a masterpiece of evasion. He neither protested against the intervention of Napoleon nor acknowledged the authority of Maximilian. Apparently, both he and Lincoln were divided between fear of a French alliance with the Confederacy and ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... that when I came upon some reference to Holman Hunt and his great masterpiece, my mind glanced over to the cynical philosopher and his lantern. The more I ponder over that lantern the more puzzled I become as to its real significance. The popular notion is that it is meant to show how difficult it was in his day to find an honest man. But popular conceptions are sometimes ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... mind, practical rather than speculative, political rather than theological, established the Civitas Dei where once stood the Civitas Roma. This ecclesiastical masterpiece of human wisdom "may still exist in undiminished vigor," says Macaulay, "when some traveler from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's." Truly the Church of Rome has left upon Christianity ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... liberty of Greece was not drawn from the ignorant historian of her republics; [Note: It is really a disgrace to the University, that any of its colleges should accept as a reference, or even tolerate as an author, the presumptuous bigot who has bequeathed to us, in his History of Greece, the masterpiece of a declaimer without energy, and of a pedant without learning.] nor did he find in the contemplative mildness and gentle philosophy of the ancients, nothing but a sanction for modern bigotry ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... as ideal or as abstract as you please, you will be none the less veracious; but if you be weak, you run the risk of being tedious and inexpressive; and if you be very strong and honest, you may chance upon a masterpiece. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the leader of the orchestra climbed into his chair, and the orchestra began to play, and the curtain went up again, on the second act of the masterpiece in hexameters. The new scenery, which Edward Henry had with extraordinary courage insisted on Saracen Givington substituting for the original incomprehensibilities displayed at the Azure Society's performance, rather pleased him. Its colouring was agreeable, and it did resemble something definite. ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... began to stretch out the banner by separating with his fingers the cords of the trellis, "the masterpiece of a woman who embroidered in the olden time was always in this difficult work. To become a member of the Corporation she had to make, as it is written in the statutes, a figure by itself in shaded gold, a sixth part as tall as if life-size. ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... he was completely free. He did not pose to posterity. Of his books he thought much—each one was a masterpiece, more glorious than the last; but he never imagined that people would be in the least interested in his doings, and he did not care about their opinion of him. Nevertheless there was occasionally a gleam of joy, when some one unexpectedly showed a spontaneous admiration ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... masterpiece was reverently deliberate. At the American House I actually lingered over the fried steak and dallied long with the not impossible mince pie. Thus fortified, I followed Main Street to the Museum—one of those depressingly correct new-Greek buildings with ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... excuse for life and a hope for humanity. Applying this test to the club, this work, which might be said to represent all that the Bodleian stood for, was in itself sufficient to justify the club's existence. If the Bodleian had done nothing else, if it should do nothing more, it had produced a masterpiece. ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... of King David and Fair Bethseba is commonly regarded as Peele's masterpiece. And here, again, we breathe the genuine air of nature and simplicity. The piece is all in blank-verse, which, though wanting in variety, is replete with melody; and it has passages of tenderness and pathos such as to invest it with an almost sacred charm. There is perhaps a somewhat too literal ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... devotedly as if the whole world could see and praise them, as indeed has since been done. His pictures in this convent are so numerous that we must not describe them, but will say that the Crucifixion in the chapter-room is usually called his masterpiece. It is nearly twenty-five feet square, and, besides the usual figures in this subject, the Saviour and the thieves, with the executioners, there are holy women, the founders of various orders, the patrons of the convent, and companies of saints. In the frame there are ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... attained almost instant popularity. His "Sportsman's Sketches" and his "Nest of Gentlefolk" made him not only famous but universally popular. In 1862 the publication of his masterpiece "Fathers and Children" dealt his reputation a blow. The revolutionary elements in Russia regarded his hero, Bazarov, as a calumny and a libel; whereas the reactionary elements in Russia looked upon "Fathers and Children" as a glorification of Nihilism. ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... silken cheek—the ivory temple—the eye of inspiration—the bereaved mourner thought he could trace, some faint resemblance to the lost Acme. Henceforward, it was his greatest pleasure, to remain with eyes fixed on that masterpiece ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... Montez explained, looking at the young engineers for an instant. "The report is written in English, as I desired it written so. But I will read the most interesting parts in Spanish to you, chiquita. You will observe that this report is a masterpiece of ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock
... abstractions, persuades himself that he will be able to construct by pure reasoning the history of nature and that of the human race. A geometrician, who no longer saw in the world anything but theorems and demonstrations, asked, after the representation of a dramatic masterpiece, "And what does that prove?" A physiologist absorbed in the study of sensible phenomena says: "Where is that soul they talk of? I have never seen it." These are phenomena of the same order. This infirmity of the mind, which leads certain savants to think that the ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... inflaming impressionable minds. The last instance is perhaps the worst. I can imagine no more wicked desecration than that the sacrilegious hand of the Anarchist should be laid upon the Indian song of songs, and that a masterpiece of transcendental philosophy and religious ecstasy should be perverted to the base ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... a lot of Mr. Crook's work in my day, sir," answered the clerk, "but nothing better than this. It's a masterpiece, Crook, that's what ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... greatest of living poets. The Essay on Criticism, written, it appears, in 1709, was published two years later, and received the highest honour a poem could then have. It was praised by Addison in the Spectator as 'a very fine poem,' and 'a masterpiece in its kind.' The 'kind,' suggested by the Ars Poetica of Horace, and the Art Poetique of Boileau—translated with Dryden's help by Sir William Soame—suited the current taste for criticism and argument in rhyme, which had led Roscommon to write an Essay on Translated Verse, ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... and looked sadly at the doomed masterpiece. The notion of James having carried it across London that night rather appealed to his fancy. There was certainly a flavor about such a highhanded proceeding. "However did you get it ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... down beside her] Rubbish! you shall marry an ambassador. You shall marry the Governor-General of India or the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, or somebody who wants a deputy-queen. I'm not going to have my masterpiece thrown ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... Marcsa looking like a monkey. If he had the doctor in his clutches now! The fakir had photographed him, not once, but a dozen times, from all sides, after each butchery, as though he had accomplished a miracle, had turned out a wonderful masterpiece. And here Julia, even Julia, his playmate, his neighbor, had ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... appreciation in the following truly American fashion: "The first Darwinian, Wallace, did not leave a leg for anti-Darwinism to stand on when he had got through his first Lowell Lecture last evening. It was a masterpiece of condensed statement—as clear and simple as compact—a most beautiful specimen of scientific work. Dr. Wallace, though not an orator, is likely to become a favourite as a lecturer, his manner is so ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... of the Nymph over the bed. Given away with the Easter number of Photo Bits: Splendid masterpiece in art colours. Tea before you put milk in. Not unlike her with her hair down: slimmer. Three and six I gave for the frame. She said it would look nice over the bed. Naked nymphs: Greece: and for instance all the ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... READER.—What this book wants is not a simple Preface but an apology, and a very brilliant and convincing one at that. Recognising this fully, and feeling quite incompetent to write such a masterpiece, I have asked several literary friends to write one for me, but they have kindly but firmly declined, stating that it is impossible satisfactorily to apologise for my liberties with Lindley Murray ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... one piece of sculpture in marble, a guardian angel for the Convent at Granada, but this no longer exists. Some of his architectural drawings are preserved in the Louvre. Ford says that his St. Francesco in Toledo is "a masterpiece ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... and sculpture achieved their highest perfection in Mysore under the patronage of Hindu kings from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries. The temple at Belur, an eleventh-century masterpiece completed during the reign of King Vishnuvardhana, is unsurpassed in the world for its delicacy of detail and ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... the most sensitive portions of the human body, one at a time or many at once. The famous Virgin, whose embrace drove a hundred knives into the body of the poor wretch she took in her arms, was an angel of mercy compared to this masterpiece of ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... the Northallerton postmark. Really, Smith, considering that you have now breathed the same air as myself for eight long years, I did not expect to be called on for an explanation. Besides, you have destroyed a masterpiece." ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... is a novel of greatness; it is so far Mr. Allen's masterpiece; a work of beauty and finished art. There can be no question of its supreme place in our literature; there can be no doubt of its wide acceptance and acceptability. More than any of his books it is destined to an enviable popularity. It does not take extraordinary ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... perhaps, for this reason that Lipsius thinks this very elegant tract was written at the same time with the Manners of the Germans, in the beginning of the emperor Trajan. The question is not very material, since conjecture alone must decide it. The piece itself is admitted to be a masterpiece in the kind. Tacitus was son- in-law to Agricola; and while filial piety breathes through his work, he never departs from the integrity of his own character. He has left an historical monument highly interesting to every Briton, who wishes to know the manners of his ancestors, and the spirit ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... the human frame, and attempted to fathom the very process by which Nature assimilates all her precious influences from earth and air, and from the spiritual world, to create and foster man, her masterpiece. The latter pursuit, however, Aylmer had long laid aside in unwilling recognition of the truth—against which all seekers sooner or later stumble—that our great creative Mother, while she amuses ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... did not look as classic under the laurel wreath as had his uncle's, nor had his work the blinding splendor nor the fineness of texture of his great model. But then, an imitation never has. It was a marble masterpiece, done in plaster! But what a clever reproduction it was! And how, by sheer audacity, it compelled recognition and homage, and at last even adulation in Europe!—and what a clever stroke it was, for this heavy, unsympathetic man to bring up ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... preached, to the zeal of that emperor and of Ebbo, archbishop of Rheims, without taking the least notice of himself or his own labors. The life of St. Willehad, first bishop of Bremen, who died in 789 or 791, compiled by St. Anscharius, is a judicious and elegant work, and the preface a masterpiece for that age. It is abridged and altered by Surius, but published entire at Cologne, in 1642; and more correctly by Mabillon; and again by Fabricius, among the ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... praiseworthy in another renders him the mark of his antipathy. Adams now began to fumble in his pockets, and soon cried out, "O la! I have it not about me." Upon this, the gentleman asking him what he was searching for, he said he searched after a sermon, which he thought his masterpiece, against vanity. "Fie upon it, fie upon it!" cries he, "why do I ever leave that sermon out of my pocket? I wish it was within five miles; I would willingly fetch it, to read it you." The gentleman answered that there was no ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... before all the world, and have the start of so many others as eager as yourself, at least keeps you in a more unbearable suspense before the curtain rises, if it does not enhance the delight with which you follow the performance and see the actor 'bend up each corporal agent' to realise a masterpiece of a few hours' duration. With a player so variable as Salvini, who trusts to the feelings of the moment for so much detail, and who, night after night, does the same thing differently but always well, it can never be safe to pass judgment after a single hearing. And this is more particularly true ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... indelicate that she turned me out of the place while Auguste re-arranged the window after his own idiotic fashion. Such brutes will never understand the language of a red splotch by the side of a grey one. Ah, well! that was my masterpiece. I have never done ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... third day they sent for the two young men and their work. Labakan came first and spread out his kaftan before the eyes of the astonished king. 'See, father,' he said; 'see, my honoured mother, if this is not a masterpiece of work. I'll bet the court ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... hereditary animosity, and desirous further to flatter Henry's vanity, had made him an offer, (an offer in which Francis was afterwards obliged to concur,) that he should be entirely arbiter in any dispute or difference that might arise between the monarchs. But the masterpiece of Charles's politics was the securing of Wolsey in his interests, by very important services, and still higher promises. He renewed assurances of assisting him in obtaining the papacy; and he put him in present possession of the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... the prototypes of the modern novel, from "Don Quixote" to "Tom Jones" and "Joseph Andrews," were little more than narratives of adventures on the road. "Joseph Andrews" in particular—perhaps Fielding's masterpiece—is simply the story of a journey from London to a place in the country some hundred and fifty miles distant. In these books all the adventures are associated with inns and the various characters, ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... Artevelde,—that brewer of Ghent who, for a brief hour, was King of Flanders. This wall-covering, of which there were no less than sixty panels, contained about fourteen hundred principal figures, and was held to be Van Huysum's masterpiece. The officer appointed to guard the burghers whom Charles V. determined to hang when he re-entered his native town, proposed, it is said, to Van Claes to let him escape if he would give him Van Huysum's great work; but the weaver had ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... Fortune Teller," a masterpiece that speaks in every tongue, to every age. Its keynote is simplicity. A gallant of Milan, clothed in buff-colored doublet slashed with brown velvet, a plumed cavalier hat set rakishly on his head, and a lace ruffle caught ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... favour and again permit them to be called Caesar's soldiers. Caesar, after having allowed himself to be sufficiently entreated, granted the permission; but the ringleaders in this mutiny had a third cut off from their triumphal presents. History knows no greater psychological masterpiece, and none ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... in Fauns, and that of Athens was his own masterpiece. Rome now contains about thirty of the same character. When the ditch of St. Angelo was cleansed under Urban VIII., the workmen found the sleeping Faun of the Barberini palace; but a leg, a thigh, and the right arm, had been broken from ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... Stepsons of Light, and other novels. "Gene" Rhodes had the "right tune." He achieved a style that can be called literary. The Hired Man on Horseback, by May D. Rhodes, is a biography of the writer. Perhaps "Paso Por Aqui" will endure as his masterpiece. Rhodes had an intense loyalty to his land and people; he was as gay, gallant, and witty as he was earnest. More than most Western writers, Rhodes was conscious of art. He had the common touch and also he was a writer for writing men. The elements of simplicity and the ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... taken a seaman twenty years to hit upon! I am not talking about the ship, ma'am. That part of your plan (if you'll allow me, as a seaman, to give an opinion) won't work at all. But the plan in general is a masterpiece." ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... Mozart, was not long in visiting Garcia after his arrival here. He introduced himself as the author of "Don Giovanni," and Garcia, clipping the old man in his arm, danced around the room like a child in glee, singing "Fin ch'han dal vino" the while. After that the inclusion of Mozart's masterpiece in Garcia's repertory was a matter of course, with only this embarrassment that there was no singer in the company capable of singing the music of Don Ottavio. This was overcome by Da Ponte going to his pupils for money enough to pay an extra singer ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... a pathetic story of a French sculptor, which illustrates the sacredness with which life's ideal should be cherished and guarded. He was a genius, and was at work on his masterpiece. But he was a poor man, and lived in a small garret, which was studio, workshop, and bedroom to him. He had his statue almost finished, in clay, when one night there came suddenly a great frost over the city. The sculptor lay on ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... going to paint her picture?" exclaimed Courtney. "By Jove! I congratulate you. It will be the masterpiece of the next salon" ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... so roused by a letter as I was by this one, and never did I promise myself more genuine pleasure in writing a reply. I determined that it should be a masterpiece of analysis and of calm yet forcible expression ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... intensely, almost painfully, alone. Alone in a vast moaning house that must be his only home until he could go back to the gay city with his masterpiece. What a masterpiece! As though with a surgeon's knife it would lay bare the hearts of men. No tricks ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... we are struck with the ingenuity and felicity of Hawthorne's analogies and correspondences; the idea appears to have made itself at home in them easily. Nothing could be better in this respect than The Snow-Image (a little masterpiece), or The Great Carbuncle, or Doctor Heidegger's Experiment, or Rappacini's Daughter. But in such things as The Birth-Mark and The Bosom-Serpent, we are struck with something stiff and mechanical, ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... picked out in black, and enamel eyes inserted in a mounting of bronze. The mummy is that of a thin elderly man, well preserved; the face was covered by a mask made of linen smeared with pitch, but when this was raised by means of a chisel, the fine kingly head was exposed to view. It was a masterpiece of the art of the embalmer, and the expression of the face was that of one who had only a few hours previously breathed his last. Death had slightly drawn the nostrils and contracted the lips, the pressure of the bandages had flattened the nose a little, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... before Humbert had completed the disguises to his satisfaction. His own was a masterpiece in its way. He assumed a grace and a lightness that might well become a minstrel of no ordinary degree. The character of his face was completely changed, and was reduced, by means of long flaxen curls and other artificial ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... strife. In this year, as he himself phrases it, he descended into hell; that is, he began those weary wanderings in exile which ended only with his life, and which stirred in him the deeps that found expression in his mighty poem, the Divina Commedia.[1] Throughout his masterpiece he speaks with eager respect of the old Roman writers, and of such Greeks as he knew—so we have admiration of the ancient intellect. He also speaks bitterly of certain popes, as well as of other more earthly tyrants—so we have the dawnings ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... foam—the marks of promised safety fading from sight, and with them the hope they nourished—the ledge which the sufferers gained with difficulty—on the one side, a raging sea, and on the other, a barrier that forbade retreat! Guy Mannering contains another masterpiece—the night attack of Portanferry, witnessed by Bertram. We feel as though we were that person—we see and hear all of which his eyes and ears had cognizance; and the impression is the more strong, because the writer has told only ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... I've left out the transforming thing," said Anne softly. "There'll be love there, Phil—faithful, tender love, such as I'll never find anywhere else in the world—love that's waiting for me. That makes my picture a masterpiece, doesn't it, even if the colors ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... tremulously, as he lifted it awkwardly to her eager hands, "ain't it splendid? I didn't know they were making them like this. I never saw such roses; why, they look alive and ready to smell; and ain't they pretty fixed this way under the brim?" She paused, turning the masterpiece slowly, like a connoisseur. "I bet I could have worn it when I was in Oregon. It would have been my style. Do you suppose"—she glanced at Banks timidly—"I'd dare to try it if my hair was done real nice, and I had ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... hearty respect. When we had surveyed everything within doors I was asked to look at the mostra—the sign that hung over the entrance; a sort of griffin in wrought iron, this, too, copied from an old masterpiece, and reminding one of the fine ironwork which adorns the streets of Siena. Don Pasquale could not be satisfied until I had privately assured him of my genuine admiration. Was it, he asked, at all like a ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... horn heard from behind the scenes, over an accompaniment of divided violas and 'cellos con sordini; the heart-shaking sadness and beauty of the succeeding passage for all the muted strings; the mysterious and solemn close: these are outstanding moments in a masterpiece of the first rank: a page which would honour any music-maker, living ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... me a masterpiece of military eloquence. While he lavished praises on his troops, he excited their emulation by hinting that the Russians were capable of disputing with them the first rank among the infantry of Europe, and he concluded his address by calling them ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... masterpiece, an Elephant; The only harmless great thing: Yet Nature hath given him no knee to bend: Himself he up-props, on himself relies; ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... of Reims did not escape so well as the Cathedral. St.-Nicaise, 'the jewel of Reims' and the masterpiece of a famous architect of the thirteenth century, Hues Libergiers, whose name is preserved in that of one of the chief streets of Reims, was pillaged and then pulled down, the materials and the site ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... for popular success rather than for scholarly reputation; has never been studied for grammar, for style, for its "beauties"; has since its genesis spawned into millions that no man can classify, and produced a hundred thousand pages of mediocrity for one masterpiece. All this (and in addition prejudices unexpressed and a residuum of hereditary bias) lies behind the failure of most professors of English to give the good modern novel its due. Their obstinacy is unfortunate; for, if they praised at all, they would not, like many hurried reviewers, ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... more refined and dramatically truthful than any of those before it. As the composer was now an old man nothing farther was expected from his pen. Nevertheless, in "Otello," he has given the world a masterpiece of a still higher order, the music throughout being subservient to the story, while the dramatic handling of the work is masterly in the extreme. For this he was in part indebted to his librettist, the distinguished poet and composer, Signor Arrigo Boito. ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... of Parliament, assumed the title by which it has ever since been known. The minister took great credit to himself for his share in this transaction, and the scheme was always called by his flatterers "the Earl of Oxford's masterpiece." ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... garb of the working man was true nobility. I did not need to ask if he was Anton Lang. I had seen his picture and had often been told that his face was the image of His Who died on the Cross. I expected much, but found infinitely more. I felt that life had been breathed into a Rubens masterpiece. No photograph can do him justice, for no lens can catch the wondrous light in his clear ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... set down as conceit, and later on had learnt to value as something innate in blood and education which was not conceit. He hated him because his gentlemanliness was so obvious that it showed up the flaws in other men, as the masterpiece upon the wall shows up the weaknesses of the surrounding pictures. But most of all he hated him because Jocelyn Gordon seemed to have something in common with the son of Sir John Meredith—a world above the ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... as a Pagan temple, a Christian church, and a Mohammedan mosque, it finally was made to serve as a Turkish powder-magazine, in a war with the Venetians, in 1687. During the progress of this contest a bomb fired the magazine, and more than half of this masterpiece of ancient art was shivered into fragments. The front is nearly perfect, and is the most prominent feature of the Acropolis at ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... attains a new sort of musical grandeur from its sharp, heavy, rectangular, rhythmically powerful melodic line. It voices through it a bold, naked, immense language. With Baudelaire, Berlioz could have said, "L'energie c'est le grace supreme." For the beauty of this his masterpiece lies in just the delineating power, the characteristic of this crude, vigorous, unadorned melody. Doubtless to those still baffled by its nudity, his music appears thin. But if it is at all thin, its thinness is that ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... like a dazzling yet regulated tumult, evolved in superb language whose apparent simplicity is only due to the complicated ingenuity of consummate skill. All is there, all except the accent which would have made this work a true masterpiece. Given the subject, the fire which should course through these magnificent phrases is absent, there lacks the cry of the love that faints, the gift of the superhuman ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... The importance of Lessing's masterpiece in comedy, "Minna von Barnhelm," is difficult to exaggerate. It was the beginning of German national drama; and by the patriotic interest of its historical background, by its sympathetic treatment of the German soldier and the German woman, and by its happy blending of the amusing and ...
— Minna von Barnhelm • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... of late come across a historical fiction, whether intended for boys or for men, which deserves to be so heartily and unreservedly praised as regards plot, incidents, and spirit as Dick o' the Fens. It is its author's masterpiece as yet."—Spectator. ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... the High Renaissance; from Giotto onwards all the painters had been preparing for that, Florence herself had been preparing for it. It makes no difference that for centuries it has been a shadow on the wall; it is still the most famous painting in the world because it is the masterpiece of Leonardo. There was a fate against the survival of his masterpieces, but he has survived them and they are remembered because of him. We accept him for himself, like the people of his own time, who, when he said he could perform impossibilities, believed him. To them he ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... the scene which he beheld was a masterpiece of human art. The proud city, ornamented with stately buildings, as became the capital of the world, showed a succession of glittering spires and orders of architecture, some of them chaste and simple, like those the capitals of which were borrowed from ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... talking about,—for he has tried all sorts of religions, pretty much. He tells us that the Roman Catholic Church is the one 'through which alone we can hope for heaven.' The other is by a worthy Episcopal rector, who appears to write as if he were in earnest, and he calls the Papacy the 'Devil's Masterpiece,' and talks about the 'Satanic scheme' of that very Church 'through which alone,' as Mr. Brownson tells us, 'we ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... sentences, could be surpassed by nothing but the exultation with which he fell back and eyed him when he had finished this brilliant display of eloquence and sagacity; his great blue waistcoat heaving with the throes of such a masterpiece, and his nose in a state of violent inflammation from the ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... deciding thereon, he wrote it clearly at the top of the first page, thus: "Nourhalma; A Love Legend of the Past," ... then turning to the end, he signed his own name with a bold flourish, thus attesting his indisputable right to the authorship of what was not only destined to be the most famous poetical masterpiece of the day, but was also to prove the most astonishing, complex, and humiliating problem ever suggested to his brain. Carefully numbering the pages, he folded them in a neat packet, which he tied strongly and sealed—then addressing it to ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... comedy who keeps talking about "le beau ciel d'Italie." Besides, he has fallen into the bad habit of uttering moral platitudes. He is always telling us that to be good is to be good, and that to be bad is to be wicked. At times he is almost edifying. Robert Elsmere is of course a masterpiece—a masterpiece of the "genre ennuyeux," the one form of literature that the English people seems thoroughly to enjoy. A thoughtful young friend of ours once told us that it reminded him of the sort of conversation ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... in the country," he continued. "It will be heard from twelve to twenty-five miles, according to the condition of the atmosphere. I want big things all round, and this is a masterpiece, I guess. Now, I'll let you hear it if you like. I didn't expect to use it until to-night at nine o'clock, when, also for the first time, I am to light the mills by electricity; a thing that's not been attempted yet in any saw-mill on the Continent. We're going ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the stars are glinting, Or the moonlight's shimmering gleam Paints the water's rippled surface With a coat of silvered sheen— Think you then that God, the Painter, Shows his masterpiece divine? That he will not hang another Of such beauty on ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... shouted Jean, with his broad, cheery grin. "By gar! tha' Jan hee's worth ten hunderd of any man's money for team-leadin'. Yes, sir; an' you can say I said so. I don't care where the nex' come from; tha' Jan, hee's masterpiece." ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... it raised with great frankness the issue of religious differences and alluded specially to the recent Papal decrees over which so much controversy had raged. The Bishop of Raphoe rose to reply and expounded, as an ex-professor of Canon Law, the true bearing of these documents. His speech was a masterpiece; its candour and its lucidity commended itself to all hearers, but most of all to the Ulstermen, who applauded at once Lord Oranmore's comment that the odium theologicum had been replaced by divina ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... often washed, had preserved its natural color. At one end of this room was a round iron stove, with a large pot for culinary purposes. On the wooden table, painted yellow, marbled with brown, stood a miniature house made of iron—a masterpiece of patience and skill, the work ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... botany, physiology, medicine, etc.—the more we are lost in admiration at the beautiful order we see displayed in the tiniest as well as in the vastest portions of the creation. And shall man alone, the masterpiece of God in this visible universe, be allowed to be disorderly, to be a failure in the noblest part of his being, to make himself like to the brute or to a demon of malice, to waste his choicest gifts in the indulgence of debasing pleasure? The Creator is bound ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... what you want to do. I think it was perfect good form in Laura to bolt from Lupton to the church door. It was almost a masterpiece in good form. It's the hardest thing in the world to act spontaneously on one's impulses—and it's the only really gentlemanly thing to do—provided ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... so fertile in literary resource or so catholic in their choice of subject that the reader is never sure, when he picks up their latest masterpiece, whether he is to have a comedy of manners, a proletarian tragedy, a tale of Court intrigue or a satire on the follies of the age. To the steady-going devotee of fiction—the reader on the Clapham omnibus—this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various
... his sling. Encomium, challenge, repartee,—all were quick and happy, and from time to time in soberer vein he passed over without shock into befitting dignity. I have sat at many a banquet, but for me that ruling of the feast by Winthrop is the masterpiece in that kind. He lived long after retiring from politics, the main stay of causes charitable, educational, and for civic betterment. My memory is enriched by the image ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... selecting from the Spectator those papers in which the refined taste of Addison, working on the more imaginative genius of Steele, has embodied that masterpiece of quiet thorough English humour which is exhibited in the portrait of Sir Roger de Coverley, is a most happy one,—so excellent indeed, and when done, it is so obviously well that it is done, that we can only wonder how it is, that, instead of having now to thank Messrs. Longman ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 53. Saturday, November 2, 1850 • Various
... release from imprisonment, sketched out to him and to a Commissioner of the Convention the details of the very plan of campaign which was to carry him victoriously from the Genoese Riviera into the heart of Austria.[35] While describing this masterpiece of strategy, says Volney, Buonaparte spoke as if inspired. We can fancy the wasted form dilating with a sense of power, the thin sallow cheeks aglow with enthusiasm, the hawk-like eyes flashing at the sight of the helpless Imperial quarry, as he ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... thus they found us; the two girls chatting over the perfection of the tombs of the constable and his wife; the soldier blind to the charms of his sister's companion, and wrapped in reverent contemplation of a wooden masterpiece. ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... us to withstand them. The difficulty disappears, however, when we understand that good and evil are but relative qualities. An illustration will make the point clear:—Let us suppose that an expert organ builder has constructed a wonderful organ, a masterpiece. Then he has followed his vocation in the proper manner, and is therefore to be commended for the good which he has done. But if he is not satisfied to leave well enough alone, if he refuses to give up his product to the musician who ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza, Leonardo never finished more than the model in clay, which was considered a masterpiece. Some years afterward (in 1499), when Milan was invaded by the French, it was used as a target by the Gascon bowmen, and completely destroyed. The profound anatomical studies which Leonardo made for this ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... bibliographical discussion of this point the reader is referred to the reprint of "The True Relation," by Charles Deane, Esq., Boston, 1864, the preface and notes to which are a masterpiece ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... or read, which could by any possibility be turned into material for the essay, until page after page was filled with her big straggling handwriting, and while her companions were still biting their pens in search of inspiration, she was confronted by the task of reducing her masterpiece by at least one-half of its length. And what a ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... you ever read the Highland Widow? I never had till yesterday: I am half inclined, bar a trip or two, to think it Scott's masterpiece; and it has the name of a failure! Strange ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in a mood of deep depression. The artistic temperament is peculiarly subject to these moods, but in Paul's case there was reason why he should take a gloomy view of things. His masterpiece, "The Shot Tower from Battersea Bridge," together with the companion picture, "Battersea Bridge from the Shot Tower," had been purchased by a dealer for seventeen and sixpence. His sepia monochrome, "Night," had ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... name has long been European, and other English writers have charmingly described the Feux Floraux of the olden time and the society of Lou Felibrige with its revival of Provencal literature. But forty years ago, and twenty years before his masterpiece had found a translator here, he was known and highly ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... and indebtedness and the like, are, when great work is concerned, questions for the study and the lecture-room, for the literary historian and the professional critic, rather than for the reader, however intelligent and alert, who wishes to enjoy a masterpiece, and is content simply to enjoy it. It does not really matter how close to anything else something which possesses independent goodness is; the very utmost technical originality, the most spotless purity from the faintest taint ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... communicate to that sentence the stamp of infallibility, if I could regard it as anything but a mere encouragement of my Muse. More than this a deep feeling of my weakness will not let me think it; but if my strength shall ever climb to the height of a masterpiece, I certainly shall have this warm approval of your Excellency alone to thank for it, and so will the world. For several years I have had the happiness to know you from the public papers: long ago the splendour of the Mannheim theatre attracted my attention. And, ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... birth, Lychwr in Carmarthenshire being the spot where he first saw the light. He was an excellent poet, and displayed in his compositions such elegance of language, and such a knowledge of prosody, that it was customary, long after his death, when any masterpiece of vocal song or eloquence was produced, to say that it bore the traces of Lawdden's hatchet. At the request of Griffith ap Nicholas, a powerful chieftain of South Wales, and a great patron of ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... him, illustrating it, after his usual way, by a parallel from the classics: "When V. produces an idea he falls in love with it, as Pygmalion did with his statue. I can forgive Pygmalion, for what he produced was a masterpiece."[484] ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... could be easily reached by internal-revenue taxation. This conjunction of internal revenue and protection proved a mutual support until the payment of the war debt had gone so far as to provoke the reaction. The Democratic National Convention of 1876 attacked the tariff system as a masterpiece of iniquity, but no distinct issue was made between the parties on this question. In 1880 and 1884, the Republican party was the one to force the issue of protection or free trade upon its opponent, ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... wife of Philip II, and sister of Charles IX of France.[13] Dark rumors were afloat for some time that she had been poisoned by order of her husband. Among the other treasures in the Hispanic Museum exhibition was the earliest imprint of Cervantes's masterpiece, the immortal "Don Quixote". This was printed in Madrid, in 1605, by ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz
... not; but it is the most reliable. I am sure when I pick up your magazine that I shall find therein consistently interesting stories. I have yet to find a story that failed to hold my attention; on the other hand, I have yet to find a masterpiece. Of all the Editors, you have shown yourself the shrewdest judge of public taste, but also the least interested in the ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... young student from Paris, to a learned doctor of laws, with whom he abode, "that his defence has been a masterpiece." ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... masters—the old masters—there would be sometimes four or five artists taking copies of the pictures. These copies they were going to carry with them, perhaps to distant lands; and I have thought that your life and character are a masterpiece, and it is being copied, and long after you are gone it will bloom or blast in the homes of those who knew you, and be a Gorgon or a Madonna. Look out what you say. Look out what you do. Eternity will hear the echo. The best sermon ever preached is a holy ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... You see, he wasn't an ordinary woman. He went as his aunt, Lady Phyllis Fenton. His personification was a masterpiece." ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... Quincey has said or done; there is opportunity, even in this brief essay, to exercise the pupil in applying the commonplace tests of criticism, although it should be seen to as well that a true appreciation is awakened for the real excellences of this little masterpiece. ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... purist must now despair of getting at the spelling of Chaucer himself — has been discarded for that of the reader's own day. It is a poor compliment to the Father of English Poetry, to say that by such treatment the bouquet and individuality of his works must be lost. If his masterpiece is valuable for one thing more than any other, it is the vivid distinctness with which English men and women of the fourteenth century are there painted, for the study of all the centuries to follow. But we wantonly ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... simplicity, elegance, and childlike innocence of face was said to be the most interesting and pathetic monument in England. It is reputed to be the masterpiece of the English sculptor Thomas Banks, whose work was almost entirely executed abroad, where he was better known than in England. The inscriptions on it were in four different languages, English, Italian, French, and ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... "see it whole." Consciousness, unconditioned by time, "in a beautiful strong dream," awakens to the perception of a world that is timeless. It brings thence some immortelle whose power of survival establishes the authenticity of the inspiration. However local and personal any masterpiece may be, it escapes by some potent magic all geographical and temporal categories, and appears always new-born from a sphere in which such categories ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... masterpiece better still, that I may see plainly what you are fit for. Now, I have twelve horses in my stable, and on them I will put twelve grooms, one on each. If you are so good a thief as to steal the horses from under them, I'll see what I can ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... has left him somewhat unfairly cold, because the circumstances were hostile, and in most cases a second dose of the affair within twenty-four hours makes him colder still, since, unless the work is the rare masterpiece, he does not wish to see it twice within a space of less than forty-eight hours, or years. No doubt the public will get the benefit of the critic's views as to the nature of the reception, since, having already written his notice, which he ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... no good result. Quiet was at length restored by the Dean of Faculty, who succeeded in soothing the prisoner, and who then addressed the Judges, pleading for indulgence to his unhappy client in most touching and eloquent language. The speech, a masterpiece of impromptu oratory, concluded with a temperate yet strongly urged protest against the reading of the papers discovered ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... I felt a wild desire to hide myself in the deepest recess of the woods, tear the grass, and shout at the top of my voice, "She loves me!" At present, when I am able to think more calmly of this joy, I find it was composed of various active forces. There was the joy of the artist who sees that a masterpiece he has begun is progressing satisfactorily; maybe also the satisfaction of the spider when the fly comes near the web; but there was also kindness, pity, great tenderness, and all that over which angels rejoice, as ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... flourished side by side, vying with one another to express the protean graces of man, of architecture and domestic interior, of earth and sky and sea. Where is the Swiss school? Where, in any public gallery, will you find a masterpiece which triumphantly vindicates the charm of Swiss scenery? You will, find it vindicated only on condensed milk tins. These folks can write. My taste in lyrics may be peculiar, but I used to love my Leuthold—I wish ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... rate, nobody could (or indeed did) deny that the author, six months later, made up for any shortcoming in The Abbot, where, except the end (eminently of the huddled order), everything is as it should be. The heroine is, except Die Vernon, Scott's masterpiece in that kind, while all the Queen Mary scenes are unsurpassed in him, and rarely equalled out of him. Nor was there any falling off in Kenilworth (Jan. 1821), where he again shifted his scene to England. He has not indeed interested us ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury |
