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Masterful   /mˈæstərfəl/   Listen
Masterful

adjective
1.
Having or revealing supreme mastery or skill.  Synonyms: consummate, masterly, virtuoso.  "Consummate skill" , "A masterful speaker" , "Masterful technique" , "A masterly performance of the sonata" , "A virtuoso performance"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Masterful" Quotes from Famous Books



... It was masterful man, once more asserting himself. It was a trivial misstep, but a fatal one. It betrayed, at a flash, his entire misjudgment of me, of my feelings, of what I was and what I ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... hermit's abode opened before Mr. Max's masterful knock, and the bearded little man appeared on the threshold. He was clad in a purple dressing-gown that suggested some woman had picked it. Surely no man could have fallen victim to ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers

... reference to the poetical and prose works of Germany or of other nations, nor is there any evidence that their imaginations were influenced by suggestions drawn from literature. Famous though they were as musicians by reason of their sincere and masterful handling of the raw material of music, there is so little depth of thought in their compositions that many of them have failed to live. Neither Haydn nor Mozart can be considered as a great character and we miss the note of sublimity in their music, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... sensation knowledge, they at once gratify that disposition and save their consistency, by declaring that even the simplest act of sensation contains two terms and a relation—the sensitive subject, the sensigenous object, and that masterful entity, the Ego. From which great triad, as from a gnostic Trinity, emanates an endless procession of other logical shadows and all the Fata Morgana ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley

... office door and marshalling them outside, "we'd better go somewhere else if we are going to talk. It is important that my patient should be kept perfectly quiet." The doctor's air was so entirely respectful and at the same time so masterful that Maclennan found himself walking meekly toward the grub-house behind the doctor, with Fahey, the smile on his face broader than ever, bringing up the rear. Maclennan caught the smile, but in the face of the doctor's quiet, respectful manner he found it difficult to rouse ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor

... Bessy in the orchard under apple trees that were pyramids of pearly bloom. She looked at him through the twilight with reproach and aloofness in her eyes. But he put out his hands and caught her reluctant ones in a masterful grasp. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... man, and had a masterful way with him, even to father, that I disliked; but after a short, business-like talk, apparently satisfactory to both, he went away without entering the house. Father put his hands in his pockets and watched him out of sight; then, looking at me, ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... is enough," she whispered. His only answer was to tighten the arm behind her. She sighed and let that masterful strength bear her where it would. She forgot that this man was little more than a savage, that they would part at dawn. The blood has no memories, no reflections, no regrets for the past, no consideration of ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather

... his father spoke of going, though he found himself talking some folly against it, on Alison's side, who jovially mocked the Colonel for shyness. But Colonel Boyce, it appeared, had made up his mind, and Harry was surprised at the masterful ease with which, keeping the empty fun still loud, he extricated himself ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey

... girl, and his manner was masterful. "I'm going out with Kent—oh, Val, this is Mr. Burnett. Kent, Miss Peyson. I forgot you ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower

... to securing freedom in its administration. No denominational name appeared in the act of incorporation, and the original board of trustees included Christians as well as Unitarians. Dr. Stebbins was an admirable man to whom to intrust the organization of the school, for he was a born teacher and a masterful administrator. He was prompt, decisive, a great worker, a powerful preacher, an inspirer of others, and his students warmly admired and ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke

... depraved imagination does not see that a living man is far more dramatic than a dead one. Along with this, as in the time of the Medici, goes the falling back into the arms of despotism, the hunger for the strong man which is unknown among strong men. The masterful hero is worshipped as he is worshipped by the readers of the "Bow Bells Novelettes," and for the same reason—a profound sense of personal weakness. That tendency to devolve our duties descends on us, which is the soul of slavery, alike whether for its menial ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton

... is that she merely wishes to give von Kerber every chance. So long as Mr. Fenshawe remains interested—beguiled, if you like—she switches his thoughts away from the object of our journey. Your grandfather is a masterful man, Miss Fenshawe. If he suspected that we were following a wild-goose chase he would turn south again this ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy

... clerk vanished. He was a stern-looking man with deep-set grey eyes and a square, clean-shaven chin. There was not an ounce of superfluous flesh on his frame, and his voice and manner were those of the decided, resolute, masterful man of business. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... dementia the gods send upon those they wish to destroy. But he enjoyed the bitter flavour of that example with the zest of a connoisseur in the art of his choice. Those two men got on well together, as if each had felt respectively that a masterful conviction, as well as utter scepticism, may lead a man very far on the by-paths ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... let me show what kind of company we were. First, then, for our master, Jack Dawson, who on no occasion was to be given a second place; he was a hale, jolly fellow, who would eat a pound of beef for his breakfast (when he could get it), and make nothing of half a gallon of ale therewith,—a very masterful man, but kindly withal, and pleasant to look at when not contraried, with never a line of care in his face, though turned of fifty. He played our humorous parts, but he had a sweet voice for singing of ditties, and could fetch a tear as readily as ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett

... come in, big, burly, with his farmer-like manner confident, bullying, masterful. He would ask her what she had done; he would swear at her when he learned that she had done nothing; he would throw himself into the most comfortable chair, stretch out his legs, and order her to go and fetch Mr. Mountjoy. Would ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins

... became the masterful male; the injured husband; the protector of his home. There were ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock

... it may seem, his overthrow is the result of a revolution mainly pacific in its nature, and in substance a revolt of public feeling against abuses that have become stereotyped in the system of government by the too long domination of one masterful will. The military rising was but its head, spitting fire. Behind was an immense body of opinion, in favor of effecting the retirement of the President by peaceful means, and with all honor to one who ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... Klinger (1752-1831) was a fellow-townsman and friend of Goethe. His Sturm und Drang, which was at first named Wirrwarr, came out in 1776. The scene is 'America.' The speakers are Wild, a lusty and masterful man of action; Blasius, a blas worldling; and La Feu, a sentimental dreamer. They propose to try their fortunes in the ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas

... photographs, and what not, with trembling fingers, and put them down again without knowing it. He was thinking, not looking. And he was trying to force himself into a masterful mood. She was only a child, he kept repeating to himself—only a child, who wanted guidance, instruction, a protecting hand. It was not her fancies, however generous and noble, that should shape the destinies of two lives. A beautiful child, ignorant of the world and its evil: full of dreams of ...
— Sunrise • William Black

... George C. Noyes, of Chicago. "Mr. Lincoln in repose," says Dr. Noyes, "was a very different man in personal appearance from Mr. Lincoln on the platform or on the stump, when his whole nature was roused by his masterful interest in the subject of his discourse. In the former case he was, as has often been described, a man of awkward and ungainly appearance and exceedingly homely countenance. In the latter case, he was ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... message was the same: He had not wanted a son who should be of his life and heart and ever his in faults and illnesses. This was the recognizable one of the shadows between them now recalled. He had wanted a fresh physical machine into which he could blow the breath of his own masterful being and instil the cunning of his experience. He saw in this straight, clean-limbed youth at his side the hope of Jack's babyhood fulfilled, in the projection of his own ego as a living thing after he himself ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... school. Of course, Mr. Clark knew of our cave, in fact he visited us there once, lowering his dignity sufficiently to squeeze into the narrow passageway, and playing Bill a game of chess at our club table. He seemed quite pleased with our work, and complimented us very highly on the masterful way in which we had built the underground house. We told him that we had organized a club of the older fellows to play indoor games and have occasional spreads, but we did not tell him that most of our spreads were held at the dead of night, when ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond

... These I reckon the essence of prose!— Cavalier Katherine, cold Cornelia, Portia's masterful Roman nose, Maud's magnificence, Totty's toes, Poll and Bet with their twang of the sea, Nell's impertinence, Pamela's woes! Anna's the name ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various

... The maid dropped the tray into the folds of her black dress; she seemed habituated enough to the sudden appearance of the cardless. She looked up respectfully, admiringly—she had opened the door for a good many gentlemen, but seldom for so magnificent and masterful a creature as Abner—and said yes. But alas for the credit of her mistress and of her mistress' household: here was a lordly person who had arrived with the open expectation of meeting a "man" ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... coaxing Roger over now, or indeed ever: he was a wilful, headstrong, masterful man; a tyrant always though never a cruel one; and accustomed to rule his wife and household as despotically as he did his gangs of workmen. Such men it is not easy to ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope

... willing. If you were to go to papa, my dear, you would have to stop coming to me." Marian put it thus, indefinably, as a picture of privation from which her companion might shrink. Such were the threats she could complacently make, could think herself masterful for making. "But if he won't take you," she continued, "he ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James

... man, I think, who ever lived. His jealousy escorted me everywhere like a guard of soldiers. Yet I liked him even for that. He was genuine; so sincere, so masterful with it. In all matters his methods were drastic. If he had been alive I should not be tormented by the absurd fears which I now allow to get the better ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett

... Nevertheless he was too masterful a man to keep his silence altogether; he was, besides, so content upon the whole that he was sure he could hold his temper in check, and the better to take breath for a long speech, he took the little boy from ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford

... showing the masterful manner in which the poor German people are led astray that most of the men making these declarations for annexation are able at the same time to cry that Germany is fighting a defensive war and is prevented from making peace only ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard

... Vicksburg and Port Hudson, Captain Will Hallam was the first to see and seize the opportunity. He bought everything he could lay his hands on in the way of steamboats and barges, and sent them all upon trading voyages—each under charge of a captain, but each directed by his own masterful mind—up and down the Mississippi, and up and down the Ohio, and up and down every navigable tributary ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston

... this distressing piece of work, was indeed so masterful that, as Vasari says, a new delightful style in architecture seemed to be revealed by it. A new way of clothing surfaces, falsifying facades, and dealing picturesquely with the lifeless element of Vitruvian tradition had been demonstrated by the genius of one ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... murmur those words? Would the Senate know that some one in a gondola had caught the new title from her own lips? And so—perchance—to punish the indiscretion—for the Senate was masterful, never-to-be-disobeyed, and the matter was not to be known until it should be declared by that solemn body of world-rulers. And if the gondoliero had carried her word to the Palazzo San Marco——? What if he had been sent there by the Senate itself to watch and see if she were already ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... a shadowy garment. He had handled millions without ever enjoying anything of what is counted as precious in the community of men, because he had neither the brutality of temperament nor the fineness of mind to make him desire them with the will power of a masterful adventurer..." ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... his brief separation from Elizabeth. He turned in at one of the clubs of which he had been made a member, and threw himself gloomily into an easy-chair. His thoughts had turned towards the grim, masterful personality of the man who seemed to have obtruded himself upon their lives. What did it mean when Elizabeth told him she was engaged for to-night? She was supping with him somewhere—probably at that moment seated opposite to him at a ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Having taken this masterful tone, Balzac gave his mother this final practical recommendation, never to give any credit to the periodical and to demand the money immediately after publication of ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet

... only by a masterful effort that Mr. Grimm held himself limp and inert, for a strange fragrance was enveloping ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle

... the spectacle of flood and fell. Mary guided him there; and then stood silent and flushed, conscious that she herself had brought the supreme moment to its birth. The same perception rushed upon Meynell. He looked into her eyes, smiling and masterful, ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... little aside from Lavinia; she only partly heard their remarks, but she saw that Abrego y Mochales' attention never strayed from her sister. Vicariously it made her giddy. The man absolutely summed up all that Lavinia had dreamed of a romantic and masterful personage. She felt convinced that he had destroyed her life's happiness—no other man could ever appeal to her now; none other could satisfy the tumult he had aroused in her. This, she told ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer

... accept the same. And, according to the same principle, persons scattered over large areas are influenced and affected in the same way by whirlpools of mental vibrations set into original motion by some strong, masterful public man. A writer has said concerning ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita

... irritable character and his masterful will all sank into insignificance when she thought of his unvarying fidelity. In so many years of married life . . . nothing! His faithfulness had been unexceptional even in the country where many, surrounded by beasts, and intent on increasing their flocks, ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... rather younger than Douglas—forty-five at the most—a tall, straight, broad-chested fellow with a clean-shaved, prize-fighter face, thick, strong, black eyebrows, and a pair of masterful black eyes which might, even without the aid of his very capable hands, clear a way for him through a hostile crowd. He neither rode nor shot, but spent his days in wandering round the old village with his pipe in his mouth, or in driving with his ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle

... persecution had at last broken? To any man with ordinary sensitiveness of nerves, a political career is a crucifixion—many times repeated. But Mr. Chamberlain, probably, has not the ordinary sensitiveness of nerves. Combative, masterful, with narrow and concentrated purpose, he pursues the game of politics—not without affliction, but with persistent tenacity and a courage that have rarely shown any signs ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor

... before the yells of these kings of the packs of savage prairie wolves, and they were masterful indeed, and could easily be distinguished above the feebler pipings of the ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor

... 120 years its solitary presbytery had grown to 135 presbyteries, including 2140 ministers serving 2865 churches and 220,557 communicants. But these large figures are an inadequate measure of its influence. It represented in its ministry and membership the two most masterful races on the continent, the New England colonists and the Scotch-Irish immigrants; and the tenacity with which it had adhered to the tradition derived through both these lines, of admitting none but liberally educated men to its ministry, had given it exceptional ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... you have learned, was a bright little girl, who spoke her mind, and had no great awe for the Bonapartes—not even for the mighty Canon Lucien, the all-powerful Nurse Saveria, nor the masterful ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa

... looking down into her eyes, bending over her, smiling, pressing, confident, masterful (Page ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield

... see Thurneysen's translation on page 97 Of the work already referred to. Thurneysen's translation is very close; perhaps the last verse should run: "Long rain of red blood at the side of the trees, a token of this proud and masterful, high with wailing is the sorrow for ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy

... back, her hands resting on her bony hips, and her feet clunking inside a pair of boys' shoes too large for her, she crossed the lawn at an angle. In all things about her—in her gait, despite its limp, in her pose, her figure—there was something masterful, something dominating, something tremendously proud. Considering her sparseness of bulk she had a most astoundingly big strong voice, and in the voice as in ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... these substantial successes were achieved, not by a religious fanatic, but by a jurist; not by a saint, but by a genial man of the world; not by force of intellect and will, but by adroitness; not by masterful authority, but by pliant diplomacy; not by forcing but by following the current of events. Since Gregory VII., no Pope had done so much as Pius IV. for bracing the ancient fabric of the Church and confirming the Papal prerogative. But what a difference there is between ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... the dust of the making of man Spirit was breathed when his life began, Lifting him up from his low estate, With masterful passion, the wish to create. Out of the dust of his making, man Fashioned his works as the ages ran; Fortress, and palace, and temple, and tower, Filling the world with the proof of his power. Over the dust that awaits him, man, ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke

... plausible pretext, but I seemed to read in his dark, deepset, brooding eyes that he was perfectly aware of my true business. He is a man of fifty, strong, active, with iron-gray hair, great bunched black eyebrows, the step of a deer and the air of an emperor—a fierce, masterful man, with a red-hot spirit behind his parchment face. He is either a foreigner or has lived long in the tropics, for he is yellow and sapless, but tough as whipcord. His friend and secretary, Mr. Lucas, is ...
— The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge • Arthur Conan Doyle

... up more earnestly the study and practice of law; he entered with spirit into the political campaigns, and constantly was growing in public esteem. His public debates with Douglas (1858) made him a familiar figure throughout the state of Illinois, and his profound knowledge and masterful handling of questions debated, his convincing and unanswerable arguments, his clear grasp of the political situation, began to gain the attention of Eastern politicians, convincing them and the country at large that they had a mighty force to reckon with in the ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America

... continuation of the Clayhanger series to the extent that its hero, George Cannon, is the stepson of Edwin, who himself makes a perfunctory appearance at the close of the tale. The scene is, however, now London, where we watch George winning fame and fortune, quite in the masterful Five-Towns manner, as an architect. The change is, I think, beneficial. That quality of unstalable astonishment, native to Mr. BENNETT's folk, accords better with the complexities of the wonderful ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various

... friend, Swamie Mukerji, a Yogi who comes out of a successive generation of Yogis, is able and proper instrument to handle the subject. He, in these lessons, prepares the layman for an understanding of the Yoga and through a series of wise and masterful sayings, impresses on the mind of the reader the necessity for rising above materialism, nay, solves the very problem "What ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson

... He never appeared to her so strong, so self-reliant and calm as at that moment of her incipient fear. Amongst his engines Frank always wore a masterful air, for he had that instinct for machinery peculiarly American, and was competent almost to the ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne

... duties to take much part in the affair. All the rest, except of course Mr. Taylor, stood together on the real issue—Was the Society to be controlled by those who had made it or was it to be handed over to Mr. Wells? We knew by this time that he was a masterful person, very fond of his own way, very uncertain what that way was, and quite unaware whither it necessarily led. In any position except that of leader Mr. Wells was invaluable, as long as he kept it! As leader we felt he would be ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease

... The masterful power with which the stalwart youth and his father swung the ax and their cunning craftsmanship impressed the English woman and her daughter and were soon to be the topic of many a London tea party. Mrs. Hare spoke of it as she was eating ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... sooner quitted the house than M. Gandrin opened a door at the side of his office, and a large portly man strode into the room,—stride it was rather than step,—firm, self-assured, arrogant, masterful. ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... said the old lady when he had gone, "but he is getting a bit uppish. He's a masterful sort. ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade

... accused should be stricken from the rolls, or the "slanderer dismissed from the cabinet." Mr. Stanton sent the letter to the President without comment. This was too much; and the Secretary received an answer on the very same day, written in Mr. Lincoln's most masterful manner: ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... herself of all the things that she wanted to say prevented full-stops and commas from being of any use to her. Miss Annett was admirably suited as a companion, being long, thin and silent, and intended by nature to be subservient to the more masterful of her sex. With any man she was able easily to hold her own; with Mrs. Ridge she was bending, ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole

... long hours by its aid, so that it had come to be part of his very self. He was beautiful also, swarthy and eager, with a head like Adonis, and in strength there was no one who could compete with him. But all was ruined by his disposition, which was so masterful that he would brook no opposition nor contradiction. For this reason he was continually at enmity with all his neighbours, and in his fits of temper he would spend months at a time in his stone hut among the mountains, hearing ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... a pleasant ride, but we finished it in silence. Verplanck was, as I recalled, a large masterful man, one of those who demanded and liked large things—such as the estate of several hundred acres which ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... Parnell's home at Avondale was some ten miles from here, lying in woods beside the Ovoca River; but the Parnell property stretched up to the slopes of Lugnaquilla, and the dismantled barrack was used by him as a shooting lodge. Here, in the early days before his life became absorbed in the masterful attachment which led finally to his overthrow, he spent good hours; and here the two Redmonds and those others of his followers who were his companions came to camp roughly in this strange, gaunt survival of ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn

... "Him," a word often occurring in Arab poetry, domain, a pasture or watered land forcibly kept as far as a dog's bark would sound by some masterful chief like "King Kulayb." (See vol. ii. 77.) This tenure was forbidden by Mohammed except for Allah and the Apostle (i.e. himself). Lane translates ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton

... screaming and cursing, jerking their arms above their heads, rolling back their lips from their yellow teeth, were apparently so many lunatics whose frenzy was not to be stayed. But undisciplined natures whose excesses spring from lack of self control are all the more ready to respond to the masterful ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day

... mine has caused the impression that Clara was not gentle and sympathetic and altogether feminine, I have wronged her. The reserve which strangers mistook for coldness was a shell that melted at the slightest kind touch, her masterful air the merest seeming. But whatever latent antagonism lay in her nature the colonel had the faculty of bringing to the surface. It must be conceded that the circumstances in which she was placed were trying, and Clara ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... Jason, pale and masterful, visited us in the afternoon, and told us of the spread of the tidings in England. "They've swallowed it," he exclaimed; "it's stirred them as nothing else has done in the last hundred years. I visited the East End to-day. The streets are full of people. Crowds everywhere. ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne

... along the road but a buggy, and who should be in that buggy but Gerard Malcolm with an actressy-looking girl! I wasn't over-pleased at the girl part of it, but it did my heart good to see Gerard. He drew up alongside the Manton and leaped out of the buggy, so splendid and handsome and cool and masterful, with a glisten in his eye which said: 'Bring on your gas-engine!'—that I loved him harder than ever, and could have almost torn the captain's ring off my finger. He didn't waste any time saying how-do-you-do, but just asked this and that ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne

... into the fire: "As far as I can gather it must be your masterful ways at the Hospital Committee that have impressed her, and especially your unheard-of tyrannical methods with ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... hid them from the rest of the world; he put masterful hands on her shoulders and turned her face ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey

... spent, that Bessee sent the boy to get me a draught of wine. The boy—mountebank as he is—lost her groat, and played truant; and she, poor wench, got into such fear for me that she went herself, and fell in with a sort of insolent masterful rogues, from whom this young knight saved her. I took her home safe enough after that, and thought to be rid of the knaves when they saw my wallet; and so truly I am, ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Minister" Charles Frohman gave interesting evidence of a masterful manipulation to make circumstances meet his own desires. He realized that the masculine title of the play might possibly detract from Miss Adams's prestige, so he immediately began to adapt several important scenes which might have been dominated by Gavin Dishart, ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman

... had given the word to strike at midnight, to surround the Palace, and to seize the Prince Pasha. Achmet—Higli, had betrayed him, then! Who other? No one else knew save Zaida, and Zaida was in the harem. Perhaps even now his own palace was surrounded. If it was so, then, come what might, this masterful Inglesi should pay the price. He thought of the den of lions hard by, of the cage of tigers-the menagerie not a thousand feet away. He could hear the distant roaring now, and his eyes glittered. The Christian to the wild beasts! That ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... a way for him in our hearts. I am well able to afford it, and Mis' Pennel, she agrees to it, and on the whole I don't think we'd best go back on our steps; besides, our little Mara has thrived since he came under our roof. He is, to be sure, kind o' masterful, and I shall have to take him off Mis' Pennel's hands before long, and put him into the sloop. But, after all, there seems to be the makin' of a man in him, and when we are called away, why he'll be as a brother to poor little Mara. ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... you take your proper place, the place of a wife in her husband's home; and that you stay there, doing as I tell you. And, in this strike, you keep your hands off. This is what you must do, as long as I am your husband." The man's eyes were masterful; his jaw was ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan

... do, Walter," Giles said. "You will be getting yourself into sore trouble. You are growing too masterful altogether, and have none of the quiet demeanour and peaceful air which becomes an honest citizen. In another six months you will be apprenticed, and then I hope we shall hear no more of ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty

... before the wan girl, and the readjustment of life, in her masterful hands, seemed ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... strong fingers clasped so tightly round his knee. He slipped the hand next to her along the stone coping, close to her foot. She felt him take hold of her gown with those deft, masterful fingers. Then he bent his dark head quickly, and whispering: "I kiss the cross," with a gesture of infinite reverence and tenderness, which Jane never forgot, he kissed the hem of her skirt. The next ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay

... plots criminally against his more fortunate brother is common to both Leisewitz and Klinger, but in neither is he an intriguing villain. In 'Julius of Tarentum' Guido is really the more masterful man of the two. He despises his brother as a weakling and asserts no other claim than that of the strongest. In Klinger's play, as we have seen, everything is made to turn upon Guido's cankering doubt of his brother's seniority. ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... move on yer, Mag!" yelled the masterful Bobby, with frantic gestures. "The princess lady is a-goin' t' take us fer a ride in her swell limerseen with her driver ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright

... (Arranging Judith's costume, and then setting out the food and wine.) In obedience to your command. At Bethulia, being busied all my days with the ordering of your possessions, I had no time for traffic with men; neither desire. And I deemed them terrible and masterful creatures. And when you commanded me to go forth into the camps and delude and entangle with wiles whatever Assyrian I should meet, I was afraid. For it was in my heart that I could not accomplish this thing. Yet I have done it prettily. And it is easier to me far than ...
— Judith • Arnold Bennett

... he shouted fiercely, "or I'll bash out your brains with this stone!" And as the Ground Hog gazed into his battle-mad eyes he weakened and dropped the knife. "Now gimme that purse!" ordered the masterful Big Boy and, cringing before the rock, the beaten Ground Hog slammed it down on ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge

... with a tremendous dignity. And there was something so comical about the little mite of a child, something so masterful in the tiny figure, something so commanding in the loud, deep-toned baby voice, that every one laughed, and somehow or other Adam forgot his obstinacy and made his ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel

... not daunten Death with thy stern voice and masterful eye, though thou canst quell a score of other ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... see how he played with them: that there flowed an undercurrent of irony in his replies. Moreover, while by his manner he had pedestaled and prayed to her as to a goddess, when they were alone and before her mother came, Dorothy now observed that Richard carried himself in a manner easy and masterful, and as one who knows much in the presence of ones who know little. This air of the ineffably invincible made Dorothy forget the adoration which had aforetime glowed in his eyes, and she longed to ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... fascinating. His delicately guarded, subtle compliments, yet earnest, sincere speech, interest me greatly." It was but natural that the tender, wistful courtesies and considerate deference of this masterful suitor should be pleasing to Esther's womanly spirit. This high-principled girl, strong for self-sacrifice upon the altar of duty, was intensely human. Oswald felt this charm, and ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee

... his face on them like a fawning dog. Ghanim is another "softy" lover, a favourite character in Arab tales; and by way of contrast, the girl is masterful enough. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... He had hoped to have five hundred thousand men at his back, but they had come in by beggarly hundreds. There was even talk of an insurance bonus to attract them. Lassalle had exaggerated both the magnetism of his personality and the intelligence and discontent of the masses. His masterful imagination had made the outer world a mere reflection of his inner world. Even in those early days, when he was scarcely known, and that favorably rather than otherwise, he had imagined himself the pet aversion of the comfortable classes. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... being 'Britannically cocooned in the purple,' says our irreverent satirist; and the maiden ladies' passion of devotion to 'the blood' helped to blind them; but still more so did the imperious urgency to curtain closely the night of Tasso, throwing all its consequences upon Victor's masterful tongue. Whence it ensued (and here is the danger for illogical individuals as well as vast communities, who continue to batten upon fiction when the convenience of it has taken the place of pleasure), that they ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... scholar been such a man as Baudichon, Blondel's answer would have been one frenzied shriek of insults and reproaches. But face to face with Basterga's massive quietude, with his giant bulk, with that air, at once masterful and cynical, which proclaimed to those with whom he talked that he gave them but half his mind while reading theirs, the wrath of the smaller man cooled. A moment his lips writhed, without sound; then, "Wrong?" he cried, his voice harsh and broken. ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman

... unconsciously, forms his own memory habits, good or bad. Form your memory habits consciously according to the laws of the mind, and in good time they will act unconsciously and with masterful precision. ...
— The Trained Memory • Warren Hilton

... have been the inspiration of many young men and women. Her hopeful, practical, masterful views of life give the reader new courage in the very reading and are a wholesome spur to flagging effort. Words of truth so vital that they live in the reader's memory and cause him to think—to his own ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant

... confusion of anarchy, as Matilda again and again sought to recover her right. In 1139 she crossed to England, wherein siege, in battle, in council, in hair-breadth escapes from pursuing hosts, from famine, from perils of the sea, she showed the masterful authority, the impetuous daring, the pertinacity which she had inherited from her Norman ancestors. Stephen fell back on his last source—a body of mercenary troops from Flanders,—but the Brabancon troops were hated in England as foreigners and as riotous robbers, ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green

... never could imagine it in the world. The prisoners were in the center of the column. When that came along and the people caught sight of their masterful old enemy Talbot, that had made them dance so long to his grim war-music, you may imagine what the uproar was like if you can, for I can not describe it. They were so glad to see him that presently they wanted to have him out and hang him; so Joan had him brought up to the front ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain

... yesterday was so impervious to a joke, honored me by giving me his baronial arm for dejeuner. I can't imagine why he did it, unless it were to get a lesson in English gratis, of which he was sadly in need. He struck me as being very masterful and weighed down with the mighty affairs of his tiny little kingdom. I was duly impressed, and never felt so subdued in all my life, which I suppose was the effect he wished to produce ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone

... desirable engagements, generally in New York. With all her past experiences, tragic and otherwise, LAURA MURDOCH has found nothing equal to this sudden, this swiftly increasing, love for the young Western man. At first she attempted to deceive him. Her baby face, her masterful assumption of innocence and childlike devotion, made no impression upon him. He has let her know in no uncertain way that he knew her record from the day she stepped on American soil in San Francisco to the time when she had come ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter

... and pre-eminently of the sculpture. It proclaims with no uncertain voice that "all is right with this Western world" - it is not too much to claim that it supplies the humanized ideality for which the Exposition stands - the daring, boasting masterful spirits of enterprise and imagination - the frank enjoyment of physical beauty and effort - the fascination of danger; as well as the gentler, more reverent of our attitudes, to this ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry

... before a masterful mind. They knew the unbending quality of Kishimoto's will, his power to command, to punish. The number grew steadily less, leaving Page and Zura and her ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay

... mansard-roof opinions, by virtue of sheer honesty and thorough-going human decency, develop into the unassuming "first citizen" of the town, trusted even by those who laughed at him, and honored most by his opponents. I saw his aggravating family of charming children grow around him—masterful Maria, aesthetic Charles Edward, pretty Peggy, fairy-tale Alice, and boisterous Billy—each at heart lovable and fairly good; but, taken in combination, bewildering and ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo

... long for me, for they were full of study and anticipation. Long chats with the eccentric but masterful man whose friendship and love for my father had brought us together were the entertainment and stimulus of my existence—a man who knew nothing of science, except that he was master of it in his own way; ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... however, he displayed himself a masterful worker. I have never seen a better. He preferred to superintend, of course, to get down into the pit or up on the wall, and measure and direct. At the same time, when necessary to expedite a difficult task, he would toil for hours at a stretch with his trowel and his line and his level and his ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser

... in that city. She was a comely girl of a taste and refinement unusual in the place and time of her birth. Many well favored youths had sought her hand, but, better than others, she liked the big, masterful, good-natured, humorous Samson, crude as he was. Naturally in her hands his timber had undergone some planing and smoothing and his thought had been gently led into new and pleasant ways. Sarah's Uncle Rogers in Boston had kept them supplied with some of the best books and magazines of the time. ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller

... power on earth from the start—and that by the masterful quality of their mind and spirit. They had endless pluck, intellectual and moral. They believed that the kingdom in this world was with ideas. It was, you might say, one of their original Yankee notions that it was the property of a man to have opinions and to stand by ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... simple in the extreme: Frank sat looking down haughtily, and his brother with deft fingers rapidly unbuckled and readjusted the stirrup leather, looking up once at the masterful black who could not speak but signified his commands with haughty ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn

... in the Waiting-Room at the Station, and a coarse but masterful Claim Agent, or some one else equally Terrifying, happened to come across the Room at her, she could feel her Little Heart stand still, and she would say, "This is where I get it." After he had gone past, on his way to the Check-Room, she would put some Camphor on her Handkerchief ...
— More Fables • George Ade

... took charge of the fortifications, and thus, in the breaches of a remote Syrian town, the former prisoner of the Temple and the ancient school friend of Napoleon joined hands to wreck that dream of a great Eastern empire which lurked in the cells of Napoleon's masterful intellect. ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... be suspicious, for is not the cool spot attractive to the sly enemy, the green snake, which conceals its presence by faithful resemblance to the creepers among which it glides? Here, too, come millions of industrious bees, and in the dusk the big pencil-tailed water-rat, which the masterful dog kills with as little ceremony as he does the ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... Cyril, for he gave a yell. It was not the cry of a despairing soul who sees his beautiful iridescent dream shattered at his feet; it was the cry of the strong, masterful spirit, furious. He turned upon Jennie, sobbing, and snatched at her cake. Unaccustomed to such behaviour from hosts, and being besides a haughty put-you-in-your-place beauty of the future, Jennie defended ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... Dr. Graham, and I told Major Plume distinctly I did not need you," was the impulsive reply, as the lady strove against the calm, masterful grasp ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King

... influence with the dear boy," though the fond mother resented all other interference. This troubled Rose and made her feel as if caught in a snare, for, while she owned to herself that Charlie was the most attractive of her cousins, she was not ready to be taken possession of in this masterful way, especially since other and sometimes better men ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott



Words linked to "Masterful" :   skilled, virtuoso



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