"Talent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... somewhat eccentric in disposition, and given to fits of passion, I had no serious occasion to complain of him until he went up to Oxford. There he got into a wild and dissipated set, and became the wildest and most dissipated among them. His great talent for music was his bane. He was continually asked out. After being two years up there, and costing me very large sums in paying his debts, he was sent down from the university. He would not turn his hands to anything, and went up to London with the idea of making his way somehow. He ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... what he saw, after 'Salome,' he remembered vividly only three pictures—Elise Delaunay's two—a portrait and a workshop interior—before which he stood, lost in naive wonder at her talent; and the head of a woman, with a thin pale face, reddish-brown hair, and a look of pantherish grace and force, which he was told was the portrait of an actress at the Odeon who was making the world stare—Mademoiselle ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with rage, and not with grief. She had not been much of a dissembler, until now her loneliness taught her to feign. She had never mingled in the society of women: her father, reprobate as he was, was a man of talent; his conversation was a thousand times more agreeable to her than the talk of such of her own sex as she now encountered. The pompous vanity of the old schoolmistress, the foolish good-humour of her sister, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... double the height of that on which the volcano is, and close to it. To these remarks I must add, that, in wet or moist weather, the volcano was most violent. There seems to be room for some philosophical reasoning on these phenomena of nature; but not having any talent that way, I must content myself with stating facts as I found them, and leave the causes ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... with all courses of duty, Panchasikha, after having himself acquired high knowledge, (came to Janaka) and knowing that that king had equal reverence for all his preceptors, began to amaze that century of preceptors (by an exposition of his doctrine fraught), with abundant reasons. Observing the talent of Kapileya, Janaka became exceedingly attached to him, and abandoning his hundred preceptors, began to follow him in particular. Then Kapileya began to discourse unto Janaka, who had according to the ordinance bent his head unto him (as a disciple should) ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... upon the sketch. He dared not look up, for the girl was at his shoulder. The whole population of the place, his foes but yesterday, now gathered round him, praising Allah for his wondrous talent; while the Emir denounced the bad quality of the paint-box, gift of the Sitt Hilda, and swore to have a proper one sent out from England. Iskender's heart was like to ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... the Emperor turned much of his enterprising talent into peaceful channels, into the development of commercial and industrial Germany. No one has a greater respect for wealth and commercial success than the Emperor. He would have made a wonderful success as a man of business. He ought to be the richest person in the ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... salutation of the heroes. We only know that at the end of their first interview Diderot's facility of discourse had been so copious that, after he had taken his leave, Voltaire said: "The man is clever, assuredly; but he lacks one talent, and an essential talent—that of dialogue." Diderot's remark about Voltaire was more picturesque. "He is like one of those old haunted castles, which are falling into ruins in every part; but you easily perceive that it is inhabited by some ancient sorcerer."[188] ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... amateurs and one student. This poem is lying now on my table. No longer ago than last year I received a recent copy in his own handwriting from Stepan Trofimovitch himself, signed by him, and bound in a splendid red leather binding. It is not without poetic merit, however, and even a certain talent. It's strange, but in those days (or to be more exact, in the thirties) people were constantly composing in that style. I find it difficult to describe the subject, for I really do not understand it. It is some sort of an allegory in lyrical-dramatic form, recalling the second ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... ein Talent sich in der Stille, doch ein Charakter in dem Strome der Welt." (Talent is developed in solitude, character in the rush ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... the meaning of the favorite paradox of Christ, "From him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath;" "take therefore the talent from him." The religious faculty is a talent, the most splendid and sacred talent we possess. Yet it is subject to the natural conditions and laws. If any man take his talent and hide it in a napkin, although it is doing him neither harm nor good apparently, God will not allow him to have ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... sat down again. The lame child, it appeared, had some artistic talent, which Miss Le Breton wished to cultivate. Meredith suddenly found his coat and hat, and, with a queer look at Julie, departed in ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... The passion for antiquity, so early developed in Italy, delivered the later Italian poets bound hand and foot into the hands of Horace. Poliziano was content to reproduce the classic authors in a mosaic work of exquisite translations. Tasso was essentially a man of talent, producing work of chastened beauty by diligent attention to the rule and method of his art. Even Ariosto submitted the liberty of his swift spirit to canons of prescribed elegance. While our English poets have conceived and executed without regard for the opinion of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... an apparatus for sending a line on board a stranded ship, whether invented or improved by him I am not prepared to say, nor whether the projectile was a rocket or a shot, or both, fired from a gun. Hollis, the eldest of our party, who had considerable mechanical talent, seemed clearly to ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... study he had not given much attention to belles-lettres, and was not aware that the simplicity and lucid purity of thought which made certain pages so easily read were produced by the best trained and most cultured talent existing among ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... only evidence she had a right to trust, the Mother Superior knew that she would not be justified in hindering Angela from taking the veil. Few had ever done so well in the noviciate, none had ever done better, and her natural talent for the profession of nursing was altogether unusual. There had never been one like her in the hospital. As for her character, she seemed to have no vanity, no jealousy, no temper, no moodiness. The Mother had never known such an even and well-balanced disposition ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... letters hitherto unpublished. They dated from all periods of his life, those written in the brilliant and troubled days of his youth predominating, and giving a picture, perhaps unique in its kind, of a character and talent in the making. The present edition is a reprint of the edition of 1911, with a few errors of transcription and one or two of date corrected, and with a very few new ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... certainly have studied; you have made yourself ready as far as your resources will permit, and I'll be hanged if I don't stand for the 'chance.' In the manufacturing of electrical instruments you could have great opportunity for inventive talent, and in my concern you shall have your chance, and go as far as your efficiency will carry you. What do you say, would you care ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... which, while you play with it, lets you feel it has claws. No person has a better carriage of the head. It is impossible to dance better than the Duchess and her daughters can; but the mother dances the best. I do not know how it is, but even her lameness is becoming to her. The Duchess has the talent of saying things in so pleasant a manner that one cannot help laughing. She is very amusing and uncommonly good company; her notions are so very comical. When she wishes to make herself agreeable to any one she is very insinuating, ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... often enough, to undertake judicial functions. The American history of the separation of powers has most largely been an attempt to bridge them; and all that has been gained is to drive the best talent, save on rare occasion, from its public life. In France the separation of powers meant, until recent times, the excessive subordination of the judiciary to the cabinet. Nor must we forget, as Locke should have remembered, the plain lesson of the Cromwellian constitutional experiments. That the dispersion ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... At any rate, local talent had no intention of kowtowing too deeply before the majesty of the "Yard," for the Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department himself could have achieved no more in the time than Police ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... Umar-al-din Khan, of the firm of Mahommed Ali of Quetta, was really a remarkable fellow. If Russian trade has not yet succeeded in getting a fair hold in Birjand, if British trade has it so far almost altogether its own way, we have only to thank the tact, energy, patience, and talent of this man. The patriotism, enterprise, and hard labour of Umar-al-din and his firm deserve indeed the greatest ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... house! he has already torn down and rebuilt that five or six times. It must have cost him at least two millions!" As Patissot left he was seized with an immense respect for this man, not on account of his success, glory or talent, but for putting so much money into a whim, because the bourgeois deprive themselves of all pleasure in order ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... comparatively small in numbers, has been serious. Brigadier-General Shields, a commander of activity, zeal and talent, is, I fear, if not dead, mortally wounded. He is (p. 312) some five miles from me at the moment. The field of operations covered many miles, broken by mountains and deep chasms, and I have not a report, as yet, from any ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... with a preceding passion play might occupy several hundred actors for a number of days. The texts as known to us are hardly 'literature' in the narrower sense. They were written by men of small poetic talent, who rimed carelessly, used the rough-and-ready language of the people, did not shrink from indecency and aimed at dramatic rather than ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... world has retrograded in its talent of apportioning wages to work, in late days? The world had always a talent of that sort, better or worse. Time was when the mere handworker needed not announce his claim to the world by Manchester Insurrections!—The world, with its Wealth of Nations, Supply-and-demand and suchlike, has of ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... he dreamed such dreams shows us how very kindly he had taken to the profession into which Chance and M. Binet between them had conspired to thrust him. That he had real talent both as author and as actor I do not doubt, and I am persuaded that had things fallen out differently he would have won for himself a lasting place among French dramatists, and thus fully have realized that dream ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... by no means strong, inasmuch as he was, as he acknowledges, too apt to form his opinion from a single feature. Now the judgment of character was, according to Robison, Black's very strongest point. "Indeed," says Robison, "were I to say what natural talent Dr. Black possessed in the most uncommon degree, I should say it was his judgment of human character, and a talent which he had of expressing his opinion in a single short phrase, which fixed it in the mind never to be ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... that you should not exhibit any curiosity as to this man, whom I wish that we had not to call an ancestor. I know little of him myself, and indeed his life was of such a nature as no woman, much less a young girl, would desire to be well acquainted with. He was, I believe, a man of remarkable talent, and spent most of his time between Oxford and Italy, though he visited Royston occasionally, and built the large hall here, which we use as a dancing-room. Before he was twenty wild stories were prevalent as to his licentious life, and by thirty his name was ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... he reached the second station in the first class, a point of elevation which "flattered his pride not a little." At this time he appeared in the eye of the world most amiable and commendable, outwardly moral, unwearied in application, and exhibited marks of no ordinary talent. One exception to this statement is to be found in an irritability of temper arising perhaps from the treatment he had received at school. On one occasion in sudden anger, he threw a knife at the head of another boy, which providentially missed him and was left trembling ...
— Life of Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia, 1781 to 1812 • Sarah J. Rhea
... with ease, and his teachers discovering that he had a talent for poetry, encouraged it. His parents took counsel as to what should be done with their son. The father wished to make a soldier of him, but the mother was opposed to this plan—she did not care to make a human butcher of her boy. He paused some time at Lyons, on his return from school, ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... prosperous time to float a new Juliet. At a neighbouring theatre a lovely foreign actress was playing the part nightly to crowded houses. We might get some of the overflow, or the public would come for the sake of comparing native with imported talent. Oh! the faces of my traducers, who had said, "Those Gascoigne girls have no feeling for art," when it was known that they were out of the bill, and that Sybil Gascoigne was to play Shakespeare. I absolutely ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... do, Bob. Mr. Tulloch certainly intimated, to me, that you had a remarkable talent that way, if in no other. Besides, your face tells its own story. Pickle is marked upon it, as plainly ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... chroniclers all wrote in Latin. The philosophers and theologians have already been spoken of. Amongst the chroniclers some deserve the name of historians; not only do they alone make us acquainted with the history of their times, but they sometimes narrate it with real talent as observers and writers. Gregory of Tours, Eginhard, William of Tyre, Guibert of Nogent, William of Jumieges, and Orderic Vital are worthy of every attention from those whose hearts are set upon thoroughly understanding the history ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... take on any sort of job you offer them. I have a special staff flushing the Bodegas. These fellows love it. It's meat and drink to them to be right in the public eye like that. Makes them feel ten years younger. It's wonderful the talent knocking about. Those Zulus used to have a steady job as the Six Brothers Biff, Society Contortionists. The Revue craze killed them professionally. They cried like children when ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... you little rogue, in spite of you; but I'll look again. No, there can be no doubt about it. Several of those faces show talent, but one only has a look of genius, and that is the face of the boy I pointed out before. What is ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... to beg off and make excuses," she went on, "and then I brought out his letters to me and talked straight. He wilted at once and paid the five thousand dollars I asked for the letters without a murmur. I might have made it fifty and with your talent you ought to get all he has in ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... ample illustration, which has actuated both parties, has led to the search among neglected archives for documents almost innumerable, and their force and bearing upon the question have been exhibited in arguments of great ability. Such has been the talent shown in this task of illustration and so copious have been the materials employed for the purpose that the great and only important question, although never lost sight of by the writers themselves, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... shy but likeable fellow, a diligent worker and trustworthy. He didn't talk. He was rarely talked to. He had no burning ambition to push himself ahead in the world. Being an assistant to the brains was good enough for him. He had a commendable talent for minding his ...
— The Observers • G. L. Vandenburg
... stunts. Those of us who know any ought to be willing to come forward and do them. We can ask some of the upper class girls to help. Beatrice Alden sings; so does Frances Marlton. Mabel Ashe can do almost any kind of fancy dancing. There is plenty of talent in college. The junior glee club will sing for us, I ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... benefit stunts, and she's decided to use their new east terrace for an outdoor stage and the big drawin'-room it opens off from as an auditorium. You know, Mrs. Robert used to give violin recitals and do concert work herself, so she ain't satisfied with amateur talent. Besides, she knows ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... to realize that he had no talent for concealment; that he was a sad bungler in the management of any business which was not open and above-board. This impertinent, disagreeable little coxcomb of a New Yorker, without a warning sound to announce his coming, had suddenly stepped ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... true from an ideal point of view. She clung to these fables as a Breton; as a Gascon she was inclined to laugh at them, and this was the secret of the sprightliness and gaiety of her life. This state of things has been the means of giving me what little talent I may have for historical studies. I have derived from it a kind of habit of looking below the surface and hearing sounds which other ears do not catch. The essence of criticism is to be able to realise conditions different from those under which ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... not from any idle wish to obtrude my humble person with undue prominence upon the publick view that I resume my pen upon the present occasion. Juniores ad labores. But having been a main instrument in rescuing the talent of my young parishioner from being buried in the ground, by giving it such warrant with the world as could be derived from a name already widely known by several printed discourses (all of which I may be permitted without immodesty to state have been deemed worthy ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... character, and the slave, instead of tilling the soil, was at liberty to do whatever he thought proper. No one raised any objection to this tolerance, for Richard, whom his master was used to call a necessary evil, had before all the talent of keeping the negroes of the plantation in good humor by ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... of fact, Jim Pink was a sort of semi-professional minstrel. Ordinarily, he ran a pressing-shop in the Niggertown crescent, but occasionally he impressed all the dramatic talent of Niggertown and really did take the road with a minstrel company. These barn-storming expeditions reached down into Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas. Sometimes they proved a great success, and the darkies rode ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... rule about who can have psi talent," I argued. "I'm just wondering if I shouldn't wire General Sanfordwaithe and tell him to cut our order ...
— Sense from Thought Divide • Mark Irvin Clifton
... woods—rested against it and began to improvise with an assumption of carelessness. Ta-meri sank back in her chair and regarded him from under dreamy lids—her senses charmed, her light heart won by his comeliness and talent. Kenkenes became conscious of her inspection, at last, and looked up at her. His eyes were still bright with his recent feeling and the hue in his cheeks a little deeper. The admiration in her face became so speaking that he smiled and ran without pausing ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... centuries we fought with England about a principle laid down by Grotius of Delft. We claimed that the sea was an open highway, free to all navigators. England used her best legal talent to prove the contrary. In this struggle we exhausted ourselves and we finally lost. Incidentally we saw our richest colonies go into the possession of England. The very colony in which I am writing this letter was taken from us in time ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... a Med Service tormal, and tormals were creatures of talent. They'd originally been found on a planet in the Deneb area, and they were engaging and friendly small animals. But the remarkable fact about them was that they couldn't contract any ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... and Keith. I am going back to King Arthur's Court for the flower of knighthood at his round table. Come and read for us between tableaux as only you can do. Be the interpreter of 'Sir Launfal's Vision' and the 'Idylls of the King,' Give us the benefit of your talent for sweet charity's sake, if not for the sake of 'auld lang ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... when they have been passably virtuous up to that time. He affected an austere and puritanical air; was the great man of the cafe he frequented; and there passed judgment on his contemporaries and pronounced them all inferior. He was difficult to please—in point of virtue demanding heroism; in talent, genius; ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the chair is filled by a gentleman of professional celebrity, faced by Little Swills, the comic vocalist, who hopes (according to the bill in the window) that his friends will rally round him and support first-rate talent. The Sol's Arms does a brisk stroke of business all the morning. Even children so require sustaining under the general excitement that a pieman who has established himself for the occasion at the corner of the court says his brandy-balls ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... her doom not to meet the man for whose rival talent she had a despairing admiration, and to whose person she was now absolutely attached. Yet she determined to make a last effort; and having gathered from her landlady that Trewe was living in a lonely spot not far ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... Straightway Louhi sought a minstrel, Magic bard and artist-singer, That the beer might well be lauded, Might be praised in song and honor. First as bard they brought a salmon, Also brought a pike from ocean, But the salmon had no talent, And the pike had little wisdom; Teeth of pike and gills of salmon Were not made for singing legends. Then again they sought a singer, Magic minstrel, beer-enchanter, Thus to praise the drink of heroes, Sing the songs of joy and gladness; And a boy was brought for singing; But the boy had little ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... and guttering candles. Beyond what once seemed a casket of dutiful security is now a limitless and indifferent universe. Ours is the wisdom or there is no wisdom; ours is the decision or there is no decision. That burthen is upon each of us in the measure of our capacity. The talent has been given us and ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... those mischievous activities heard of his feats in burning bridges and cutting trestles in remote sections of the mountains. The probabilities could keep no terms with him, and he baffled prophecy. He had a quick invention—a talent for expedients. He appeared suddenly when least expected and where his presence seemed impossible. He had a gift of military intuition. He seemed to know the enemy's plans before they were matured; ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... I said before, you have talent. I think I could make something of you; but your bowing is bad, very bad; your method is abominable! It would never be allowed in the Conservatory; and ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... a great teacher in the monastery school, and even learned scholars came to consult him. Friar John ruled the affairs of the little monastery world with wisdom and prudence. Indeed, out of the whole number only Valentine seemed without special talent. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education
... elements Knollwood was peculiarly fortunate. The people were bright and entertaining. In a number of instances musical talent, both vocal and instrumental, was of a high order, and there was also a good deal of amateur ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... he did not understand that it had taken people a year to appreciate his success. He had hoped for immediate recognition of his great services to archaeology, and had been somewhat disappointed because that recognition had not been instantaneous. Like most men of superior talent, in the same situation, when praise came in due time and abundantly, he did not care for it because he was already interested in new work. To the man of genius the past is always insignificant as compared with the future. ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... nearly at the top of the fifth. His friends at home, having regard, I suppose, to his age, and not to his size and place in the school, hadn't put him into tails; and even his jackets were always too small; and he had a talent for destroying clothes and making himself look shabby. He wasn't on terms with Flashman's set, who sneered at his dress and ways behind his back; which he knew, and revenged himself by asking Flashman the most disagreeable questions, ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... designed to narcotize the forces of rebellion of his time. What he was like physically, no epitaph declares. His father was a clergyman. A description of him reads ... "tall and slender, with a noble and poetic personality, and a peculiar talent for music ... short-sighted." That ranks him at once as a pituito-centric. The mother was dark and had a fiery temper and came of a family distinguished for the powerfully built anatomy of its members. In the heredity ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... Crown.[12] Robinsons, Cartwrights, Ryersons, and a score of other well-known families, proved, generation after generation, by their sustained public capacity, how considerably the struggle for existence, operating on sound human material, may raise the average of talent and energy. The tendency of the Loyalists to conservatism was, under the circumstances, only natural. Their possession, for a time, of all the places in Upper Canada which were worth holding, was the consequence of their priority in tenure, ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... women engaged in great enterprises of benevolence and piety, reformers, missionaries, teachers who labor and live for the causes in which they are engaged, but scarcely a beauty can be found among them all. But why? Is Beauty uncongenial to talent and worth? By no means. But Beauty is a dangerous gift, and few beautiful women ever seek to develop their minds—ever seek to be any thing more than they are. Worth is made, not given; Beauty is given, not made. Women who have no Beauty make worth. Those who have Beauty are satisfied ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... was not personally as greedy of money as many of his contemporaries, and was not without generosity; but he loved power, the Pope, and the House of Austria. He was singularly reserved in public, practised successfully the talent of silence, and had at last arrived at the position he most coveted, the virtual presidency of the council, and saw the men he most hated ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to be called pepper-and-salt cloth." He soon settled down in his new home, "a very quiet little personage, very good-tempered, and very much in awe of his aunt," with a fame among his cousins for his talent for making paper boxes one within another. His bed was in an attic, next door to his big cousin Marten's room. Marten had a shelf full of books, which Henry used to carry off to his own domain and ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... yourself easy as to that, Kate," said Florence, with a smile; "I have no intention of calling upon your talent; I have an asylum ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... said, "Each man has his own vocation. The talent is the call." It is no small thing, in this grim world, to make people smile, to be absurd for their alleviation, to render all things "sympathetically ridiculous" for a time, to bear in a chalice of mirth the water of Lethe. If one's talent ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... of literature. He established schools throughout his empire for the education of both Hindus and Moslems, and he gathered round him many men of literary talent, among whom may be mentioned the brothers Feizi and Abul Fazl. The former was commissioned by Akbar to translate a number of Sanskrit scientific works into Persian; and the latter (see ABUL FAzl) has left, in the Akbar-Nameh, an enduring record of the emperor's reign. It is ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... him," answered Dr. Lloyd, "and no wonder.—Talent, personal beauty, lively and generous feelings, the purest sense of honour, and the noblest aspirings after fame, were combined in his character. He loved too, and he knew himself beloved. You seem, Sir, about his age; my sensibility ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... writer would acknowledge his indebtedness to Hon. J. Hammond Trumbull, a gentleman who has given much time and talent to the investigation ...
— Wampum - A Paper Presented to the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society - of Philadelphia • Ashbel Woodward
... asked her what she would think of a young doctor, full of talent, future professor of the Faculty, actually considered already a savant of the first order, handsome—because you are handsome, my dear sir, and it is no flattery to say this—in good health, a peasant by birth, who presented himself as a husband. She appeared flattered, I tell you frankly. ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... to preserve me, exercised with so many griefs, that I may serve Thyself. There is one great sin discernible in my soul, which I confess before the whole world. I have never served Thee in proportion to my strength; that little talent of Thy grace which Thou hast deigned to grant me I have not yet turned to full account—whether because I have followed too much the pleasures of mere study, or whether I have consumed too much time and labour in refuting the invectives of the evil-disposed, to whom, such has ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... University. In the earlier years of the next century her poems found their way into the common school readers. One of those in her representative volume was addressed to Scipio Moorhead, a young Negro of Boston who had shown some talent for painting. Thus even in a dark day there were those who were trying to ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... opens, when the plebeians had obtained political power, and the immediate enemies were subdued. This was a period of conquest over the various Italian States. The period is still heroic, but historical. Great men arose, of talent and patriotism. The ambition of the Romans now prominently appears. They had been struggling for existence—they now fought for conquest. "The great achievement of the regal period was the establishment," says Mommsen, "of the ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... returning to England, and when only twenty-one, Sidney was sent as ambassador to Vienna, by Queen Elizabeth, who knew how to perceive talent and worth, though she did not always reward them generously. He faithfully discharged the duties of his office, and was most honorably received by the queen on his return. But he was not of the stuff out of which courtiers are made. He was too honest, independent, and disinterested to gain ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... aware that you have a pleasant sense of patronizing him, when you condescend so far as to let him turn somersets, literal or literary, for your royal delight? Now if a man can only be allowed to stand on a dais, or raised platform, and look down on his neighbor who is exerting his talent for him, oh, it is all right!—first-rate performance!—and all the rest of the fine phrases. But if all at once the performer asks the gentleman to come upon the floor, and, stepping upon the platform, begins to talk down at him,—ah, that ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... in all the original colonies, we find this to be the case. But, as Americans, we must reject both what our fathers brought and what they found. Two thousand specimens of the American talent for nomenclature, then, we can exhibit. Walk up, gentlemen! Here you have the top-crest of the great wave of civilization. Hero is a people, emancipated from Old-World trammels, setting the world a lesson. What is the result? With the grand divisions ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... plucked undecidedly at the banjo-strings. Then he cleared his throat and launched upon a negro melody; he sang it with the unctuous abandon of the darkey, and Irving listened and looked on enviously, admiring the display of talent. Westby sang another song, and then turned and pushed ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... tells why Beethoven is always modern and Strauss always mediaeval—try as he may to cover it up in new bottles. He has chosen to capitalize a "talent"—he has chosen the complexity of media, the shining hardness of externals, repose, against the inner, invisible activity of truth. He has chosen the first creed, the easy creed, the philosophy of his fathers, among whom he found a half-idiot-genius ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... confronted the new seigneur. It was not the royal intention that he should fold his talent in a napkin. On the contrary, the seigneur was endowed with his rank and estate to the sole end that he should become an active agent in making the colony grow. He was expected to live on his land, to level the forest, to clear fields, and to make two blades of grass grow ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... all those who were near. Courage is a matter of the red corpuscle. It is oxygen that makes every attack; without oxygen in his blood to back him, a man attacks nothing—not even a pie, much less a blank canvas. Perugino was a success; he had orders ahead; he matched his talent against titles; power flowed his way. Raphael's serious, sober manner and spiritual beauty appealed to him. They became as father and son. The methodical business plan, which is a prime aid to inspiration; the habit of laying out work and completing it; the high estimate of self; ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... assistant-teacher, Who by Art consoled himself for What was wanting in his income, And instead of wine and roast beef Lived upon his flute's sweet music. Then came—Who can count, however, All these instrumental players? All the talent of the city For this concert had united. From the ironworks of Albbruck Even came the superintendent; He alone ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... There are many parish clerks, and even some curates in this realm, scarcely more liberally endowed in mind than thou. But greatly do I fear that thou art little better than one of the wicked. How hast thou put to use this talent entrusted thee by the Master of the vineyard? In the maintenance of the things which profit not; in seeking the applause of the unworthy; in the writing of vain plays, which, if of the follies of youth, may be forgiven and remembered not against thee, provided in riper years ...
— Shakespeare's Insomnia, And the Causes Thereof • Franklin H. Head
... received nearly one third of the total county vote, notwithstanding his absence from the canvass, notwithstanding the fact that his acquaintanceship was limited to the neighborhood of New Salem, notwithstanding the sharp competition. Indeed, his talent and fitness for active practical politics were demonstrated beyond question by the result in his home precinct of New Salem, which, though he ran as a Whig, gave two hundred and seventy-seven votes for him and only ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... go chattering around that house the way I do out here. I've got a great talent, if I do say it, for ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... some war honour. A bonnet could not be made without the consent of all the warriors and it stood as a record of tribal valour and a special mark of distinction granted to the man by his tribe. Every Indian takes great joy in laying out his colour scheme. It becomes a mosaic of artistic talent. Feathers are gathered from the eagles' flight. Skins are taken from the wild beasts. Bones, beads, sparkling metals, soft-tinted sea shells, and all of them blended with the varicoloured paints that he has compounded in nature's mortar. The woman enters into the work with intelligent zest, ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... this second sketch. The handling was effective as it had been swift. Considering that fifteen minutes and a lead pencil were all, there had been a great deal done, in a style that proved use and cultivation as well as talent. The rocks, upper and lower, were truly given; the artist had chosen a different state of light from the actual hour of the day, and had thus thrown a great mass into fine relief. Round it the ferns and mosses and creepers with a light hand ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... some pain to explain the really exceptional circumstances of your marriage; but after what I have seen in the mind of your old friend, I think, if you really wish for the assistance of his great talent, you should personally take ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... could please me better.' I promised to find him a teacher; and, as I promised, the thought of you, friend Croft, came into my mind. Now, here is something that you can do; a good work in which you can employ your one talent." ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... religious movements of the 15th and 16th centuries, Chojecki, Denk and many others, took the Anarchist position as regards the state and property rights, deducing his conclusions from the general spirit of the teachings of the Christ and from the necessary dictates of reason. With all the might of his talent he made (especially in The Kingdom of God in Yourselves) a powerful criticism of the church, the state and law altogether, and especially of the present property laws. He describes the state as the domination of the wicked ones, supported by brutal force. Robbers, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... engrossed their time and thoughts, to the exclusion of higher objects of interest. Ada was fond of embroidery, and would betake herself to it when nothing better was going on; and Sophy was sometimes persuaded to paint for a fancy sale one of the illuminations, in doing which she evinced great talent. They were generally quotations from the poets which she selected; and as Lucy watched the taste with which Sophy blended and contrasted the rich colouring, she would long for the same skilful hand, in order to clothe ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... now bears his name, while in the same year Pedro d'Escobar crossed the equator. Wherever the Portuguese investigators landed they left marks of their presence, at first by erecting crosses, then by carving on trees Prince Henry's motto, "Talent de bien faire," and finally they adopted the method of erecting stone pillars, surmounted by a cross, and inscribed with the king's arms and name. These pillars were called padraos. In 1484, Diego Cam, a knight of the king's household, set up one of these pillars at the ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... accomplished man, made a point of showing every attention in his power to the Prince, and they soon became very intimate. There was in the town an old officer of the Emperor's Polish Legion who, compelled to leave France after Waterloo, had taken refuge in England, and, having the national talent for languages, maintained himself by teaching French, Italian, and German in different families. The old exile and the young one found each other out, and the language master was soon an habitual guest at the Prince's table, and treated by him with the most affectionate attention. ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... out with joyous whoops. Some of the more mischievous or spirited actually tackled unsuspicious comrades, toppling their victims over to the ground. That line of tactics resulted in many a "chase" that brought out some remarkably good sprinting talent. Thus the squad dissipated itself like the mist, and soon the grounds near the ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock
... demur, meeting as they did with an ever ready sale, brought their profits, not to her, but to others less gifted and more needy than herself. And many a dainty trifle wrought by her graced some sick-room, or home of straitened means, where there was neither time nor talent to be given ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... most erroneous opinion that those who have left the most stupendous monuments of intellect behind them, were not differently exercised from the rest of the species, but only differently gifted; that they signalized themselves only by their talent, and hardly ever by their industry; for it is in truth to the most strenuous application of those commonplace faculties which are diffused among all, that they are indebted for the glories which now encircle their remembrance and ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... meet people of every shade of opinion, and make friends with them. We are taught to rail against a man the whole session through, and then hob-a-nob with him at the concluding entertainment. We find men of talent far exceeding our own, whose conclusions are widely different from ours; and we are thus taught to distrust ourselves. But the best means of all towards catholicity is that wholesome rule which some folk are most inclined to condemn—I mean the law of OBLIGED SPEECHES. Your senior member commands; ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tried to compete in athletics, as the one inevitable path of ambition for an American boy at college; but realizing soon that he was too slightly built for this field, he had drifted into desultory reading and sketching for the college comic paper. Then a social talent and a gift for writing music gave him the composition of the score for the annual musical play. This was a hit, and from that time he began to think seriously of studying music. It was agreed in the family that after his graduation he should go abroad "to see what ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... its gradual creation after the labor of each day was done, and he knew that Nello had a hope—vain and wild perhaps, but strongly cherished—of sending this great drawing to compete for a prize of two hundred francs a year which it was announced in Antwerp would be open to every lad of talent, scholar or peasant, under eighteen, who would attempt to win it with some unaided work of chalk or pencil. Three of the foremost artists in the town of Rubens were to be the judges and elect the victor according ...
— A Dog of Flanders • Louisa de la Rame)
... delicate without doubt," says Frank. "Beware of the home-spun brothers, dear. If they come into the dance, you'll see who's an ass. Think now, if they only applied (say) a quarter as much talent as I have applied to the question of what Mr. Archie does with his evening hours, and why he is so unaffectedly nasty ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... standing near Baby Hippolyta, or 'Ipsie,' was the acknowledged young beauty of the place, Susie Prescott, a slip of a lass with a fair Madonna-like face, long chestnut curls and great, dark, soft eyes like pansies filled with dew. Susie had a decided talent for music,—she sang very prettily, and led the village choir, under the guidance of Miss Janet Eden, the schoolmistress. This morning, however, she was risking the duties of conductorship on her own account, and very sweet she looked in her cheap white nuns-veiling gown, wearing a bunch of narcissi ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... delightful story of a little girl who had inherited a most remarkable musical talent, which found its natural expression through the medium of the violin. The picturesqueness of Mrs. Jamison's stories is remarkable, and the reader unconsciously becomes Seraph's friend and sympathizer in all ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... inviolate; and I hope you don't doubt me, notwithstanding any airs she may have given herself, upon my jocular pleasantry to her, and perhaps a little innocent romping with her, so usual with young folks of the two sexes, when they have been long acquainted, and grown up together; for pride is not my talent. ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... to be brought out in this first part of the parable is the immense magnitude of every man's transgressions against God. Numismatists and arithmeticians may jangle about the precise amount represented by the thousand talents. It differs according to the talent which is taken as the basis of the calculation. There were several talents in use in the currency of ancient days. But the very point of the expression is not the specification of an exact amount, but the use of a round number which is to suggest ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... returned from the convent, and who has often desired me to take her to France, will, believe me, be somewhat sensitive at the preference given to her younger sisters. Josephine has a beautiful head, beautiful eyes and arms, and also a wonderful talent for music. During her stay in the convent I procured her a guitar-teacher; she has made the best of the instruction received, and she has a glorious voice. It is a pity she has not the opportunity of completing her education in France; and were I to have my wish, I would ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... other trades demand, verse makers beg; A dedication is a wooden leg; A barren Labeo, the true mumper's fashion, Exposes borrow'd brats to move compassion. Tho' such myself, vile bards I discommend; Nay more, tho' gentle Damon is my friend. "Is 't then a crime to write?"—If talent rare Proclaim the god, the crime is to forbear: For some, tho' few, there are large-minded men, Who watch unseen the labours of the pen; Who know the muse's worth, and therefore court, Their deeds her theme, their beauty ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... to another artist, the painted fragments which form the mosaic copy of Raphael's Transfiguration in St. Peter's; he would put them together in a form, whose mode would be fashioned by his own peculiar mind and talent. Doubtless the leaves of the Cumaean Sibyl have suffered distortion and diminution of interest and excellence in my hands. My only excuse for thus transforming them, is that they were unintelligible in their ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... "I don't care for beauty. A man should have a decided air of the gentleman, with an expression of talent, height, and all that—but I don't care about what ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... pretend to know what you meant by it, but I take occasion to make a remark which may hereafter prove of value to some among you.—When one of us who has been led by native vanity or senseless flattery to think himself or herself possessed of talent arrives at the full and final conclusion that he or she is really dull, it is one of the most tranquillizing and blessed convictions that can enter a mortal's mind. All our failures, our shortcomings, our strange disappointments in the effect of our efforts are lifted from our bruised ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... in Cincinnati. It is related that he was a very eloquent and powerful orator, and was considered a very promising man by the people of the city of Rome, and received great attention from the noble families, on account of his wisdom and talent and his being a native American; and yet he had a much lighter complexion than his cousin Aug Hamlin, who was also taken over there and ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... certainly be mended, for 'my convictions tell me that there is nothing so impracticable as the Unreal.' He comforts his commissioner by the reminder that a population after all has one great human heart, and a great human heart is that which chiefly exalts the Man of Genius over the mere Man of Talent, so that when a Man of Genius with practical experience of the principles of sound government comes face to face with a people whose interest it is to be governed well, the chances are that they will understand ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... find him whom she lost, and that then she will not be all-unworthy. Who blames her? Something is lost in the passage of every soul from one eternity to the other,—something pure and beautiful, which might have been and was not: a hope, a talent, a love, over which the soul mourns, like Esau deprived of his birthright. What blame to the meek Quaker, if she took her lost hope to make the ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... of inventions also depends upon the changing needs of a society. Needs and circumstances vary more than do degrees of talent. Thus when need and knowledge merge, inventors quickly appear. Indeed, several men in several places are likely to work on the same problems at the same time, and they often solve it in almost identical fashion. Nearly simultaneous inventions or discoveries occur with astonishing ...
— Agricultural Implements and Machines in the Collection of the National Museum of History and Technology • John T. Schlebecker
... mechanical arts their progress has been slow. Their crude implements of husbandry are in contrast with their exhibitions of skill in other directions. Although imitation long ago supplanted the activity of inventive talent, to China belongs the distinction of being a civilized land before the Christian nations of Europe had emerged ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... infinite pains. It becomes the more important, therefore, that Macaulay held the Bible in such estimate as he did. "In calling upon Lady Holland one day, Lord Macaulay was led to bring the attention of his fair hostess to the fact that the use of the word 'talent' to mean gifts or powers of the mind, as when we speak of men of talent, came from the use of the word in Christ's parable of the talents. In a letter to his sister Hannah he describes the incident, ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... work of prevention of just such misdeeds. They are reformers with a shrewd twinkle in their eyes. They take a keen intellectual pleasure in their work, and are ready to give credit to any natural talent in their antagonist. If they are inclined to take a cheerful view of the whole situation it is because they are in the habit of looking at the situation as a whole. The predominance of force is actually on their side and they see no reason to doubt ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... 1603, when, at the intercession of the pope, they were again restored by Henry IV. That they participated in the crime of Ravaillac could never be proved. They became the confidential advisers in Germany, of Ferdinand II. and III. They discovered remarkable political talent in the thirty years' war; the league of the Catholics could do nothing without them. Father Lamormain, a Jesuit, and confessor to the emperor, effected the downfall of Wallenstein, and by means of his agents, kept the jealous Bavarians in their alliance with Austria. Then burst upon them in France ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... she actually faced her first big audience—a tired and fluttering and yawning audience, for two hours of Brooklyn amateur talent will wilt even the most valiant listeners!—she had but one thought, and that was—that there wasn't ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... standard of intellectual honesty at a lofty pitch, and what better service can a man render than to furnish the world with an example of faithful dealing with his own conscience and with his fellows? This at least is the one talent that is placed in the hands of ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... devoted himself to the profession he might look for honourable success in it, and to his great satisfaction his father procured him employment with the painters. Thus by dint of continual practice and with the assistance of his natural talent he far surpassed the manner of his teachers. For they had never cared to make any progress and had executed their works, not in the good manner of ancient Greece, but in the rude modern style of that time. Cimabue drew from nature to ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... leaped over all bounds as the vileness of these iniquitous schemes pressed upon me. I heard the bands of music from those who had prostituted their talent to the ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... custom for each of the different Sunday Schools in Moonstone to give a concert on Christmas Eve. But this year all the churches were to unite and give, as was announced from the pulpits, "a semi-sacred concert of picked talent" at the opera house. The Moonstone Orchestra, under the direction of Professor Wunsch, was to play, and the most talented members of each Sunday School were to take part in the programme. Thea was put down by the committee "for instrumental." This made her indignant, ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... be adopted) much exceeding 10,000 ft. That this has for centuries been regarded as the main route northward from Kabul, the Buddhist relics of Bamian and Haibak bear silent witness; but it may be doubted whether Abdur Rahman's talent for roadmaking has not opened out better alternative lines. One of his roads connects Haibak with the Ghorband valley by the Chahardar pass across the Hindu Kush. The pass is high (nearly 14,000 ft.), but the road is excellently well laid out, and the route, which, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... only a lucky bluff. My old partner and I used to sing fool things to the mules, and as we could out-bray the burros my Indio friends are kind and call it a singing;—as easy as that is it to get credit for talent in this beneficent land of yours! But—the ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... mistress of Epicurus, who called her his "dear little Leontium" as appears by a fragment of one of his letters in Laertius. This Leontium was a woman of talent; "she had the impudence (says Cicero) to write against Theophrastus;" and Cicero, at the same time, gives her a name which is neither ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... I'll keep it for me only. But I haven't half thanked you for it. I do appreciate it, I assure you, and I feel guilty because I underrated your talent. But perhaps it is because I saw you do it, that I care so very much for it. Anyway, ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... CHAP. XXV. 1. The Master said, 'A sage it is not mine to see; could I see a man of real talent and virtue, that would satisfy me.' 2. The Master said, 'A good man it is not mine to see; could I see a man possessed of constancy, that would satisfy me. 3. 'Having not and yet affecting to have, empty and yet affecting to be full, straitened and yet affecting ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge
... statesmen, had already, in great measure, pointed the way to the Indian policy to be pursued by Washington and his successors. No state, either under the old confederation or the new constitution, presented such a formidable array of talent and statecraft as Virginia. Washington, Jefferson, John Marshall, and Madison, stood pre-eminent, but there was also Edmund Randolph, Patrick Henry, James Monroe, George Mason, William Grayson and Richard ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... the Academy from some deplorable choices; I will only cite a single instance, on which occasion I had the sorrow of finding myself in opposition to M. de Laplace. The illustrious geometer wished a vacant place in the astronomical section to be granted to M. Nicollet,—a man without talent, and, moreover, suspected of misdeeds which reflected on his honour in the most serious degree. At the close of a contest, which I maintained undisguisedly, notwithstanding the danger which might follow from thus braving the powerful protectors ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... to make himself necessary to Susan Merton. He brought a woman's cunning to bear against a woman's; for the artifice to which his strong will bent his supple talent is one that many women have had the tact and temporary self-denial to carry out, but not one ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... course, in degree—to govern twenty men that it does to rule a million; and although the Squire is sufficiently intelligent, and the kindest-hearted creature in the world, he evidently does not possess that peculiar tact, talent, gift, or whatever it is called, which makes Napoleons, Mahomets, and Cromwells, and which is absolutely necessary to keep in order such a strangely amalgamated community, representing as it does the four quarters of the globe, as congregates upon ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... means of arriving at excellence, should he cultivate them sedulously and employ them usefully—should he rule his passions and be guided by his understanding. Every good man cannot be wise; but it is in the power of every wise man, if he pleases, to be as eminent for virtue as for talent." ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... second generation of dramatists was strongly affected. Yet there are few lyric poets worth mentioning among Gongora's disciples for the reason that such a pernicious system meant certain ruin to those who lacked the master's talent. The most important names are the Count of Villamediana (1580-1622), a satirist whose sharp tongue caused his assassination, and Paravicino y Arteaga (1580-1633), a ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... of the timbers that rise above the decks, and are used for belaying hawsers, large ropes, &c. (See KEVEL-HEADS.) These being such important parts of a ship, men of acknowledged talent in the royal navy are styled "the timber-heads of ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... existence; and there was not a cabinet against a wall, not a rug on a floor, not a cushion on a chair, not a knicknack on a mantelpiece, not a plate in a rack, but had come there by the design of her brain. Without possessing much artistic taste, Leonora had an extraordinary talent for domestic equipment, organisation, and management. She was so interested in her home, so exacting in her ideals, that she could never reach finality; the place went through a constant succession of improvements; its comfort and its attractiveness were always on the increase. And the ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... and costumes. In nothing is Iceland so deficient as in pictorial representation. It has been very minutely surveyed by the Danes, and Olsen has left nothing to wish for in the way of topographical delineation, but artists do not seem to have found it an attractive field for the exercise of their talent. At least I could obtain no good pictures of Iceland in Copenhagen. The few indifferent sketches published there, and in the journals of late English and German tourists, afford no adequate idea of the country. I have seen nothing of the ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... or a luncheon or "shower" to which ladies only are invited. If for any reason either the husband or the wife cannot attend a function, the other also must decline. The exceptions to this rule are those cases where a man or a woman of particular talent moves in a circle the interests of which are not especially enjoyable to the other one of the couple, or where the health of the one precludes the possibility of attendance upon affairs of which the other should not be deprived. Too long or too frequent use of the excuses which cover these ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... one then. In Padua, which seems to be regaining its old reputation as the birthplace of spurious antiques, by the way, there lives an ingenious craftsman named Pietro Stelli. This simple soul, who possesses a talent not inferior to that of Cavino at his best, has for many years turned his hand to the not unprofitable occupation of forging rare Greek and Roman coins. As a collector and student of certain Greek colonials ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... well-reputed school, that of the Rev. John Clarke, at Enfield: the son Charles Cowden Clarke, whom I have previously mentioned, was an undermaster, and paid particular attention to Keats. The latter did not show any remarkable talent at school, but learned easily, and was 'a very orderly scholar,' acquiring a fair amount of Latin but no Greek. He was active, pugnacious, and popular among his school-fellows. The father died of a fall from his horse in April, 1804: the mother, after re-marrying, succumbed ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... absorbing something of its careless creed, its loose ethical and moral standards. New York society, he knew, reflected much that was bad, and much that was good of the gay worlds of Paris and London; for Americans are unexcelled in the talent of imitation, but from phrases that had passed Olga's lips he knew that she ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs |
