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More "Versatile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his pieces as a whole, and again at the general scope of his labours, as revealed to us in the works which have come down to us, we are forced to censure him severely on many accounts. Of few writers can so much good and evil be said with truth. He was a man of boundless ingenuity and most versatile talents; but he either wanted the lofty earnestness of purpose, or the severe artistic wisdom, which we reverence in Aeschylus and Sophocles, to regulate the luxuriance of his certainly splendid and amiable qualities. His constant aim is to please, he cares not by what means; hence ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... you will be attending to your duty as commander of the Chateaugay, for you will still be on the lookout for your prize," continued the versatile Frenchman. "You can run up twenty or thirty miles to the northward, on the east side of the islands, where all large ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... inevitable OLIVE OIL. No latter-day article will exactly correspond to it. First of all it takes the place of butter as the proper condiment to prevent the bread from being tasteless.[*] It enters into every dish. The most versatile cook will be lost without it. Again, at the gymnasium we have seen its great importance to the athletes and bathers. It is therefore the Hellenic substitute for soap. Lastly, it fills the lamps which swing over very dining board. It takes ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... published. Some of the best-known among them are: "Boreen," "Holsteiner's Band," "The Hoodoo," "Jay Bird," "The Man in the Moon's Ball," "Mrs. Craigin's Daughter," "O'Grady's Goat," "The Party at Odd Fellows' Hall," "The Phantom Band," "Romeo and Juliette," "Schneider's Band," and "The Versatile Baby." The book is full of the rollicking college spirit, and college men and their sweethearts will find it an unfailing source of delight. It is adapted either for glee club or home use, ...
— The Writer, Volume VI, April 1892. - A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers • Various
... tea-cosy may have to do for an Admiral's cocked hat; it all depends on whether the amateur actor can swear like an Admiral. A hearth-rug may have to do for a bear's fur; it all depends on whether the wearer is a polished and versatile man of the world and can grunt like a bear. A clergyman's hat (to my own private and certain knowledge) can be punched and thumped into the exact shape of a policeman's helmet; it all depends on the clergyman. I mean it depends on his permission; ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... accompaniment, ever whistled and sang one song with a desperate intentness. That song was "The Rosary." The fish had presumed too far. "This," I shrewdly told myself, "is almost certainly a dream." The soundless words were magic. Gorge and stream vanished, the versatile fish faded to blue sky showing through the green needles of a jack pine. It was a sane world again and still, I thought, with the shadows of ranch house, stable, hay barn, corral, and bunk house going long to the east. I stretched in the ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... the Rouge party, led by the member for Montreal, which is principally composed of very versatile and enthusiastic Frenchmen of rather indefinite opinions and aims, professing a creed which appears a curious compound of Republicanism and Rationalism. The word Latitudinarianism defines it best. There are 130 members, divided into numerous ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... country drummers and country circuses, medicine men who shouted the versatile merits of corn salve by the light of flaring torches, eccentric orators of eccentric theology, tent-shows of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," with real bloodhounds and unreal painted ice, gypsies who were always expected to steal ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... French so aptly call savoir faire, and which they themselves term faculty, the power of accomplishing, the knowing how to do, the understanding how to suit means to ends, which makes a Yankee so useful and versatile, and consequently a valuable acquisition to society—has received its full share of Southern abuse and ridicule. 'They palm off upon us their inventions, half of which are worthless,' say they. 'They cheat us with ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... anxiety and expectation that had seized hold of everybody present. This strange epistle furnished no clue whatever to the mystery; and the ray of hope that had sparkled for an instant in M. Segmuller's eyes speedily faded away. As for the versatile Goguet he returned with increased conviction to his former opinion, that the prisoner had the advantage over ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... the brother, oddly enough, of the brilliant but infidel Lord Herbert of Cherbury; which lord was a versatile man of talent, but not a man of genius like the humble ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... modest, noble, not easy to be understood (!), parsimonious, pious (twice), profound in opinion, prone to regret his acts, prudent, rash, religious, reverent, self-confident, sincere, singular in mode of thinking, strong, temperate, unreserved, unsteady, valuable in friendship, variable, versatile, violent, volatile, wily, and worthy.' Zadkiel concludes thus:—'The square of Saturn to the moon will add to the gloomy side of the picture, and give a tinge of melancholy at times to the native's character, and also a disposition to look at the dark side of things, and ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... riding, fencing, boxing, dancing; of casual attendance also at the Greek classes in University College. In all these matters he seems to have won more or less definite accomplishment, and from most of them his versatile literary talent took, at one time or another, an effective toll. The athletic musician, who composed his own songs and gloried in a gallop, was to make verse simulate, as hardly any artificer had made it before, the labyrinthine meanderings ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... each complete in itself, that the orator was equipped for an address of any length, from fifteen minutes to four hours, by selection or consolidation of these sections. Few of them would trust themselves to extemporaneous speaking. The most versatile and capable of those who could was James G. Blaine. He was always ready, courted interruptions, and was brilliantly effective. In a few sentences he had captured his audience and held them enthralled. No public man in our country, except, perhaps, ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... Constantinople, and about 1175 was appointed archbishop of Athens. After the capture of Constantinople by the Franks and the establishment of the Latin empire (1204), he retired to the island of Coos, where he died. He was a versatile writer, and composed homilies, speeches and poems, which, with his correspondence, throw considerable light upon the miserable condition of Attica and Athens at the time. His memorial to Alexis III. Angelus on the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Bastions de l'Est, enjoy immense popularity, and within the last few months have appeared two volumes which fully confirm the views of their forerunners—M. Hallays' impressions of many wayfarings and Aprs quarante ans by M. Jules Claretie, the versatile, brilliant and much respected administrator-general of the ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... than artists responsive to their stimulating force. How closely science, which is knowledge, is interwoven on many sides with art, it is needless here to say. In the name of letters I have to call upon one of the most versatile of their votaries, a man whose nimble intellect plays with luminous ease round many and various subjects; delicate as a poet, acute and picturesque as a critic, a sparkling journalist, no one has pursued with more earnest ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... Catholic mind extends beyond the sacred domain of Religion. Catholic philosophy has been justly named the "scientific justification of common sense." Its principles do not rest on the capricious fancies of the versatile human mind, as is the case with the philosophy of the dreamer of Koenigsberg. We only mention here Kant, for his influence has in our days been tremendous and far reaching. In Catholic philosophy ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... was, he had accurately described a certain class of that versatile nation, the French, which are often met with in every country, wanderers or exiles from home. While we write, we have one in our own mind, well known to our good citizens who is familiarly designated by the sobriquet of ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... big hit. The audience cheered and applauded; which gave me greater confidence in my ability to get through the performance all right. Buntline, who is a very versatile man, saw that it would be a good plan to follow this up, and ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... these hypotheses to blend the wide array of technology available to the total joint force and according to bold new concepts. The results will determine the worth of Rapid Dominance concepts by judging whether they will permit even more balanced, versatile, and lethal combinations to fit known ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... stood facing him, a hand tossed up and opening and closing as if she had caught a shaft of sunshine and let it go again. Thus she would wave to him from the veranda as he came up the terrace steps. Indelible to him this picture, radiant of a versatile, impressionable vitality, of capacities yet unsounded, of a downright sincerity of impulses, faiths, and ideals which might buffet her this way and that over a strange course. A woman unafraid of destiny; a woman too objective yet to ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... rulers would hardly have ventured upon. The adoption of the Chinese language, literature, and religions from ten to twelve centuries ago, was not occasioned by a military occupancy of Japanese soil by invaders from China. It was due absolutely to the free choice of their versatile people, as free and voluntary as was the adoption by Rome of Greek literature and standards of learning. The modern choice of Western material civilization no doubt had elements of fear as motive power. But impulsion through a knowledge of conditions differs radically ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... and human existence. There is, too, as the wisest of men and the greatest of kings has said, 'a time for every purpose and for every work.' No volume of Poetry or of Prose can, therefore, be popular or interesting to such a nation as we are, that does not adapt itself to the versatile genius of our people, and to the ever-varying conditions ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... as to exclude the possibility that one man might master it all. So we find a Galileo, for example, making revolutionary discoveries in astronomy, and performing fundamental experiments in various fields of physics. Galileo's great contemporary, Kepler, was almost equally versatile, though his astronomical studies were of such pre-eminent importance that his other investigations sink into relative insignificance. Yet he performed some notable experiments in at least one department of physics. These experiments had to do with the refraction of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... oscillate &c 314; vibrate between, two extremes, oscillate between, two extremes; alternate; have as man phases as the moon. Adj. changeable, changeful; changing &c 140; mutable, variable, checkered, ever changing; protean, proteiform^; versatile. unstaid^, inconstant; unsteady, unstable, unfixed, unsettled; fluctuating &c v.; restless; agitated &c 315; erratic, fickle; irresolute &c 605; capricious &c 608; touch and go; inconsonant, fitful, spasmodic; vibratory; vagrant, wayward; desultory; afloat; alternating; alterable, plastic, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Father' (Hamlet); 'Falstaff and Doll' (King Henry IV., Second Part); 'Macbeth meeting the Witches on the Heath' (Macbeth); 'Robin Goodfellow' (Midsummer Night's Dream). This gallery gave the public an opportunity of judging of Fuseli's versatile powers. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... loyal duty I owed my belongings and my party, and so reluctantly—more reluctantly than I can tell you—I declined, obliging them to send for Gen. Horace Porter and bring him over from across the ocean, where he was ably serving as Ambassador to France. I need not add how well that gifted and versatile gentleman discharged the distinguished and ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... to vomit up the carrion it may have recently gorged. Lastly, Azara states that several Carranchas, five or six together, will unite in chase of large birds, even such as herons. All these facts show that it is a bird of very versatile ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Salvini. Virginia Marini is well considered in Italy, and used to be the leading lady in the Salvini troupe. She now directs a company of her own, and has been succeeded in her former position by the estimable Signora Piamonti, whom Salvini declares to be one of the most versatile artistes he has ever known, equally good in the highest tragedy or the liveliest farce. Her Dalilla in Samson was much admired in America, but her rendering of the role of Francesca di Rimini in the tragedy of that name ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... of the nation. His opponent for a generation was Benjamin Disraeli, the young Jewish novelist, who had first won a following in the House of Commons by voicing the venom of the old-line protectionist Tories against the recreant Peel. Versatile, shifty, brilliant, this adventurous politician made himself indispensable to the Conservatives, and overcame by political moves which were little short of genius, the leadership of the opposition. Indeed, he may be said to have ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... a remarkable man. His services to science were very great. He laid the foundations of notable structures which, however, other men were to rear. He might have been a greater man had he been less versatile. And yet his versatility was one source of his greatness. He clung to old-fashioned notions, defending the doctrine of 'philogiston' after it had been abandoned by nearly every other chemist of repute. ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... more. Since the sketch of Dr. Norman Macleod was in print, that genial, versatile, and accomplished Divine has gone over to the Great Majority. On Sunday forenoon, the 16th of June, he died rather suddenly, although, as he had been ailing for some time previously, his end was not altogether unexpected. In the public prints of both England and ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... given to pigeons for the purpose of taming them, and a curious superstition is that of the "divining-rod," with "its versatile sensibility to water, ore, treasure and thieves," and one whose history is apparently as remote as it is widespread. Francis Lenormant, in his "Chaldean Magic," mentions the divining-rods used by the Magi, wherewith they foretold the future by throwing little ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... Foote, ingenious Slidell, polished and versatile Soule, ardent King, fail to withstand that mighty trio, "Webster, Seward, and Clay," the immortal three. The death of the soldier-President Taylor calms the clamor for a time. The struggle shifts to the House. Patriotic Vinton, of Ohio, locks the door ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... meeting of two ages and of two worlds—precisely in the moment when bookish literature was beginning to reach the people, and when Society was first learning to admit the low-born to her Minor Mysteries? Before you how many singers not less truly poets than yourself—though less versatile not less passionate, though less sensuous not less simple- -had been born and had died in poor men's cottages! There abides not even the shadow of a name of the old Scotch song-smiths, of the old ballad-makers. The authors of "Clerk Saunders," of "The Wife of Usher's ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... was just too funny! Some of it was too rich to keep. Karl came here the day after he returned—wanted to hear me talk of Ernestine, you know. People in love aren't exactly versatile in their conversation. I did talk about her for two hours, and then I ventured to change the subject. 'Karl,' I said, 'what do you think of the colour they're painting the new Fifty-seventh ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... of the poetic gift, of this passage of a soft and dreamy boy into the keenest, boldest, sternest of poets, the free and mighty leader of European song, was, what is not ordinarily held to be a source of poetical inspiration—the political life. The boy had sensibility, high aspirations, and a versatile and passionate nature; the student added to this energy, various learning, gifts of language, and noble ideas on the capacities and ends of man. But it was the factions of Florence which made Dante ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... found a still more powerful friend. The King, who was himself the broadest of Latitudinarians, as far as Protestantism was concerned, was not repelled by Wilkins' theological views, and yielded readily to the attractions of a versatile and agreeable man of science. Science was the most creditable of Charles's tastes and occupations; the one in which he took a genuine ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... imagination with ready-made models that limit and smother individual initiative. And one marvels to think into what exotic beauties these southern saints would have blossomed, had they been at liberty, like those Greeks, freely to indulge their versatile genius—had they not been bound to the wheels of inexorable precedent. If the flying monk, for example, were an ordinary mortal, there was nothing to prevent him from being born in an omnibus or some other of the thousand odd places where ordinary mortals occasionally are born. But—no! ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... much of it he made in coal and iron—here and there in the Appalachians. He trained me up in that business. Why, I even worked during school vacations as a telegraph operator in the office of the local railroad station." He smiled again as he added, "Add that item to my versatile summary. I'm as good a key tickler as you would be apt to find in a ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... might be, if the powers of pleasing, which can cover and even recommend the deformity of vice, were conscientiously excited in its behalf! This is the peculiar province of women, and they are peculiarly fitted for it by Nature. Their personal loveliness, their versatile powers, and lively fancy, qualify them in an eminent degree to adorn, and by adorning ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... that each, while rebel against his Government, fought in the name of his Government. Mommsen says: "It may be doubted whether any Roman statesman of the earlier period can be compared in point of versatile talent to Sertorius," who, though in rebellion against Rome, did all he did in the name of Rome, fought battles, levied tributes, enfranchised cities, remodeled communities; in short, did in Spain what, in a later ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... limits of self-love use to make good their places and duties, though with peril; and if they stand in seditious and violent alterations, it is rather the reverence which many times both adverse parts do give to honesty, than any versatile advantage of their own carriage. But for this point of tender sense and fast obligation of duty which learning doth endue the mind withal, howsoever fortune may tax it, and many in the depth of their corrupt principles may despise it, yet it will receive an ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... Cox was an active, industrious and versatile Member of Congress for more than twenty years. He was born in Ohio, graduated at Brown University, was admitted to the bar, but, I believe, rarely practiced his profession. His natural bent was for editorial and political conflicts, in which most ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... or catholicus of the Jacobite (Monophysite) Church in the 13th century, and (in Dr. Wright's words) "one of the most learned and versatile men that Syria ever produced." Perhaps no more industrious compiler of knowledge ever lived. Simple and uncritical in his modes of thought, and apparently devoid of any striking originality, he collected in his numerous and elaborate treatises the results of such research in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... of the Republic, Latin prose had reached its full splendour in the hands of the most copious and versatile master of style whom the Graeco-Roman world had yet produced. The claims of Cicero to a place among the first rank of Roman statesmen have been fiercely canvassed by modern critics; and both in oratory and philosophy some excess of veneration once paid to him has been replaced by an equally ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... especially in Icelandic literature, and wrote extensively under difficult circumstances:—in fact all the modern authors represented in the present book may be said to have been prolific as writers. Gumundur Frijnsson was equally versatile as a writer of short stories and poems. He has a rich command of imagery and diction, and his style, at times a little pompous, is often powerful though slightly archaic in flavour. The ancient heroic literature ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... Cannes twenty years since? who ever mentioned it in England, who knew its beauties? Nobody. Lord Brougham passes there, stops, selects a hill, crowns its top with a white chateau, scatters the gold from his purse, and sheds over the little town the lustre of the renown won by his versatile genius—Cannes immediately becomes the vogue—Cannes is charming, magnificent! Cannes, certainly, with her fields of jasmine and roses, her groves of orange-trees, her burning sun, blue skies and sea, and her warm pine-woods, is a delightful spot;—but Cannes is also a place of languor ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... preface, which was, indeed, characteristic of the fair creature, Aurora told Aunt Eliza of the bassoon, and as she spoke of his versatile accomplishments and admirable qualities her eyes glowed with an unwonted animation, and a carmine hue suffused her beautiful cheeks. It was plain that Aurora was deeply in love, ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... Arch., ed. Schneider, X. 9. Insuper autem ad capsum redae loculamentum firmiter figatur habens tympanum versatile in cultro ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... you what let's play," the versatile Patty proposed, after exhausting the pleasures of "Geography," "Ghosts" and other tests of intellect. "Let's play 'Truth.' We'll each take a piece o' paper and a pencil, and then each of us asks the other ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... typical Englishman of Elisabeth's reign was Walter Raleigh, who was even more versatile than Sidney, and more representative of the restless spirit of romantic adventure, mixed with cool, practical enterprise that marked the times. He fought against the Queen's enemies by land and sea in many quarters of the globe; in the Netherlands and ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... occupied as usual; but the feelings which she carried about to her employment, were very different from what they had been heretofore. It was her first taste of sorrow; well might her aunt deeply reproach Hazlehurst for his versatile conduct towards her beloved child. Elinor flattered herself that Miss Agnes knew not half of what she felt. In general she succeeded in being quite calm, and attentive to others; she was always sweet-tempered, and ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... time of the Five-Years War, the Foreign Policy conducted from Washington was almost entirely Pan-American, and the Monroe Doctrine was the beginning and end of it; for even if that versatile man, President Roosevelt, was fond of extending his activities to other spheres, as, for instance, when he brought the Russo-Japanese War to an end by the Peace of Portsmouth, the Panama Canal scheme remained his favorite child. But in the case of the Russo-Japanese ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... progress of classic culture and the employment of Dutch and Italian artists led to a gradual introduction of Renaissance forms, which, as in France, were at first mingled with others of Gothic origin. Among the foreign artists in England were the versatile Holbein, Trevigi and Torregiano from Italy, and Theodore Have, Bernard Jansen, and Gerard Chrismas from Holland. The pointed arch disappeared, and the orders began to be used as subordinate features in the decoration of doors, windows, chimneys, and mantels. Open-work balustrades replaced externally ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... defendant to arrange the affair between them. "Gentlemen of the jury," continued the learned counsel, "it must appear to you, that on the part of the plaintiff this is not an affair of the heart, but a matter of the breeches' pocket. He leaves his wife—a fascinating, versatile creature—with my client, I confess it, an acknowledged man of gallantry. Well, the result is—what was to be expected. My learned friend has dwelt, with his accustomed eloquence, on his client's broken heart. I will not speak of his heart; but I must say that the man who, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... of scarlet-coated young officers, and card-playing was rampant. The shabby little theater on South Street was no longer relegated to opprobrium, but put in some repair and made a place of fashionable entertainment; the versatile Englishmen turning their hands and their wits to almost anything in that line, from scene-painting to acting in comedy, ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... prospered and saw a good deal of the world. He traveled East and West, North and South. He was in Canada and down in Mexico; he visited London, Berlin, Paris, New York and San Francisco. His money all gone, he drifted for a time, trying his versatile hand at everything that offered itself. He went to sea and sailed around the Horn before the mast, he enlisted in the army and saw active service in the Philippines. He was cowboy for a Western cattle king, and there he learned ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... almost with enjoyment. But in the midst of these accounts one finds such phrases as these: "What crop do you intend to sow in such a field next year?" "How is the mare?" "Has the cow a fine calf?" &c. No minds can be more versatile, and at the same time more constant. I have always thought that, after all, the peasantry were superior to all other classes in France. But these men are deplorably in want of knowledge and education, ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... me the strangest letters when I was abroad, and almost every one presented him under some new phase. No, he is no sceptic. If he has rejected almost every thing, he has also embraced almost every thing; at each point in his career, his versatile faith has found him some system to replace that he had abandoned; and he is now a dogmatist par excellence, for he has adopted a theory of religion which formally abjures intellect and logic, and is as sincerely abjured by them. ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... close. We have found De Quincey a subtile philosopher, a mighty master of the historic art, a prose poet of unrivalled splendor. To powers so versatile and extraordinary, combined with learning so profound, and a style of such matchless brilliance, we believe that no other writer of the present age can lay any great claims. Still we take our leave of that eccentric, storm-tossed man of genius with feelings ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of the language underwent no change. "The development of the neo-Hebraic idiom from the ancient Hebrew," a distinguished modern ethnographer justly says, "confirms, by linguistic evidence, the plasticity, the logical acumen, the comprehensive and at the same time versatile intellectuality of the Jewish race. By the ingenious compounding of words, by investing old expressions with new meanings, and adapting the material offered by alien or related languages to its own purposes, it has increased ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... of poor Goldsmith's epigram, and I leave to [——] the questionable praise of being their hack. For Bentley and Hatchard, alike with Rivington and Frazer, for Colburn and Nisbet, as well as Knight, Tilt, Tyas, Moxon, and Murray, I seem to be gratuitously pouring out in equal measure my versatile meditations; at this sign all customers may be suited; only, shop-lifters will be visited with the utmost rigour of that obnoxious monosyllable.—Well, poor Epic, good night to you, and my benison on ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... difficult to find in these days a more competent and sympathetic editor of Scott than his countryman, the brilliant and versatile man of letters who has undertaken the task, and if any proof were wanted either of his qualifications or of his skill and discretion in displaying them, Mr. Lang has furnished it abundantly in his charming Introduction ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... fail. Compare myself, for example. All my life I have been in banks—I have got on in banks. I have even been a bank manager. But was I happy? No. Why wasn't I happy? Because it did not suit my temperament. I am too adventurous—too versatile. Practically I have thrown it over. I do not suppose I shall ever manage a bank again. They would be glad to get me, no doubt; but I have learnt the lesson of my temperament—at last.... No! I shall ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... often so much alike from play to play that he called them by the same conventional theatric name of Mascarille or Sganarelle, and played them, doubtless, with the same costume and make-up. Later on, when he became more versatile as an actor, he wrote for himself a wider range of parts and individualised them in name as well as in nature. His growth in depicting the characters of young women is curiously coincident with the growth of his wife as an actress for whom to devise such characters. Moliere's ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... Angeles, selling to them hides, which were a valuable source of wealth to the mission, and wine, famous for its fine quality. He was, in fact, a general utility man, on whom, on account of his reliability and versatile qualities, the Father depended greatly. Father Zalvidea, the senior priest at San Gabriel, had reason to congratulate himself on having Diego at his command, for not often is such an one found among the poorer and laboring class ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... kinds brings forth perfect fruits, only when concentrated upon one object: no matter how versatile men may be, mankind has a wise and salutary prejudice against diffused talent; for although knowledge diffused immortalizes itself, diffused talent is but a shallow pool, glittering in the noonday ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... wear pigtails—pirates, that is, of the upper crust (the Kidds and Flints and Morgans)—and at first this was a knotty problem. But he obtained a number of old stockings—stockings, of course, beyond the skill of that versatile person who mends the gaps—and he has wound them on wires, curling them upward at the end and tieing them with bits of ribbon. The pirate captain is allowed an extra inch of pigtail to exalt him above his fellows. When he first adjusted this pigtail ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... the recovery of the Palatinate. Both were young and inexperienced. But Charles, obstinate when his mind was made up, was sluggish in action and without fertility in ideas, and he had long submitted his mind to the versatile and brilliant favourite, who was never at a loss what to do next, and who unrolled before his eyes visions of endless possibilities in the future. Buckingham was sent over to Paris to urge upon the French court the importance of converting its ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... past had risen with Phoenix upblazing and he had recklessly cabled her to halt at the step of the altar. She confessed with deep humiliation that had the message come in time, she might have obeyed. But that, too, had failed—and now with his versatile capacity for the expedient, he was dallying again with the affections of Marian Holbury. It was, she admitted, not a pretty record. She told herself almost savagely that she hated Stuart Farquaharson as one can hate ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... mule or whatever he did invent. The man with the wheel hoe is the man that is "It." A wheel hoe costs from $6 to $12, and will do the work of several men without breaking the heart or even the back of one of them. It has as many attachments as a summer girl and is equally versatile. It must be run between the rows as soon as the ground is dry after every rain, so as to slay the weeds before they are born. If you don't they will slay ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... steps by which they have ascended to those fearfull precepices, they seek to allay the secret pangs of a gnawing worme, by adopting the most prodigious of their crimes into a Religion fitted for the purpose, and versatile as their giddy interest, till at last, encourag'd by the number of thriving Proselytes and successes, they grow feared and confident; swallowing all with ease, and passing from one heresie to another; whilst yet they are ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn
... impress and charm her, and at the same time to take off something of his burthen of forty years, by wearing the last fancy of the contemporary buck, a costume of elastic material with distensible warts and horns, changing in colour as he walked, by an ingenious arrangement of versatile chromatophores. And no doubt, if Elizabeth's affection had not been already engaged by the worthless Denton, and if her tastes had not had that odd bias for old-fashioned ways, this extremely chic conception would have ravished her. Bindon had consulted ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... is an extraordinary volume—especially welcome as an evidence of female genius and accomplishment—but it is hardly less disappointing than extraordinary. Miss Barrett's genius is of a high order; active, vigorous, and versatile, but unaccompanied by discriminating taste. A thousand strange and beautiful views flit across her mind, but she cannot look on them with steady gaze; her descriptions, therefore, are often shadowy and indistinct, and ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... in London, we need say nothing. All who have witnessed her delightful performances, will admit her to be one of the most charming actresses of the day. Voice, face, figure, every thing is in her favour; her popularity is as well established as her talent is versatile and perfect. "She is cited," says Mr. Hervey, "as one of those who, not more by their brilliant natural gifts than by their private worth, have become ornaments of the profession to which they belong, and who, whilst they can fairly claim universal admiration, are not less entitled ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... the famous Palazzo del Te, outside the walls of Mantua. It still remains the chief monument of Giulio Romano's versatile genius. ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... pastoral production of this country in the light of a more or less connected tradition, it is impossible not be struck by the originality and diversity of the various forms which it assumed. Though as a literary kind it never rivalled its Italian model in fertility, it evinced an individual and versatile quality which we seek in vain in other countries. To substantiate this claim and to show how far the vitality of the English pastoral was due to its hybrid origin will be my chief aim in this chapter. When I come to deal with the main subject of this ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... are more concerned with the literary labors of this versatile and indefatigable genius. These, in the midst of his multifarious commercial and diplomatic concerns, he never intermitted. All the time the Review continued to give a brilliant support to the Ministry. The French ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... at Uncle Winthrop's with Miss Alice Royall, who had come over with the two little girls to return some of the visits Doris had made. The girls fell in love with bright, versatile Betty, and Alice was much interested in her visit to Hartford, and ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... of England's oldest and most successful descriptive writers, talks very entertainingly regarding the emancipated slave. The first trip made to this country by the versatile writer referred to was during ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... have never had a regicide Bertrand de Gurdon, a Ravillac or a Damiens in Germany; but they have been common in France, and the Sovereigns of France cannot be too circumspect in their maintenance of ancient etiquette to command the dignified respect of a frivolous and versatile people.' ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 4 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... a fisherman as well as a romantic theorist!" I said, rather rudely. "How I wish I were as versatile! Come, Margot, we must be going now. The carriage ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... Vaccinated a Vapouring, Verbose Varmit of a Vulgar Villainous Vagabond, who Very Verdantly Ventured on a Versatile, Veteran, Valueless Velocipede to Visit the Viceroy of Venice, instead ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... never been a more versatile character; never one who after a volte face in politics could turn with such poise and dignity upon any critic cradled in the foundations of belief and ask, "Well, ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... seasons are versatile; and it may have been Springtime, after all, instead of Indian Summer, that struck Dry ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... be taken as a sample of my intercourse with Lord Raymond. I became intimate with him, and each day afforded me occasion to admire more and more his powerful and versatile talents, that together with his eloquence, which was graceful and witty, and his wealth now immense, caused him to be feared, loved, and hated beyond any other ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... a versatile individual for he is steward, doctor, postman, purveyor of news, and dictator in general. He alone makes the schedule of each trip, arriving and departing at will. Time in the Congo counts for naught. It is in truth the land ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... plastic work you liked. He had a natural affinity with such things. They held it quite likely that the blood of Praxiteles or his compeers may still have flowed through his veins—certain at all events, that there hung about his person the traditions of the versatile colonists on the shores of Magna Graecia who, freed by legions of slaves from the trivial vexations which beset modern lives, were able to create in their golden leisure those monuments of beauty which are the envy ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... but that the wheels of his mind, keep way with the wheels of his fortune. For so Livy (after he had described Cato Major in these words, In illo viro tantum robur corporis et animi fuit, ut quocunque loco natus esset, fortunam sibi facturus videretur) falleth upon that, that he had versatile ingenium. Therefore if a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune: for though she be blind, yet she is not invisible. The way of fortune, is like the Milken Way in the sky; which is a meeting or knot of a number of small stars; not seen asunder, but ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... fire, enough to set up half a dozen poets. Again, there was a fund of malignity, coldness, and subtlety adequate to the making an Iago. Here, too, were the clear sceptical intellect, the fertility and versatile power of brain, which only the loftier minds ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... reasons it commended itself to Pall Mall, but its chief merit was that it sent to South Africa a capable, versatile and zealous soldier, whose mind did not run in the grooves. Yet if Baden-Powell had been sent to Kimberley instead of to Mafeking, Kimberley would probably have fallen—after an outbreak of civil war within the ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... not the oldest among those who would make leaders but he was the most versatile of them all, the most thoughtful and stubbornly determined. He reminded Lake of that fierce old man who had been his grandfather and had it not been for the scars that twisted his face into grim ugliness he would ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... LAIRESSE is a critical reminiscence of the unreal and mythological in art, and its immediate subject a Belgian painter, born at Liege, but who nourished at Amsterdam in the second half of the seventeenth century. De Lairesse was a man of varied artistic culture as well as versatile skill; but he was saturated with the pseudo-classical spirit of the later period of the renaissance; and landscape itself scarcely existed for him but as a setting for mythological incident or a subject for embellishment by it. This is curiously apparent in a ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... to present in his own person a resume of all the characteristics of the age in which he lived. He was the miracle of that age of miracles. Ardent and versatile as youth; patient and persevering as age; a most profound and original thinker; the greatest mathematician and most ingenious mechanic of his time; architect, chemist, engineer, musician, poet, painter—we are not only astounded by the variety of his natural gifts and acquired ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... assistance which it furnishes,—the finest nature would be inferior to the most ordinary capacities in the very respect in which it ought to shine. The more extensive a man's knowledge, the more luxuriant his imagination, the more versatile his talent,—the more costly has his education been, the more remarkable and numerous were his teachers and his models, and the greater is his debt. The farmer produces from the time that he leaves his cradle until he enters his grave: the fruits of art and science ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... delicate lyrics of W. H. Davies. Among the others, the brilliant G. K. Chesterton, the facile Alfred Noyes, the romantic Rupert Brooke (who owes less to Masefield and his immediate predecessors than he does to the passionately intellectual Donne), the introspective D. H. Lawrence and the versatile J. C. Squire, are perhaps best ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... but that if my object was to prevent her from looking at me, the most efficient way certainly was to apply a bandage to her eyes. Oh! woman, woman!" groaned Wacousta, in fierce anguish of spirit, "who shall expound the complex riddle of thy versatile nature? ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... struggle over the Home Rule Bill, there was published a book interesting as the biography of a remarkable individual, but no less interesting as depicting the crucial moment in the history of an aristocracy. Colonel Moore wisely entitles the life of his father simply An Irish Gentleman. Versatile, eloquent, quick-tempered and lovable, excessive in generosity, excessive in courage and self-confidence, with the racecourse for his ruling passion and horsemanship for his supreme achievement, ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... centuries a homely variant of Lord Rosebery's Egyptian epigram would have been substantially true: Newfoundland is the codfish and the codfish is Newfoundland. Many, indeed, are the uses to which this versatile fish may be put. Enormous quantities of dried cod are exported each year for the human larder, a hygienic but disagreeable oil is extracted from the liver to try the endurance of invalids; while the refuse of the carcase is in repute as a stimulating ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... career that he wrote his magnificent "Lays of Ancient Rome." An immense sensation was produced by his remarkable "Essays," issued in three volumes; but even greater was the popularity achieved by his "History of England." Macaulay was one of the most versatile men of his time. His easy and graceful style was the vehicle of extraordinary acquisitions, his learning being ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... Catiline] was of high birth, richly endowed both in mind and body, but of extreme depravity; with extraordinary powers of endurance, reckless, crafty, and versatile, a master in the arts of deception, at once grasping and lavish, unbridled in his passions, ready of speech, but with little true insight Of insatiable and inordinate ambitions, he was possessed, after Sulla's supremacy, with a craving to grasp the control of the state, utterly careless of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... generalisation, specially on the subject of the Greeks. Again and again when we think we have laid hold of their characteristic view we are confronted with some new aspect of their life which we cannot fit into harmony with our scheme. There is no formula which will sum up that versatile and many-sided people. And so, in the case before us, we have no sooner made what appears to be the safe and comprehensive statement that the Greeks conceived the relation of man to the gods mechanically, than we are reminded of quite another phase ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... condemned him and his two disciples to the flames, decided that his confession should not be read aloud at the stake, according to custom, feeling certain that an this occasion also he would give it the lie, and that publicly, which, as anyone must see who knew the versatile spirit of the public, would be a most ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... such a mission there was needed a clever, enterprising man, well acquainted with the difficulties of a journey in those regions, and possessing a knowledge of the Oriental languages, or at the very least, of Arabic. This agent must be of a versatile disposition, and able to dissemble; capable, in a word, of concealing the real meaning of projects which aimed at nothing less than withdrawing all the commerce of Asia from the hands of the Mussulmans and Arabs, and through them from the Venetians, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... butler, and Bashville himself. Miss Carew, who knew the value of good servants, appreciated her footman's smartness, and paid him accordingly; but she had no suspicion that she was waited on by a versatile young student of poetry and public affairs, distinguished for his gallantry, his personal prowess, his eloquence, and his ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... Dr. Henry Stubbe, a physician of Warwick—one of those ardent and versatile characters, strangely made up of defects as strongly marked as their excellences. He was one of those authors who, among their numerous remains, leave little of permanent value; for their busy spirits too keenly delight in temporary controversy, and they waste the efforts of a mind on their own ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... 1806-1870, one of the most versatile, prolific, and popular of American authors, was born at Charleston, South Carolina. His family was poor, and his means of education were limited, yet he managed to prepare himself for the bar, to which he was admitted when twenty-one years of age. The law proving ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... and the Priest of Buddha by turns, and sometimes all at once. For Mr. Bellingham was a professed Buddhist and a profound student of Eastern moralities, and he was a thorough scholar in certain branches of the classics. The combination of these qualities, with the tact and versatile fluency of a man of the world, was a rare one, and was a source of unceasing surprise to his intimates. At the present moment he was a diplomatist, since he could not be a diplomat, and to his energetic suggestion and furtherance of the ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... shifting the scenery of the mind. The more accurate the imagination, the more safely may a painter, or a poet, undertake a delineation, or a description, without the presence of the objects to be characterised. The more versatile the fancy, the more original and striking will be the decorations produced.'—British ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Beethoven practically completed his life-work (with the exception of the last quartets) is the dawn of a new musical genius, versatile, accomplished, many-sided, who as performer was qualified to rank with the older master. On New-year's day of this year, Franz Liszt, who had been studying under Czerny for two years past, made his first appearance in Vienna in concert, ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... rather not give up Parliament, please." For at one instant to hate and defy a man, at the next to weep before him, and at the next to be perfectly confidential and friendly with him, was not an unusual process with our versatile-minded Baronet. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... dignified and brilliant company. Law, medicine, theology, science, commerce represented by very worthy and excellent gentlemen. And, among them sat the modest, unassuming, versatile Priestley. That he was happy in his surroundings there is ample reason to believe. He loved to be among men. He, too, was appreciated and eagerly sought because of his winning ways, his tolerance and liberality. He was ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... events. Democracy moreover inevitably worships and is swayed by the spoken word. As inevitably, the range and purposes of science daily more and more transcend the comprehension—even the educated comprehension—of the vulgar, who will of course elevate the nimble and versatile, speaking a familiar language, above dull and inarticulate ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... man; justified, in very great varieties, by the simple consideration of what he himself has to say, quite independently of any real or supposed connection with this or that literary age or school. Let us close with the words of a most [16] versatile master of English—happily not yet included in Mr. Saintsbury's book—a writer who has dealt with all the perturbing influences of our century in a manner as classical, as idiomatic, as easy and ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... this shock and settled down again to the ordinary routine of his life at Wildtree Towers. As the afternoons became shorter, and out-of-door occupations in consequence became limited, he found Percy unexpectedly amenable to a quiet course of study, which greatly improved the tone of that versatile young gentleman's mind. Percy still resolutely set his face against a return to school, and offered no encouragement to his perplexed parents in their various schemes for the advancement of his education. Consequently they were fain to be thankful, until some light dawned on the question, ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... brilliant conversational powers, who had written a History of Philosophy, two novels, Ranthorpe, and Rose, Blanche, and Violet, and was a contributor to several reviews. Mr. Lewes was a witty and versatile man, a dramatic critic, an actor for a short time, unsuccessful as an editor of a newspaper, and unsuccessful ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... reawakened interest in nature, in common man, and in mediaeval culture, and his work is generally romantic both in style and in spirit. The same conflict between the classic and romantic schools, and the triumph of Romanticism, is shown clearly in the most versatile of ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... or travel in an electromobile, we are partakers in a revolution more swift and profound than has ever before been enacted upon earth. Until the nineteenth century fire was justly accounted the most useful and versatile servant of man. To-day electricity is doing all that fire ever did, and doing it better, while it accomplishes uncounted tasks far beyond the reach of flame, however ingeniously applied. We may thus observe under our eyes just such an impetus to human intelligence ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... stated in one of your remarkably versatile and "Graphic" journals that I have boasted of having come here with the idea of making some money in the United States. But bless your hearts and souls, gentlemen of the Lotos Club, I assure you that ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... spent itself for the moment, and now the conversation began to take other forms. Banquo began to enter into the dialogue. His contributions so far had been mainly interjectory and blasphemous—a department of which he was obviously a more versatile exponent than the other, who was by no means a 'prentice hand. And here I must note a curious thing. Whether it was that the box afforded no proper theatre for exhibiting the natural dignity of my carriage, or that the light was not good, or that I am a ruffian ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... Speaker's committees; it was well that they could not go back to Ripton into the offices on the square, earlier in December, where Mr. Hamilton Tooting was writing the noble part of that inaugural from memoranda given him by the Honourable Hilary Vane. Yes, the versatile Mr. Tooting, and none other, doomed forever to hide the light of his genius under a bushel! The financial part was written by the Governor-general himself—the Honourable Hilary Vane. And when it was all finished and revised, it was put into a long envelope which bore this ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... rosy, broad humanity. As he had charmed the spiritual woman he saw in Anne, so he laid himself out to flatter the natural man he saw in Majendie. And Majendie leaned back in his chair, and gazed at the Canon, the remarkable, the clever, the versatile little Canon, with half-closed eyelids veiling his contemptuous eyes. (He confided to Hannay, later on, that the Canon, in his after-dinner moments, made ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... Plaisance heads and feet offered the most tempting work for her pencil. It is tempting enough for anyone to ask: "Where did you get that hat?" or "Where did you hit that shoe?" Evidently not in Chicago. Nothing of their kind ever graced a western city in such versatile varieties until the bands began to play and the world's cake-walk moved ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... was a man of versatile parts. Beside writing rhymes he preached the Gospel, and was at one time ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various
... compelled to alter this desirable policy—for something in Lord Valleys' character made him fear that, in real emergency, he would exert himself to the point of the gravest discomfort sooner than be left to wait behind. A fellow like young Harbinger, of course, he understood—versatile, 'full of beans,' as he expressed it to himself in his more confidential moments, who had imbibed the new wine (very intoxicating it was) of desire for social reform. He would have to be given his head a little—but there ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the living poets of our own land. The dramatic powers of a Maturin and a Shiel, the former consecrated by the applause of a Scott and a Byron, and the latter by the tears of some of the brightest eyes in the empire. The rich imagination of a Philips, who has courted more than one Muse. The versatile genius of a Morgan, who was the first that mated our sweet Irish strains with poetry worthy of their pathos and their force. But I feel I have already trespassed too long upon your patience and your time. I do not regret, however, that you have deigned to listen with patience ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 12, No. 349, Supplement to Volume 12. • Various
... regretted that Tazewell did not bring his mind to bear upon the science of language, and especially of comparative philology. Had he been able to read Bonn, or had mastered the New Cratylus or the Varronianus of Donaldson, his versatile and sharp intellect might have sent forth a work of "winged words" of equal interest and infinitely more profound than ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... provides you with what he modestly terms a "first-class outfit," albeit his cans of fruits, vegetables and meats are for the delectation of the inner man. Frying-pans and dutch-ovens, camp-stools and trout-scales, receive the same designation. And now comes the crowning triumph of this versatile term, as well as a happy illustration of what might be called its agglutinative and assimilating powers; for when horses and wagon have received their load of tent and equipments, and father, mother and the babies have filled up every available space, this whole establishment, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... were still more odious and unpardonable. In his manner, indeed, of defending himself he is his own worst accuser—as there is no outrage of power, no violation of faith, that might not be justified by the versatile and ambidextrous doctrines, the lessons of deceit and rules of rapine, which he so ably illustrated by his measures, and has so shamelessly ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... manner—want of colour in character and costume.' Such are your own and your friends' impressions; and behold! there starts up a little man, differing diametrically from all these, roundly charging you with being too airy and cheery—too volatile and versatile—too flowery and coloury. This harsh little man—this pitiless censor—gathers up all your poor scattered sins of vanity, your luckless chiffon of rose- colour, your small fringe of a wreath, your small scrap of ribbon, your silly bit ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... The versatile man who commands more than respect as the biographer of Poe and Wilde; as the (translator of and commentator on Remy de Gourmont; as a folklorist, has shown himself to be consecrated to the truth. The document that Mr. Ransome hurried out of Russia in the early days of the Soviet government ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... of the British Parliament. Towards the close of the American war, two committees of the Commons sat on Eastern affairs. In one Edmund Burke took the lead. The other was under the presidency of the able and versatile Henry Dundas, then Lord Advocate of Scotland. Great as are the changes which, during the last sixty years, have taken place in our Asiatic dominions, the reports which those committees laid on the table of the House will still be found most ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a good Irish scholar, and from Celtic MSS. had elicited some cross-lights upon his subject—not very bright or steady, I allow—but enough to delight the rector, and inspire him with a tender reverence for the indefatigable and versatile youth, who was devoting to the successful equitation of their hobby so many of his hours, and so much of his languages, labour, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the hill Where Boreas sweeps with icy chill, A masterpiece of studied art Conceived by genius versatile And fashioned with unerring skill, O'erlooks the busy, crowded mart, And, like a kingly domicile, Its burnished dome and sculpture thrill With admiration every heart; And strangers pause beyond the rill To view its grandeur, lingering still, And ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... Taylor begins to be himself again; for with all his astonishing complexity, yet versatile agility, of powers, he was too good and of too catholic a spirit to be a good polemic. Hence he so continually is now breaking, now varying, the thread of the argument: and hence he is so again and again forgetting that he is reasoning against ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... early age, he had wisely determined to learn the whole business of newspaper journalism from the beginning. At the ago of eighteen he was sub-editor on a big provincial daily; but his brilliant and versatile intelligence soon wearied of the monotony of the life, and he came to London to demand the right of admittance ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... shine—though very feebly and intermittingly—in England. When he had returned he began to read Kant and Schelling, or rather to mix excursions into their books with the miscellaneous inquiries to which his versatile intellect ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... captain is a versatile individual for he is steward, doctor, postman, purveyor of news, and dictator in general. He alone makes the schedule of each trip, arriving and departing at will. Time in the Congo counts for naught. It is in truth the land of leisure. For the ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... emotionality might be counterbalanced by studies of a strictly positive nature; a tutor was engaged to ground young Wilfrid in mathematics and the physical sciences. The result was that the tutor's enthusiasm for these pursuits communicated itself after a brief repugnance to the versatile pupil; instincts of mastery became as vivid in the study of Euclid and the chemical elements as formerly in the humaner paths of learning; the plan had failed. In the upshot Wilfrid was sent to school; if that did not develop the animal in ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... light to be seen in my dark heart. Yet I look up, I trust singly, to Him from whom it came yesterday; and thither may I look till again the day break. Can I say, in full sincerity, "more than they that watch for the morning"? Alas that I am so versatile! Christian and worldling within a day. Oh for a deeper sense that I am not my own,—that I have no right to disturb the sanctuary of my own spirit when God has made it such,—that there is no other way than whole-hearted and honest-hearted Christianity ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... lively, and sometimes brilliant. For several years after I left Cambridge I lived with him in his father's house in Dean's Yard, and thus made the acquaintance of some celebrities whom his fascinating and versatile talents attracted thither. As I shall return to this later on, I will merely mention here the names of such men as Thackeray, Tennyson, Frederick Locker, Stirling of Keir, Tom Taylor the dramatist, Millais, Leighton, and others of lesser ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... absent you will be attending to your duty as commander of the Chateaugay, for you will still be on the lookout for your prize," continued the versatile Frenchman. "You can run up twenty or thirty miles to the northward, on the east side of the islands, where all large ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... acquaintance, to judge from Mattheson's account; it stuck in Mattheson's memory for many years and he remembered especially the pastry-cook's boy who blew the organ for Handel and himself. Mattheson was four years older than Handel; he was one of those precociously gifted, versatile, attractive, and rather vain young men who are endowed with so many talents that they never achieve distinction in any branch of art. He is remembered now only by the literary work of his later life, in which he shows himself as a voluminous pedant and an embittered critic. He made ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... scholar, the wanderer, and the Priest of Buddha by turns, and sometimes all at once. For Mr. Bellingham was a professed Buddhist and a profound student of Eastern moralities, and he was a thorough scholar in certain branches of the classics. The combination of these qualities, with the tact and versatile fluency of a man of the world, was a rare one, and was a source of unceasing surprise to his intimates. At the present moment he was a diplomatist, since he could not be a diplomat, and to his energetic suggestion and furtherance of the plan he ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... such occasions was like his predecessor's coat, polychromatic. The Klosking read him, and wondered. "Alas!" said she, "with what versatile skill do you descant on a single circumstance not ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... him.[161] But if Luis de Leon was relatively poor in humour, he had an abundant store of mordant sarcasm and a faculty for ironic banter, as Medina and Castro learned to their chagrin.[162] Pacheco's opinion of Luis de Leon's versatile talent is borne out by the scrap of evidence given at the trial by Francisco de Salinas—the sightless dedicatee of El aire se serena. Salinas bore witness that some of Luis de Leon's admirers were persuaded that he could carry any University chair ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... human sentiment." But here fresh difficulties arise. Although "a poet is naturally a religious animal," we find that the greatest of Roman poets Lucretius, was an Atheist, while even "some of our most brilliant notorieties in the modern world of song are not the most notable for piety." But our versatile Professor easily accounts for this by assuming that there "may be an idolatry of the imaginative, as well as of the knowing faculty." Never did natural historian so jauntily provide for every fact ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... justified, in very great varieties, by the simple consideration of what he himself has to say, quite independently of any real or supposed connection with this or that literary age or school. Let us close with the words of a most [16] versatile master of English—happily not yet included in Mr. Saintsbury's book—a writer who has dealt with all the perturbing influences of our century in a manner as classical, as idiomatic, as ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... Darweshes, and have in this very manner for a long while wandered and roamed about; we bear our homes on our shoulders. There is a saying, that 'a pilgrim's home is where the evening overtakes him;' and all we have seen in this versatile world is too long ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... machinery. A tea-cosy may have to do for an Admiral's cocked hat; it all depends on whether the amateur actor can swear like an Admiral. A hearth-rug may have to do for a bear's fur; it all depends on whether the wearer is a polished and versatile man of the world and can grunt like a bear. A clergyman's hat (to my own private and certain knowledge) can be punched and thumped into the exact shape of a policeman's helmet; it all depends on the clergyman. I mean it depends on his permission; his imprimatur; his nihil obstat. ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... had been the round of the place, in search of lodgings, without the old tutor who had been their inseparable companion from their childhood. They had named him after the hero of their Latin exercise-book, which overflowed with anecdotes of that versatile genius—anecdotes whose vagueness in detail was more than compensated by their sensational brilliance. "Balbus has overcome all his enemies" had been marked by their tutor, in the margin of the book, "Successful Bravery." ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... and was good enough to pick me up at Bras d'Or. Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, who had previously shown me much kindness, permitted us to rendezvous at his house, and for a second time I enjoyed seeing some of the experiments of his most versatile brain. His aeroplanes, telephones, and other inventions were all intensely interesting, but among his other lines of work the effort to develop a race of sheep, which had litters just as pigs do, interested ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... Aucassin and Nicolette has been edited and translated into English, with much graceful scholarship, by Mr. F. W. Bourdillon. Still more recently we have had a translation—a poet's translation—from the ingenious and versatile pen of Mr. Andrew Lang. The reader should consult also the chapter on "The Out-door Poetry," in Vernon Lee's most interesting Euphorion; being Studies of the Antique and Mediaeval in the Renaissance, a work abounding in knowledge and insight on the ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... "as in ductile play." The use of the language, so lucid and so nice in its discriminations, was itself an education for the young who grew up to hear it and to speak it. In a genial yet invigorating climate, in a land where breezes from the mountain and the sea were mingled, the versatile Greeks produced by physical training that vigor and grace of body which they so much admired; and they developed the civil polity, the artistic discernment, and the complex social life, which made them the principal source of modern culture. ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... that I had to carry about all day Miss Jorgensen's letter and money. On returning home to dinner that afternoon, I found a stranger occupying Miss Jorgensen's place at table. He was a shrewd-looking man of about forty years, talkative, versatile, and what you might call "jolly." Nothing escaped his observation; nothing was uttered that he did not hear, often replying most unexpectedly to what was not intended for him—a practice that would have been annoying but for ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... many great orators, and so many noble philosophers, Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Socrates; so many heroes of former days, and so many generals after them, and tyrants; besides these, Eudoxus, Hipparchus, Archimedes, and other men of acute natural talents, great minds, lovers of labor, versatile, confident, mockers even of the perishable and ephemeral life of man, as Menippus and such as are like him. As to all these consider that they have long been in the dust. What harm then is this to them; and what to those whose names are altogether ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius
... fully realize that they were Angevins. To an English schoolboy Henry II. is little more than the murderer of Beket and the friend of Fair Rosamund. Even an English student finds it hard after all the labours of Professor Stubbs to lay hold of either Henry or his sons. In spite of their versatile ability and of the mark which they have left on our judicature, our municipal liberty, our political constitution, the first three Plantagenets are to most of us little more than dim shapes of strange ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... Napoleon, but his maturer years were devoted to domestic and academic interests. Every impression of his life, whether deep or fleeting, was material for a poem or a cycle. He handled with consummate skill the odd or complicated metres of eastern and southern lyric forms, and he was most versatile as a translator of foreign poetry, ancient and modern, occidental and oriental. His unusual formal talent and mastery of language were a constant temptation to rapid and superficial versifying; but there are in the vast mass of his production many genuine ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... with the army, a man with the most ordinary capacity for garnering up the humorous stories of camp may find his repertoire overflowing with the most versatile of incidents. A connection with the daily press is, however, of great service, especially as a letter-writer is expected to know all that ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... Hamlet's Father' (Hamlet); 'Falstaff and Doll' (King Henry IV., Second Part); 'Macbeth meeting the Witches on the Heath' (Macbeth); 'Robin Goodfellow' (Midsummer Night's Dream). This gallery gave the public an opportunity of judging of Fuseli's versatile powers. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... very smoothly for Mr. Sheldon's family. Georgy was very happy in the society of a companion who seemed really to have a natural taste for the manufacture of pretty little head-dresses from the merest fragments of material in the way of lace and ribbon. Diana had all that versatile cleverness and capacity for expedients which is likely to be acquired in a wandering and troubled life. She had learned more in her three years of discomfort with her father than in all the undeviating course of the Hyde-Lodge studies; she had improved her French ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... to keep it!" The baddish boy had registered a vow to the contrary, and proceeded to bleed his flint (for to do Christie justice the process was not very dissimilar). Flucker had a versatile genius for making money; he had made it in forty different ways, by land and sea, tenpence at ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... whose practice had been mainly in matters of legislation. He was, in 1876, a man of venerable appearance, with white hair, worn long, and a patriarchal beard. He was a familiar figure in Washington, and well known among the public men of his day. A versatile and entertaining companion, by turns prosperous and impecunious, and an optimist always, Gardiner Hubbard became a really indispensable factor as the first advance agent of ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... letting the enemy win the field, or of flying through Media and Armenia and seizing Cappadocia, but came to no resolution while his friends stayed with him. After turning to many expedients in his mind, which his changeable fortune had made versatile, he at last put his men in array, and encouraged the Greeks and barbarians; as for the phalanx and the Argyraspids, they encouraged him, and bade him be of good heart; for the enemy would never be able to stand them. For indeed they were the oldest of Philip's and Alexander's ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... appointment, very aptly characterized the relations of the new chancellor to the emperor, in contrast to the position occupied by Bismarck. "The Germany of William II.," it said, "does not admit a Titan in the position of the highest official of the Empire. A cautious and versatile diplomatist like Bernhard von Buelow appears to be best adapted to the personal and political necessities of the present situation." Count Buelow, indeed, though, like Bismarck, a "realist," utilitarian and opportunist in his policy, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... more concerned with the literary labors of this versatile and indefatigable genius. These, in the midst of his multifarious commercial and diplomatic concerns, he never intermitted. All the time the Review continued to give a brilliant support to the Ministry. The French expedition had lent a new interest to the affairs of Scotland, ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... be a very great man and to be still very inferior to Julius Caesar, the most complete character, so Lord Bacon thought, of all antiquity. Nature seems incapable of such extraordinary combinations as composed his versatile capacity, which was the wonder even of the Romans themselves. The first general—the only triumphant politician—inferior to none in eloquence—comparable to any in the attainments of wisdom, in an age made up of the greatest ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... elevation of his theme. The remark may serve to remind us of our modern disadvantage for a full appreciation of Demosthenes. The old world felt, as we do, his moral and mental greatness, his fire, his self-devotion, his insight. But it felt also, as we can never feel, the versatile perfection of his skill. This it was that made Demosthenes unique to the ancients. The ardent patriot, the far-seeing statesman, were united in his person with the consummate and unapproachable artist. Dionysius devoted two special treatises to Demosthenes,—one on his language and style ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... Eastern question which would in effect have been the work of Russia only. The more daring policy of Canning, by which Great Britain had attempted to take the lead as opportunity offered, either in active co-operation with Russia or in active opposition to her, could only be directed by a more versatile statesman than the nation now possessed. The accession to office of Wellington, though it left Dudley at the foreign office, was really marked by a return to the policy of Castlereagh, a policy which, if not brilliant, was at least honourable, consistent, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... versatile, graceful even in his singular homeliness, and peculiar insolent style of address, he yet made himself so acceptable to the family as to dare to seek the hand of the second daughter of Colonel La Vigne, and, though at ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... maphri[a]n or catholicus of the Jacobite (Monophysite) Church in the 13th century, and (in Dr. Wright's words) "one of the most learned and versatile men that Syria ever produced." Perhaps no more industrious compiler of knowledge ever lived. Simple and uncritical in his modes of thought, and apparently devoid of any striking originality, he collected in his numerous and elaborate treatises the results of such research ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... all students of ghostology are aware, has frequently been the case; and it was precisely the case with the ghost seen by the famous Lord Brougham, the brilliant and versatile Scotchman, whose astonishingly long and successful career in England as statesman, judge, lawyer, man of science, philanthropist, orator, and author won him a place among the immortals both of the Georgian and of the ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... legislature, and could not affect the fortunes of the Liberal party in Lower Canada then distinguished by the ability of A.N. Morin, P.J.O. Chauveau, R.E. Caron, E.P. Tache, and L.P. Drummond. The recognized leader of this dominant party was Morin, whose versatile knowledge, lucidity of style, and charm of manner gave him much strength in parliament. His influence, however, as I have already said, was too often weakened by an absence of energy and of the power to lead at ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... his mind, keep way with the wheels of his fortune. For so Livy (after he had described Cato Major in these words, In illo viro tantum robur corporis et animi fuit, ut quocunque loco natus esset, fortunam sibi facturus videretur) falleth upon that, that he had versatile ingenium. Therefore if a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune: for though she be blind, yet she is not invisible. The way of fortune, is like the Milken Way in the sky; which is a meeting or knot of a number of small stars; not seen ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... not appear that the Reverend Mr. Colburn remained for a long time in this school, for at the close of the session in 1866 we have a record of an exhibition in Bank Hall under the charge of T. J. Ferguson. Ferguson was a versatile character among the Negroes at that time, participating extensively in politics during the reconstruction period, and contending for the enlargement of freedom and opportunity for their race. The next ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... of Pitt's personality charmed and overawed this impressionable Irishman from the time of their first interview in the summer of 1792. Always versatile and sometimes shifty, he seems instinctively to have felt in him the needed counterpart. As the Czar Alexander leaned on the rock-like Stein in the crisis of 1812, so Canning gained strength and confidence from reliance on Pitt. He on his ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... are fluctuating and versatile, as will ever be the case where men are impelled by necessity to act in opposition to their principles. In their eagerness to attribute all the past excesses to Robespierre, they have, unawares, involved themselves in the ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... undertook the task had perhaps the keenest scientific imagination and the most versatile profundity of knowledge of his generation—one is tempted to say, of any generation. For he was none other than the extraordinary Dr. Thomas Young, the demonstrator of ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... general favourites. Even Queerface and Polly and Nelly came in for some share of the favour they enjoyed, for although neither monkeys nor parrots can be said to be scarce in Africa, their talents were so great and of so versatile a character, that their society was welcomed almost, Adair declared, as much as that of their masters. Queerface more than once, however, got into disgrace. The three midshipmen were spending the day at the house of a kind ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... Buck trying to speak the truth as God gave him to see the truth and at the same time keep his artistic, literary, financial, and dramatic talents confined within the limits of a pastor's activities. So it is that some men are too meek and too small for the professions—others too aggressive, too versatile, and too independent for the routine of professional life. Still others have decided talents which qualify them for unusual success in other vocations. If a man has unusual intellectual attainment, he either does or ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... seen it stated in one of your remarkably versatile and "Graphic" journals that I have boasted of having come here with the idea of making some money in the United States. But bless your hearts and souls, gentlemen of the Lotos Club, I assure you that I have no such idea! [Laughter.] ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... thy theme, for shrewdness famed And genius versatile, who far and wide A Wand'rer, after Ilium overthrown, Discover'd various cities, and the mind And manners learn'd of men, in lands remote. He num'rous woes on Ocean toss'd, endured, Anxious to save himself, and ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... is no place in the United States, so far as I know, where the cow is more versatile or ambidextrous, if I may be allowed the use of a term that is far above my station in life, than here in the mountains of North Carolina, where the obese 'possum and the ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... to hear this, sir: he's the head of the French Intelligence, you know. He's outside now. Shall we have him in? Miss Mackwayte shall tell her story, and you can then hear what Lambelet has to say about this versatile young dancer." ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... partner, and the pair were in constant communication. Oscar was an adept at disguises, and he had found in Cad Metti a ready scholar, and between them they had studied the art of disguise as a science and both had become very versatile and proficient. ...
— Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist - Dudie Dunne Again in the Field • Harlan Page Halsey
... Even as officially narrated by Mr. MONTAGU it was sufficiently exciting. The most curious and reassuring fact was that all the actors in the drama, abductors and rescuers alike, were Afridis. It is to be hoped that this versatile community includes a cinematograph operator, and that a film will, like the lady, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... institution, gets his pass, and returns to civil life, so they tell me, with a dangerous knowledge that he is a suckling Von Moltke, and may apply his learning when occasion offers. Given trouble, that man will be a nuisance, because he is a hideously versatile American, to begin with, as cock-sure of himself as a man can be, and with all the racial disregard for human life to back him, through any ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... hesitate to risk the favor of the queen and his own continuance in office, for the sake of what appeared to him the cause of religion and his country. On the whole, however, moderation and prudence were the governing principles of his mind and actions. The intellect of Burleigh was more versatile and acute, that of Bacon more profound; and their parts in the great drama of public life were cast accordingly: Burleigh had most of the alertness of observation, the fertility of expedient, the rapid calculation of contingencies, required in the minister ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... in good Greek "foreigners" (-barbari-); in like manner among the appellations of moneys and coins, that occur ever so frequently, there does not once appear a Roman coin. We form a strange idea of men of so great and so versatile talents as Naevius and Plautus, if we refer such things to their free choice: this strange and clumsy "exterritorial" character of Roman comedy was undoubtedly due to causes very different from aesthetic considerations. The transference of such social relations, as are uniformly delineated in ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... he had examined his mind for a short time. "I may meet with an ungraceful and objectionable death if I carry out your estimable instructions, but I shall certainly merit and receive a similar fate if I permit so renowned and versatile a person to leave without a fitting reception. In such matters a person can only trust to the intervention of good spirits; if, therefore, you will permit this unworthy individual to wear, while making the venture, the ring which he perceives upon your finger, ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... which were found in very deed somewhat later to be the infirmity of Greece as a whole, when, though its versatile gifts of intellect might constitute it the teacher of its eventual masters, it was found too incoherent politically to hold its own against Rome:—those evils of Athens, of Greece, came from an exaggerated assertion of the fluxional, flamboyant, centrifugal Ionian element in ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... underwent no change. "The development of the neo-Hebraic idiom from the ancient Hebrew," a distinguished modern ethnographer justly says, "confirms, by linguistic evidence, the plasticity, the logical acumen, the comprehensive and at the same time versatile intellectuality of the Jewish race. By the ingenious compounding of words, by investing old expressions with new meanings, and adapting the material offered by alien or related languages to its own ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... up Montaigne's 'Essais' for perusal we are presently under the spell of a feeling as though we were listening to the words of a most versatile man of the world, in whom we become more and more interested. We find in him not only an amiable representative of the upper classes, but also a man who has deeply entered into the spirit of classic antiquity. Soon he convinces us that he is honestly searching after truth; that he pursues the ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... for the greater bulk of the vegetable life of the globe; but his is a monotonous business, like the painting of miles and miles of palings: grass, grass, grass, trees, trees, trees, ad infinitum; whereas yellow leads a roving, versatile life, and is seldom called upon for such monotonous labour. The sands of Sahara are probably the only conspicuous instance of yellow thus working by the piece. It is in the quality, in the diversity of the things it ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... of the American quilt at its best is found in the "Indiana Wreath." Its pleasing design, harmonious colours, and exquisite workmanship reveal to us the quilter's art in its greatest perfection. This quilt was made by Miss E. J. Hart, a most versatile and skilful needlewoman, in 1858, as shown by the small precise figures below the large wreath. The design is exceedingly well balanced in that the entire quilt surface is uniformly covered and no ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... to Don Adriano de Arma'do, the fantastic Spaniard. He is cunning and versatile, facetious and playful.—Shakespeare, Love's Labor's ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Durant, or Henry Welles Smith as he was called in his boyhood, was born February 20, 1822, in Hanover, New Hampshire. His father, William Smith, "was a lawyer of limited means, but versatile mind and genial disposition." His mother, Harriet Fowle Smith of Watertown, Massachusetts, was one of five sisters renowned for their beauty and amiability; she was, we are told, intelligent as well as beautiful, "a great reader, and a devoted ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... Maurice Barrs' impassioned series, Les Bastions de l'Est, enjoy immense popularity, and within the last few months have appeared two volumes which fully confirm the views of their forerunners—M. Hallays' impressions of many wayfarings and Aprs quarante ans by M. Jules Claretie, the versatile, brilliant and much respected administrator-general of the ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Pacific for the benefit of my people my leading Minister had the audacity to obtrude upon my privacy at Tsarskoye Selo and demand that I withdraw the manifesto. This piece of impudence cost me the decision in that war. That magniloquent Minister, with his versatile Irish amanuensis, not only turned my mother against me, but he had the temerity to demand that I dismiss my best agent, Azeff, who alone kept me advised of the machinations of the Social Revolutionists, who, in turn, accused me of murdering my uncle Sergius—the greatest theologian of the age. ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... give us the impression of versatile ingenuity, and what is better, ingenuousness on the part ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various
... he frequently held Madame, Selina, and McIntosh spell-bound by his fairy-like descriptions and eloquent conversation. Of course, he only talked of the most general subjects to Mrs Villiers, and never by any chance let slip that he knew the seamy side of life—a side with which this versatile young gentleman was pretty well acquainted. As a worker, Gaston was decidedly a success. Being quick at figures and easily taught anything, he soon mastered all the details of the business connected with the Pactolus claim, and Madame found ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... contains a feast of fat things for the little folks, and folks who are no longer little find there lost childhood in its pages. We are not saying too much when we say that its versatile editor—Ella Farman, is more fully at home in the child's wonder-land than any other living American writer. She is thoroughly en rapport with her readers, gives them now a sugar plum of poesy, now a dainty jelly-cake ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... short of this, so no doubt did the king so greatly extolled, and much more so, probably, than the versatile Watt. ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... weft And trace the hinted texture here or there, Of that stupendous loom weaving our fates. Two parents, late in life, are haply blessed With one bright child, a wonder in his years, For loveliness and genius versatile: Some common ill destroys him; parents, both, Until their death, are left but living tombs That hold the one dead image of their joy. A man, the flower of honour, who has found His well-beloved young daughter fled from home, Fallen from her maidenhood, a nameless thing Tainting his blood. A youth ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... among the languages. There is no comparison to be instituted between his actual achievements as a builder and a versifier. The whole tenor of his life made him more competent to deal with architecture than with literature. Nevertheless, it is significant that the versatile genius of the man was henceforth restricted to these two channels of expression, and that in both of them his last twenty years of existence produced bloom and ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... he came down looking so like a chimney-sweep that Constance, whose versatile moods changed with the rapidity of lightning, flung herself on the bed in fits of laughter. The interrupted preparations were quickly resumed and completed; and when all was ready, and the boatman waiting at the Castle pier, Le Despenser went into the hall to bid farewell to his mother. She was sitting ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... it would have burst his breast; his head swam with a sort of pleasurable dizziness; his eyes were dim and suffused; and he scarce knew that he was talking, though he was indeed the life of the whole company, voluble, witty, versatile, and at times eloquent, so far as the topics of the day gave ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... guying in every direction. The placing of big, white candles upon it, however, strained the skill and self-control of the men to the last degree. If a candle prefers one set of antics to another, that set is certainly embodied in the versatile schemes for lopping over, which the wretched thing will develop on the best-behaving tree in the world. On a home-made tree the opportunities for a candle's enjoyment of this, its most diverting of accomplishments, are increased remarkably. The day was cold, but the men perspired from every ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... spent the night pretty well, though they complained of having been much disturbed at the time of high-water by the shaking and tremulous motion of their house and by the plashing noise of the sea upon the mortar gallery. Here James Glen's versatile powers were again at work in cheering up those who seemed to be alarmed, and in securing everything as far as possible. On this occasion he had only to recall to the recollections of some of them the former night which they had spent on the beacon, the wind ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a practiced writer. A very charming love romance runs through the story. This new and tasteful edition of "Nick of the Woods" will be certain to make many new admirers for this enchanting story from Dr. Bird's clever and versatile pen. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... was not of a versatile complexion. When his mind was quite made up he carried out the whole of it. But he could not now make up his mind upon either of two questions. Of these questions one was this—should he fight for ...
— Frida, or, The Lover's Leap, A Legend Of The West Country - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... the time of the Five-Years War, the Foreign Policy conducted from Washington was almost entirely Pan-American, and the Monroe Doctrine was the beginning and end of it; for even if that versatile man, President Roosevelt, was fond of extending his activities to other spheres, as, for instance, when he brought the Russo-Japanese War to an end by the Peace of Portsmouth, the Panama Canal scheme remained ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... who was now at the farm enjoying his vacation and worshipping at the shrine of the managing editor in the person of his versatile daughter, "are the most unreliable of any class in the world. So I've often been told, and I believe it. They come and go, by fits and starts, and it's a wonder the erratic rascals never put a paper out of business. But they don't. You never heard of a newspaper ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... She made it a duty to neglect no regular task, and much of her time was occupied as usual; but the feelings which she carried about to her employment, were very different from what they had been heretofore. It was her first taste of sorrow; well might her aunt deeply reproach Hazlehurst for his versatile conduct towards her beloved child. Elinor flattered herself that Miss Agnes knew not half of what she felt. In general she succeeded in being quite calm, and attentive to others; she was always sweet-tempered, and unrepining. But she could not read, herself, the expression of her ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... that as an orator "Beecher and Chapin were his only competitors. He was the admirer and friend of both, and both repaid his affection and his esteem. He had the superior charm of youth and novelty, with a nature more varied, and more versatile faculties and endowments than either. He had a far more artistic and formative nature and genius. His thoughts ran ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... or the only alternative will happen, the loss of our own liberties and the forfeiture of our national office as the leader of Progress combined with Order, on the planet. We have to deal with an implacable, a subtle, and a versatile enemy, wholly committed to the opposite cause; unscrupulous, inappreciative of magnanimity or concession of any kind; restrained by no considerations whatsoever short of the accomplishment of his absolute and tyrannical will. We have this enemy nearly prostrate under our feet, and we stand hesitating ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... is that versatile officer's own sketch of a man with whom he soldiered on one of his campaigns: "He has all the qualifications that go to make an officer above the ruck of them. Endowed with all the dash, pluck, and attractive force that make a born leader ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... tables thus turned on myself, and not willing to give Mr. Peac—any clew to poor Vivian (who thus appeared, to my great satisfaction, to have finally dropped an acquaintance more versatile than reputable), I contrived, by a few evasive sentences, to keep Mr. Peac—'s curiosity at a distance till he was summoned in haste to change his attire for the domestic drama. And so ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... before. He went abroad, as he affirmed at the time, "for purposes of study," whereat we all smiled, for Ken, so far as we knew him, was more likely to do anything else than to study. He was a young fellow of buoyant temperament, lively and social in his habits, of a brilliant and versatile mind, and possessing an income of twelve or fifteen thousand dollars a year; he could sing, play, scribble, and paint very cleverly, and some of his heads and figure- pieces were really well done, considering that he ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... most famous of living tenors, after Caruso, whom Mr. Conried thought it wise to carry over to the Metropolitan Opera House, thus precipitating a controversy, which, as such things go, was of real assistance to the manager whom the rival sought to injure; Maurice Renaud, the most finished and versatile of French operatic artists, whom the foresight of Maurice Grau had retained for the Metropolitan, but whose contract Mr. Conried canceled at the cost of a penalty; M. Charles Dalmors, a sterling dramatic ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... but with unkempt hair and with disconsolate side-whisker. He was not quite used to that side-whisker yet, for it had only recently come within the margin of cultivation. In active service Grodman had been clean-shaven, like all members of the profession—for surely your detective is the most versatile of actors. Mrs. Drabdump closed the street door quietly, and pointed to the stairs, fear operating like a polite desire to give him precedence. Grodman ascended, amusement still glimmering in his eyes. Arrived on the landing he knocked peremptorily at the ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... ERVINE is a versatile author who exhibits that unevenness of quality which is generally the besetting sin of versatile authors. When he is good he is very good indeed, and in The Foolish Lovers (COLLINS) he is at his best. The Ulsterman is seldom either a lovable or an interesting character. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... middle year of the nineteenth century, and fated unfortunately never to see its close, Guy de Maupassant was probably the most versatile and brilliant among the galaxy of novelists who enriched French literature between the years 1800 and 1900. Poetry, drama, prose of short and sustained effort, and volumes of travel and description, each sparkling with the same minuteness ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... among those who lead the normal type of life, that the abstinent and chastely celibate are exceptionally healthy, energetic, immune. The wildest claims are made. But indeed it is true for all who can see the facts of life simply and plainly, that man is an omnivorous, versatile, various creature and can draw his strength from a hundred varieties of nourishment. He has physiological idiosyncrasies too that are indifferent to biological classifications and moral generalities. It is not true that his absorbent vessels begin their task as children ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... reign was the establishment of the "Manufacture des Meubles de la Couronne," or, as it is usually called, "Manufacture des Gobelins." Artists of all kinds were gathered together and given apartments in the Louvre and the wonderfully gifted and versatile Le Brun was put at the head. Tapestry, goldsmiths' work, furniture, jewelry, etc., were made, and with the royal protection and interest France rose to the position of world-wide supremacy in the arts. Le Brun had the same ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... "O thrice-versatile Chou-hu!" exclaimed Tsae-che, whose eyes had reflected an ever-increasing sparkle of admiration as Yan unfolded the details of his scheme, "how insignificant are the minds of others compared with yours! Assuredly you have ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... vexation, and a little shame that he should have so easily surprised her secret; though, indeed, she preferred that Tinker should have discovered it rather than anyone else in the world. Then her sure knowledge of his discretion eased her anxiety, and the consideration of his able imagination and versatile ingenuity set a new and strong hope springing up ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... that versatile little book of short stories, "The Lower Bureau Drawer" is Emma Upton Vaughn, a Kansas City, Kansas teacher. These heart stories, showing keen insight of human nature—especially woman nature—deal with every day ...
— Kansas Women in Literature • Nettie Garmer Barker
... is so industrious, so changeable, and so versatile, as to be able to make himself like and adapt himself to many different persons, and not to laugh at the advice of Theognis, "Imitate the ingenuity of the polypus, that takes the colour of whatever stone it sticks to."[345] And yet the changes in ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... bride before she left her father's home. The son of a Pisan sculptor who had settled in Rome, Cristoforo's genius had attracted attention when he was quite a boy, and he had been sent to Milan by Cardinal Ascanio Sforza. The young Roman master was one of those brilliant and versatile artists who especially commended themselves to Lodovico. He sang and played the lute admirably, while his literary tastes made him the intimate friend of Bembo and Castiglione, and a great favourite with the cultured princesses of Mantua and Urbino. ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... take the poets' word for me—those low And scurvy fellows who lump all their spleen And call the mess my portrait! But in fact, I am more versatile, more broad, more kind Than they conceive. I venture to believe That I ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... Augustine united; a kind of Protestant pope, to whom everybody looks for advice and consolation. What a wonderful man! No wonder the Germans are so fond of him and so proud of him,—a Briareus with a hundred arms; a marvel, a wonder, a prodigy of nature; the most gifted, versatile, hard-working man of his ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... evaporation of Dr. Fortescue-Langley (with whom were amalgamated the Comte de Laroche-sur-Loiret, Mr. Higginson the courier, and whatever else that versatile gentleman chose to call himself) entailed ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
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