"Prodigy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... celebration was a scene of a demonstration of popular interest and patriotic feeling amazing in its multitudinous enthusiasm. The Loyal League was out in full force, the parade was a prodigy of display, and the Clover Club gave a brilliant dinner, and the cleverness of the President's speech carried the club ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... document. I found that it was dated in Milwaukee, and signed by the mayor of that city, two physicians, three clergymen, and an editor, who bore united testimony to the fact that Jacob Menzel—I think that was his name—the bearer, any way,—was a deaf mute, and, considering that fact, a prodigy of learning, being master of no less than five different languages (a pathetic circumstance, considering that he was unable to speak one); moreover, that he was a converted Jew; and, furthermore, a native of Germany, who had come to this ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... left her infant prodigy, Clarence, in our care for a little while that she might not be distracted by his innocent prattle while selecting the material ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... look at some of their cameras and the clerk sold me one of the kind that 'a child can operate.' He didn't say where the child was to be found, but I have since concluded that it must be a very remarkable specimen of the infant prodigy, and is probably touring the country as a dime museum attraction on the ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman
... battle of Salamis. He does this by refusing to see in the above quotations from Herodotus any allusion to a solar eclipse at all, but invites us to consider a later statement in Herodotus[46] as relating to an eclipse though the historian only calls it a prodigy. ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... conception of what is to be held for this sort of personage in fiction would make him almost as much of a prodigy there, as in real history is a new law-giver, a revolutionizing philosopher, or the founder ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... there was no longer the imagery of devout passion, but a material entity, a prodigy of affection which impelled him, when he was praying before the engraving, to open out his hands in order that he might reverently receive the heart that leaped from that immaculate bosom. He could see it, hear it beat; he was ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... you invite me to discussion, and present the opportunity, let us first examine, before any one else arrives, what can be the nature of the parhelion, or double sun, which was mentioned in the senate. Those that affirm they witnessed this prodigy are neither few nor unworthy of credit, so that there is more ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... and Jonah's face changed instantly. It wore the adoring gaze of the fond parent, who thinks his child is a marvel and a prodigy. ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... gifts and each and every one of the acquirements that are so prodigally displayed in the Plays and Poems, and in much higher and richer degree than any other man of his time or of any previous time. He was a genius without a mate, a prodigy not matable. There was only one of him; the planet could not produce two of him at one birth, nor in one age. He could have written anything that is in the Plays and Poems. He could ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... Pantomime, here in our midst re-appear almost in their habits as they lived, certainly with their white faces and black skull-caps "as they appeared," a pair of marvellously clever Pierrots. Mlle. JANE MAY as Pierrot Junior, "the Prodigy son," and M. COURTES as Pierrot Senior, are already drawing the town to Matinees at the Prince of Wales's, causing us to laugh at them and with them in their joys, and to weep with them in their ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 11, 1891 • Various
... dear friend, I am afraid the world will laugh at us for making such fantastical distinctions. This infraction of 'established sequences' ceases to be miraculous, if the wonder is perpetuated and sufficiently multiplied! Meantime, what becomes of the prodigy during the time in which it is uncertain whether any thing will come of it or not? You will say, I suppose, (the interpolation in the 'series' of phenomena being just what I have supposed,) that it is uncertain whether it is to be regarded as miraculous or not, till we know whether ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... appearance of a hart and hind,[28] which left the forest and, contrary to their shy nature, came quietly onward, traversing the village towards the dwelling of Thomas. The prophet instantly rose from the board; and, acknowledging the prodigy as the summons of his fate, he accompanied the hart and hind into the forest, and though occasionally seen by individuals to whom he has chosen to show himself, has never again mixed familiarly ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... had never been conscious what stuff there was in Carl, so he had never known how much he really loved, admired, and relied upon him. He stood staring at him there in the moonlight as if he then for the first time perceived what a little prodigy ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... crowd? What means the throng That rushes fast the streets along? Can Rhodes a prey to flames, then, be? In crowds they gather hastily, And, on his steed, a noble knight Amid the rabble, meets my sight; Behind him—prodigy unknown!— A monster fierce they're drawing on; A dragon stems it by its shape, With wide and crocodile-like jaw, And on the knight and dragon gape, In turns, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Gemini was not acquainted with the ancient monuments Isabel occasionally offered to introduce her to these interesting relics and to give their afternoon drive an antiquarian aim. The Countess, who professed to think her sister-in-law a prodigy of learning, never made an objection, and gazed at masses of Roman brickwork as patiently as if they had been mounds of modern drapery. She had not the historic sense, though she had in some directions the anecdotic, and as regards herself the apologetic, but ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... these committees. He was then forty years old and one of the most remarkable men in the country. Born on the frontier—his father from the upper middle class, his mother "a Randolph"—he had been trained to an outdoor life; but he was also a prodigy in his studies and entered William and Mary College with advanced standing at the age of eighteen. Many stories are told of his precocity and ability, all of which tend to forecast the later man of catholic tastes, omnivorous interest, and extensive but superficial ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... wilfulness, in attempting a second voyage, against the advice of all my friends and relations. In this terrible agitation of mind, I could not forbear thinking of Lilliput, whose inhabitants looked upon me as the greatest prodigy that ever appeared in the world; where I was able to draw an imperial fleet in my hand, and perform those other actions, which will be recorded forever in the chronicles of that empire, while posterity shall hardly believe them, although attested by millions. I reflected what a mortification ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... and wavering shapes of stranger stars; The vast, blue night Was murmurous with peris' plumes And the leathern wings of genies; words of power Were whispering; and old fishermen, Casting their nets with prayer, might draw to shore Dead loveliness: or a prodigy in scales Worth in the Caliph's Kitchen pieces of gold: Or copper vessels, stopped with lead, Wherein some Squire of Eblis watched and railed, In durance under potent charactry Graven by the seal of Solomon the ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... and particularly the inferences he draws with respect to climate, fall to the ground. It is not the vigour of natural propensities, as he has supposed, that destroys the moral ones; it is not the effect of climate that makes it to be considered among these people "as a prodigy of virtue for a man to meet a fine woman in a retired chamber without offering violence to her,"—it is the effect of studiously pampering the appetite, nurturing vicious notions, considering women as entirely subservient ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... Grammont regarded his master's attention to the affairs of state as a prodigy: he could not conceive how he could submit at his age to the rules he prescribed himself, or that he should give up so many hours of pleasure, to devote them to the tiresome duties, and laborious functions ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... further from the floor, until Kiartan, who seemed to have a natural predominance over these supernatural prodigies, seizing a huge forge-hammer, struck the seal repeatedly on the head, and compelled it to disappear, forcing it down into the floor, as if he had driven a stake into the earth. This prodigy was found to intimate a new calamity. Thorodd, the master of the family, had some time before set forth on a voyage to bring home a cargo of dried fish; but in crossing the river Enna the skiff was lost and ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... the military school at Brienne in April 1779, and from there sent letters which might well have warned his parents that they had hatched a prodigy. All the bitterness of a proud humiliated spirit inspired them, whether the boy, despised by richer students, begged his father to remove him, or urged, with utter disregard of filial piety, the repayment by some means of a sum ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... voyages; but he manifested such an aversion to the life and habits of a sailor as to induce his father to suffer him to pursue his own inclinations, which led strongly towards drawing and study. At the schools in Cork to which he was sent he was regarded as a prodigy. About the age of seventeen he first attempted oil-painting, and between that and the age of twenty-two, when he first went to Dublin, he produced several large pictures, which decorated his father's house, such as "Aeneas escaping with his Family from the Flames of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... the stately crown } Of each tall turret, look with horror down, } And general grief overwhelms th' unhappy town: } The old deplore their late remains of light; And mothers lead their infants from the sight. The ghosts of Cadmus' race, an impious crew, This prodigy of kindred guilt to view, Sent from the mansion of eternal hills, (A dark assembly) crowd Baeotia's hills; O'er day's fair face a gloomy twilight cast, And smile with joy to see their ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... the sufferers in the carriage became intensely interested. They no longer took their eyes off this little girl on whom a miracle had been performed, but scanned her from head to foot as though seeking for some sign of the prodigy. Those who were able to stand rose up in order that they might the better see her, and the others, the infirm ones, stretched on their mattresses, strove to raise themselves and turn their heads. Amidst the suffering which had again ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... became the high ambition and deep desire of Dam to overcome Sergeant Havlan's son in battle with the gloves. As young Havlan was a year his senior, a trained infant prodigy, and destined for the Prize Ring, there was plenty for him to ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... you are good at that, I'll match you there too. [Holds out his lanthorn.] O prodigy! Is Beatrix ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... humanity and the world's Press! The machiavelism of Bismarck was bad enough, with its constant demands on our vigilance, but this new omniscient German Emperor is worse; he reminds one of some infant prodigy, the pride of the family. Yet his ways are anything but kingly; they resemble rather those of a shopkeeper. He literally fills the earth with his circulars on the art of government, spreads before us ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... the following entry:—"1658, 27 Jan. After six fits of an ague, died my son Richard, five years and three days old onely, but, at that tender age, a prodigy for witt and understanding; for beauty of body, a very angel; for endowment of mind, of incredible and rare hopes. He was all life, all prettinesse. What shall I say of his frequent pathetical ejaculations uttered of himselfe: Sweete Jesus, save me, deliver ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... interesting a denouement as the actual capture of this prodigy of the wilds, I was up early and off the following Sunday to Newark, where in Peter's apartment in due time I found him, his rooms in a turmoil, he himself busy stuffing things into a bag, outside an ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... creditably from this portion of the episode. But he did not care. The whole of his body went hot and then cold as his mind presented the simple question: "Why had she been reading the history of printing?" Could the reason be any other than her interest in himself? Or was she a prodigy among young women, who read histories of everything in addition to being passionate about verse? He said that it was ridiculous to suppose that she would read a history of printing solely from interest in himself. Nevertheless he was madly happy for a few moments, and as it were staggered with ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... hand, with horror wing'd, hath torn From the rank life of towns this leaf! and flung The prodigy of full-blown crime among Valleys and men to middle ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... The druid was put into the fresh part, and Patrick's casula about him. Benen, however, was put into the dry part, with the druid's tunic about him. The house was afterwards closed and fastened on the outside, before the multitude, and fire was applied to it. A great prodigy occurred there through Patrick's prayers. The fresh part of the house was burned, as well as the druid under the casula, and not a bit of the casula was destroyed. The dry portion, in which was Benen, however, was not burned, and God preserved Benen under the druid's tunic, and the ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... south aisle of Westminster Abbey stands a monument erected to the memory of Lady Grace Gethin.[141] A statue of her ladyship represents her kneeling, holding a book in her hand. This accomplished lady was considered as a prodigy in her day, and appears to have created a feeling of enthusiasm for her character. She died early, having scarcely attained to womanhood, although a wife; for "all this goodness and all this excellence was bounded within the compass ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... against other well-known players. In the course of a few weeks he gained me great credit; and though I am not so foolish as to attach importance to such trifles, but, on the contrary, think an old soldier who stood fast at Coutras, or even a clerk who has served the King honestly—if such a prodigy there be—more deserving than these professors, still I do not err on the other side; but count him a fool who, because he has solid cause to value himself, disdains the ECLAT which the attachment of such persons gives him in the ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... young astronomer, though Apian's pupil, was an avowed Copernican and the destined master and friend of Kepler. Yet, in the treatise embodying his observations, he felt it necessary to save his reputation for orthodoxy by calling the comet a "new and horrible prodigy," and by giving a chapter of "conjectures on the signification of the present comet," in which he proves from history that this variety of comet betokens peace, but peace purchased by a bloody victory. That he really believed in this theological theory seems impossible; the very fact that his ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... his sister, Catharine, took him in hand, but he spent his time in teazing the girls of her school, and she was compelled to give him up as a hopeless case. The boy of ten could not be made a mental prodigy, do what they would. The result is that the man of fifty-nine is as fresh and vigorous in body and mind as most others are ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... down his nose, and put on warrior's costume. In vain Jarwin begged and protested and sang. The Big Chief's blood was up, and his commands must be obeyed, therefore Jarwin did as he was bid; went out to battle in this remarkable costume—if we may so style it— and proved himself such a prodigy of valour that his prowess went far to turn the tide of victory wherever he appeared during the fight. But we pass over all this. Suffice it to say, that the pugnacious tribe was severely chastised and reduced to a state of quiet—for ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne
... prodigy of divine providence, the secret of the ages had been kept from premature disclosure during the centuries in which, without knowing it, the Old World was actually in communication with the New. That was high strategy in the warfare for the advancement of the ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... party with whom I had the honour to dine. What other repasts Sir George Thrum may have given, what assemblies of men of mere science he may have invited to give their opinion regarding his prodigy, what other editors of papers he may have pacified or rendered favourable, who knows? On the present occasion, we did not quit the dinner-table until Mr. Slang the manager was considerably excited by wine, and music had been heard for some ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... already by an enemy more formidable than the assemblies of the clergy of France. Cardinal Richelieu, naturally attracted towards greatness as he was at a later period towards the infant prodigy of the Pascals, had been desirous of attaching St. Cyran to himself. "Gentlemen," said he one day, as he led back the simple priest into the midst of a throng of his courtiers, "here you see the most learned man in Europe." But the Abbot of St. Cyran would accept no ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... prodigy? What cruel and mysterious scourge is this? We are a numerous people and we want hands! We have an excellent soil, and we are in want of subsistence? We are active and laborious, and we live in indigence! We ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... trifles. Who, on the contrary, talked of duty, and had a peaceful word for all, and openly condemned the duello, and was mild as milk and as gentle as an owl. Such a one seemed, indeed, the fabled "phaynix," or a bat with six wings, or any other prodigy which the fancy, Irish ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... seeds, and that when the fish are devoured by birds the seeds can germinate, etc. Remember that every year many birds are blown to Madeira and to the Bermudas. Remember that dust is blown 1,000 miles over the Atlantic. Now, bearing all this in mind, would it not be a prodigy if an unstocked island did not in the course of ages receive colonists from coasts whence the currents flow, trees are drifted and birds are driven by gales. The objections to islands being thus stocked are, as far as I understand, that certain species and genera have been more ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... planned for his own purpose the most complete hierarchy that can well be imagined. His only tactic, that of lex talionis, also worked out a perfect reciprocity even in those common affairs to which this prodigy stooped in order to conquer, for he seemed to create infallibly every institution he combated and to use every weapon that he execrated when employed by others. The most fertile of law-givers himself, he could not ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... beheld a head hanging in the air, with nobody to hold it. This prodigy astonished her so that she could not tell what to think of it; but her amazement was increased when she saw the head laid at her feet, and heard a voice ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... Professor Auer. "The word 'prodigy' when applied to some youthful artist is always used with an accent of reproach. Public and critics are inclined to regard them with suspicion. Why? After all, the important thing is not their youth, but their artistry. Examine the history ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... the time he could spare from the avocations of his employment, he spent in educating his daughter, and in studying for his own improvement. In short, the adventurer Fathom was, under the name of Grieve, universally respected among the commonalty of this district, as a prodigy of learning and virtue. These particulars I learned from the vicar, when we quitted the room, that they might be under no restraint in their mutual effusions. I make no doubt that Grieve will be pressed ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... brightest of his essays, "Des Boiteux," where he declares that, from his own observation of witches and sorcerers, he should have recommended them to be treated with curative hellebore—stating in his own way a pregnant doctrine, since taught more gravely. It seems to him much less of a prodigy that men should lie, or that their imaginations should deceive them, than that a human body should be carried through the air on a broomstick, or up a chimney by some unknown spirit. He thinks it a sad business ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... it's remarkable," agreed Wayne meekly, "but I don't know anything about it. He might sleep twenty-three hours out of twenty-four—I shouldn't understand whether to call him a prodigy or ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... not a solitary case, nor is it a prodigy, but a mere specimen of a class. The case of Oxford, who fired at Her Majesty in the Park, will be found, on examination, to resemble it very nearly, in the essential feature. There is no proved pretence ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... eleven years of age when he went to Berlin. There he passed for a prodigy. The Elector, wishing to become the patron of so rare a genius, manifested a disposition to attach him to himself, and to send him to Italy to complete his musical education. But when the father was consulted, he did not think it wise to ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... the inhabitants of the empire in the reign of Galerius, or any other history of wonderful occurrence—it is of course a myth. Does not every one know that nothing marvelous ever happened, or, if it did, would any historian trouble himself to record a prodigy? "Or, if it is couched in symbolical language," as is every eloquent passage in Thucydides, Robertson, Gibbon, or Guizot, the records of China, and of India, the picture-writing of the Peruvians, and especially ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... a prodigy there invariably comes a time when it is compelled to relinquish being very clever for a child, and has to enter the business of life in ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... then, they were not acquainted with the circulation of the blood, the weight of the air, the laws of motion, light, the number of our planets, &c. And a man who maintained a thesis on Aristotle's "Categories," on the universals a parte rei, or such-like nonsense, was looked upon as a prodigy. ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... had given him a worn appearance; he expressed himself with a refined correctness which became him admirably, and he was affectionate and amiable in his manners, at times to excess. With respect to his vast learning, what can be said but that he was a real prodigy? In Madrid his name was always mentioned with respect, and if Don Cayetano had lived in the capital, he could not have escaped becoming a member, in spite of his modesty, of every academy in it, ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... and the chief began dealing out the flour by handfuls, beginning of course with the boldest warriors. But, horror of horrors, each man's porridge swelled before his eyes, grew hot, smoked, boiled over. They turned and fled, man, woman, and child, from before that supernatural prodigy; and the settlers coming back to look for the dropped sack, saw a sight which told the whole tale. For the poor creatures, in their terror, had thrown away their pans and calabashes, each filled with that which it was likely to contain, seeing that the sack itself had contained, not flour, but ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... This infant prodigy, who was born in 1791, first appeared on the stage at the age of eleven, and for over five years personated the most difficult characters before enraptured audiences, earning from fifty to seventy-five guineas per night, apart from benefits, ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... successive sovereigns, Henry, Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth, may, on one account or other, be admitted into the class of authors. Queen Catharine Parr translated a book: Lady Jane Gray, considering her age, and her sex, and her station, may be regarded as a prodigy of literature. Sir Thomas Smith was raised from being professor in Cambridge, first to be ambassador to France, then secretary of state. The despatches of those times, and among others those of Burleigh himself, are frequently interlarded with quotations from the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... sleep, to sit is to dream, to stand is to think.' My father caught the infection, and fell into meditation, but my mother roused them both thoroughly. Broodviol scowled at her savagely, and demanded what she required. Then I too learned for the first time the object of our journey. I was a prodigy—that is to say, I was without sex. My parents were troubled over this, and wished to ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... who had walked till he was very warm, took off his wig to cool and refresh himself: A sudden exclamation of one of the Indians who saw it, drew the attention of the rest, and in a moment every eye was fixed upon the prodigy, and every operation was suspended: the whole assembly stood some time motionless, in silent astonishment, which could not have been more strongly expressed if they had discovered that our friend's limbs had been screwed ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... one which I had partly relieved for the purpose. We arrived safely at Cairo; and, as the little animal grew up, I had more than ever reason to be satisfied that I had saved its life. All good judges considered it a prodigy of beauty and strength; and prophesied that it would some day be selected as the holy camel to carry the Koran in the pilgrimage to Mecca. And so it did happen about five years afterwards, during which interval I accompanied ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... Graves' "Life of Sir William Rowan Hamilton" a series of letters will be found, in which Aunt Sydney details the progress of the boy to his mother in Dublin. Probably there is no record of an infant prodigy more extraordinary than that which these letters contain. At three years old his aunt assured the mother that William is "a hopeful blade," but at that time it was his physical vigour to which she apparently referred; for the proofs of his capacity, which ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... "Holy Blue! what a prodigy! You suffer this to burst upon me, Jacques, without notice, without preparation. My nerves are permanently shattered. You tell me, a man; I behold a tower, a mountain, Atlas crowned with clouds! Thousand thunders! what bulk! what ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... courtezan with the fall of the leaf. I do wonder you do not loathe yourselves. Observe my meditation now. What thing is in this outward form of man To be belov'd? We account it ominous, If nature do produce a colt, or lamb, A fawn, or goat, in any limb resembling A man, and fly from 't as a prodigy: Man stands amaz'd to see his deformity In any other creature but himself. But in our own flesh though we bear diseases Which have their true names only ta'en from beasts,— As the most ulcerous wolf and swinish measle,— Though we are eaten up of lice and worms, And though ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... course in college was far below the abilities of this boy of eleven years. Professor James, of Harvard, the famous psychologist, has pronounced him the greatest mental marvel he ever knew. It is said the young prodigy could recite pages of Shakespeare from memory at an age when the ordinary boy ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... invitation to the laird and his sister little hoping or expecting they would come. But the laird, likewise being a deputy lord-lieutenant, he accepted the invitation, and came with his sister in all the state of pedigree in their power. Such a prodigy of old-fashioned grandeur as Miss Jenny was!—but neither shop nor mantuamaker of our day and generation had been the better o't. She was just, as some of the young lasses said, like Clarissa Harlowe, in the cuts and copperplates of Mrs Rickerton's set of the book, and ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... admitted, one may hope, that common things are never commonplace. Birth is covered with curtains precisely because it is a staggering and monstrous prodigy. Death and first love, though they happen to everybody, can stop one's heart with the very thought of them. But while this is granted, something further may be claimed. It is not merely true that these universal things are ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... youthful prodigy, climbing to the wagon seat. "Don't forget to keep straight ahead after you turn off the main road. Git dap! So long, fellers!" He leaned over the wheel, as the stage turned, and bestowed a wink upon the delighted "Squealer," who was holding one freckled paw over ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... years, and—strange to say—his savings amounted to about three times the sum of his wages during his life's service. A man who, having a pound a week, can save three pounds, would in England be regarded as a prodigy. In Ireland such things happen every day. Particulars as to the cases hereinbefore-mentioned can be obtained from anybody in Killygordon, which is altogether a remarkable place—to say nothing of its name, which for obvious reasons has the misfortune to ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... "Right!" exclaimed Nehe-miah, to the relief of Sudley and his wife, who had trembled during the pause, for it seemed so threatening. They smiled at each other, unconscious that the examination meant aught more serious than a display of their prodigy's learning. ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... the origin of that debt which has since become the greatest prodigy that ever perplexed the sagacity and confounded the pride of statesmen and philosophers. At every stage in the growth of that debt the nation has set up the same cry of anguish and despair. At every stage in the growth of that debt it has been seriously asserted by wise men that bankruptcy ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... daughters laughing for two or three hours every day. His notions of law, government, and trade are surprisingly clear and just. His misfortune is to have chosen a profession at once above him and below him. Zeal would have made him a prodigy; formality and bigotry would have made him a bishop; but he could neither rise to the duties of his order, nor stoop ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... project occurred to me, to put this courage to the test. A woman capable of recollection in danger, of warding off groundless panics, of discerning the true mode of proceeding, and profiting by her best resources, is a prodigy. I was desirous of ascertaining whether you ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... authority arose. The subject is instructive to those who wish to form themselves on whatever of excellence has gone before them. There are many young members in the house (such of late has been the rapid succession of public men) who never saw that prodigy, Charles Townshend; nor of course know what a ferment he was able to excite in everything by the violent ebullition of his mixed virtues and failings. For failings he had undoubtedly—many of us remember them; we are this day considering the effect of them. But he had no failings which ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... Schroder-Devrient, who was bitterly prejudiced against her part, as it was not the role of the heroine, could only answer my questions in a voice stifled with tears. I believe the whole theatrical body, down to its humblest officials, loved me as though I were a real prodigy, and I am probably not far wrong in saying that much of this arose from sympathy and lively fellow-feeling for a young man, whose exceptional difficulties were not unknown to them, and who now suddenly stepped out of perfect obscurity into splendour. During the interval at ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... that is to say five ages, during which the two kings and their family scarcely found energy to breathe after so terrible a shock. D'Artagnan, leaning against the wall, in front of Fouquet, with his hand to his brow, asked himself the cause of such a wonderful prodigy. He could not have said at once why he doubted, but he knew assuredly that he had reason to doubt, and that in this meeting of the two Louis XIV.s lay all the doubt and difficulty that during late ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... passage, he brought the substance of it across by irregular and astonishing means. He wore his teachers out. He could never learn like other people, never acquired any finish. He was always a Negro prodigy who played barbarously and wonderfully. As piano-playing, it was perhaps abominable, but as music it was something real, vitalized by a sense of rhythm that was stronger than his other physical senses—that not ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... of Christ. The words addressed to Matthew at the receipt of custom required no miracle to produce obedience. It was by no stroke of the supernatural that Jesus caused those sent to seize Him to go backward and fall to the ground. It was the sublime and holy effluence from within, which needed no prodigy to commend it to the reverence even of ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... it and praise it! The day of real greatness is over. Beethoven, and Bach and Mozart, and Rubinstein are to be superseded by the wonderful Wagner—who hasn't a notion of music in his head! and Serov, the imitator; and now Gregoriev, infant prodigy, picked out of the gutter by me, from whom he now proceeds to steal the only ideas he has about composing!—And here I, a genius, have slaved all my life away to please a public who desert me ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... forget the perfect form he showed: not an awkward pose, not a sign of effort, not a hint of anxiety; self-possession, courage, self-confidence all through and the most perfect grace of movement, ease, and suggestion of reserve strength. He is a prodigy." ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... reduced me to silence because you have interrupted me. Ah! there, you have tangled my hair. How provoking you are! It will take me an hour to put it right. You are not satisfied with being a prodigy of impiety, but you must also tangle my hair. Come, hold out your hands and take this skein ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... rumour through the crowd with which Polynesians receive a prodigy. As for myself, I stood amazed. The thing was a common conjuring trick which I have seen performed at home a score of times; but how was I to convince the villagers of that? I wished I had learned legerdemain instead of Hebrew, that I might have paid the fellow out with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... than to read and write, having acquired by herself, later, while assisting her uncle, a vast fund of information. But there had been no plan settled upon between them. He had not wished to make her a prodigy; she had merely conceived a passion for natural history, which revealed to her the mysteries of life. And she had kept her innocence unsullied like a fruit which no hand has touched, thanks, no doubt, to her unconscious and religious waiting for the coming ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... mischiefs multiply! let every hour Of my loath'd life yield me increase of horror! O let the sun, to these unhappy eyes, Ne'er shine again, but be eclips'd for ever! May every thing I look on seem a prodigy, To fill my soul with terrors, till I quite Forget I ever had humanity, And grow a curser of the works ...
— The Orphan - or, The Unhappy Marriage • Thomas Otway
... ran to the old colonel like a chick to its hen. You see, there aren't so very many Latinists in town during the hot weather. Perhaps eighteen or twenty in all came from about here and from Washington to see the prodigy in 'the Park of the Boar,' after the advertisement appeared. He wouldn't have anything to do with any of us. Pretended he didn't understand our kind of Latin. I offered him a place, myself, at a wage of ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... ordinary human gift for a special and extraordinary endowment. The mechanism of breathing and that of swallowing are very wonderful, and if one had seen and studied them in his own person only, he might well think himself a prodigy. Everybody knows these and other bodily faculties are common gifts; but nobody except editors and school-teachers and here and there a literary than knows how common is the capacity of rhyming and prattling in readable prose, especially among young women of a certain degree of ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... conscience? Was she in love with Gordon Wright, and did she wish, in consequence, to forget—and wish him not to suspect—that she had ever received an expression of admiration from another man? This was not likely; it was not likely, at least, that Miss Vivian wished to pass for a prodigy of innocence; for if to be admired is to pay a tribute to corruption, it was perfectly obvious that so handsome a girl must have tasted of the tree of knowledge. As for her being in love with Gordon Wright, that of course was another affair, and Bernard did not pretend, as yet, to ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... support my family. We salaried men used to expect our children to be dependent on us until they completed their educations. For a boy to work during his summer vacation was almost as bad form as for the wife to work for money at any time. It had to be explained that the boy was a prodigy with unusual business ability or that he was merely seeking experience. But Dick did not fall into any of these classes. This was what made his proposal the more remarkable to me. It meant that he was willing to take just ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... see how I value his pragmatical advice, he may come and dance at the wedding. I declare, your mamma and that colonel of his have perfectly spoilt him with their flattery! I knew what would come of it; you all would make a prodigy of him, till he is so puffed up, that he ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of an apparition, related by M. d'Aubigne. "I affirm upon the word of the king[359] the second prodigy, as being one of the three stories which he reiterated to us, his hair standing on end at the time, as we could perceive. This one is, that the queen having gone to bed at an earlier hour than usual, and there being present at her coucher, amongst other persons of note, the ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... swell and grow like brutes conceived; My feet are fixing roots, and every limb Is billowy and gigantic, till I seem A wild, old, wicked mountain in the air: And the abhorred conscience of this murder, It will grow up a lion, all alone, A mighty-maned, grave-mouthed prodigy, And lair him in my caves: and other thoughts, Some will be snakes, and bears, and savage wolves, And when I lie tremendous in the desert, Or abandoned sea, murderers and idiot men Will come to live upon my rugged sides, Die, and be buried in me. Now it comes; I break, and magnify, and lose my form, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... that she's a prodigy," said Lady Anne; "and prodigies and monsters are sometimes ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... civilized nations, yet this did not excite them to borrow their learning, as being foreign to their views of trade and commerce. Eloquence, poetry, history, seem to have been little known among them. A Carthaginian philosopher was considered as a sort of prodigy by the learned. What then would an astronomer or a geometrician have been thought? I know not in what esteem physic, which is so highly useful to life, was held at Carthage; or jurisprudence, ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... testimony, must be admitted by those who believe in the miracles which they have performed. About the middle of the last age, an inveterate ulcer was touched and cured by a holy prickle of the holy crown: [53] the prodigy is attested by the most pious and enlightened Christians of France; nor will the fact be easily disproved, except by those who are armed with a general antidote against ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... incantations. For many ages they {44} retained a principal place among diviners. In the reign of Marcus Antoninus, when the emperor and his army, who were perishing with thirst, were suddenly relieved by a shower, the prodigy was ascribed to the power and skill of the Chaldean soothsayers. Thus accredited for their miraculous powers, they maintained their consequence in the courts of princes. (See Cic. de Divin. l. i., Strabo l. xv.—Sext. Emp. adv. Matt. l. v. Sec. 2, Aul. ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... nature are his playthings: the gods, angels, and demons are his habitual attendants: the sun, moon, and all the starry host wheel around his cradle in joyful measures, and the earth thrills with joy at having borne such a prodigy: and at his last hour of mortal life the whole ...
— The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons • H.S. Olcott
... competitions. In the year 319 Constantine the Great and Licinius Caesar celebrated with great solemnity the fifty-eighth certamen. Ausonius of Burdigala, the great poet of the fourth century, speaks of an Attius Delfidius, an infant prodigy (paene ab incunabulis poeta), who gained the prize under Valentinian I. The mediaeval and Renaissance custom of "laureating" poets on the Capitol was certainly ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... terrible way. How long did he pause and how long did he debate? There was presently nothing to measure it; for his vibration had already changed—as just by the effect of its intensity. Shut up there, at bay, defiant, and with the prodigy of the thing palpably proveably done, thus giving notice like some stark signboard—under that accession of accent the situation itself had turned; and Brydon at last remarkably made up his mind on what it ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... defy rivalry. Sir Kenelm Digby was certainly an accomplished and gallant gentleman; but what with his silly superstition about sympathetic powders, etc., any man nowadays might be clever in comparison without being a prodigy. Yes, ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... at the ball of Don Pedro of Aragon. His satisfaction found vent in a mark of favor which not a little disconcerted the recipient. Removing the sculpel which the artist had permission to wear in the royal presence, he kissed him on the crown of the head, pronounced him a prodigy, and desired him to execute in the same digital style, a picture of St. Francis of Assisi for the Queen." Charles, on another occasion, complimented the artist, by saying, "If, as a King I am greater than Luca, Luca as a man wonderfully gifted by God, is greater than myself," a sentiment altogether ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... competitor? The one was as yet but a colliery engine-wright, scarce raised above the manual-labour class, pursuing his experiments in obscurity, with a view only to usefulness; the other was the scientific prodigy of his day, the most brilliant of lecturers, and the ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives loose to his worst passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, can not but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy, who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances." Such is the practical operation of a system, which puts men and cattle into the same family and treats them alike. And must we prove, that Jesus Christ ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society |
