"Consummate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dog-days have come it is already preparing for its approaching liberation. The adult is not sufficiently well equipped to open for itself a way out through the pea, which is now completely hardened. The larva knows of this future helplessness, and with consummate art provides for its release. With its powerful mandibles it bores a channel of exit, exactly round, with extremely clean-cut sides. The most skilful ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... not much worse than the authors. The prosaic Buckle, to be sure, admits that the poets have in all time been consummate observers, and that their observations have been as valuable as those of the men of science; and yet we look even to the poets for very casual and occasional glimpses of Nature only, not for any continuous reflection of her glory. Thus, Chaucer is perfumed with early spring; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... far as technical skill in cutting goes, was out and away beyond anything we could almost dream of at home, and all at 1s. 4d. a day, which is good pay here. One man cut with consummate skill geometrical ornaments on lintels to be supported by architraves covered with woodland scenes, with elephants foreshortened and ivory tusks looking out from amongst tree-trunks, and most naturalistic ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... company with the general, it was with the understanding that they meet again in a day or two, and consummate the agreement whereby the adroit critic was to follow the fortunes of his master through politics and war. He therefore went directly to his home, and returned thanks for the mercy of this opportune deliverance from his dire necessities. A shilling he had not had in his pocket for several days; ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... harmonised little satin petticoats, the solidity of the little heads, in spite of all their prettiness, the happy, unexaggerated squareness and maturity of pose, are, severally, points to study, to imitate, and to reproduce with profit. But the taste of such a consummate thing is its great secret as well as its great merit—a taste which seems one of the lost instincts of mankind. Go and enjoy this supreme expression of Vandyck's fine sense, and admit that never was a ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... multitudes, (as the ancient represented nature by Proteus,[500] a shepherd), and in undescribable variety. It publishes itself in creatures, reaching from particles and spicula, through transformation on transformation to the highest symmetries, arriving at consummate results without a shock or a leap. A little heat, that is, a little motion, is all that differences the bald, dazzling white, and deadly cold poles of the earth from the prolific tropical climates. All changes pass without violence, by reason of the two cardinal conditions ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... and Monsieur Darzac on his knees by her pillow. I guessed that each had drawn different conclusions from what they had seen. It was easy to see that the scene had strongly impressed Rouletabille in favour of Monsieur Robert Darzac; while, to Larsan, it showed nothing but consummate hypocrisy, acted with finished art ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... the fatal end. They do not grow or develop on the imagination; their character is stamped at once, and they have but to act it out. There is no lingering upon episodes, no digressions, no reliefs. They cannot stir from that spot where they are doomed to expiate or consummate their crimes; one little day is given them, ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... ALEXANDER, dolicocephalic, fimbriated and supra-lapsarian, interpreted the role of the archdeacon with consummate skill. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 7, 1914 • Various
... precision is no easy matter, as every one who has tried to learn carpentry will admit. To throw a stone with as true an aim as a Fuegian in defending himself, or in killing birds, requires the most consummate perfection in the correlated action of the muscles of the hand, arm, and shoulder, and, further, a fine sense of touch. In throwing a stone or spear, and in many other actions, a man must stand firmly on his feet; and this again demands the perfect co-adaptation of numerous ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... English, or did Philip, pocketing his 10,000 francs, cheat and defraud his allies with a counterfeit Jeanne? Such crooked dealing would have been in perfect keeping with his character. Though a far more agreeable and gentlemanly person, he was almost as consummate and artistic a rascal as his great-great-great-grandson and namesake, Philip II. of Spain. His duplicity was so unfathomable and his policy so obscure, that it would be hardly safe to affirm a priori that he might not, for ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... exhibit; and everybody who saw Lady Clavering's reception rooms, was forced to confess that they were most elegant; and that the prettiest rooms in London—Lady Harley Quin's, Lady Hanway Wardour's, or Mrs. Hodge-Podgson's own; the great Railroad Croesus' wife, were not fitted up with a more consummate "chastity." ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the Never Never country, and Mrs Herring had nursed him bravely to the end. She tried to reconcile this with his death this afternoon in the Boer War, and decided that it didn't matter. He must have died somewhere, for no one had ever seen him. She was discovering slowly that this woman was a consummate liar, who lied as the birds sing, but forgot her many inventions, a born liar without a memory. Suddenly Mrs Herring said she must be going, and Ada got up to leave. She lurched as she stood, and pushed her chair over ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... of you!" exclaimed Mr. Taggett. "Any expression of friendliness from you would finish me! For nearly ten days I have looked upon you as a most cruel and consummate villain." ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... they were an unusual group, a group characterized by breadth of vision, and by a faith sufficient for them to carry through the bold projects outlined by their leader. Many were blessed with abundant means, and, above all, were filled with a consummate loyalty and affection for their church. In this happy partnership of pastor and parish, each inspired the other to great accomplishment. The older members who were in the parish at the beginning of Mr. Nelson's ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... the acquaintance of the Chevalier d'Eon, the secretary of the embassy, who afterwards became famous. This Chevalier d'Eon was a handsome woman who had been an advocate and a captain of dragoons before entering the diplomatic service; she served Louis XV. as a valiant soldier and a diplomatist of consummate skill. In spite of her manly ways I soon recognized her as a woman; her voice was not that of a castrato, and her shape was too rounded to be a man's. I say nothing of the absence of hair on her face, as that ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... type of journalist, who professed to be on intimate terms with everybody in Paris worth knowing, has a number of offensive and unjustifiable allusions to Lola Montez at this period of her career. He talks of her "consummate impudence," of her "pot-house wit," and of her "grammatical errors," and dubs her, among other things, ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... years of Miss Mancel's life passed in a perfect calm; this may appear too cold an expression, since her situation was such as would by most people have been thought consummate happiness. Mrs Thornby's ample fortune enabled them to live in great figure, and Miss Mancel's beauty and understanding rendered her the object of general admiration. Had her conduct been less admirable, she could not but have acquired many lovers; it is not strange then, such ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... loyalty in Bertram to make conclusive to him in such a matter as that of taking a wife. Bertram had surely good reason to look upon the king's forcing him to marry Helena as a very tyrannical act. Indeed, it must be confessed that her character is not very delicate, and it required all Shakspeare's consummate skill to interest us for her; and he does this chiefly by the operation of the other characters,—the Countess, Lafeu, &c. We get to like Helena from their praising and commending her ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... antiquities, gave him the final impulse towards investigation of the Eternal City. Some fifteen years ago my father became acquainted and subsequently on terms of friendship with the great Rossi, in whose company he spent whole days in the catacombs. Thanks to his extraordinary gifts he soon acquired such consummate knowledge of Rome as to astonish Rossi himself. Several times he began writing treatises on the subject, but never finished what he had begun. Maybe the completion of his collections took up too much of his time, but most likely ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... palmer did his best to prolong a mood so beneficial to the wounded young man. The surgeon also nodded approval, and attributed this happy state of the patient's mind, and all the physical advantages growing out of it, to his own consummate skill; nor, indeed, was he undeserving of credit, not often to be awarded to medical men, for having done nothing to impede the good which kind Nature was willing to bring about. She was doing the patient ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and he was impatient for an introduction. I like him extremely: he has everything in his favour that can be imagined ; sound judgment without positiveness, brilliant talents without conceit, authority with gentleness, and consummate knowledge of science with modesty. What a blessing that such a character should preside over these inexperienced youths ! Mr. Jacob has aided us to remove. Time is a plaything to the diligent and obliging, though a thief to the idle and capricious ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... He was one of my dearest college friends. He is a man of the utmost dignity of soul and consummate breeding." ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... like rings of gold, beset with rubies red. In one stanza they abhorred themselves as worms; in the next they rejoiced as alabaster doves; and, glorying in the constant presence of the Well-Beloved, they feared not the King of Terrors, and calmly sang of death as "the last magnetic kiss, to consummate their bliss." But, despite its crude and extravagant language, this hymn-book was of historic importance. At that time the number of hymn-books in England was small; the Anglicans had no hymn-book at all, and never sang anything but Psalms; ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... by wholly unsupported witnesses, it was a very human weakness of Rattlers Ridge that the responsibility of corroboration was passed to the dog himself, and HE was looked upon as a consummate liar. ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... to deal with a bold adventuress, with a consummate actress, who, finding herself in a dangerous situation, had adopted this daring line of defence, and now by her personal charm sought to lure me ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... defend the flag and property of the United States. With this policy in his heart, he permitted public property to be seized, without striking a blow; he discovered treason in his cabinet, and coolly allowed the traitors to consummate their work and to depart. The fact was, that he was a very weak man, and his biographer is the best authority for the statement. The work is important; it will always, as it richly merits, be consulted by students, and may be read with ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... diffuses over the whole figure in the tragic scene that requires it; we are equally struck by both: we see nothing like either: and we admire the execution while we have no conception of the manner in which it is performed. The strength and heightening are alike admirable in each, and the consummate sweetness only to be rivalled by the expressive strength of the colouring. In the conduct and finish of their pieces, both have done wonders; and as the pictures of Corregio are so equal in their several parts, that, though the labour of years, they seem to have been finished ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... have answered him that he, the questioner himself had set him on, but the words stuck in his throat. The consummate art with which his patron had led him to this point, and managed the whole conversation, perfectly baffled him. He did not doubt that if he had made the retort which was on his lips when Mr Chester turned round and questioned ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... in Florence. He was favored with a devoted teacher, Brunetto Latini, who was said to be "a great philosopher and a consummate master of rhetoric, not only knowing how to speak well, but to write well." Under him Dante became familiar with all of the great Latin poets, with philosophy, history, and theology. Dante always spoke of his teacher with great affection. Those were times of revolution and ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... soldier were fortunately found united in the person of one man; and that man, by the rarest of combinations, the same who was clothed with the supreme power of the State. Less power, or power less harmonious, or power the most consummate, administered with less absolute skill, would doubtless have been found incompetent to struggle with the tempestuous assaults which then lowered over the entire frontier of France. It was natural, and, upon the known constitution ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... between Socrates and a mysterious woman of foreign extraction. She elicits the final truth from one who knows nothing, and who, speaking by the lips of another, and himself a despiser of rhetoric, is proved also to be the most consummate ...
— Symposium • Plato
... of Tripoli: he travelled the length and breadth of Asia Minor. When he arrived back at Shiraz, he had passed the limit of three-score years and ten, and there he remained in his hermitage and his garden, to arrange the result of all his studies, his experiences, and his sufferings, in that consummate work which he has named the "Rose Garden," after the little cultivated plot in which he spent his declining days and ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... unsymmetrical parts of his body are similarly misplaced. The right lobe of his liver is on the left side, the left on his right; while his lungs, too, are similarly contraposed. What is still more singular, unless Gottfried is a consummate actor, we must believe that his right hand has recently become his left. Since the occurrences we are about to consider (as impartially as possible), he has found the utmost difficulty in writing, except from right to left across the paper with his left hand. He ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... has a thick overcoat of hair that sheds off both the snow and the rain. Other provisions and adaptations in the dresses of animals, relating less to climate than to the more mechanical circumstances of life, are made with the same consummate skill that characterizes all the love work of Nature. Land, water, and air, jagged rocks, muddy ground, sand beds, forests, underbrush, grassy plains, etc., are considered in all their possible combinations ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... self-devotion, his insight. But it felt also, as we can never feel, the versatile perfection of his skill. This it was that made Demosthenes unique to the ancients. The ardent patriot, the far-seeing statesman, were united in his person with the consummate and unapproachable artist. Dionysius devoted two special treatises to Demosthenes,—one on his language and style ([Greek: lektikos topos]), the other on his treatment of subject-matter ([Greek: pragmatikos ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... intelligence is speaking in the unity of a person; which unity is no more broken by the diversity of the pipes through which it makes itself audible, than is a tune by the different instruments on which it is played by a consummate musician, equally perfect in all. One instrument may be more capacious than another, but as far as its compass extends, and in what it sounds forth, it will be true to the conception of the master. I can conceive ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... tricked up for the entertainment of an idle hour. We are told by Lockhart, that the old man who told the story of Gilpin Horner to Lady Dalkeith bona fide believed the existence of the elf. Lady Dalkeith repeated the tale to Walter Scott, who worked it up with consummate skill into the Lay of the Last Minstrel. This is a case of a really believed legend of diablerie becoming the source of a literary fiction. Scott neither believed in the reality of the goblin page himself, nor expected his readers to believe ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... Ebers's early life was worth the telling, and he has told it himself, as no one else could tell it, with all the consummate skill of his perfected craftsmanship, with all the reverent love of an admiring son, and with all the happy exuberance of a careless youth remembered in all its brightness in the years of his maturity. Finally, the book teaches a beautiful lesson of fortitude in adversity, of suffering patiently ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... take her hence and marry her instantly. Do you the office, friar; which consummate, Return him here ...
— Measure for Measure • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... truth, there was something remarkably striking about the clear, silvery, bell-like tones of the violin; they seemed to have been engendered in the human soul. Krespel's heart was deeply moved; he played, too, better than ever. As he ran up and down the scale, playing bold passages with consummate power and expression, she clapped her hands together and cried with delight, "I did that well! I did ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... up her mind. She would simulate innocence at all costs. With the craft of a consummate actress, she began in a low voice, which gradually rose and became ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... or even to increase the richness towards the top; but this is done so skillfully that no fine work is wasted; and when the spectator ascends to the higher points of the building, which he thought were of the most consummate delicacy, he finds them Herculean in strength and rough-hewn in style, the really delicate work being all put at the base. The general treatment of Romanesque work is to increase the number of arches at the top, which at once enriches and lightens the mass, and to put the finest ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... the intellect and the imagination, its concrete works of art, its special and prominent personalities, with their profound aesthetic charm, but for its general spirit and character, for the ethical qualities of which it is a consummate type. ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... comedy with consummate skill, Coucon hastened to the carriage he had kept waiting, and drove to the Hotel de Monte-Cristo. He was in such haste to inform Goutran that he had successfully fulfilled his mission, that he ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... their front against a persistent defense worthy of the grimmest period of trench warfare and attacked the strongly held wooded hill of Blanc Mont, which they captured in a second assault, sweeping over it with consummate dash and skill. This division then repulsed strong counter attacks before the village and cemetery of Ste. Etienne and took the town, forcing the Germans to fall back from before Rheims and yield positions they had held since September, 1914. On Oct. 9 the 36th Division relieved ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... caldron, stood round it for her defence, and when the last man had fallen the victorious suitor carried off the girl, and married her for her lands. This, too, was a plain case of abducting an heiress, not indeed by violence, but with consummate art. Setting aside the rare attractions of the lady, in Moodie's estimation the prize was immense. L'Isle, with all his lofty airs, was but a commoner, with perhaps no fortune but his sword, a mere adventurer, and Lord Strathern's broad acres were an irresistible temptation; though, in truth, this ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... a by no means idle time while sojourning in the territories of our eastern Ally. For among them they promised away any amount more munitions and war material of all kinds. They went into the details of the contemplated deal with meticulous care and consummate administrative skill. They elaborated a programme which would undoubtedly have proved in the highest degree advantageous to Russia, had the conditions not undergone a complete metamorphosis owing to the outbreak of the Revolution in Petrograd ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... island, but the respect and deference shown to him by the tribe were owing more to the man's age and personal worth, than to his rank. He had succeeded his father as chief of the tribe, and, during a long life, had led his people in council, at the hunt, and in war, with consummate ability and success. Although old, he still held the reins of power, chiefly because his eldest son and rightful successor—Chingatok's elder brother—was a weak-minded man of little capacity and somewhat malignant disposition. If our giant had ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... Sauret again visited the United States, when it was admitted by those who had heard him twenty years before that he had grown to a consummate and astounding virtuoso. His tone was firm, pure, and beautiful, though not large. Marsick and Ondricek had preceded him by a few weeks, but Sauret ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... repeat, de Courcelles, that your man, Boucher, has thrown away his own life. It's not well to deal a foul blow at a consummate swordsman. But I suppose it's hard for a murderer to change his instincts. Ah, what a stroke! What a stroke! It was so swift that I saw only a flash of light! And so, our friend, Boucher, has sped! And when ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... skin of his face shone.' In all regions of life, the consummate apex and crowning charm of excellence is unconsciousness of excellence. Whenever a man begins to imagine that he is good, he begins to be bad; and every virtue and beauty of character is robbed of some portion of its attractive fairness when the man who bears it knows, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... the nation, the cause must be sought for in the peculiar features of the invasion itself, rather than any lack of military influence in the French defences. As has been already remarked, a million of disciplined men, under consummate leaders, were here assailing a single state, impoverished by the fatal war in Russia,—torn in pieces by political factions,—deserted by its sworn allies,—its fortresses basely betrayed into the enemy's hands, and its military power paralyzed by the treason of generals with ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... all this contumely preserved an appearance of consummate indifference to it all; but her son! her unhappy son blushed with shame and anger. He turned his sympathizing eyes upon her, whom he believed to be an impersonation of every feminine virtue, and she replied to his glance by ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... and again would ring the fearful cry, "There goes Kennedy's spies;" and it required the most consummate acting and self- possession to allay the suspicion. Often on a single word or act hinged their very lives. Some of these men were in the mob that made the first attack on Mayor Opdyke's house, ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... human reason confirms this reasoning. There is no one, not even the most consummate villain, provided only that he is otherwise accustomed to the use of reason, who, when we set before him examples of tionesty of purposea of steadfastness in following good maxims, of sympathy and general benevolence (even combined with great sacrifices of advantages and comfort), ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... who had been one of her best teachers and with whom, when a pupil, she had had many an argument, was kindly received, and fulfilled his commission with consummate skill. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... formed to the memory of the Drapier; shops and taverns bore the sign of the Drapier's Head; children and women carried handkerchiefs with the Drapier's portrait woven in them. All grades of society respected him for an influence that, founded in sincerity and guided by integrity and consummate ability, had been used patriotically. The DEAN became Ireland's chiefest citizen; and Irishmen will ever revere the memory of the man who was the first among them to precipitate their national instincts into the abiding form of national power—the reasoned ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... her, and, though she was welcomed by others, the majority were hostile and suspicious. But gradually she gained ground. Her good will could not be denied, and her capacity could not be disregarded. With consummate tact, with all the gentleness of supreme strength, she managed at last to impose her personality upon the susceptible, overwrought, discouraged, and helpless group of men in authority who surrounded her. She stood firm; she was a rock in the angry ocean; with her alone was safety, comfort, ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... necessary right of way for the hydraulic tunnel or in the acquisitom of land, the Company has shown consummate tact. A few proprietors declined to accept its terms, and the Company selected a parallel route. Having obtained the right of way for the latter, it informed the refractory owners on the first line of their success, and intimated that the Company could now dispense with ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... He seemed no longer to see Margaret, and she watched him thoughtfully. His eyes rested on a print of La Gioconda which hung on the wall. Suddenly he began to speak. He recited the honeyed words with which Walter Pater expressed his admiration for that consummate picture. ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... Wallace, in Florence, already a great commercial town, Arnolfo di Cambio had received the sublime orders of the Signoria to construct for the Duomo 'the most sumptuous edifice that human invention could desire or human labour execute,' and had carried out those orders with consummate skill. While Edward III. was dreaming of his lawless filibustering expeditions into France, Ciotto was encrusting the face of his glorious belfry with that magnificent decoration of many-coloured marbles which makes northern churches look ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... utterly impossible that these intricate movements could go on without resulting in a series of collisions and disasters. Yet, with all this bewildering whirling, twisting, and intertwining, the ships were guided on their courses with consummate skill and with an unerring accuracy ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... pronounced a panegyric on the young hero, Captain Walsingham, which made the good old man rub his hands with exultation, and which irradiated with joy the countenance of her son. But, alas! Mrs. Beaumont's endeavours to please, or rather to dupe all parties, could not, even with her consummate address, always succeed: though she had an excellent memory, and great presence of mind, with peculiar quickness both of eye and ear, yet she could not always register, arrange, and recollect all that was necessary for the various parts she ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... Consummate Artist, whose undying name With classic Rogers shall go down to fame, Be this thy crowning work! In my young days How often have I with a child's fond gaze Pored on the pictured wonders thou hadst ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... and movement. For this reason Negro rhythms and white man imitations of them popularized as 'rag-time' have spread far and wide and have conquered the world to-day. The black man has by nature a highly organized rhythmic sense. A totally uneducated Negro, dancing or playing the bones, is often a consummate artist in rhythm, performing with utter abandon and yet with flawless accuracy. My African informant, Kamba Simango, thought nothing of singing one rhythm, beating another with his hands and dancing a third—and all ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... should have gladdened the hostess. Her house had never lighted to better advantage; everybody admired the new decorations; she herself felt no impulse to quarrel either with nature or her dressmaker; the programme had run with consummate smoothness,—Volney Sprague, the editor of the Tuscarora County Whig, reading a scholarly paper on Shakespeare's anachronisms, and his fast friend Bernard Graves leading the discussion in his usual clever way; furthermore, the ices ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... barbarity, and blasphemy to proclaim the reign of "Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality," with Marat for their leader, and Danton for their orator, and Robespierre for their high-priest; and, finally, to consummate the infamous farce of reform by openly setting up a wanton woman as the idol of their worship, under the name of the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... carefully, child. If one day you rise above your station and come to know yourself and the world about you, you will discover this, that men act only out of regard for the opinion of their fellows—and per Bacco! they are consummate fools for their pains. They dread other folks' blame and ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... wrote to Morris Townsend. The intimacy between these two was by this time consummate, but I must content myself with noting but a few of its features. Mrs. Penniman's own share in it was a singular sentiment, which might have been misinterpreted, but which in itself was not discreditable to the poor lady. It was a romantic ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... innocent; but no good principles had ever taken root in his heart. Very early, those a mother's care had endeavoured to instil into him had been eradicated; and step by step—slow at first, perhaps—he had advanced from bad to worse, till he became the consummate villain he now was. But I am forestalling the account I afterwards got ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... manners which has produced so much evil; and, as far as I can form an opinion, these views have met with sympathy from every part of the country. I look upon it that to-night—I hope I am not mistaken—we are met to consummate and to celebrate the emancipation of this city, at least so far as the Athenaeum extends, from the influence of these feelings. I hope that our minds and our hearts are alike open to the true character of this institution, to the necessities which have ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... yet he is not more that than he is every thing else: for he makes us think as intensely as he requires us to feel; while opening the deepest fountains of the heart, he at the same time kindles the highest energies of the head. Nay, with such consummate art does he manage the fiercest tempests of our being, that in a healthy mind the witnessing of them is always attended by an overbalance of pleasure. With the very whirlwinds of passion he so blends the softening and assuaging influences of ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... state sustain no injury in the mean time, while I am crossing over, while I am landing my troops in Africa, while I am advancing my camp to the walls of Carthage; be not too sure that it is not an insult to Publius Licinius, the consul, a man of consummate valour, who did not draw lots for so distant a province merely that, as he was chief pontiff, he might not be absent from religious affairs, to say that he is unable to do that, now that the power of Hannibal is shaken, and in a manner shattered, which ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... the consummate dexterity with which he exhibited two different views of his policy to two different parties he was afterwards bitterly reviled by the Court of Saint Germains. "Licet Foederatis publicus ille preado haud aliud aperte proponat nisi ut Galici imperii exuberans amputetur potesias, veruntamen ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... be, when Henry died, and there was no longer any thing in the way of his marriage, he showed no desire to consummate it. Alice's father, too, had died, and Philip, the present King of France, and Richard's ally, was her brother. Philip called upon Richard from time to time to complete the marriage, but Richard found various pretexts for postponing it, and thus the matter stood when the expedition ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... physical austerities. The principle of the rule is the subduing of the will and the curbing of the spirit. The order is a recent one, and was instituted by Saint Francis of Sales while Beza ruled in Geneva and the Reformation had just disturbed the religious balance of Europe. With consummate prudence the new order was directed to employ the means best understood by the age. Cold calculation had succeeded to ardent zeal: the public mind no longer instinctively revered the old heroic type of dragon-tamers, be they called Roland ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... Thomas Arundel, of Wardour. As Cecilius, unlike his father, never held public positions in England, his character is best revealed by his conduct of his province in America, which shows him to have been a man of consummate prudence and tact. ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... we are. But considering man at his best, he is at the start faced with the great problem. At the very start he has to undertake his tripartite being, the mother within him, the father within him, and the Holy Ghost, the self which he is supposed to consummate, ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... in the night. His surprise was such that he could only marvel that while, travel-stained and dishevelled, he had arrived at Britstown with an effort, she had already reached that goal, and, to judge from the studied neatness of her attire, had reached it with consummate ease. Her smile and attitude as she held out her hand to her visitor expressed satisfaction at the meeting—a satisfaction tempered with a determination to show a front which should declare a full measure ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... new order to become his Colonial Minister, or more technically, Minister of the Interior, was Smuts, who had left his law office in Johannesburg to fight the English in 1900 and who displayed the same consummate strategy in the field that he has since shown in Cabinet meeting and Legislative forum. With peace he returned to law but not for long. Now began his political career—he has held public office continuously ever since—that is a vital part of the ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... Berlin, where events seemed to require the exercise of great diplomatic ability. He was afterward appointed to Madrid, where, by his highly honorable personal character, and captivating manners, he obtained great influence, even at that most proud and distrustful court, and conducted, with consummate skill and marked success, the important and delicate negotiations then pending between the United States and Spain. He remained at Madrid for many years, where he attained the reputation of being one of the most able and accomplished diplomatists that the United States ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... On the way back to Rome, the count led them insensibly by a particular route. Presently he reined in his horse, clapped his hand before his eyes, and cried out aloud. Then he showed his face again (which was now quite white, for he was a consummate actor), and stared upon the baron. 'What ails you?' cries the baron. 'What is wrong with you?'—'Nothing,' cries the count. 'It is nothing. A seizure, I know not what. Let us hurry back to Rome.' But in the meanwhile the baron had looked about him; and there, on the left-hand side of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... have passed since I finished that entry with the most appropriate words, "I am." They fittingly express the consummate egoism with which I was then afflicted. ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... this remains recorded in the Prachar and Bharati of those days and need not be repeated here. At the close of this period of antagonism Bankim Babu wrote me a letter which I have unfortunately lost. Had it been here the reader could have seen with what consummate generosity Bankim Babu had taken the sting ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... waited with consummate judgment, though against the advice of all his supporters, until Fox had worn down his majorities in the House, and totally disgusted the nation, dissolved the parliament. The measure was triumphant; an unequaled Tory majority ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... consummate expression of that Stoic philosophy in which were blended the clearness of Greek thought and the austerity of the best Roman life. Stoicism reverted from all universe-schemes, spiritual or materialist, to the conduct of ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... was lighted with precious jewels for lamps. The serpent people, in the same way, who live beneath the earth in the city of Vasuki, yield, after combat, to Arjuna. A thousand million semi-human snakemen dwelt there, with wives of consummate loveliness, possessing in their realm gems which would restore dead people to life, as well as a fountain of perpetual youth. Finally, Arjuna's host marches back in great glory, and with a vast train ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... Messurier was solacing his aching head with his hands, oblivious of the events of the preceding evening, he was feelingly reminded of his consummate skill in pilotage. He then became most unnaturally modest, and denied all pretensions to the honour. Now Captain Reud had no idea that even an enemy should wrap up his talent in a napkin, so he merely said to him, "You must take my ship in." When the captain had made up his mind, the deed ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... labeled, from the earth to the inhabitants; these primitives, these blissfully "heathen" people, have become the most consummate of sharpers. I walk up to buy something of the value of only a few cash, and on all sides are nets and traps, like spider-webs, and the fly that these gentry would catch, as they see me stalk around inspecting their wares, is myself. They seem to lie in wait for one, and for an article for which ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... it, and went so far as to make his solicitor write to that effect to Marmaduke, who had the consummate impudence to reply that he should in that case be compelled to provide for himself by contracting a marriage of which he could not expect his family to approve. Still, he added, if the family chose to sever their connexion with him, they could not expect him to consult their feelings in his ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... from that place to reside in Rome, where he remained for twelve years, till August 1870. During all that period he was the real though unofficial representative of England at the Vatican, and his consummate tact enabled him to do all, and more than all, that an ordinary man could have done in a stronger position. A reference, however, to his evidence before a committee of the House of Commons in 1871 will make it clear to any unprejudiced reader that ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... place of worship in Christendom. There is a mystery in it at the sunset hour which is felt by all men, though none can explain it; the light glows and fades there as nowhere else, the shadows have a sweet solemnity of their own, and consummate art, or supreme good-fortune, has made the vast nave and colonnaded aisles responsive to the softest notes the human voice can breathe. First the full organ blares out triumphantly alone, and by and by the chorus, borne up by the master instrument, swells from a hundred throats ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... who loves lilies because they are pure, and calls teapots 'consummate' because—well, I don't exactly know why—he couldn't have put his ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... the highest order. But besides being a great dramatist he was a consummate master of language. The choruses in Esther and Athalie are excellent examples of the kind of lyric that the tendencies represented by Malherbe permitted. The extract here given is from Esther, Act III. The approach to the language of the Psalms ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... hand over his eyes a moment and let the breath escape softly through his teeth. "Yet most damnably clever in the consummate way the vile suggestions are insinuated under cover of a kind of high drollery. My stenographer left me of course—and I've ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... foul a den was then a royal prison, it must appear almost marvellous that Carl Maria should have possessed sufficient equanimity to have occupied himself with his beloved art during his arrest. But so it was. He managed to procure a dilapidated old piano, put it in tune with consummate patience, by means of a common door-key, and actually, then and there, on the 14th of October, 1808, composed his well-known beautiful song, 'Ein steter Kampf ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... defence of Washington had been committed to Commodore Barney, a most expert and gallant veteran of the Revolution, who handled his wholly inadequate little force with consummate skill and daring, both afloat and ashore. He was not, strictly speaking, a naval officer, but a privateersman who had made the unique record of taking eleven prizes in ten consecutive days with his famous Baltimore schooner Rossie. The military defence was committed to General Winder, one ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... are a bachelor, because you have never been any one's husband; and a married man, because you have a wife living; and to all intents and purposes a widower, because you have been deprived of that wife; and a consummate ass for going off to Benicia in the first place, while things were so mixed. And by this time I have got myself so tangled up in the intricacies of this extraordinary case that I shall have to give up any further attempt to advise you—I might ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... refused when she does it so timidly and shrinkingly and deprecatingly that it might be supposed she were the rejected party. It is bad enough to be refused when she expresses the hope that you will always be friends, and shows a disposition to make profuse amends in general agreeableness for the consummate favor which she is forced to decline you. Not to put too fine a point upon it, it is bad enough to be refused anyhow you can arrange the circumstances, but to be refused as Lombard had been, with a petulance as wounding to his dignity as was the refusal itself to his affections, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... cordons, and even in Prussia, where sanatory laws where executed "avec une punctualite et une rigeur ailleurs inconnues." The money is nevertheless granted; it is always a good thing to have, but they have set one curious condition upon its being granted, which displays consummate tact, for it is to be employed solely in disbursements of a particular nature (depenses materielles), including, it may be presumed, temporary hospitals, &c.; and that it is by no means ("nullement") to go ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... represented as a German from the west bank of the Rhine fleeing from the turmoil caused by the French Revolution. The political element is not a mere background, but is woven into the plot with consummate skill, being used, at one point, for example, in the characterization of Dorothea, who before the time of her appearance in the poem has been deprived of her first betrothed by the guillotine; and, ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... When men and women hear Who since they went to their account Have settled with the year! — Paid all that life had earned In one consummate bill, And now, what life or death can do Is immaterial. Insulting is the sun To him whose mortal light, Beguiled of immortality, Bequeaths him to the night. In deference to him Extinct be every hum, Whose garden wrestles with the dew, At ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson |
