"Versatility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is really excellent, if accompanied with the necessary command of fanciful illustration and elegant expression, is the most interesting quality which can be possessed by a poet."[170] Again he lays emphasis on Dryden's versatility,—greater, he says, than that of Shakspere and Milton. In Old Mortality Dryden is referred to as "the great High-priest of all the Nine." Scott would have called this another point of his superiority over Spenser, if he ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... system of plunder and anarchy, exercised under different forms more or less sanguinary, produced no permanent result beyond an incontestible proof that the versatility of the French nation, and its puny suppleness of character, utterly incapacitate it for that energetic enterprise without which there can be no hope of permanent emancipation from national slavery. It is my unalterable conviction that the French will never know how to enjoy ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... talking," Burke declared, with a new appreciation of the versatility of this woman—who had not been wasting her time hitherto, and had no wish to ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... strange drama, it is only natural that I should dwell rather upon his successes than upon his failures. And this not so much for the sake of his reputation—for, indeed, it was when he was at his wits' end that his energy and his versatility were most admirable—but because where he failed it happened too often that no one else succeeded, and that the tale was left forever without a conclusion. Now and again, however, it chanced that even when he erred, the truth was still discovered. I have noted of some half-dozen ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... united the scientific, idealistic cosmology with the utterances of early Christian tradition about Jesus in such a way as to make the two, as it were, appear the totally dissimilar wings of one and the same building,[548] With peculiar versatility he contrived to make himself at ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... a vocalist of such extraordinary versatility and power that one feels almost guilty in speaking of him under the title which stands at the head of this paper. How he would scold, out-carlyling Carlyle, if he knew what were going on! Nevertheless I cannot rank him with the great singers, exceptionally clever and original as, beyond all dispute, ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... life in a variety of detached and unrelated acts, since neither can the whole material of life be ever given while we still live, nor can that which is given be impartially retained in the human memory. When omniscience was denied us, we were endowed with versatility. The picturesqueness of human thought may console us ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... me, dear young friend," continued the good minister. "You alarm and grieve me. I tremble for you, when I behold your versatility. Tell me, how is this? Can you not trust yourself? Can I ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... Stanhope, whose versatility of talent succeeded in abolishing the old wooden printing-press, with its double pulls, and substituting in its place the beautiful iron one, called after him the "Stanhope Press." His lordship's inventive genius, however, failed in the composing-room; for his transmogrified ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... Beethoven's music shows a deficiency in counterpoint. His originality, the wealth of his ideas, his versatility, will explain this. The fugue, while it is ingenious and interesting, is artificial and, indeed often arbitrary in musical composition, sometimes introduced merely to stop gaps or for brilliancy of effect. It is not surprising that Beethoven should have neglected ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... Versatility seldom pays. But, to tell the truth, luck was against him; and although in a long life every deserving man seems to get a chance, yet Fortune does baffle some meritorious men for a limited time. Generally, we think, good fortune and ill fortune succeed ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... has achieved considerable success in the difficult task he has undertaken in the later and more valuable portion of his book. Fully admitting, as he does, Napoleon's extraordinary military talents, his astonishing versatility and fruitfulness of resource, the promptitude, rapidity, and unerring precision of his movements, Mr. Seeley maintains that what is really marvellous is the remarkable combination of favorable circumstances which at the outset furnished his field, ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... broadly speaking, the law of Nature and not the dictate of personal ambition. The secret of the prosaic man's success, such as it is, is the simplicity with which he pursues these ends: the secret of the artistic man's failure, such as that is, is the versatility with which he strays in all directions after secondary ideals. The artist is either a poet or a scallawag: as poet, he cannot see, as the prosaic man does, that chivalry is at bottom only romantic suicide: as scallawag, he cannot see that it does not pay to spunge ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... once arrested the attention of naturalists and geologists; his generalizations have since received ample confirmation, and now command universal assent, nor is it questionable that they have had the most important influence on the progress of science. More recently Mr. Darwin, with a versatility which is among the rarest of gifts, turned his attention to a most difficult question of zoology and minute anatomy; and no living naturalist and anatomist has published a better monograph than that which resulted from his labours. Such a man, at all events, has not entered the sanctuary with ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... of 1888 he astonished his friends by producing a small weekly paper called the 'Reflector.' It appeared from January 1 to April 21, 1888. He received help from many friends, but wrote the chief part of it himself. The articles show the versatility of his interests, and include many thoughtful discussions of politics and politicians, besides excursions into literature. Perhaps its most remarkable quality was not favourable to success. It was singularly candid and moderate in tone, and obviously the work of a thoughtful observer. ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... is a native of Cambridge and a graduate of Harvard in the class of '29; a class whose anniversary reunions he has celebrated in something like forty distinct poems and songs. For sheer cleverness and versatility Dr. Holmes is, perhaps, unrivaled among American men of letters. He has been poet, wit, humorist, novelist, essayist, and a college lecturer and writer on medical topics. In all of these departments he has produced ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... domestic life would attract them from many duties which they owe to their fellow creatures. There are then many disadvantages connected with matrimony. There is so much ignorance, perverseness, undue inclination for power, disposition to contradict, anger, jealousy, hatred, and versatility among human beings that many unpleasant occurrences will necessarily arise, and especially in the marriage state, because here most of these feelings are brought into action, and are most sensibly felt by those who are subject to their influence. He that paints the experience ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... author tells us, by the reading of Cuvier—leaves us with impressions of grandeur and desolation which no other passages of English poetry can convey. Lord Byron has elsewhere exhibited more versatility of fancy and richness of illustration, but nowhere else has he so nearly "struck the stars." From constellation to constellation the pair speed on, cleaving the blue with mighty wings, but finding in all a blank, like that in Richter's wonderful dream. The result on the mind of ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... plausibility to the end of 1536 at Evora[91]. The children of his second marriage were almost certainly with him, Paula and Luis, who edited his works in 1562 and were now still in their teens, and the even younger Valeria. Paula seems to have inherited her father's versatility and his musical, dramatic and literary tastes. Tradition connects her closely with him and would even assign her a part in the composition of his plays. Another and a more reliable tradition says that he was buried ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... run he was sometimes described by unthinking people as a one-part actor. Nothing could be farther from the truth. He possessed uncommon versatility. That after twenty years of the new Rip Van Winkle, when he was past fifty years of age, he could come back to such parts as Caleb Plummer and Acres is proof of this. He need not have done so at all. Carrying ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... Payne; Edward G. Andrew, who became in the course of years a Bishop in the Methodist Church; Professor Robert Adrain, who taught mathematics, and who at the same time was one of the faculty of Columbia College; and Lorenzo L. da Ponte. The latter was a man of unusual versatility, and was especially distinguished as a linguist. He taught us English literature in such a successful manner that we regarded that study merely as a recreation. Mr. da Ponte was a son of Lorenzo da Ponte, a Venitian of great learning, who after coming to this country ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... philosophical Society, which united all the wits of Florence and the visitors who crowded to the capital of culture. Vespasiano states that "he was always the father and benefactor of those who showed any excellence." Distinguished by versatility of tastes and comprehensive intellect, he formed his own opinion of the men of eminence with whom he came in contact, and conversed with each upon his special subject. When giving audience to the scholars, he discoursed concerning letters; in the company ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... ugliness was of a masculine, aristocratic, intelligent stamp. His figure, moreover, was good enough to compensate for the absence of a straight nose and a fine mouth; and his general bearing offered a most pleasing combination of the gravity of the man of affairs and the versatility of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... are wide, and whose moods are varied, will touch with a certain suggestiveness; he will flash a ray of cheerfulness into the haunts of pessimism, or throw a new pathos into common situations. And Mr. Davidson possesses a large measure of this many-sidedness, this versatility of sympathy. He appears a very human man, a man unfettered by cant or creed, observing men and things from various sides, and entering into their circumstance. Is he without a creed? From his verses on the Making of a Poet ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... eclipse, transit and observations with ease and perfect accuracy. He was also deeply read in metaphysics, and wrote and published, in the old Democratic Review for 1846, an article on the "Natural Proof of the Existence of a Deity," that for beauty of language, depth of reasoning, versatility of illustration, and compactness of logic, has never been equaled. The only other publication which at that period he had made, was a book that astonished all of his friends, both in title and execution. It was called "The ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... His ability is marked and is now recognized by all parties, I may say, in all parts of the world. He has the lawyer's habit of taking the opposite side of a question, but before he acts he is apt to be on the right side. When in the Senate he did not show the versatility of talent he has exhibited as President. All his utterances have been marked with dignity suited to his high position, yet with delicate appropriateness and precision that will admit no criticism. I have no ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... might be found necessary, and the union was to be a voluntary one. The King in order to carry out this policy appointed as one of his Ministers Herr von Radowitz. He was a man of the highest character and extreme ability. An officer by profession, he was distinguished by the versatility of his interests and his great learning. The King found in him a man who shared his own enthusiasm for letters. He had been a member of the Parliament at Frankfort, and had taken a leading part among the extreme Conservatives; a ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... office, as a central point, appears to have been attractive to many of the clever young operators who graduated from it to positions of larger responsibility. Some of them were conspicuous for their skill and versatility. Mr. Adams tells this interesting story as an illustration: "L. C. Weir, or Charlie, as he was known, at that time agent for the Adams Express Company, had the remarkable ability of taking messages and copying them twenty-five words ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... and limpid in a sort of mystic rapture, now they were merry and mischievous, now they were dreamy and melancholy, now tender and tearful, now sparkling with fun or shining with anger. Perhaps her charm lay in her versatility, in the keenness of her intellect, in her sympathetic and insinuating voice. She was, in short, an interesting, charming woman. I do not know whether it was owing to her pride or her naturally tempestuous mind, but scorning the young men of her ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... This versatility of mood, the despair, which he had felt to be real, followed by a light-heartedness which he felt to be equally sincere; all this ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... papers, and talk with one's friends in bed-room, dining-room and parlor, dashing over the prairies at the rate of thirty miles an hour. While men can keep house in this charming manner, the world will not be utterly desolate when women do vote. As we consider the great versatility in the talents of our noble countrymen, we are lost in admiration. They seem as much at home in watching the gyrations of an egg or oyster in hot water as the revolutions of the heavenly bodies; in making pins and buttons to unite garments that time and haste may have put asunder as in spanning ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... His versatility knows almost no limit. His wealth of theatrical experience runs the gamut from his own first appearance as an amateur actor and coach to a succession of triumphs as producing director of the most gorgeous theatrical presentations both here ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... the faculties, also, gives versatility of talent, so that, if the customary business of the laborer is superseded by improvements, he can readily betake himself to another kind of employment. But an uncultivated mind is like an automaton, which can do only the thing for which its wheels or springs were made. ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... had no equal in beauty and grace and brightness and symmetry and all perfection. She was past mistress in all manner of arts and accomplishments and endowed with [many] excellences, surpassing all the folk of her age and time. She was grown more notorious than a way-mark,[FN206] for the versatility of her genius, and outdid the fair both in theory and practice and elegant and flexile grace, more by token that she was five feet high and in conjunction with fair fortune, with strait arched brows, as they were the ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... of a dialectician; but your father was unrivalled in the clearness, precision, succinctness, and point of his statements, in his complete and ready grasp of his own system of philosophical thought, and the quickness and versatility with which his thought at once assumed the right attitude of defence against any argument coming from any quarter. I used to think that while others of us could perhaps find, on the spur of the moment, AN answer ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... dividing the benefits of the new revenue policy with its free rival. The South of necessity was restricted to a single industry, the tillage of the earth. Slave labor did not possess the intelligence, the skill, the patience, the mechanical versatility to embark successfully in manufacturing enterprises. Free labor monopolised the protected industries, and Northern capital caught all the golden showers of fiscal legislation. What the South needed, from an economic ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... new, Renaissance, modern; not merely in this or that quality, he is so all round. And this in the first place because he is so completely the man of impressions; the man not uttering wonderful things, nor elaborating exquisite ones, but artistically embodying with marvellous versatility whatever strikes his fancy and feeling—fancy and feeling which are as new as the untouched sculptor's clay. And this extraordinary temper of art for art's sake, or rather effect for effect and form's sake, was possible in that day only in a man ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... mind, during the gradual historical evolution of the race. The plurality of gods appears to be the manifestation of the divine principle; their action on the world lost almost all trace of arbitrary power and of their former versatility and caprice. The superstition of polytheism remained, but it had an inward tendency to more ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... However the lovers of the drama may lament this diversion of his talents, and doubt whether even the chance of another School for Scandal were not worth more than all his subsequent career, yet to the individual himself, full of ambition, and conscious of versatility of powers, such an opening into a new course of action and fame, must have been like one of those sudden turnings of the road in a beautiful country, which dazzle the eyes of a traveller with new glories, and invite him on to untried paths of ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... system of domestic affection in which he was brought up, and which his maturer years have confirmed, presents a greater obstacle to you than any which my lover's versatility presented to me, if I had known how ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... night for Mr. Gladstone, his wife, and a daughter. Mr. Gladstone made himself quite charming, spoke French fairly well, and knew more about every subject discussed than any one else in the room. He was certainly a wonderful man, such extraordinary versatility and such a memory. It was rather pretty to see Mrs. Gladstone when her husband was talking. She was quite absorbed by him, couldn't talk to her neighbours. They wanted very much to go to the Conciergerie ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... salient points in the life-history of his wife's brother, Bertie Baxter, the deeper did the iron become embedded in his soul. Bertie was one of Nature's touchers. This is the age of the specialist, Bertie's speciality was borrowing money. He was a man of almost eerie versatility in this direction. Time could not wither nor custom stale his infinite variety. He could borrow with a breezy bluffness which made the thing practically a hold-up. And anon, when his victim had steeled himself against this method, he ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... tubercles, but that in his opinion Nature's fondness for dabbling in the erratic was most notably exhibited in that curious combination of bird, fish, amphibian, burrower, crawler, quadruped, and Christian called the Ornithorhynchus—grotesquest of animals, king of the animalculae of the world for versatility of character ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Limiting training and job opportunity because of race reduced fighting potential in a way that never could be justified. The Air Force should open to its Negroes a wide variety of training, experience, and opportunity to acquire versatility and proficiency.[11-62] ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... the hard part "chucked up" by Rafe. It was rather difficult, I confess, as the first four lines were in pantomime and required great versatility:— ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... continually that she soon felt a more thorough disgust at this employment than at the preceding one. So the epic stopped short, some hundred years before the Norman conquest. Difficulty, which quickens the ardor of industry, always damps, and generally extinguishes, the false zeal of caprice and versatility. ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... twenty-three in number, now removed of their own accord from the tender, to lodge in the beacon, together with Peter Fortune, a person singularly adapted for a residence of this kind, both from the urbanity of his manners and the versatility of his talents. Fortune, in his person, was of small stature, and rather corpulent. Besides being a good Scots cook, he had acted both as groom and house-servant; he had been a soldier, a sutler, a writer's clerk, and an ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that his genius, waiting to be determined by the highest prize, fluttered uncertainly from effort to effort, until, when he was more than sixty, it suddenly spread its broad wing, and soared so as to arrest the gaze of other generations besides his own. For he had no versatility of faculty to mislead him. The "Night Thoughts" only differ from his previous works in the degree and not in the kind of power they manifest. Whether he writes prose or poetry, rhyme or blank verse, dramas, satires, odes, or meditations, we see everywhere the same ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... be done upon the castle, and Greif entered upon it with boundless enthusiasm, while Rex helped him at every turn with his extraordinary knowledge of all matters in which exactness was required. Hilda marvelled at his amazing versatility and at the apparent depth of his information upon so many matters. No question came amiss to him connected with the restoration, from the customs and mode of life of the mediaeval Germans to the calculation of a Gothic ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... elsewhere in Fletcher's work. That Fletcher should have exhibited such faculty once and once only is barely credible, and we are driven to the alternative conclusion that the noble valediction was by Shakespeare, who in it gave proof of his versatility by echoing in a glorified key the habitual strain of Fletcher, his colleague and virtual successor. James Spedding's theory that Fletcher hastily completed Shakespeare's unfinished draft for the special purpose of enabling the company to celebrate the marriage ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... there is no apparent consciousness of these manifold and varied interests. He never affected to conceal from himself his superiority to other men in his aims and in the grasp of his intelligence. But there is no trace that he prided himself on the variety and versatility of these powers, or that he even distinctly realized to himself that it was anything remarkable that he should have so many dissimilar objects and be able so readily to pursue them ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... resignation of M. Venizelos it was decided to dissolve the Chamber and to have General Elections, in which for the first time the territories conquered in 1912-13 would participate. Meanwhile, the King called upon M. Gounaris, a statesman of considerable ability, though with none of the versatility of mind and audacity of character which distinguished his predecessor, to carry on the Government and to preside over the elections. Under ordinary circumstances these would have taken place at once. But owing to the need of preparing electoral ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... southeastern Europe. So universal has been the attraction of America, that our present population includes elements from every important country in the world. From the industrial standpoint, the dominant Characteristics of this composite American people are energy and versatility. ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... a butterfly, and sips life after the approved manner of his kind,—now from Bohemian glass, now from vessels of gold and silver. He chats with stage lights in their dressing-rooms, and attends a ball in the Bowery or a supper at Sherry's with a ready versatility. The book, apart from its intention, really gives the middle classes an excellent idea ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... in each just what was ordered, following directions explicitly, gives naval officers as a class an adaptability and a facility which become professional characteristics. It may be interesting to note that the same was commonly remarked of the old-time seaman. His specialty was everything—versatility; and he was handy under the least expected circumstances, on shore as well as afloat. Burgoyne used chaffingly to attribute his misfortunes at Saratoga to the aptitude with which a British midshipman and seamen threw a bridge over the upper Hudson. "If it had not ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... required to show the grounds of our determination. The immediate parties may find some excuse or palliation in the thoughtlessness of youth, the strength of affection, the pangs of disappointment and blighted hopes, in versatility of feeling to which all are subject, and in constitutional temperament. The conduct of the friends of either is not to be judged of nor censured in consequence of the unfortunate results which have attended this truly unfortunate ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... England from August to February, 1785. During that brief period he began to write his "History of Geneva," and he showed his versatility by composing for a young refugee clergyman a sermon on the immortality of the soul. By the gift of this sermon he drew the exiled preacher from poverty, for it was the means of obtaining ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... wonderful. This was David Garrick. He had been admitted a student of Lincoln's Inn a year before Fielding entered the Middle Temple, had afterwards turned wine-merchant, and was now delighting London by his versatility in comedy, tragedy, and farce. One of his earliest theatrical exploits, according to Sir John Hawkins, had been a private representation of Fielding's Mock-Doctor, in a room over the St. John's Gate, ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... must be removed. Our desideratum is, not the manners and habits of gentlemen;—these can be, and are, acquired in various other ways, by good society, by foreign travel, by the innate grace and dignity of the Catholic mind;—but the force, the steadiness, the comprehensiveness and the versatility of intellect, the command over our own powers, the instinctive just estimate of things as they pass before us, which sometimes indeed is a natural gift, but commonly is not gained without much effort and the ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... in strict propriety for Mr. Mathews, in his AT HOME, after he has been imitating his inimitable Scotchwoman, to slip out as quick as lightning, and appear in the side-box shaking hands with our old friend Jack Bannister. It adds to our surprise at the versatility of his changes of place and appearance, and he had been before us in his own person during a great part of the evening. There was no harm done—no imaginary spell broken—no discontinuity of thought or sentiment. Mr. Mathews ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... gleam that was never wholly absent from his keen blue eyes, Monohan talked with facile ease, with wonderful expressiveness of face. He was a finished product of courteous generations. Moreover, he had been everywhere, done a little of everything, acquired in his manner something of the versatility of his experience. Physically he was fit as any logger in the camps, a big, active-bodied, ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... evident sincerity. Lawson's clever brilliancy, his social ease and versatility and musical talent, were all what he himself had longed unspeakably to possess. Besides, there was a deeper bond. "I've known him ever since he was a curly-headed boy, long before he came ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... Russian criticism has styled him the poet of life. If Chekhov was the Wunderkind of Russian letters, Kuprin is its enfant terrible. His range of subjects is enormous; his power of observation and his versatility extraordinary. Gambrinus alone would justify his place among the literary giants of Europe. Some of his picaresques, "THE INSULT," "HORSE-THIEVES," and "OFF THE STREET"—the last in the form of a monologue—are sheer tours de force. "Olessiya" is possessed of a weird, unearthly ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... character, in the different phases of life, from the horrible to the grotesque, the grand to the comic, attest the versatility of his powers; and, whatever faults may be found by critics, the public will heartily render their quota of admiration to his magic touch, his rich and facile rendering of almost every thought that stirs, or lies yet ...
— The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete • Anonymous
... in compass. Webster's voice was remarkable for the extent of its compass, ranging with the utmost ease, from the highest to the lowest notes, required by a spirited and diversified delivery; and such was said to be the versatility of Whitefield's vocal power, that he could imitate the tones of a female, or the infant voice, at one time, and at another, strike his hearers with awe, by ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... the rest of the evening the helpless prey of her sister who had fawned and scolded and wheedled and threatened in a way that outraged all Rita's feelings. Seizing this unexpected occasion Therese had displayed a distracting versatility of sentiment: rapacity, virtue, piety, spite, and false tenderness—while, characteristically enough, she unpacked the dressing-bag, helped the sinner to get ready for bed, brushed her hair, and finally, as a climax, kissed her hands, partly by surprise ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... time, and in the summer at a booth at Bartholomew Fair. He had three sons, all actors, of whom the eldest was Christopher Bullock (c. 1690-1724), who at Drury Lane, the Haymarket and Lincoln's Inn Fields displayed "a considerable versatility of talent." Christopher created a few original parts in comedies and farces of which he was the author or adapter:—A Woman's Revenge (1715); Slip; Adventures of Half an Hour (1716); The Cobbler of Preston; Woman's a Riddle; The Perjurer ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... hybrid playlets which have combined tragedy and comedy to give some particular star an opportunity to show versatility in acting. [1] But some of these playlets have been merely vehicles for a personality, and therefore cannot be ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... character of the Spanish Friar was not, however, forgotten, when Dryden became a convert to the Roman Catholic persuasion; and, in many instances, as well as in that just quoted, it was assumed as the means of fixing upon him a charge of inconsistency in politics, and versatility in religion[5]. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... that the city at large is the instructress of Greece, and that individually each person among us seems to possess the most ready versatility in adapting himself, and that not ungracefully, to the greatest variety of circumstances and situations that diversify human life. That all this is not a mere boast of words for the present purpose, but rather the actual truth, this very power of the state, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... equally void of versatility—he would shake his head doubtfully, while his cigar-case circulated around ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... would naturally have been attracted had she been perfectly free to make her choice of a husband. Contrasted with the man of action, of few words, of few feelings and strong ones, she saw the many-sided man of the world, whose mere versatility was a charm, and the thought of whose manifold experiences had in it a sort of mysterious fascination. Arnold de Curboil was above all a man of tact and light touch, accustomed to the society of women and skilled in the art of appealing to that unsatisfied vanity which is the basis of most imperfect ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... than myself. So much for our artistic standpoints! But we are also men of the world, and it must be obvious to both of us that we might go on being funny until we reached our death-beds without demonstrating the supremacy of either. Enfin, our only hope lies in versatility—the conqueror must distinguish himself in a solemn part!" He viewed the other with complacence, for the quaint Quinquart had been designed for a ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... doubtless but very few (and I confess that I am not one of these select few) who can accept Goethe in all his many-sidedness. We ordinary mortals are incapable of such Protean versatility and are sure to find points, often many and important points, where we are strongly repelled by his teachings and his personality. The idealist is scandalized by his vigorous realism, the realist and materialist by his idealism, the dogmatist by his free thought, the free-thinker by his reverence ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... said regarding Webster as an orator. It was mainly in that respect, however, that he surpassed his fellows, and mainly by that means was he enabled to ascend to the high position which he held so long. The versatility of his powers was very great, and the mode in which he sometimes employed them was not a little remarkable. He had, on one occasion, spent several hours with his colleagues in adjusting some important questions ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... immoveably serious as Madera, and when mirth rules the hour, he is the gayest of the gay: such indeed is his taste on these occasions, that he not only catches the outward tone of his company, but really appears to think and feel as they do. His enterprising spirit and versatility of talent have led him to engage in a number of pursuits; his success, however, is the most remarkable in his acquisition of English. About a month after our arrival, he was asked what had become of his companion Anya; he replied, "Anya, him mother sick, he go him mother house;" and ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... of persons of high position; and had Joan been less ignorant of things belonging to her proper station, she would have found yet more to interest her in him. But being a man of some insight, and possessed also of considerable versatility, so that, readily discovering any perculiarity, he was equally ready to meet it, he laid himself out to talk to her of the things, and in the ways, which he thought she would like. To discover, however, is not to understand. No longer young enough, as he said ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... immediately began was brilliant but desultory, for Mr. Smithers, with an airy lightness for which he is remarkable, introduced topic after topic, perhaps for the purpose of showing off Mr. T-'s versatility, and perhaps for the deeper and more sinister purpose of shaking the kaleidoscope of talk so thoroughly, that the real topic which we were met to discuss should not make an undue impression on ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... this Magazine it would be out of place here to speak, further than to say that they indicated a wide range and versatility of talent, embraced both prose and verse, and were universally popular. "Cyril Thornton," which appeared in 1827, instantly arrested public attention and curiosity, even in an age eminently fertile in great works of fiction. With little of plot—for it pursued the desultory ramblings ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... immediate action, the plausible plea of Marcellus Eprius against the honest attack of Helvidius Priscus, and the burning rebukes of the intrepid Vocula to his cowardly and treacherous followers—all these, in the Histories, show no ordinary degree of rhetorical skill and versatility. Indeed, the entire body of his works is animated with the spirit of the orator, as it is tinged also with the coloring of the poet. For this reason, they are doubtless deficient in the noble simplicity of the earlier classical histories; but ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... teacher. With this tendency to specialties it becomes more and more difficult to preserve what is so essential to the pupil—his rounded human culture and symmetry of development. The citizen of modern civilization sometimes appears to be an artificial product by the side of the versatility of the savage man. ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... an atmosphere in which the most sensitive and diffident natures develop and reveal themselves, and Madge Alden, who might easily have been chilled into a reticent and dispirited girl, eventually manifested an unusual versatility of fancy and thought, acquiring also no ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... is conducted on business principles and does not look for histrionic talent or general versatility. As one of the heads of a prominent agency said to ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... influence for good among his contemporaries, and must always qualify the admiration with which mankind will regard him as a moral philosopher and an exhorter to a good life. His sagacity, intellectual force, versatility, originality, firmness, fortunate period of service, and longevity combined to make him a great leader of his people. In American public affairs the generation of wise leaders next to his own felt for him high admiration and respect; and the strong republic, whose ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot
... have the serene sublimity of the God-man Christ, and consent to be crucified by a gibing world that was fated to be afterwards civilized and dominated by His teachings, what can be more glorious? To have the magnificent versatility of a Shakespeare, who was scarcely recognized in his own day, but whose gifts were so vast and various that the silly multitudes wrangle over his very identity and the authenticity of his plays to this hour—what can be more triumphant? ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... the colors of the integuments of some insects, and of some other natural bodies, exhibiting in different lights the most beautiful versatility, may be found to be of this description, and not to be derived from thin plates. In some cases a single scratch or furrow may produce similar effects, by the reflection ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... fertile brain and well selected reading have made him master, but has preferred to concentrate most of his powers upon delicate amatory lyrics. While some of his readers may at times regret this limitation of endeavor, and wish he might practice to a greater extent that immense versatility which he permitted the amateur public to glimpse in the September Piper; it is perhaps not amiss that he should cultivate most diligently that type of composition most natural and easy to him, for he is ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... which the brave like to give the fair. Notwithstanding this, Mr. Stanhope King could not say the day was dull. After a morning presumably spent over works of a religious character, some of the young ladies, who had been the life of the excursion the day before, showed their versatility by devising serious amusements befitting the day, such as twenty questions on Scriptural subjects, palmistry, which on another day is an aid to mild flirtation, and an exhibition of mind-reading, not public—oh, dear, no—but with a favored group in a private parlor. In none of these groups, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... officers constitute one of the most gentleman-like bodies of men in the King's service. They are thoroughly imbued with all the high sentiments of honour belonging to the military character; and they possess, moreover, in a very pleasant degree, the freedom of manner and versatility of habits peculiar to those who go down to ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... by another. Administrations and systems of government would be quite indifferent to those very functionaries and their opponents, who appear the most zealous partisans, if their fortunes and consequence were not affixed to them. Several of these men seem consistent, and indeed are; the reason is, versatility would loosen and detach from them the ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... Hideyoshi, whom he once defeated,—but he was much more than a soldier, a far-sighted statesman, an incomparable diplomat, and something of a scholar. Cool, cautious, secretive,—distrustful, yet generous,—stern, yet humane,—by the range and the versatility of his genius he might be not unfavourably contrasted with Julius Caesar. All that Nobunaga and Hideyoshi had wished to do, and failed to [278] do, Iyeyasu speedily accomplished. After fulfilling Hideyoshi's dying injunction, not to leave the troops in ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... Pieces. For some weeks he has appeared at Question time in dual character as Prime Minister and Secretary of State for War. To-night takes on duties of absent CHANCELLOR OF DUCHY OF LANCASTER. His versatility as marvellous as his industry. In response to group of five questions addressed to him "as representing the CHANCELLOR OF THE DUCHY OF LANCASTER," bristles with minute information respecting number of livings in gift of the Duchy in West Riding of Yorkshire, together with amount ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 • Various
... the pressure of action a very self-protecting guile. Robespierre's mind was not rich nor flexible enough for true statesmanship, and it is a grave mistake to suppose that the various cunning tacks in which his career abounds, were any sign of genuine versatility or resource or political growth and expansion. They were, in fact, the resort of a man whose nerves were weaker than his volition. Robespierre was a kind of spinster. Force of head did not match his spiritual ambition. He was not, we repeat, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... political progress, but also, as at home, from gaining success in industrial pursuits which their talents would otherwise win for them. They succeed as journalists owing to their quick intelligence and versatility, and as contractors mainly owing to their capacity for organising gangs of workmen—a faculty which seems to be the only good thing resulting from their political education. They are as brilliant soldiers in the service of the United States as they are in that ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... back was more than his passion for Eleanor Cobham or the natural versatility of his temper; it was the advance of a rival in England to further power over the realm. This was his uncle, Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester. The bishop had already played a leading political part. He was charged with having ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... Lilian was not likely to form many acquaintances in the town. With the Liversedges she stood on excellent terms, and one or two families closely connected with them gave her a welcome from which she did not shrink. But she had no gift of social versatility; it cost her painful efforts to converse about bazaars and curates and fashions and babies with the average Polterham matron; she felt that most of the women who came to see her went away with distasteful impressions, and that they were anything ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... "His versatility and bright and ready wit are conspicuous in all his work. As a parodist he is second to none, not even to Mr. Calverley, if we may take the word of the reviewers.... Mr. Seaman cracks the whip with consummate ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... There have been many such travels by presidential candidates, but none like this. His march was a triumphal procession, and his audiences enormous and most enthusiastic. The whole country marvelled at his intellectual versatility. He spoke every day, and often several times a day, and each speech was absolutely new. There seemed to be no limit to his originality, his freshness, or the new angles from which to present the issues ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... of the "Sketch-Book" display unusual versatility. It opens with a bright gavotte, in which adherence to the classic spirit compels a certain reminiscence of tone. The second piece, a song, "I' the Wondrous Month o' May," has such a springtide ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... call forms out of clay—the success of friendship being one even more permanently satisfying. In her early life as a girl hardly more than twenty, she sought Rome, living with art as her chaperon. Her versatility, her picturesque individuality, and her imaginative power all combined to win sympathetic recognition. Gibson, whose guidance was particularly well adapted to develop her gifts, received her into his own studio ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... sufficient only to give occasion for considerable slaughter and plunder. The invaders, seeing no reason for returning to their famine-stricken fastnesses, settled themselves in the enjoyment of the abundance of the vanquished, who, in their turn, with their accustomed versatility, submitted patiently, and even cheerfully, to a yoke which, after the first onslaught was over, pressed lightly; the Voizins, to whom fighting was a pastime, bearing no malice, and passing ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... meeting, in no spirit of empty compliment, and I have always kept his letter in return as a memento of a remarkable personality. Some day I hope there may be a Memoir of him; for none has yet appeared. He had not the charm, the versatility, the easy classical culture, of his famous father—"the Rupert of debate." But with his great stature—he was six feet two—his square head, and strong, smooth-shaven face, he was noticeable everywhere. He was a childless widower when I first knew him, and made the impression ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Sand and her brother and sister philosophers, Templars, Saint Simonians, Fourierites, Lerouxites, or whatever the sect may be, leave the unfortunate people who have listened to their doctrines, and who have not the opportunity, or the fiery versatility of belief, which carries their teachers from one creed to another, leaving only exploded lies and useless recantations behind them! I wish the state would make a law that one individual should not be allowed to preach more than one doctrine in his life, or, at ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the instance of employment of Chinese bookkeepers and accountants being cited as proof. I talked with several persons who had ground for their belief, and the consensus of opinion exonerated the Japanese from so serious a charge. One said the Japanese, with all their versatility, have little aptitude for figures and realize it; another said that a descendant of the old samurai would scorn to take the position of a bookkeeper, considering the position beneath him. Everywhere in Japan I left ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... message on a wall, like Walt Whitman, in large and straggling letters, it would have startled men like a blasphemy. But he wrote his light-headed paradoxes in so flowing a copy-book hand that everyone supposed they must be copy-book sentiments. He suffered from his versatility, not, as is loosely said, by not doing every department well enough, but by doing every department too well. As child, cockney, pirate, or Puritan, his disguises were so good that most people could not see the same man under all. It is an unjust fact that if a man can play the fiddle, give ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... and bred, and have subsequently lived. In illustration of this, I may mention an anecdote of a matter which greatly impressed me at the time. I was staying in a country house with a very pleasant party of young and old, including persons whose education and versatility were certainly not below the social average. One evening we played at a round game, which consisted in each of us drawing as absurd a scrawl as he or she could, representing some historical event; the pictures ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... Elijah's versatility is shown in the following occurrence. A pious man bequeathed a spice-garden to his three sons. They took turns in guarding it against thieves. The first night the oldest son watched the garden. Elijah appeared to him and asked him: "My son, what wilt thou have knowledge of the Torah, or great ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... acting, yet she possessed a decided superiority in respect of song"; and, even in acting, Malibran's grace, originality, vivacity, piquancy, spontaneity, feeling, and tenderness, won the heart of all spectators. Such was her versatility, that the Semi-ramide of one evening was the Cinderella of the next, the Zerlina of another, and the Desdemona of its successor; and in each the individuality of conception was admirably preserved. On being asked by a friend which was her favorite role, she answered, "The character I ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... Scott returns to modern times, where he is as much at home as when writing of imaginary kingdoms or the days of powder and patches. Mr. Scott's last novel, "The Impostor," had Annapolis in 1776 as its locale, but he shows his versatility by centering the important events of this romance in and ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... who were struggling against the Chancellor in the royal council. Of that party Ashley Cooper, Lord Ashley, was now in influence, though not in rank, the chief. Every step in his career had brought out the boldness, the self-reliance, the versatility and readiness of resource which distinguished his character. In mere boyhood he had saved his estate from the greed of his guardians by boldly appealing in person for protection to Noy, who was then attorney-general. As an undergraduate at Oxford he organized a rebellion of the freshmen against ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... character, when the conversation turned on squaring the circle, and not on the propriety of confining France within the natural boundary of the Rhine. Mr. Brougham is, in fact, a striking instance of the versatility and strength of the human mind, and also in one sense of the length of human life, if we make a good use of our time. There is room enough to crowd almost every art and science into it. If we pass 'no ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 496 - Vol. 17, No. 496, June 27, 1831 • Various
... of Dryden. Butler dwells on Shaftesbury's unprincipled versatility; on his wonderful and almost instinctive skill in discerning the approach of a change of fortune; and on the dexterity with which he extricated himself from the snares in which he left his associates ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... too hard, he went abroad for a long change. On his way back, at the Albergo La Luna, in Venice, he met an elderly Russian lady in whose company he spent most of his time there. She was no doubt impressed by his versatility and charmed, as everyone always was, by his conversation and original views on the many subjects that interested him. We may be sure he told her all about himself and what he had done and was intending to do. At the end of his stay, ...
— Samuel Butler: A Sketch • Henry Festing Jones
... vassal, so that the latter no more complained, but paid exactly the dues of his domain, for love" of the master who had procured for him this freedom from care. This theme might be pursued at length, for the composers of epitaphs varied it with remarkable cleverness and versatility of imagination. The very zeal which they display in describing the lord's virtues betrays how precarious was the condition of his subjects. There was nothing to hinder the unjust prince or the prevaricating officer from ruining and ill-treating ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... fro, these good folks want to lull me asleep on my feet. I admire, as I tread the lava pavements of the strada, those porters and fishermen who move by me chatting, singing, smoking, gesticulating, quarrelling, and embracing each other the next moment with astonishing versatility of mood. They live through all their sense at the same time; and, being philosophers without knowing it, keep the measure of their desires in accordance with the brevity of life. I approach a much-patronised tavern, and ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... observe the limits originally placed to the proposal. The first Readings were to comprise only the Carol, and for others a new story was to be written. He had not yet the full confidence in his power or versatility as an actor which subsequent experience gave him. "I propose to announce in a short and plain advertisement (what is quite true) that I cannot so much as answer the numerous applications that are made to me to read, and that compliance with ever so few of them is, in any reason, impossible. ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... lively, and he would throw himself naturally and warmly into them. From his general demeanour (I need scarcely say) the "odour of sanctity" was wholly absent. I am not sure that his height and depth of aim and lively versatility of talent did not leave his compassionate sympathies rather undeveloped; certainly to himself, and, I suspect, largely in the case of others, he would view suffering not as a thing to be cockered up or made much of, though of course to ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... remarkable for rigorous Catholicity. Of an evening, when not engrossed with his garden, he was reading or writing in his room, perhaps preparing the material of that History of New France in which, despite the versatility of his busy brain, his good sense and capacity ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... the man and the poet were a single individuality, we shall also portray the latter when we speak of the former. Irritability and versatility, the accompaniments of poetical and of rhetorical talents, dominated him to a high degree, but an acquired rather than an innate moderation kept them in equilibrium. Our friend was capable of enthusiasm in highest measure, and in youth he surrendered ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Palestrina's versatility and genius enabled him to lift ecclesiastical music out of the rigidity and frivolity characterizing on either hand the opposing ranks of those that preceded him, and to embody the religious spirit in works of the highest art. He transposed the ecclesiastical ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... meditated for some time, and if with any other sensation than that of grasping avarice, and all its accompanying hopes and fears, it was with that of admiration for the Greek's daring and versatility of talent. He was thinking of the value of which they might ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... that the political weathercock was again veering. Even when we make allowance for the very peculiar circumstances by which he was surrounded from his entry into life until his exit from it, it is impossible to doubt that this versatility was a consequence of a particular mental organization, and that, if rigorously analyzed, its causes would be found to resolve themselves into habits of reasoning upon men and things from which courage, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... symmetry, repeated the tint of her cheeks artistically. She was fond of weaving bright bits of color into the two long braids of black hair, and decorating in many different ways her fur parkies and mukluks. She was proud of keeping her house and person as tidy as possible, while her versatility allowed her the use of ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... temperament, and become still more by acquired habit, men of strong, narrow, concentrated natures, whose thoughts, like a deep and rapid stream confined in a restricted channel, flow with resistless energy in one direction. It is by the sacrifice of versatility that they do so much, and the result is amply sufficient to justify it. But it is a real sacrifice, depriving them of many forms both of capacity and ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... the entire absence of that dramatic talent so marvellously developed among his contemporaries,—a defect, as we shall presently see, sufficient of itself to disqualify him for the duties of Court Poet. But, what was still worse, his mind was not gifted with facility and versatility of invention, two equally essential requisites; and to install him in a position where such faculties were hourly called into play would have been to put the wrong man in the worst possible place. Drayton ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... sort of double aspect which he thus presented, as viewed by the world and by his friends, he was himself fully aware; and it not only amused him, but, as a proof of the versatility of his powers, flattered his pride. He was, indeed, as I have already remarked, by no means insensible or inattentive to the effect he produced personally on society; and though the brilliant station he had attained, since the commencement of my acquaintance with him, made not the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... rare qualities, not to be revealed to the every-day world, that gives to genius that shy, reserved and troubled air, which puzzles and flatters you, when you encounter it. Cora realized her beauty and genius; but, with that charming versatility, that of right belongs to woman, she had the faculty of bending and modelling her graceful intellect to ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... little wine he had been suffered to imbibe), but still behaved as well as he knew how. Hargrave and Annabella, from different motives and in different ways, emulated me, and doubtless both surpassed me, the former in his discursive versatility and eloquence, the latter in boldness and animation at least. Milicent, delighted to see her husband, her brother, and her over-estimated friend acquitting themselves so well, was lively and gay too, in her quiet way. Even ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... refer to a passage in the essays which has some bearing on the question of the place of acting in the hierarchy of the arts. Garrick clearly was the greatest actor of his century; but in speaking of Barry, Mr Irving says: "He had not Garrick's fire or versatility; he had no gift for comedy; but in such parts as Othello, Romeo and Alexander the Great his superior physique, his stately grace, his charming pathos gave him the victory." His superior physique is a phrase which explains the reluctance of some fully to admit the actor's claim for his art: they ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... itself in a variety of ways. It is protean in its versatility. It can be physical or mental. The hypochondriac conceives that everything is going to the "demnition bow-wows." Nothing can reassure him. He sees in every article of diet a hidden fiend of dyspepsia; in every drink a demon of torture. Every man ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... honour to visit the liberator of their land; and to them Bonaparte behaved with that mixture of affability and inner reserve, of seductive charm alternating with incisive cross-examination which proclaimed at once the versatility of his gifts, the keenness of his intellect, and his determination to gain social, as well as military and political, supremacy. And yet the occasional abruptness of his movements, and the strident tones of command ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... more characteristic than the turbulent pretensions to meekness and simplicity in this address. Again, the versatility and adroitness of Richard is admirably described in the following ironical conversation ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... during this part of his life also wrote papers on lithography and upon musical instruments, and translated Algarotti's Treatise on "Architecture, Painting, and Opera Music," enough will have been said to make manifest his very remarkable and somewhat prolix versatility. In 1773 he made a tour in Westphalia in quest of MSS., and on his return, by way of completing his education, he turned journalist, and commenced a periodical called the Cassel Spectator, with Mauvillon as his co-editor. In 1775 he was ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... Carlen exhibits a versatility which may be considered remarkable. While in one book she revels in descriptions of home-scenes and characters, in another she presents her readers with events and incidents that bear a strong resemblance to the startling and melo-dramatic productions of many of the modern ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... time he gained successes in all these various fields. His many-sidedness shows him to have been a man of wide sympathies, whilst the astonishing rapidity of his development testifies to the precocity of his talent. His versatility and his precocity are, in fact, the two most prominent characteristics to be borne in mind in judging his art, for much that appears at first sight incongruous, if not utterly irreconcilable, can be explained on this basis. For versatility and precocity in ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... at this period, more remarkably than at any other during his life, the unparalleled versatility of his genius was unfolding itself, those quick, chameleon-like changes of which his character, too, was capable, were, during the same time, most vividly and in strongest contrast, drawn out. To the world, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... that Colman the younger brought out a decade later, took the town by storm, and the struggling young poet found himself a popular favourite at twenty-one. He then tried serious lyrical writing, and his tact, elegance of manner and versatility, gained him a place in the best society. This sudden success received a blow in 1789, when a very poor opera, Holge Danske, which he had produced, was received with mockery and a reaction against him set in. He left Denmark in a rage and spent the next years in Germany, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... things to suffer the summer of his consummate mental powers to shine upon us? Take the works of any of the abovenamed distinguished individuals previous to their thirty-eighth year, and shall we perceive that flexibility of the English language to the extent that Byron has left behind him? His versatility was, indeed, astonishing and triumphant. His Childe Harold, the Bride of Abydos, the Corsair, and Don Juan, (though somewhat too freely written,) are established proofs of his unequalled energy of mind. His power was unlimited; not only eloquent, but the sublime, grave ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... Most of my readers have seen that remarkable little lay written by Mr. Gilbert for Miss Anderson to display the range and variety of her powers—"Comedy and Tragedy." Mr. Gladstone gave proof of powers of equally wide versatility; and all at the expense of poor Joe. First for the Comedy. I must quote the passage of the speech to explain what ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... with the author's characteristic originality and force, and with much natural humor. In subject the book is altogether different from any of its predecessors, and the author's marked success proves his breadth and the versatility of his great talent. ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... of Swift and Prior, and his variations upon French suggestions, his personal note is scarcely so apparent; but the two Elegies and some of the minor pieces retain a deserved reputation. His ingenious prologues and epilogues also serve to illustrate the range and versatility of his talent. As a rule, the arrangement in the present edition is chronological; but it has not been thought necessary to depart from the practice which gives a time-honoured precedence to 'The Traveller' and 'The Deserted Village'. The true sequence of the poems, in their order of publication, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... forces of ennui and dissipation acting on a Society that is willing to spend money and desires to kill time. She has played many parts, some (of infinitesimal proportions), on the burlesque stage, others in the semi-private life of her own residence in the South-west district of London. Her versatility has gained for her many admirers and a precarious income, but so long as she possesses the former she scorns to live upon the latter. Being unquestionably a real lady, she has been elected an honorary member of a night club to which undoubted gentlemen resort. There ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various
... give such a coloring. "There have been, says the celebrated American Farmer, in every age and in every country bad men: Men who either hold or expect to hold certain advantages by fitting examples of SERVILITY to their countrymen: Who train'd to the employment, or self-taught by a natural versatility of genius, serve as decoys for drawing the innocent and unwary into snares. It is not to be doubted but that such men will diligently bestir themselves on this and every like occasion, to spread ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... "The versatility of genius exhibited by this author has won for him a world-wide reputation as a facetious and a strong writer. One moment replete with the most touching pathos, and the next full of ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... subject of religion. Though intolerant of error, he cherished no personal animosities. Calvin was more refined than Luther, and never like him gave vent to coarse expressions. He had not Luther's physical strength, nor his versatility of genius; nor as a reformer was he so violent. "Luther aroused; Calvin tranquillized," The one stormed the great citadel of error, the other furnished the weapons for holding it after it was taken. The former was more popular; the latter appealed to a higher intelligence. The ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... tranquil, and sad, with Wallenstein. But as, in his dramas, this intense perception of self—this earnest, haunting consciousness—this feeling of genius as a burden, and of life as a religion—interferes with true dramatic versatility; so, on the contrary, these qualities give variety in his poems to the expositions of a mind always varying, always growing—always eager to think, and sensitive to feel. And his art loved to luxuriate in all that copious fertility of materials which the industry ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... astonished at her fortitude, and hung over her bed with the affection of a parent, and the reverence of a son. Nor did it give me less pleasure to see her sweet mind cleared of all its latent prejudices, and left at liberty to admire and applaud that force of thought and versatility of genius, that comprehensive soul and benevolent heart, which attracted and commanded veneration from all, but inspired peculiar sensations of delight mixed with reverence in those who, like her, had the opportunity ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... of short essays it is only possible to take a few, but care has been taken to attempt to show the enormous versatility of Chesterton's mind. It has been said quite wrongly that Chesterton cannot describe pathos. This is certainly untrue. He can so admirably describe humour that he cannot help knowing the pathetic, which is often so akin to humour. I am not sure that ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... an honor, and should evince no ill-feeling, especially from these clever singing comedians, who are the best of fellows at heart; whose songs are clever but never vulgar; who sing because they love to sing; and whose versatility enables them to create the broadest of satires, and, again, a little song with words so pure, so human, and so pathetic, that the applause that follows from the silent room of listeners comes ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... mediaeval knight in "Childe Roland," the Hebrew in "Saul," the Greek in "Balaustion's Adventure," the monster in "Caliban," the immortal dead in "Karshish,"—all these and a hundred more histories of the soul show Browning's marvelous versatility. It is this great range of sympathy with many different types of life that constitutes Browning's chief likeness to Shakespeare, though otherwise there is no comparison between the ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... young Vicomte de H—— entered the box. He placed himself behind Pauline, and remained there for the rest of the evening, in eager, animated conversation. He was not only one of the most agreeable men of the day, but added to wit and versatility of genius, a handsome face, graceful bearing, and a noble heart; and while Pauline yielded to the charms of so delightful a companion, full of the dreams and hopes of youth, uttering sentiments that ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... of that sort were somewhat brought under, we find the Earls of Warwick equally busy burning and slaying to the right and left; now crusading into Palestine, and now fighting the French, who were a standing resort for activity when nothing else was to be done; with great versatility diversifying these affairs with pilgrimages to the holy sepulchre, and founding monasteries and hospitals. One stout earl, after going to Palestine and laying about him like a very dragon for some years, brought home a live Saracen king to London, ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... have tried her fortune on the stage, she had personal attractions, depth of feeling, and vivacity of mind to have rendered her one of the very first in a profession, to excel in which there is, perhaps, more correct judgment and versatility of talent required than in any other, and would have had a fair prospect of obtaining that coronet which has occasionally been the reward of those fair dames ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... instructors in physical culture in the public schools, first of St. Louis and later of St. Paul, Minnesota. As a child, and afterwards as a young girl, she exhibited great precocity and a considerable amount of real ability in drawing and in English composition, but her very cleverness and versatility were the means of her becoming much more sophisticated than most young women of her age, with the result that while still in her teens she gave her adopted parents ground for considerable uneasiness. Accordingly they decided to place her for the next few ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... which were ever passing the boundary and flocking down; but it is no just account of the historical fact, viewed as a whole. Not often indeed do the Oriental nations present us with an example of versatility of character; the Turks, for instance, of this day are substantially what they were four centuries ago. We cannot conceive, were Turkey overrun by the Russians at the present moment, that the fanatical tribes, ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... took pupils.] was in like manner surnamed The Wise, but both of them were so called for other reasons than those which have given you this name,—Atilius, for his reputation as an adept in municipal law, Cato, for the versatility of his endowments for there were reported to his honor many measures wisely planned and vigorously carried through in the Senate, and many cases skilfully defended in the courts, so that in his old age The Wise was generally applied to him as a surname. But you are regarded ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... winter and working in the summer he earned enough to enter Union College. He was unable to complete the course, however, and turned to teaching in Ohio, where he restored to decent order a school notorious for bullying its luckless teachers. But teaching was not to be his career; indeed, Taylor's versatility for a time threatened to make him the proverbial Jack-of-all-trades: he was employed successively in a grist mill, a saw mill, and an iron foundry; he dabbled in the study of medicine; and finally, in the year which saw ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... of its author's versatility, for nothing more different from its immediate predecessors could easily be imagined. It is also the most thoroughly human among his plays, and the only one that does not end upon a tragic note. Finally it is the most ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... certainly you will never find him obscure, and you will never find him dull. The clearness, the vivacity, of this man's mind were something almost preternatural. So, too, were his readiness, his versatility, his audacity. He had no distrust of himself, no awe of his fellow-men, no reverence for God, to deter him from any attempt with his pen, however presuming. If a state ode were required, it should be ready to order at twelve to-morrow; if an epic ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... spirits were recklessly high. He talked incessantly, playing the host with a brilliant ease that betrayed no sign of strain. He did not seem to have a care in the world, and Avery marvelled at his versatility. ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... enveloping the Swedish princess, returned to the palace of Compiegne. Several days were spent at Compiegne, during which she astonished every one by the remarkable self-poise of her character, her varied information, and the versatility of her talents. She conversed upon theology with the ecclesiastics, upon politics with the ministers, upon all branches of science and art with philosophers and the virtuosi, and eclipsed the most brilliant of the courtiers in the small-talk ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... possessing will and moral insight in as preeminent a degree as he possesses sensibility. This view, that poetry is merely a by-product of a great nature, gains plausibility from certain famous artists of history, whose versatility appears to have been unlimited. Longfellow has seized upon this conception of the poet in his drama, Michael Angelo, as has G. L. Raymond in his drama, Dante. In the latter poem the argument for the poet's moral supremacy is baldly ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... unselfish part in furthering my interests. Although he was a contributor to the Gazette Musicale, edited by Moritz Schlesinger, he had never succeeded in making his influence felt there in the slightest degree. He had none of the versatility of a journalist, and the editors entrusted him with little besides the preparation of bibliographical notes. Oddly enough, it was with this unworldly and least resourceful of men that I had to discuss my plan for the conquest of ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... time before our hero acquired dexterity in his new trade: his companions formed, with amazing celerity, whole sentences, while he was searching for letters, which perpetually dropped from his awkward hands: but he was ashamed of his former versatility, and he resolved to be steady to his present way of life. His situation, at this printer's, was far better suited to him than that which he had quitted, with so much disgust, at the brewer's. He rose early, and, by great industry, overcame all the difficulties which at first ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth |
