"Critic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gives architecture as well as melody to verse; it gives that delightful sense of limitation which in all the arts is so pleasurable, and is, indeed, one of the secrets of perfection; it will whisper, as a French critic has said, 'things unexpected and charming, things with strange and remote relations to each other,' and bind them together in indissoluble bonds of beauty; and in his constant rejection of rhyme, Mr. ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... good things.... In them the priest will find a storehouse of hints on matters spiritual; from them the layman will reap crisp and clear information on many ecclesiastical points; the critic can listen to frank opinions of literature of every shade; and the general reader can enjoy the choice bits of description and morsels of humour scattered lavishly ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... that such a volume of the "choice crudities of criticism" as is here proposed would likewise fulfill the desirable purpose of avenging the author upon his ancient enemy, the critic, by showing how absurd the latter's utterances often are, and what a veritable farrago of folly those collected utterances can make. We may rest assured that however much hostile criticism may have pained an author, ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... most European countries, too, cheese has long been known as the poor man's friend; whilst as for pork, apart from all other considerations, I can claim for it a distinct place in English literature. A greater essayist by far than the critic to whom I am referring, a certain Mr. Charles Lamb, of the India House, has left us an immortal page on the origin of roast pig and crackling. And, when everything is considered, I should much like to know why novels should be confined to the aspirations of the soul, and ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... face suddenly alight. "That is splendid. You know he's the most severe critic we have, but we all adore his work." Then she added as an afterthought: "He's tremendously popular with the men. He studied here, ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... in reading an effusion by one critic who, in discussing the question of the canal lines, remarked that he could not accept 'these one-man discoveries,' oblivious of the fact that they are the discoveries of many observers. He then very naively gives the illuminating information ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... merely as a name and have perhaps never heard of Fogazzaro. Yet it is in these men that the better genius of modern Italy has recently expressed itself. Carducci's international reputation as the foremost living poet in Europe and a literary critic of the first class gains slowly, but its future is secure. Thanks to the wider circulating medium of fiction, Fogaz-* *zaro's name is a household word in thousands of Italian families, and he combines in his genius so many rare and important ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... in its course; obstinacy or self-assertion will often interfuse itself with their grandest impulses; and their very deeds of self-sacrifice are sometimes only the rebound of a passionate egoism. So it was with Mr. Tryan: and any one looking at him with the bird's-eye glance of a critic might perhaps say that he made the mistake of identifying Christianity with a too narrow doctrinal system; that he saw God's work too exclusively in antagonism to the world, the flesh, and the devil; that his intellectual culture was too ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... compromise instead of assisting you." M. Royer-Collard was in the right, and defined himself admirably, perhaps more correctly than he imagined. He was more calculated to advise and contest than to exercise power. He was rather a great spectator and critic than an eminent political actor. In the ordinary course of affairs he would have been too absolute, too haughty, and too slow. In a crisis, I question whether his mental reservations, his scruples of conscience, his horror of all public excitement, and his ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... of that most impartial and worthy critic, Lord Jeffrey, which is, that tourists should describe those things which make the pleasantest impression on their own minds, I should begin with an account of the delightful entertainment which genuine hospitality and courtesy have here favored me with. I passed Blannerhasset's Island ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... but he put a hand on each knee, and glared with pursed lips and a leonine bristle of the beard at his youthful critic for some moments, after which he returned to his Globe with a ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... that 'Roderick' were in your hands for reviewing; I should desire no fairer nor more competent critic. But it is of little consequence what friends or enemies may do for it now; it will find its due place in time, which is slow but sure in its decisions. From the nature of my studies, I may almost be said to live in the past; it is to the future that I look for my reward, and it would ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... S. Coburn, the artist, also, I am deeply indebted for the faithful manner in which he has interpreted the different characters and scenes contained in this volume. All the pictures have been sketched from nature or life, and the keenest critic will agree with me, that Mr. Coburn's illustrations are most typical, both of ...
— The Habitant and Other French-Canadian Poems • William Henry Drummond
... background and who could give the best hours of the day and night to the pleasures or duties of society, was best represented in our day by the Rev. William Harness and the Rev. Henry White. Mr. Harness was a diner-out of the first water; an author and a critic; perhaps the best Shakespearean scholar of his time; and a recognized and even dreaded authority on all matters connected with the art and literature of the drama. Mr. White, burdened only with the sinecure chaplaincies of the Savoy and the House of Commons, took the ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... meat, and the body than raiment." Through history and literature the Tuskegee student is brought to develop a criticism, an appreciation of life and the worthier ends of human striving. To such a discipline, however elementary, the critic will not, I take ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... distrusted popularity: like all men who believe in their own individual judgment, he doubted collective wisdom. Yet now that his protegee had been accepted by others, he questioned that judgment and became her critic. It struck him that her sudden outburst was strained; it seemed to him that in this mere contortion of passion the sibyl's robe had become rudely disarranged. He spoke to Hamlin, and ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... side of that line of demarcation which, by an odd law, makes us, with our preference for what we are pleased to call the picturesque, object to such occurrences even as occurrences. The real truth is that objections are too vain, and that he would be too rude a critic here, just now, who shouldn't be in the humour to take the thick with the thin and to try at least to read something of the old soul ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... bestow some attention on it; but he is not old, at least not more than six and thirty. Beside he is a very clever man—a musical critic and good writer; in fact, one of Mr. ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... everywhere with the close of the Middle Age and the dawning of the Renaissance, had filled the minds of men with wonder, and caused them to turn to the writings of the Apocalyptic Seer with keenest interest. A recent critic, commenting upon his work as represented in these engravings, says: "The energy and undismayed simplicity of his imagination enable him, in this order of creations, to touch the highest point of human achievement. The four angels keeping back the winds that they blow ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... our critic has fallen, in this case, undoubtedly resulted in part from the unfortunate confounding of the words Philosophy and Science, which pervades the Positive System. Philosophy and Science are not, in any proper use of the terms, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... long enough to test Trollope's hypothesis. Mr. Hutton, critic for the Spectator, recognized Trollope as the author and so stated in his review. Trollope did not deny ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... falls on Everyman, and the artist who played this part seemed to me, though I am no dramatic critic, to have caught the atmosphere and the spirit of the play. His performance, indeed, was very wonderful from the moment when he offers Death a thousand boons if only the dread summons may be delayed, to that final tense scene, when, stripped ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... Maupertuis, the President of the Berlin Academy, which resulted in the production of the famous Diatribe of Doctor Akakia, Physician to the Pope (1752), by a malicious attack on Maupertuis's successor, Le Franc de Pompignan, and by his caricature of the critic Elie Catharine Freron, as Frelon ("Wasp"), in L'Ecossaise, which was played at Paris in 1760.—Life of Voltaire, by F. Espinasse, 1892, pp. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... although "it is a miserable country it is joined to Egypt, and it would be difficult to divorce the two." Within a very few weeks, therefore, the Government learnt that its own agent was the most forcible and damaging critic of the policy of evacuation, and that the worries of the Soudan question for an administration not resolute enough to solve the difficulty in a thorough manner were increased and not diminished by Gordon's mission. At that point the proposition was made and supported ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... discerning truth from falsehood and certainty from doubt. It is by solidity of criticism more than by the plenitude of erudition, that the study of history strengthens, and straightens, and extends the mind 60. And the accession of the critic in the place of the indefatigable compiler, of the artist in coloured narrative, the skilled limner of character, the persuasive advocate of good, or other, causes, amounts to a transfer of government, ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... Dialectical Society, and refers only to Professor Barrett's cases as having been already published. A number of other cases are, however, described in detail. The evidence in these scarcely comes up to the level of scientific, and unless it had been sifted by so careful a critic as Mr. Myers, who convinced himself of the reality of the facts, could hardly be considered of much value. The two following cases in the first article ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... Arabs, the nations had neither political organization nor, strictly speaking, any religion, nor any industrial development. None but the most primitive instincts determine the lives and conduct of the Negroes who lack every kind of ethical inspiration. Every judicial observer and critic of alleged African culture must once for all make up his mind to renounce the charm of poetry and wizardry of fairy lore, all those things which in other parts of the world remind us of a past fertile ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... Life, and the Reader is left uncertain, whether the Character, that lies before him, is an Effect of Art, or a real Appearance of Nature.—A Master-Piece of this Kind, requires the Hand of one who is a Critic in Men and Manners, a Critic in Thoughts, ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally
... said. I—me—Mr. Bernard Effingwell Dreux, the prominent cotillion leader, the second-hand dealer, the art critic and amateur detective. I unearthed the notorious and dreaded Sicilian desperado in his lair, and now he's cooling his heels in the parish prison ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... for one to feel discouragement when at first he does not admire all that the critics say is beautiful, but prefers some of the simple things that he knew in his childhood. The critic is right from his point of view, but there is merit, too, in the judgment of the humble reader. A person would hesitate to say the critic's judgment is the higher were it not for the fact that anyone reading carefully will find his tastes changing and constantly approximating higher standards. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... Litteraire. The MS. copy of Spence's Essay bears frequent marks of Pope's correcting hand by erasure and interlineary correction, silently made. I transcribe the few passages where the poet's revision of his critic are accompanied by remarks. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 25. Saturday, April 20, 1850 • Various
... pink. Or perhaps Charles Edward—if that young man's artistic ability had been equal to his sense of it there would have been less danger in taking him into the factory. Or probably Maria, with her great head for business—oh, Maria, I grant you, is like what the French critic said of the ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... every minute event mentioned in these volumes ever befell one and the same ship, though ready enough to admit that they may very well have occurred to several different ships: a mode of commenting that is much in favour with your small critic. To this objection, we shall make but a single answer. The caviller, if any there should prove to be, is challenged to produce the log-book of the Montauk, London packet, and if it should be found to contain a ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... in his own religious experiences and aspirations. They care little for the date, authorship, unity and textual accuracy of the Bhagavad-gita. They simply ask, is it true, what can I get from it? The European critic, who expects nothing of the sort from the work, racks his brains to know who wrote it and when, who touched it up ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... the "Water of Life" which the Grimms found in Hesse, etc., "Gammer Grethel's German Popular Stories," Edgar Taylor, Bells, 1878; and now published in fuller form as "Grimm's Household Tales," by Mrs. Hunt, with Introduction by A. Lang, 2 vols. 8vo, 1884. It is curious that so biting and carping a critic, who will condescend to notice a misprint in another's book, should lay himself open to general animadversion by such a rambling farrago of half-digested knowledge as that which composes ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... am become a critic; there is nothing I can enjoy. . . . However, set it aside; I'll eat ...
— Aria da Capo • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... went on and eyes of the company furtively wandered to the face of the duchess, anxious to know what so powerful a personage and so keen and outspoken a critic thought of the performance. But the serene face of ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... eighteen years from 1831 to 1849, when Poe's unhappy life came to an end in a Baltimore hospital, his literary activity was chiefly that of a journalist, critic, and short story writer. He lived in Baltimore, Richmond, Philadelphia, and New York. Authors who now exploit their fat bargains with their publishers may have forgotten that letter which Poe wrote back to Philadelphia ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... my dear Julia, scan him, I beg; regard him with an observant eye, the eye not of a doting woman but a dispassionate critic—examine him! ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... Papal power his mind was bent upon enforcing the practical solution of a pressing social problem, we easily misunderstand him and underrate what he had to say. A charge has been forcibly urged against him by an eminent English critic, for example, that he has confounded supremacy with infallibility, than which, as the writer truly says, no two ideas can be more perfectly distinct, one being superiority of force, and the other incapacity of error.[14] De Maistre made logical blunders in abundance quite as bad ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... scenes. A Virginian of that winter, writing of her, had written thus; but then Williamsburgh was not London, nor its playhouse Drury Lane. Perhaps upon that ruder stage, before an audience less polite, with never a critic in the pit or footman in the gallery, with no Fops' Corner and no great number of fine ladies in the boxes, the jewel shone with a lustre that in a brighter light it had not worn. There was in Mr. Charles Stagg's company of players no mate ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... it would be almost the same as ask you for another, if I shall make apology in case I have not find the correct idiotism of your language in this letter; so I shall not make none at all—only throw myself at your mercy, like a great critic. ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... and topicality has subsided. The same work is done by great men. They anticipate lines of action; philosophers generally follow (Machiavelli's theories the practice of Louis XI., Nietzsche's that of Napoleon I.). The critic recognises the tentative steps of genius in letters. The work of fine delicacy and reserve, the work that follows, lacking the real originality, is liable to neglect, and may become the victim of ill-luck, unfair influence, or other extraneous ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... Goethe, a most penetrating thinker, declared that the prime quality of the real critic is sympathy. There is no other realizing and understanding approach to a man or a race. "The significant ideals, the organized energy, the sustaining vitality of an alien people must be sought and understood in order to come into ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... who must not expect to be pardoned it in this world till he be dispatched to the other." He refers very happily to his great abilities, "whereof God hath given him the use, but the devil the application." But does the critic's own memory stand much higher? Was he not the King's evil genius, who, together with the Queen, pushed him to that fatal step—the arrest of ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... his usual clear-headedness in pronouncing 'that there is little in the technique of palliatae to excite our admiration.' Again we insist (to borrow the jargon of the modern dramatic critic) it was but a ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... pedagogic expert or so, a keen psychologist perhaps with a penetrating mind—for example, one might try and kidnap Professor William James in his next Sabbatical year—one or two industrious young students, a literary critic perhaps, a philologist, a grammarian, and set them all, according to their several gifts and faculties, towards this end. At the end of the first year this organizer would print and publish for the derision of the world in ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... reforms secured blurred the main issue, have we lost sight of the goal? The objective of the New Zealand Labour Party to-day is the 'securing to all of the full value of their labour power by the gradual public ownership of all the means of production, distribution, and exchange.' Contrary to your critic's opinion, what has already been done has but whetted the appetite for more, and to-day New Zealand labour is marshaling its forces for further assaults on the fortress ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... body of authentic history. For even the briefest epistle in the ordinary chirography is dangerous. There is scarce any style so compressed that superfluous words may not be detected in it. A severe critic might curtail that famous brevity of Caesar's by two thirds, drawing his pen through the supererogatory veni and vidi. Perhaps, after all, the surest footing of hope is to be found in the rapidly increasing tendency to demand less and less of qualification in candidates. Already ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... Frederica," said Theresa. "You must grasp it grasp it loosely but as the distinguished critic who has last spoken ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Our Muse is in mind for th' untrussing a poet, I slip by his name, for most men do know it: A critic, that all the world bescumbers With satirical humours and ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... his lack of even such slender commercial success in letters as was really necessary to a man who liked 'plain living and high thinking.' He fell early in love with a city, with a place—he lost his heart to St. Andrews. Here, at all events, his critic can sympathise with him. His 'dear St. Andrews Bay,' beautiful alike in winter mists and in the crystal days of still winter sunshine; the quiet brown streets brightened by the scarlet gowns; the long limitless sands; the dark blue distant ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... who is not just 'busting' himself with Titanic intellectualities, but who is a readable dramatic critic.... Mr. Hale is a modest and sensible, as well as an acute and sound critic.... Most people will be surprised and delighted with Mr. Hale's ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... considered what consequence the finding the bill, may have upon a poor man perfectly innocent, I mean the printer. A lawyer may pick out expressions and make them liable to exception, where no other man is able to find any. But how can it be supposed, that an ignorant printer can be such a critic? He knew the author's design was honest, and approved by the whole kingdom, he advised with friends, who told him there was no harm in the book, and he could see none himself. It was sent him in an unknown hand, but the same in which he received the three former. He and his wife have offered ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... so serious an omission, we may be glad to believe, with our acute statesman-critic, that "there is permanent value in his theories." If they indicate at all the direction in which scientific thinking is to move, we shall soon have travelled a very long distance from the days in which it was imagined that all vital phenomena might be accounted for on merely materialistic ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... so, my dear master?" said Porbus humbly, while the young man could hardly restrain a strong desire to strike the critic. ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac
... born in 1866. A poet of great mastery and a refined critic, his thought, is steeped in hellenism and in the most ...
— The Shield • Various
... of the critic in Essays in London! I doubt if you have done any single thing so satisfying as a piece of style and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which surrounded his countenance emphasized the slight incoherence of its expression. Quiet he was and looked. But his wife knew him for one of the most incurably obstinate of men; the inveterate critic moreover of everything and every one about him, beginning with herself. This trait of his led her unconsciously to throw most of her remarks to him into the form of questions, as offering less target to criticism than other forms of statement. ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... English, who were on the left, with that flank unprotected and "in the air"; on their right marched the French; on whose right, again, the Turks; then came the sea. Moving parallel with the land-forces, the allied fleets held undisputed dominion of the waters. A competent critic could detect no brilliant strategy in the operations so far; no astute, carefully calculated plan directed the march. One simple and primitive idea possessed the minds of the allied commanders, and that was to come to close quarters, and fight the Russians ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... this climax was the best the young dramatist had yet constructed. A critic who had been invited to a reading had declared that it lacked little of being great. And at this late hour the star wanted it changed in order to bring her alone in the lime-light! It was preposterous. As Warrington was on the first wave of popularity, the ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... she was too utterly preoccupied to attend to anything I said of herself then, so I did not insist farther, and went up to the easel. I was not an artist nor a critic, nor in any way qualified to be a judge of painting as painting; but of genius, who is not a judge? In any art it is recognisable, patent, obvious to all. There is no human clod, no boor who is utterly insensible to its influence. It needs no education to perceive its ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... allowing for the prejudice of each, and to form my judgment upon both, without adhering strictly to either. The doctor assured me, that he was a very pretty gentleman of family and fortune; a scholar, a wit, a critic, and perfectly well acquainted with the town; that his honour and courage were unquestionable, though some extravagances he had been guilty of, and his talents for satire had procured him enemies, and made some people shy of his acquaintance. From these different sketches, I concluded that ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... part of Strauss' work is a dissertation on the dogmatic import of the life of Jesus. Here this merciless critic tries to prove that, though the belief of the church concerning Christ be thus uprooted by the theory of myths, nothing truly valuable is destroyed. He declares it his purpose "to re-establish dogmatically that ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... unpublished document of the seventeenth century by what he modestly called 'a lucky chance.' We know, however, that these happy finds come only to those who have the genius of the literary discoverer, and characteristic of the textual critic is his parting message to us in his delightful description of his new-found treasure given in a magazine article under the prophetic title—'A Last Will ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... of blood and vulgarity, prince of ephemerals and idol of the unelect"—as a Chicago critic chortles—is dead. It is true. He is dead, dead and buried. And a fluttering, chirping host of men, little men and unseeing men, have heaped him over with the uncut leaves of Kim, wrapped him in Stalky & Co., for winding ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... to explain his distaste for the thing to Dresser, what would he have to say to other people—to the Hitchcocks? Yet he made his reservations to himself at least: he was not committed to his "career"; he should be merely a spectator, a free-lance, a critic, who keeps the precious treasure of his own independence. Almost at the start, however, he was made to realize that this nonchalance, which vindicated himself in his own eyes, could not be evident to others. As he was entering the Athenian hive one morning, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... better known in school circles of my time as "Haste thee, winter, haste away." There is a very playful effect in these variations, and in the title Mason calls them "Variations Grotesques"; but when he sent a copy to Liszt, that amiable critic replied that the word "grotesque" had no place in piano playing—that they should properly be called jocose, or ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... verb meaning 'bend,' 'rest'; but one great scholar has translated it 'shall kill.' (5) 'Hwaer,' Very recently, has been attacked, 'waere' being suggested. (6) As a corollary to the above, the same critic proposes to drop 'oft' out of the text.—t.B. suggests: Oft seldan waere after leodhryre: lytle hwile bongar bugeeth, eah seo bryd duge often has a treaty been (thus) struck, after a prince had fallen: (but only) a short time is the spear (then) ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... have enjoyed a wider reputation in the same department than the celebrated German critic HEINRICH HEINE. The literary world will, therefore, learn with regret that he is dying. An article in a late number of the London Leader says, that "paralysis has killed every part of him but the head and heart; and yet this diseased body—like that of the noble ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... a man who styles the robber Montreal, "eccellente uomo—di quale fama suono per tutta la Italia di virtude" ("An excellent man whose fame for valour resounded throughout all Italy.")—(so good a moral critic was the writer!) but he also altogether waves all mention of the probabilities that are sufficiently apparent, of the scheming of Pandulfo to supplant Rienzi, and to obtain the "Signoria del Popolo." Still, however, if the death of Pandulfo ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... distinctness that it might almost be called a creation. He was exactly the kind of actor, moreover, to impress him. He was great, grand, passionate, overwhelming with a like emotion the apprentice and the critic. Everybody after listening to a play or reading a book uses it when he comes to himself again to fill his own pitcher, and the Cyprus tragedy lent itself to Zachariah as an illustration of his own Clerkenwell sorrows and as a gospel for them, although his ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... said in a tone of good-humored tolerance—"He has the most caustic wit of any man in Al-Kyris! He is a positive marvel of perverseness and ill-humor, well worth the four hundred golden pieces I pay him yearly for his task of being my scribe and critic. Like all of us he must live, eat and wear decent clothing,—and that his only literary skill lies in the abuse of better men than himself is his misfortune, rather than his fault. Yes! ... he is my paid Critic, paid to rail against me on all occasions ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... been talking about Amias Keston's unfinished picture, and, as usual, Malcolm had been holding forth in his role of art critic, when one of those sudden pauses which seem to drop softly between intimate friends followed his concluding speech. Verity held up her finger with the hackneyed allusion to a passing angel, at ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... evades the request of Pauline. He proceeds to describe a home, which he does not say he possesses, but to which he would lead her, "could Love fulfil its prayers." This caution is intended as a reply to a sagacious critic who censures the description, because it is not an exact and prosaic inventory of the characteristics of the Lake of Como!—When Melnotte, for instance, talks of birds "that syllable the name of Pauline" (by the way, a literal translation ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... impressed on your minds by the delivery of a single line, or even of one forcible word. Has not this made the passage far more real and human to you than all the thought you have devoted to it? An accomplished critic has said that Shakespeare himself might have been surprised had he heard the "Fool, fool, fool!" of Edmund Kean. And though all actors are not Keans, they have in varying degree this power of making a dramatic character step out of the page, and come nearer to our ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... above suspicion; Cave, an able Anglican critic; Grotius and other distinguished Protestant writers, do not hesitate to re-echo the unanimous voice ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... Mr. Aiken's first volume of poetry, "Earth Triumphant", was published in 1914, and has been followed by "Turns and Movies", 1916; "Nocturne of Remembered Spring", 1917; and "The Charnel Rose", 1918. Mr. Aiken is a keen and trenchant critic, as well as a poet, and his volume on the modern movement in poetry, "Skepticisms", is one of the finest and most stimulating contributions to the subject. [Conrad Aiken won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1930 for "Selected Poems". — ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... Quintilian, in his list of Roman orators, has neither mentioned Maternus, nor Marcus Aper. The Dialogue, for that reason, seems to be improperly ascribed to him: men who figure so much in the enquiry concerning oratory, would not have been omitted by the critic who thought their conversation ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... problem. It is from The Autobiography of a Journalist, by W.J. Stillman, Boston, 1901, Vol. I, pp. 192-4: Not many of our older readers will require any introduction of Stillman. For the younger ones, we may say that he was a very eminent art-critic; spent most of the latter half of his life abroad, being part of the time our consul at Crete; wrote a history of the Cretan Rebellion, and other books; and was a regular correspondent of The Nation, and of The London Times. We never ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... sed he, "with Hyacinthian curls, and his eye in a fine frenzy rollin! That's the great art critic, who lays down the lor for ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne
... bring the News Of Critic who reads Books that he Reviews, And make the stern Reviewer do as well Himself, before he Meed of ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... inserted is slightly wedge-shaped. You will at the same time be careful and bear in mind that this fresh wood will have to match so nicely, that when inserted properly the threads or grain will appear continuous and not broken to the eye of any person but the experienced critic. To please this person, however, you will have not only to make the lines of the grain follow through evenly, but so fit your wood as to be in the direction of the growth of the plank from which the table was cut. You see this aperture is on the slant or curve about midway between ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... of affection, the breaking of friendship, the decline of ambition, are all illustrated in these fourpenny collections. The presentation volumes are here which the author gave in the pride of his heart to the poet who was his "Master," to the critic whom he feared, to the friend with whom he was on terms of mutual admiration. The critic has not even cut the leaves, the poet has brusquely torn three or four apart with his finger and thumb, the friend has grown cold, and has let the poems slip into some corner of his ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... telling her they were already sisters, paying her compliments that made Francie envy her art of saying things as she had never heard things said—for the excellent reason, among many, that she had never known such things COULD be. After she had dropped her charge this critic rushed off to her father's, reflecting with pleasure that at that hour she should probably find her sister Marguerite there. Mme. de Cliche was with their parent in fact—she had three days in the week for coming to the Cours la Reine; she sat near him in ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... A distinguished modern critic[2] has said, that he who would now become a great poet must first become a little child. There is no doubt he is right. The seen and unseen fetters of civilization; the multitude of old ideas afloat in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... should be most where man is least; So, where is neither church nor priest, And never rag of form or creed To clothe the nakedness of need,— Where farmer-folk in silence meet,— I turn my bell-unsummoned feet; I lay the critic's glass aside, I tread upon my lettered pride, And, lowest-seated, testify To the oneness of humanity; Confess the universal want, And share whatever Heaven may grant. He findeth not who seeks his own, The soul is lost that's saved alone. Not on one favored ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... automatically and therefore easily, without conscious thinking, and thus to save our mental energy for other work; but for the same reason, habit is often very harmful; it makes us protect false ideas automatically, and so when the destructive critic endeavors to destroy such ideas by reasoning with us, he finds that he is trying to reason with automats—with machines. Such is the chief difficulty encountered by destructive criticism. On the other hand, ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... than a student learns in his entire university course." "The first six years are as full of advancement as the six days of creation," and so on. If we did believe these things fully, we should begin education with conscious intelligence at the cradle, if not earlier. The great German dramatic critic, Schlegel, once sneered at the brothers Jacob and William Grimm, for what he styled their "meditation on the insignificant." These two brothers, says a wiser student, an historian of German literature, were animated by a "pathetic optimism, and possessed ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... agitation, her pale face, the handkerchief she was twisting to shreds in her restless hands. He came to plead with her—his passion lending him eloquence. Let her but trust herself and her gift. She had the praise of those she revered to go upon. How should the carelessness of a single critic affect her? Imbeciles!—they would be all with her, at her feet, some day. Let her despise them then and now! But his extravagances ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... their faults, their happiness, their misery, their love and friendships, their peculiarities, their power, their gentleness, their patience, their pride,—which Miss Robinson has not touched upon with conscientiousness and sympathy."—The Critic. ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... most successful of modern literary fabulists was the French poet Jean de la Fontaine (1621-1695). A famous critic has said that his fables delight the child with their freshness and vividness, the student of literature with their consummate art, and the experienced man with their subtle reflections on life and character. He drew most ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... its clearness, its comprehensiveness, seem to me to mark the author as a genuine critic of the broader and the ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... wheel composed of three triangles. The whole is filled with painted glass, a small portion of which is ancient; the remainder was presented in 1788, by Dr. Lockman, the late master. Dr. Milner terms it curious: but the critic of The Crypt refers to it as "an exemplification of how much trash and vulgarity in the art can be crowded into a certain compass."[5] Beneath this window stands a double doorway, surmounted by a small quatrefoil window of like colours, enclosed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 570, October 13, 1832 • Various
... at any rate Miriam does; and one of my main points is missed if it fails to appear that she does so with absolute sincerity and with the cold passion of the high critic who knows, on sight of them together, the more or less dazzling false from the comparatively grey-coloured true. Sherringham's whole profession has been that he rejoices in her as she is, and that the theatre, the organised theatre, will be, as ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... pick and spade the relics of bygone ages, is often accused of devoting his energies to work which is of no material profit to mankind at the present day. Archaeology is an unapplied science, and, apart from its connection with what is called culture, the critic is inclined to judge it as a pleasant and worthless amusement. There is nothing, the critic tells us, of pertinent value to be learned from the Past which will be of use to the ordinary person of the present time; and, though the archaeologist can offer acceptable information to the painter, ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... defects of his great qualities, the over-ideality, the haste, the incoherence, and the want of grasp on narrative, are glaringly apparent in these early works. But while this is true, the qualities themselves are absent. A cautious critic will only find food in "Zastrozzi" and "St. Irvyne" for wondering how such flowers and fruits of genius could have lain concealed within a germ apparently so barren. There is even less of the real Shelley discernible in these productions, than of the real Byron ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... For diadems, whose bare and scanty brims Will hardly keep the sunbeam from their eyes. For what do Poets strive? A leafy hat, Without or crown or brim, which hardly screens The empty noddle from the fist of scorn, Much less repels the critic's thund'ring arm. And here and there intoxication too Concludes the race. Who wins the hat, gets drunk. Who wins a laurel, mitre, cap, or crown, Is drunk as he. So Alexander fell, So Haman, ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... in daring and painful attempts than the sensitive and pampered taste of a democratic century can approve of?—There is no doubt these coming ones will be least able to dispense with the serious and not unscrupulous qualities which distinguish the critic from the skeptic I mean the certainty as to standards of worth, the conscious employment of a unity of method, the wary courage, the standing-alone, and the capacity for self-responsibility, indeed, they will avow among themselves a DELIGHT in denial and dissection, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Philosophy class, which then suffered from the failing health of the professor, the teacher pro tem. appended, as a criticism of an essay of Gilmour's on Utilitarianism, the words, "Wants thoroughness." This was a problem to the diligent student, who tackled his critic at the end of the hour, and apparently had the best of the argument; for he told me afterwards that he had puzzled the judge to explain his own verdict. There was a strong vein of combativeness in him; he liked to try his strength, both ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... Henley (1849-1903) was an English critic and journalist of great force and a poet whose verse is full of manliness and tenderness. His life was a constant and courageous struggle against disease. The spirit in which he faced conditions that would have ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... adagio introduction for instruments which is of a very dramatic character, and, unlike nearly all of the sacred music of that time, is noticeable for the absence of the fugue. Barbedette, the great French critic, pronounces it the chef-d'oeuvre of introductions, and a masterpiece in the serious style. The first number is a recitative and aria for tenor, sung by Jesus ("All my Soul within me shudders"), which, notwithstanding the ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... have a sort of religion in literature, believing that no author can justly intrude upon the public without feeling that his writings may be of some benefit to mankind, I beg leave to apologize for this little book. I know, no critic can tell me better than I know myself, how much it falls short of what might have been done by an abler pen. Yet it is something—an index, I should say, to something better. The French in America may sometime find a champion. For my own part, ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... Athenaeum, for which he had asked as an old contributor and as the yearly acting editor in the 'editor's holiday.'" But Sir Charles's choice had fallen on Mr. Norman MacColl, 'that Scotch Solomon,' as he sometimes called this admirable critic, who conducted the ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... significant that a German critic has of late reminded us that the one test which the most authoritative and dramatic portrayal of the Day of Judgment offers, is the social test. The stern questions are not in regard to personal and family relations, but did ye visit the poor, the criminal, the sick, ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... more to say, so pray God to keep you, and give me patience to bear all the ill that will be spoken of me by more than one subtle and starched critic. Vale. ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... perfection, never getting tired, so that the officers had no lack of partners, and voted it great fun. There were many very pretty girls among them, and several with much more of the rose on their cheeks than usually falls to the share of West Indian damsels. Some censorious critic even ventured to hint that it was added by the hand of art. That this was false was evident, for the weather was so hot that had rouge been used it would have inevitably been detected; but the island damsels trusted to their good figures and features, and their lively manners and conversation, rather ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... he may never lose it!" said the subject of the remark, himself, who had entered the room unperceived, and overheard this speech. "Being a soldier, one would wish to look like what he is, my little critic." ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... determined now that the young girl was the very person to be used as the test-critic of the Romany mind upon Arnold's poem, for she was exceptionally intelligent. So instead of going to the camp the oddly assorted little party of three struck across the ferns, gorse, and heather towards "Kingfisher brook," and when they reached it they sat down on ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... was founded because of the discontent of the self-righteous Puritans of Connecticut with the religious opinions of the ruling spirits at Harvard. [Laughter.] That piece of information has been amply discussed and exploded by an able critic, and I will not repeat the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... editor, essayist, critic, and poet, and an intimate friend of Byron, Moore, Keats, and Shelley, was born near London, England, in 1784, ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... Calvin's exegetical tact, unites a large measure of Calvin's grasp of mind and transparent clearness in the department of systematic theology, we should point to this Princeton Professor. He possesses, to use the words of an English critic, the power of seizing and retaining with a rare vigour and tenacity the great doctrinal turning-points in a controversy; while he is able to expose with triumphant dexterity the various subterfuges under which it has been sought to ...
— The Cockatoo's Story • Mrs. George Cupples
... the field. But besides this experienced and able campaigner, who so thoroughly shared the opinions of Prince Maurice, every military man in the provinces of any consideration, was opposed to, the scheme. Especially Lewis William—than whom no more sagacious military critic or accomplished strategist existed in Europe, denounced it with energy and even with indignation. It was, in the opinion of the young stadholder of Friesland, to suspend the existence of the whole commonwealth upon a silken thread. Even success, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... natura—if it is the right, as it is the common reading—Cicero must mean the same as by nulla crescendi natura, or coalescendi, either of which Lambinus proposes; for, as the same learned critic well observes, is there not a cohesion of parts in a clod, or in a piece of stone? Our learned Walker proposes sola cohaerendi natura, which mends the sense very much; and I wish he had the authority ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... compare either the importance or the onerousness of the hospital orderly's work with that of the soldier capable of going to the front to fight, I would here add that the critic who watches the stretcher-carrying and thinks it a pity that able-bodied males should be wasted on it, is doing the system (not to mention the men themselves) an injustice. For the men whom he sees are not, as a matter of fact, able-bodied, even though muscular enough to stand this short physical ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... the Nobility of the Almanac; and it is certain that every man should believe in the Nobility of his work whatever it is—then he is sure of one ardent Admirer. It is sad to think that some carping critic had been riling the sweet soul of Nathan in the year 1732. It is all over now. Let us hope he is not damned for his Epicureanism, but is reaping his crop of praise in a better climate than Marblehead. He gives us more poetry in 1733, and a clear account of why Leap years are ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... theatres of the United States. A few years since, I observed, in an English magazine, a critique on a drama called 'Pocahontas; or, the Indian Princess,' produced at Drury Lane. From the sketch given, this piece differs essentially from mine in the plan and arrangement; and yet, according to the critic, they were indebted for this very stupid production 'to America, where it is a great favourite, and is to be found in all the printed collections of stock plays.' The copyright of the 'Indian Princess' was also given to Blake, and transferred to Longworth. It was printed in 1808 or 1809. ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker
... quite plain to me, sir; I am a poor critic of such matters, but I should think it a ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... we look to the occasions when he was charged with using it, and its effect at the time, we may be inclined to believe that his judgment of the line of argument to be pursued was as likely to be appropriate as that of the critic who formed his opinion according to ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... a short statement respecting certain MSS., now existing, of the great critic Casaubon, in a recent volume of the Parker Society—Whitaker's Disputation on Holy Scripture, edited and translated by Professor Fitzgerald, Professor of Moral Philosophy, Dublin, which I conceive is one of those facts which might be of service at some future time ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 26. Saturday, April 27, 1850 • Various
... playlet—which are constructed to develop a problem, either humorous or dramatic. The technique of the playlet playwright is considered in the same way that the three-act playwright's art of construction is analyzed by the dramatic critic." ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... Ingres exhibition has been opened in the Georges Petit Gallery, Paris. Apropos of this event, the Revue des Deux Mondes (May 15, 1911) contains a striking paper by the art-critic, M. de Sizeraine. Some of the conclusions here arrived at are startling. Certain authorities on art are said to regard the great Montalbanais as a victim of daltonism—in other ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... that the editor of the Athenaeum, in my time, was a charming and accomplished writer; he is also my very good friend and too generous critic, and I should be a wretch if I did not love him. But on the evening when a weekly paper goes to press, when the pages are pouring in, and some one, as likely as not, is waiting at the Cafe Royal, even the most cultivated and considerate of editors will be an editor. Wherefore ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... afterwards acquired for the Berlin Gallery. "In it we have one of those rare portraits such as only Giorgione, and occasionally Titian, were capable of producing, highly suggestive, and exercising over the spectator an irresistible fascination."[34] Such are the great critic's enthusiastic words, and no one surely to-day would be found to gainsay them. We may note the characteristic treatment of the hair, the thoughtful look in the eyes, and the strong light on the face in contrast to the dark frame of hair, points which this portrait shares in common with the "Knight ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook |
