"Masterless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the same," answered Ramabai. "We can reach there before sundown. It would be wise to hasten, however, as this desert and those hills are infested with lawless nomadic bands of masterless men—brigands, you call them. They would cut the throat of a man for the ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... retainers of a daimyo wished to avenge any act without committing their lord, they withdrew from his service and became ronins. Most of the outrages which occurred during the years intervening between the formation of the treaties and the restoration were committed by these masterless men. Responsibility for them was disclaimed by the daimyos, and the government of Yedo was unable to extend its control over these wandering swash-bucklers. There was no course for the foreign ministers to pursue but to hold ...
— Japan • David Murray
... real melody; and that he will become, he, once again the Historian of Events,—bewildered Dryasdust having at last the happiness to be his servant, and to have some guidance from him. Which will be blessed indeed. For the present, Dryasdust strikes me like a hapless Nigger gone masterless: Nigger totally unfit for self-guidance; yet without master good or bad; and whose feats in that capacity no god or man ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... in Germany, all of which were to be subordinate to the mother republic in France. The proclamation of a still-born Cisrhenish republic (it not having as yet been constituted when it was swallowed up in the great French republic), in the masterless Lower Rhenish provinces in the territory of Treves, Aix-la-Chapelle, and Cologne, under the influence of the French Jacobins and soldiery, was, however, all that could ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... infancy, felt himself a geometrician; and Vandyke, in like manner, was a painter. Shakespeare, who, of all poets, had the deepest insight into human nature, was aware of a prevailing bias in the operations of every mind. By him we are told, "Masterless passion sways us to the mood of what it likes ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... for the man who is not much interested in midway Gods between himself and the Veiled Being. This hapless fellow-creature, says Mr. Wells, "has not really given himself or got away from himself. He has no one to whom he can give himself. He is still a masterless man" (p. 83). As Mr. Wells has evidently read a good deal about Japan, he no doubt takes this expression from Japanese feudalism, which made a distinct class of the "ronin" or masterless man, who had, by death or otherwise, ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... described as having been of a wayward and violent temper in his youth—cross, untractable, and masterless—with a vast quantity of youthful energy, which exploded in a variety of youthful mischiefs. He even obtained the reputation of a roysterer in his native town, and seemed to be rapidly going to the bad, when religion, in one of its most rigid forms, laid hold upon his strong nature, and subjected ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... fens were wild men, masterless men, fled slaves, and outlaws, who were hunted in sport as the ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... or perhaps from an original independence enjoyed by the church as a monastery. The Chapter claimed within their sphere the rights attributed to Athelstan's grant, and also assize of bread, ale, weights and measures; dues of fairs and markets; certain feudal dues; power over masterless goods, and to deal with cases of rent, wrongful detention of land, and theft; cognitio de falso judicio; execution of royal writs; 'sheriff-tourn'; coroners of their own; in fact the powers of a sheriff and of the justices-in-eyre, with a prison and the right of gaol-delivery, and even of inflicting ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... historian of the Novel, though it might be adduced to strengthen the remarks made on Rousseau's Confessions.[144] And the rest of the "resurrected" matter is also more autobiographical, or at best illustrative of Beyle's restless and "masterless" habit of pulling his work to pieces—of "never being able to be ready" (as a deservedly unpopular language has it)—than contributory to positive novel-achievement. But the first and by far the most substantive of the Nouvelles Inedites, which ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... with whipping and confinement in the house of correction'; yet, in this forest, about March or April, according to the dryness of the season, such vast heath-fires are lighted up, that they often get to a masterless head, and, catching the hedges, have sometimes been communicated to the underwoods, woods, and coppices, where great damage has ensued. The plea for these burnings is, that, when the old coat of heath, etc., is consumed, young will sprout up, and afford much tender browse for cattle; ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... the word, "I, as a Socialist, can tell you that starvation is now impossible, except where, as in England, masterless men are forcibly prevented from producing the food they need. And you, as an artist, can tell me that at present great artists invariably do starve, except when they are kept alive by charity, private fortune, or some drudgery which hinders them ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... me to Rome! Take me as you would take a dog, I think, Masterless left for strangers to maltreat: Take me home like that—leave me in the house Where the father and mother are" . ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... Then fell, with power, that word of God upon me, See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh. Hebrew xii. 25. This made a strange seizure upon my spirit; it brought light with it, and commanded a silence in my heart, of all those tumultuous thoughts, that did before use, like masterless hell-hounds, to roar and bellow, and make an hideous noise within me. It showed me also that Jesus Christ had yet a word of grace and mercy for me, that He had not, as I had feared, quite forsaken and cast off my soul; yea, this was a kind of chide ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... world of ideas, sensations, and realities seemed to have been thrown down, and all rushed into my brain like a set of hungry foxhounds. The horror of effort and the futility of endeavor permeated my very soul. My weary, helpless brain was filled with hordes of unruly imaginings; I was masterless, panic-driven, maddened, and had to abide for weeks—yea, months—with a fever-haunted soul occupying a fever-rent ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... know why you stay out here in the Dumps, masterless. I have heard of the forbidden drug that is sold in the mining camps such as Argon City. Is this the mechanism?" ...
— B-12's Moon Glow • Charles A. Stearns
... Rahere. "Witless, landless, nameless, and, but for my protection, masterless, he can still make shift to bide his ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... bad dreams tonight—but I cannot take you among the Spanish guerillas without showing you what kind of men they were, and the sort of warfare that they waged. I will only say that I understood why Monsieur Vidal's horse was waiting masterless in the grove, and that I hoped he had met this terrible fate with sprightliness and courage, as a good ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... livelihood, and which carried with it the expropriation of the PEOPLE from the land, the extinction of the yeoman, and the rise of the capitalist farmer; and the growth of the town population, which, swelled by the drift of the landless vagabonds and masterless men, grew into a definite proletariat or class of free-workmen; and their existence made that of the embryo capitalist-manufacturer also possible; and the reign of commercial contract and cash payment began to take the place of the old feudal hierarchy, ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... up as an anchor and dropped into the sea; when instantly an oily calmness floats out from the east, and the sea is still, as Jonah carries down the gale with him, leaving smooth water behind. He goes down in the whirling heart of such a masterless commotion that he scarce heeds the moment when he drops seething into the yawning jaws awaiting him; and the whale shoots-to all his ivory teeth, like so many white bolts, upon his prison. Then Jonah prayed ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... that storm over, and we saw the Goths tossing up their spears over the slain, and horses running loose and masterless adown over the westward-lying slopes, and a few with their riders still clinging to them. Yet some, sore hurt by seeming, galloping toward the main ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... interval since the fall of the First Babylonian Dynasty, however, Western Asia had not been left masterless. Three other imperial powers had waxed and waned in her borders, of which one was destined to a second expansion later on. The earliest of these to appear on the scene established an imperial dominion ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... terror-frenzied from beneath the Rosemary. The thing done had been overdone. The fireman had "bled" the air-brake too freely, and the liberated car, gathering momentum with every wheel-turn, surged around the circling spur track and shot out masterless on the steeper gradient of the ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... warrior dieth, His comrades in the war, With arms reversed and muffled drum, Follow his funeral car; They show the banners taken, They tell his battles won, And after him lead his masterless steed, While ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... troubles began, and one, Sigurd, had been lord over the Orkney Islands, and had died there. The other, Jarl Einar, fell out with Rognvald, his father, and we heard that he would take to the viking path, and go to the Orkneys, to win back the jarldom that Sigurd's death had left as a prey to masterless men and pirates of all sorts. So my mother took me to him, and asked him for the sake of old friendship to give me a place in his ship; for I was fourteen now, and well able to handle weapons, being strong and tall for my age, as were many of the sons ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... made visible, The mystery of its yearning realized, As the first babe to the first woman born; 120 No falcon ever felt delight of wings As when, an eyas, from the stolid cliff Loosing himself, he followed his high heart To swim on sunshine, masterless as wind; And I believe the brown earth takes delight In the new snowdrop looking back at her, To think that by some vernal alchemy It could transmute her darkness into pearl; What is the buxom peony after that, With its coarse constancy of hoyden blush? 130 What the full ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... forty miles away, but the breaking day brought no surcease of strugglings. When it came to the bitter end, when his eyelids would close involuntarily and he would wake with a start to wonder dumbly how far the 956 had come masterless, Gallagher took a chew of tobacco and began to rub the spittle into his eyes—the last resort of the sleep-tormented engineman. Like all the other expedients it sufficed for the time; but before long he was nodding again, and ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... time of unceasing disquiet. It was soon noised abroad that the heir to the Grange was missing, and his house and lands left masterless; and there presently appeared first one and then another of the Goldings, far-off kinsmen of Andrew; these persons came to the house to examine it, and talked much with the Standfasts; also they tried to find out what my sister and I knew of Andrew's ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... breaking spears, of ringing helm and shield, A dreadful rumor roared on every side, There lay a horse, another through the field Ran masterless, dismounted was his guide; Here one lay dead, there did another yield, Some sighed, some sobbed, some prayed, and some cried; Fierce was the fight, and longer still it lasted, Fiercer and fewer, still themselves ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... he had broken through the barrier on the previous afternoon, and the only thing that could bring it back was the birth of a feeling in her greater than comradeship. His shoulders fell together, the reins loosened, while P.D., masterless if not ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... life nor body! We are in no wise bound. Nothing is his. He may not carry arms; nor have redress For any harm that men should put on him, Saving to strike a shadow on the wall! He is a Nothing, by the statute-book; And, by the book, so let him live or die, Like to a masterless dog! ...
— The Piper • Josephine Preston Peabody
... compassion, and made me determine to follow her. Accordingly I elbowed my way, though I felt that I rather disturbed the surgeon's dressing; but that was a trifle. I followed her up stairs without ceremony. With respect to her, affection, 'masterless passion, had swayed her to its mood'—she was ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... altis de montibus umbrae—" murmured Grifone to himself, as he slipped among the cypresses over the grass. Molly followed him with faltering knees, nearly spent. As always, she was at the mercy of a clear head, never masterless when a man was near her. Morally, nervously, she seemed to be dead; so she followed her new lord as meekly as she had followed her old—that one to Nona across the seas, this one by gloomy, pent ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... committed confusedly from memory to papyrus by some amateur. The conventional attribution of the Hymns to Homer, in spite of linguistic objections, and of many allusions to things unknown or unfamiliar in the Epics, is merely the result of the tendency to set down "masterless" compositions to a well-known name. Anything of epic characteristics was allotted to the master of Epic. In the same way an unfathered joke of Lockhart's was attributed to Sydney Smith, and the process is constantly illustrated in daily conversation. ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... the painted hide-tents, "Moyas" named, that on the mead Sheltered dark-eyed women wearing Braided hair and woven bead. Never man had seen their lodges, Never warrior crossed the slopes Where they rode, and where they hunted Imu bulls and antelopes. Masterless, how swift their riding! While the wild steeds onward flew, From round breasts and arms unburdened Freedom's winds their tresses blew. Only when the purple shadows Slowly veiled the darkening plain Would they sorrow that the Sun-god Dearer loved ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... may a' rin masterless, My hawks may fly frae tree to tree, My lord may grip my vassal lands, For there again maun ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... said the knight. "An arrow in the left eye has bereft our Duke of a noble ally and increased the blessedness of the City of Paradise. You are masterless now. Will you ride with me on my service, you Jehan the Hunter? It would appear that we are alike in our ways of thinking. They call me the Dove from the shield I bear, and a dove I seek to be in the winning of England. The hawk's task is over when the battle is won, and he who has but the sword ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... artilleryman's still hand. He explained to me, keeping his eyes straight in front of him, that he had met this dog (he called him awful names) walking alone, and was going to take him to the Fort to be killed for a masterless pariah. ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... engaging of those fables that make the conventional background of German history is the academic legend of a free agricultural village community made up of ungraded and masterless men. It is not necessary here to claim that such a village community never played a part in the remoter prehistoric experiences out of which the German people, or their ruling classes, came into the territory of the Fatherland; such a claim might divert the argument. But ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... the 'taste and fancy' of the reciter. The lore is now traditional, whether it be in prose, as Maerchen, or in verse, as ballad. And so it remains in oral circulation—and therefore still liable to variation—until it is written down or printed. It is left 'masterless,' unsigned; for of the original author's composition, may be, only a word or two remains. It has passed through many mouths, and has been made over countless times. But once written down it ceases virum volitare per ora; the invention of printing has ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... mine, and I am free. Ye holy gods, but it is fine for a man to own himself and call none other lord! No man ever more shall hold me slave to him. Henceforth we be rovers, this star of my life and I. Come thou with us, friend! If thou stay here, thou'lt be held no better than erro, a landless, masterless wanderer, who is fair game for the law and for all men. Had my lord stayed, thou knowest that I too should have remained faithful. He being gone, we must fend for ourselves ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... yt appeareth by dayly experience that the numbr of idle, vaggraunte, loyteringe sturdy roags, masterless men, lewde and yll disposed persons are exceedingly encreased and multiplied, committinge many grevious and outerageous disorders and offences, tendinge to the great . . . of Allmightie God, the contempt of Her Majesties laws, and to the great charge, trouble, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... walked as though he had been made of wood, and Mowgli killed for him. But the young wolves, the children of the disbanded Seeonee Pack, throve and increased, and when there were about forty of them, masterless, full-voiced, clean-footed five-year-olds, Akela told them that they ought to gather themselves together and follow the Law, and run under one head, as ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... on the side of the track, the village dogs steal into the moonlight and come gradually nearer us; masterless dogs of any colour betwixt the collie and fox-terrier. No one feeds them or owns them, so there's plenty of appetite and unclaimed affection going. One old lady takes her position beside us for the night, ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... been taken in audacious circumstances a year or two before. A travelling photographer had been one of yet another coach-load turned out and stood in a line by the masterful masterless man. ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... of Ballads of Sacred Origin contains all that we possess in England—notice that only two have Scottish variants, even fragmentary—and somewhat more than can be classified as ballads with strictness. Yet I would fain have added other of our 'masterless' carols, which to-day seem to survive chiefly in the West of England. One of their best lovers, Mr. Quiller-Couch, has complained that, after promising himself to include a representative selection of carols in his anthology, he was chagrined to discover that they lost their quaint delicacy ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... Virginia. At the close of the Civil War I found myself possessed of several hundred thousand dollars (Confederate) and a captain's commission in the cavalry arm of an army which no longer existed; the servant of a state which had vanished with the hopes of the South. Masterless, penniless, and with my only means of livelihood, fighting, gone, I determined to work my way to the southwest and attempt to retrieve my fallen fortunes in a search ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... bound to support him. So long as this corresponded to facts, the system could work satisfactorily. With the spread of commerce, and the growth of a less settled population, difficulties necessarily arose. The pauper and the vagabond represent a kind of social extravasation; the 'masterless man' who has strayed from his legitimate place or has become a superfluity in his own circle. The vagabond could be flogged, sent to prison, or if necessary hanged, but it was more difficult to settle what to do with a man who was not a criminal, but simply a product ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... welfare and education of Pratinas's runaway, until she reached a maturity at which Agias could assert his claims. The young Hellene himself had been not a little anxious lest his cousin cast obstacles in the way of an alliance with a masterless slavegirl; for of late Demetrius had been boasting to his kinsman that their family, before business misfortunes, had been wealthy and honourable among the merchant princes of Alexandria. But the worthy pirate had ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... of its annual scourge and visitor, the yellow fever. I was in a manner left alone; all my friends had gone up or down stream, or across the Pont Chartrain. There was nothing to be seen in the whole place but meagre hollow-eyed negresses, shirtless and masterless, running about the streets, howling like jackals, or crawling in and out of the open doors of the houses. In the upper suburb things were at the worst; there, whole streets were deserted, the houses ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... above the outside wall, which I did recognise as being worn by the serving-men of the great lady's friends; and while we were yet talking, a flight of bullets passed close over our heads, and three or four of the troopers fell off dead men, leaving their saddles empty and their horses masterless. ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... Island of Destiny came under the equal rule of the two. And one had rule over the courts and cities, the harbors and the military encampments. And the other had rule over the waste places and the villages and the roads where masterless men walked. And the deeds of one are in the histories the shanachies have written in the language of the learned, and the deeds of the other are in the stories the people tell to you ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... the body's maidenhood Alone were neither rare nor good Unless with it I gave to you A spirit still untrammeled, too, Take my dreams and take my mind That were masterless as wind; And "Master!" I shall say to you Since you never asked ...
— Love Songs • Sara Teasdale
... fierce Prussia's chargers stand, Her children's sharp swords out;— Proud Austria's bright spurs streaming red, When rose the closing shout. But soon the steeds rushed masterless, By tower and town and wood; For lordly France her fiery youth Poured o'er them like a flood. Go, hew the gold spurs from your heels, And let your steeds run free; Then come to our unconquered decks, And learn to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... more than ever Wingfold felt that if there was no God, his soul was but a thing of rags and patches out in the masterless pitiless storm and hail of a chaotic universe. Often would he rush into the dark, as it were, crying for God, and ever he would emerge therefrom with some tincture of the light, enough to keep him alive and send ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... and woodland and highland, Give all that ever they gave: But my world is a cultureless island, My spirit a masterless slave. ...
— A Dark Month - From Swinburne's Collected Poetical Works Vol. V • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... did not know how to reply. If the old woman had spoken the truth, an extraordinary chance was being offered to him. Only a great passion could impel the daughter of a noble house to seek, of her own will, the affection of an obscure and masterless samurai, possessing neither wealth nor any sort of prospects. On the other hand, it was not in the honorable nature of the man to further his own interests by taking advantage of a feminine weakness. Moreover, the circumstances were disquietingly ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... to me, I was forced to go when she bade me, and I have wandered about ever since, with grief gnawing at my heart; for how can a masterless man, without money or goods, ever hope ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... the same—everything—except—the old home. That home he and his father had planned, and they had overseen the building of it, a chateau of logs a little distance from the town, with the Saskatchewan sweeping below it and the forest at its doors. Masterless, it must have seen changes in those four years. Fumbling in his pocket, his fingers touched Conniston's watch. He drew it out and let the firelight play on the open dial. It was ten o'clock. In the back of the premier half of the case Conniston had ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... brought a force up by Ghazni to Kabul, overcoming some resistance on his way, and assumed the supreme command. Nevertheless the political situation was still embarrassing, for as the whole country beyond the range of British effective military control was masterless, it was undesirable to withdraw the troops before a government could be reconstructed which could stand without foreign support, and with which diplomatic relations of some kind might be arranged. The general position and prospect of political affairs in Afghanistan ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... they often lie in the room upstairs soaking, and can't see one another for the drink, they're that foggy. Everything goes crooked here, as you may suppose, with no master. 'Masterless, defenceless,' as the old proverb says. But what can you say about it—they haven't anything else in common! But it's all the same to me—as soon as Lasse finds something ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo |
