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Versatile   Listen
adjective
Versatile  adj.  
1.
Capable of being turned round.
2.
Liable to be turned in opinion; changeable; variable; unsteady; inconstant; as, a versatile disposition.
3.
Turning with ease from one thing to another; readily applied to a new task, or to various subjects; many-sided; as, versatile genius; a versatile politician. "Conspicuous among the youths of high promise... was the quick and versatile (Charles) Montagu."
4.
(Nat. Hist.) Capable of turning; freely movable; as, a versatile anther, which is fixed at one point to the filament, and hence is very easily turned around; a versatile toe of a bird.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Versatile" Quotes from Famous Books



... versatile individual for he is steward, doctor, postman, purveyor of news, and dictator in general. He alone makes the schedule of each trip, arriving and departing at will. Time in the Congo counts for naught. It is in truth the land of leisure. For the man who wants to move fast, water ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson

... habit of my versatile guest was his fly-catching. It is already notorious that the golden-wing is giving up the profession of woodpecker and becoming a ground bird; it is equally patent to one who observes him that the red-head ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller

... Barrs' impassioned series, Les Bastions de l'Est, enjoy immense popularity, and within the last few months have appeared two volumes which fully confirm the views of their forerunners—M. Hallays' impressions of many wayfarings and Aprs quarante ans by M. Jules Claretie, the versatile, brilliant and much respected administrator-general ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... whose memory certain enormities of Dunshie had rankled ever since that versatile individual had abandoned the veterinary profession, owing to the most excusable intervention of a pack-mule's off hind leg, was not far out in his surmise, as subsequent history may some day reveal. But the telling of that story is still a long ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)

... year of the nineteenth century, and fated unfortunately never to see its close, Guy de Maupassant was probably the most versatile and brilliant among the galaxy of novelists who enriched French literature between the years 1800 and 1900. Poetry, drama, prose of short and sustained effort, and volumes of travel and description, each sparkling with the same minuteness of detail and brilliancy of style, flowed ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant

... boy. The charge for my instruction was mainly set off by the periodic visits of my father with a large bag of battered fossils to lecture to us upon geology. I was one of those fortunate youngsters who take readily to school work, I had a good memory, versatile interests and a considerable appetite for commendation, and when I was barely twelve I got a scholarship at the City Merchants School and was entrusted with a scholar's railway season ticket to Victoria. After my father's death a large and very ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... carefully backed in through a passage laid out by the versatile Fisheye. A door was opened in one of the unplaced cages and the little bears pushed out into a new world. They scrambled to a far corner, faced about, and waited ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney

... but he came down looking so like a chimney-sweep that Constance, whose versatile moods changed with the rapidity of lightning, flung herself on the bed in fits of laughter. The interrupted preparations were quickly resumed and completed; and when all was ready, and the boatman waiting at the Castle ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt

... debate, ambitious, adventurous in political diplomacy, a hard worker, incessant in activity for his party, temperate upon the slavery question, whole-souled in every measure or policy calculated to advance nationality, this versatile man may be put down as foremost among the leaders of the Whig Party from its origin ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... reluctantly—more reluctantly than I can tell you—I declined, obliging them to send for Gen. Horace Porter and bring him over from across the ocean, where he was ably serving as Ambassador to France. I need not add how well that gifted and versatile gentleman discharged ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... catch a straying weft And trace the hinted texture here or there, Of that stupendous loom weaving our fates. Two parents, late in life, are haply blessed With one bright child, a wonder in his years, For loveliness and genius versatile: Some common ill destroys him; parents, both, Until their death, are left but living tombs That hold the one dead image of their joy. A man, the flower of honour, who has found His well-beloved young daughter fled from home, Fallen from her ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner

... more than vigorous Italian princes. To that level they returned after the period of the Saxon Ottos (962-1002). In those forty years there were glimpses of a better future; the German Pope, Gregory V, allied himself to Cluny (996-999); as Sylvester II (999-1003) the versatile Gerbert of Aurillac—at once mathematician, rhetorician, philosopher, and statesman—entered into the romantic dreams of his friend and pupil, Otto III, and formed others on his own behalf which centred round the Papacy rather than the Empire. Sylvester saw in imagination ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis

... the sketch of Dr. Norman Macleod was in print, that genial, versatile, and accomplished Divine has gone over to the Great Majority. On Sunday forenoon, the 16th of June, he died rather suddenly, although, as he had been ailing for some time previously, his end was not altogether unexpected. In the public prints of both England and Scotland, the tributes paid to ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans

... anyway," said I, and I was confirmed in my opinion along in the spring, when the cornet, and aught else, appeared to have palled upon the versatile Mary. She wrote that she had serious thoughts ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth

... love of enjoyment. Unusual bodily vigour enabled him to combine severe devotion to work with facile indulgence in sensual pleasures. His passion for wine and women was almost as well known as his learning. Versatile, light-hearted, boastful and pleasure-loving, he contrasts with the nobler and more intellectual character of Averroes. His bouts of pleasure gradually weakened his constitution; a severe colic, which seized him on the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... and the Duke of Saxony, should be present as witnesses at the marriage. Philip himself found the consent of these divines and of his most distinguished ally, John Frederick, indispensable. He succeeded first of all in gaining over the versatile Butzer, and sent him in December 1539, on ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... to our theme, the cries of the marchands. It would take a pen like Balzac's, as curiously versatile, as observant, as full of individual ink, to catch all the shades of these odd utterances. You may recollect as you lay in your sweet English bed in London, just as the fog was lifting over the great city early ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various

... Maltravers, which is indeed a splendid work." Now that we look back at Bulwer-Lytton's prodigious compositions, we are able to perceive more justly than did the critics of his own day what his merits were. For one thing, he was extraordinarily versatile. If we examine his books, we must be astonished at their variety. He painted the social life of his own day, he dived into spectral romance, he revived the beautiful ceremonies of antiquity, he evoked the great shades of English and of Continental history, he made realistic ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... find in these days a more competent and sympathetic editor of Scott than his countryman, the brilliant and versatile man of letters who has undertaken the task, and if any proof were wanted either of his qualifications or of his skill and discretion in displaying them, Mr. Lang has furnished it abundantly in his charming Introduction ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... Mr Jollyboy made Martin his head clerk; and then, becoming impatient, he made him his partner off-hand. Then he made Barney O'Flannagan an overseer in the warehouses; and when the duties of the day were over, the versatile Irishman became his confidential servant and went to sup and sleep at the Old Hulk; which, he used to remark, was quite a natural and proper and decidedly comfortable place to ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne

... perfect command of pitch and break, his beautifully easy action, which never varied with the varying pace, his great ball on the leg-stump—his dropping head-ball—in a word, the infinite ingenuity of that versatile attack. It was no mere exhibition of athletic prowess, it was an intellectual treat, and one with a special significance in my eyes. I saw the "affinity between the two things," saw it in that afternoon's tireless warfare against the flower of professional cricket. It was not that Raffles ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung

... Chronicle," if they were allowed to pursue quietly the "meditation" which I have thought fit, with, some amount of feasible excuse, to set in fair order, concerning the apotheosis of an evening service in musical form, from the versatile pen of Mr. Berthold Tours, in the key of D, which, with no inconsiderable eclat was in the sequence of events, produced at St. Raphael's Church, Bristol, on Sunday, the 12th inst. A companion to the graceful ...
— Original Letters and Biographic Epitomes • J. Atwood.Slater

... various philosophical systems without fear, but also through the vapours of science and scholarship, while remaining ever true to his highest self. And it was this highest self which exacted from his versatile spirit works as complete as his were, which bade him suffer and learn, that he might ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche

... similar gifts, though no others, so far as I know, are quite so versatile as these three. Several of the warblers, for example, have attained to more than one set song, notwithstanding the deservedly small reputation of this misnamed family. I have myself heard the golden-crowned thrush, ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey

... doubt, from a reminiscence of that passage—"It is possible to be a very great man, and to be still very inferior to Julius Caesar, the most complete character, so Lord Bacon thought, of all antiquity. Nature seems incapable of such extraordinary combinations as composed his versatile capacity, which was the wonder even of the Romans themselves. The first general; the only triumphant politician; inferior to none in point of eloquence; comparable to any in the attainments of wisdom, in an age made up of the greatest commanders, statesmen, orators, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... versatile man of his time, found plenty of praise for his art work, until he preached social reform to Englishmen. Thereafter the art of William Morris was not so highly esteemed, and the best poet in England failed to attain the laurel on the ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby

... fellow-student, John Thorndyke, now an eminent authority on Medical Jurisprudence. I had been associated with him temporarily in one case as his assistant, and had then been deeply impressed by his versatile learning, his acuteness and his marvellous resourcefulness. Thorndyke was a barrister in extensive practice, and so would be able to tell me at once what was my duty from a legal point of view; and, as he was also a doctor of medicine, ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman

... current of thought. Deep down in our hearts we were going back to English days; the cumbrous, quaint, queer, old, picturesque times; the dim, haunted times between cock-crowing and morning; those hours of national childhood, when popular ideas had the confiding credulity, the poetic vivacity, and versatile life, which distinguish children ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... drunk with it. Never did I think I should have a good draught of poetry again." Ruskin somewhere considered it the greatest poem of the nineteenth century, "with enough imagination to set up a dozen lesser poets"; and Stedman calls it "a representative and original creation: representative in a versatile, kaleidoscopic presentment of modern life and issues; original, because the most idiosyncratic of its author's poems. An audacious speculative freedom pervades it, which smacks of the New World rather than the Old.... 'Aurora Leigh' is a mirror ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... Capitol that crowns the hill Where Boreas sweeps with icy chill, A masterpiece of studied art Conceived by genius versatile And fashioned with unerring skill, O'erlooks the busy, crowded mart, And, like a kingly domicile, Its burnished dome and sculpture thrill With admiration every heart; And strangers pause beyond the rill To view its grandeur, ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard

... ancients relegated to slaves will in course of time be more and more largely performed by inanimate machinery. Unskilled labour will for the most part disappear. Skilled labour will consist in the guiding of implements contrived with versatile cunning for the relief of human nerve and muscle. Ultimately there will be no unsettled land to fill, no frontier life, no savage races to be assimilated or extirpated, no extensive migration. Thus life ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... service in 1813, served for a number of years as a clerk, and settled down in Lower Fort Garry District in 1824. Farming, teaching, catechising for the church, acting precentor, a local encyclopaedia and collector of customs, he passed his versatile life, till in the year before the Sayer affair, 1848, he became clerk of Court, which place, with slight interruption, he held for twenty years. One who knew him says: "From his long residence in the Settlement, he has seen Governors, Judges, Bishops, and Clergymen, not to mention ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce

... Impeachment of Warren Hastings— which, by embodying the cause of a whole country in one individual, and thus combining the extent and grandeur of a national question, with the direct aim and singleness of a personal attack, opened as wide a field for display as the most versatile talents could require, and to Mr. Sheridan, in particular, afforded one of those precious opportunities, of which, if Fortune but rarely offers them to genius, it is genius alone that can fully ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... general intercourse with society; but, with those whom he loved and wished to please, he was gentle and insinuating; and when he chose to open the resources of his highly gifted mind, his conversational talents were more versatile and fascinating, than those of any individual whom I have ever known. There was a cast of deep thought, almost of melancholy, in his countenance, which was ascribed, I know not if correctly, to an early disappointment; but it was seldom banished, even from his smiles, and often increased ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney

... of the Convention are fluctuating and versatile, as will ever be the case where men are impelled by necessity to act in opposition to their principles. In their eagerness to attribute all the past excesses to Robespierre, they have, unawares, involved themselves in the obligation of not continuing the same system. They ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... Vaccinated a Vapouring, Verbose Varmit of a Vulgar Villainous Vagabond, who Very Verdantly Ventured on a Versatile, Veteran, Valueless Velocipede to Visit the Viceroy of Venice, instead of Visiting ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... charmed the spiritual woman he saw in Anne, so he laid himself out to flatter the natural man he saw in Majendie. And Majendie leaned back in his chair, and gazed at the Canon, the remarkable, the clever, the versatile little Canon, with half-closed eyelids veiling his contemptuous eyes. (He confided to Hannay, later on, that the Canon, in his after-dinner moments, made ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair

... especially recall George William Curtis, a genius of the first brilliancy and remarkable withal for his versatile conversational powers. I was talking to him on one occasion when someone inquired as to his especial work in the co-operative fold of Brook Farm. His laughing reply was, "Cleaning door knobs." George Ripley was a distinguished scholar and a ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur

... mother's sentiments were naturally so versatile that they could not be depended on for two days together; but it did not occur to her for the moment that a change had been helped on in the present case by a romantic talk between Mrs. Garland and the miller. But Mrs. Garland could not keep the secret long. She chatted gaily as she walked, ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... Colossae). At an early age he studied at Constantinople, and about 1175 was appointed archbishop of Athens. After the capture of Constantinople by the Franks and the establishment of the Latin empire (1204), he retired to the island of Coos, where he died. He was a versatile writer, and composed homilies, speeches and poems, which, with his correspondence, throw considerable light upon the miserable condition of Attica and Athens at the time. His memorial to Alexis III. Angelus on the abuses of Byzantine administration, the poetical ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... extent of a social character, may, he says, bring about serious consequences. Such exalted persons are apt to regard any intellectual cypher as a great military genius if he happens to be an agreeable and versatile talker, and then the military authorities have not always the courage to disturb the preconceived notions of their sovereign. Result: Society-generals for dinners and balls; after whom rank next the petticoat-generals. And then he referred ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein

... was a versatile gentleman, serving his country and generation in almost every useful capacity, from chaplain in the continental army to foreign ambassador. He was born in Redding, Ct., 1755, and died near Cracow, Poland, ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth

... an omelet we must break our eggs; that is, the breaking of eggs is a necessary condition of the omelet. But is it a sufficient condition? Does an omelet appear whenever three eggs are broken? So of the Greek mind. To get such versatile intelligence it may be that such commercial dealings with the world as the geographical Hellas afforded are a necessary condition. But if they are a sufficient condition, why did not the Phoenicians outstrip the Greeks in intelligence? ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... servants were grand; all was grand to Owen's bewildered imagination. Madame Duvet made such very decided attempts to talk to him, however, that he was obliged to cease wondering, and to bring his usually versatile genius into play, in the light of all the grandeur. He got on so well with the lady, that Howel wondered in his turn, and after dinner told Owen that he verily believed if he played his cards well, he might make an impression on ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale

... or the casualties on the part of the Diamond X forces would have been much heavier than it was. Even then several were hit, and Billee's hat was carried off his head by a bullet, which, if it had gone a few inches lower, would have ended the career of that versatile cowboy. ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker

... has a more nimble and versatile tongue as well as wit. In the older fiction and drama apparitions spoke seldom, and then merely as ghosts, not as individuals. And ghosts, like kings in drama, were of a dignity and must preserve it in their speech. Or perhaps the authors were doubtful as to the dialogue ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough

... is given to pigeons for the purpose of taming them, and a curious superstition is that of the "divining-rod," with "its versatile sensibility to water, ore, treasure and thieves," and one whose history is apparently as remote as it is widespread. Francis Lenormant, in his "Chaldean Magic," mentions the divining-rods used by ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer

... a new aspect of your versatile nature, Solomon. Must I regard you as a personally emancipated moral influence, not committed to the straight and narrow path yourself, but still close enough to it to keep my feet from ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester

... that the abstinent and chastely celibate are exceptionally healthy, energetic, immune. The wildest claims are made. But indeed it is true for all who can see the facts of life simply and plainly, that man is an omnivorous, versatile, various creature and can draw his strength from a hundred varieties of nourishment. He has physiological idiosyncrasies too that are indifferent to biological classifications and moral generalities. It is not ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... have ability enough, the rays of their faculties taken separately are all right; but they are powerless to collect them, to concentrate them upon a single object. They lack the burning glass of a purpose, to focalize upon one spot the separate rays of their ability. Versatile men, universal geniuses, are usually weak, because they have no power to concentrate the rays of their ability, to focalize them upon one point, until they burn a ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden

... that contained the list of the Speaker's committees; it was well that they could not go back to Ripton into the offices on the square, earlier in December, where Mr. Hamilton Tooting was writing the noble part of that inaugural from memoranda given him by the Honourable Hilary Vane. Yes, the versatile Mr. Tooting, and none other, doomed forever to hide the light of his genius under a bushel! The financial part was written by the Governor-general himself—the Honourable Hilary Vane. And when it was all finished and revised, it was put into a long envelope which bore this printed address: ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... dark heart. Yet I look up, I trust singly, to Him from whom it came yesterday; and thither may I look till again the day break. Can I say, in full sincerity, "more than they that watch for the morning"? Alas that I am so versatile! Christian and worldling within a day. Oh for a deeper sense that I am not my own,—that I have no right to disturb the sanctuary of my own spirit when God has made it such,—that there is no other way than whole-hearted and honest-hearted Christianity ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall

... life, as it had played itself out in Normandy inns, was here, in this Inn on a Rock, to give us a series of farewell performances. On no other stage, we were agreed, could the versatile French character have had as admirable and picturesque a setting; and surely, on no other bit of French soil could such an astonishing and amazing variety of types be assembled for a final appearance, as came up, day after day, to make the tour of ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... (Hamlet); 'Falstaff and Doll' (King Henry IV., Second Part); 'Macbeth meeting the Witches on the Heath' (Macbeth); 'Robin Goodfellow' (Midsummer Night's Dream). This gallery gave the public an opportunity of judging of Fuseli's versatile powers. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... approached semi-night replaced the day, the gloom being so deep that telegraph poles twenty feet away could not be seen. Breathing was difficult, and the smoke made the eyes water. At Naples, however, a favorable wind had cleared the air of smoke, the sun shone brightly, and the versatile people were happy once more. The goggles and eye-screens had disappeared, but the streets were anything but comfortable, for some six thousand men were at work clearing the ashes from the roofs and main streets and piling them in the middle of the narrow streets, making the passage of ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... broad and versatile mastery that it is difficult to analyze. Thus it is not easy to find salient traits in the art of M. Saint-Saens. We are apt to think mainly of the distinguished beauty of his harmonies, until we remember his subtle counterpoint, or in turn the brilliancy of his orchestration. The one trait that ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp

... is no place in the United States, so far as I know, where the cow is more versatile or ambidextrous, if I may be allowed the use of a term that is far above my station in life, than here in the mountains of North Carolina, where the obese 'possum and the anonymous ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye

... thy theme, for shrewdness famed And genius versatile, who far and wide A Wand'rer, after Ilium overthrown, Discover'd various cities, and the mind And manners learn'd of men, in lands remote. He num'rous woes on Ocean toss'd, endured, Anxious to save himself, and to conduct ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... the simple consideration of what he himself has to say, quite independently of any real or supposed connection with this or that literary age or school. Let us close with the words of a most [16] versatile master of English—happily not yet included in Mr. Saintsbury's book—a writer who has dealt with all the perturbing influences of our century in a manner as classical, as idiomatic, as ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater

... whistled and sang one song with a desperate intentness. That song was "The Rosary." The fish had presumed too far. "This," I shrewdly told myself, "is almost certainly a dream." The soundless words were magic. Gorge and stream vanished, the versatile fish faded to blue sky showing through the green needles of a jack pine. It was a sane world again and still, I thought, with the shadows of ranch house, stable, hay barn, corral, and bunk house going long to the east. ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... the opportunity. The result flattered him in spite of himself. To others she was courteous, affable and sublimely indifferent. When he approached it seemed almost as if a film passed from her eyes, that she awakened into a fuller life and became an enchantress in her versatile powers. He responded with as fine a courtesy as her own, although quite different, but there was a cool, steady self-restraint in eyes and manner which piqued ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe

... inclining against us—and because the opposition to it was ripening into disorganizing councils. Adams had prepared the way by securing the mediation of Alexander. Then, in that critical period, associated with Russell, Bayard, the learned and versatile Gallatin, and the eloquent and chivalric Clay, he negotiated with firmness, with assiduity, with patience, and with consummate ability, a definitive treaty of peace—a treaty of peace which, although it omitted the causes of the war already obsolete, saved and established and ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... fully realize that they were Angevins. To an English schoolboy Henry II. is little more than the murderer of Beket and the friend of Fair Rosamund. Even an English student finds it hard after all the labours of Professor Stubbs to lay hold of either Henry or his sons. In spite of their versatile ability and of the mark which they have left on our judicature, our municipal liberty, our political constitution, the first three Plantagenets are to most of us little more than dim shapes of strange manner and speech, hurrying to their island realm to extort money, to ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... vacancies, and so they wander on. If a man applies for temporary work, the choice of industry is disappointingly limited. One is tempted to think that the whole superstructure of cheap and free shelters has tended to the standardisation of a low order of existence in this netherworld that attracted the versatile philanthropist at the head of the Salvation Army twenty ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes

... kind of joyous sigh, "I like so many things! If a thing strikes me with a certain intensity I accept it. I don't want to swagger, but I suppose I'm rather versatile. I like people to be totally different from Henrietta—in the style of Lord Warburton's sisters for instance. So long as I look at the Misses Molyneux they seem to me to answer a kind of ideal. Then Henrietta presents ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James

... to take off something of his burthen of forty years, by wearing the last fancy of the contemporary buck, a costume of elastic material with distensible warts and horns, changing in colour as he walked, by an ingenious arrangement of versatile chromatophores. And no doubt, if Elizabeth's affection had not been already engaged by the worthless Denton, and if her tastes had not had that odd bias for old-fashioned ways, this extremely chic conception would have ravished her. Bindon ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... remarkable particular, William the Silent resembles Quintus Sertorius; namely, that each, while rebel against his Government, fought in the name of his Government. Mommsen says: "It may be doubted whether any Roman statesman of the earlier period can be compared in point of versatile talent to Sertorius," who, though in rebellion against Rome, did all he did in the name of Rome, fought battles, levied tributes, enfranchised cities, remodeled communities; in short, did in Spain what, in a later ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... and with harmless unconstraint chatted yet a long time with the shrewd and versatile ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... lacking in all appreciation of them, and, if he be so lacking, no amount of explanation will avail to give him understanding. Borrow, in one of his sermons, declared concerning wit: "It is, indeed, a thing so versatile, multiform, appearing in so many shapes and garbs, so variously apprehended of several eyes and judgments, that it seemeth no less hard to settle a clear and certain notion thereof than to make a portrait of Proteus, or to define the figure of the ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous

... causes which ruined Athens were in full operation at Florence. First and foremost was the petulant and variable temper of a democracy, so well described by Plato, and so ably analyzed by Machiavelli. The want of agreement among the versatile Florentines, fertile in plans but incapable of concerted action, was a chief source of political debility. Varchi and Segni both relate how, in spite of wealth, ability, and formidable forces, the Florentine ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... chapter of accidents, and a volume of motley incidents in various climes, and upon far seas. Being a very strong, active man, with gift of versatile hand and brain, and early acquaintance with handicrafts, Christopher Bert could earn his keep, and make in a year almost as much as he used to give away, or lend without redemption, in a general day of his wealthy time. Hard ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... to such a process? He avowed that he was deeply enamored of Enrica—a man in love is already half vanquished. Why should Marescotti throw away his chance of happiness for a phantasy—a mere dream? There was no real obstacle. He was versatile and visionary, but the very soul of honor. How, if he—Trenta—could bring Marescotti to see how much it would be to Enrica's advantage that he should transplant her from a dreary home, to ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot

... play." The use of the language, so lucid and so nice in its discriminations, was itself an education for the young who grew up to hear it and to speak it. In a genial yet invigorating climate, in a land where breezes from the mountain and the sea were mingled, the versatile Greeks produced by physical training that vigor and grace of body which they so much admired; and they developed the civil polity, the artistic discernment, and the complex social life, which made them the principal ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... moment, looking into the valley. The gray mists had lifted themselves into the upper air, and the atmosphere was so clear that the road leading to the mountain could be followed by the eye, save where it ran under the masses of foliage; and it seemed to be a most devious and versatile road, turning back on itself at one moment only to plunge boldly forward the next. Nor was it lacking in color. On the levels it was of dazzling whiteness, shining like a pool of water; but at points where it made a visible descent it was alternately red and gray. Something ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris

... the Transcendental group worthy of mention here is George William Curtis, a versatile and charming personality, not a genius in any sense, but a writer of pleasant and amusing prose, an orator of no small ability, and one of the truest patriots who ever loved and labored for his country. It is in this latter aspect, rather than ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson

... shall forget it;' or, 'A great personage, whom some of us knew;' or, 'It was a rule with a very worthy and excellent friend of mine, now no more;' or, 'Never was his equal in society, so just in his remarks, so lively, so versatile, so unobtrusive;' or, 'So great a benefactor to his country and to his kind;' or, 'His philosophy so profound.' 'Oh, vanity! vanity of vanities! all is vanity! What profiteth it? What profiteth it? His soul is in hell, O ye children of men! While thus ye speak, his soul is in the beginning ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... there had also descended to him the wonderful beauty, the matchless grace, of his ill-fated father. Great abilities, courage, fascination of manners, were also his; but he had not been endowed with firmness of character, and was at once energetic and versatile. Even at this age, the qualities which became his ruin were ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... often have occasion to remark the fidelity to early habits and tastes by which Lord Byron, though in other respects so versatile, was distinguished. In the juvenile letter, just cited, there are two characteristics of this kind which he preserved unaltered during the remainder of his life;—namely, his punctuality in immediately answering letters, and his love of the simplest ballad ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore

... feared no danger while she was with me, but that if my object was to prevent her from looking at me, the most efficient way certainly was to apply a bandage to her eyes. Oh! woman, woman!" groaned Wacousta, in fierce anguish of spirit, "who shall expound the complex riddle of thy versatile nature? ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... Although "a poet is naturally a religious animal," we find that the greatest of Roman poets Lucretius, was an Atheist, while even "some of our most brilliant notorieties in the modern world of song are not the most notable for piety." But our versatile Professor easily accounts for this by assuming that there "may be an idolatry of the imaginative, as well as of the knowing faculty." Never did natural historian so jauntily provide for every fact contravening his theories. ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote

... battle, and in the science of morality. Well-read in history and the Puranas and various branches of learning, and acquainted with the truths of the Vedas and their branches they acquired knowledge, which was versatile and deep. And Pandu, possessed of great prowess, excelled all men in archery while Dhritarashtra excelled all in personal strength, while in the three worlds there was no one equal to Vidura in devotion to virtue and in the knowledge of the dictates ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)

... Richard; "elegant in a lady's chamber, if you will. Oh, ay, Conrade of Montserrat—who knows not the popinjay? Politic and versatile, he will change you his purposes as often as the trimmings of his doublet, and you shall never be able to guess the hue of his inmost vestments from their outward colours. A man-at-arms? Ay, a fine figure on horseback, and can bear him well in the tilt-yard, and at the barriers, ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... human creature Chambers is strikingly versatile. It must always be remembered that he started life as a painter. There is a story that Charles Dana Gibson and Robert W. Chambers sent their first offerings to Life at the same time. Mr. Chambers sent a picture and Mr. Gibson sent a bit of writing. ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton

... Augustine united; a kind of Protestant pope, to whom everybody looks for advice and consolation. What a wonderful man! No wonder the Germans are so fond of him and so proud of him,—a Briareus with a hundred arms; a marvel, a wonder, a prodigy of nature; the most gifted, versatile, hard-working man of his century ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord

... running in the freshets, had gripped him so relentlessly that one of his legs was twisted to almost utter uselessness. With his crutches, however, he could get about after his fashion; and being handy with his fingers and versatile of wit, he managed to make a living well enough at the little odd jobs of mechanical repairing which the Settlement folk, and the mill hands in particular, brought to his cabin. His cabin, which was practically a citadel, stood on a steep cone of rock, upthrust from the bed ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts

... of the director of this amusement was Merbod. He could imitate the voices of all the birds, and was a merry, versatile fellow, who knew how to do a thousand things, and of whom ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... perceived by the eyes of the body. But in the reign of the younger Andronicus, these monasteries were visited by Barlaam, [41] a Calabrian monk, who was equally skilled in philosophy and theology; who possessed the language of the Greeks and Latins; and whose versatile genius could maintain their opposite creeds, according to the interest of the moment. The indiscretion of an ascetic revealed to the curious traveller the secrets of mental prayer and Barlaam embraced the opportunity of ridiculing the Quietists, who placed the soul in the navel; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... tranquillity of a never-varying countenance concealed a busy, ardent soul, which never ruffled even the veil behind which it worked, and was alike inaccessible to artifice and love; a versatile, formidable, indefatigable mind, soft, and ductile enough to be instantaneously moulded into all forms; guarded enough to lose itself in none; and strong enough to endure every vicissitude of fortune. A greater master in reading and in winning men's ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... a memoir of Archbishop Trench has sufficed to recall prominently to the public mind the virtues, endowments, and achievements of one of the most notable of latter-day divines. Richard Chenevix Trench was one of the most versatile of writers. He discoursed with equal knowledge and effect on Biblical and philological topics, and his prose work will always be respectfully regarded by the students alike of divinity and of language. But though, on these subjects, his pronouncements may in time grow stale or require correction, ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams

... Shakespearian forgeries. We shall never know the exact truth about the fabrication of the Shakespearian documents, and 'Vortigern' and the other plays. We have, indeed, the confession of the culprit: habemus confitentem reum, but Mr. W. H. Ireland was a liar and a solicitor's clerk, so versatile and accomplished that we cannot always trust him, even when he is narrating the tale of his own iniquities. The temporary but wide and turbulent success of the Ireland forgeries suggests the disagreeable reflection that criticism and learning ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang

... example. All my life I have been in banks—I have got on in banks. I have even been a bank manager. But was I happy? No. Why wasn't I happy? Because it did not suit my temperament. I am too adventurous—too versatile. Practically I have thrown it over. I do not suppose I shall ever manage a bank again. They would be glad to get me, no doubt; but I have learnt the lesson of my temperament—at last.... No! I shall never manage a ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... The versatile man who commands more than respect as the biographer of Poe and Wilde; as the (translator of and commentator on Remy de Gourmont; as a folklorist, has shown himself to be consecrated to the truth. The document that Mr. Ransome hurried ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome

... compelled to alter this desirable policy—for something in Lord Valleys' character made him fear that, in real emergency, he would exert himself to the point of the gravest discomfort sooner than be left to wait behind. A fellow like young Harbinger, of course, he understood—versatile, 'full of beans,' as he expressed it to himself in his more confidential moments, who had imbibed the new wine (very intoxicating it was) of desire for social reform. He would have to be given his head a little—but there would be ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... the Cursory Observations as the three contemporary analyses of the poems which a reader should consult.[37] The pamphlet is now offered to twentieth-century readers as an illustration of the mature and versatile critical powers of one of ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone

... protection of a surgeon in the army, whose embraces she relinquished for those of her present illustrious possessor. How long she may keep him in captivation, is a surmise of rather equivocal import; however ardent at present, his attachment, Mrs. C*r*y must be aware of the versatile propensities of his R*y*l H*ghn*ss of Y**k, and sans doubt like her predecessor, Mary Ann C***ke, will make the most of a ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... work of significance, The Essay on Man, a professedly philosophical poem by an author who knew little of philosophy, was published in four epistles, in 1733-4. Bolingbroke's brilliant, versatile, and shallow intellect had strongly impressed Swift, and had also fascinated Pope. It has been commonly supposed that the Essay owes its existence to his suggestion and guidance. The poet believed in his philosophy, and had the loftiest estimate of his ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis

... was an active, industrious and versatile Member of Congress for more than twenty years. He was born in Ohio, graduated at Brown University, was admitted to the bar, but, I believe, rarely practiced his profession. His natural bent was for editorial and political conflicts, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... a highly-gifted one too. He sings beautiful songs of his own invention to the lyre; his ecstatic and versatile mind works him up into any frame of feeling; but his soul is perverted; it is soaked in wickedness as a sponge drinks up water. He is a vessel full of beautiful gifts, but he has forfeited all that was good ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... see that Dr. Ryerson's character was a many-sided one; while his talents were remarkably versatile. He was an able writer on public affairs; a noted Wesleyan Minister, and a successful and skilful leader among his brethren. But his fame in the future will mainly rest upon the fact that he was a distinguished Canadian Educationist, and the Founder of a great ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... to blame. I have read the expostulations of Mr. Finck about the untilled fields of Chopin. Yet his favorite Paderewski plays season in and season out a selection from the scheme I have just given, with possibly a few additions. The most versatile—and—also delightful—Chopinist is Pachmann. From his very first afternoon recital at old Chickering Hall, New York, in 1890, he gave a taste of the unfamiliar Chopin. Joseffy, thrice wonderful wizard, who has attained to the height of a true philosophic ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker

... by a stronger name—and curiously enough with him the usual conditions were reversed and he received a commission for a statue of his father, Judge Story, before he had made any definite turning toward the art of sculpture. A young man of versatile gifts and accomplished scholarship, sculpture was to him one among the many attractive forms of art rather than the supreme attraction; and it was the stimulus of the given work that determined him as a sculptor, rather ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... of recent erection; the ancient temple had been thrown down in the earthquake sixteen years before, and the new building had become as much in vogue with the versatile Pompeians as a new church or a new preacher may be with us. The oracles of the goddess at Pompeii were indeed remarkable, not more for the mysterious language in which they were clothed, than for the credit which was attached to their ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... the field, or of flying through Media and Armenia and seizing Cappadocia, but came to no resolution while his friends stayed with him. After turning to many expedients in his mind, which his changeable fortune had made versatile, he at last put his men in array, and encouraged the Greeks and barbarians; as for the phalanx and the Argyraspids, they encouraged him, and bade him be of good heart; for the enemy would never be able to stand them. For indeed they were the oldest of Philip's and Alexander's ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... stupendous results of this reign was the establishment of the "Manufacture des Meubles de la Couronne," or, as it is usually called, "Manufacture des Gobelins." Artists of all kinds were gathered together and given apartments in the Louvre and the wonderfully gifted and versatile Le Brun was put at the head. Tapestry, goldsmiths' work, furniture, jewelry, etc., were made, and with the royal protection and interest France rose to the position of world-wide supremacy in the arts. Le Brun had the same taste and love of magnificence as Louis, and had also extraordinary ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop

... the boy had been confided, Chu-koh Liang, is the most versatile and inventive genius of Chinese antiquity. As the founder of the house of Chou discovered in an old fisherman a [Page 115] counsellor of state who paved his way to the throne, so Liu Pi found this man in a humble cottage where he was hiding ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

... went to Germany partly to study the new philosophy which was beginning to shine—though very feebly and intermittingly—in England. When he had returned he began to read Kant and Schelling, or rather to mix excursions into their books with the miscellaneous inquiries to which his versatile ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... Buddha by turns, and sometimes all at once. For Mr. Bellingham was a professed Buddhist and a profound student of Eastern moralities, and he was a thorough scholar in certain branches of the classics. The combination of these qualities, with the tact and versatile fluency of a man of the world, was a rare one, and was a source of unceasing surprise to his intimates. At the present moment he was a diplomatist, since he could not be a diplomat, and to his energetic suggestion and furtherance ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford

... was, he had accurately described a certain class of that versatile nation, the French, which are often met with in every country, wanderers or exiles from home. While we write, we have one in our own mind, well known to our good citizens who is familiarly designated by ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray

... reputation in the century he lives in has equaled this actor's. Talma and Rachel, if as great as he, were not so complete, so versatile. This sketch has mentioned but a few of his many marvelous creations, each so rich in individuality, each so marked and so distinct from the other, and each in its turn so original and novel. In his proud face, his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various

... [——] the questionable praise of being their hack. For Bentley and Hatchard, alike with Rivington and Frazer, for Colburn and Nisbet, as well as Knight, Tilt, Tyas, Moxon, and Murray, I seem to be gratuitously pouring out in equal measure my versatile meditations; at this sign all customers may be suited; only, shop-lifters will be visited with the utmost rigour of that obnoxious monosyllable.—Well, poor Epic, good night to you, and my benison on those who ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... rivers, and might answer very well, but I think it reather too low to venture a permanent establishment, particularly if built of brick or other durable materials, at any considerable expence; for so capricious, and versatile are these rivers, that it is difficult to say how long it will be, untill they direct the force of their currents against this narrow part of the low plain, which when they do, must shortly yeald to their influence; in such case a few years only ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... is an extraordinary volume—especially welcome as an evidence of female genius and accomplishment—but it is hardly less disappointing than extraordinary. Miss Barrett's genius is of a high order; active, vigorous, and versatile, but unaccompanied by discriminating taste. A thousand strange and beautiful views flit across her mind, but she cannot look on them with steady gaze; her descriptions, therefore, are often shadowy ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... Changeable, versatile, inconstant Eusebius, where is now your burst of philanthropy—where is all your rage? Pretty havoc you would but now have made, had you been armed with thunder—thunder, I say, for yours would have been no silent devastation among ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... a rich song from the same fertile and versatile pen, which was sung at one of our Red Lion meetings. That is why I want you to look at it, not that you will understand it, because it is full of allusions to occurrences known only in the scientific circles. At Ipswich we had ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley

... with Turkey, and enabling Italy to return to normal life? Why should time and opportunity be given to the Turks and Kurds for the massacre of Armenian men, women, and children? This candid reminder is said to have had a sobering effect on the versatile delegates yearning for a holiday. The situation that evoked it will arouse the passing wonder ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... smoothly for Mr. Sheldon's family. Georgy was very happy in the society of a companion who seemed really to have a natural taste for the manufacture of pretty little head-dresses from the merest fragments of material in the way of lace and ribbon. Diana had all that versatile cleverness and capacity for expedients which is likely to be acquired in a wandering and troubled life. She had learned more in her three years of discomfort with her father than in all the undeviating course of the Hyde-Lodge studies; she had improved her ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... He went abroad, as he affirmed at the time, "for purposes of study," whereat we all smiled, for Ken, so far as we knew him, was more likely to do anything else than to study. He was a young fellow of buoyant temperament, lively and social in his habits, of a brilliant and versatile mind, and possessing an income of twelve or fifteen thousand dollars a year; he could sing, play, scribble, and paint very cleverly, and some of his heads and figure- pieces were really well done, considering that he never had any regular ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne

... she had not felt thirty; she could only accept the almanac and the rules of arithmetic. The interminable years of her marriage rolled back, and she was eighteen again, ingenuous and trustful, convinced that her versatile husband was unique among his sex. The fading of a short-lived and factitious passion, the descent of the unique male to the ordinary level of males, the births of her three girls and their rearing and training: all these things seemed as trifles to her, mere excrescences ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett

... Eastern question which would in effect have been the work of Russia only. The more daring policy of Canning, by which Great Britain had attempted to take the lead as opportunity offered, either in active co-operation with Russia or in active opposition to her, could only be directed by a more versatile statesman than the nation now possessed. The accession to office of Wellington, though it left Dudley at the foreign office, was really marked by a return to the policy of Castlereagh, a policy which, if not brilliant, was at least honourable, consistent, and considerate, and which in the ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... spiritual life is quite other, not harsh and constrained, but free and spontaneous—a wealth of feeling playing about a constantly shifting centre. Spirit is not consecutive and law-abiding, but capricious and wanton, seeking the beautiful in no orderly progression, but in a refined and versatile sensibility. If this be the nature of spirit, and if spirit be the nature of reality, then he is most wise who is most rich in sentiment. The Romanticists were the exponents of an absolute sentimentalism. And they did not ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... easily be supposed, the divines with whom he was subsequently engaged in controversy did not suffer to sink into oblivion. [229] A still more infamous apostate was Joseph Haines, whose name is now almost forgotten, but who was well known in his own time as an adventurer of versatile parts, sharper, coiner, false witness, sham bail, dancing master, buffoon, poet, comedian. Some of his prologues and epilogues were much admired by his contemporaries; and his merit as an actor was universally acknowledged. This man professed himself a Roman Catholic, and went to Italy in ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... cessation of the deep baying of the dog. Cherry was one of the best and most versatile that the police had ever acquired ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve

... of very versatile intelligence, and, besides being a great musician, he made organs of lead with his own hand. In S. Domenico he made one of cardboard, which has ever remained sweet and good; and in S. Clemente there was another, also by his hand, which was placed on high, with ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari

... big rough stone house, loop-holed for defence against the Indians. Under this one roof the enterprising owner assembled a variety of industries and performed a variety of functions that would dismay the most versatile man of any older community. Here he kept a general store, operated blacksmith and wheelwright shops, served as post-master, ran a hotel, and sat as justice of the peace. Indeed, he got so much in the ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson

... satisfaction that the Army Estimates of L506,500,000 would, if properly manipulated, work out at little more than a fourth of that amount. Between now and the Budget Mr. CHAMBERLAIN might do worse than get his versatile colleague to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 9, 1919 • Various

... but mixed in parties, where her conversational talents rendered her highly acceptable, and carried on, besides, a very extensive correspondence. History, biography, poetry, tales, local descriptions, foreign correspondence, didactic essays, even the culinary art, by turns employed her versatile powers. Most of these compositions were occasional pieces, furnished to periodical works; to some she attached her name, and a few were separately published. Amongst the latter is a very pleasing biographical sketch of Mrs. Maclean (formerly Miss Landon), ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts

... journalist; he brings to the editor of a paper an article of his composition, a violent attack on a law. "My dear M. Macaire," says the editor, "this must be changed; we must PRAISE this law." "Bon, bon!" says our versatile Macaire. "Je vais retoucher ca, et je vous fais en faveur de la loi UN ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... trials to determine the worth of these hypotheses to blend the wide array of technology available to the total joint force and according to bold new concepts. The results will determine the worth of Rapid Dominance concepts by judging whether they will permit even more balanced, versatile, and lethal combinations to fit known and anticipated future ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade

... mood this window was a kind of postern to the house for innocent deception, beyond the eye of both the sitting-room and cook. Sometimes it was the bridge of a lofty ship with a pilot going up and down, or it was a lighthouse to mark a channel. It was as versatile as the kitchen step-ladder which—on Thursday afternoons when the cook was out—unbent from its sober household duties and joined him as an equal. But chiefly on this sill the child read his books on summer days. His cousins sat inside on chairs, starched for company, and read safe and ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks

... Ravillac or a Damiens in Germany; but they have been common in France, and the Sovereigns of France cannot be too circumspect in their maintenance of ancient etiquette to command the dignified respect of a frivolous and versatile people.' ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 4 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... nor, whatever the range of thought we may justly concede him, may we, therefore, expect the sublime; he is below that. With the eloquence of an impassioned imagination, united to the unornamented vigor of a ready, versatile, and comprehensive reason, he reminds one of some colossal engine in forceful, though not ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... highest standard, the standard of Elektra, Don Quixote, and Till Eulenspiegel, not to mention the beautiful songs. Ariadne on Naxos was a not particularly successful experiment, and what the Alp Symphony will prove to be we may only surmise. Probably this versatile tone-poet has said his best. He is not a second Richard Wagner, not yet has he the charm of the Lizst personality, but he bulks too large in contemporary history to be called a decadent, although in the precise meaning of the word, without its ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... The versatile genius of the poet was equally at home in the simpler lyric region of the Haynes Bayley school. Taking for his model the favourite drawing-room ballad of the period, "She wore a wreath of roses the night that first we met," he made a parody of its rhythmical cadence ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun

... of the vegetable life of the globe; but his is a monotonous business, like the painting of miles and miles of palings: grass, grass, grass, trees, trees, trees, ad infinitum; whereas yellow leads a roving, versatile life, and is seldom called upon for such monotonous labour. The sands of Sahara are probably the only conspicuous instance of yellow thus working by the piece. It is in the quality, in the diversity of the things it colours, rather than in their mileage or tonnage, that yellow is distinguished; ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne

... Elizabeth (1558-1603) the progress of classic culture and the employment of Dutch and Italian artists led to a gradual introduction of Renaissance forms, which, as in France, were at first mingled with others of Gothic origin. Among the foreign artists in England were the versatile Holbein, Trevigi and Torregiano from Italy, and Theodore Have, Bernard Jansen, and Gerard Chrismas from Holland. The pointed arch disappeared, and the orders began to be used as subordinate features in the decoration ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin

... this most versatile lady made every drop of the soup that was prepared for the men herself, and she has, so a Belgian military doctor says, saved more lives than he has with her timely cups of hot, nourishing food. It is only the most seriously wounded men who are taken to the field hospital, ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan

... Luther as the instrument of Satan because he persecuted his Protestant subjects. When he died, his brother, [Sidenote: April, 1539] the Protestant Henry the Pious, succeeded and introduced the Reform amid general acclamation. Two years later this duke was followed by his son, the versatile but treacherous Maurice. In the year 1539 a still greater acquisition came to the Schmalkaldic League in the conversion of Brandenburg ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... too funny! Some of it was too rich to keep. Karl came here the day after he returned—wanted to hear me talk of Ernestine, you know. People in love aren't exactly versatile in their conversation. I did talk about her for two hours, and then I ventured to change the subject. 'Karl,' I said, 'what do you think of the colour they're painting the new Fifty-seventh ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell

... of poets, the free and mighty leader of European song, was, what is not ordinarily held to be a source of poetical inspiration—the political life. The boy had sensibility, high aspirations, and a versatile and passionate nature; the student added to this energy, various learning, gifts of language, and noble ideas on the capacities and ends of man. But it was the factions of Florence which made Dante ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... his pass, and returns to civil life, so they tell me, with a dangerous knowledge that he is a suckling Von Moltke, and may apply his learning when occasion offers. Given trouble, that man will be a nuisance, because he is a hideously versatile American, to begin with, as cock-sure of himself as a man can be, and with all the racial disregard for human life to back him, through any ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling

... magnanimous, modest, noble, not easy to be understood (!), parsimonious, pious (twice), profound in opinion, prone to regret his acts, prudent, rash, religious, reverent, self-confident, sincere, singular in mode of thinking, strong, temperate, unreserved, unsteady, valuable in friendship, variable, versatile, violent, volatile, wily, and worthy.' Zadkiel concludes thus:—'The square of Saturn to the moon will add to the gloomy side of the picture, and give a tinge of melancholy at times to the native's character, and also a disposition to look at the dark side of things, ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... one of England's oldest and most successful descriptive writers, talks very entertainingly regarding the emancipated slave. The first trip made to this country by the versatile writer referred to was during ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... brother, oddly enough, of the brilliant but infidel Lord Herbert of Cherbury; which lord was a versatile man of talent, but not a man of genius like ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... that if Babar had been immortal he might possibly have beaten back Sher Shah. But that admission serves to prove my argument. Babar was a very able general. So likewise was Sher Khan. Humayun was flighty, versatile, and unpractical; as a general of but small account. It is possible that the Sher Khan who triumphed over Humayun might have been beaten by Babar. But that only proves that the system introduced by Babar was the system to which he had been accustomed all his life—the ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson

... (irresolute) 605; oscillate &c 314; vibrate between, two extremes, oscillate between, two extremes; alternate; have as man phases as the moon. Adj. changeable, changeful; changing &c 140; mutable, variable, checkered, ever changing; protean, proteiform^; versatile. unstaid^, inconstant; unsteady, unstable, unfixed, unsettled; fluctuating &c v.; restless; agitated &c 315; erratic, fickle; irresolute &c 605; capricious &c 608; touch and go; inconsonant, fitful, spasmodic; vibratory; vagrant, wayward; desultory; afloat; alternating; alterable, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... disconsolate side-whisker. He was not quite used to that side-whisker yet, for it had only recently come within the margin of cultivation. In active service Grodman had been clean-shaven, like all members of the profession—for surely your detective is the most versatile of actors. Mrs. Drabdump closed the street door quietly, and pointed to the stairs, fear operating like a polite desire to give him precedence. Grodman ascended, amusement still glimmering in his eyes. Arrived on the landing he knocked peremptorily at the door, crying, "Nine o'clock, ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill

... state of India had for some time occupied much of the attention of the British Parliament. Towards the close of the American war, two committees of the Commons sat on Eastern affairs. In one Edmund Burke took the lead. The other was under the presidency of the able and versatile Henry Dundas, then Lord Advocate of Scotland. Great as are the changes which, during the last sixty years, have taken place in our Asiatic dominions, the reports which those committees laid on the table of the House will still be found ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... gamesters and courtezans, and was at length left with resources barely sufficient to enable him to return to Canada. Settling in Montreal, his extraordinary acquaintance with both schools of law, his impassioned and versatile eloquence, his ready repartee, his habitual, grim and grotesque humour, his outrageous sallies of wit, his unmerciful logic, his fierce invective, his irony, his sarcasm, and his deep, irresistible scorn, all heightened by his singularly expressive personal presence, ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege

... so changed Suzanna," she said at last; "I've disappointed her, I fear, about something or other. Dear me, what insight versatile children do demand in a mother. And Suzanna takes everything so very seriously. And Maizie stares at me too, with a little bewildered expression. It's strange that Maizie, with all her literalness, can understand at times Suzanna's disappointments when her fancies ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake

... December 18, 1813, Sarah Bedell, a lady of Huguenot descent, who made for him a happy home during fifty-seven years.[1] He bought a house in Hempstead, expecting to remain there; and in the household, as in business, he gave rein to his ardent and versatile inventive faculty. One of his domestic contrivances rocked the cradle, fanned away the flies, and played a lullaby to the baby. He sold the patent in Connecticut to a Yankee peddler for a horse and wagon, and the peddler's stock, including a hurdy-gurdy. Another invention ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond

... since those early days when you and I, who are of totally different tastes and temperament, first met and became friends. I was attracted by your wide knowledge, versatile vigour of mind, and engaging personality, which subsequent years have not diminished. You were strenuously engaged at that time in breaking down the weevilly traditions of a bygone age, and helping to create a new era in the art of steamship management, and, at the same time, ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... domestic restriction of machinery. A tea-cosy may have to do for an Admiral's cocked hat; it all depends on whether the amateur actor can swear like an Admiral. A hearth-rug may have to do for a bear's fur; it all depends on whether the wearer is a polished and versatile man of the world and can grunt like a bear. A clergyman's hat (to my own private and certain knowledge) can be punched and thumped into the exact shape of a policeman's helmet; it all depends on the clergyman. I mean it depends on ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton

... the time of the Five-Years War, the Foreign Policy conducted from Washington was almost entirely Pan-American, and the Monroe Doctrine was the beginning and end of it; for even if that versatile man, President Roosevelt, was fond of extending his activities to other spheres, as, for instance, when he brought the Russo-Japanese War to an end by the Peace of Portsmouth, the Panama Canal scheme remained his favorite child. But in the case of ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff

... were a versatile, unsteady race, and exceedingly given to make and unmake kings. They had for a long time vacillated between old Muley Abul Hassan and his son, Boabdil el Chico, sometimes setting up the one, sometimes the other, and sometimes both at once, according to the pinch and pressure ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... rarely met with, and we may trust Hawthorne's word that Constantino Bacci was one of them; not only a skilful driver, but a generous provider, honest, courteous, kindly, and agreeable. They went first to Siena, where they were entertained for a week or more by the versatile Mr. Story, and where Hawthorne wrote an eloquent description of the cathedral; then over the mountain pass where Radicofani nestles among the iron-browed crags above the clouds; past the malarious Lake of Bolsena, scene of the miracle which Raphael has ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... with short clubs, were not perfectly sure to be friendly. Coronado felt that, if ever he got his wife and his fortune, he should have earned them. He was resolute, however; there was no flinching yet in this versatile, yet obstinate nature; he was as wicked and as enduring as ...
— Overland • John William De Forest

... reclaimed in large numbers, it is most likely they will become extinct as a race; but there is less difficulty with regard to the Mamelucos, who, even when the proportion of white blood is small, sometimes become enterprising and versatile people.Many of the Ega Indians, including all the domestic servants, are savages who have been brought from the neighbouring rivers— the Japura, the Issa, and the Solimoens. I saw here individuals of at least sixteen different ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... Fielding's discourse! So versatile; so bending to the changes of the occasion; so obsequious to my curiosity, and so abundant in that very knowledge in which I was most deficient, and on which I set the most value, the knowledge of the human heart; of society ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... editing a London daily at an early age, he had wisely determined to learn the whole business of newspaper journalism from the beginning. At the ago of eighteen he was sub-editor on a big provincial daily; but his brilliant and versatile intelligence soon wearied of the monotony of the life, and he came to London to demand the right ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes

... in its unparalleled antiquity; strong in its reminiscences; strong in its recent persecutions; strong in its Pharaonic relics, regarded by all men with a superstitious or reverent awe—and the free-thinking and versatile Greeks. The occasion was like some others in history, some even in our own times; a small but energetic body of invaders was holding in subjection an ancient ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... with horses and vans, so that the whole frontage of the premises was very considerable. A brass plate said, "R. Bartley, ship-broker and commission agent"; but the man was evidently a ship-owner and a carrier besides; so this miscellaneous shop roused hopes in our versatile hero. He rapidly surveyed the outside, and then cast hungry glances through the window of the man's office. It was a bow-window of unusual size, through which the proprietor or his employees could see a long way up and down the river. Through this window Hope peered. Repulses had made him timid. ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade



Words linked to "Versatile" :   versatility, biology, varied, biological science



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