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Opus   Listen
noun
Opus  n.  (pl. opera)  A work; specif. (Mus.), A musical composition. Note: Each composition, or set of pieces, as the composer may choose, is called an opus, and they are numbered in the order of their issue. (Often abbrev. to op.)
Opus incertum. (Arch.) See under Incertum.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Opus" Quotes from Famous Books



... I have the honor to write that music also, but I am glad of it, for now the music will be all by the same master. The third act will prove at least as good as the two others,—in fact, I believe, infinitely better, and that it might fairly be said, finis coronat opus. The Elector was so pleased at the rehearsal that, as I already wrote to you, he praised it immensely next morning at his reception, and also in the evening at court. I likewise know from good authority that, on the same evening ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

... a quality which men cared to praise, was, strangely enough, fond of books and of scholars. A taste for learning was gradually leavening the barbarous Normanic lump, spreading downwards from monarch to people. Two years before John's death Roger Bacon was born, whose opus Majus embraced every branch of science, and whose life is the whole intellectual life of the thirteenth century. Matthew Paris, the last of the great monastic historians, was the intimate friend of Henry III., who delighted in his scholarship, and loved to visit him ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone

... architecture and landscape is mingled with festoons, vines, and purely conventional ornament. Mosaic was also employed to decorate floors and wall-spaces, and sometimes for ceilings.[13] The later imperial baths and palaces were especially rich in mosaic of the kind called opus Grecanicum, executed with numberless minute cubes of stone or glass, as in the Baths of Caracalla and the ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin

... Marx's magnum opus, "Capital,'' added bulk and substance to the theses of the Communist Manifesto. It contributed the theory of surplus value, which professed to explain the actual mechanism of capitalist exploitation. This doctrine is very complicated and is scarcely tenable ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell

... consule civicum, Bellique causas et vitia, et modos, Ludumque Fortunae, gravesque Principum amicitias, et arma Nondum expiatis uncta cruoribus, Periculosae plenum opus aleae, Tractas, et incedis per ignes Suppositos ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope

... Consult the collections of Frensheim (Supplement. Livian, c. 12, 43) and Usher, (Anal. p. 469.) Livy himself had styled the Alexandrian library, elegantiae regum curaeque egregium opus; a liberal encomium, for which he is pertly criticized by the narrow stoicism of Seneca, (De Tranquillitate Animi, c. 9,) whose wisdom, on this ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... with the great names of the historic past. Hawthorne has recorded how, by mere chance, he turned from the Via delle Quattro Fontane into the Via Quirinale and was thus lured on to an obelisk and a fountain on the pedestal of which on one side was the inscription, "Opus Phidias," and on the other, "Opus Praxiteles," ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... aetas animusque virilis Quaerit opus, & amicitias: inservit honori: Commisisse cavet, ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce

... in the bulkheads and deluged the gun deck, while the Louisiana drifted helplessly down the river, feeling the effect of the wheels no more sensibly than if they were a pair of sculling oars. "Facilis descensus Averno; sed revocare gradum, hoc opus, hic labor est." The aptness of the quotation will be appreciated by the reader who is in at the death of the Louisiana. We accomplished our object of getting down to the forts about seventy miles below the city, thanks to the current and our two transports; but our artillerists ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson

... group of mediaeval alchemists set down a few centuries out of our time in the murky light of Prescott's sanctum. Yet, though he accepted us at our face value, and began to talk of his strange discoveries there was none of the old familiar prating about matrix and flux, elixir, magisterium, magnum opus, the mastery and the quintessence, those alternate names for the philosopher's stone which Paracelsus, Simon Forman, Jerome Cardan, and the other mediaeval worthies indulged in. This experience at least was as up-to-date as the Curies, Becquerel, ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... calls for answer. Your questions about ST. IVES were practically answered in my last; so were your wails about the edition, AMATEUR EMIGRANT, etc. By the end of the year ST. I. will be practically finished, whatever it be worth, and that I know not. When shall I receive proofs of the MAGNUM OPUS? or shall I receive ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Book' Mr. Browning attained the full recognition of his genius. The 'Athenaeum' spoke of it as the 'opus magnum' of the generation; not merely beyond all parallel the supremest poetic achievement of the time, but the most precious and profound spiritual treasure that England had produced since the days of Shakespeare. ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... the Brenzoni tomb in the Church of San Fermo: "Quem genuit Russi Florentia Tusca Johanis: istud sculpsit opus ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford

... good? While God's unfinished opus Multitudinous harmony obeys, Evil is a dissonance not a discord, Soon to be resolved ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman

... The entry, as given by Las Casas, is "Pro authore, seu pictore, || Gennua cui patria est, nomen cui Bartolomeus || Columbus de terra rubea, opus edidit istud || Londonije: anno domini millesimo quatercentessimo octiesque uno || Atque insuper anno octavo: decimaque die mensis Februarii. || Laudes Christo cantentur abunde." Historia, tom. i. p. 225. Now since Bartholomew ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... OEdipo conjectere opus est—it would have been difficult for any other person to have divined such a motive. The conduct of the drama is exactly suitable to its commencement; the fate of OEdipus and of Thebes, the ravages of the pestilence, and the avenging of the death of Laius, are all secondary ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... ille, quem videtis, hospites, Ait fuisse navium celerrimus, Neque ullius natantis impetum trabis Nequisse praeterire, sive palmulis Opus foret volare sive linteo. Et hoc negat minacis Adriatici Negare litus insulasve Cycladas Rhodumque nobilem horridamque Thraciam Propontida trucemve Ponticum sinum, Ubi iste post phaselus antea fuit Comata silva: nam Cytorio ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank

... 1214, at or near Ilchester; became a friar of the Franciscan Order; studied natural philosophy and wrote, besides other works, the "Opus Majus" (described as "at once the 'Encyclopaedia' and the 'Organon' of the ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade

... they "are significant, but not efficient"; and also Augustine as saying, "Deus regit inferiora corpora per superiora": God rules the bodies below by those above. But best of all is this, which another writer has expressed: "Sapiens adjuvabit opus astrorum quemadmodum agricola terrae naturam": A wise man assisteth the work of the stars as the husbandman helpeth the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... vulgus, quia tantum, quantum opus est, sapit. {254} Quoted by Montaigne (Of Presumption) from Lactantius. Characteristic of Montaigne and true, so far that a man can know nothing thoroughly unless the ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford

... in Satira videor nimis acer, et ultra Legem tendere opus: sine nervis altera, quicquid Composui, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift

... sive Albatenii opus astronomicum. Ad fidem codicis escurialensis arabice editum, latine versum, adnotationibus instructum a Carolo Alphonso Nallino, 1899-1907. Publicazioni del R. Osservatorio di Brera in ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith

... comprehension, and founded on the most baseless facts. I am desirous, sir, to see myself in print. I should like my work, sir, to appear in large letters; in very large letters, sir. Indeed, sir, it would give me joy, if you would condescend to print it altogether in capital letters: my magnum opus might then be called with truth, a capital work." To him, the Publisher - "Much certainly depends on the character of the printing." Meekly the author - "Indeed, sir, it does. A great book, sir, should ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... devoted himself to the writing of a life of Lord Verulam, and had been at it ever since. But as yet he had not written a word. In early life, that is, up to his fortieth year, he had talked freely enough about his opus magnum to those of his compeers with whom he had been intimate; but of late Bacon's name had never been on his lips. Patience, at home, was aware of the name and nature of her father's occupation, but Clarissa had not yet learned to know ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... oppose the government; free labor unions (authorized in April 1977); Workers Confederation (CC.OO); the Socialist General Union of Workers (UGT), and the smaller independent Workers Syndical Union (USO); business and landowning interests; the Catholic Church; Opus Dei; university students ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... said to have been given to the place, because the daughters of Triopus used to lament there the fate of Apollo. But Apollo and the Python were the same; and Tripus, or Triopus, the supposed father of these humane sisters, was a variation for Tor-Opus, the serpent-hill, or temple; where neither Apollo, nor the Python were slain, but where they were both worshipped, being one and the same Deity. [425][Greek: Puthoi men oun ho Drakon ho Puthios threskeuetai, kai ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant

... that they were tolerating her out of mere Politeness. Later on, in the Drawing Room, they continued to tolerate her the best they knew how. The Girl with the Book of Rules played a sad little Opus on the Piano, after which the Steeple-Chaser in Red leaped on top of the Instrument and tore out Coon Stuff with eight men turning ...
— People You Know • George Ade

... ancient knowledge and culture over the arid waste of mediaevalism. France and England had awakened from their long mental torpor, Paris was become the center of an intellectual revival. In England, Roger Bacon, in his "Opus Majus," was systematizing all existing knowledge and laying a foundation for a more advanced science and philosophy for the people, who had only recently extorted from their wicked King John the great ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele

... candide, mores, Et tecum cuncti qui mea scripta legunt: Nam mea vita meis non est incongrua scriptis; Justitiam doceo, Justitiamque colo. Improbus esse potest nemo qui non sit avarus, Nec pulchrum quisquam fecit avarus opus. Octoginta ego jam complevi et quatuor annos; Pene acta est vitae fabula ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... wine With which our host would dope us! Now let us hear what pretty dear Entangles him of Opus. ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field

... there must be marks by which, if you were to study them closely, you might distinguish the occult qualities of Boys and divide them into genera and orders. The subject only wants its Linnaeus. If ever I gird myself for my magnum opus, I am determined it shall be a "Compendious Guide to ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... sensu verborum consociatum Psalterium Jesu, sic est opus hoc vocitatum, Qui legit intente, quocunque dolore prematur, Sentiet inde bonum, dolor ejus et alleviatur; Ergo pius legat hoc ejus sub amore libenter, Cujus ibi Nomen scriptum ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley

... fuit ad desideratum nimis diu divini vatis Danici incomparabile opus. Arcta etenim, qu nos et Britannos intercessit amicitia, me allexit, ut, clementissime annuentibus Augustissimis patri patribus CHRISTIANO VII. et FREDERICO VI. iter in Britanniam anno seculi prteriti LXXXVI. ad thesauros bibliothecarum Albionensium ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker

... magnum opus of Cutbush resulted in "A System of Pyrotechny" (1825), which voluminous publication did not appear until after his decease, and then largely through the efforts of his wife and former students in the Cadet Corps, for, in Silliman's ...
— James Cutbush - An American Chemist, 1788-1823 • Edgar F. Smith

... be told the Story of what happen'd at Loim, in the Dutchy of Gulic, where a Popish Curate having ineffectually try'd many Charms to Eject the Devil out of a Damsel there possessed, he passionately bid the Devil come out of her into himself; but the Devil answered him, Quid mihi Opus, est eum tentare, quem Novissimo die, Jure Optimo, sum possessurus? That is, What need I meddle with one whom I am sure to have, and hold at the Last-day ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather

... certificat neque removet dubitationem ut quiescat animus in intuitu veritatis, nisi eam inveniat via experientiae; quia multi habent argumenta ad scibilia, sed quia non habent experientiam, negligunt ea, nee vitant nociva nex persequuntue bona. J. H. Bridges, The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon (Oxford, ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... Appropriate action to create or maintain a situation will take the form of a military operation. An operation, in the basic sense, is merely an act, or a series of acts. The word is derived from the Latin opus, meaning "work". A military operation is therefore an act, or a series of included acts (i.e., work), of a military character. A military operation may consist of an entire campaign, or even of several such, constituting ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College

... them—panned down through the ship's blister-ports. There was a planet below. The ship descended toward it. It swelled visibly as the space-ship approached. Cochrane stood out of camera-range and acted as director as well as producer of the opus. He used even Johnny Simms as an offstage voice repeating stern commands. It was corny. There was no doubt about it. It had ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... Iona, and perhaps the larger portion of the nave and aisles, to be "probably the erection of the twelfth and next succeeding century," found, in 1844, on the abacus of one of the supporting columns, the inscription "DONALDUS OBROLCHAN FECIT HOC OPUS;" and already this inscription has been broken and mutilated.—(See Ulster Journal of Archaeology, vol. i. p. 86.) The obit of a person of this name, and probably of this builder, occurs, as Dr. ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson

... themselves indifferent? But, yet, if the bare authority of an ecclesiastical law, without any other reason than the will and pleasure of men, be made to restrain practice, then is Christian liberty taken away. Junius saith,(83) that externum opus ligatur from the use of things indifferent, when the conscience is not bound; but in that same place he showeth, that the outward action is bound and restrained only quo usque circumstantiae ob quas necessitas imperata est, se extendunt. So that it is not ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie

... fleet son of Oileus was captain, Aias the less, that was not so great as was the Telamonian Aias but far less. Small was he, with linen corslet, but with the spear he far outdid all the Hellenes and Achaians. These were they that dwelt in Kynos and Opus and Kalliaros and Bessa and Skarphe and lovely Augeiai and Tarphe and Thronion, about the streams of Boagrios. And with Aias followed forty black ships of the Lokrians that ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)

... good-night, sweet Pete," said Nancy, taking the reluctant cherub by the hand. "'Hoc opus, hic labor est,' Mr. Thurston, to get the Peter-bird upstairs when once he is down. Shake hands with your future teacher, Peter; no, you mustn't kiss him; little boys don't kiss great Latin scholars ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... Mr Mackenzie, pointing to the ditch and wall, 'this is my magnum opus; at least, this and the church, which is the other side of the house. It took me and twenty natives two years to dig the ditch and build the wall, but I never felt safe till it was done; and now I can defy all the savages in Africa, for the spring that fills the ditch is inside the wall, and ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard

... Church; Euskal Herritarok or EH [Herri BATASUNA]; free labor unions (authorized in April 1977); on the extreme left, the Basque Fatherland and Liberty or ETA and the First of October Antifascist Resistance Group or GRAPO use terrorism to oppose the government; Opus Dei; Socialist General Union of Workers or UGT and the smaller independent Workers Syndical Union or USO; university ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... compose by the time he was ten, but he did not manifest any especial precocity in this direction: his published compositions with opus number contain only one movement, it is believed, which he wrote before he was twenty or twenty-one years of age. After the death of his father he was left, as he had been practically for some years before, the responsible head of the family, with the care of his mother and his younger ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews

... amator; post dimissum opus civicum requiem in Africae solitudinibus nuper quaesivit ubi in feras terrae non minore animo, successu haud minore, ferrum exacuit quam in malos saeculi mores ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt

... customary to represent in these situations; but it can of course convey no idea of the brilliant effect produced by powerful colouring executed in mosaic, the most luminous of all methods of enrichment. The floor of most of them was formed in the style of mosaic known as "opus Alexandrinum," and the large sweeping, curved bands of coloured material with which the main outlines of the patterns are defined, and the general harmony of colour among the porphyries and other hard stones with which these pavements were executed, ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith

... Tertium recognovit Rudolfus Schoell; Opus Schoellii morte interceptum absolvit G. Kroll. Berolini apud ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker

... justae staturae hominibus generantur. Qualis vero ea Gens sit, ex qua ista Naturae Ludibria tanta copia proveniant, Vossium docere oportelat, quia Pumiliones Pumiles alios non gignunt, sed plerunque steriles sunt, experientia teste; ut plane non opus habuerunt Doctores Talmudici Nanorum matrimonia prohibere, ne Digitales ex iis nascerentur. Ludolphus it may be is a little too strict with Vossius for calling them Nani; he may only mean a sort of Men in that Country of less Stature than ordinary. And ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson

... green cloth; from an inner room came the unmistakable click of a roulette-wheel. Men talked loudly of their projects and ambitions shortly to be accomplished. An epic poet was about to publish his magnum opus, the birth of a new star in the poetical firmament; a speculator had made his great coup—to-morrow he would ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen

... causa[75] peccati, volens, suggerens, efficiens, iubens, operans, et in hoc impiorum scelerata consilia gubernans. Proprium Dei opus fuit,[76] ut vocatio Pauli, sic adulterium Davidis, Iudaeque proditoris impietas." Monstrum hoc, cuius Philippum aliquando puduit, Lutherus[77] tamen, a quo Philippus hauserat, quasi oraculum coeleste miris extollit laudibus, et alumnum suum eo nomine tantum non exaequat[78] ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion

... matrimonii, se vertit, ut non recipiat semen, vel statim post illud acceptum surgit, ut expellatur, lethaliter peccat; sed opus non est ut diu resupina jaceat, quum matrix, brevi, semen attrahat, et mox, arctissime claudatur" (vol. ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy

... would seem that the New Law is more burdensome than the Old. For Chrysostom (Opus Imp. in Matth., Hom. x [*The work of an unknown author]) say: "The commandments given to Moses are easy to obey: Thou shalt not kill; Thou shalt not commit adultery: but the commandments of Christ are ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... bis octo nogenis Venit legatus Roma bonitate donatus Qui lapidem fixit fundo, simul et benedixit Praesule Francisco, gestante pontificatum Istud ab Arnolpho templum fuit aedificatum Hoc opus insigne decorans Florentia digne Reginae coeli construxit mente fideli Quam tu, Virgo pia, semper ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari

... of their vicar, sang, or recited, or imitated the drawing of a champagne cork. Among the promised items was "Miss Honeychurch. Piano. Beethoven," and Mr. Beebe was wondering whether it would be Adelaida, or the march of The Ruins of Athens, when his composure was disturbed by the opening bars of Opus III. He was in suspense all through the introduction, for not until the pace quickens does one know what the performer intends. With the roar of the opening theme he knew that things were going extraordinarily; in the chords that herald the ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster

... in has aedes intret fortasse viator, Busta poetarum dum veneranda notet, Cernat et exuvias Drydeni,—plura referre Haud opus: ad ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... custos Jovis, vnde, qud alis Constreperis, Gallus decidit; vltor adest Vlricus Gallus, ne quem poscantur in vsum, Edocuit pennis, nil opus esse tuis. ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne

... cayman ten feet and a half long fast to the end of the rope. Nothing now remained to do but to get him out of the water without injuring his scales: "hoc opus, hic labor." We mustered strong: there were three Indians from the creek, there was my own Indian Yan, Daddy Quashi, the negro from Mrs. Peterson's, James, Mr. R. Edmonstone's man, whom I was instructing to ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton

... must seize the occasion, he repeated. It was bald behind, and must be grasped by the forelock. It was not enough to have begun well. One must end well. "Finis coronat opus." It was very easy to speak of a league, but a league was not to be made in order to sit with arms tied, but to do good work. The States ought not to suffer that the Germans should prove themselves more ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... but the apparent maturity of his first published works is due to the fact that he destroyed his earliest efforts and disowned those works which are known as posthumous, and which may have created confusion in some minds by having received a higher "opus" number than ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck

... menstruis jam primum venientibus factum est: saepe autem puellis propter timorem statum suam celantibus, aut aliqua alia ex causa, opus quod tempore menstruali fieri prorsus necessarium ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... animals come from an egg. You ought to know it, for the great controversy going on about spontaneous generation has brought it into special prominence lately. Well, then, the ovum, the egg, is, to speak in human phrase, the Creator's more private and sacred studio, for his magnum opus. Now, look at a hen's egg, which is a convenient one to study, because it is large enough and built solidly enough to look at and handle easily. That would be the form I would choose for my thinking-cell. Build me an oval with smooth, translucent walls, and put me in the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... sagacity, and his clear and lively style, make all his writings unusually attractive. His present volume on the Origin of Species is the result of many years of observation, thought, and speculation; and is manifestly regarded by him as the "opus" upon which his future fame is to rest. It is true that he announces it modestly enough as the mere precursor of a mightier volume. But that volume is only intended to supply the facts which are to support ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... father, smiling, "if you feel that way, why that's a good way to feel. But I'm afraid art is stronger in you than you think. Just now you're tired and disillusionized. In a month you'll be making sketches for some monumental opus." ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris

... thing out of another," in the words of the Roman poet, "and does not suffer anything to be begotten before she has been recruited by the death of something else." To all things born she comes one day with her imperious message: /materies opus est ut crescant postera secla/.[2] With the infinite patience of one who has inexhaustible time and imperishable material at her absolute command, slowly, vacillatingly, not hesitating at any waste or any cruelty, ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail

... Frazer's Golden Bough. Simpler folk will find it in the peasant's song of John Barleycorn, now made accessible to our drawingroom amateurs in the admirable collections of Somersetshire Folk Songs by Mr. Cecil Sharp. From Frazer's magnum opus you will learn how the same primitive logic which makes the Englishman believe today that by eating a beefsteak he can acquire the strength and courage of the bull, and to hold that belief in the face of the most ignominious ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw

... crowning function, the Magnum Opus of the mystery, must take place in the Sheol of Dappah; a long procession filed from the mountain temples to the charnel-house of the open plain; the night was dark, the moon had vanished in dismay, black clouds scudded across the heavens, a feverish rain fell ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite

... vitae bona proiecit atque abscidit et casus suos oneravit ipse, cui deo nullo est opus, quare ille mortem cupiat aut quare petat? utrumque timidi est: nemo contempsit mori qui concupivit. cuius haut ultra mala exire possunt, in loco tuto est situs, quis iam deorum, velle fac, quicquam potest malis tuis adicere? ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... was broken, smashed,—I am not exaggerating—by this one frivolous little girl. All that he could say feebly was—"But—but it's my magnum opus! The work of my life." Miss Venner did not know what magnum opus meant; but she knew that Captain Kerrington had won three races at the last Gymkhana. Wressley didn't press her to wait for him any longer. He had sense enough ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... having thus secured a sound base of operations he set himself to collect materials for a work which should unite the research of Lepsius and the ingenuity of Champollion. The preparation of this magnum opus entailed many hurried visits to the magnificent Egyptian collections of the Louvre, upon the last of which, no longer ago than the middle of last October, he became involved in a ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... inspired by a love and regard for work, has in its quiet uniformity a great force, without which no one can accomplish anything essential. The world, therefore, holds Industry worthy of honor; and to the Romans, a nation of the most persistent perseverance, we owe the inspiring words, "Incepto tantum opus est, caetera res expediet"; ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz

... to the subscribers that elegant folio volume which my father always considered as his magnum opus. It was entitled The New Laws of the Indies for the good treatment and preservation of the Indians, promulgated by the Emperor Charles the Fifth, 1542-1543. A facsimile reprint of the original Spanish edition, ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens

... levat duros, quamvis rudis ore, labores; Inter opus cantat rustica Pyrrha suum; Nec meminit, secura rotam dum versat euntem, Non aliter nostris sortibus ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... templa tua et sacros spernentia ritus Pectora confundam; fausto sic numine laetus Relliquias vincam sceleris: vastam ipse ruinam Aspicies, pater, et stellanti summus ab arce Accipies gemitus morientum, et fulmine justum Confirmabis opus: laetabitur aethere toto Sancta cohors, magnique ibunt longo ordine patres Visuri exitium, ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker

... we aspire to a world of prophets and sibyls. Beethoven never heard of radioactivity nor of electrons dancing in vortices of inconceivable energy; but pray can anyone explain the last movement of his Hammerklavier Sonata, Opus 106, otherwise than as a musical picture of these whirling electrons? His contemporaries said he was mad, partly perhaps because the movement was so hard to play; but we, who can make a pianola play it to us over and over until it is as familiar as ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... to reinforce the Troops nearer Valencia, were the next Point to be undertaken; but hic labor, hoc opus; since the greater Body under the Conde de las Torres (who, with Mahoni, was now reinstated in his Post) lay between the Earl and those Troops intended to be dispers'd. And what inhaunc'd the Difficulty, the River Xucar must be passed ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe

... 1977) include the Communist-dominated Workers Commissions (CCOO); the Socialist General Union of Workers (UGT), and the smaller independent Workers Syndical Union (USO); the Catholic Church; business and landowning interests; Opus Dei; ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... necessary to plan before beginning to act—Priusquam incipias, consulto—opus est. Most translators have rendered consulto "deliberation," or something equivalent; but it is planning or contrivance that is signified. Demosthenes, in his Oration de Pace, reproaches the Athenians ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust

... a system of prevention may easily be allowed, where, as in Paraguay, institutions are fore-planned, and not, as everywhere in Europe, the slow and varying growth of circumstances. But to introduce it into an old society, hic labor, hoc opus est! The Augean stable might have been kept clean by ordinary labour, if from the first the filth had been removed every day; when it had accumulated for years, it became a task for Hercules to cleanse it. Alas, the age of ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey

... find room for almost any word saving a few indecent ones (quae sunt parum verecunda).' He adds that writers of the Old Comedy were often commended even for these: 'but it is enough for us to mind our present business—sed nobis nostrum opus ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... a score of "Rienzi" which I had left there on my flight. If that is so, I should be glad if you would not attach much importance to its possession. My original score is always at your disposal in case, as I scarcely believe, you should care much about this opus. I have only a very few copies left. At the time I had no more than twenty-five copies made, more than half of which I have squandered away. If it MUST be, get a copy from Fischer in Dresden, and submit it reverentially in my name to the great Dingelstedt. Have you had your score altered by Fischer? ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... pregnant thoughts and seminal utterances of his predecessors,—Socrates, Anaxagoras, and Pythagoras; whilst all of them do but represent the general tendency and spirit of their country and their times. The principles of Lord Bacon's "Instauratio Magna" were incipient in the "Opus Majus" of Roger Bacon, the Franciscan friar. The sixteenth century matured the thought of the thirteenth century. The inductive method in scientific inquiry was immanent in the British mind, and the latter Bacon ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... fort inexpugnable: In vain therefore do Princes confide in any other; for Armes invite Armes, Terrour, suspition. To this only do you trust, and the few which you maintain about your person, is rather for state, then fear. Quid enim istis opus est, quum firmissimo sis muro Civici amoris obtectus? Here is then the firm Keeper of our Liberties indeed, whom the Armies love for His own sake, and whom no servile flattery adores; but a simple, and sincere devotion; and verily such a Prince as Your Majesty, deserves to have ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn

... returned to the bank through an admiring circle, who, if they had been as numerous as the spectators to the Olympic games, would have greeted him with as loud shouts of triumph as saluted Epharmostus of Opus.{1} ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock

... was seen At combats gladiatorial, And ate enough to feed Ten boarders at Memorial; He often went on sprees And said, on starting homus, "Hic labor—opus est, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various

... rustici operis imitatione cessaret, more pecudum victos sub iugum misit. Sic expeditione finita redit ad boves rursus triumphalis agricola. Intra quindecim dies coeptum peractumque bellum, {10} prorsus ut festinasse, dictator ad relictum opus videretur. ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce

... and dullness are made by him the vehicles of wisdom. There is no difficulty for one being a fool to imitate a fool; but to be, remain, and speak like a wise man and a great wit, and yet so as to give a vivid representation of a veritable fool,—'hic labor, hoc opus est'. A drunken constable is not uncommon, nor hard to draw; but see and examine what goes to make up ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... a crushing blow," said the old man. "That is my MAGNUM OPUS—the pile of papers on the side table yonder. It is my analysis of the documents found in the Coptic monasteries of Syria and Egypt, a work which will cut deep at the very foundation of revealed religion. With my enfeebled health I do not know ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Percy-vering One did not apply to Mr. Punch for permission to reprint the page of Bradshaw which appeared in Mr. Punch's Bradshaw's Guide, marvellously illustrated by BENNETT, many years ago. This magnum opus in parvo is really interesting and amusing, but if there is one thing more than another which he who runs and reads desiderates of an author writing of time-tables and guides, it is accuracy. Now, in one particular instance, our PERCY is inaccurate. He writes: "Close ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various

... William the Conqueror, which in the king's name commands and firmly enjoins the personal attendance of all knights and others: "quod habeant et teneant se semper in armis et equis, ut decet et oportet; et quod semper sint prompti et parati ad servitium suum integrum nobis explendum et peragendum, cum opus adfuerit, secundum quod debent feodis et tenementis suis de jure nobis facere." This personal service in process of time degenerated into pecuniary commutations or aids, and at last the military part of the feudal system was ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various

... one today can be in sympathy with such a sentiment as the following (Becker, p. 95): "Et Trinummum, quae ita amabilibus lepidisque personis optimisque exemplis abundat, ut quoties eam lego, non comici me poetae, sed philosophi Socratici opus legere mihi videar." I believe we may safely call the Trinummus the least Plautine of Plautine plays, except the Captivi, and it is by no means so good a work. The Trinummus is crowded with ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke

... Bhartri-hari's Apophthegms. Colebrooke records his debt to Carey for carrying through the Serampore press the Sanskrit dictionary of Amara Sinha, the oldest native lexicographer, with an English interpretation and annotations. But the magnum opus of Carey was what in 1811 he described as A Universal Dictionary of the Oriental Languages, derived from the Sanskrit, of which that language is to be the groundwork. The object for which he had been long collecting the materials of this mighty work was the assisting of "Biblical ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith

... lad out of the country! I tell thee, Mary, Hector's understanding, and far more that of feminity, is inadequate to comprehend the extent of the loss which he has occasioned to the present age and to posterityaureum quidem opusa poem on such a subject, with notes illustrative of all that is clear, and all that is dark, and all that is neither dark nor clear, but hovers in dusky twilight in the region of Caledonian antiquities. I would have made the Celtic panegyrists look about ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... the time of Freind generally accepted as the work of Bacon, is almost certainly not from the pen of that eminent philosopher. In addition to the fact that Bacon himself says he had (for obvious reasons) written nothing except a few tracts (capitula quaedam) prior to the composition of his Opus Magnum in 1267, the real author of the Liber de speculis is probably mentioned by Bacon in the following ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson

... drank deeply from these fountains, new and old, and struggled like a giant to illumine the darkness of his time, by systematizing all existing knowledge. His "Opus Majus" was intended to bring these riches to the unlearned. But he died uncomprehended, and it was reserved for later ages to give recognition to his stupendous work, wrought in the twilight out ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele

... Syracusanas omnes audistis; plerique nostis. Opus est ingens magnificum regumac tyrannorum. Totum est ex saxo in mirandam altitudenem depresso, et multorum operis penitus exciso. Nihil tam clausum ad exitus, nihil tam septum undique, nihil tam tutum ad custodias, nec ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... brought with him his variations on "La ci darem la mano"; altogether the times seemed propitious and much more so when he was urged to give a concert. Persuaded to overcome a natural timidity, he made his Vienna debut at this theatre August 11, 1829, playing on a Stein piano his Variations, opus 2. His Krakowiak Rondo had been announced, but the parts were not legible, so instead he improvised. He had success, being recalled, and his improvisation on the Polish tune called "Chmiel" and a theme from "La Dame Blanche" stirred ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... aeternaque habetur. Sed diu magnum inter mortales certamen fuit,[9] vine corporis an virtute animi res militaris magis procederet. Nam et prius quam incipias consulto, et ubi consulueris mature facto opus est.[10] Ita utrumque per se ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)

... express in words what abuses in the Church this fanatical opinion concerning the opus operate, without a good disposition on the part of the one using the Sacraments, has produced. Hence the infinite profanation of the Masses, but of this we shall speak below. Neither can a single letter be produced from the old writers which in ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon

... parte per aphaeresim abscissa), ideoque apostrophi notam semper vel pingendam esse, vel saltem subintelligendam, omnino errant. Quamvis enim non negem quin apostrophi nota commode nonnunquam affigi possit, ut ipsius litterae s usus distinctius, ubi opus est, percipiatur; ita tamen semper fieri debere, aut etiam ideo fieri quia vocem his innuat, omnino nego. Adjungitur enim et foeminarum nominibus propriis, et substantivis pluralibus, ubi vox his sine soloecismo ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... Averni; Noctes atque dies patet atri janua Ditis; Sed revocare gradum, superasque evadere ad auras, Hoc opus, his ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood

... ipsas res! Sat [vero], says Sennertus, in hac vitae brevitate et naturae obscuritate, rerum est, quibus cognoscendis tempus impendatur, ut [confusis et multivotis] sermonibus intelligendis illud consumere opus non sit. [Eheu! quantas strages paravere verba nubila, quae tot dicunt ut nihil dicunt;—nubes potius, e quibus et in rebus politicis et in ecclesia turbines et tonitrua erumpunt!] Et proinde recte dictum putamus ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... some day. My head and my heart are both so full of poems which the dreadful struggle for bread does not give me time to put on paper, that I am often driven to headache and heartache purely for want of an hour or two to hold a pen." He then proceeds to outline what is to be his first 'magnum opus', "a long poem, founded on that strange uprising in the middle of the fourteenth century in France, called 'The Jacquerie'. It was the first time that the big hungers of THE PEOPLE appear in our modern ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

... this the curtain fell, the lights were put out, and all the atmosphere and mise en scene of the drama vanished. It was well known, however, that another season would come, the actors would reaeppear, and an "opus" would be given; whether it should turn out a tragedy, or a Miriam's song of deliverance, no one was able to predict. Meantime, the women of Colorado—to change the figure—bivouacked on the battle-field, and sent for reinforcements against the fall campaign. They held ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... triumphed over: for it hath carried our knowledge over the vast and devouring space of many thousands of years, and given so fair and piercing eyes to our mind; that we plainly behold living now (as if we had lived then) that great world, "Magni Dei sapiens opus," "The wise work (saith Hermes) of a great God," as it was then, when but new to itself. By it (I say) it is, that we live in the very time when it was created: we behold how it was governed: how it was covered with waters, and again repeopled: how kings and kingdoms have flourished ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... Hygeiae, Medicus movet arma triumphans, Undique victa fugit lurida turma mali.—— Laurea dum Phoebi viridis tua tempora cingit, Nec mortale sonans Fama coronat opus; Post equitat trepidans, repetitque Senectus in aurem, Voce canens stridula, "sis memor ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... inscription on the base of the monumental niche which occupies the centre of the Pieta, "Quod Titianus inchoatum reliquit, Palma reverenter absolvit, Deoque dicavit opus," records how what Titian had left undone was completed as reverently as might be by Palma Giovine. At this stage—the question being much complicated by subsequent restorations—the effort to draw the line accurately between the work ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips

... letters of Peter Martyr was published in 1530, under the title of Opus Epistolarum, Petri Martyris Anglerii; it is divided into thirty-eight books, each containing the letters of one year. The same objections have been made to his letters as to his Decades, but they bear the same stamp of candor, probity, and great information. They possess ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... Austriacum. Plus ultra Quadratura Circuli. Auctore P. Gregorio a Sancto Vincentio Soc. Jesu., Antwerp, 1647, folio.—Opus Geometricum posthumum ad Mesolabium. By the same. Gandavi [Ghent], ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... characteristic expressions of Chatterton, that God had sent his creatures into the world with arms long enough to reach anything if they chose to be at the trouble. In study, as in business, energy is the great thing. There must be the "fervet opus": we must not only strike the iron while it is hot, but strike it till it is made hot. It is astonishing how much may be accomplished in self- culture by the energetic and the persevering, who are careful to avail ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... the parish house resounded to the twenty voices of the choir. The choir master at the piano kept time with his head. Earnest and intent, they filled the building with the Festival Te Deum of Dudley Buck, Opus 63, No. 1. ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... He who is worthy of knowing what took place in him at that time or what questions were thrashed out in the darkest holy of holies in his soul—and not many are worthy of knowing all this—must hear, observe, and experience Tristan and Isolde, the real opus metaphysicum of all art, a work upon which rests the broken look of a dying man with his insatiable and sweet craving for the secrets of night and death, far away from life which throws a horribly spectral morning light, sharply, upon ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche

... opus est ut opus numere quibus est opulenta, Et per quas inopes sustentat non ope lenta, Piscibus & stanno nusquam ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley

... quaere potius ecquid ipse novi. Silent enim diutius Musae Varronis quam solebant, nec tamen istum cessare, sed celare quae scribat existimo. Minime vero, inquit ille: intemperantis enim arbitror esse scribere quod occultari velit: sed habeo opus magnum in manibus, idque iam pridem: ad hunc enim ipsum—me autem dicebat—quaedam institui, quae et sunt magna sane et limantur a me politius. 3. Et ego: Ista quidem, inquam, Varro, iam diu exspectans, non audeo tamen flagitare: audivi enim e Libone nostro, cuius nosti studium—nihil ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... de Turenne, who was in a high fever, and after he was gone Madame d'Urfe began to discuss alchemy and magic, and all the other branches of her beloved science, or rather infatuation. When we got on to the magnum opus, and I asked her if she knew the nature of the first matter, it was only her politeness which prevented her from laughing; but controlling herself, she replied graciously that she already possessed the philosopher's stone, and that she was acquainted with all the operations of the work. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... "Well, this opus is about the old Manhattan Project. The heroine is a sort of super-Mata-Hari, who is, alternately and sometimes simultaneously, in the pay of the Nazis, the Soviets, the Vatican, Chiang Kai-Shek, the Japanese Emperor, and the Jewish International ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr

... Absolute in the Infinite, in the Indefinite, and in the Finite, this is the Magnum Opus, the Great Work of the Sages, which Hermes called the Work ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... famous centre of the art of enamelling in the twelfth century, the work being known as Opus de Limogia, or Labor Limogiae. Limoges was a Roman settlement, and enamels were made there as early as the time of Philostratus. Champleve enamel, while it was not produced among the Greeks, nor even in Byzantine work, was almost invariable ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison



Words linked to "Opus" :   intermezzo, septette, adagio, symphonic poem, notturno, larghetto, duo, programme music, quartette, serenade, realisation, realization, pastiche, sextette, sheet music, pastorale, solo, medley, composition, suite, trio, pastoral, capriccio, allegretto, quartet, octet, piece of music, idyll, toccata, song, music, largo, introit, duet, octette, vocal, potpourri, sextet, septet, musical composition, musical passage, morceau, coda, arrangement, musical arrangement



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