"Masterpiece" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Bravo!" he smiled as if he understood the word, and lifted his instrument again to his shoulder. This time his bow descended upon the strings with a full note of triumph, and he burst into the brilliant performance of a great masterpiece, playing with a spirit and dash which seemed to transform him. Often his lips parted to show his white teeth, often he swung his whole body into the rhythm of his music, until he seemed a very part of the splendid ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... painter of Henry IV.—neglected by Marie de Medicis for Rubens—was probably at work. The young man felt the strong sensation which vibrates in the soul of great artists when, in the flush of youth and of their ardor for art, they approach a man of genius or a masterpiece. In all human sentiments there are, as it were, primeval flowers bred of noble enthusiasms, which droop and fade from year to year, till joy is but a memory and glory a lie. Amid such fleeting emotions nothing so resembles love as the young passion of an artist who tastes ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac
... only seen fifty cents' worth of good canvas spoiled by ten cents' worth of paint. I put it that way, Samuel, because that's the only way you'll understand it. Look at it! Did you ever see such a sky? Why, it's like a slash of light across a mountain-pool! I tell you—Samuel—that's a masterpiece!" ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... these requests he was not simply seeking flattery. What he needed were sympathetic critics who could clothe in acceptable language statements which he would recognise as expressing the truth about his masterpiece. Hints of Prefaces, especially if read in the context of the numerous replies Richardson received, reveals very plainly the extent to which he was aware of what he wanted from his correspondents. Most, unfortunately, were sadly incapable ...
— Clarissa: Preface, Hints of Prefaces, and Postscript • Samuel Richardson
... invention of the two men? Mr. Barrie once affirmed very wisely in an essay on Robert Louis Stevenson, "Critics have said enthusiastically—for it is difficult to write of Mr. Stevenson without enthusiasm—that Alan Breck is as good as anything in Scott. Alan Breck is certainly a masterpiece, quite worthy of the greatest of all story-tellers, who, nevertheless, it should be remembered, created these rich side characters by the score, another before dinner-time." Inventiveness, is, I suppose, one of the first qualities of a great novelist: and to Scott's ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Latin in the original, she will do well to procure a discreet translation. In the Bodleian Library there is treasured the only known copy of a very poignant and delightful rendering of this one book of Ovid's masterpiece. It was made by a certain Wye Waltonstall, who lived in the days of Elizabeth, and, seeing that he dedicated it to 'the Vertuous Ladyes and Gentlewomen of Great Britain,' I am sure that the gallant writer, ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... compiled from papers of Vertue, the engraver; but Walpole, from the stores of his own historical knowledge, from his taste in the fine arts, and his happy manner of sketching characters, rendered them peculiarly his own. But his masterpiece in this line was his "Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors," originally published in 1758. It is very true, as Walter Scott observes, that "it would be difficult, by any process or principle of subdivision, to ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... morning, the note was written, and the name of Princess Anna was signed to it. The work was a masterpiece, and even exceeded Bodlevski's expectations. Its lightness and clearness were remarkable. The engraver, examining the writing of Princess Anna, compared it with his own work, and was astonished, so perfect ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... recollect what seemed to him so many proofs to the contrary. Yet in what she said there was no hesitation, no incoherence, no false note. Pride, noble pride, upheld her to the end. The first falsehood of her life was a masterpiece. ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... rate, nobody could (or indeed did) deny that the author, six months later, made up for any shortcoming in The Abbot, where, except the end (eminently of the huddled order), everything is as it should be. The heroine is, except Die Vernon, Scott's masterpiece in that kind, while all the Queen Mary scenes are unsurpassed in him, and rarely equalled out of him. Nor was there any falling off in Kenilworth (Jan. 1821), where he again shifted his scene to England. He has not indeed interested us ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... at the end of the south transept, resembles the one in the Academy. In place of the powerful saints' heads, is a group of angels of much grace and purity, supporting a shrine. This picture is considered a bolder and more untrammelled composition than the other. It is the world-renowned masterpiece of the thirteenth century, which all Florence turned out in procession to honor when it left the painter's hands; and which even Charles of Anjou, dripping in blood, and stalking through the scenes of that great tragedy whose catastrophe was the Sicilian vespers, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... with shoe-thread upon cod-hooks. One of these I stained and streaked with my heart's blood into the semblance of a Parmacheene Belle. The canary furnished materials for a Yellow May; a dooryard English sparrow, for a Brown Hackle. My masterpiece, the beautiful, parti-colored fly known as Jock Scott, owed its being ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... have invented John Silver, that terribly smooth-spoken mariner. Nothing but genius could have drawn that simple yokel on the island, with his craving for cheese as a Christian dainty. The blustering Billy Bones is a little masterpiece: the blind Pew, with his tapping stick (there are three such blind tappers in Mr. Stevenson's books), strikes terror into the boldest. Then, the treasure is thoroughly satisfactory in kind, and there is plenty of it. The landscape, as in the feverish, ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... life,—justice, beneficence, honor, and his country. A man who loves these may be excused for indifference to the last geranium or the newest plough, or even (though that offends you more, Fanny) the freshest masterpiece by Lanseer, or the latest ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... be! But if such a thing were possible that the spirit of Raphael should enter into the man and obtain the mastery of his mind and eye and hand, it would be entirely possible that he should paint this masterpiece; for it would simply be Raphael reproducing Raphael. And this in a mystery is what is true of the disciple filled with the Holy Ghost. Christ, who is "the image of the invisible God," is set before him as his divine pattern, and Christ by the ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... the day after Abbey had stretched his great canvas in Sargent's studio in London, expecting to begin his work the following week, he suddenly passed away, and what would, in all likelihood, have been Edwin Abbey's mural masterpiece was lost to ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... Besides, he has fallen into the bad habit of uttering moral platitudes. He is always telling us that to be good is to be good, and that to be bad is to be wicked. At times he is almost edifying. Robert Elsmere is of course a masterpiece—a masterpiece of the "genre ennuyeux," the one form of literature that the English people seems thoroughly to enjoy. A thoughtful young friend of ours once told us that it reminded him of the sort of conversation that goes on at a meat tea in the house of a serious Nonconformist ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... was produced in Seventeen Hundred Thirteen, he occupied the first place in English letters. The play was a dazzling success; and it is a great play yet. It lives as literature among the best things men have ever done—a masterpiece! ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... a masterpiece. It has been described by Benjamin Hallowell in his Autobiography and by the Alexandria Gazette at the time, and memories of it linger in old tales told in many homes. Built in three sections, a large arch spanned ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... almost silent indication of the wonderful variety of this volume also. In one sense the subject of its constituents is the same. Yet in another it is treated with the widest and most infinite difference. Any one of the three treatments would be a masterpiece of single achievement; while the first of the three is, as it seems to me, the masterpiece of its ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... backs on reality: she sought not truth, but the miracle. However, though she had thus taken sides, there was still a yawning gap to be bridged between her ready acceptance of the honourable invitation, and the composition of a masterpiece. Thanks to her wonted inability to project her thoughts beyond the moment, she had been so unthinking of possible failure that Cupid had found it necessary to interject: "Here, I say, don't blow!" Whereas, when she came to ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... appreciative understanders of music are, in their way, as essential as executants. "Shocking as it may seem, hundreds of children 'learn music' for the length of their school life and never hear a masterpiece, and indeed, hear no music at all except such as their own untrained musical sense and half-trained fingers can compass."[21] In increasing measure the teaching of music appreciation is coming into vogue, and as an aid to this the piano-player and ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... appeared "The King, which is in many respects Bjoernson's greatest modern masterpiece in dramatic form. He had by this time become a convinced republican, but he was also an evolutionist, and he knew that republics are not created by fiat. He believed the tendency toward republicanism ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... masterpiece of the Mound Builders is known as Fort Ancient. Its colossal size, ingenuity in design and perfection in construction give it first rack in interest among all prehistoric fortifications, and it represents the highest point attained by this lost race in ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... preeminent among Greek orators. His well-known oration "On the Crown," the preparation of which occupied a large part of seven years, is regarded as the oratorical masterpiece of all history. ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... of verdure, on which none but public buildings may be erected, dividing the working part of the town from the residential part, has always seemed to me a masterpiece of wisdom in city planning, and hardly less admirable are the five open reserves inside the city which serve as its lungs. Ultimately the city proper will probably be almost entirely reserved for business purposes. Already very ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... fumble in his pockets, and soon cried out, "O la! I have it not about me." Upon this, the gentleman asking him what he was searching for, he said he searched after a sermon, which he thought his masterpiece, against vanity. "Fie upon it, fie upon it!" cries he, "why do I ever leave that sermon out of my pocket? I wish it was within five miles; I would willingly fetch it, to read it you." The gentleman answered that there was no need, for he was cured of the ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... like an old masterpiece, the sunlight bronzing her heavy brown curls, the olive-tinted skin of her bare arms and legs flushing with health, and her cheap calico gown held tightly about her, showing the contour of her full and shapely figure, the girl appeared to Jose like a vision from the realm of enchantment. And he knew ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... strands of the hoisting cable cannot reveal whether it was cut or weakened, yet Hardin knows. It was his devilish masterpiece. ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... by the Crown, and taken office as Lord Chamberlain. He wrote more verse than Roscommon and poorer verse. The Essay on Poetry, in which he followed the critical fashion of the day, he was praised into regarding as a masterpiece. He was continually polishing it, and during his lifetime it was reissued with frequent variations. It is polished quartz, not diamond; a short piece of about 360 lines, which has something to say of each of the chief ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... Ha-yo-went-ha miraculously disappeared in a white canoe, which arose with him in the air and bore him out of their sight. Other prodigies, according to this tradition, attended and signalized the formation of the confederacy, which is still celebrated among them as a masterpiece of Indian wisdom. Such in truth it was; and it will remain in history as a monument of their genius in developing gentile institutions. It will also be remembered as an illustration of what tribes of mankind ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... Attock, which is a high structure built across the narrow bed of the Indus, which here foams down with swirling swiftness, is considered a masterpiece of engineering. It is built in two tiers, the upper of which carries the railway, while the lower forms a road for carriages, beasts of burden, and foot-passengers. On either side of the river is a fortified gate. The English commander of Attock ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... however, hung a small picture with naked figures in the foreground, and with much foliage behind. It might not have struck every beholder, for it looked old and smoke-dried; but a connoisseur, on inspecting it closely, would have pronounced it to be a Judgment of Paris, and a masterpiece of the Flemish School. ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... expression of the faults and merits of Fletcher, whose comedies Swinburne has divided into three groups: pure comedies, heroic or romantic dramas, and mixed comedy and romance. To the first group belong 'Rule a Wife and Have a Wife,' Fletcher's comic masterpiece, 'Wit without Money,' 'The Wild Goose Chase,' 'The Chances,' 'The Noble Gentleman.' The second group includes 'The Knight of Malta,' full of heroic passion and Catholic devotion, 'The Pilgrim,' 'The Loyal Subject,' 'A Wife for a Month,' 'Love's Pilgrimage,' 'The Lover's Progress.' The third ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... this stunt is that a fellow who can't draw at all can turn out almost as good a masterpiece as Ethel Blue here, who has the makings of a real artist," and James gazed at his production ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... not of late come across a historical fiction, whether intended for boys or for men, which deserves to be so heartily and unreservedly praised as regards plot, incidents, and spirit as Dick o' the Fens. It is its author's masterpiece as yet."—Spectator. ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... Socialist Carpenter of his creation who made a huge sensation by inciting to riot in the streets of an elaborate Old Munich—the origin of Old London and Old Paris and all the sham Old Towns that Exhibitions have long since staled for us. But his masterpiece was the Dissipated Gentleman, like all masterpieces a marvel of simplicity—hired evening clothes, a good long roll in the muddiest gutter on the way to the ball, and it was done; but the art, Duveneck said, was in the rolling, which in this case, ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... point of style the work is a masterpiece of vivid, forceful, sinewy, Anglo-Saxon. The story never halts, one is never irritated by floridity ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... liquors, the laws for their import and export, the monopoly of their manufacture, etc. It is remarkable how the budget is balanced by the aid of the alcoholic intoxication of the people, and how people are made to believe that a masterpiece of political economy is thereby achieved. In reality, the health and strength of the nation are sacrificed. This kind of political economy can only be qualified as false and deceitful. We cannot too often nor too strongly ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... Audrey Craven was the original of "Laura," the heroine of Langley Wyndham's masterpiece. She first attracted the attention of that student of human nature at Oxford, at a dinner given by her guardian, the Dean of St. Benedict's, ostensibly in honour of the new Master of Lazarus, in reality for his ward's entertainment and instruction in the bewildering ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... insularity, and condescension. She was a clever though tiresome woman; and expressed herself best in letters. She promised herself to write a "character" of General Hobson in her next letter to an intimate friend, which should be a masterpiece. Then, having led him successfully through the role of the comic Englishman abroad, she repaid him with information. She told him, not without some secret amusement at the reprobation it excited, the tragic story of Mrs. Verrier. She gave ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the filmy and amethyst haze that closed each forest vista, came a milk-white horse, stepping high over the fallen leaves. The rider, not tall, black-bearded, with a pale, handsome face, sat like a study for some great sculptor's equestrian masterpiece. In a land where all rode well, his was superb horsemanship. The cape of his grey coat was lined with scarlet, his soft wide hat had a black plume; he wore long boots and white gauntlets. The three beneath the beech saluted. He spoke in a pensive ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... invention of Terence himself. He might challenge the advocates of Menander to produce the Greek original from which the play was borrowed; he might reject the Greek idioms which abound in that masterpiece of the Roman stage with contempt, as beneath his notice; and disregard the names which betray a Grecian origin, the allusions to the habits of Grecian women, to the state of popular feeling at Athens, and the administration of Athenian law, with supercilious indifference. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... second time, Evelyn Strang experienced a disappointment that was half relief. The sunburnt youth, in khaki trousers and brown-flannel shirt, who knelt by the border before her was John Strang Berber, Doctor Mach's human masterpiece; this ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... manuscripts preceding the final metrical version," says Dr. Landquist, "the original one, written when Strindberg was twenty-three, is the masterpiece. There everything is consistent; there the dialogue has a power and an incisiveness to which it does not attain in any of the unprinted manuscripts. On the contrary, these seem more youthful than the original, producing at ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... masterpiece. It was a rare stroke of art to get an old dotard of a member of Congress to publish, twelve days before the election, that Mr. Clay had agreed to vote for Mr. Adams, and that Mr. Adams had agreed to reward him by the office of Secretary of State. When the vote had been given and the office ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... covered with specimens of the pupils' skill, and the headmaster was observed to direct the attention of the mighty to a map done by Cyril. Of course it was a map of Ireland, Ireland being the map chosen by every map-drawing schoolboy who is free to choose. For a third-form boy it was considered a masterpiece. In the shading of mountains Cyril was already a prodigy. Never, it was said, had the Macgillycuddy Reeks been indicated by a member of that school with a more amazing subtle refinement than by the young Povey. From a proper pride in themselves, from a proper fear lest ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... only the logical result of the intellectual projection of his effort to make sacrifices in order to benefit humanity. As a child he sacrificed everything for health and virtue that he might have influence, and as a man he knew no other plan or purpose in life. His masterpiece is upon the "will" which he developed to the ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... London, son of a cloth-worker; studied in Italy, and, returning to England, obtained the patronage of James I., and became chief architect in the country; the Royal Chapel at Whitehall is reckoned his masterpiece; Heriot's Hospital, Edinburgh, is from his design; his style follows Palladio ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... reputation; has never been studied for grammar, for style, for its "beauties"; has since its genesis spawned into millions that no man can classify, and produced a hundred thousand pages of mediocrity for one masterpiece. All this (and in addition prejudices unexpressed and a residuum of hereditary bias) lies behind the failure of most professors of English to give the good modern novel its due. Their obstinacy is unfortunate; for, if they praised at ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... civilian strategists, particularly Stanton, who, though tied to his desk as Secretary of War, was busy wire-pulling Banks's men about the Valley. Stanton ordered Banks to take post at Strasburg and to hold the bridges at Front Royal with two detached battalions. This masterpiece of bungling put the Federals at Front Royal in the air, endangered their communications north to Winchester, and therefore menaced the Valley line toward Washington. But Banks said nothing; and Stanton would have snubbed him ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... every tint. The result, according to my friend, would be the greatest literary portrait ever painted, and what he asked of me was just to be so good as not to trouble him with questions till he should hang up his masterpiece before me. He did me the honour to declare that, putting aside the great sitter himself, all aloft in his indifference, I was individually the connoisseur he was most working for. I was therefore to be a good boy and not try to peep under the curtain before the show was ready: I should ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... MITCHENER. A masterpiece of strategy. Let me explain. The Suffragets are a very small body; but they are numerous enough to be troublesome—even dangerous—when they are all concentrated in one place—say in Parliament Square. But by making a two-mile radius and pushing them beyond it, you scatter their attack over ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... contrast with the intellectual and moral elevation which the New Testament writers everywhere evince, and especially in the conception of that Ideal of Excellence which even those who reject all that is supernatural in Christianity acknowledge to be so sublime a masterpiece,—in whose discourses the most admirable ethics are illustrated, and in whose life they are still more divinely dramatized,—not only is such ludicrous madness of fanaticism at variance with the tone of sobriety and simplicity everywhere ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... stock inherited— New England's stateliest type of man, In port and speech Olympian; Whom no one met, at first, but took A second awed and wondering look (As turned, perchance, the eyes of Greece On Phidias' unveiled masterpiece); Whose words, in simplest home-spun clad, The Saxon strength of Caedmon's had, With power reserved at need to reach The Roman forum's loftiest speech, Sweet with persuasion, eloquent In passion, ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... keeping. Nothing that her biographers have done (when they have done their worst) can destroy or even diminish the effect her life gives of unity, of fitness, of profound and tragic harmony. It was Mrs. Gaskell's sense of this effect that made her work a masterpiece. ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... home again and keeping house all by our two selves that I want to enjoy myself for a space. For a month, a whole month longer, I am going to play and have the good of life. Then I shall shut myself up and say farewell to the world while I create a masterpiece that will rend your heart and your tear glands. Only," she dropped down on a footstool beside him; "only I do hope that Allyn and Babe will return to their wonted habits, and that this new cook will learn that ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... closely, contained not a line by the author of the lovely lyrics in The Feast at Solhoug. It was at this low and miserable moment that Ibsen's talent suddenly took wings; he conceived, in the summer of 1858, what finally became, five years later, his first acknowledged masterpiece, and perhaps the most finished of all his writings, the sculptural ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... its emaciated strength, and the serpent with its vital writhe and deadly reverted bite, are both characteristic of the finest Lombard work. The dog's head is 14th century Gothic—a masterpiece of broad, subtle, easy sculpture, getting expression with every touch, and never losing the least undulation of surface, while it utterly disdains the mere imitation of hair, or attainment of effect ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... us cast a glance at history—upon Frederick the Great's campaign of 1760, celebrated for its fine marches and manoeuvres: a perfect masterpiece of Strategic skill as critics tell us. Is there really anything to drive us out of our wits with admiration in the King's first trying to turn Daun's right flank, then his left, then again his right, &c.? ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... "Curb your hunting instincts for once, Creighton. You can't handle a swamper that way. Let's go and see Charity's masterpiece instead." ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... year, as he himself phrases it, he descended into hell; that is, he began those weary wanderings in exile which ended only with his life, and which stirred in him the deeps that found expression in his mighty poem, the Divina Commedia.[1] Throughout his masterpiece he speaks with eager respect of the old Roman writers, and of such Greeks as he knew—so we have admiration of the ancient intellect. He also speaks bitterly of certain popes, as well as of other more earthly tyrants—so we have ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... on the outskirts of Mexico, had a tradition that the gods, "in the day of obscurity and darkness," built "a sumptuous palace, a masterpiece of skill, in which they male their abode upon a mountain. The rock was called 'The Place of Heaven;' there the gods first abode on earth, living many years in great rest and content, as in a happy and delicious land, though the world still lay in obscurity ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... day, Khalid asked the child to show her how to dance and die, and Najib begins to whirl like a dervish until he falls in the grave; thereupon he folds his arms, closes his eyes, and smiles a pathetic smile. This by far is the masterpiece of all his feats. And one evening, when he was repeating this strange and weird antic, which in Khalid's strange mind might be made to symbolise something stranger than both, he saw, as he lay in the grave, a star in the sky. It was the first time he ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... not read that early in the seventeenth century there appeared in Paris the philosopher Descartes, accompanied by the figure of a beautiful woman? She moved, spoke, and seemed life itself; but Descartes declared she was an automaton, a masterpiece of mechanism he himself had made. Yet many refused to believe his story, declaring he had by sorcery compelled a spirit to serve him in this form. He called her Franchina, ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... Press, without atmosphere, colour, or truth. Miss Edgeworth alone had already struck the note of a new development in her Castle Rackrent, not to mention the delightful stories in The Parents' Assistant, Simple Susan, Lazy Lawrence, or The Basket-Woman. Galt's masterpiece, The Annals of the Parish, was not yet even lying unfinished in his desk. The Mucklebackits and the Headriggs were still further distant. Miss Mitford's sketches in Our Village—the nearest in form to Crabbe's pictures of country ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... whispered a young student from Paris, to a learned doctor of laws, with whom he abode, "that his defence has been a masterpiece." ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... his comments, and signifying a very polite approval. Here are a pair of them, {2} Fath Allah and Ameenut Daoodee his father, horse-dealers by trade, who came and sat with us at the inn, and smoked pipes (the sun being down), while the original of the above masterpiece was made. With the Arabs outside the walls, however, and the freshly arriving country people, this politeness was not so much exhibited. There was a certain tattooed girl, with black eyes and huge silver earrings, and ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Kitty, "and of course he's writing better than ever now. Everyone says Lindley's Wife is a masterpiece." ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... amount of stitching, the brothers were able at last to clothe themselves in a couple of fur jackets. These, although they were perhaps roughly made, the good people at home could not have turned up their noses at, for the articles were certainly intrinsically worth more than the best-cut masterpiece of the best outfitter, even if not of so perfect a ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... in the golden light. And stretching away to the north and east lay the sagebrush plains, wrapped in the silence of a dying day and illuminated with the sheen of God's promise of a to- morrow to come..... A wonderful picture: Nature's own masterpiece! ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... and Panther." This is the masterpiece of a famous writer now living {67b}, intended for a complete abstract of sixteen thousand ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... outstretched arms, and looking up with an appealing agonized expression towards heaven; before her, on the earth, lies extended the form of the Saviour. In tenderness, dignity, simplicity, and tragic pathos, nothing can exceed this production; the head of the Virgin in particular is regarded as a masterpiece, so far exceeding in delicacy of execution every other work of Marc Antonio, that some have thought that Raphael himself took the burin from his hand, and touched himself that face ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... to the head of a turbaned Turk, executed in black pencil. Woloda, with out-stretched neck, was standing behind the drawing master and looking over his shoulder. The head was Woloda's first production in pencil and to-day—Grandmamma's name-day—the masterpiece was to be presented ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... little man had a Gilbert Stuart for sale, and what was more to the point he had a customer for the masterpiece: Morlon, the collector, of unlimited means and limited wall space, would buy it provided Adam Gregg, the distinguished portrait painter, Member of the International Jury, Commander of the Legion of Honor, Hors Concours in Paris and Munich, etc., ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... front, and made my best bow. Then I said: 'I waited until yesterday because I knew absolutely nothing about my subject'—the audience laughed—'and I could find nothing either here or in the library at home, so last night I reviewed Saintine's masterpiece, "Picciola."' ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... or six years Marcel had been engaged upon the famous painting which he said was meant to represent the Passage of the Red Sea; and for five or six years this masterpiece in color had been obstinately refused by the jury. Indeed, from its constant journeying back and forth, from the artist's studio to the Musee, and from the Musee to the studio, the painting knew the road so well ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... familiar with man's floating prisons from the frequent descriptions given to them by John Adams, and especially from a drawing made by him, years ago, on the back of an old letter, representing a full-rigged man-of-war. This masterpiece of fine art had been nailed up on the walls of John Adams's hut, and had been fully expounded to each child in succession, as soon after its birth as was consistent with ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... with the ingenuity and felicity of Hawthorne's analogies and correspondences; the idea appears to have made itself at home in them easily. Nothing could be better in this respect than The Snow-Image (a little masterpiece), or The Great Carbuncle, or Doctor Heidegger's Experiment, or Rappacini's Daughter. But in such things as The Birth-Mark and The Bosom-Serpent, we are struck with something stiff and mechanical, slightly incongruous, as if the kernel had ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... do was to make ridiculous the romances of chivalry over which all Spain at the time of Cervantes seemed to have gone mad. How well Cervantes succeeded in his aim may be known from the fact that after the appearance of his masterpiece, no new romance of chivalry ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... of producing good. Good qualities.] Goodness — N. goodness &c adj.; excellence, merit; virtue &c 944; value, worth, price. super-excellence, supereminence; superiority &c 33; perfection &c 650; coup de maitre [Fr.]; masterpiece, chef d'ouvre [Fr.], prime, flower, cream, elite, pick, A 1, nonesuch, nonpareil, creme de la creme, flower of the flock, cock of the roost, salt of the earth; champion; prodigy. tidbit; gem, gem of the first water; bijou, precious stone, jewel, pearl, diamond, ruby, brilliant, treasure; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... problems that Hindu theology turns. The innumerable solutions lack neither boldness nor variety but they all try to satisfy both the philosopher and the saint and none achieve both tasks. The system of Sankara is a masterpiece of intellect, despite his disparagement of reasoning in theology, and could inspire a fine piety, as when on his deathbed he asked forgiveness for having frequented temples, since by so doing he had seemed to deny ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... wall a bookcase rose from floor to ceiling, upon the shelves of which the books stood closely packed in double ranks, the varied colors of the rows in sight wooing the eye by their harmonious arrangement. A pedestal in one corner supported a half-size copy of the Venus of Milo, that masterpiece of sculpture; in its faultless amplitude of form, its large life-giving loveliness, and its sweet dignity, the embodiment of the highest type of womanhood. In another corner stood a similar reduction of the Flying Mercury. Between ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... all its resources. The walls and vaulted roofs entirely painted in encaustic by the first artists of Germany, and representing the principal events of the second Testament, the splendour of the mosaic pavement, the richness of the painted windows, the sumptuousness of the altar, crowned by a masterpiece of Carlo Dolce and surrounded by a silver rail, the tone of rich and solemn light that pervaded all, and blended all the various sources of beauty into one absorbing and harmonious whole: all combined to produce an ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... singular, what should one then say, if another fish is spoken of which does not regard this kind of protection as sufficient, and which therefore causes its eggs to hatch outside the surface of the water. The exceedingly adorned and elegant Phyrrhylima Filamentosa performs this masterpiece of truest love. With great dexerity [tr. note: sic] this fish darts from 5 to 7 cm. above the surface of the water and there fastens its eggs on the walls of the aquarium—usually in one corner. Even though one must and can preserve ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... impossible to praise; we can only mark them well and keep them clear, as we insist on silence to hear great music.... If I don't praise Guercino's Aurora in the greater Casino, it's for another reason; this is certainly a very muddy masterpiece. It figures on the ceiling of a small low hall; the painting is coarse and the ceiling too near. Besides, it's unfair to pass straight from the Greek mythology to the Bolognese. We were left to roam at will through the house; the custode shut ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... business to respond with his whole being to the appeal of the musical masterpiece he attempts to interpret, and so express the emotions aroused by it from their slumbers in his own bosom that a responsive echo may be found in the bosoms of the listeners. A most ingeniously constructed music-box, with the presentation of a complicated ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... unpublished misapprehension—arises from the undeserved contempt with which our books of astronomy too often treat the labours of Ptolemy, Tycho Brahe, and others who advocated erroneous theories. If the simple truth were told, that the theory of Ptolemy was a masterpiece of ingenuity and that it was worked out by his followers in a way which merits the highest possible praise, while the theory of Tycho Brahe was placed in reality on a sounder basis than that of Copernicus, and accounted as well and as simply for observed appearances, ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... pointing to a picture of a woman (apparently drunk) who was amusing herself by chasing butterflies, while a number of broad-faced, mischievous-looking children were teasing her—'that is the masterpiece of Hokusai. The legend in the corner is "Kiyo-jo cho ni tawamureru," which, according to the lying Japanese scholars, means nothing more than "A cracked woman chasing butterflies." It was left for me to discover that it represents ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... Sheffield, duke of Buckingham, with 'Julius Caesar' (1692). But during the same period the chief actor of the day, Thomas Betterton, won his spurs as the interpreter of Shakespeare's leading parts, often in unrevised versions. Hamlet was accounted that actor's masterpiece. {332a} 'No succeeding tragedy for several years,' wrote Downes, the prompter at Betterton's theatre, 'got more reputation or money ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... was losing hope he did not show it, but Pepsy was frankly in despair. In her free hours she sat in their little shelter, her thin, freckly hands busy with the worsted masterpiece that she was working. Pee-wee, at least, had his appetite to console him, but she had no relish for the stale lemonade and melting, oozy taffy which stood pathetically on the counter ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... in disappearing he might throw all pursuit off his track, and at the same time have an ample and crushing revenge upon his old sweetheart, if he could give the impression that he had been murdered by her only child. It was a masterpiece of villainy, and he carried it out like a master. The idea of the will, which would give an obvious motive for the crime, the secret visit unknown to his own parents, the retention of the stick, the blood, and the animal remains and buttons ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... transatlantic democracy never sufficiently explained her apathy on social questions. She had a mental image of that son of the Crusaders who was to suffer her to adore him, but like many an artist who has produced a masterpiece of idealisation she shrank from exposing it to public criticism. It was the portrait of a gentleman rather ugly than handsome and rather poor than rich. But his ugliness was to be nobly expressive and his poverty ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... conception of the progress of physiology, since 1837, will do well to compare Mueller's 'Physiology,' which appeared in 1835, and Drapiez's edition of Richard's 'Nouveaux Elements de Botanique,' published in 1837, with any of the present handbooks of animals and vegetable physiology. Mueller's work was a masterpiece, unsurpassed since the time of Haller, and Richard's book enjoyed a great reputation at the time; but their successors transport one into a new world. That which characterises the new physiology is that it is permeated by, and indeed based upon, conceptions which, ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... going all the youth and beauty of Atuona crowded my paepae. Water brought his ukulele, a Hawaiian taro-patch guitar, and sang his repertoire of ballads of Hawaii—"Aloha Oe," "Hawaii Ponoi," and "One, Two, Three, Four." Urged by all, I gave them for the last time my vocal masterpiece, "All Night Long He Calls Her Snooky-Ukums!" and was rewarded by a clamor of applauding cries. Marquesans think our singing strange—and no wonder! Theirs is a prolonged chant, a monotone without tune, with no high notes and little variance. But loving distraction, they listened ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... author, a contemporary, as M. Gaston Paris thinks him, of Louis VII (1130). He was original enough to have invented, or adopted from popular tradition, a form for himself; his originality declares itself everywhere in his one surviving masterpiece. True, he uses certain traditional formulae, that have survived in his time, as they survived in Homer's, from the manner of purely popular poetry, of Volkslieder. Thus he repeats snatches of conversation always in the same, or very nearly the same words. He has a ...
— Aucassin and Nicolete • Andrew Lang
... keeps you in a more unbearable suspense before the curtain rises, if it does not enhance the delight with which you follow the performance and see the actor 'bend up each corporal agent' to realise a masterpiece of a few hours' duration. With a player so variable as Salvini, who trusts to the feelings of the moment for so much detail, and who, night after night, does the same thing differently but always well, it can never be safe to pass judgment after ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... human energy and emotion into enduring forms they perceive in the weltering procession of transient human lives no more significance or value than in the endless fluctuation of the waves of the sea. For them, therefore, the creation of one masterpiece of genius has more meaning than the physical or mental welfare of a whole generation; they can, indeed, discern no genuine intellectual welfare of a people except in so far as the people look up reverently to the products of the higher ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... plain to me, sir; I am a poor critic of such matters, but I should think it a masterpiece for ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... that strange and forceful personality, Romain Rolland, is known only through his magnificent, intimate record of an artist's life and aspirations, embracing ten volumes, Jean-Christophe. This is not the place in which to discuss that masterpiece. A few biographical facts concerning the author may not, however, ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... there than he did any where else how to enter into the true Gothic taste. Sir Christopher Wren, who built the tower of the great gateway at Christ Church, has catched the graces of it as happily as you could do: there is particularly a niche between two compartments of' a window, that is a masterpiece. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... to quarrel with Gray's way of passing his life, and the poet who had produced so exquisite a masterpiece as the Elegy had a fair right to spend the rest of his days as he pleased. But the temptations to confound a finicking dilettantism with the 'art to live' are so strong, that it is worth while to correct the Rector's admiration ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... Winning of Barbara Worth,' the reading public believed he had written his masterpiece of fiction but this literary genius, the wizard of American novelists, has surprised the literators in 'The Eyes of the World.' * * * the most intense and dramatic novel of today."—Grand ...
— The Uncrowned King • Harold Bell Wright
... his eyesight. "I should not know," he said, "to what extent a person in my situation could be beloved; besides, to me my wife is always young, fresh, and pretty, which is no light matter." Huber's great work on 'Bees' is still regarded as a masterpiece, embodying a vast amount of original observation on their habits and natural history. Indeed, while reading his descriptions, one would suppose that they were the work of a singularly keensighted man, rather than of one who had been entirely blind for twenty-five years ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... dramatic version of Beauty and the Beast? If so, it is a masterpiece in depicting perfect repose on the part of Beauty, while the Beast vivifies the protective instinct of the stronger toward the weaker. Speaking in the common parlance, if you will call off your dog, Miss Stevenson, I ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... ornamented; the chapel of Paul V., adorned with marble and precious stones; the chapel of Sforza, by Michael Angelo; and the sepulchres of Guglielmo della Porta and Algardi. In the square before the front is a Corinthian column, which is considered a masterpiece of its kind. The largest church in Rome next to St. Peter's was the Basilica di San Paolo fuori delle Mura, on the road to Ostia, burnt a few years since. The church of S. Lorenzo, without the ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... John, When Nature first began To try her canny hand, John, Her masterpiece was man; And you amang them a', John, Sae trig frae tap to toe— She proved to be nae journeyman, John ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... allegorical papers in the 'Rambler,' Labour and Rest was his favourite; but Scrotinus, the man who returns late in life to receive honours in his native country, and meets with mortification instead of respect, was by him considered as a masterpiece in the science of life and manners. The character of Prospero in the fourth volume Garrick took to be his; and I have heard the author say that he never forgave the offence. Sophron was likewise a picture drawn from reality, and by Gelidus, ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... theatres, which Lamb loved next to books. There has been no criticism of acting in English like Lamb's, so fundamental, so intimate and elucidating. His style becomes quintessential when he speaks of the stage, as in that tiny masterpiece, On the Acting of Munden, which ends the book of Elia, with its great close, the Beethoven soft wondering close, after all the surges: 'He understands a leg of mutton in its quiddity. He stands ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... disputed Affinity of the Mammalian Genus Plagiaulax, from the Purbeck beds."—"Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc." Volume XVIII., page 348, 1862.) with extreme interest, and I thank you for sending it, though I should certainly have carefully read it, or anything with your name, in the Journal. It seems to me a masterpiece of close reasoning: although, of course, not a judge of such subjects, I cannot feel any doubt that it is conclusive. Will Owen answer you? I expect that from his arrogant view of his own position he will not answer. Your paper is dreadfully severe on him, but perfectly courteous, and polished ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... furs and rugs and scarves of brilliant hues, and set with elegant and curious trifles—fans on the mantelshelf, an antique lamp upon a bracket, and on the table a silver-mounted bowl of cocoa-nut about half full of unset jewels. The fair Cuban, herself a gem of colour and the fit masterpiece for that rich frame, motioned Harry to a seat, and, sinking herself into another, thus began ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Air Force released its official report on the incident. To use a trite term, it was a masterpiece in the art of "weasel wording." It said that the UFO might have been Venus or it could have been a balloon. Maybe two balloons. It probably was Venus except that this is doubtful because Venus was too dim to be seen in the afternoon. This jolted writers who had been following the UFO story. Only ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... the Universe is a limitless artist, monsieur, who from all time and to all time is ever expressing himself in differing forms—always trying to make a masterpiece, and generally failing. For me this world, and all the worlds, are like ourselves, and the flowers and trees—little separate works of art, more or less perfect, whose little lives run their course, and are spilled ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... came his scientific masterpiece, 'Physics and Politics'; a work which does for human society what the 'Origin of Species' does for organic life, expounding its method of progress from very low if not the lowest forms to higher ones. Indeed, one of its main lines is only a special application of Darwin's ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various |
