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More "Prodigy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fall and rot unnoticed, like the leaves of the forest? Degraded, superstitious, many of them still are. But they need only to be organized and directed to do untold mischief. More than once already has a similar catastrophe occurred. Some prodigy of skill and genius has seized such enormous forces, given them discipline and coherency and hurled them like a thunderbolt upon Christendom. Sometimes the shock has been frightful, and before it the proudest of empires and the stateliest of ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... the botany, or what not, the moment you have reason to think the hour is ripe. The hour may not last long, and while it continues you may safely let all the child's other occupations take a second place. In this way you economize time and deepen skill; for many an infant prodigy, artistic or mathematical, has a flowering epoch ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... never discredited their position with weaknesses. They were, so to speak, hermits of their religion, and were held in high esteem. And in fact the constancy of their life and modesty of their customs, obliged one to have respect for them. In a nation so barbarous and who knew not God, it appears a prodigy worthy of wonder that one of the special providences of His Divine Majesty, to place such examples of virtue in a country where vice had absolute control, so that the experience of the eyes causes ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... limestone rock, and is twice again swallowed up by the earth before it makes its final appearance and is lost in the Save. The Zirknitz See or Lake is a mass of water entirely filled and emptied by subterraneous sources, and its natural history, though singular, has in it nothing of either prodigy, mystery, or wonder. The Grotto of the Maddalena at Adelsberg occupied more of our attention than the Zirknitz See. I shall give the conversation that took place in that extraordinary cavern entire, as well as I can remember it, in the ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... individually considered."—Ib. So much, then, for "the pronoun EVERY!" But, without other exceptions, what shall be done with the following texts from Murray himself? "The flock, and not the fleece, is, or ought to be the object of the shepherd's care."—Ib., ii, 184. "This prodigy of learning, this scholar, critic, and antiquary, was entirely destitute of breeding and civility."—Ib., ii, 217. And, in the following line, what conjunction appears, or what is the difference between "horror" and "black despair." that ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Clouds. He so warmed and animated the People against this monstrous Ornament, that it lay under a kind of Persecution; and whenever it appeared in publick was pelted down by the Rabble, who flung Stones at the Persons that wore it. But notwithstanding this Prodigy vanished, while the Preacher was among them, it began to appear again some Months after his Departure, or to tell it in Monsieur ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... mouth quirked in a sudden smile. "You look as if you expected pearls to pop out of my mouth, son. And, by the way, if you're going to a concert this evening don't you think it would be a good idea to squander an hour on study this afternoon? You may be a musical prodigy, but geometry's geometry." ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... Dryden. page 260 13.—Lope Felix de Vega Carpio (1562-1635) was the most fertile playwright ever known to the world. Alone he created the Spanish drama almost out of nothing. Born at Madrid, where he spent most of his life, Lope was an infant prodigy who fulfilled the promise of his youth. His first play was written at the age of thirteen. He fought against the Portuguese in the expedition of 1583 and took part in the disastrous Armada of 1588. His life was marked ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... this, whatever else it may be, involves a special excellence of the auditory path within the brain, rather than any unusual development of the essential parts of the ear. The individual who is a musical prodigy has, without question, a more perfect connection established between his auditory apparatus, in the widest sense of the word, and those muscular mechanisms employed in the execution of music, whether vocal ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... the sultan's cook had cleaned the fish, she put them upon the fire in a frying-pan, with oil, and when she thought them fried enough on one side, she turned them upon the other; but, O monstrous prodigy! scarcely were they turned, when the wall of the kitchen divided, and a young lady of wonderful beauty entered from the opening. She held a rod in her hand and was clad in flowered satin, with pendants in her ears, a necklace of large pearls, and bracelets ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... of it printed for Hogg, Paternoster-row, the trunk or main stem of this tree has been sixty-six feet, and some of the branches twelve feet, in circumference. The age of this prodigy of the forest cannot be ascertained with any degree of precision. The oak viewed by the present King, in Oxfordshire, and some years ago felled in the domains of one of the Colleges, though only twenty-five ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... Cassel about 1714, sad and discouraged; and the man to whom we owe that prodigy, the steam engine, that instrument of universal welfare and riches, disappeared without leaving any trace ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... prodigy plays cards; that is, such as we ladies play?" asked Mary. "You say he has lived much in France, where the game was invented, but I have no doubt he would scorn to waste his time at so frivolous a pursuit, when he might be ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... lords of the ruined stead, ii. 181. Stay! grant one parting look before we part, ii. 15. Steer ye your steps to none but me, v. 65. Still cleaves to this homestead mine ecstasy, viii. 243. Stint ye this blame viii. 254. Straitened bosom; reveries dispread, iii. 182. Strange is my story, passing prodigy, iv. 139 Strange is the charm which dights her brows like Luna's disk that shine, ii. 3. Strive he to cure his case, to hide the truth, ii. 320. Such is the world, so bear a patient heart, i. 183. Suffer mine eye-babes weep lost of love and tears express, viii. 112. Suffice thee death ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... gait, his eyes, his lineaments entire: It was himself. He walked beside the high-priest: But soon they caused him to avoid my sight. This is the trouble that arrests me here, And touching which I long to question both. Mathan, what does this prodigy forebode? ...
— Athaliah • J. Donkersley
... "Life of Sir William Rowan Hamilton" a series of letters will be found, in which Aunt Sydney details the progress of the boy to his mother in Dublin. Probably there is no record of an infant prodigy more extraordinary than that which these letters contain. At three years old his aunt assured the mother that William is "a hopeful blade," but at that time it was his physical vigour to which she apparently referred; for the proofs of his capacity, which she adduces, related ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... not be a prodigy of physical strength. He may or may not be a tower of mental energy. But so long as this old world stands the man with an overpowering desire for all that is best for the race to be in the race, whose life is in tune with the divine and with the good that is within us all, whether he ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... reiterating, in a stifled tone, the words, "I burn." The next time that he prayed there the same words assailed his ears. "I burn" was repeated again and again, and no word beside. He applied to the chief of the Imams to know what this prodigy might mean; and was informed in reply, that his father, though a great man, had also been, unfortunately, a great reformer, and that as such it was too much to be feared that he had a terrible penance to undergo in the other world. The Sultan sent for his brother-in-law ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... Light satire, wit, and harmless joy, And leave us dungeons, chains and blood. Swift they disperse, and with them go, Mild Otway, sentimental Rowe; Congreve averts the indignant eye, And Shakespeare mourns to view the exotic prodigy. ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... heroic, but simple and unskilful, against the same spirit disciplined and persevering. Few nations show in their annals so beautiful a page as that last Gaulish war, written nevertheless by an enemy. Every effort of heroism, every prodigy of valour, which the love of liberty and of country ever produced, there displayed themselves in spite of a thousand contrary and fatal passions: discords between the cities, discords in the cities, enterprises of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... senses, and thoroughly competent to take his part in the battle of life. Far be it from imagining that I decry the advantages of learning in the slightest degree, but surely there is the broadest distinction between a scholastic prodigy and a ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... Not only over his associates, but His judges, was attributed to witchcraft, Such was his influence:—I have no great faith 250 In any magic save that of the mine— I therefore deemed him wealthy.—But my soul Was roused with various feelings to seek out This prodigy, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... that marvellous prodigy, that walking cyclopaedia, Lord St. Eval, has absolutely deserted us, to bury himself in Italy or Switzerland. Miss Hamilton, can you explain so wonderful and puzzling an enigma?" mischievously demanded ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... he could talk plainly the little fellow showed himself to be a musical prodigy, and when he was scarcely three years old he would steal into the room where his father was giving a lesson on the harpsichord to Anna (or "Nannerl," as she was called), the sister five years older than himself, and while she was being taught, Wolfgang would ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... hollands, to one little room at the end of the dusky suite, where Lady Clara sate alone, or in the company of the nurses and children. The blank gloom of the place had fallen upon the poor lady. Even when my wife talked about children (good-natured Madame de Moncontour vaunting ours as a prodigy) Lady Clara did not brighten up! Her pair of young ones was exhibited and withdrawn. A something weighed upon the woman. We talked about Ethel's marriage. She said it was fixed for the new year, she believed. She did not know whether Glenlivat had been very ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... river," he said as he looked at the flood, "this is certainly the infant prodigy. Well, ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... life in the United States. He was not the only musical genius that we had among us. There was a little girl at one of the tents who had taught herself to play on the accordion on the way out. She was really quite a prodigy, singing very sweetly, and accompanying herself with ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... beam with a celestial brightness, which undoubtedly announced the beatitude her soul was enjoying. Sister St. Ange, for whom the Foundress had offered her life, and who was then in perfect health, on witnessing the extraordinary prodigy, took the name of Sister of the Blessed Sacrament, which had been the community appellation of Sister Bourgeois ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... matter—father, mother and sister joined hands to make the pale, handsome boy a prodigy of learning: one that would surprise the world and leave ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... to the old colonel like a chick to its hen. You see, there aren't so very many Latinists in town during the hot weather. Perhaps eighteen or twenty in all came from about here and from Washington to see the prodigy in 'the Park of the Boar,' after the advertisement appeared. He wouldn't have anything to do with any of us. Pretended he didn't understand our kind of Latin. I offered him a place, myself, at a wage of more denarii than I could well afford. I wanted ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... This prodigy of learning and philosophy went into Court, took the stand, and declared his opinion in favor of the reality of witchcraft, entered into a particular discussion of the subject before the jury, threw the whole weight of his great name into the wavering ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... settled back, coolly resigned to fate. How she must suffer, after having stooped to ask for aid! Poor Robbie Belle! Poor, lonely, disappointed Robbie Belle! For strange to say she flunked too and the question journeyed on triumphantly to the mathematical prodigy at the end of ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... screech-owl voice, my hideous form, and my mis-shapen features, to do with the fairer workmanship of nature? Do not men receive even my benefits with shrinking horror and ill-suppressed disgust? And why should I interest myself in a race which accounts me a prodigy and an outcast, and which has treated me as such? No; by all the ingratitude which I have reaped—by all the wrongs which I have sustained—by my imprisonment, my stripes, my chains, I will wrestle down my feelings of rebellious humanity! I will not be ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... must give way before it. His frown was a thing perfectly intelligible, but to witness his smile, or rather his effort at one, was to witness an unnatural phenomenon of the most awful kind, and little short of a prodigy. If one could suppose the sun giving a melancholy and lugubrious grin through the darkness of a total eclipse, they might form some conception of the jocular solemnity which threw its deep but comic shadow over his visage. One ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... borrow their learning, as being foreign to their views of trade and commerce. Eloquence, poetry, history, seem to have been little known among them. A Carthaginian philosopher was considered as a sort of prodigy by the learned. What then would an astronomer or a geometrician have been thought? I know not in what esteem physic, which is so highly useful to life, was held at Carthage; or jurisprudence, so necessary ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... safety, and of wealth, united in a single spot, was sufficient to justify the choice of Constantine. But as some decent mixture of prodigy and fable has, in every age, been supposed to reflect a becoming majesty on the origin of great cities, the emperor was desirous of ascribing his resolution, not so much to the uncertain counsels of human policy, as to the infallible ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... Man who reared flocks, brought forth lambs with human heads. Dreadfully alarmed at the prodigy, he runs full of concern to the soothsayers. One answers that it bears reference to the life of the owner, and that the danger must be averted with a victim. Another, no wiser, affirms that it is meant that his wife is an adultress, ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... stage ensconced in a comfortable chair; and then there was a burst of music around me, which gave me leisure to look about and take stock. It was all very nice. There was a great group of fine ladies in front, and they were all staring at me as if I were a dime-museum prodigy. I was "Gorgonized from head to foot with a stony, British stare"; a cool, unblushing, calculating stare, that made me feel as if I were turning into stone. I did not know what to do. I tried to cross my legs coolly, but the arm-chair was too low, and I fell back in a ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... kept watch in the temple came hereupon running to the captain of the temple, and told him of it; who then came up thither, and not without great difficulty was able to shut the gate again. This also appeared to the vulgar to be a very happy prodigy, as if God did thereby open them the gate of happiness. But the men of learning understood it, that the security of their holy house was dissolved of its own accord, and that the gate was opened for the advantage of their enemies. So these publicly declared that the signal foreshowed ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... praying God for annihilation until the fit be passed; and at last amid the whirl of woe he feels, a deep stupor steals over him, as over the man who bleeds to death, for conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it; so, after sore wrestlings in his berth, Jonah's prodigy of ponderous misery drags him drowning down to sleep. And now the time of tide has come; the ship casts off her cables; and from the deserted wharf the uncheered ship for Tarshish, all careening, glides to sea. That ship, my friends, was the first of recorded smugglers! ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... taught the people nothing else, they at least taught them to read their native tongue; and their object in this was to spread the knowledge of the Bible, and thus make the people good Protestants. But in those days a man who could read was regarded as a prodigy of learning. The result was widespread alarm. As the report gained ground that among the Brethren the humblest people could read as well as the priest, the good folk in Bohemia felt compelled to concoct some explanation, and the only explanation ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... this point, a stir was made, a rustling of silks was heard, and the way opened for a young prodigy in music, considered by his parents to be the wonder of the nineteenth century; one of those abstracted individuals who seem to live apart from the multitude, speaking to no one, save in monosyllables, and walking ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... Casket containing all things delightful; to the Elixir of Virtue, of Grace, and of Beauty; to the Gem, to the Prodigy of all Normandy; to the Pearl of the Bayeux; to the Fairy of St. Laurence; to the Madonna of the Rue Teinture; to the Guardian Angel of Caen, to the Goddess of Enchanting Spells; to the Treasury of ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... deficerent si omnia vellem percurrere, multa quldem impura et impudica quae memorare nefas, recitavit. Nor is this youth, it seems, a monster or prodigy in the age he lives; on the contrary, I am told he is an exemplar only of ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... since we see That miracles men's faith do move By wonder, and by prodigy; To the dull angry world lets prove There's a ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... Camford, supplied the majority of the candidates, and Julian, Owen, and Kennedy were all three mentioned as likely to be first; but the rival ranks of Saint Margaret's boasted their champions also, and almost every small college nursed some prodigy of its own, for which it vehemently predicted an easy ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... same time to the great qualities whence that authority arose. The subject is instructive to those who wish to form themselves on whatever of excellence has gone before them. There are many young members in the house (such of late has been the rapid succession of public men) who never saw that prodigy, Charles Townshend; nor of course know what a ferment he was able to excite in everything by the violent ebullition of his mixed virtues and failings. For failings he had undoubtedly—many of us remember them; we are this day considering the effect ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... the concert platform The prodigy appears I do not grudge his welcome, The clappings and the cheers; But I can't forgive the people Who down our throats would cram The novelists from the nursery, The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... who affect to treat the dangers of a longer continuance in our present situation as imaginary. A NATION, without a NATIONAL GOVERNMENT, is, in my view, an awful spectacle. The establishment of a Constitution, in time of profound peace, by the voluntary consent of a whole people, is a PRODIGY, to the completion of which I look forward with trembling anxiety. I can reconcile it to no rules of prudence to let go the hold we now have, in so arduous an enterprise, upon seven out of the thirteen States, and after having passed over so considerable a part of the ground, to recommence the course. ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... upon one. All faces were turned toward the door; and one could properly expect that, for most of the people there suddenly realized, no doubt, that they were about to see, in actual flesh and blood, what had been to them before only an embodied prodigy, a word, ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... empty to readers: in fact, nobody knows on what paltriest of moors a memorable thing will not happen;—here, for instance, is withal the Birthplace of that Rhyming miracle, Frau Karsch (Karschin, KarchESS as they call her), the Berlin literary Prodigy, to whom Friedrich was not so flush of help as had been expected. The child of utterly poor Peasants there; whose poverty, shining out as thrift, unweariable industry and stoical valor, is beautiful to me, still more their ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... poet, dramatist, essayist, lexicographer, dogmatist, and critic, and, in this array of professional characters, played so distinguished a part in his day that he was long regarded as a prodigy in English literature. His influence has waned since his personality has grown dim, and his learning been superseded or overshadowed; but he still remains, and must always remain, the most prominent literary ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... had never been conscious what stuff there was in Carl, so he had never known how much he really loved, admired, and relied upon him. He stood staring at him there in the moonlight as if he then for the first time perceived what a little prodigy he was. ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... passages, and have sometimes abandoned the attempt in despair. Not a few of the pieces in the last edition of Dodsley come within this category; and we may signalise the unique tragedy of Appius and Virginia, 1575, as a prodigy of negligent and ignorant execution on the part of the original compositor. But to the same cause is due our still remaining uncertainty as to the true reading of ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... the circle of smaller slaves, gives loose to his worst passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, can not but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy, who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances." Such is the practical operation of a system, which puts men and cattle into the same family and treats them alike. And must we prove, that Jesus Christ is not in favor of a school ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... sensible woman or an original idea, so far, on the block. I wouldn't budge an inch farther, but for Quigg's promise to introduce me to a young widow who lives next door—a regular prodigy of science and art, according to his story. I think you said ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... and would be glad to leave inflammations and gangrene behind him. When I think on one, with his confederates, I remember the danger of Coriolanus, who was afraid that girls with spits, and boys with stones, should slay him in puny battle; when the other crosses my imagination, I remember the prodigy ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... soul, for body is only its other ego. Not only is all muscle culture at the same time brain-building, but a book-worm with soft hands, tender feet, and tough rump from much sitting, or an anemic girl prodigy, "in the morning hectic, in the evening electric," is a monster. Play at its best is only a school of ethics. It gives not only strength but courage and confidence, tends to simplify life and habits, gives energy, decision, and promptness to the will, brings consolation ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... attempting "The Soldier Tired" and "Di piacer," it really was pitiful. We gave her plenty of kind words and compliments, and sundry pieces of advice to him, which he will not take, and in a few months no doubt we shall hear of little Miss H—— singing away as a prodigy, and in a few years the voice, health, and strength will all be gone, and probably the poor little life itself have been worn out of its fragile case. Stupid barbarian! After rehearsal drove to Bannisters.... In the evening, at the theater, the play was "The Provoked ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... counted as a kind of riches of the soul. Or, if you shall so prefer to choose, a new province of knowledge and new avenues to fame and power shall be laid open to you, here, in this room, upon the instant; and your sight shall be blasted by a prodigy to stagger the unbelief ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... remote and ancient relics, which cannot be proved by any human testimony, must be admitted by those who believe in the miracles which they have performed. About the middle of the last age, an inveterate ulcer was touched and cured by a holy prickle of the holy crown: [53] the prodigy is attested by the most pious and enlightened Christians of France; nor will the fact be easily disproved, except by those who are armed with a general ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... textbooks in use at Trinity. When Isaac heard lectures on Sanderson he found he knew the book a deal better than the tutor, a thing the tutor shortly acknowledged before the class. This caused young Mr. Newton to stand out as a prodigy. Usually students have to rap for admittance to the higher classes, but now the teachers came and sought him out. One professor told him he was about to take up Kepler's Optics with some post-graduate students—would young Mr. Newton come in? Isaac begged to be excused ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... no marvel, when art is a brief truancy from rational practice, that the artist himself should be a vagrant, and at best, as it were, an infant prodigy. The wings of genius serve him only for an escapade, enabling him to skirt the perilous edge of madness and of mystical abysses. But such an erratic workman does not deserve the name of artist or master; ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... obligingly confided these particulars to Nicholas, left him to mingle with his fellows; the work of personal introduction was completed by Mr Vincent Crummles, who publicly heralded the new actor as a prodigy of genius ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... the Defaults of Nature by the Industry of Art; he accordingly makes the greatest Provision for their Breeding and Education, which prov'd so effectual in a little Time, that their Progress was a greater Prodigy than themselves. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... that the birth place of benevolence and piety is more illustrious than the birthplace of genius and philosophy. On this principle we look with admiration upon the town of Joppa, which, if it cannot boast a prodigy of valour, talent, or learning, is nevertheless conspicuous as the residence of one "of whom the world was not worthy." She was not, indeed, rich in wealth, but in good works. She was not a conqueror of nations or a distributor of crowns, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... mustn't think I want to make a prodigy of her or an image of myself. I don't want to be it procurer for my daughter and educate her exclusively for matrimony, for then if she were left unmarried she might have bitter days. On the other hand, I don't ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg
... projected by a Scotch theorist in 1691 (William III.), after many migrations, settled down in Threadneedle Street in 1734. It has a history of its own, and we shall see during the Gordon Riots the old pewter inkstands melted down for bullets, and, prodigy of prodigies! Wilkes himself rushing out ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Soon as her beak had burst through wind-rackt spaces of ocean, While th'oar-tortured wave with spumy whiteness was blanching, Surged from the deep abyss and hoar-capped billows the faces Seaborn, Nereids eyeing the prodigy wonder-smitten. 15 There too mortal orbs through softened spendours regarded Ocean-nymphs who exposed bodies denuded of raiment Bare to the breast upthrust from hoar froth capping the sea-depths. Then Thetis Peleus fired (men say) a-sudden with love-lowe, Then Thetis nowise spurned to ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... family what he had learned. This practice he does not recommend. "The teaching, I am sure, is very inefficient as teaching, and I well know that the relation between teacher and taught is not a good moral discipline to either." By the time this prodigy of intellect and industry reached the age of fourteen he had studied the following formidable list: Virgil, Horace, Phaedrus, Livy, Sallust, the Metamorphoses, Terence, Cicero, Homer, Thucydides, the Hellenica, Demosthenes, AEschines, Lysias, Theocritus, ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... the floor. After they had mutually promised to conceal what they had seen, they again closed the Tower, and blocked up the gate of the Cavern with earth, that no memory might remain in the world of such a portentous and evil-boding prodigy. The ensuing midnight, they heard great cries and clamour from the Cave, resounding like the noise of Battle, and the ground shaking with a tremendous roar; the whole edifice of the old Tower fell to the ground, by which they were greatly affrighted, the Vision which they had beheld appearing ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... to which I was conducted in state that evening was not an imposing habitation. It boasted of only three rooms, and just as many occupants. George, the hero of the occasion, was the son of its humble owner and his wife, and, as will have been gathered, had turned out a prodigy. From his earliest days he had displayed a remarkable aptitude for study. Having once learned to read at the village school, he became insatiable after books, and devoured all that came ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... of noble ancestors. The great peculiarity of his youth was his precocity. He was an intellectual prodigy,—like Pitt, Macaulay, and Mill. Like them, he had a wonderful memory. He early mastered the Greek language; he wrote poetry, studied under eminent professors, frequented the Forum, listened to the speeches of different orators, watched the posture and gestures of actors, and plunged into ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... mean anything, they portend, I humbly submit, a somewhat mysterious and mythical denouement to this very age, and to those struggles of it which I have herein attempted, clumsily enough, to sketch. We are entering fast, I both hope and fear, into the region of prodigy, true and false; and our great-grandchildren will look back on the latter half of this century, and ask, if it were possible that such things could happen in an organised planet? The Benthamites will receive this announcement, if it ever meets their eyes, with shouts of laughter. Be it ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... the new Spanish masters of Naples. The poet-politician therefore took up his abode at Rome, whilst his wife and two young children continued to reside at Naples and Sorrento. The boy was a born student, almost an infant prodigy of learning, and so great was his desire for knowledge that he would insist upon rising long before it was day-light, and would even make his way to school through the dark dirty streets of Naples, conducted by a servant with a torch ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... the hearts of the Natchez. A child is born to them of the race of their Suns. A boy is born with a beard on his chin. The prodigy still works on from generation to generation.' So sang the warriors of my tribe when I sprang from my mother's womb, and the shrill cry of the eagle, in the heavens, was heard in joyful response. Hardly fifteen summers had passed over my head when ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... 'Daisy of the Glen,'" was the reply. "She is a prodigy for her age. Her history is a little singular. She was found not far from here in a wild glen, or ravine, when about three years old, and has never been able to tell who or where her parents are. But I will relate the circumstances to you at another time. ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... about him. Benen, however, was put into the dry part, with the druid's tunic about him. The house was afterwards closed and fastened on the outside, before the multitude, and fire was applied to it. A great prodigy occurred there through Patrick's prayers. The fresh part of the house was burned, as well as the druid under the casula, and not a bit of the casula was destroyed. The dry portion, in which was Benen, however, was not burned, and God ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... a prodigy, and seems to feel contempt for his elder son, Joel, who as he expressed it, 'ain't intellectooal like Timotheus,' and Joel usually retaliates by saying, 'It's lucky one son er the Simpkins family has got jest ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... long as possible, and when he cannot prevent longer an inversion of this position, retains him at creeping as long as is in his power, is as much wiser, in comparison with him who urges him forward to make a prodigy of him, as he is who, instead of making his child a prodigy in mind or morals at premature age, holds him back, and endeavors to have his mental and moral nature developed no ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... was intolerable. I was glad enough to reach Tennessee and old Kentucky. The people of Frankfort treated me very handsomely, as did those of Lexington. I paid my respects to the local idol, the young Virginia orator and rising lawyer, Henry Clay. That man is a prodigy—he will make his mark. I wish he were hand in hand with us, like Jackson, and ready to embark his fortune ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... suddenly much fonder of the boy and more inclined to see in him the possibility of genius. But he was aware of apprehension as to the relations forming between his son and Mimi. That girl appeared to be establishing an empire over the great youthful prodigy of finance. Was this desirable?... No, that was not the question. The question was: Would Eve regard it as desirable? He could never explain to his wife how deeply he had been touched by Mimi's mad solicitude for the slumber of Charlie's father. And even if ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... began the exercise of their power with singular forbearance, and each grew into a prodigy of cruelty. So averse was Caligula to bloodshed, that he refused to look at a list of conspirators against his own life, which was handed to him; yet afterwards, a more cruel wretch never wielded a sceptre. In his thirst for slaughter, he wished all the necks in Rome one, that he might cut them ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... freedom, without having learned anything more than to read and write, having acquired by herself, later, while assisting her uncle, a vast fund of information. But there had been no plan settled upon between them. He had not wished to make her a prodigy; she had merely conceived a passion for natural history, which revealed to her the mysteries of life. And she had kept her innocence unsullied like a fruit which no hand has touched, thanks, no doubt, to her unconscious and religious ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... a miracle, a prodigy! To see a woman weep is as much pity As to see foxes digg'd out of their holes. If thou wilt pleasure me, let me see thee less; Grieve much; they say grief often shortens life: Come not too near me, till I call thee, wife; And that will be but seldom. I will tell thee, How thou shalt ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... has a far greater affinity to the Spanish than to the Tuscan, and there are likewise, a great many Greek words in it. When one takes into consideration the extreme ignorance that prevails among the Neapolitans in general, one is astonished that such a prodigy of genius as Filangieri could have sprung up among them. What talent, application, deep research and judgment were united in that illustrious man! And yet there are many Neapolitans of rank who have never heard ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... stupendous miracles. Miracle, from miraculum, a wonder, a prodigy. "A miracle," says Horne, "is a sensible suspension or controlment of, or deviation from, the known laws of nature." It is a signal act of Divine Omnipotence, that which no other being but God can do. Miracles flow from Divine power, and are the proper evidence of a Divine mission. The reality ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... thinking of dinner! Hark ye, landlord; how far is it to young Melnotte's cottage? I should like to see such a prodigy. ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... multiply, and he understands the relation of numbers to each other, their properties, and because of his superior sense in this direction he becomes a "lightning calculator" and is regarded as a mathematical prodigy. There are others who have this sense deficient, but they may be superior in development to the mathematical prodigy ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... pupil was great, and he was fain to run off to call his mother to see the performances of their prodigy, but Jan was too impatient ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... that is to say five ages, during which the two kings and their family scarcely found energy to breathe after so terrible a shock. D'Artagnan, leaning against the wall, in front of Fouquet, with his hand to his brow, asked himself the cause of such a wonderful prodigy. He could not have said at once why he doubted, but he knew assuredly that he had reason to doubt, and that in this meeting of the two Louis XIV.s lay all the doubt and difficulty that during late days had rendered the conduct of Aramis so suspicious to the musketeer. These ideas ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Gazette illustration on the wall. For half an hour he had been steadily regarding it, and for half an hour I had been slyly watching him. Something was going on in that mind of his, and, whatever it was, I knew it was well worth knowing. He had lived life, and seen things, and performed that prodigy of prodigies, namely, the turning of his back upon his own people, and, in so far as it was possible for an Indian, becoming a white man even in his mental processes. As he phrased it himself, he had come into the warm, sat among us, by our fires, and become one of us. He had never learned ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... even though it were in death, Our bodies burning in one funeral pile, The prodigy of Thebes would be renewed, And my divided ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... as far as circumstances permitted, his instructor in literature and painting. The younger brother inherited his father's taste for music, and was a quiet, thoughtful child, passionately attached to Richard, on whom he looked as a prodigy of learning and talent. Nothing, in fact, could be more touching than the attachment of these two brothers: at their leisure hours they were always to be seen together; their pleasures ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... Lionel's admiration, Marian complied; and though, of course, no great cricketer, her skill was sufficient to make her a prodigy in their eyes. But the game was brought to a sudden conclusion by Miss Morley, who, seeing them from the window, came out very much shocked, and gave the girls a lecture on decorum, which Marian ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... All-gracious; how can a man really believe thus of Him, and yet make free with Him? it is almost a contradiction in terms. Hence even heathen religions have ever considered faith and reverence identical. To believe, and not to revere, to worship familiarly, and at one's ease, is an anomaly and a prodigy unknown even to false religions, to say nothing of the true one. Not only the Jewish and Christian religions, which are directly from God, inculcate the spirit of "reverence and godly fear," but those other religions which have existed, or exist, whether ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... carrier fell to whistling with fresh zest; and if (now and again) he glanced at the companion of his drive, it was with mingled feelings of triumph and alarm—triumph because he had succeeded in arresting that prodigy of speech, and alarm lest (by any accident) it should begin again. Even the shower, which presently overtook and passed them, was endured by both in silence; and it was still in silence that they drove ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... distinguished violinist, born near Presburg, in Hungary; famous as a youthful prodigy; was encouraged by Mendelssohn; has visited London every year since 1844, and has been principal leader in the Monday and Saturday Popular Concerts from the first, and became head of the Academy of Music at ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... his reply, furiously attacks the fools who, calling reason to their aid, dare call for an account from God why he condemns or predestines to damnation innocent beings before they have even seen the light. Truly, Luther, in the eyes of all God's creatures, must appear a prodigy of daring when he ventures to maintain that no one can reach heaven unless he adopts the slavery of the human will. And it is not merely by the spirit of disputation, but by settled conviction, that he defends this most odious of all ideas. He lived and died teaching that horrible ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... considered as the generals and magistrates of the Republic, their wives and mothers, although dignified by the name of Augusta, were never associated to their personal honors; and a female reign would have appeared an inexplicable prodigy in the eyes of those primitive Romans, who married without love, or loved without ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... career of a prodigy there invariably comes a time when it is compelled to relinquish being very clever for a child, and has to enter the business of life ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... polished black walnut decks, and in and out the intricacies of the rigging? Who is it? well may be asked. What name is it that blanches with terror the cheeks of the Patagonian navy? Who but the Pirate Prodigy—the relentless Boy Scourer of Patagonian seas? Voyagers slowly drifting by the Silurian beach, coasters along the Devonian shore, still shudder at the name of Bromley Chitterlings—the Boy Avenger, ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... a head hanging in the air, with nobody to hold it. This prodigy astonished her so that she could not tell what to think of it; but her amazement was increased when she saw the head laid at her feet, and heard a voice utter ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... hind,[28] which left the forest and, contrary to their shy nature, came quietly onward, traversing the village towards the dwelling of Thomas. The prophet instantly rose from the board; and, acknowledging the prodigy as the summons of his fate, he accompanied the hart and hind into the forest, and though occasionally seen by individuals to whom he has chosen to show himself, has never ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... me a prodigy," murmured Fran, as she obeyed Mrs. Gregory's gesture inviting her to follow up-stairs. "Now it's stopped raining," Simon Jefferson complained, as he wheeled his mother ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... of those about whose footsteps legends rise, and legend could add little to the romantic facts of her life;—the poverty of her youth; her debut as a child prodigy at Warsaw and the sudden fame that had followed it; the coronets that had been laid at her feet; her private tragedies, cosmopolitan friendships, her scholarship, caprices and generosities. She had been the Egeria, ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... fascination attracted her thither, and on each succeeding evening she found some new beauty in the bassoon, some new phase in his kaleidoscopic character to wonder at, some new accomplishment to admire. On one occasion—it was at the opera bouffe—this musical prodigy exhibited a playfulness and an exuberance of wit and humor that Aurora had never dreamed of. He ran the gamut of vocal conceit, and the polyglot fertility of his fancy simply astounded his rapt auditor. She was dazed, enchanted, spellbound. So here we find the fair Aurora passing from the ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... pleasant orange grove in good bearing; in the courtyard a bronze Venus rode on a sprouting whale, and there were many fountains; and within there was much white marble and pillars of precious stone, and horrible liverish Viennese mosaics, for the house was something of a prodigy, having been built in a trade boom by a rastaqouere. "Mhm," said Mr. Philip sagaciously, and from the funeral slide of respect in his voice Ellen guessed that he imagined rastaqouere to be a Brazilian variety of Lord Provost. She would have laughed had there not been the ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... desire for any thing, and is disappointed, she sometimes marks the foetus with the figure or likeness of the object longed for, on this or that part of the body. And, what is still more, and approaches to a prodigy, upon the mother being terrified by a sudden injury done to any one part, that very part in the child suffers the same evil, and decays for want of nourishment. I know that the truth of stories of this kind, is called in doubt by some physicians; ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, they would, no doubt, have been very much surprised. Nor is it likely that they could have guessed which of them was the chosen one. For Richard Wagner—or Richard Geyer, as he was then called, after his stepfather—was by no means a youthful prodigy, like Mozart or Liszt. It is related that Beethoven shed tears of displeasure over his first music lessons; nevertheless, it was obvious from the beginning that he had a special gift for music. Richard Wagner, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... oracle should suffer no abatement, elected a young priest of goodly presence and ascetic life; the humblest, purest, most fervent, and most ingenuous of the sons of men. So rare a choice might well be expected to be accompanied by some extraordinary manifestation, and, in fact, a prodigy took place which filled the sacred authorities with dismay. The responses of the oracle ceased suddenly and altogether. No revelation was vouchsafed to the pontiff in his slumbers; no access of prophetic fury ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... miracle of her liturgy, the power of her word, the constantly renewed prodigy of phrases created by revolving time, of prayers arranged by ages which are dead. All has passed, nothing exists that was raised up in those bygone times. Yet those sequences remain intact, cried aloud by indifferent ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... astronomer, though Apian's pupil, was an avowed Copernican and the destined master and friend of Kepler. Yet, in the treatise embodying his observations, he felt it necessary to save his reputation for orthodoxy by calling the comet a "new and horrible prodigy," and by giving a chapter of "conjectures on the signification of the present comet," in which he proves from history that this variety of comet betokens peace, but peace purchased by a bloody victory. That he really believed ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... as if the smallness of his stature had nothing to do with his inactivity. When all was ready, he climbed up to his seat, and at a signal from the station-keeper, who watched with paternal pride all the movements of the little prodigy, we dashed off at a pace rarely attained by post-horses. He had the faculty of emitting a peculiar sound—something between a whirr and a whistle—that appeared to have a magical effect on the team and every few minutes he employed this incentive. ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... as at that moment; certainly, my perception of the enormous outrage which is inflicted by it, on the godlike nature of its victims, was rendered far more clear than ever. There stood one, in physical proportion and stature commanding and exact—in intellect richly endowed—in natural eloquence a prodigy—in soul manifestly "created but a little lower than the angels"—yet a slave, ay, a fugitive slave,—trembling for his safety, hardly daring to believe that on the American soil, a single white person could be found ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... was first seen to multiply in the hands of the Venerable Mother: with only two or three loaves to divide among fifty or sixty persons, it was found that every one had a sufficient share. She perceived the prodigy herself and said quite simply, as she went on dividing the loaves, "I think our good God is multiplying this bread for His poor necessitous creatures." Even before this special demand on her charity, she had arranged that whatever might be their own distress, no ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... impertinent talkers (in the broadest Scotch) ever heard, and boasted of being unanswerable in all manner of argument. He wrote some of the most wearisome treatises ever read—among others, a book upon witchcraft, in which he was a devout believer—and thought himself a prodigy of authorship. He thought, and wrote, and said, that a king had a right to make and unmake what laws he pleased, and ought to be accountable to nobody on earth. This is the plain, true character of the personage whom ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... the days to come Edison will not only be recognized as an intellectual prodigy, but as a prodigy of industry—of hard work. In his field as inventor and man of science he stands as clear-cut and secure as the lighthouse on a rock, and as indifferent to the tumult around. But as the "old man"—and before he was thirty years old he was affectionately ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... How would such a prodigy in time appear to his own age? Such cataclysmic wars as Ts'in had been waging for the conquest of China take society first, so to say, upon its circumference, smash that to atoms, and then go working inwards. The most conservative ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... Henry, Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth, may, on one account or other, be admitted into the class of authors. Queen Catharine Parr translated a book: Lady Jane Gray, considering her age, and her sex, and her station, may be regarded as a prodigy of literature. Sir Thomas Smith was raised from being professor in Cambridge, first to be ambassador to France, then secretary of state. The despatches of those times, and among others those of Burleigh himself, are frequently ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... me with her account of you whom she had lately seen—dwelling upon your retrograde passage into youth, and the delight you were taking in the presence and society of some still more youthful, fair, and gay monstrum amandum, some prodigy of intellectual accomplishment, some little Circe who never turned anybodies into pigs. I learnt too from her for the first time that you were settled at Hampstead! Whereabout at Hampstead, and for how long? She didn't tell me that, thinking of course that ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... he answered. "I shall work with my hands if men will have none of my brains. Indeed," he continued, turning towards her with a swift, transfiguring smile, "I am not a village prodigy going to London with a pocketful of manuscripts. Don't think that of me. I am going to London because I have been stifled and choked—I want room to breathe, to see men and women who live. Oh, you don't know the sort of place I have come from—the ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... moment the Head of the Credit Department hit him on the Back and said he had a Good One. It was all about little Frankie, the Only Child, the Phenom, the 40-pound Prodigy. ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... to laugh, and even looked admiringly on the prodigy who had so suddenly developed himself. Noddy felt that his fortune was already made, and he was almost ready to snap his fingers at the court-house. Here was a chance for him to "work and win," and it was entirely ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... any longer to cut it voluntarily. The new comers seemed to decline the honor. The "old favorites" reappeared one by one like dethroned princes who have been replaced for a brief spell in power. Then, the chosen ones became few, very few. For a month (O, prodigy!) M. Anserre cut open the cake; then he looked as if he were getting tired of it; and one evening Madame Anserre, the beautiful Madame Anserre, was seen cutting it herself. But this appeared to be very wearisome to her, and, next day, she urged ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... return from Assisi, the Father conversed with his children on the prodigy which they had witnessed, and took occasion from it to confirm them in their vocation. He entered in detail as to the secret dispositions of their consciences; he foretold them many circumstances relative to the increase of his Order; ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... did he pause and how long did he debate? There was presently nothing to measure it; for his vibration had already changed—as just by the effect of its intensity. Shut up there, at bay, defiant, and with the prodigy of the thing palpably proveably done, thus giving notice like some stark signboard—under that accession of accent the situation itself had turned; and Brydon at last remarkably made up his mind on what ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... came at last a high dim August dawn when she couldn't sleep and when, creeping restlessly about and breathing at her window the coolness of wooded acres, she found the faint flush of the east march with the perception of that other almost equal prodigy. It rosily coloured her vision that—even such as he was, yes—her husband could on occasion sin by excess of candour. He wouldn't otherwise have given as his reason for going up to Portland Place in the August days ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... a realization of the importance of the family, but they err if they base this teaching altogether on the family's pride in some remote ancestor who, even though he bore the family name and was a prodigy of virtues, probably counts for very little in the individual's make-up to-day. To take a concrete though wholly imaginary illustration: what man would not feel a certain satisfaction in being a lineal descendant of George ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... amount of thunder from so small a cloud, I was rebuked of my faintheartedness. In truth, not the least of my misgivings was Hipp's extraordinary zeal. He gave the townsmen to understand that I was a prodigy of oratory, whose battle-sketches would harrow up their souls and thrill them like a martial summons. It brought the blush to my face to see him talking to knots of old men after the fashion of a town crier at a puppet-booth, and I wondered whether ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... astonishment. I did not like Ribera,—there was too great a contrast of color in his pictures, and he frightened me a little; but I liked Carlo Dolce. In short, my tutor, my father, and his friends considered me a very prodigy; I heard myself praised, and it flattered my vanity. But, all the same, it was not the healthiest of educations; and my nervous system, developed too early, always remained very sensitive. It seems strange that these influences were neither so deep nor so lasting as might have been expected. ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... under Henry VIII. One of the chaplains of the Bishop of Exeter has found a line of Rowley in Hudibras-the monk might foresee that too! The prematurity of Chatterton's genius is, however, full as wonderful, as that such a prodigy as Rowley should never have been heard of till the eighteenth century. The youth and industry of the former are miracles, too, yet still more' credible. There is not a symptom in the poems, but the old words, that savours ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... for annihilation until the fit be passed; and at last amid the whirl of woe he feels, a deep stupor steals over him, as over the man who bleeds to death, for conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it; so, after sore wrestlings in his berth, Jonah's prodigy of ponderous misery drags him drowning down to sleep. And now the time of tide has come; the ship casts off her cables; and from the deserted wharf the uncheered ship for Tarshish, all careening, glides ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... air, the laws of motions, light, the number of our planets, etc. And a man who maintained a thesis on Aristotle's "Categories," on the universals a parte rei, or such-like nonsense, was looked upon as a prodigy. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... not study for that," said this musical prodigy; and taking the instrument, he played second violin with ease and accuracy. Such precocity seems almost incredible, and only in the history of music does it find ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... Jeffrey was a great Liberal, the two facts were probably not unconnected in the line of causation. Francis went to the High School when he was eight, and to the College at Glasgow when he was fourteen. He does not appear to have been a prodigy at either; but he has an almost unequalled record for early work of the self-undertaken kind. He seems from his boyhood to have been addicted to filling reams of paper, and shelves full of note-books, with extracts, abstracts, critical annotations, criticisms ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... view, indeed, they soon regarded us with emotions of envy and wonder; and the doctor was considered nothing short of a prodigy. The Cockney found out that he (the doctor) could read a book upside down, without even so much as spelling the big words beforehand; and the Yankee, in the twinkling of an eye, received from him the sum total of several arithmetical items, stated aloud, with the view ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... a distinguished violinist, born near Presburg, in Hungary; famous as a youthful prodigy; was encouraged by Mendelssohn; has visited London every year since 1844, and has been principal leader in the Monday and Saturday Popular Concerts from the first, and became head of the Academy of Music at Berlin in 1869; the fiftieth anniversary of his first ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... of Przemysl (1792-1841), was the friend and disciple of Krochmal. An infant prodigy, he spent all the years of his early childhood in the exclusive study of the Law. When he was thirteen years old, his father married him to a girl of eighteen, whom he had not set eyes upon before the day of their marriage. She did not live long. Erter went on with ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... Her hair reached down to her feet; her hands were the hands of a princess. Then I saw that she was as clever as she was beautiful, and that she had only to play her cards. She had masters, professors, every educational advantage. They told me she was a little prodigy. She speaks French, Italian, German, better than most natives. She has a wonderful genius for music, and might make her fortune as a pianist, if it was not made for her otherwise! I traveled all over Europe; every one told me she was a marvel. The director ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... in the hearts of the Natchez. A child is born to them of the race of their Suns. A boy is born with a beard on his chin. The prodigy still works on from generation to generation.' So sang the warriors of my tribe when I sprang from my mother's womb, and the shrill cry of the eagle, in the heavens, was heard in joyful response. Hardly fifteen summers ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... Whenever cases occur in which an individual believes that he has been restored to health by means of the Milagro, it is customary for him to deposit, in the chapel of the image he venerates, a small model or representation of that member or part of the body restored to health by the prodigy. These objects in great abundance adorn the walls of such edifices, where may be seen innumerable arms, legs, eyes, mouths, and so on, of silver or of wax, according to the circumstances of the persons so favoured. ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... fatherless children. I lamented my own folly and wilfulness, in attempting a second voyage, against the advice of all my friends and relations. In this terrible agitation of mind, I could not forbear thinking of Lilliput, whose inhabitants looked upon me as the greatest prodigy that ever appeared in the world; where I was able to draw an imperial fleet in my hand, and perform those other actions, which will be recorded forever in the chronicles of that empire, while posterity shall hardly believe them, ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... studies and becomes a prodigy; he argues on his master's lessons; he finds that Fo has only been able to change himself into a white elephant, because that is the most beautiful of animals. "The kings of Siam and Pegu," he says, "have made war for a white elephant; certainly ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... of Blind Tom. He was a very prodigy in music. But apart from that he was a complete idiot, and had been so from his birth. After his death a gentleman who knew him well wrote a sketch of his life. In the noble, concluding words of that ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... Graves' "Life of Sir William Rowan Hamilton" a series of letters will be found, in which Aunt Sydney details the progress of the boy to his mother in Dublin. Probably there is no record of an infant prodigy more extraordinary than that which these letters contain. At three years old his aunt assured the mother that William is "a hopeful blade," but at that time it was his physical vigour to which she apparently referred; for the proofs of his capacity, which she adduces, related to his ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... years of age, the Infanta Isabella six years younger. She was esteemed majestically beautiful by her courtiers, and Cardinal Bentivoglio, himself a man of splendid intellect, pronounced her a woman of genius, who had grown to be a prodigy of wisdom, under the tuition of her father, the most sagacious statesman of the age. In attachment to the Roman faith and ritual, in superhuman loftiness of demeanour, and in hatred of heretics, she was at least a worthy child ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... stupidity verify epitaph retinue nutriment vestige medicine impediment prodigy serenity ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... Lisbon, which is, you know, the capital of Portugal. I have, at home, a very interesting narrative of an earthquake that happened at Calabria, in the southern part of Italy. It is related by Father Kircher, who was considered as a prodigy of learning, and was also a very excellent man. When we return home, I will look for the paper, ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... "While the prodigy was before them, the spectators stirred not; nor was there one brave enough to speak; most of them with their eyes devoured it all, King and throne, birds, men and spirits; ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... Vases of china, filled with freshly-gathered flowers, shed sweet perfumes, while they delighted the eye with their beauty, etherializing the elements of bread and meat by suggestions of the poetry and ideals of life. A grand old buffet, a prodigy of cabinet-maker's art, displayed a mass of family plate, and a silver shield embossed with the arms of Tilly, a gift of Henry of Navarre to their ancient and loyal house, hung upon the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... no doubt," replied the Signor solemnly. "She is, indeed, a prodigy of talent,—one of the wonders of the ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... future happiness of their favourites. Victoire's verses were not handed about in fashionable circles, nor was she called upon to recite them before a brilliant audience, nor was she produced in public as a prodigy; she was educated in private, and by slow and sure degrees, to be a good, useful, and happy member of society. Upon the same principles which decided Madame de Fleury against encouraging Victoire to be a poetess, she refrained ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... premising that he does not believe them all himself. A tradition with them was that they were the youngest of all nations, being descended from Targitaus, one of the numerous sons of Jove. The three children of Targitaus for a time ruled the land, but their joint rule was changed by a prodigy. There fell from the skies four implements of gold,—a plough, a yoke, a battle-axe, and a drinking-cup. The oldest brother hastened eagerly to seize this treasure, but it burst into flame at his approach. The second then made the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... reckless and unscrupulous villain. Most of them knew that he had been hunted out of San Francisco; and at that time—years before the Vigilance Committee commenced their labours of purification—a man too bad for that city must have been a prodigy of crime: and yet, and although he was violent-tempered, and had a knack of referring the slightest dispute to his revolver, his table was always crowded; probably because—the greatest rogues have some good qualities—he was honest in ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... of the first marksman chipped an edge off the nail-head; the next man's bullet drove the nail a little way into the target—and removed all the paint. Haven't the miracles gone far enough now? Not to suit Cooper; for the purpose of this whole scheme is to show off his prodigy, Deerslayer Hawkeye—Long-Rifle-Leather-Stocking- Pathfinder-Bumppo ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... showering sovranties of light, Ere Rome shook earth with her tremendous tread, Ere yon blue-feasting sun-god burst blood-red, Beneath thee slept thy prodigy, O Night! Aeons have ta'en like dreams their strange, slow flight, And vastest, tiniest, creatures paved her bed, E'en cities sapped by the usurping spread Of her imperious waves have sunk from sight Since she first chanted her colossal psalms That swell and sink beneath the ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... confusion. Some of his acquaintance, who were pleased to distinguish between the wit and the scholar, extoll'd him altogether on account of the first of these excellencies; but others, who were more candid, admired him as a prodigy in both. He had acquired reputation in the schools, both as a philosopher and polemic of extensive knowledge, and deep penetration, and went through all the courses with a proper regard to the dignity, and importance of each science. Mr. Smith had a long and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... tremblings of the earth and eclipses to a simple sneeze. In the expedition to Sicily, Nicias, the general of the Athenians, at the moment of embarking his army for the retreat, was arrested by an eclipse of the moon; the gods, thought he, had sent this prodigy to warn the Athenians not to continue their enterprise. And so Nicias waited; he waited twenty-seven days offering sacrifices to appease the gods. During this inactivity the enemy closed the port, destroyed the fleet, and ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... poetry, painting, architecture, they have not since been equalled; and it ill becomes us to arraign the taste of a period which possessed a cluster of writers of whom the meanest would now be esteemed a prodigy." Malone did not live to read this denouncement of his objection to these Masques, as "bungling shows;" and which Warburton treats as "fooleries;" Granger as "wretched performances;" while Mr. Todd regards them merely as ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Ramon has accomplished this prodigy. Don Ramon can begin his work again. (A loud explosion is heard.) The prodigy is no longer in existence. The employment of such a force is not without danger, and the danger which Don Ramon had not foreseen, has manifested itself, at the very ...
— The Resources of Quinola • Honore de Balzac
... "I heard him chattering about it, the little scamp. Well, Miss Nelson," he could not help laughing. "Has that young prodigy of mine tried ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... subject to the application of our knowledge and skill, but we ourselves are under the dominance of laws which operate out of the inaccessible and indefinable depths of the spirit. Alongside of most players of this period Ada Rehan is a prodigy of original force. Her influence, accordingly, has been felt more than it has been understood, and, being elusive and strange, has prompted wide differences of opinion. The sense that she diffuses of a simple, unselfish, patient nature, and of impulsive ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... hand, why run to the other extreme and make this most supremely human of all men an anomaly, a prodigy, a bolt from the blue, an element of extreme disorder, born to further or to distract the progress of humanity by a chance which no man can estimate? The resources of psychological theory are adequate, as I have endeavoured to show, ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... Greeks. There were Suetonius and Plutarch; the one natural, simple, and pure in his style, far beyond his age, but without much depth or vigor of thought; the other involved and affected in his manner, but in his matter of surpassing richness and incalculable worth. There was the elder Pliny, a prodigy of learning and industry, whose researches in Natural History cost him his life, in that fatal eruption of Vesuvius which buried Herculaneum and Pompeii. There was also the judicious Quintilian, at once neat and nervous in his language, delicate and correct in his criticisms, ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... and the story of his life; the profoundness of his doctrine, which overturns all difficulties, and is their most complete solution; his gospel; the singularity of his mysterious being; his appearance, his empire, his progress through all centuries and kingdoms,—all this is to me a prodigy, an unfathomable mystery. I defy you to cite another life like that of Christ." It has well been said that "Christ is the God who is man, and the ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... down by Hobbes was taken up by *Cudworth* (A. D. 1617-1688), the most learned man of his time, whose "Intellectual System of the Universe" is a prodigy of erudition,—a work in which his own thought is so blocked up with quotations, authorities, and masses of recondite lore, that it is hardly possible to trace the windings of the river for the debris of auriferous ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... the extensiveness of his knowledge was next to a prodigy. Whenever I happened to consult him on any extraordinary question, upon which the authors most familiar to us were silent, he would take me to the library of the abbey of St. Bertin, would ask for old writers, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... head hanging in the air, with nobody to hold it. This prodigy astonished her so that she could not tell what to think of it; but her amazement was increased when she saw the head laid at her feet, and heard ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... this new demand upon sculpture, and may be called the founder of a new style, was GIOVANNI LORENZO BERNINI (1598-1680), a very gifted man. When but ten years old this remarkable genius was known as a prodigy in art, and it was at this early age that his father took him to Rome. Pope Paul V. was soon interested in him, and Cardinal Barberini assisted him in his studies; from this fortunate beginning all through his life ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... Church of Boston, President of Harvard College, and author, inter alia, of that characteristically Puritan book, An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences. Cotton Mather himself was a monster of erudition and a prodigy of diligence. He was graduated from Harvard at fifteen. He ordered his daily life and conversation by a system of minute observances. He was a book-worm, whose life was spent between his library and his pulpit, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... decent bow in my life. The little gilt one I used to wave round when I was a Coopid wasn't worth a cent to go," answered Ben, feeling as if that painted "prodigy" must have been a very distant connection of the respectable young person now walking off arm-in-arm with the lord of ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... himself one of the academicians, introduced me to his family. His parents, who were in easy circumstances, received me very kindly. One of his sisters was very amiable, but the other, a professed nun, appeared to me a prodigy of beauty. I might have enjoyed myself in a very agreeable way in the midst of that charming family during my stay in Chiozza, but I suppose that it was my destiny to meet in that place with nothing but sorrows. The young doctor forewarned me that the monk Corsini was ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... example of the curious and credulous exaggeration which has construed certain articulations in animals into rational speech. Some time since, in travelling through Italy, we heard, in grave earnest, from several Italians, of the prodigy of a Pomeranian dog that had been taught to speak most intelligibly by Sir William Gell. Afterwards, in visiting that accomplished and lamented gentleman at Naples, we requested to hear an animal possessed ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... mental gifts and each and every one of the acquirements that are so prodigally displayed in the Plays and Poems, and in much higher and richer degree than any other man of his time or of any previous time. He was a genius without a mate, a prodigy not matable. There was only one of him; the planet could not produce two of him at one birth, nor in one age. He could have written anything that is in the Plays and Poems. He could ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... recollection of Margaret is as a schoolmate of my sisters, in Boston. At that period she was considered a prodigy of talent and accomplishment; but a sad feeling prevailed, that she had been overtasked by her father, who wished to train her like a boy, and that she was paying the penalty for undue application, in nearsightedness, awkward manners, extravagant tendencies of thought, and a pedantic ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... of what is to be held for this sort of personage in fiction would make him almost as much of a prodigy there, as in real history is a new law-giver, a revolutionizing philosopher, or the founder of ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... the mark of his caste is all over him. But perhaps he was able to disguise it a little with his manner—alive; undoubtedly, I'd say. He was a genius of his kind—a prodigy; a mental giant. That translation of the 'Tantras'——! Wonderful!... Well, he's gone his own way: God be with him.... When do you want ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... to his full shortness, he watched the operation attentively, as if the smallness of his stature had nothing to do with his inactivity. When all was ready, he climbed up to his seat, and at a signal from the station-keeper, who watched with paternal pride all the movements of the little prodigy, we dashed off at a pace rarely attained by post-horses. He had the faculty of emitting a peculiar sound—something between a whirr and a whistle—that appeared to have a magical effect on the team and every few minutes he employed this ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... great event in the history of the continent, which we are now met here to commemorate, that prodigy of modern times, at once the wonder and the blessing of the world, is the American Revolution. In a day of extraordinary prosperity and happiness, of high national honor, distinction, and power, we are brought together, in this place, by our love ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... in a much-frequented grove near Regium Lepidum.[327] There it sat, unterrified and unmoved, either by the crowds of people or by the birds which fluttered round it, until the moment at which Otho killed himself. Then it vanished. A calculation of the time showed that the prodigy's appearance and disappearance coincided with the beginning of the battle[328] and ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... leaped overboard, whether it was madness or fear that caused this; and first {of all}, Medon began to grow black with fins, with a flattened body, and to bend in the curvature of the back-bone. To him Lycabas said, 'Into what prodigy art thou changing?' and, as he spoke, the opening of his mouth was wide, his nose became crooked, and his hardened skin received scales upon it. But Libys, while he was attempting to urge on the resisting oars, saw his hands shrink into a small compass, and now to be hands no longer, {and} ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... regarding it, and for half an hour I had been slyly watching him. Something was going on in that mind of his, and, whatever it was, I knew it was well worth knowing. He had lived life, and seen things, and performed that prodigy of prodigies, namely, the turning of his back upon his own people, and, in so far as it was possible for an Indian, becoming a white man even in his mental processes. As he phrased it himself, he had come into the warm, sat among us, by our fires, and become one of us. He had never learned ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... of history are bad enough; the fictions are, if possible, worse; but there is little doubt that the future Queen of Scots learnt the first lessons of life at a horrible school. If in subsequent years she was a prodigy of innocence and virtue, it was not the fault of her whilom mother-in-law, of her uncles of the house of Guise, or of the examples presented to her either at the windows of the castle of Amboise or in its more ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... bridesmaids were as before. Mrs. Hill, who stood by Mrs. Carruthers, wept copiously, when her favourite daughter's turn came, and Hill senior gave her away with a qualm, especially as the parent of Timotheus presented him as the prodigy's son come back from the swine husks. So the last ceremony was over. "Siccan a thing as five waddins in ae day was never heard o' in Flanders before," said the Squire, with a sigh of relief. Of course, the people ought all to have gone away somewhere, according to all the rules that govern civilized ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... of Willy Ferrero, the Boy Conductor? A musical prodigy, seven years old, who will order the fifth oboe out of the Albert Hall as soon as look at him. Well, he ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... of East Barsetshire, but of all England. On this occasion it was found that one pearl was very big, very rare, and worthy of great attention; but it was a black pearl, and was regarded by many as an abominable prodigy. "The period of our history is one in which it becomes essential for us to renew those inquiries which have prevailed since man first woke to his destiny, as to the amount of connection which exists and which must exist between spiritual and simply human forms ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... window that they might laugh unseen. Daniel gazed at their shaking shoulders with an air of wonder, while the grave couple at the end of the room, who for some moments had been looking disturbed, drew near and informed the youthful prodigy that it was time for ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... Gregory Nazianzen, tom. ii. de Vita sua, p. 21, 22. For the sake of posterity, the bishop of Constantinople records a stupendous prodigy. In the month of November, it was a cloudy morning, but the sun broke forth when ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... of the waking Ulysses, who just woke in time to witness, but not soon enough to prevent, their rash and sacrilegious banquet. He had scarce time to ask what great mischief was this which they had done unto him; when behold, a prodigy! the ox-hides which they had stripped began to creep as if they had life; and the roasted flesh bellowed as the ox used to do when he was living. The hair of Ulysses stood up on end with affright at these omens; but his companions, like men whom the gods had infatuated ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... the whole course of our acquaintance, Lomellino, never did I hear you so enthusiastic! Go, then, conduct this prodigy hither. ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... thought, "He will give me a second life; I have one into the bargain. This will be a prodigy indeed!" and he filled the jug again and put it to ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... departed without a fresh appointment he was to reappear six months later under protection no less adequate than that of our young lady herself. I had seen her repeatedly for months: she had grown to regard my studio as the tabernacle of her face. This prodigy was frankly there the sole object of interest; in other places there were occasionally other objects. The freedom of her manners continued to be stupefying; there was nothing so extraordinary save ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... was no longer the imagery of devout passion, but a material entity, a prodigy of affection which impelled him, when he was praying before the engraving, to open out his hands in order that he might reverently receive the heart that leaped from that immaculate bosom. He could see it, hear it beat; he was loved, that heart was beating for himself! His whole ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... to be a fool before the realities of life as set down in numerals. As a young man, he had been a prodigy. People then spoke of him as a future bishop, and he filled fashionable churches of the city with the best in the land. They came to hear his sensational sermons, and they patted him on the back approvingly ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... makes it possible to be at our ease in front of him. A sentiment of superiority keeps us cool and practical; the mere facts would make, our knees knock under as with religious fear. It is the fact that every instant of conscious life is an unimaginable prodigy. It is the fact that every face in the street has the incredible unexpectedness of a fairy-tale. The thing which prevents a man from realizing this is not any clear-sightedness or experience, it is simply a ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... objects of the universe, from the sun to an atom, range themselves distinctly in so small an organ? Is not the substance of the brain, which preserves, in order, such lively representations of all the objects that have made an impression upon us ever since we were in the world, a most wonderful prodigy? Men admire with reason the invention of books, wherein the history of so many events, and the collection of so many thoughts, are preserved. But what comparison can be made between the best book and the brain of a learned man? There is no doubt but such a brain ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... document. I found that it was dated in Milwaukee, and signed by the mayor of that city, two physicians, three clergymen, and an editor, who bore united testimony to the fact that Jacob Menzel—I think that was his name—the bearer, any way,—was a deaf mute, and, considering that fact, a prodigy of learning, being master of no less than five different languages (a pathetic circumstance, considering that he was unable to speak one); moreover, that he was a converted Jew; and, furthermore, a native of Germany, who had come to this country in company with two ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... mutant; rouser, snorter* [U.S.]. individuality, idiosyncrasy, originality, mannerism. aberration; irregularity; variety; singularity; exemption; salvo &c. (qualification) 469. nonconformist; nondescript, character, original, nonesuch, nonsuch[obs3], monster, prodigy, wonder, miracle, curiosity, flying fish, black sheep, black swan, lusus naturae[Lat], rara avis[Lat], queer fish; mongrel, random breed; half-caste, half-blood, half-breed; metis[Lat], crossbreed, hybrid, mule, hinny, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... added); then just when you expected him to soar off at a tangent to Patti's topmost A, he let his voice fall to his boots, and emitted a most bloodcurdling bass growl, which carried horrid suggestions of midnight fiends and ghouls and the silent tomb. Still, his mates thought he was a musical prodigy; he was entranced with the sweetness and power of his own performance, and the passengers were more than amused, so ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... fallen! We may now pause before that splendid prodigy, which towered among us like some ancient ruin, whose frown terrified the glance its magnificence attracted. Grand, gloomy, and peculiar, he sat upon the throne, a sceptered hermit, wrapt in the solitude of ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... congratulation on his accession to the estate; and some of them offered their good offices towards a reconciliation betwixt his father and him, induced by the general detestation which was entertained for his brother Gam, who was by this time looked upon by his neighbours as a prodigy of insolence and malice. Our young squire thanked them for their kind proposal, which he accepted; and old Gamaliel, at their entreaties, seemed very well disposed to any accommodation: but as he would not venture to declare himself before he had ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... in the towering talent of a 12-year-old, Tyrone Ford. A child prodigy of gospel music, he has surmounted personal adversity to become an accomplished pianist and singer. He also directs the choirs of three churches and has performed at the Kennedy Center. With God as your composer, Tyrone, your music will be the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the crowd? What means the throng That rushes fast the streets along? Can Rhodes a prey to flames, then, be? In crowds they gather hastily, And, on his steed, a noble knight Amid the rabble, meets my sight; Behind him—prodigy unknown!— A monster fierce they're drawing on; A dragon stems it by its shape, With wide and crocodile-like jaw, And on the knight and dragon gape, In turns, the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... through the crowd with which Polynesians receive a prodigy. As for myself, I stood amazed. The thing was a common conjuring trick which I have seen performed at home a score of times; but how was I to convince the villagers of that? I wished I had learned legerdemain instead of Hebrew, that I might have paid the fellow out with ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rose, and in addressing Mr. Wilderspin, said, that he was astonished with the results of five weeks training in these perfect infants. He had never seen a greater prodigy. He too had had his prejudices—his doubts of the possibility of infant education; but these doubts had now vanished, and for ever. The arrangements for bodily exercise, connected with mental and moral improvement, especially delighted him. He was amused as well as instructed ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... were in ecstasy; they applauded vociferously; and the crowd followed them, deluded into the certainty that they had witnessed, that day, the last shred of the curtains of Truth torn to pieces before their eyes by a prodigy of intellect. The performance of his tremendous feat so delighted them that they forgot to ask themselves if there was any ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... became the warm friend of the young artist, and, as far as circumstances permitted, his instructor in literature and painting. The younger brother inherited his father's taste for music, and was a quiet, thoughtful child, passionately attached to Richard, on whom he looked as a prodigy of learning and talent. Nothing, in fact, could be more touching than the attachment of these two brothers: at their leisure hours they were always to be seen together; their pleasures or sorrows ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... relief of Sudley and his wife, who had trembled during the pause, for it seemed so threatening. They smiled at each other, unconscious that the examination meant aught more serious than a display of their prodigy's learning. ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... miracles are wrought, namely the manifestation of something supernatural, and in this respect they are commonly called "signs": but on account of some excellence they receive the name of "wonder" or "prodigy," as ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... wastes, through pine woods, was intolerable. I was glad enough to reach Tennessee and old Kentucky. The people of Frankfort treated me very handsomely, as did those of Lexington. I paid my respects to the local idol, the young Virginia orator and rising lawyer, Henry Clay. That man is a prodigy—he will make his mark. I wish he were hand in hand with us, like Jackson, and ready to embark his fortune at ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... salutation; and what little knowledge they had was extolled and exaggerated. It was confined to the acquisition of the Psalter by heart, while a little grammar, writing, and accounts were regarded as extraordinary. He who could write a few homilies, drawn from the Fathers, was a wonder and a prodigy. There was a ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... evident; but when you hunt, see if such quarry, good Perez, turn not to bay. But new in Seville, I ne'er have encountered this prodigy; if his rank be mere assumption, he must be exposed; yet, Perez, there may be many causes for an incognito. Our Spain is wide and well peopled with those who boast ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... considered as a man, born in a rude age, and educated in the lowest manner, without any instruction either from the world or from books, he may be regarded as a prodigy: if represented as a poet, capable of furnishing a proper entertainment to a refined or intelligent audience, we must abate much of this eulogy. In his compositions, we regret that many irregularities, and even ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... (1798-1837), a native of the trans-Apennine Roman states. His works were published (1845-49), consisting of philological pieces, poems, papers on philosophy, and letters. The Italians consider him to have been a prodigy in philological power that might have rivalled Niebuhr. As a poet he was one of the finest of his country in the present century. His letters are very classical in expression, and have been said to rival the correspondence ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... made down to that date. It measured six metres and a half in height, by four metres and eleven centimetres in width, which gave it a surface area of 26 metres 12 centimetres. Naturally M. Henrivaux determined to surpass this prodigy in 1889, and to match the Eiffel Tower with a mirror. The Belgian rivals of St.-Gobain suspected this, it seems, and sent forth subtle persons to spy out the plans of the great French manufactory. These colossal plates of glass are cast upon immense ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... at his side. True, the girl was merely a Jewess, and he disliked the breed. But Mabel Aaronsberg was unexpected. She had a statuesque purity of outline and complexion; seemed, indeed, worthy of being a creation of his own. How the tedious old manufacturer could have produced this marmoreal prodigy provided a problem for the sculptor, as he almost silently ate his way through ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... just as dangerous," he declared. "Now, we should be in Jerusalem this hour. Our welfare and the welfare of others depend upon us—I mean my companion and me. But there is no devoted prodigy to bear me away—thank fortune! I have come out of a great turmoil; I must plunge into a greater one before many days. Let me rest between them. It will be a long time before I shall possess anything so sweet as the smell of this cedar fire and the picture of you against ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... his sister's dishonour, who had been kept by the most profuse, imperious, and shameless of harlots, and whose public life, to those who can look steadily through the dazzling blaze of genius and glory, will appear a prodigy of turpitude, believed implicitly in the religion which he had learned as a boy, and shuddered at the thought of formally abjuring it. A terrible alternative was before him. The earthly evil which he most dreaded was poverty. The one ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Under the kindly care of Madame de Stael, he was a student in the college of Vendome from 1811 to 1814. Lambert met there Barchon de Penhoen and Jules Dufaure. He was apparently a poor scholar, but finally developed into a prodigy; he suffered the persecutions of Father Haugoult, by whose brutal hands his "Treatise on the Will," composed during class hours, was seized and destroyed. The mathematician had already doubled his capacity by becoming a philosopher. His comrades had named him Pythagoras. His course completed, ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... and Paul appeared to St. Dionysius, as he saith in his foresaid epistle in these words: Understand the miracle and see the prodigy, my brother Timothy, of the day of the martyrdom of them, for I was ready in the time of departing of them. After their death I saw them together, hand in hand, entering the gates of the city, and clad with clothes of light, and arrayed with crowns ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... would fain believe that Toussaint Washington Johnson, who ran away to sea so many years ago, has found some fortunate zone where his hair and skin keep the same sunny and rosy tints they wore to his mother's eyes in infancy. But I have no means of knowing this, or of telling whether he was the prodigy of intellect that he was declared to be. Naomi could no more be taken in proof, of the one assertion than of the other. When she came to us, it was agreed that she should go to school; but she overruled her mother in this as in everything ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... notes he struck, he never lost the intention of a passage, he brought the substance of it across by irregular and astonishing means. He wore his teachers out. He could never learn like other people, never acquired any finish. He was always a Negro prodigy who played barbarously and wonderfully. As piano-playing, it was perhaps abominable, but as music it was something real, vitalized by a sense of rhythm that was stronger than his other physical ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... The cool hand! And verily, but that Cilly takes it so easily, I should imagine it was her singing prodigy—eh? It ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... interior strength, she replied: "As much as it weighs in the balance." —"Well!" said the banker, "here is the balance. Write down your ten days' indulgence, and put the paper in one scale; I will place a piece of money in the other." O prodigy! the scale with the paper in it does not rise, but the other does. The banker, much amazed, puts in another piece of money, but the weight is not changed; he puts in another, then another; but the result is still the same, the paper on which the indulgence is ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... little, and brought tears out of my eyes, and I began to bless myself that such a prodigy of nature should happen upon my account; and this was the more strange to me, because I saw near it still, all along by the side of the rock, some other straggling stalks, which proved to be stalks of rice, and which I knew, because ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... down his nose, and put on warrior's costume. In vain Jarwin begged and protested and sang. The Big Chief's blood was up, and his commands must be obeyed, therefore Jarwin did as he was bid; went out to battle in this remarkable costume—if we may so style it— and proved himself such a prodigy of valour that his prowess went far to turn the tide of victory wherever he appeared during the fight. But we pass over all this. Suffice it to say, that the pugnacious tribe was severely chastised and reduced to a state of quiet—for ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne
... the heel of the bowsprit to investigate this ocean prodigy. And as the cask drifted nearer he saw that Joe Hawkridge was clinging to it. There was no mistaking that dauntless grin and the mop of carroty hair. A handy seaman tossed a bight of line over his shoulders as he bobbed past the forefoot of the brig and he was yanked bodily ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... would, no doubt, have been very much surprised. Nor is it likely that they could have guessed which of them was the chosen one. For Richard Wagner—or Richard Geyer, as he was then called, after his stepfather—was by no means a youthful prodigy, like Mozart or Liszt. It is related that Beethoven shed tears of displeasure over his first music lessons; nevertheless, it was obvious from the beginning that he had a special gift for music. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... sorry for it; I had heard that your royal highness had left off drinking;' the Prince laughed, tapped him on the shoulder very good-naturedly, without saying a word, or ever after showing any displeasure. The Duke of York, who was for some time cried up as the prodigy of the family, is as profligate, and of less understanding. To these particular traits, from a man of sense and truth, it would be superfluous to add the general terms of praise or blame, in which he is spoken of by other persons, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... nymphs, whose mount Alighting feels her first: the learned nine, Thus she bespeaks;—"fame tells, a new-made spring, "Burst from a blow the swift-wing'd horse's hoof "Inflicted; lo! the cause I hither come. "That steed I saw spring from his mother's blood: "Fain would I this new prodigy behold." Urania gave reply. "O, maid divine! "What cause soe'er has with thy presence grac'd. "Our dwelling, proves to us a grateful boon. "Fame speaks not false. Our fountain surely sprung "Sole from Pegasus." Speaking thus, she leads The virgin goddess to the sacred streams: ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... of youth. His brow was furrowed with care rather than time, and his eye seemed still to flash with the fires of young manhood. Nevertheless he was an old man. Every one who saw him on that memorable morning pronounced him a prodigy. ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... Defaults of Nature by the Industry of Art; he accordingly makes the greatest Provision for their Breeding and Education, which prov'd so effectual in a little Time, that their Progress was a greater Prodigy than themselves. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... groan, craven, and wipe my hand across my forehead to brush away the frenzy. The fingers came free, damp with cold sticky sweat—a prodigy of a parchment ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... frequently drowned his voice. I could not understand his jokes, but if I could get near enough to watch his lips and his smile and his merry eyes, I was happy. That any one could talk so fast, and in English, was marvel enough, but that this prodigy should belong to our establishment was a fact to thrill me. I had never seen anything like Mr. Wilner, except a wedding jester; but then he spoke common Yiddish. So proud was I of the talent and good taste displayed at our stand that if my father beckoned to me in the crowd and sent me ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... again engaged for nearly a year in Switzerland, and soon after, poor fellow, though with a jovial robustness of look and breadth of chest that promised unusual length of days, was killed by heart-disease. "The brave C continues to be a prodigy. He puts out my clothes at every inn as if I were going to stay there twelve months; calls me to the instant every morning; lights the fire before I get up; gets hold of roast fowls and produces them in coaches at a distance from all other help, in hungry ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... new prodigy? What cruel and mysterious scourge is this? We are a numerous people and we want hands! We have an excellent soil, and we are in want of subsistence? We are active and laborious, and we live in indigence! ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... youthful prodigy, climbing to the wagon seat. "Don't forget to keep straight ahead after you turn off the main road. Git dap! So long, fellers!" He leaned over the wheel, as the stage turned, and bestowed a wink upon the delighted ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... passion on reading the letter. "What meaneth this old dotard, surd and absurd, thus to control our actions? Did not our innate generosity restrain us, I would confound him, and make him a prodigy to all ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... been named, as other children are; but they called me La Masque now. I had masters and professors without end, and studied astronomy and astrology, and the mystic lore of the old Egyptians, and became noted as a prodigy and a wonder, and a miracle ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... despite the violence of the rain, the Spartans marched on:—scaled the fortifications:—were within the walls. The fulfilment of dark prophecies had already portended the fate of the besieged; and now the very howling of the dogs in a strange and unwonted manner was deemed a prodigy. Alarmed, aroused, the Messenians betook themselves to the nearest weapons within their reach. Aristomenes, his son Gorgus, Theoclus, the guardian prophet of his tribe (whose valour was equal to his science), ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... had said. When I was some little way above the town I sat down on a low wall and rubbed my knee strongly and long with this balm, and the pain instantly disappeared. Then, with a heart renewed by this prodigy, I took the road again and began walking very rapidly and high, swinging ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... girl, twelve years old now, nine when her first volume of verses appeared, Hilda Conkling is not so much the infant prodigy as a clear proof that the child mind, before the precious spark is destroyed, possesses both vision and the ability to express it in natural and beautiful rhythm. Grace Hazard Conkling, herself a poet, is Hilda's mother. They live at Northampton, Massachusetts, ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... ground floors, the walls built of split cane and mud, and the roofs thatched with leaves. These edifices, though extremely slight, are abundantly sufficient for a climate where rain is considered as a prodigy, and is not seen in many years; so that it is said that a small quantity of rain falling in this country in the year 1728, it ruined a great number of buildings, which mouldered away, and, as it were, melted before it. The inhabitants of Paita are principally ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... authority arose. The subject is instructive to those who wish to form themselves on whatever of excellence has gone before them. There are many young members in the house (such of late has been the rapid succession of public men) who never saw that prodigy, Charles Townshend; nor of course know what a ferment he was able to excite in everything by the violent ebullition of his mixed virtues and failings. For failings he had undoubtedly—many of us remember them; we are this day ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... the goddess graciously to incline her head, in sign that, yet another year, Egypt shall be protected. And when the fervor of the crowd's united prayer is great enough, the head of the Goddess of Stone will bow. That will be the first prodigy. ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... conscience; five minutes, that is to say, five ages, during which the two kings and their family scarcely found time to breathe after so terrible a shock. D'Artagnan, leaning against the wall, in front of Fouquet, with his hand to his brow, asked himself the cause of such a wonderful prodigy. He could not have said at once why he doubted, but he knew assuredly that he had reason to doubt, and that in this meeting of the two Louis XIV.'s lay all the difficulty which during late days had rendered the conduct of Aramis so suspicious to the musketeer. These ideas were, however, enveloped ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... silver medal—delineative of Apollo crowning Merit (poor Merit had not a rag to his back; but Merit, left only to the care of Apollo, never is too good a customer to the tailor!) And the County Gazette had declared that Britain had produced another prodigy in the person of Dr. Riccabocca's ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... a little of everything and nothing absolutely. A man who gives himself without counting the cost, to everything that he does, everything that he suffers, everything that he loves, everything that he hates, is a prodigy, the greatest that is granted to us here on earth. Passion is like genius: a miracle, which is as much as to say ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... should not be all beer and skittles with us, and therefore apt to pall, my cousins and I had to work pretty hard. In the first place, my dear mother did all she could to make me an infant prodigy of learning. She tried to teach me Italian, which she spoke as fluently as English or French (for she had lived much in Italy), and I had to translate the "Gierusalemme Liberata" into both those latter languages—a task ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... come Edison will not only be recognized as an intellectual prodigy, but as a prodigy of industry—of hard work. In his field as inventor and man of science he stands as clear-cut and secure as the lighthouse on a rock, and as indifferent to the tumult around. But ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... in which what I foretell must happen, forms a part of Celtic Gaul; and more than once, in the midst of your prosperity, you will regret the happy and peaceful life you led in the colony. At the moment you shall quit it, (but not forever,) a prodigy will appear in the air;—this will be the first harbinger ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... eat seeds, and that when the fish are devoured by birds the seeds can germinate, etc. Remember that every year many birds are blown to Madeira and to the Bermudas. Remember that dust is blown 1,000 miles over the Atlantic. Now, bearing all this in mind, would it not be a prodigy if an unstocked island did not in the course of ages receive colonists from coasts whence the currents flow, trees are drifted and birds are driven by gales. The objections to islands being thus stocked are, as far as I understand, that certain species and genera have been ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... then, for "the pronoun EVERY!" But, without other exceptions, what shall be done with the following texts from Murray himself? "The flock, and not the fleece, is, or ought to be the object of the shepherd's care."—Ib., ii, 184. "This prodigy of learning, this scholar, critic, and antiquary, was entirely destitute of breeding and civility."—Ib., ii, 217. And, in the following line, what conjunction appears, or what is the difference between "horror" and "black despair." that the ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the enormous outrage which is inflicted by it on the godlike nature of its victims, was rendered far more clear than ever. There stood one in physical proportions and stature commanding and exact—in intellect richly endowed—in natural eloquence a prodigy." [1] ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... was a mental prodigy, for he taught himself to read when four years old, and at five he had devoured hundreds of books and was already writing poems and plays. At ten, when he had his first tutor, his knowledge was wide ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... Mozart (1756-1791) was not only a musical genius, but was also one of the pre-eminent geniuses of the Western world. He defined in his music a system of musical thought and an entire state of mind that were unlike any previously experienced. A true child prodigy, he began composing at age 5 and rapidly developed his unmistakable style; by 18 he was composing works capable of altering the mind-states of entire civilizations. Indeed, he and his predecessor ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... snapped little Mrs. Jeffries. "We are wasting the gentleman's time. You are no infant prodigy, and we have no pictures of your calves to ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... not think, when I undertook your education, that I was laying the foundation of any comfort for myself. For a long time you were only a good girl, and what ignorant people called a prodigy of learning. In your circumstances a commonplace child might have been both. I subsequently came to contemplate your existence with a pleasure which I never derived from the contemplation of my own. I ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... precious woods shipped thence for Egypt had to submit to a toll on behalf of the temple. Did the daily life forced the necessity upon them; it teaches us at the same time how that fabulous chronicle was elaborated, whose remains have been preserved for us by classical writers. Every prodigy, every fact related by Manetho, was taken from some document analogous to ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... There was also at the same time at Florence one Maso del Saggio, a fellow marvellously entertaining by his cleverness, dexterity and unfailing resource; who having heard somewhat touching Calandrino's simplicity, resolved to make fun of him by playing him a trick, and inducing him to believe some prodigy. And happening one day to come upon Calandrino in the church of San Giovanni, where he sate intently regarding the paintings and intaglios of the tabernacle above the altar, which had then but lately been set there, he deemed time ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... crossed, he threw in his lot with Pompey. He was certainly influenced in part by personal attachment: Pompey seems to have exercised a degree of fascination over his weakness. He knew Pompey's indecision of character, and confessed that Caesar was "a prodigy of energy;" but though the former showed little liking for him, he clung to him nevertheless. He foreboded that, let the contest end which way it would, "the result would certainly be a despotism". He foresaw that Pompey's real designs were as dangerous to the liberties ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... that Charlemagne, having conquered nearly the whole of Europe, retired to his palace to seek repose. But one evening, while gazing at the stars, he saw a bright cluster move from the "Friesian sea, by way of Germany and France, into Galicia." This prodigy, twice repeated, greatly excited Charlemagne's wonder, and was explained to him by St. James in a vision. The latter declared that the progress of the stars was emblematic of the advance of the Christian army towards Spain, and twice bade the emperor deliver his land from the hands ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... the lustration of fire, rots uncleanly into something we call life; seized through all its atoms with a pediculous malady; swelling in tumours that become independent, sometimes even (by an abhorrent prodigy) locomotory;[4] one splitting into millions, millions cohering into one, as the malady proceeds through varying stages. This vital putrescence of the dust, used as we are to it, yet strikes us with occasional disgust, and the profusion of worms in a piece of ancient turf, or the air of ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... French marine was acknowledged with shame and envy at Whitehall, and that the state of our shipping and dockyards was of itself a sufficient guarantee that we should not meddle in the disputes of Europe. [47] Pepys informed his master that the naval administration was a prodigy of wastefulness, corruption, ignorance, and indolence, that no estimate could be trusted, that no contract was performed, that no check was enforced. The vessels which the recent liberality of Parliament had ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... thereabout, and the best for pasturage, the herbage being there good; and it had not been before fed upon, because of the opinion men had that God dwelt there, the shepherds not daring to ascend up to it; and here it was that a wonderful prodigy happened to Moses; for a fire fed upon a thorn bush, yet did the green leaves and the flowers continue untouched, and the fire did not at all consume the fruit branches, although the flame was great and fierce. Moses was aftrighted at this strange sight, as it was ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... the terrible energies of nature are his playthings: the gods, angels, and demons are his habitual attendants: the sun, moon, and all the starry host wheel around his cradle in joyful measures, and the earth thrills with joy at having borne such a prodigy: and at his last hour of mortal life the whole universe ...
— The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons • H.S. Olcott
... an article complimenting George upon his skill in managing a difficult team, and upon introducing Spot, an infant prodigy, to the racing world of the North. Then it announced, in a delicate vein of sarcasm, that one of the wheel dogs had been the most recent notable addition to the Allan and Darling Kennel—Baldy, ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... of all the learned sort, ... born into the world to show unto our age a sample of ancient virtue." The English paragon of excellence was but thirty-two years old when he was slain at Zutphen, the Italian Phoenix but thirty-one when he was carried off by a fever, and the Scotch prodigy of gifts and attainments was only twenty-two when he was assassinated by his worthless pupil. Sir Philip Sidney is better remembered by the draught of water he gave the dying soldier than by all the waters ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... and poured on a certain rock beside the spring, immediately the water changes into vapour, forms itself into great clouds filled with hail; the air becomes thick with shadows, and resonant with the muttering of thunder. Those who have come through curiosity to behold the prodigy wish that they had never done so, so filled are their hearts with terror, and so does fear paralyse their limbs. Incredible as the marvel may seem, yet the proofs of its reality are too abundant to ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
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