"Virtuoso" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... other morning when I took to her the early mail and she discovered that Mrs. Van Varick Shadd had got ahead of her in the matter of Jockobinski, the monkey virtuoso. Society had been very much interested in the reported arrival in America of this wonderfully talented simian who could play the violin as well as Ysaye, and who as a performer on the piano was vastly the superior of Paderewski, because, taken in his infancy and specially trained for ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... a young woman who was preparing to become a virtuoso once applied to a famous musical educator for advice regarding the future career of his daughter. "I want her to become one of the greatest pianists America has ever produced," he said. "She has talent, good health, unlimited ambition, a good general education, and she ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... nervous, high-pitched, vacant little laugh, which she used to fill in gaps in conversation much as a distinguished virtuoso might interlude his own important efforts with selections ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... learned virtuoso. But what does that matter? The real artist is seldom a patient collector or an encyclopedic authority. That is the role of Museum people and of compilers of hand-books. Many thoroughly uninteresting minds know more about Assyrian pottery and Chinese ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... artist when I met him. He was a very great man, the grandeur of whose tradition lives in the whole 'romantic school' of violin playing. Look at his seven concertos—of course they are written with an eye to effect, from the virtuoso's standpoint, yet how firmly and solidly they are built up! How interesting is their working-out: and the orchestral score is far more than a mere accompaniment. As regards virtuose effect only ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... composition for the voice do not encourage the display of florid execution, a singer would be ill-advised indeed to neglect this factor, on the plea that it has no longer any practical application. No greater error is conceivable. Should an instrumental virtuoso fail to acquire mastery of transcendental difficulties, his performance of any piece would not be perfect: the greater includes the less. A singer would be very short-sighted who did not adopt an analogous line of ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... now in a state of extravagant delight. Most men have a secret treasure somewhere. The miser has his golden hoard; the virtuoso his pet ring; the student his rare book; the poet his favourite haunt; the lover his secret drawer; but Cosmo had a mirror with a lovely lady in it. And now that he knew by the skeleton, that she was affected by the things around her, he had a new ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... residence, as if in prison, at the fortress of Meissen. Why not bring pots and wheels to Rosenmold, and prosecute his discoveries there? The Grand-duke, indeed, preferred his old service of gold plate, and would have had the lad a virtuoso in nothing less ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... it more pleasant and profitable to resume his itinerant habits. He visited all parts of Italy, but usually made Genoa his head-quarters, where, however, he preferred to play the part of the dilletante to that of the virtuoso, and performed in private ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various
... "Yes, a shaving virtuoso; really a comical and strange character, and has oddities enough to compensate one for the debasement of talking with a man ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... deficient in its shadings and minor attractions, it is adapted only for concerts and chamber music." This dissertation closes as follows: "In order to judge a virtuoso, one must listen to him while at the clavichord, not while at ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover
... an animated exhortation from the press, in an age when the nobility and gentry began to read and to reflect, he knew would do more. A proper person for the purpose therefore was sought and found; a man of family, fortune, and learning; an experienced planter; a virtuoso, and not a little of an enthusiast in his own walk. Such was Mr. Evelyn: and to this occasion we are indebted for the Sylva, which has therefore a title to be regarded as a national work... It sounded the trumpet of alarm to the nation on the condition ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... principle, no soul. Years ago I discovered all the aids necessary to the pyrotechnist. I am not a chemist for nothing. If I can paint a fair imitation of a Claude Monet on canvas, I can also produce for you a colourless gas which, when handled by a virtuoso, produces astonishing illusions. In the open air, against the dark background of the horizon, I can show you the luminous dots planewise of the Impressionists; or I can give you the broad, sabrelike brushwork ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... a musical atmosphere. A picturesque, old German virtuoso is the reverent possessor of a genuine "Cremona." He consents to take for his pupil a handsome youth who proves to have an aptitude for technique, but not the soul of an artist. The youth has led the happy, ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... inspiration of his work, his work was impersonal. He was aloof from that feverish anxiety for self-revelation which has made much modern art so interesting pathologically, and so detestable otherwise. Nor again had he anything of the virtuoso about him. To him technique was not an end in itself. In Hellenistic art it became so, but not in the Golden Age. Indeed, he was sometimes almost careless of exact modelling, and in architecture he did not use the order as a mere exhibition of scholarship. In his search for beautiful form, ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... just tell you that at my lesson yesterday I played the Ernst F sharp minor concerto,—-the virtuoso, firework thing, you know, with Kloster putting in bits of the orchestra part on the piano every now and then because he wanted to see what I could do in the way of gymnastics. He laughed when I had finished, and patted my shoulder, ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... point—this Fortunato—although in other regards he was a man to be respected and even feared. He prided himself on his connoisseurship in wine. Few Italians have the true virtuoso spirit. For the most part their enthusiasm is adopted to suit the time and opportunity—to practise imposture upon the British and Austrian millionaires. In painting and gemmary, Fortunato, like his countrymen, was a quack—but in the matter of old wines he was sincere. In this respect I did not ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the piano, with bulging watch-crystal eye-glasses and hair tucked behind his ears, was the well-known, all-round musician, Wenby Simmons—otherwise known as "Pussy Me-ow" —a name associated in some way with the strings of his violin. This virtuoso played in the orchestra at the Winter Garden, and occupied the bedroom next ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... author who began virtually at the end of his career—proclaiming himself a finished virtuoso at the start—entered into prose with a volume of tales, radiating from Simla, which betray qualities that are usually associated with the later rather than with the early work of an author. Plain Tales from the Hills number more Simla stories to the square ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer
... Mr. Peter; and then he must be styled Father Peter, and sometimes My Lord Peter. To support this grandeur, which he soon began to consider could not be maintained without a better fonde than what he was born to, after much thought he cast about at last to turn projector and virtuoso, wherein he so well succeeded, that many famous discoveries, projects, and machines which bear great vogue and practice at present in the world, are owing entirely to Lord Peter's invention. I will ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... sisters. He was sent to a day school at Shrewsbury in the year of his mother's death, 1817. At this age he tells us that the passion for "collecting" which leads a man to be a systematic naturalist, a virtuoso, or a miser, was very strong in him, and was clearly innate, as none of his brothers or sisters had this taste. A year later he was removed to the Shrewsbury grammar school, where he profited little by the education in the dead languages administered, and incurred (as even to-day would be ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... beautiful, passionate mother, who played the piano and the mandolin so wonderfully, and to whom everything was quite immaterial, married anew after the lapse of a year, this time a musician, a virtuoso with an Italian name whom she followed to far-away lands. Tonio Kroeger found this a trifle unprincipled; but was he called upon to prevent her? He who wrote verses and could not even answer the question what in all the world ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... 82, Johnson makes a virtuoso write:—'I often lamented that I was not one of that happy generation who demolished the convents and monasteries, and broke windows by law.' He had in 1754 'viewed with indignation the ruins of the Abbeys of Oseney and Rewley near ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... seeking pence, accompanies the beat of paddle wheels across the ferry, there is surely a difference rather of kind than of degree to that unearthly voice of singing that bewails and praises the destiny of man at the touch of the true virtuoso. Even that you may perhaps enjoy; and if you do so you will own it impossible to enjoy it more keenly than here, im Schnee der Alpen. A hyacinth in a pot, a handful of primroses packed in moss, or a piece of music by some one who ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... paths where vulgar feet have trod, But give the vigorous fancy room. For when, like stupid alchymists, you try To fix this nimble god, This volatile mercury, The subtile spirit all flies up in fume; Nor shall the bubbled virtuoso find More than fade insipid mixture left behind.[6] While thus I write, vast shoals of critics come, And on my verse pronounce their saucy doom; The Muse like some bright country virgin shows Fallen by mishap ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... tolerate fools Deep learning is generally tainted with pedantry Deepest learning, without good-breeding, is unwelcome Desirous of pleasing Dictate to them while you seem to be directed by them Dissimulation is only to hide our own cards Do not become a virtuoso of small wares Does not give it you, but he inflicts it upon you Endeavors to please and oblige our fellow-creatures Every man pretends to common sense Every numerous assembly is a mob Eyes and the ears are the only roads to the ...
— Widger's Quotations from Chesterfield's Letters to his Son • David Widger
... Variations are based upon popular themes and, in general, may be considered as virtuoso pieces to show off the agility of the performer. We find occasional examples, as in the Clarinet Quintette and in the Sonata in D major, which are of ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... as to the aims of kings and courts; to understand financial and diplomatic movements; briefly, as far as was then possible, to be an incarnate blue-book. He was to study literature and appreciate art, though he was carefully to avoid the excess which makes the pedant or the virtuoso. He was to cultivate a good style in writing and speaking, and even to learn German. Chesterfield's prophecy of a revolution in France (though, I fancy, a little overpraised) shows at least that he was a serious observer of political ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... Fiovaranti was, indeed, going to sing; Fiovaranti, who, by his talents as a virtuoso, his perfect method, his melodious voice, provoked a real enthusiasm among the lovers of music ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... and virtue on the part of the Nez Perce tribe, we grieve to have to record a circumstance calculated to throw a temporary shade upon the name. In the course of the social and harmonious evening just mentioned, one of the captain's men, who happened to be something of a virtuoso in his way, and fond of collecting curiosities, produced a small skin, a great rarity in the eyes of men conversant in peltries. It attracted much attention among the visitors from beyond the river, who passed it from one to the other, examined it with looks ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... cemetery, now ruined to the very graves. The situation struck me as very appropriate to the legend, being blighted as their love.... The Gothic monuments of the Scaliger princes pleased me, but 'a poor virtuoso am I.'"—Letter to Moore, November 7, 1816, Letters, 1899, iii. 386, 387. The tombs of the Scaligers are close to the Church of Santa Maria l'Antica. Juliet's tomb, "of red Verona marble," is in the garden of the Orfanotrofio, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... more limited sense of the term, which embraces personal as well as incorporeal goods; as, for instance, the labors of the doctor, teacher; virtuoso, of the statesman, judge, and of preachers, whose office it is, by way of eminence, to produce and preserve the immaterial wealth, known as the ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... precisely to this particular spot in France. What better fortune could have befallen me than to secure, in so short a time, the sympathetic interest of the most famous composer of French opera! Meyerbeer took me to see Moscheles, who was then in Boulogne, and also Fraulein Blahedka, a celebrated virtuoso whose name I had known for many years. I spent a few informal musical evenings at both houses, and thus came into close touch with musical celebrities, an experience ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... round trip of 316 miles. In 1887 he went to Berlin and became fourth cornetist of the Philharmonic Orchestra and valet to Dr. Schweinsrippen, the conductor. In Berlin he studied violin and second violin under the Polish virtuoso, Pbyschbrweski, and also had lessons in composition from Wilhelm Geigenheimer, formerly third triangle and assistant ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... that aspect of politics he was by temperament and by training remote. But yet he knew by calculation what the politician's technic is. He was one of those people who know just how to do a thing, but who can not quite do it themselves. They are often better teachers than the virtuoso to whom the art is so much second nature that he himself does not know how he does it. The statement that those who can, do; those who cannot, teach, is not nearly so much of a reflection on ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... a humble little bit of tin and horn; I'm a byword, I'm a plaything, I'm a jest; The virtuoso looks on me with scorn; But there's times when I am better than the best. Ask the stoker and the sailor of the sea; Ask the mucker and the hewer of the pine; Ask the herder of the plain, ask the gleaner of the grain— There's a lowly, ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... clarinets are the most used; in the military band, B flat and E flat. The C clarinet is not much used now. All differ in tone and quality; the A one is softer than the B flat; the C is shrill. The B flat is the virtuoso instrument. In military bands the clarinet takes the place which would be that of the violin in the orchestra, but the tone of it is always characteristically different. Although introduced in the time of Handel and Bach those composers made no use of it. With Mozart ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... second concert, playing the same excerpts from this concerto—the slow movement is Constance Gladowska musically idealized—the Krakowiak and an improvisation. The affair was a success. From these concerts he cleared six hundred dollars, not a small sum in those days for an unknown virtuoso. A sonnet was printed in his honor, champagne was offered him by an enthusiastic Paris bred, but not born, pianist named Dunst, who for this act will live in all chronicles of piano playing. Worse still, Orlowski served up the themes of his concerto into mazurkas ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... 'motto', 'nuncio', 'opera', 'oratorio', 'pantaloon', 'parapet', 'pedantry', 'pianoforte', 'piazza', 'portico', 'proviso', 'regatta', 'ruffian', 'scaramouch', 'sequin', 'seraglio', 'sirocco', 'sonnet', 'stanza', 'stiletto', 'stucco', 'studio', 'terra-cotta', 'umbrella', 'virtuoso', 'vista', 'volcano', 'zany'. 'Becco', and 'cornuto', 'fantastico', 'magnifico', 'impress' (the armorial device upon shields, and appearing constantly in its Italian form 'impresa'), 'saltimbanco' (mountebank), ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... the action of the drama ceased, as in the case of the intermezzo, or when the old principles of operatic construction waked into life again as in the confession of the hero-lover. Here, moreover, there comes into the score an element of novelty, for the confession is extorted from Lorris while a virtuoso is entertaining a drawing-roomful of people with a set pianoforte solo. As for the rest of the opera, it seems sadly deficient in melody beautiful either in itself or as an expression of passion. "Andrea Chenier" has more to commend it. To start with, there is a good play back of it, though ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... of the gods thou wouldst not spare, But when they're made thine own, they sacred are, And must be kept with reverence; as if thou No other use of precious gold didst know But that of curious pictures to delight With the fair stamp thy virtuoso sight. The only true and genuine use is this, To buy the things which nature cannot miss Without discomfort, oil, and vital bread. And wine by which the life of life is fed, And all those few things else by which we live All that remains is given for thee to ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... move to Sanford, and father has been writing articles off and on for the magazine ever since then. It's better for all of us to be here. Uncle John isn't quite like other people. When he was a young man he studied to be a virtuoso on the violin. He overworked and had brain fever just before he was to give his first recital. After he got well he never played the same again. He had spent all the money his father left him on his musical ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... musical atmosphere. A picturesque, old German virtuoso consents to take for his pupil a handsome youth who proves to have an aptitude for technique, but not the soul of an artist. The youth cannot express the love, the passion and the tragedies of life as can the master. But a girl comes into his life, and ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... Violoncello violoncxelo. Violoncellist violoncxelisto. Viper vipero. Virago (fig.) drakino. Virgin virgulino. Virginal virga. Virginity virgeco. Virgin, The Blessed La Sankta Virgulino, Dipatrino. Virile vira. Virility vireco. Virtue virto. Virtuous virta. Virtuoso virtuozo. Virulent venena, malboniga. Virus veneno. Visage vizagxo. Vis-a-vis kontrauxulo. Viscera internajxo. Viscuous gluanta. Visible videbla. Visibly videble. Vision (sense) vido. Vision (apparition) aperajxo. Visit viziti. Visiting-card ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... two singers, my mother being gifted musically quite out of the common, and active for many years not only as a dramatic singer, but also as a harp virtuoso, I, with my sister Marie, received a very careful musical education; and later a notable course of instruction in singing from her. From my fifth year on I listened daily to singing lessons; from my ninth year I played accompaniments on the pianoforte, sang all the missing parts, in French, ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann
... deferential attitude towards him of reverence, ere ever being acquainted with his patronymics, although already largely conversant with, and a sincere admirer of his music. To have been spoken amiably to by this distinguished "virtuoso" is a not unnoteworthy reminiscence to be recorded. He evinced much concern in the early rehearsals of his choral works; being individually present at the moment of their preparation; but it not infrequently appeared to me ambiguous, ...
— Original Letters and Biographic Epitomes • J. Atwood.Slater
... Another Virtuoso of my Acquaintance will not allow the Cat-call to be older than Thespis, and is apt to think it appeared in the World soon after the antient Comedy; for which reason it has still a place in our Dramatick Entertainments: Nor ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... etchers of the last two or three generations have taken a step further or aside in this or that direction, more particularly in the art of landscape, but even Whistler, at once the supreme virtuoso and the greatest individuality of nineteenth-century etching, falls far short of Rembrandt in the one thing which makes or mars genius of the highest order, i.e. depth of humanity, without surpassing him in the technical mastery ...
— Rembrandt, With a Complete List of His Etchings • Arthur Mayger Hind
... much more direct links with some of Hawthorne's work. When Christiana at the Palace Beautiful is shown one of the apples that Eve ate of, and Jacob's ladder with some angels ascending upon it, it incites one to turn to that marvellously complete "Virtuoso's Collection," [Footnote: Mosses from an Old Manse, Vol. II.] where Hawthorne has preserved Shelley's skylark and the steed Rosinante, with Hebe's cup and many another impalpable marvel, in the warden-ship of the Wandering Jew. So, too, when we read ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... for example, to cast a criticism or eulogy of an author or artist into the form of an imaginary epitaph; and this was often actually inscribed on a monument, or beneath a bust, in the galleries or gardens of a wealthy /virtuoso/. Thus the sepulchral epigrams include inscriptions of this sort of many of the most distinguished names of Greek literature. They are mainly on poets and philosophers; Homer and Hesiod, the great tragedians and comedians, the long roll of the lyric ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... slandering his. The cause, as explained by Ramann, is, that she cherished an ambition to be Liszt's Muse, and made strong demands for the acceptance of her opinions upon his works. We can easily imagine the situation: A sensitive, fiery composer, who is incidentally the chief virtuoso of the world, dashes off a gorgeous composition, and in the first warmth of enthusiasm plays it to his companion. She, desirous of asserting her importance, listens to it with that frame of mind which ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... Lajoshes and Joshkas of the band, they blew, beat, or scraped with redoubled fury, or sank into thrilling tenderness. Hurrah! here was somebody to play to who knew gypsy and all the games thereof; for a very little, even a word, reveals a great deal, and I must be a virtuoso, at least by Romany, if not by art. It was with all the joy of success that the first piece ended ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... old woman kept house and he always addressed her in the Hungarian tongue. His wants were simple, but his pride was Lucifer's. By no means a virtuoso, he had the grand air, the grand style, and when he sat down to play one involuntarily stopped breathing. He had a habit of smiting the keyboard, and massive chords, clangorous harmonies inevitably preluded ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... publisher, undertaken to superintend a new edition of the Plays of Shakespeare, is particularly desirous of inspecting the first folio edition. This is probably very scarce, and may be found only in the cabinet of some distant virtuoso. But the owner of this rare book will be very gratefully thanked if the editor can have permission to consult it for a short season." Later on (April 14, p. 119) Dennie confesses some further "wants:" "During some weeks in which the editor has been engaged in researches respecting ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... Tradescant's stuffed specimen was a fabrication. He used to preserve his own specimens; and there could be no motive at that period for a fabrication. I had hoped to have found some notice of it in the Diary of that worthy virtuoso Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach, who visited the Ashmolean Museum in 1710; but though he notices other natural curiosities, there is no mention of it. This worthy remarks on the slovenly condition and inadequate superintendence ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various
... and virtuoso, author of "Anastasius, or the Memoirs of a Modern Greek," which Byron was proud to have fathered on him, and of a posthumous essay on the "Origin and Prospects of Man," was famous as having suggested to Carlyle one of the most significant things he ever wrote, while he pronounced it perhaps the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... art, and science were spectacular also. She was a sympathetic and friendly onlooker, always on the side of those things against the Philistines, but not affecting special knowledge herself. She was something of a virtuoso. She once said, "I have a passion for reading, but on subjects which nobody else will touch," and this indicated the independence of her mind. She read to please herself, and to satisfy her thirst for experience. When our friendship ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... could not be long hid; all Vienna, in 1822, was talking of the wonderful boy. "Est deus in nobis," wrote the papers, profanely. The "little Hercules," the "young giant," the boy "virtuoso from the clouds," were among the epithets coined to celebrate his marvellous renderings of Hummel's "Concerto in A," and a free "Fantasia" of his own. The Vienna Concert Hall was crowded to hear him, and the other illustrious artists—then, as ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... the appreciation of music before it will be possible for Chopin's work to become popular." Heine also wrote that his favorite pianist was Chopin, "who, however," he adds, "is more of a composer than a virtuoso. When Chopin is at the piano I forget all about the technical side of playing and become absorbed in the sweet profundity, the sad loveliness of his creations, which are as deep as they are elegant. Chopin is the great inspired tone-poet who properly should be named only in company ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... fat, fairly pretty, she strummed her guitar and sang, rolling her eyes fiercely, like a virtuoso executing feats of difficulty. She lowered her head, stuck her chin into her neck, in order to draw deeper notes from the furthermost recesses of her body; and succeeded in bringing forth a great hoarse voice,—a voice that might have belonged to an aged frog, a ventriloquist's ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... Rambler, No. 83, a character of a virtuoso is given which in many ways suits Walpole:—'It is never without grief that I find a man capable of ratiocination or invention enlisting himself in this secondary class of learning; for when he has once discovered a method of gratifying his desire of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... unaccustomed to so vigorous a virtuoso, and its bridge fell with a bang. The Parson blurted an expletive, inflected like the profane. Then he straightened the bridge, gave the fiddle a tremendous saw, and resumed his bellow. But with the accident, his first tune had gone ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... in their taste soon after broke out in less seemly terms; for Shadwell permitted himself to use some very irreverent expressions towards Dryden's play of "Aureng-Zebe," in the Prologue and Epilogue to his comedy of the "Virtuoso;" and in the Preface to the same piece he plainly intimated, that he wanted nothing but a pension to enable him to write as well as the poet-laureate.[19] This attack was the more intolerable, as Dryden, in the Preface to that very play of "Aureng-Zebe," ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... hypocrisy, what hateful depth of malice against his successor must underlie these sinister nocturnal labours. It was painful to think of and dreadful to watch. Even I, who had none of the acute feelings of a virtuoso, could not bear to look on and see this deliberate mutilation of so ancient a relic. It was a relief to me when my companion tugged at my sleeve as a signal that I was to follow him as he softly crept out of the room. It was not until we were within his own ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... THE FACULTIES.—The maestro Augusto Rotoli, the great Italian Tenor and singing teacher; Herr Carl Faelten, foremost pianist and teacher; Leandro Campanari, Violin Virtuoso teacher; Prof. W. J. Rolfe, the eminent Shakespearean Scholar and Critic; Mr. William Willard, the famous portrait painter; Mlle. Emilie Faller, artist from Paris, and Mr. Jas. E. Phillips, steward and caterer, of ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... rich prize was brought into the bay, freighted with a cargo from Asia, Africa, or the European shores of the Mediterranean, she never failed to attend the unloading, during which, by the help of cajolery, judicious depreciation, and other ingenious devices still dear to the virtuoso, she succeeded in obtaining possession of articles which would have enraptured a modern collector. Judith was apparently indifferent to a habit which she looked upon as a caprice of her faithful servant, and the only evidence of her noticing ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... Said of code and designs which exhibit both complexity and a virtuoso flair. Has connotations similar to {hairy} but is more positive in tone. Often in the emphatic 'most studly' or as noun-form 'studliness'. "Smail 3.0's configuration ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... then, was this charged atmosphere sensed and explored with the groping hand of trepidation by Rhetta Thayer, finely tuned as a virtuoso's violin. She knew something was hatching in that Satan's nest of iniquity that would result in an outbreak of defiance, but what form it would take, and when, she could not determine, although friends tried to sound for her the ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... Hall[3] was lost. Charmed with the wonders of the show, On every side, above, below, 20 She now of this or that enquires, What least was understood admires. 'Tis plain, each thing so struck her mind. Her head's of virtuoso kind. 'And pray what's this, and this, dear sir?' 'A needle,' says the interpreter. She knew the name. And thus the fool Addressed her as a tailor's tool: 'A needle with that filthy stone, Quite idle, all with rust o'ergrown! 30 You better might employ your parts, And aid the sempstress ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... [Footnote 10: "Mancebo virtuoso, i de grande Animo, i bien ensenado: i especialmente se havia exercitado mucho en cavalgar a Caballo, de ambas sillas, lo qual hacia con mucha gracia, i destreca, i tambien en escrevir, i leer, lo qual ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... and its neighborhood are still rich in; seals, gems, small figures of bronze, mediaeval carvings in ivory; things which had been obtained at little cost, yet might have borne no inconsiderable value in the museum of a virtuoso. ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Painting this enlightened virtuoso is given over to Hogarth's hated dealers in the ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... this man or that, for our judgments are narrow and misrepresent actual values,-but that which has had from beginning to end the greatest total of happiness. No other ultimate criterion for conduct can ever justify itself, and most theoretical statements reduce to this. To be virtuous is to be a virtuoso in life. All sorts of objections have been raised to this simple, and apparently pagan, way of stating the case; they will be considered in due time. The reader is asked to refrain from parting company ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... been built by the last proprietor, Northmour's uncle, a silly and prodigal virtuoso - presented little signs of age. It was two storeys in height, Italian in design, surrounded by a patch of garden in which nothing had prospered but a few coarse flowers; and looked, with its shuttered windows, not like a house ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... been pawned. It lay exposed for purchase on Fox's shelf for some months, until, in December, 1895, a tailor named James Dooly visited the shop to redeem a silver watch. Being, at the same time, in funds, and able to satisfy his taste as a virtuoso, he felt the need of and bought a violin for ten dollars, but, Fox urging upon him the desirability of getting a good one while he was about it, was finally persuaded to purchase the Bott violin for twenty dollars in its stead. Dooly took it home, played upon it as the spirit moved, ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... all Contractions or Expedients for Wit, I admire that of an ingenious Projector whose Book I have seen. [4] This Virtuoso being a Mathematician, has, according to his Taste, thrown the Art of Poetry into a short Problem, and contrived Tables by which any one without knowing a Word of Grammar or Sense, may, to his great Comfort, be able to compose or rather to erect ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... view which I was afforded of this gentleman did not lessen my interest in him; increased it rather; it also served to make the extraordinary didoes of which he had been the virtuoso and I the audience more than ever profoundly inexplicable. My glimpse of him in the lighted doorway had given me the vaguest impression of his appearance, but one afternoon—a few days after my interview with Miss Apperthwaite—I was starting for ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... essential difference between that age and our own. The result of poetical activity was not the property and was not the production of a single person, but of the community. The work of the individual endured only as long as its delivery lasted. He gained personal distinction only as a virtuoso. The permanent elements of what he presented, the material, the ideas, even the style and metre, already existed. 'The work of the singer was only a ripple in the stream of national poetry. Who can say how much the individual ...
— The Book of Old English Ballads • George Wharton Edwards
... value. His tastes leaned toward the marvellous and the monstrous, and I have heard that his experiments in the direction of the unknown have passed all the bounds of civilization and of decorum. To his English friends he never alluded to such matters, and took the tone of the student and virtuoso; but a Frenchman whose tastes were of the same nature has assured me that the worst excesses of the black mass have been perpetrated in that large and lofty hall, which is lined with the shelves of his books, and ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... pull of music and the cacoethes scribendi. (Grandpa John Huneker had been a composer of church music, and organist at St. Mary's.) In the year mentioned he set out for Paris to see Liszt; his aim was to make himself a piano virtuoso. His name does not appear on his own exhaustive list of Liszt pupils, but he managed to quaff of the Pierian spring at second-hand, for he had lessons from Theodore Ritter (ne Bennet), a genuine pupil of the old walrus, and he was also taught ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... Grandison gives of her two lovers. One of them, a fashionable baronet who talks French and Italian fluently, cannot write a line in his own language without some sin against orthography; the other, who is represented as a most respectable specimen of the young aristocracy, and something of a virtuoso, is described as spelling pretty well for a lord. On the whole, the Earl of Bute might fairly be called a man of cultivated mind. He was also a man of undoubted honor. But his understanding was narrow, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay |
