"Mastery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... finesse or skill in the management of men, with scarcely any assistance, and almost entirely by his own energy and force of conviction. His industry and capacity for work were prodigious. He spoke frequently, and on a wide range of subjects requiring careful study and mastery of facts. In the divisions he obtained little support. He had antagonized the French-Canadians, the Clear Grits of Upper Canada were for the time determined to stand by the government, and his views were usually not such as the Conservatives could endorse, although they occasionally followed ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... after describing a piece of antique sculpture he saw in Rome adds, "To express the perfection of learning, mastery, and art displayed in it is beyond the power of language. Its more exquisite beauties could not be discovered by the sight, but only by the touch of the hand passed over it." Of another classic marble at Padua he says, ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... building, one of the granges of the Abbey, presenting a long flank unbroken by door or window. The horse stretched itself into a gallop, and headed straight for that craggy thirty-foot wall. He would break in red ruin at the base of it if he could but dash forever the life of this man, who claimed mastery over that which had ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... than he knew. Miss Osborn liked him, but her father's rank and traditions were daunting obstacles. Kit felt this was unjust, and raw passions and prejudices that he was, as a rule, too sensible to indulge, got the mastery. ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... now—his name and glory have waved across America like a pennon of victory. I do not intend as others have done to describe every small detail of his early life[17]—I merely wish with a few brief and decided strokes of the pen to expose to the public his mastery of psychology, his exquisite grace of style and above all his amazing supremacy of grammar. No writer since Steve Montespan Pligger has achieved such stupendous feats of literature and even he—Pligger—failed over his ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... assured her the inflammation was purely symptomatic, and as soon as he could subdue the continual nervous inclination to shrivel up the nose, which he trusted he could in time master, all would go well. But Sir Amyas attended every day for a month, yet never got the mastery of this nervous inclination. Lady Spilsbury then was persuaded it could not be nerves, it must be scrofula; and she called in Dr. Frumpton, the man for scrofula. He of course confirmed her ladyship in her opinion; for a week ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... antiquity has taken a stronger hold upon the modern mind than Horace. The causes of this are manifold, but three may be especially noted: his broad human sympathies, his vigorous common- sense, and his consummate mastery of expression. The mind must be either singularly barren or singularly cold to which Horace does not speak. The scholar, the statesman, the soldier, the man of the world, the town-bred man, the lover of the country, the thoughtful and the ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... might, indeed, be proved to belong to a noble family, and Sir Ralph's objections to her might be removed; or, on the other hand, her birth might be such, that still greater obstacles might arise, or the proofs, had they existed, might have been removed. Fears and hopes alternately gaining the mastery, she in vain endeavoured to calm her agitation. Miss Mary stood holding her hand, her sightless eyes turned towards the speakers, listening to all that was said; while Miss Jane every now and then threw in a word, gave her advice, or cross-questioned Adam with an acuteness ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... horribly, like an obsession, was creeping over him in these days the conviction of some similarity between his work and the thin, clear, clever brush-work of Allaire—with all its mastery of ways and means, all its triumph over technical difficulties, all its tricks and subtle appeals, and its falsity, ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... round with me. My hands felt cold as ice. I was struggling for the mastery over myself, but I felt ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... contraband goods get in, which we find in every part of the world? and this is the reason why the preventive service can do so little, however strict and vigilant they may be. The learning the art indeed must probably cost some trouble; and this no doubt is why so very few seem to reach any mastery in it." ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... created the wildest confusion and retired to watch the fire-brand. The "wise men" of the nation had made possible a system of government in which robbery and murder were to contend for the mastery, in which organized ignorance and organized brigandage were to contend for the right ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... object, the remaining associated states enjoy it only partially. Of contact there is (the function of) the mere touching, of perception the mere noting or perceiving, of volition the mere coordinating, of consciousness the mere cognizing. But feeling alone, through governance, proficiency, mastery, enjoys the taste of an object. For feeling is like the king, the remaining states are like the cook. As the cook, when he has prepared food of diverse tastes, puts it in a basket, seals it, takes it to the king, breaks the seal, opens the basket, takes the best of all the soup and curries, ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... necessary. But Nicolas II. restricted elections to the College of Cardinals by a two-thirds vote, and gave to the German emperor the right of confirmation. For almost two centuries there was a struggle for mastery between the cardinal oligarchy and papal absolutism. The cardinals were willing enough that the pope should be absolute in his foreign rule, but the never failed to attempt, before giving him their votes, to bind him to accord to ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... fall when I think of my incomparable Jenny and her astounding mastery of minutiae at "Crow's Nest"—her finesse and exquisite touch, her kittenlike delicacy, her catlike swiftness and sureness. The two beings involved were as children in her hands. Oh, precious phoenix of a woman, you and I were of the same spirit, kneaded into our ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... come down to us complete, and have been admired by all ages for their philosophical acuteness, as well as beauty of language. He was not the first to use the form of dialogue, but he handled it with greater mastery than any one who preceded him, or has come after him, and all with a view to bring his hearers to a consciousness of knowledge or ignorance. He regarded wisdom as the attribute of the godhead; that philosophy is the necessity of the intellectual man, and the greatest good to which he can ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... first ten years of his retirement to a work on the Laws of Nations, and especially of the Law of Admiralty, which was the favorite science of his venerable grandfather, and of which, during the preceding twenty years, he had obtained so perfect a mastery. He loved the Common Law, revelled in its subtleties, expounded with a richness and a grace ever to be remembered the leading statutes by which the wisdom of a thousand years had controlled or modified it, and gloried in it as the living remembrancer ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... Jamaica, and a kind of sweet punch made by the Hispaniola Indians. As we ate and drank he would gossip about the ways of the world; and though he never mentioned his own doings, there was such an air of mastery about him as made him seem the centre figure of his tales, I could see that Grey was mightily captivated, and all afternoon he plied him with questions, and laughed joyously at his answers. As we camped that night, while Grey was minding his horse Ringan ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... he deemed himself to be. But he does not mind it. Like Iago in the play, he "knows his price, and, by the faith of man, that he is worth no worse a place" than that which he occupies. He finds out the value of the check he receives, and lets it "pass by him like the idle wind"—a mastery, which the schoolboy, however he may affect it, never ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... situation and knowing how to deal with it, the art of guiding a debate and choosing the right moment for reserve and for openness, for a dignified retreat, for a watchful defense, for a sudden rattling charge upon the enemy, no one had a fuller mastery of it. His recollection of precedents was unrivaled, for it began in 1833 with the first reformed Parliament, and it seemed as fresh for those remote days as for last month. He enjoyed combat for its own sake, not so much from any inborn pugnacity, for he was not disputatious in ordinary ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... is contained in the commonsense consideration, that to be strong, consistent with concealment from enemies which are stronger, is best, as giving the organism mastery over foes which are weaker, and generally renders it better able to secure supplies. Weismann points out that natural selection favours early and abundant reproduction. But whether the qualifications of the "fittest" be strength, fertility, cunning, fleetness, imitation, or concealment, ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... off his coat and vest. A few minutes later the lads were struggling on the wrestling mat, their faces dripping with perspiration, their supple young figures twisting and turning as each struggled for the mastery ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... know. The rough appeal thrown out in those two words found a way through her armour, which his insolent mastery had only dented and bruised. It gave her a better conceit of herself. This was a big man, and he recognised something of his own quality in her. At any rate, she would stand up to him. She would not be ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... opinion, in the quiet certainty that truth needs only a fair field to secure the victory. Here the human mind goes forth unshackled in the pursuit of science, to collect stores of knowledge and acquire an ever-increasing mastery over the forces of nature. Here the national domain is offered and held in millions of separate freeholds, so that our fellow-citizens, beyond the occupants of any other part of the earth, constitute in reality a people. Here exists the democratic form of government; and that form ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Johnson • Andrew Johnson
... careful may be the assignment of the lesson, and no matter how much the teacher may urge upon the class at the time of the assignment that they prepare the lesson well, the pupils must be held responsible for this preparation day by day, without fail, if we are to insure their mastery of it. ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts
... loud voice he informed her he had been ordered to turn her back from the gates. Was it then to witness this fresh insult that the people had now been brought together? Anger and apprehension struggled for mastery in her breast and choked her utterance when she attempted to speak. She could only turn to her men, and in instant response to her look they drew their swords and pressed forward as if about to force their way in. This movement on their part was greeted with a loud burst ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... on thee," replied the old man, as Abe put on his cap and walked hurriedly out of the house. He went out scarcely knowing why; perhaps to hide his trouble from his dear old father; perhaps to smother his emotions, which were rapidly gaining the mastery over him, or maybe he knew not why,—an impulse was upon him, and it carried him forth into the cool evening air; away he went at a brisk walk from the village in the direction of Almondbury common. Faster and faster he went, faster and faster as if to keep up with the rapid current ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... task to be a good Mission Priest. It meant self-mastery, self-renunciation, self-forgetfulness total and complete. It meant the laying aside of much that lies very close to a man's heart. "Unless the Congregation of the Mission is humble," said Vincent, "and realizes that it can accomplish ...
— Life of St. Vincent de Paul • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... it home at once to Nid de Merle; but it squalled and kicked so violently when I held out my arms to it, that it gave me time to think that to carry it thus away without authority might only bring Cecile into trouble with those who had the mastery over her, and that to see it in such a condition could only give her pain. I should not have objected to the mere surface dirt of grubbing in the farmyard (shocking as it may sound to you, Mademoiselle mes Petites ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Scriptures in Europe,—and all this great light wilfully hidden, not under a bushel, but under a dunghill. He is somewhat like Socrates in face, and in character likewise; in him, as in Socrates, the demigod and the satyr, the man and the ape, are struggling for the mastery. In Socrates, the true man conquers, and comes forth high and pure; in Rabelais, alas! the victor is the ape, while the man himself sinks down in cynicism, sensuality, practical jokes, foul talk. He returns to Paris, to live an idle, luxurious ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... the consciousness of power, investing his hardly mature figure with a dignity that did not belong to its physical manifestation. It was evident, that, with but one wave of his hand and a corresponding effort of his will, he could complete his mastery over Phoebe's yet free and virgin spirit: he could establish an influence over this good, pure, and simple child, as dangerous, and perhaps as disastrous, as that which the carpenter of his legend had acquired and ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in her breath quickly, as if in this abrupt close she had a revelation of the Chief's whole meaning, and was startled by the sudden unveiling of his mastery. Her hands hung loose; her figure was tremulous. A murmur from Corte jarred within her like a furious discord, but he had not offended by refusing to disclaim his error, and had simply said in a gruff acquiescent way, "Proceed." Her sensations of surprise at the singular triumph of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in virtue of the self-regarding sentiment. The conations, the desires and aversions, arising within this self-regarding sentiment are the motive forces which, adding themselves to the weaker ideal motive in the case of moral effort, enable it to win the mastery over some stronger, coarser desire of our primitive animal nature and to banish from consciousness the idea of the end of ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... bent every faculty to the mastery of the duties required of him. He was to mop out the store with damp cloths, so as to raise no dust, to look after the furnace and graduate the heat throughout the building, to receive boxes, to assist in packing and unpacking ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... pursuits, that she shall wedge into her four years of work, courses in domestic science, the chemistry of food, nursing, dressmaking, house sanitation, pedagogy, and that blight of the nursery,—child-study. These are the things, we are often told, which it behooves a woman to know, and by the mastery of which she is able, so says a censorious writer in the "Educational Review," "to repay in some measure her debt to man, who has extended to her the benefits of a ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... thou seest me, saw I the three Fall one by one 'twixt the fifth day and sixth: Whence I betook me now grown blind to grope Over them all, and for three days aloud Call'd on them who were dead. Then fasting got The mastery of grief." Thus having spoke, Once more upon the wretched skull his teeth He fasten'd, like a mastiff's 'gainst the bone Firm and unyielding. Oh thou Pisa! shame Of all the people, who their dwelling make In that fair region, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... periods which seem to have prejudiced many persons against reading his works, but which are full of that peculiar, if unattractive, eloquence which flows from mastery ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... the properties of the foehn winds. Our coldest winds have come from S.W. to W., that is to say, from the Old World's pole of cold, situated in the region of Werchojansk. On the existence of two currents of air, which at a certain height above the surface of the earth contend for the mastery, depends also the surprising rapidity with which the vault of heaven in the region of Behring's Straits becomes suddenly clouded over and again completely clear. Already the famous Behring's Straits' navigator, ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... man's conduct must be a law for him, the regular expression of his will. Hence the virtues are habits of deliberate choice, and not natural endowments. Following Plato, Aristotle sees that there is in man a number of impulses struggling for the mastery of the soul, hence he is led to assume that the natural instincts need guidance and control. Moderation is therefore the one chief virtue; and moral excellence consists in an activity which at every point seeks to strike a 'mean' between two opposite excesses. ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... able to watch your actions with an interest at once detached and absorbed. But no one was more single-minded than Strickland. I never knew anyone who was less self-conscious. But it is unfortunate that I can give no description of the arduous steps by which he reached such mastery over his art as he ever acquired; for if I could show him undaunted by failure, by an unceasing effort of courage holding despair at bay, doggedly persistent in the face of self-doubt, which is the artist's bitterest enemy, I ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... howled the General. You know, senores, in our country the bravest are not ashamed of the fear an earthquake strikes into all the senses of man. One never gets used to it. Repeated experience only augments the mastery ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... and coming to pass on the seven hills upon which the proud young capital of the proud young Confederacy stood. Rome, in her most imperial days, never dreamed of the scenic glories that Richmond, like a spoiled beauty, was hardly conscious of holding as her dower. Indeed, such is the necromantic mastery of the passion of the beautiful that, once standing on the glorious hill, that commands the James for twenty miles—twenty miles of such varied loveliness of color, configuration, and mis en scene, that the purple ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... rebellion in Norfolk. It was associated with a prophecy that said, "there shulde lande at Walborne hope the proudest prince of Christendome, and so shall come to Moshold heethe, and there shuld mete with other ij kinges, and shall fyght and shalbe put down: and the whyte lyon shuld optayne" the mastery. And yet this prophecy goes much further back, for the Danes are said to have landed at Weybourne Hope in their invasions, and the old rhyme is still ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... scope, while psychometry is unlimited, transcending far all that collegians have called science, and all that they have deemed the limits of human capacities, for in psychometry the divinity in man becomes apparent, and the intellectual mastery of all things lifts human life to a higher plane than it ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... hatred also sometimes, to be sure, but at the same time with respect and awe! There lay the ultimate cause of the fundamental difference of opinion respecting the colonial policy to be followed [*]. Van Diemen dreamt a bold dream of Dutch supremacy in the East and of the East India Company's mastery "of the opulent Indian trade." To this end he deemed necessary: "harassing of the enemy [**], continuation and extension of trade, together with the discovering or new lands." But if he had lived to read the missive [***], his grand projects would have received an effectual damper as he perused ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... clever man three hundred years ago to learn all that science could show him without interference with the acquisition of the special knowledge required to fit him for the attainment of eminence in a technical study, or the technical mastery in the working it out, but now the range of a liberal education is so great that those who are required to take respectable rank in a specialty must devote themselves exclusively to it, during the years in which alone technical mastery is possible ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... woman a sphere of activity, usefulness and distinction, not, under the present constitution of society, to be found elsewhere. Here she may exhibit whatever she possesses of skill in the mastery of unknown and difficult dialects; of tact in dealing with the varieties of human character; of ardor and perseverance in the pursuit of a noble end under the most trying discouragements; and of exalted Christian heroism and fortitude, that braves appalling dangers, ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... slave-owners there had not been a whit more cruel than slave-owners in the other islands. But, in spite of this, how ferocious, how sanguinary, [8] how relentless against them has the vengeance of the Blacks been in their hour of mastery! A century has passed away since then, and, notwithstanding that, the hatred of Whites still rankles in their souls, and is cherished and yielded to as a national creed and guide of conduct. Colonial administrators of the mighty ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... bed he went. But before he gave himself up to sleep, he prayed God to watch him, lest the commotion in his heart and the giddiness of hope should make something rise that would come between him and the light eternal. The man in whom any earthly hope dims the heavenly presence and weakens the mastery of himself, is on the by-way through the meadow to the castle ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... heap of stones, and one by one, with a perfect mastery of the art, skipped those all across the water. But he did it very gloomily, with no apparent pleasure, hardly as if conscious of what he were doing. And Arethusa continued to stare straight before her as if she had found new and unexpected ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... any want of personal affection, for they were the most affectionate people among whom I had ever lived. They attached themselves to every officer who deserved love, and to some who did not; and if they failed to show it to their masters, it proved the wrongfulness of the mastery. On the other hand, they rarely showed one gleam of revenge, and I shall never forget the self-control with which one of our best sergeants pointed out to me, at Jacksonville, the very place where one of his brothers had been hanged by the whites for leading a party of fugitive ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... shall not last. When he comes I want him to know my story. What he knows already will not hurt repeating. It is well that man shall have it; it may be that we shall both fail-there is no telling; but if we do the world can profit by our blunders and guide itself—perhaps to the mastery of the phenomenon that controls ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... of the Revolution, and the peculiar manner in which Yuan Shih-kai allowed events rather than men to assert their mastery has often been related and need not long detain us. It is generally conceded that in spite of the bravery of the raw revolutionary levies, their capacity was entirely unequal to the trump card Yuan Shih-kai held all the while in his hand—the ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... from me. I hastened in pursuit, calling to him to wait for me. It appeared that he had become suddenly refractory: they do that sometimes. I was going to reprimand him; I thought that it might be necessary to chastise him, as sometimes a man must do to retain the mastery. But I stayed my hand. The animal had not run away at all! He actually knew what he was doing. He came straight here. And what do you think he discovered? What do you imagine brought him? ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... Englishmen mentions the yet more striking coincidence, that in both cases the mastery of the sea rested with the victor. The Roman control of the water forced Hannibal to that long, perilous march through Gaul in which more than half his veteran troops wasted away; it enabled the elder Scipio, while sending his army from the Rhone ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... disgust for onions and honey; so powerful, that the very sight of these things made him sick. Yet by constantly viewing and touching what was disagreeable, he conquered these dislikes; and proved that men have a complete mastery over what is merely instinctive in their nature. His courage corresponded to his splendid physical development. When a boy of fifteen, he severely wounded himself in the foot. The gash had to be probed and then sewn up. Alberti not only bore the pain of this ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... the mist there? As soon as you think of the human struggle with the elements, as soon as you know that hearts are in the midst of it, it is a clashing of water-drops no more. It is an awful power, with which the will and all that it rules have to fight for the mastery, or at least ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... went forth and slew the men and the women who were on the mountain (or, desert land). And the Majesty of this god said, "Come, come in peace, O Hathor, for the work is accomplished." Then this goddess said, "Thou hast made me to live, for when I gained the mastery over men and women it was sweet to my heart;" and the Majesty of Ra said, "I myself will be master over them as [their] king, and I will destroy them." And it came to pass that Sekhet of the offerings waded about in the night season ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... a sin is committed, the inclination to do the same again is encouraged, and those habits which belong to the evil nature are strengthened until they assume the mastery of the soul, and the soul comes more and more under ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... and vegetarian, will gladly pay five pounds to any psychopathic suggestionist who will extirpate from his subconsciousness the lingering relics of an antipathy to syncopated rhythms which retard his progress towards a complete mastery of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... 'to be a politician in the land of his birth,' turns away from politics to view 'that other city which is within him,' and finds on the very threshold of the grave that the secret of human happiness is the mastery of self. The change of government in the time of the English Commonwealth set men thinking about first principles, and gave rise to many works of this class...The great original genius of Swift owes nothing to Plato; nor is there any trace in the conversation or in ...
— The Republic • Plato
... description of these manipulations makes the method seem rather intricate, yet but little practice is required to obtain an easy and sure mastery over it. We have felt compelled to describe the method minutely, since preparations so often come under our notice which, although made by scientific men, who pursue haematological investigations, are only to be ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... ten minutes to bring Solano back, chafing, but owning Jack's mastery—for the time being, at least. He returned to a sullen audience, save where the Americans cheered him from their side of ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... the saints both of the Eastern and Western Churches. His name was Joannes, and from being born at Damascus, the former capital of the Khalifs, he is best known in history as Joannes Damascenus, or St. John of Damascus. He must have known Arabic, and probably Persian; but his mastery of Greek earned him, later in life, the name of Chrysorrhoas, or Gold-flowing. He became famous as the defender of the sacred images, and as the determined opponent of the Emperor Leo the Isaurian, about 726. It is difficult in ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... Then in her mind was the proud woman a loathing, Who dared to waste a marvel such as this, The right in the world's knowledge so to love. O pitiful evil blasting so great a flesh, Walling a spirit so governing itself In spite of desolation. A maid's thought thus Knew how the frames of mastery can suffer. ...
— Preludes 1921-1922 • John Drinkwater
... with purple rings around them. Two or three great tears silently flow'd out from the eyes, and roll'd down his temples (he was doubtless unused to be spoken to as I was speaking to him.)Sickness, imprisonment, exhaustion, &c., had conquer'd the body, yet the mind held mastery still, and ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... (540) to the abdication of Kogyoku (645), is a series of monotonously similar chapters, the result for Japan being that she finally lost her position at Mimana. There was almost perpetual fighting between the petty kingdoms which struggled for mastery in the peninsula, and Kudara, always nominally friendly to Japan, never hesitated to seek the latter's assistance against Shiragi and Koma. To these appeals the Yamato Court lent a not-unready ear, partly because ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... laboratory have shown that it is best in making impressions to make more than enough impressions to insure recall. "If material is to be retained for any length of time, a simple mastery of it for immediate recall is not sufficient. It should be learned far beyond the point of immediate reproduction if time and energy are to be saved." This principle of learning points out the fact that there are two kinds of memory—immediate ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... same manner, there is wisdom and depth in the philosophy which always considers the origin and the germ, and glories in history as one consistent epic.[7] Yet every student ought to know that mastery is acquired by resolved limitation. And confusion ensues from the theory of Montesquieu and of his school, who, adapting the same term to things unlike, insist that freedom is the primitive condition of the race from which we are sprung.[8] ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton
... conviction became deep and firm that God called him to the ecclesiastical state. He closed the books of human law, renounced the prospects of worldly success, and resolved to prepare by study and seclusion, by prayer and self-mastery, for the ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... influence of man's presence upon wild animals. Man's fear, which with the conquest of fire gave way to courage, has resulted in his mastery of many mechanical appliances and in the development of social cooperation, which so increases his power as to make him an object of fear to the wild animals. Since the wild animals now try to escape from man's presence, there is a greater demand made upon man's ingenuity than ever before in supplying ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... might, indeed it has, become a sufficiently perplexing question of casuistry, both as touches the punctilios of national honour and as regards an equitable division between rival Powers in respect of the material means of mastery. So in private life it may become a moot question—in point of equity—whether the craving of a kleptomaniac may not on occasion rise to such an intolerable pitch of avidity as to justify him in seizing whatever valuables he can safely lay hands on, to ease ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... S. Francesco, Pinturicchio, with the same meticulous refinement, painted a letter addressed to him by Gentile Baglioni. It lies on a stool before Madonna and her court of saints. Nicety of execution, technical mastery of fresco as a medium for Dutch detail-painting, prettiness of composition, and cheerfulness of colouring, are noticeable throughout his work here rather than either thought or sentiment. S. Maria Maggiore ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... His style is in perfect keeping with his peculiar gifts. He had a highly developed artistic sense. By his air of perfect candor, his minuteness of detail, and his power of graphic description, he gains complete mastery over the soul, and leads us almost to believe the impossible. Within the limited range of his imagination (for he was by no means the universal genius he fancied himself to be) he is unsurpassed, perhaps, by any ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... of the cruelty of the court and the nobility, which had led to the present horrors, though great, did not prevent her from seeing the tyranny and brutality in which the people indulged so soon as they obtained the mastery. Her treatment of the facts of the Revolution is characterized by honesty. She is above all else an impartial historian and philosopher. She distinguishes, it is true, between the well-meaning multitude—those who took ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... occasionally, for she was very cold and very hungry, having spent the last few pence, which might have given her a meal, in drink; and the re-action of the poison helped to depress her. The evil spirit seemed to gain the mastery at this point, to judge ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... answering addressed: "Of a truth thou hast said all these things, old man, according to what is right. But this man is desirous to be above all other men; he wishes to have the mastery, and lord it over all, and to prescribe to all; with which his desires I think some one will not comply. But if the ever-existing gods have made him a warrior, do they therefore give him ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... be formed, the whole composition, by the greater strictness of the form, would gain in keeping and appearance, and we should be enabled at the very outset to guard against many important errors. We have not yet attained such a mastery in this matter as will allow us to abandon ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... cooperation, a strong work ethic, mastery of high technology, and a comparatively small defense allocation (1% of GDP) helped Japan advance with extraordinary rapidity to the rank of second most technologically-powerful economy in the world after the US and third-largest economy after ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... torn in pieces; and in putting herself together again she had left out the dangerous, disintegrating, virile element. Whatever happened now, she would no longer suffer from the presence in her of two sexes contending for the mastery. Through it all, through all her dreadful virility, she had always been persistently and preposterously feminine. And lying quiet she was more than ever what George Tanqueray had said she was not to ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... page will leave behind, Pregnant with genius tho' it be, But half the treasures of a mind, Where Sense o'er all holds mastery:— ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... to Shem, and he in turn to Abraham. From Abraham it descended through Jacob, Levi, Moses, and Joshua to Solomon, who learnt all his wisdom from it, and his skill in the healing art, and also his mastery ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... I felt too unnerved to remain standing. I was giving way utterly to an imaginative horror that seemed to threaten my reason. In vain I tried to pull myself together. My body was in a cold sweat. All mastery ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... in his desire to be freer and more independent, but reminded him that when the day of liberation came, he would not regret the comparatively short apprenticeship during which he had acquired so great a mastery of business. Business, he said, had been Orsino's ambition from the beginning, and business he had, in plenty, if not with profit. For his ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... achievement for a man who had never known a sick day. In quality, and subject, and method of narration, they leave little to be desired. There, in Parkman's volumes, is told vividly, strongly, and truthfully, the history of the great struggle between France and England for the mastery of the North American continent, one of the most important events of modern times. This is not the place to give any critical estimate of Mr. Parkman's work. It is enough to say that it stands in the front rank. It is a great contribution to history, and a still greater gift to the ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... said the regent, "whether it is I or my lackey who rides in a carriage." He took for his minister and councillor the Abbe Dubois, "a little, thin man, like a weasel," said Saint-Simon, "in whom all the vices, perfidiousness, avarice, debauchery, ambition, and base flattery, struggled for the mastery." The general demoralization caused by the collapse of the great financial schemes of John Law was only a feature in the general abandonment of all restraint in the pursuit of pleasure. In the midst of this luxury of effrontery, there suddenly appeared the imposing and ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... waiting only for this hint, Anna burst into a flood of tears. I was frightened, for her sobs became hysterical and convulsed. Those precious sentiments which had been so long imprisoned in her gentle bosom, obtained the mastery, and I was well paid for my selfishness, by experiencing an alarm little less violent than her own outpouring ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... fight for mastery in Finland. The official Russian, the language of the government; Finnish, now receiving a new lease of life; and Swedish, the language of those who once conquered and held Finland, and who so imposed their civilisation on the more ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... quiet as long as he was treated indulgently; but on the slightest show of anger, he became unmanageable, and was liable to fits of fury which would have made him formidable even without his pitchfork. There was no mastery to be obtained over him except by kindness or guile. David ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... Goethe's Faust, excited and stirred me deeply. The Opera was giving the first performances of Marschner's Vampir and Templer und Judin. The Italian company arrived from Dresden, and fascinated the Leipzig audience by their consummate mastery of their art. Even I was almost carried away by the enthusiasm with which the town was over-whelmed, into forgetting the boyish impressions which Signor Sassaroli had stamped upon my mind, when another ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... old spell was still potent, with the moods of the day still strong, he found new viewpoints struggling for mastery. Clearly the girl had shown a deep interest in him, and entirely on her own initiative. If it was to be in the future an interest born of friendship, why, it should be, he told himself, an engaging future for him. But he did not desire that her interest in him from now on should be offered ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... Germanic race. It was just that it should rule the world, since it only had the power to do so. This "telurian germanization" was to be of immense benefit to mankind. The earth was going to be happy under the dictatorship of a people born for mastery. The German state, "tentacular potency," would eclipse with its glory the most imposing empire of the past ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the Battle of Jutland, on the other hand, we have a fresh demonstration on a greater scale than ever before, of that old, that root fact, without which indeed the success of the Allied effort in other directions would be impossible—i.e., the overwhelming strength of the British Navy, and its mastery of the Sea. ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... hesitation, for it seemed cowardly to go back, now he was so far down; but somehow the desire to be upon the safe side obtained the mastery, and ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... in this position, and having his hands and feet perfectly at liberty, he will move them to and fro in the same manner as in swimming; this he should repeat several times a day, until he finds that he has got a complete mastery over the action required. The head must be drawn back, the chin raised, the fingers must be kept close, and the hands slightly concave on the inside,—they must be struck out in a line with the breast; the legs ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... a second wife (of the noble house of Flintskinner), and Lady Fitz-Boodle detested smoking, as a woman of her high principles should. She had an entire mastery over the worthy old gentleman, and thought I was a sort of demon of wickedness. The old man went to his grave with some similar notion,—heaven help him! and left me but the wretched twelve thousand pounds secured to me on my poor ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... bottom and heart of this subject of mastery lies Concentration: without that, little of value can be accomplished. Students think if they sit at the piano and 'practise' a certain number of hours daily, it is sufficient. A small portion of that time, if used ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... glass when they had to refill a window of that date?" No. Nor must you. Never imitate, but graft your own work on to the old, reverently, and only changing from it so far forth as you, like itself, have also a living tradition, springing from mastery of ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... regret it, and to grudge every passing pang inflicted, half wilfully half unwittingly, on the true heart, it may be questioned whether love would flourish better, whether it would attain its perfect stature, without the test of the brief check and combat for mastery. ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... the possession of wisdom and a knowledge of the law necessarily led to penitence and good deeds. "For," said he, "it would be useless to acquire great learning and the mastery of biblical and traditional law and act irreverently toward one's parents, or toward those superior on account of age ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... Europe, our horizon in the East will mourn in darkness. It does not hurt my pride to acknowledge that, in the present age, Western humanity has received its mission to be the teacher of the world; that her science, through the mastery of laws of nature, is to liberate human souls from the dark dungeon of matter. For this very reason I have realised all the more strongly, on the other hand, that the dominant collective idea in the Western countries is not creative. It is ready to enslave or kill individuals, to ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... earliest of the ballads, description of the situation preponderates over the epic element, and there is no 'idea' except to narrate an extraordinarily brave action. In 'The Ring of Polycrates' one can discern progress in the mastery of the ballad form, though the subject was none of the best. Based upon a story in Herodotus, it is a poetic setting of the ancient idea that excessive good fortune provokes the anger of the gods and portends disaster. Strangely enough Schiller's ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... He felt as if he could not breathe in our narrow cabin, and I believe at that moment as if the whole world would have been too narrow for him. A thousand conflicting feelings struggled for the mastery in his heart; his knees trembled, and his countenance was alternately flushed and pallid. I sympathized and participated in his emotion, but I cannot by words convey to your mind any idea of the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... which had suddenly struck him down that day, certain it was, that a violent sickness attacked him, and he lay for many, many days—days and weeks as old Frost had called it—between life and death. Fever and delirium struggled with life, which should get the mastery. ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... or unclean. Some critics maintain that the heroes and heroines of his books are impossibly pure and innocent young people. R. H. D. never called upon his characters for any trait of virtue, or renunciation, or self-mastery of which his own life could ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... Bourinot had completed and revised the following pages some months before his lamented death. The book represents more satisfactorily, perhaps, than anything else that he has written the author's breadth of political vision and his concrete mastery of historical fact. The life of Lord Elgin required to be written by one possessed of more than ordinary insight into the interesting aspects of constitutional law. That it has been singularly well presented must be the conclusion of all who ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... his critics could not forgive any more than the Impressionists, who have outdone that ruggedness, can forgive him his frequent use of a warm general tone inclining to brownness. His ideal of form and of composition he possessed complete from the beginning; his mastery of light and color and the handling of materials was slower of acquirement; but he did acquire it, and in the end he is as absolute a master of painting as of drawing. He did not see nature in blue and violet, as Monet has taught us to see it, and little ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... mingled with a chorus of inarticulate protest. Samson had risen, and, for a second, his face had become a thing of unspeakable passion. His hand instinctively swept toward his pocket— and stopped half-way. He stood by his overturned chair, gazing into the eyes of his assailant, with an effort at self-mastery which gave his chest and arms the appearance of a man writhing and stiffening under electrocution. Then, he forced both hands to his back and gripped them there. For a moment, the tableau was held, then the man from the mountains began speaking, ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... fourth celestial sphere; In fine, its horror and its misery drear Within me reach so far, That I myself upon myself make war, When in the arms of sleep A living corse am I, for it doth keep Such mastery o'er my life, that, as I dream, A pale foreshadowing threat ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... wreckage. You can manage your own wings now, and you can soar away to Capri if there is any smoke or fuss. We have the pull of all the great things; the aeronauts are privileged and rich, the closest trades union in the world, and so are the engineers of the wind-vanes. We have the air, and the mastery of the air is the mastery of the earth. No one of any ability is organising against us. They have no leaders—only the sectional leaders of the secret society we organised before your very opportune awakening. Mere busybodies and sentimentalists they are and bitterly jealous ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... knowledge that they found life sweet and worth living, all this was to be a part of the tissue of her brain forever, and was to add one to the conflicting elements which battled within her for the mastery during all the clouded, ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... black mood. It was a morbid dominance of the mind. He fought it as he would have fought a devil. And mastery still was his. But his brow was clammy and his heart was leaden when he had wrested that somber, mystic control ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... models, are captivated by whatever stuns and dazzles them. They deserted Mrs. Siddons to run after Master Betty; and they now prefer, we have no doubt, Jack Sheppard to Van Artevelde. A man of great original genius, on the other hand, a man who has attained to mastery in some high walk of art, is by no means to be implicitly trusted as a judge of the performances of others. The erroneous decisions pronounced by such men are without number. It is commonly supposed ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... such as ours, a virile, highly-civilised nation with an age-long tradition of mastery behind it, cannot be held under for ever by a few thousand bayonets and machine guns. We must surely rise up one day ...
— When William Came • Saki
... swinging with dismal, heart-shaking toll, like a mighty voice from the spirit-world; and it was answered by the tolling of all the bells in the city, making such wavering clangors and vibrating circles in the air over Florence that it might seem as if it were full of warring spirits wrestling for mastery. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... Scottish historian, the swans which were on Linlithgow Loch when the English obtained the mastery in Scotland, disappeared. On the king's return, the swans came back. Their flight was considered to foreshadow evil to the royal family, and their reappearance was regarded ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... set out to walk by himself up to Basset Cottage, whither his luggage had been sent before him, he felt a little tired. He was not accustomed to violent emotions, and that morning he had gone through a good deal. His anger and anxiety had for long been fighting for mastery, and both had reached their climax that morning. On the one hand, he wished to avenge himself for the insult paid him, and to show that he was not to be trifled with; on the other hand, his anxiety lest he should be unable to make up matters with Wenna led ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... raise armies and equip fleets. The coasts of Normandy and Britainy swarmed with soldiers, who threatened to invade England; arms, money, and men were sent to America; and the navy of France set out to contend with the navy of Great Britain, for the mastery of the seas between the two countries. On the 18th of March, the French king issued an edict to seize all British ships in the ports of France, and shortly after our government laid an embargo on all French ships in British ports. This, with the mutual ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... but ages ago the females, little by little, assumed the mastery. For other ages no noticeable change took place in the race of Mahars. It continued to progress under the intelligent and beneficent rule of the ladies. Science took vast strides. This was especially true of the sciences which we know as biology and eugenics. Finally ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs |
