"Talent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a strong superficial resemblance between them. They both possessed an inexhaustible supply of broad humour and an imagination of singular vividness. Both had the power of seeing the ridiculous side of common things, and the talent of producing caricatures that had a wonderful semblance of reality. A little calm reflection would suffice to show that the characters presented are for the most part psychological impossibilities; but on first making their acquaintance we are so struck with one or two life-like ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... in Hamilton County, where his grandfather General William Henry Harrison lived until chosen President in 1840. He remained in Ohio until he was twenty-one; then he went to Indianapolis, and it was from Indiana that he went to the war, where he achieved rank and distinction by his talent and courage. ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... never objected to Aileen's exercising her talent in her own way. Father Honore encouraged her to sing to the accompaniment of his violin, knowing well that the instrument would do its share in correcting faults. She sang, too, with Luigi Poggi, her "knothole ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... saying that it was a relief to find herself where she could weep at her ease; for weep she must at the folly of the ultra-Royalists. "We can not but be destroyed," she continued, "when we are attacked by people who unite every kind of talent to every kind of wickedness; and when we are defended by folks who are indeed very estimable, but who have no just notion of our position. They have now compromised me with both parties, in their presenting to me ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... addressing the vast concourses called together by the fame of the Disciple leader, then in the plenitude of his power and influence as a preacher and teacher. In these gatherings and in such company Dr. Robison enriched his mind and developed a great talent for extemporaneous address and discussion. Of a positive nature he brought strong earnestness and unflagging energy to the work in which he was engaged, and carried his hearers with him, as he himself was frequently borne away by ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... influence singularly few are to be found in Crete. Dr. Evans has shown the correspondence of a purple gypsum weight found during the second season's excavations at Knossos, with the light Babylonian talent, while the ingots of bronze from Hagia Triada represent the same standard of weight. It may be that the drainage system so highly developed at Knossos and Hagia Triada found its first suggestion in the terra-cotta drain-pipes discovered at Niffur by Hilprecht, though it ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... who is guilty if you want people to believe that I am not." Why should so natural a petition have been made in vain, to a husband who after all had shown some solicitude for his wife's honor, and who had the means to employ the best detective talent in the world? Langholm could only conceive one reason: there was nothing for the husband to find out, but everything for him ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... first vessels sent out on discovery. The duties of officers in surveying vessels are much too fatiguing and severe to allow them the time to make anything but hasty sketches, and they require that practice with the pencil without which natural talent is of little avail; the consequence is, that the engravings, which have appeared in too many of the Narratives of Journeys and Expeditions, give not only an imperfect, but even an erroneous, idea of what ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... the story in the Tocsin) found each moment of it enthralling enough. The State's attorney, fearful of losing so notorious a case, and not underestimating his opponent, had modestly summoned others to his aid; and the attorney for the defence, single-handed, faced "an array of legal talent such as seldom indeed had hollered at this bar"; faced it good-naturedly, an eyebrow crooked up and his head on one side, most of the time, yet faced it indomitably. He had a certain careless and disarming smile when he lost ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... John Miller, the American bookseller in London, paid us a visit. Among the passengers in the same ship was a fine English girl of great talent and promise, Miss Leesugg, afterwards Mrs. Hackett. She was engaged at the Park as a singer, and Phillips, who was here about the same period fulfilling a most successful engagement, was decided and unqualified in his admiration of her talent. Every one took an interest ...
— She Would Be a Soldier - The Plains of Chippewa • Mordecai Manuel Noah
... to obtain correct information; and among the most valuable traits of a military character, is the skill to select those means which will obtain it. Yet the best selected means are not always successful; and, in a new army, where military talent has not been well tried by the standard of experience, the general is peculiarly exposed to the chance of employing not the best instruments. In a country, too, which is covered with wood, precise information of the numbers composing different columns ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... home after being in the society of his lady friends, and recounted his triumphs. If this was so, she at all events began to be more particular about her own dress and appearance, and set to work now to systematically cultivate the social talent which she naturally possessed. She determined to conquer her rivals, who had the advantage of her in appearance, but were inferior to her in talent; and she succeeded. But she became naturally an object for ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... of literature, no other sort of book admits of such variety of topics, style, and treatment as the novel. As diverse in talent and quality as the story-teller himself,—now harlequin, now gossip, now threnodist,—with weird ghostliness, moping melancholy, uncouth laughter, or gentle serious smile,—now relating the story, with childlike interest in it, now with a good heart and now with a bad heart ridiculing mankind, now ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... said," says the same author, "that the American has no talent for lying, and distrust of a man's word strikes the Yankee as specifically European." Now in England "an American lie" has stood almost as a proverb; yet the German writer is entirely in earnest, ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... Memoirs of his own Life have been kindly sent to me by his son, the well-known physician of Chelsea College, from which it appears that the reverend doctor, and, more particularly still, his wife, a lady of remarkable talent and humor, had formed a high notion of Scott's future eminence at a very early period of his life. Dr. S. survived to a great old age, preserving his faculties quite entire, and I have spent many pleasant hours under his hospitable roof in company with Sir Walter Scott. We heard him preach ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... may be said that gamesters must be madmen, or rogues, how has it come to pass that men of genius, talent, and ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of His wrath. And every island fled away, and the mountains were not found. And there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent: and men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail; for the plague thereof was exceeding great." ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... Judge Story. From this double connection with two of the first men in the country their family associations are particularly agreeable. Mrs. Paige is one of three sisters, all very handsome, spirited, and full of talent. One is married to Mr. Webster's eldest son. Another, Mrs. Joy, has for her husband an idle gentleman, a rare thing in this place. Mrs. Paige was in Europe two years ago with Mr. and Mrs. Webster ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... as in many of her other works, humble life has held a strong attraction for Mrs. Barr's pen. Her mind and heart naturally turn in this direction; and although her wonderful talent, within its wide range, deals with all stations and conditions of life, she has but little relish for the gilded artificialities of society, and a strong love for those whose condition makes life for them something real and earnest and definite of purpose. For this reason, ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... obstacle, the next candidate for appropriation would be Jane Cholmley. Assuming, however, that your correspondent allows this lady as a candidate for the appropriation, her pedigree corroborates the claim. I have found, by long and minute observation, that hereditary talent, &c. usually descends by the mesmeric {269} tie of affection and favoritism, from fathers to the eldest daughter, and from mothers to the eldest son; and the pedigree of Jane, Countess of Charles, sixth Earl of Westmoreland, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various
... as politicians. So lately as the early part of the year 1848, their opinions were generally accepted throughout Italy. They were, at that time, also the most powerful party. Their numbers, authority and talent, gave them a decided superiority, whilst the Republicans were still a weak minority. In a few months, to all appearance, everything was completely changed. Talent, respectability, authority, and influence, were still on the side of the constitutional reformers. But, in the meantime, ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... dialogue nor concentration, any more than "fine speeches," as Mr Pinero calls them. Now the dramatic demand and the ethical demand here meet and take each other's hands, and will not be separated. This is why Mr Stevenson and Mr Henley—young men of great talent, failed—utterly failed—they thought they could make a hero out of a shady and dare-devil yet really cowardly ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... commanded the third division of that corps under my immediate personal observation. I have no hesitation in saying that I have never seen a more able and efficient division commander. General Cox is possessed of a very high order of talent and superior education. As a commander he is discreet, energetic, and brave. As a just reward for long, faithful, and efficient service, and as an act of justice to the army and the country, I earnestly recommend that Brigadier-General J. D. Cox be ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... fail," she said lightly. "Look at these pictures! That is what is the matter with California—too much talent. You must be as individual as a talking monkey to get your head above the crowd. All these poor devils are doomed ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... Homoeopathy, if that honorable name must be applied to all kinds of book-making, has been degraded to the condition of the humblest servitude. Productions without talent, without spirit, without discrimination, flat and pitiful eulogies, exaggerations surpassing the limits of the most robust faith, invectives against such as dared to doubt the dogmas which had been proclaimed, or catalogues of remedies; of such materials is it composed! From distance ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Byron, "was much more disgusted with any human production than with the eternal nonsense, and tracasseries, and emptiness, and ill-humour, and vanity of this young person; but he has some talent, and is a man of honour, and has dispositions of amendment. Therefore use your interest for him, for he is improved and improvable;" and, in a letter to Murray, Aug. 21, 1817, "You want a 'civil and delicate declension' for the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... brush away the documentary evidence, and to declare that Sir J. H. Tomlinson (one of the most learned and astute picture-buyers in England) had been smartly imposed upon by a needy Dutch artist with a talent for forgery. The real Maria Vanrenen, he declared and swore, was the one he offered us. "Success has turned the man's head," Charles said to me, well pleased. "He thinks we will swallow any obvious lie he chooses to palm off upon us. But the bucket ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... groaned. "He couldn't stand up very long at first. But I saw he had talent. I gladly learned the skill of holding him upright in a relaxed manner so that he could express himself on paper. In no time at all, he had written what was to be his first, sensational, best-selling shocker, Naked Bellies ...
— Droozle • Frank Banta
... accustomed themselves to give the name of genius; implying, by this name, something original and heaven- bestowed in the passion. But the passion is to be found far beyond those manifestations of it to which the world usually gives the name of genius, and in which there is, for the most part, a talent of some kind or other, a special and striking faculty of execution, informed by the heaven-bestowed ardour, or genius. It is to be found in many manifestations besides these, and may best be called, as we have called it, ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... able to quote what is believed to be Scott's first written opinion of Wilson. In a letter headed 'At sea, Sept. 27,' he said: 'I now come to the man who will do great things some day—Wilson. He has quite the keenest intellect on board and a marvelous capacity for work. You know his artistic talent, but would be surprised at [Page 27] the speed at which he paints, and the indefatigable manner in which he is always at it. He has fallen at once into ship-life, helps with any job that may be in hand... in fact is ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... of society Milman was long a foremost figure. He had all the gifts that fit men for it—not only brilliancy, knowledge, and versatility, but also unfailing tact, a rare charm of courtesy, a singularly wide tolerance. He was quick and generous in recognising rising talent, and he had that sympathetic touch which seldom failed to elicit what was best in those with whom he came in contact. Few men possessed more eminently the genius of friendship—the power of attaching others—the power of attaching himself to ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... would be nice, he reflected, to be a real superman. But any talent has its limits. And, even allowing for that, only Donegan and a very few others could handle the full theoretical potentials of their talents. In theory, a telekineticist could move any object with his mind that he could move with his ...
— Sight Gag • Laurence Mark Janifer
... were there one whose fires True genius kindles and fair fame inspires, Blest with each talent and each art to please, And born to write, converse, and live with ease; Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, Bear like the Turk no brother near the throne; View him with scornful yet with ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... could presume to excite or bestow. Nor can anything be a stronger proof of Dr. Johnson's piety than such an expression; for his idea of poetry was magnificent indeed, and very fully was he persuaded of its superiority over every other talent bestowed by heaven on man. His chapter upon that particular subject in his "Rasselas" is really written from the fulness of his heart, and quite in his best manner, I think. I am not so sure that this is the proper place to mention his writing that surprising little volume in a week ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... own style is dealt with in a later chapter: here it is merely asserted that, before the war, at any rate, Mr. Belloc's style was accorded more general recognition than were his ideas. Many who decried his matter extolled his manner. Many men of talent, some men of genius, such as the late Rupert Brooke, regarded him as a very great writer of English prose. Literary dilettanti envied him the refrains of his ballades. His essays, many of which were manner without matter, were thoroughly popular. ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... proclaimed dictator and exterminate all who adhered to the anti-senatorial party. And into this melee of factions Drusus threw himself, and found relief and inspiration in the conflict. His innate common-sense, a very considerable talent for oratory which had received a moderate training, his energy, his enthusiasm, his incorruptibility, his straightforwardness, all made him valuable to the Caesarians, and he soon found himself deep in the counsels ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... highlanders; but whether I have or not, the reader must, I am sure, admit that the proverbs, songs and anecdotes above translated are at least indications of great latent capability, of unusual versatility of talent, and of a wide range of human feeling and sympathy. It is possible that I overestimate their value on account of my inability to separate the impressions made upon me by the people themselves from those made by their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... Mrs. Nickleby), Mrs. Miller, Lady Bellaston, Mrs. Waters and other light-of-loves and dames of folly, whose dubious doings are carried off with such high good humor that we are inclined to overlook their misdeeds. There is a Chaucerian freshness about it all: at times comes the wish that such talent were used in a better cause. A suitable sub-title for the story, would be: Or Life in The Tavern, so large a share do Inns have in its unfolding. Fielding would have yielded hearty assent to Dr. Johnson's dictum that a good inn stood for man's highest felicity here below: ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... and, walking to the window for better light, said: "Believe me, I have a profound respect for the artistic talent. I myself once had—ah!" He sharply paused as he saw the pencilled head, and stood looking fixedly at it. Presently he turned slowly, came to the portrait on the wall, and compared it with that in his hand. Then, with a troubled face, he said: "You have much talent, but it is—it is too old—much ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... best legal talent to defend you," replied the German quietly. "But in any case you will wear gloves fitted with the finger-prints of a notorious housebreaker. You have ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... in the truest sense of the word—a man of rather quiet tastes, never happier than when he had leisure for indulging his musical taste in strumming all sorts of Spanish fandangos on the guitar, or his somewhat marked talent ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... she loves you: and that should settle it, if—Oh, this wretched if! The beloved Desiree must be altogether noble, since my son Peter has loved her. He has taste and talent, and would choose a wife of his own nature. The few years difference in age are of no moment. If your love is real and substantial, all else is nonsense. She would not want you to play the servant, and you could compose even if you ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... tell us many points of interest. By them originality, talent and mental capacity are displayed, as well as any deficiency or want of education. There are two styles of capital letters at present in use. The high-class style employed by persons of education is plain and often eccentric, but without much ornamentation. ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... admiration for him, and you describe his speaking to your country friends as very little inferior, if at all, to Mr. Burke's. Beside this one are some half dozen others, among whom the question of superiority is, you understand, strongly mooted. It puzzles you to think, what an avalanche of talent will fall upon the country at the graduation ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... shadowed forth as an actor! From my point of view, therefore, your son's determination is scarcely open to objection on the score of his social standing or his honourable character. But it is a difficult calling and demands, above all, a high degree of talent. I am also willing to admit that it is a calling not without peculiar dangers to weak characters. And finally I have myself proved the unspeakable hardships of my profession so thoroughly that I would ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... talent of Poussin became known, and orders for paintings flowed in on him. He might have become rich, but he cared not for wealth, and was perhaps the only artist that ever thought his works too highly paid for. On one occasion, being sent one ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... musician is not one of mere talent, or of a certain sensual refinement and dexterity. It involves deep systematic study, closely akin to that of the severer sciences. It has a sequence and logic of its own, and excellence in it is unattainable without good sense and strong intellect. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... and whom he particularly delighted by jumping with his humour in respect to old times, and by having a scrap of an old song to suit every occasion. We had presently a specimen of his last-mentioned talent; for no sooner was supper removed, and spiced wines and other beverages peculiar to the season introduced, than Master Simon was called on for a good old Christmas song. He bethought himself for a moment, and then, with a sparkle of the eye, and a voice ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... poor boy, and did not need to work in the fields or tend the sheep on the hillside. Indeed, he might have soon become rich and famous, for his wonderful talent for painting would have quickly brought him honours and wealth if he had gone out into the world. But instead of this, when he was a young man of twenty he made up his mind to enter the convent at Fiesole, and to become a monk of the ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... favors fools. In a countryman settled at Berlin he found a protector. Then other admirers of talent and learning boarded and lodged him. The way ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the manner in which this music should be interpreted. At Paris the first attempts to execute the music of Palestrina were made in the time of Louis Philippe, by the Prince of Moscow. He had founded a choral society of amateurs, all titled, but gifted with good voices and a certain musical talent. This society executed many of the works of Palestrina and particularly the famous "Mass of Pope Marcellus." They adopted at that time the method of singing most of these pieces very softly and with an extreme slowness so that in the long-sustained ...
— On the Execution of Music, and Principally of Ancient Music • Camille Saint-Saens
... counterblast to the Protestant work. Whereas his criticism is no whit better than theirs, he adopted the cunning policy, unfortunately widely obtaining since his day, of simply ignoring or suppressing unpleasant facts, rather than of refuting the inferences drawn from them. His talent for switching the attention to a side-issue, and for tangling instead of clearing problems, made the Protestants justly regard him as "a great deceiver" though even the most learned of them, J. J. Scaliger, who attempted to refute him, found the ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... strange time,' replied the other. 'Who knows whether mountebanks may not come to rule the roost in their turn. One ought to despise nothing nowadays: the veriest straw of talent may be that which is to break the ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... money-lender. "I never lent money on that kind of risk. I must read upon it! They say manufacturing requires mechanical talent. ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... sheep, and almost think the artist must have been one. At all events, it is most wonderful how Roos has been able to think and feel himself into the very soul of these creatures, so as to make the internal character peer with such force through the outward covering. Here you see what a great talent can do when it keeps steady to subjects which are ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... in front of the choir, which was screened by ironwork as delicate as lace, and covered with admirably carved wood. The pulpit, the regal present of a great lady, was a marvel of art cut in massive oak. The baptismal fonts had been hewn out of hard stone by an artist of great talent. Pictures by masters ornamented the walls. Crosses, pyxes, precious monstrances, sacred vestments, similar to suns, were piled up in the vestry cupboards. And what a dream it was to be the pontiff of such a temple, to reign there after having erected it with ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... are you going to find him? I can count up the satirists of any real talent on the fingers of one hand; and none of them are available. Giusti wouldn't accept; he is fully occupied as it is. There are one or two good men in Lombardy, but they write ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... of McCutcheon & Callingham, drapers (the latter, by the bye, was a most clever low comedian); Plummer, the auctioneer; and last, though not least, Alex. Phillips, of soda water fame. These names will all be familiar to old pioneers. As female talent was scarce, or they were loth to take part in theatricals, the other sex had to be enlisted, and I shall not forget the meeting at the Boomerang (our meeting-place) when this difficulty was met by the suggestion ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... of the world," said I. "And my one talent, as you must have noticed, is getting people out of scrapes. It'll be wasted if I can't have you. Besides, under the wing of an Embassy no one will dare to try and steal you, or blow you up. We'll be diplomats together, Biddy. Come! ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... very much divided in opinion in respect to the personal character of Queen Elizabeth, but in one point all have agreed, and that is, that in the management of public affairs she was a woman of extraordinary talent and sagacity, combining, in a very remarkable degree, a certain cautious good sense and prudence with the most determined resolution ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Lincoln, we see that he received nearly one third of the total county vote, notwithstanding his absence from the canvass, notwithstanding the fact that his acquaintanceship was limited to the neighborhood of New Salem, notwithstanding the sharp competition. Indeed, his talent and fitness for active practical politics were demonstrated beyond question by the result in his home precinct of New Salem, which, though he ran as a Whig, gave two hundred and seventy-seven votes for him and only three ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... among our contributors to the songs of gramarye: but one has only to open "The Congo" side by side with "Peacock Pie" to see how the seductions of ragtime and the clashing crockery of the Poetry Society's dinners are coarsening the fibres of Mr. Lindsay's marvellous talent as compared with the dainty horns of elfin that echo in Mr. de la Mare. And it is a long Pullman ride from Spoon River to the bee-droned gardens where De la Mare's old women sit and sew. Over here we have to wait for Barrie or Yeats or Padraic Colum to tell us about the fairies, ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... of H.: He's not all right. No, by the fame of Shakespeare, he's all wrong. A certain convocation of talented amateurs Are e'en at him. Your amateur is your only emperor for talent; There's not a genius in the universe Who will essay ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... Maenads struggling on the ground and the Street Boy Eating Figs, which were no longer his property, were sold at high prices. No meeting of artists was complete without Hermon, and the great self-possession which success and wealth bestowed, besides his remarkable talent and the energy peculiar to him, soon aided him to great influence among the members of his profession; nay, he would speedily have reached the head of their leaders had not the passionate impetuosity of his warlike ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... IS begins to betray itself when his talent decreases,—when he ceases to show what he CAN do. Talent is also an adornment; an adornment ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... poet with a different talent writes, One praises, one instructs, another bites. Horace could ne'er aspire to epic bays, Nor lofty Maro ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... They were well received by the Indians, who gave them a large house belonging to a chief, and situated near the shore of a river. Immediately Captain Patino and Captain San Vincente, both men of talent and energy, ordered an intrenchment to be built around this house, with a slope of earth and fascines, these being the only means of defense possible in that country, where stones are nowhere to be found. Up to to-day ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... Thomas Colman, the cooper, was opening the meeting in a speech which was an instance of how well a man of no platform talent can acquit himself when he believes something and believes it is his duty to convey it to his fellow-men. Victor Dorn, to be the fourth speaker and the orator of the evening, was standing at the rear of the platform partially concealed by the crowd of men and women leaders ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... Hale at first, but the homesickness had quickly worn off—apparently for both. She had studied hard, had become a favourite among the girls, and had held her own among them in a surprising way. But it was on June's musical talent that Hale's sister always laid most stress, and on her voice which, she said, was really unusual. June wrote, too, at longer and longer intervals and in her letters, Hale could see the progress she was making—the change in her handwriting, the increasing formality ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... that she possesses extraordinary talent as a mimic. She has the flexible face, the manageable voice, and the dramatic knack which fit a woman for character-parts and disguises on the stage. All she now wants is teaching and practice, to make her sure of her own resources. The experience of her, thus gained, has revived an idea in ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... such circumstances. They're exactly your play, and have nothing in common with such a life as mine. However," Mrs. Alsager went on, "her behaviour was natural for HER, and not only natural, but, it seems to me, thoroughly beautiful and noble. I can't sufficiently admire the talent and tact with which you make one accept it, and I tell you frankly that it's evident to me there must be a brilliant future before a young man who, at the start, has been capable of such a stroke as that. Thank heaven I can admire Nona Vincent as intensely as I feel ...
— Nona Vincent • Henry James
... That You Saw Me," and various others), as a third owner of one of the most successful popular music publishing houses in the city and as an actor and playwright of some small repute, he was wont to spin like a moth in the white light of Broadway. By reason of a little luck and some talent he had come so far, done so much for himself. In his day he had been by turn a novitiate in a Western seminary which trained aspirants for the Catholic priesthood; a singer and entertainer with a perambulating cure-all oil troupe ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... with.... No, excuse me, but I consider myself aristocratic, and people like me, who can point back in the past to three or four honorable generations of their family, of the highest degree of breeding (talent and intellect, of course that's another matter), and have never curried favor with anyone, never depended on anyone for anything, like my father and my grandfather. And I know many such. You think it mean of me to count the trees in my forest, while you make Ryabinin ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... these two is the story of many beside. Husband and wife began the long journey side by side with equal talent, hope, energy; his work led him along the high-road, hers lay in a quiet nook; his name became world-known, hers was scarcely heard beyond the precinct of her own village; and yet who can say that his life was the more successful, who can say that the quiet falling rain, with ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... music only as an accomplishment, however. He did not want to be a performer, although he had amazing natural talent in that direction. Music was born in him. He could transpose a melody in any key. You could whistle an air for him, and he could turn it into a little opera ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... talent for eluding the common doom of man to eat his bread in the sweat of his face was peculiarly marked. He was the eldest of seven sons, ranging in age from eleven to twenty years, including one pair of twins. The parents had ...
— Una Of The Hill Country - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... is so obstinate that the match would have been broken off at the church door. Well, sir, I always said that you were the best to get out of a scrape that I ever knew when you were a middy, and you don't appear to have lost the talent; it was well managed." ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... unable to afford specific designs, will—amidst the disregarded curses of these more intelligent customers—still simply reproduce in a cheaper and mutilated form such examples as happen to be set. Practically, that is to say, the shareholder will buy up almost all the available architectural talent. ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... the CONTINENTAL are aware of the important position it has assumed, of the influence which it exerts, and of the brilliant array of political and literary talent of the highest order which supports it. No publication of the kind has, in this country, so successfully combined the energy and freedom of the daily newspaper with the higher literary tone of the first-class monthly; and it is very certain that no magazine has given wider range to its contributors, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... up and down, while Pilar twisted her hands together, and Sturges mused upon his future wife's talent for dramatic invention. Suddenly Dona Brigida shouted: "Tomaso, come here! The spring! A horse has watered here to-day—two horses! I see the little hoof-mark and the big." She ran back to the cave, dragging Tomaso with her. ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... a masterpiece of one whose talent for ambiguity was becoming world famous, and a stone in shape of a loaf was thus hurled at the ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... their sensibility to the evil, and widens the feeling of hostility between them and the citizens at large.... We should not know where to find in literature any record of so much unbalanced intellectuality, such undeniable apprehension without talent, so much power without equal applicability, as our young men pretend to.... The balance of mind and body will redress itself fast enough. Superficialness is the real distemper.... It is certain that speculation is no succedaneum for life." ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... mentioned the fact that all the male members of our family, on my father's side—as far back as the Middle Ages—have exhibited in early youth a decided talent for running away. It was an hereditary talent. It ran in the blood to run away. I do not pretend to explain the ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... to praise the blessings of peace. Still easier to paint the horrors of war,—and yet war will remain for all time the greatest game at which human wits can play. For in it every form of courage, physical and moral, and every talent are called into being. If war at once develops the bestial, it also develops as promptly the heroic. Alone of human activities it demands a brute's strength, an iron will, a serpent's intellect, a lion's courage—all in one. And of him who has these things in justest measure, ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... youth in a corn-raising community reports to me the following psychological observation: However industrious all the boys of the village were, one of them was always able to husk about a half as much more corn than any one else. He seemed to have an unusual talent for handling so many more ears than any one of his rivals could manage. Once my friend had a chance to inquire of the man with the marvellous skill how he succeeded in outdoing them so completely, and then he learned that no talent was involved, but a simple ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... denied all opportunity of exercising it. For a faculty to be repressed is hard just in proportion as its quality is noble. A caged canary is hardly a painful sight, but a caged eagle stirs one with regret. And the world has such need of all noble talent; such exigent and hungry need of the true teacher, statesman, seer,—of the word of inspiration and the act of leadership! How shall one who feels in him the power and sees the need; who grasps in his hand the keen sickle, yet is ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... several individuals under different forms. The variety of idioms spoken on the banks of the Meta, the Orinoco, the Cassiquiare, and the Rio Negro, is so prodigious, that a traveller, however great may be his talent for languages, can never hope to learn enough to make himself understood along the navigable rivers, from Angostura to the small fort of San Carlos del Rio Negro. In Peru and Quito it is sufficient to know the Quichua, or the Inca language; in Chile, the Araucan; and in Paraguay, the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... Dartmouth were addressed for the first time, and the doctrine of Progress was illustrated by the distinguished speaker in more senses than one.[01] Who can tell how great the influence of such associations may become in cherishing kind feeling, in fostering literature, in calling out talent, in leading men to act, not selfishly, but more efficiently for the general cause through particular institutions?"—Pres. Hopkins's Miscellaneous ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... handsome new clubhouse of a secret order renowned the continent over for its hospitality and its charities. We sat, six or seven hundred of us, in a big assembly hall, smoked cigars and drank light drinks, and witnessed some corking good sparring bouts by non-professional talent. There were two or three ministers present—fine, alert representatives of the modern type of city clergymen. When eleven o'clock came the master of ceremonies announced the toast, To Our Absent ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... another of his constant brawls and scandals. But to compare the best work of both is to recognise a difference in kind as well as degree: the essential difference between even negligent genius and the most elaborate talent. High talent Urs Graf had unquestionably; though stamped,—I think,—with the lawless caprices of his own character. Holbein's every design has not only what Urs Graf lacked—that ordered imagination which is Style—but over and above all, the ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... to 'retire' from the world, absolutely brought all the world to visit them, for after a few years of seclusion their strange story was the universal subject of conversation, and there has been no person of rank, talent, and importance in any way who did ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... ridiculous pretext that the Greeks were constructing a fortress instead of a college; but on investigation, and the payment of some purses to the Divan, it has been permitted to continue. The principal professor, named Ueniamin (i.e. Benjamin), is stated to be a man of talent, but a freethinker. He was born in Lesbos, studied in Italy, and is master of Hellenic, Latin, and some Frank languages: besides a smattering ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... She has a great talent for putting young men on their feet and teaching them to walk alone. In fact, she is a perfect employment bureau for meritorious youth. Somebody wrote to her that Mr. Arlt has genius and grit, and not a guinea to his name, and she is trying to get ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... seems so incredible that I cannot but suspect an error in the MS. The sum named is two hundred Attic talents. The Attic talent, according to Smith's dictionary, was worth L243 13s. It may be that this large amount had been collected over ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... means of subsistence; and it was necessary, if I wished to support myself like a gentleman, that I should choose some calling by which I could at least obtain an income, supposing that I had not the talent to realise ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... and it is not at all diminished by the place being so remote from the sound of Bow-bells and the region of Cockaigne, although it is true that the contents of the paper are not composed of exciting parliamentary reports, or of leading articles equal in talent to those of the ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... of great talent, who lived, like many other people of that period, by applying his capacity to state intrigues, had been committed to the Tower at the instigation of Somerset. He died there suddenly; and a suspicion arose that he had been poisoned by Somerset and his countess. A curious account ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... his spirits so that when he sould have risen he was found dead in very truth. As also 3ly of a certain Italian painter who being to draw our Saviour as he was upon the Cross in his greatest torment and agony (he caused a comoedian whose main talent was to represent sorrow to the life), he caused one come and sit doune before him and feigne one of the dolfullest countenances that he could that he might draw Christ of him; but he tuise sticked it, wt which being angred he drew out a knife and stobbed the person to the heart; and ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... we observe, has already found a chronicler, and one peculiarly qualified, both by his knowledge and talent, to do justice to the subject.[1] Although possessing all the essentials of history, however, the book has something more, and is therefore not strictly a history, in the conventional sense of the term; the text as well ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... at the same moment, awoke to the conviction that my whole past had been an error; that my life had been a lie; that the years which had succeeded my imprisonment had been more utterly lost than those passed within my dungeon itself; and there came to me the conviction that time, talent, power and wealth had been worse than wasted—that the wondrous riches, undreamed of save in the wildest flights of oriental fiction, and by a miracle bestowed upon me, were designed for nobler, holier ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... The skill and talent of young Jervis had already given him distinction among the rising officers of the feet. He had become a favourite with Admiral Saunders, was taken with him from ship to ship; and when the admiral was recalled from the Mediterranean ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... no doubt that you will do that, with your talent," Lord Cameron replied; then drawing an envelope from his pocket, he quietly passed it to him. "Do not open it until you reach New York," he said, with ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... attracting notice by his personal beauty and by the rather turgid eloquence which was his chief talent. In 1342 he took the most prominent part in an embassy from the citizens to Clement VI; and though he failed to induce the Pope to return to Rome, which at that time he seems to have regarded as the panacea for the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... is now, I should hope, unnecessary to insist that the able and conscientious editor to whom his fame and his readers owe so great a debt was over-hasty in assuming and asserting that he was a poet "to whom, we have reason to believe, nature had denied even a moderate talent for the humorous." The serious or would-be poetical scenes of the play are as unmistakably the work of an imitator as are most of the better passages in "Titus Andronicus" and "King Edward III." Greene or Peele may be responsible for the ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Julian's mind that he had heard of persons possessed of the wonderful talent of counterfeiting sounds to such accuracy, that they could impose on their hearers the belief, that they proceeded from a point of the apartment entirely opposite to that which the real speaker occupied. Persuaded that he had now gained the depth of the mystery, he replied, "This trifling, Sir ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... sunshine the blue waters deserved their reputation. It was warm as summer, and all day the passengers lived on deck, watching the smooth sea and distant coastline, or amusing themselves with games. Mr. Stacey, with his jolly, hearty ways and talent for entertaining, was, of course, the life and soul of everything. He organized various sports during the day, and concerts and theatricals during the evening. He was great at deck cricket, which, owing to the limitations of the vessel, is a very different game from that on land. The balls are ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... from the time of his marriage with the accomplished sister of Admiral Beaufort to the hour in which he followed her to the grave, was regarded as the most admired man in every circle, and yet more publicly respected as being the magnificent host and most munificent patron of talent, particularly of British growth, in the whole land. Besides, by his own genius as a statesman, he often stood a tower of strength in the senate of his country; and his general probity was of such a stamp, that his private friends were all solicitous to acquire the protection of his name over any ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... faded flowers, rubbed gilding, silks as forlorn as her heart, half understood the powerful fascinations of vice as she studied its results. It was impossible not to wish to possess these beautiful things, these admirable works of art, the creation of the unknown talent which abounds in Paris in our day and produces treasures for all Europe. Each thing had the novel charm of unique perfection. The models being destroyed, every vase, every figure, every piece of sculpture was the original. This is the crowning grace of modern luxury. To ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... sang, and once took a principal part in a ballet. She drew and painted well, as did her sister Pauline Viardot, whose spirited caricatures of her friends, and herself were admirable specimens both of likenesses and of humorous talent in delineating them. Both sisters conversed brilliantly, speaking fluently four languages, and executed the music of different nations and composers with a perception of the peculiar character of each that was extraordinary. They were mistresses of all the different schools of ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... sure, this note-book habit means labor, but remember that more speeches have been spoiled by half-hearted preparation than by lack of talent. Laziness is an own-brother to Over-confidence, and both are your inveterate enemies, though they pretend ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... received, upon condition that he should also, at the same time, continue his other studies; and in case any two artists that his friend might consult, should declare, on seeing his work, that he did not show talent enough to promise reasonable success, he was, from that time, to devote himself to business. For a while, Charlie was a great deal happier than a king. He immediately began a view of his beloved little mill-pond, and then attempted one ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... sense a leader of men as were Chatham and Fox, as were Washington, Clay and Lincoln; nor of ideas as were Rousseau, Voltaire and Franklin, he had the subtle tenacity of Louis the Eleventh of France, the keen foresight of Richelieu with a talent for the surprising which would have raised him to eminence in journalism. In short he was an opportunist void of conviction and ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... eliminated. A father now refuses his daughter to a drunkard, a criminal, a pauper, a bankrupt, an inefficient man, one who has no income, etc. Some men refuse their daughters to irreligious men, or to men who are not of their own sect or subsect. Some allow inherited wealth, or talent, or high character, etc., to outweigh disadvantages. In short, we already have selection. It always has existed. The law of incest was an instinctive effort in the same direction. The problem is the same now as it ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... always repellent, there was still an amount of kindness and consideration in the demeanour of his new employer that reassured him. Besides, he knew that, let his painting be as crude and amateur-like as any one might please to consider it, he had still the undoubted talent of being able to catch a likeness—indeed, his ability to do this had never once failed him. This reflection gave him some consolation, and he resolved to undertake courageously whatever was required of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... whether those complex mental attributes, on which genius and talent depend, are inherited, even when both parents are thus endowed. But he who will study Mr. Galton's able work on 'Hereditary Genius' ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... human aid can save us, then we ought to learn His hardest lesson—to submit. To submit—yet still, while saying 'Thy will be done,' to strive, so far as we can, to do it. If He have taken from us all but one talent, even that, my children, let us not bury in a napkin. Let us rather put it out a usury, leaving to Him to determine how much we shall receive again; for it is according to our use of what we have, and not of what we have not, that He will call us 'good and faithful servants,' and at last, when ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... those that Lady Constantine had a weakness for in the present case, and she asked her more experienced guest if he thought early development of a special talent a ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... San's father and who had tired of her mother and left her two years after her own birth; of the poverty against which they had struggled—for the Englishman had left no provision for them; of the faithful old servant, who had been her mother's nurse; of O Hara San's discovery of her own artistic talent which had enabled her to provide for the simple wants of the little household. She had grown up alone—apart from the world, watched over by the old woman, her mind a tangle of fairy-tales and romance—living ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... entertainments and of the givers of them, by reason of their superior familiarity with the manners and customs of the best society of Europe. Mrs. Adams was, "on the whole, a very pleasant and agreeable woman; but the Secretary [had] no talent to entertain a mixed company, either by conversation or manners;" thus writes this same Mr. Mills, whose sentiments towards Mr. Adams were those of respect rather than of personal liking. The favorite dissipation then consisted in card-playing, and the stakes were too often out of all just ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... her to be spoiled. I like her. She has talent and character, and I cannot understand, Esther, why you are so ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... find them fast enough if you seek them, Ellen. No one is so poor or so young but he has one talent at least to use ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... was a courtier, a man of talent, of business, of intrigue, who felt, with annoyance, that for a person of his condition and weight, such a commission as he bore was very empty. He appeared exceedingly agreeable in conversation, of pleasant ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... by the artifices of his servant: although I have smelt out this too, that they are about that, {and} are secretly planning it among them. Syrus is {always} whispering with that {servant} of yours;[57] they impart their plans to the young men; and it were better for you to lose a talent this way, than a mina the other. The money is not the question now, but this— in what way we can supply it to the young man with the least danger. For if he once knows the state of your feelings, that you would sooner part with your life, ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... said. "It is very strange. So many rare felicities of curve and color, so much of purity and kindliness and valor and mirth, extinguished as one snuffs a candle! Well! I am sorry she is dead, for the child had a talent for living and got such joy out of it. . . . Hers was a lovely happy life, but it was sterile. Already nothing remains of her but dead flesh which must be huddled out of sight. I shall not perish thus entirely, I believe. Men ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... by its sociological bearing, and therefore took, or thought I did, considerable liberty with my subject. Imagination, however, can only act upon data—one must have somewhere in his consciousness the ideas which he puts together to form a connected whole. Creative talent, of whatever grade, is, in the last analysis, only the power of rearrangement—there is nothing new under the sun. I was the more firmly impressed with this thought after I had interviewed half a dozen old women, and a genuine "conjure doctor;" for I discovered ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... must return to his early years at Paris and to his first literary attempts, after this long digression, which has served, I hope, to give something of an idea of the milieu in which he moved, and of the influences at work upon the formation of his talent. ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... Thagaste was the great mart of woodland Numidia, the warehouse and the bazaar, where to this day the nomad comes to lay in a stock of provisions, and stares with childish delight at the fine things produced by the inventive talent of the workers ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... marble statues of women erected in public places. Such acts serve no purpose, for prudery will never rid the world of eroticism; it will only increase it by leading to hypocrisy. We have something better to do than persecute and insult true art and men of talent or genius who expose ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... gradual working of what I call happiness and success in ameliorating character. I have known a man who, by necessity, by the pressure of poverty, was driven to write for the magazines,—a kind of work for which he had no special talent or liking, and which he had never intended to attempt. There was no more miserable, nervous, anxious, disappointed being on earth than he was, when he began his writing for the press. And sure enough, his articles were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... as a psychotherapist," said the dark-skinned young man. He looked too young to be practicing a profession, barely nineteen, but that could be merely a sign of talent, Donahue reflected. The new teaching and testing methods ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... verve and keenly fanciful talent delighted him, but the universal admiration his works had won nevertheless estranged him slightly. And for years he had refused to frame them for fear that the first blundering fool who caught sight of ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... every thing in his country's cause. Such were his friends, and such their zeal in his behalf. It was here that Colonel Burr was all-powerful, for he possessed, in a pre-eminent degree, the art of fascinating the youthful. But with all this tact and talent, he was credulous and easily deceived. He therefore often became the dupe of the most worthless ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... hypnotism—and the success of the dramatic version of Trilby presented a few days ago by Mr. Tree, invite one to apply the test. Clearly there are large numbers of people who enjoy hypnotic fiction, or whose prejudices have been effectively subdued by Mr. du Maurier's tact and talent. Must we then confess that our instinct has been unjust and unreasonable, and give it up? Or—since we must like Trilby, and there is no help for it—shall we enjoy the tale under protest and ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... always has a sparkle which wounds us, and the man who has much of it makes us fear him perhaps, and if he is a proud man he will be capable of jealousy, and is not therefore to our taste. In fact, we prefer to raise a man to our own height rather than to have to climb up to his. Talent has great successes for us to share in, but the fool affords enjoyment to us; and we would sooner hear said 'that is a very handsome man' than to see our lover elected to ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... are fitted for motherhood and have a talent for it can enter it with advantage. There is a talent for motherhood exactly as there is for other things. Other women have genius which can be of greatest service to the community in other ways. They should have opportunity to find their sphere. If this is "Feminism," it is also simple ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... attractive demeanor—all the traits and all the qualities, completely ripe, which make up and express weight of character; and all the address and firmness and knowledge of youth, men, and affairs which constitute what we call administrative talent. For that form of talent, and for the greatness which belongs to character, he was doubtless remarkable. He must have been distinguished for this among the eminent. From his first appearance before the students on the day of his inauguration, ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... designs, fashioned his amorous thoughts into grotesque jewels that pleased their buyers well, they not knowing how many wives and children were lost in the productions of the good man, who, the more talent he threw into his art, the more disordered he became. Now if God had not had pity upon him, he would have quitted this world without knowing what love was, but would have known it in the other without that metamorphosis of the flesh which spares it, according to Monsieur Plato, ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... now a vulgar error as regards criticism. I think the notion that no poet can form a correct estimate of his own writings is another. I remarked before that in proportion to the poetical talent would be the justice of a critique upon poetry. Therefore a bad poet would, I grant, make a false critique, and his self-love would infallibly bias his little judgment in his favor; but a poet, who is indeed a poet, could not, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... blame for having aspired to honours which I knew were not to last. However the ambition was not dishonourable, nor did I disgrace the station while I held it; and when I see, as in the present year, that station filled by a man of education and talent, of high character and ample fortune, I discover no cause to repent of having been one of his predecessors. Indeed I ought to apologize for making public the weakness by which we were all affected; especially as I have myself already learned to laugh at what we ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various
... rock, on which stands the fortress, which commands the country for some distance round. Still, there is no question that the French could take it, if they attacked it. Our men are utterly dispirited with defeat. Cope and Gingen have neither enterprise nor talent. ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... artistic standpoint the novel is entirely unsatisfactory, not to say anything more out of respect for the talent of Turgenev, for his former merits, and for his numerous admirers. There is no common thread, no common action which would have tied together all the parts of the novel; all of it is in some way just separate rhapsodies. . . . This novel is didactic, ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... attempted for the second time to break down the preconceived opinion of critics, that such a subject did not come within his province. They were accustomed to have tales of sea-life from his pen, and could not readily be persuaded that another sphere of life might afford equal scope for his talent. "Thomas Ross," published in 1878, had treated of Christiania life, and had attracted but little attention; and now, in the spring of 1883, appeared this "story of a smith's apprentice, with his struggles for existence and his ultimate final failure owing to the irresistible indulgence of a passionate ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... a talent for finding the place where she was most needed and getting to work. She put the sideboard drawers in order, and then went to packing away garments from the closets in drawers and trunks and chests, until by four o'clock a great many little nooks and ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... altogether, Montrose might be termed rather a handsome, than a hard-featured man. But those who saw him when his soul looked through those eyes with all the energy and fire of genius—those who heard him speak with the authority of talent, and the eloquence of nature, were impressed with an opinion even of his external form, more enthusiastically favourable than the portraits which still survive would entitle us to ascribe to it. Such, ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... many lives been sacrificed; on no other things, excepting possibly religion, have so many books been written; to no other things has the strenuous exertion of so many minds been devoted; in operating no other things has such a combination of talent and genius and power of ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... would do well to consider that this talent of ridicule they value so much is a perfection very easily acquired, and applied to all things whatsoever; neither is anything at all the worse because it is capable of being perverted to burlesque; perhaps it may be the more perfect ...
— Three Sermons, Three Prayer • Jonathan Swift
... impatiently, "it is not that I think highly of myself, as you well know; you well know with what anguish I have deplored our wants; it is pretension I despise, and rise above; talent, and learning, and virtue, and nobleness, that I revere, and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... this in Baur's own age was represented in the work of Neander, a converted Jew, professor of church history in Berlin, who exerted great influence upon a generation of English and American scholars. He was not an investigator of sources. He had no talent for the task. He was a delineator, one of the last of the great painters of history, if one may so describe the type. He had imagination, sympathy, a devout spirit. His great trait was his insight into personality. He wrote history with the biographical ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... It is worthy of a brave man to show a resolute front to his enemies! It is in battle that talent is retempered, as formerly in the ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... do," sighed Betty, who had given up a hockey game that afternoon to study history. "I suppose we've got to choose," she added philosophically. "But I choose to be an all-around girl, like Dorothy King. I can't sing though. I wonder what my one talent is. ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... off the yard and put up some seats we might perform behind the bars. Advertise that the gentlemen composing the greatest aggregation of minstrel talent in the known world will attempt the difficult feat of playing themselves ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... to that, Kate," said Florence, with a smile; "I have no intention of calling upon your talent; I have an asylum in view ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... fact, a faint mew perfectly imitated seemed to issue from the dish. It was Coupeau who did that with his throat, without opening his lips; a talent which at all parties, met with decided success, so much so that he never ordered a dinner abroad without having a rabbit ragout. After that he purred. The ladies pressed their napkins to their mouths to try and stop their laughter. Madame Fauconnier asked for a head, she only liked that part. ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... dipped his hand freely into the purse of M. le Comte de Guiche, one of the best furnished purses of the period. M. le Comte de Guiche had had, as the companion of his boyhood, this De Manicamp, a poor gentleman, vassal-born, of the house of Gramont. M. de Manicamp, with his tact and talent had created himself a revenue in the opulent family of the celebrated marechal. From his infancy he had, with calculation beyond his age, lent his mane and complaisance to the follies of the Comte de Guiche. If his noble companion had stolen some fruit destined for Madame ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... was destined to disappointment. With her conversion at Rouen, and her association with M. Singlin and Port Royal, her old life seems entirely to have died out. Even her old pleasure in making verses was renounced at the bidding of Port Royal. She was told “that it was a talent of which God would not take any account—it was necessary to bury it,” and this although she only exerted it now in the service of religion and the Church. While Madame Périer has given us no details, and, indeed, no ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... the best to make your Excellency an impartial relation thereof: I shall only say, that I shall strive according to my best understanding (that is, according to those rules your Lordship hath given me) to increase whatsoever talent he may have already. Truly, he is of gentle and waxen disposition; and God be praised, I cannot say he hath brought with him any evil impression; and I shall hope to set nothing into his spirit but what may be of a good sculpture. He hath ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... as any thing belongs to anyone. Yours? why, what can you really call your own? Every talent you have, every breath you draw, every drop of blood flowing in your veins, is lent to you only; you must pay it all back. And as far as the arts go, it is a bad sign of poet, painter, or musician, who is arrogant enough to call his work his own. It never was his, and never will ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... wheedling, good-natured, cunning, light-fingered and light-hearted old devil of a Capuchin that ever hid in St. Francis' wound. Hey! but I'm snug in my snuff-coloured suit. My poor old father—God have him after all his pains!—put me there, to lie quiet and nurse my talent, and so I do when times are hard. But the waxing moon sees me skipping, and you will no more keep me long off the road than your cur upon it. I must be out and about—in the kitchen to tease the wenches, into the taverns for my jug of wine, off to the fairs, where the ducats ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... mayor, as he took his stand in front of an august array of legal talent which was waiting to pick his argument to pieces in the commission chambers at the capitol, "I miscalculated but one thing in this case which I am about to lay before you, and that is the extent of public interest. I came here prepared to make a private argument, ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... what little he had he had now clean lost. He had never been much a reader of his Bible; he had never sat over it as other men sat over their news-letters and their romances. He had never had much taste or talent for spiritual books of any kind. He was a good sort of man, but he was not exactly the manner of man on whose broken heart the Holy Ghost sets the broad seal of heaven. But for his dreadful misadventure, ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... evenly at the bottom. There are those who remember the time when Fanny was a beautiful girl, happy-go-lucky but always kind-hearted. Now she is famous for her marvelous instinct for news gathering and her great talent in weaving the odds and ends of commonplace daily living into an interesting, gossipy yarn. Green Valley without Fanny Foster would not be Green Valley, for she ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... she actually faced her first big audience—a tired and fluttering and yawning audience, for two hours of Brooklyn amateur talent will wilt even the most valiant listeners!—she had but one thought, and that was—that there wasn't any pattern to ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... for him, in much the same way as the generals won his battles, or the architects built his monuments: they were nothing more than nameless agents, whose individuality was eclipsed by that of their master, their skill and talent being all placed to his credit. Babylonia shared equally with Assyria in the benefits of his government. He associated himself with his brother Shamash-shumukin in the task of completing the temple of E-Sagilla; ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... calculations. At sight of him, Fleda's blood quickened, but in indignation and in no other sense. As he came towards her, however, despising his vanity as she did, she felt how much he was above all those by whom he was surrounded. She realized his talent, and it almost made her forget his cunning and his loathsomeness. As he came near to her he made a slight gesture to someone in the crowd, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... easy, but firm; like men aware that important interests were at stake, and prepared to make a good defence. Mr. Grant, their colleague, was an insignificant-looking man when silent, but he never rose to speak, without commanding the whole attention of his audience by the force of his talent. ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... himself, the Captain-Major sent Davane, accompanied by Joab da Nunez, one of the convicts,—a Christian and a man of talent, who could speak Arabic and Hebrew, and also understood the Moorish language, although he could not speak it,—that he might go to the city and ascertain the way of transacting business; he was ordered to buy only provisions, while he listened ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... to represent Virginia. Accordingly, about the middle of September, 1774, these three Congress-men set out together on horseback for Philadelphia, the place of meeting. Arrived here, Washington found assembled the first talent, wisdom, and virtue of the land. It was to him a sublime spectacle indeed,—that of the people of many widely separated provinces thus met together to give voice and expression to what they felt to be their sacred rights as freemen and free Englishmen. To add still greater solemnity ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady |
