"Critic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Training Camp on Salisbury Plain in '99. Now he has mysteriously made himself (heaven knows how) into our premier authority on the Middle East and is travelling on some ultra-mysterious mission, very likely, en passant, as a critic of our doings: never mind, he is thrice welcome as a large-hearted and ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... what woman is in the true sphere of her virtues, home. The amiable and intelligent family of the Pigots received him within their circle as one of themselves: and in the Rev. John Becher[48] the youthful poet found not only an acute and judicious critic, but a sincere friend. There were also one or two other families—as the Leacrofts, the Housons—among whom his talents and vivacity made him always welcome; and the proud shyness with which, through the whole of his minority, he kept aloof ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... have captured certain outworks, the latter has made its way to within striking distance of the citadel, and that the more unobserved because attention has been focussed almost exclusively upon the more imposing performances of the critic and the biologist. ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... of Miss Martineau on American literature are, as all her other remarks, to be received with great caution. Where she obtained her information I know very well, and certain it is that she has been most egregiously deceived. An American critic observes very truly:— ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... Blair!' ... The book is good, and lovely, and true, having the best description of a noble child in it (Winnie) that I ever read; and nearly the best description of the next best thing,—a noble dog," says John Ruskin, the distinguished art critic. ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... was anciently called "The Grand Tour," had acquired a right, by ocular inspection, to chastise me for my presumption. Every member of the Travellers' Club who could pretend to have thrown his shoe over Edom was, by having done so, constituted my lawful critic and corrector. It occurred, therefore, that where the author of Anastasius, as well as he of Hadji Baba, had described the manners and vices of the Eastern nations, not only with fidelity, but with the humour of Le Sage ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... fragrance their own.—Oh! that all round the domains of genius should lie thus unhedged, for such cattle to uproot! Oh! that an eagle should be stabbed by a goose-quill! But at best, the greatest reviewers but prey on my leavings. For I am critic and creator; and as critic, in cruelty surpass all critics merely, as a tiger, jackals. For ere Mardi sees aught of mine, I scrutinize it myself, remorseless as a surgeon. I cut right and left; I probe, tear, and wrench; kill, burn, and destroy; ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... one critic of Borrow—Jane H. Findlater, in the Cornhill Magazine, November 1899—actually says that 'The Bible in Spain was perhaps the most ill-advised title that a well-written book ever laboured under, giving, as it does, the idea that the book is ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... fair critic of the works in verse and prose that are shown me; but perhaps I speak my opinion with almost too great freedom. Another fault in me is that I have sometimes a spirit of delicacy far too scrupulous, and a spirit of criticism far too severe. I do not ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... indeed! M. Violette had a college friend upon whom all the good marks had been showered, who, having been successively schoolmaster, journalist, theatrical critic, a boarder in Mazas prison, insurance agent, director of an athletic ring—he quoted Homer in his harangue—at present pushed back the curtains at the entrance to the Ambigu, and waited for his soup at the barracks gate, holding out an ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... 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 only made ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... external reality into artistic form. This is what Hazlitt seems to ignore very strangely in his judgment of Crabbe and Scott, and this is, I think, an interesting point in the history of criticism, especially when it is remembered that Hazlitt was a critic of painting, and himself a painter. He speaks almost as if realities passed direct into the verse of Crabbe; as if Scott's imagination in the novels were merely recollection and transcription of experience. Speaking of the difference ...
— Sir Walter Scott - A Lecture at the Sorbonne • William Paton Ker
... characteristics that have bewildered and sometimes offended his critics. He has been charged with insincerity because he was so clever, and because he wrote with a kind of Oriental exuberance that was to him entirely natural and a part of his Jewish heritage. Gilfillan is the only critic, so far as I know, who has recognized that Disraeli's excellences, and his defects as well, were racial rather than individual. Speaking of his Oriental fancy and cleverness, Gilfillan says: "Disraeli has a fine fancy, soaring up at intervals into high imagination, and making ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... insanity takes the form of harmless delusion, and the absurdity of his ways and talk enables the author to lighten the sombreness without weakening the moral, in a way that ought to win all boys to his side."—The Critic. ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... of seeing them. In his life of the poet, however, he has given several specimens, both Latin and Italian, which are extremely agreeable. The Latin poems consist of ten eclogues and a few epigrams; but the epigrams, this critic tells us, are neither good nor on a fitting subject, being satirical sallies against Nicolo of Este, who had attempted to seize on Ferrara, and been beheaded. Boiardo was not of a nature qualified to indulge in bitterness. ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... am sure South Africans are very grateful indeed to the amiable and kindly critic in the person of Sir Frederick Young. It is no new thing to Colonists to owe him a debt. All those present will acknowledge the great things he has done for the Colonies in connection with the Royal Colonial Institute. Sir Frederick Young is a man who has been content to look ...
— A Winter Tour in South Africa • Frederick Young
... to Wittenberg for another year, that he might complete the work for graduation; graduated in December of that year as Master of Arts, and then returned to his work in Berlin. He worked industriously, not only as critic, but also in translation from the classics, from French, English, and Italian; and he was soon able to send help towards providing education for the youngest of the household of twelve children in the Camenz parsonage. In 1753 he gave himself eight weeks of withdrawal ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... behind him came Watson, the landscape-painter, who had had two pictures accepted by the Royal Academy—one of them hung on the line, a great honor for an American; and after them blue-eyed, round-faced Munson, a pupil of Kaulbach, and late from Munich; as well as Harry Stedman, Post, the art-critic, ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Agnes were still "scrapping" in their own peculiar way. The beauty accused Neale again of being a harsh critic. ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... to speak of the scribble wit, and judge wit or critic, but in general wits were regarded as rakes and not long afterwards we find it debated whether a woman can ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... says, 'I have been better entertained, and more informed by a few pages in the Pilgrim's Progress, than by a long discourse upon the will and the intellect, and simple and complex ideas.' Nothing short of extraordinary merit could have called for such a eulogy from so severe a critic. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... amateur, was an extraordinarily clever mimic, acted better than most people who were not on the stage, and could write very entertaining verse with a pungent, sub-acid flavour. But he had no creative power and no perseverance. As a critic of the performances of others he was cruel but discerning, giving no quarter, but giving credit where it was due. He loathed a bad workman more than a criminal, and would rather have crushed an incompetent human being than a worm. Secretly he despised himself. His own ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... seemed to be a crushing retort. He had scornfully called Balaam's ass the first great critic, and the inference was plain until a writer in Vanity Fair called his attention to the fact that ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... violent, sensation of his tragic end; half a century elapsed before a Prussian prince set up a simple granite monument to mark the grave. Ten years passed after Kleist's death before his last great dramas, Arminius and the Prince of Homburg, were published, edited by the eminent poet and critic Ludwig Tieck, who also brought out, in 1826, the first collection of Kleist's works. Long before this time, the patriotic uprising for which he had labored with desperate zeal in his later works, had brought liberation to Germany; it was on the thirty-sixth anniversary of Kleist's birth that Napoleon's ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... 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 ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... "Beethoven, eine Kunststudie" is a "Leben des Meisters," a mere sketch, made up from the same works as the "Catalogue," with a very few additions from other sources. As a biographer, Lenz fails as signally as in his capacity of critic. Much original matter, from one living so far away, was not to be expected; but he has made no commendable use of the printed authorities which he had at hand. His style is bombastic and feeble; there is neither a logical nor a chronological progress to his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... to remark that what the Morning Post man said would be entered, one way or the other, to the critic of the Morning Post, and had nothing to do with me. "Of course not," I agreed; "and between ourselves, I don't think the charity got very much. Expenses, when you come to add refreshments and one thing and another, mount up. ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... Sibyls and other figures which surround it, each statuette deserving the most careful study, each, in fact, a little gem. The frame-work of this noble monument is of rich Gothic design, too elaborate, perhaps, to please the fastidious critic, but deliciously imaginative, and finished as far as artistic finish can go. To the right of the Prince is the tomb of Marguerite of Burgundy, his mother, a hardly less sumptuous piece of work than the first, and superbly framed in by Gothic decorative ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... "Boarders v. School," played on September 25, 1912, when the School won by 32 points to 21. "Jones," says the reporter, "presented an awesome sight." His first appearance in the 1st XV was against London Hospitals "A" in October. Singling him out for honourable mention, the critic says: "Jones displayed any amount of go." He was awarded his 1st XV colours after the match against Bedford School at Bedford in November. In this hard-fought game Bedford led at half-time by 15 points to 5, and 25 ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... rabid partisans that she was unable to hold her place in the new surroundings, and that his genius needed a helpmate more in sympathy with his high ideals. Admitting the truth of these assertions, the fair-minded critic must accept them as an explanation, at least, of his conjugal ingratitude, but Minna's faithful performance of duty in the early days will not allow them to stand as ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... highly distinguished, has already demonstrated itself worthy of the exalted name, so happily bestowed upon it, the most carping critic must admit. With a population now reaching up toward a million and a half, and with all the forces that make for industrial, commercial and agricultural supremacy in full swing, and gathering new momentum yearly, Washington is moving onward and upward toward a position among the ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell
... The Chinese critic Hsieh Ho who lived in the sixth century of our era said: "In Art the terms ancient and modern have no place." This is exactly ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... was a failure. After the first act, many left the theatre; at the end of the second, most of the others started out. A cynical critic as he rose from his aisle seat ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... that Mr. Gandish, at a great age—though he was not older than several industrious Academicans—withdrew from the active exercise of his art and employed his learning and experience as Art Critic of the "Newcome Independent." The following critique appears to show traces of declining mental vigour ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... a very pretty farce, for those that can see it in that light. I confess a severe critic, that would examine by ancient rules, might find many defects, but 'tis ridiculous to judge seriously of a puppet-show. Those that can laugh, and be diverted with absurdities, are the wisest spectators, be it of writings, actions, ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... English critic, [Footnote: Lord Howard Douglass, "Treatise on Naval Gunnery," p. 416.] whose remarks are generally very just, seems to me to have erred somewhat in commenting on this last sloop action. He says that the Avon ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... 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
... I dedicate to you the story, and ask for no better verdict on it than that of that profound critic of life and literature, Mr. Huckleberry Finn, who observed of the Pilgrim's Progress that he "considered the ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... 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 ...
— 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
... success. Mrs. Stowe replied that she did not make the story, that the story made itself, and that she could not stop it till it was done. The publisher hesitated. It is said that a competent literary critic to whom he submitted it sat up all night with the novel, and then reported, "The story has life in it; it will sell." Mr. Jewett proposed to Professor Stowe to publish it on half profits if he would share the expenses. This offer was declined, for the Stowes had no money to advance, and ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... old critic as he is!" thought Matty; "I knew that he and I would never agree together. I paper my walls to please my own taste, and ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... importance, and may (as indeed in one way or another they generally must) be taken at second hand. The completion of the Dictionary of National Biography has at once facilitated the task of the writer, and to a great extent disarmed the candid critic who delights, in cases of disputed date, to assume that the date which his author chooses is the wrong one. And I have in the main adjusted the dates in this book (where necessary) accordingly. The bibliographical additions which have been made ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... stimulus to keep importunate thought at bay. This the theatre supplied. It had ceased long ago to tire her. She knew the ways of it from both sides of the footlights uncommonly well, and loved them indifferently much. She was a shrewd and cynical critic. Nevertheless, to go to the play was a sort of going home to her—a home neither very socially nor morally exalted, perhaps, but one offering the ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... of humility, and of reverence for antiquity—begins. The true university man, born and bred in the century, not in the years, in the race halls, not those alone in his Alma Mater, is neither a scoffer nor an atheist, nor a critic, sceptic, or cynic. He is a man of simple and exalted faith. God, who hath brought such great things to pass in science, nature, and art, in human character, in the destiny of nations, and the history of humble men and women, is a God ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... their claims to be regarded as innovators, and therefore as leaders. Within a month they published Germinie Lacerteux and an elaborate study on Fragonard; and, while they plumed themselves (as they very well might) on their feat, the average intelligent reader joined with the average intelligent critic in concluding that such various accomplishment must needs be superficial. It was not credible that one and the same pair—par nobile fratrum—could be not only close observers of contemporary life, but also authorities on Watteau and Outamaro, on Marie ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... a fine art. When they do care, they cover their interest in the matter decently, with the veil of humorous affectation. They cannot spontaneously and sincerely make a business of it, as the French do in all good faith. Even if they had a genius for dining, we doubt if a critic is right in thinking they should dine at six o'clock or seven at latest. Whether in the country or in town, the business or amusement of the day claims more time. Sportsmen, for example, in early autumn could not possibly return home by six very frequently, ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... give Lady Davers an account of the matters as they pass, and her sentiments on what she sees. There must be something new in her observations, because she is a stranger to these diversions, and unbiassed entirely by favour or prejudice; and so will not play the partial critic, but give to a beauty its due praise, and to a fault its due censure, according to that truth and nature which are the unerring guides of her actions as well as sentiments. These I will transcribe for you; and you'll be so good as to return them when perused, because I will ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... been kept out so long? Almost from the beginning she claimed a place in the house beautiful of art. In spite of rebuffs she knocked at its doors, though the portrait painter and the critic flung stones at her from the house-top, and the law itself stood at the threshold denying her entrance. Those early efforts were not untinctured with a fear that if she should get in she would run the establishment, but the law long ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... intellectuality, of its immeasurable elevation above the fare offered. But Morgan derived his sense of the ghastly failure of the whole business, not so much from the demeanour of the audience as from that of one of the critics, who somehow summed it up for him. This critic, whose bald pate had fascinated his eye, had a curiously irritating, spasmodic chuckle, and Morgan in vain tried to be ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... I like. Billy is a man of sense and a critic worth having, since he had read my works many times before expressing his opinion. He asks for no answer, so send ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... short lived, for the passions and fears to which it ministered soon calmed down; and, its occupation being gone, it naturally gave up the ghost and died. Among other celebrities who now wrote for the newspapers are Porson, the accomplished but bibulous Greek scholar and critic; Tom Campbell, several of whose most beautiful poems first appeared in the columns of The Morning Chronicle, Charles Lamb, Southey, Wordsworth, and Mackintosh. These last five wrote for The Morning Post, and raised it, by their brilliant contributions, from the last place among the dailies—its ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... with gleaming eyes, and hand laid along his forehead, as if to screen off an insupportable light and concentrate his gaze upon the words, read and re-read these sentences with an agony of scrutiny such as no critic ever yet directed upon a disputed passage in his favourite classic. But there was no possibility of fastening any consolatory interpretation upon the paragraph. It was all too ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... more complex. Since Jeremy Collier let off his Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage, there has never lacked a critic to chastise or to deplore—the more effective and irritating course—not simply the coarseness but, the immorality of our old comedies, their attitude towards and their peculiar interests in life. Without affirming that we are now come to the Golden Age of criticism, one may rejoice that modern ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... every critic of insight must see, that the artist is conditioned on the man; that whenever a man does anything which has greatness in it he does it with his whole nature. Into his verse the poet puts his body, his mind, and his soul; he is as powerless to detach his work ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... him on the subject, how could she do it? It was impossible. Had he been a young man, with some acquaintance with life, she thought it would not have been so hard; or had he been a mere child, to whom she could have said that Theo was to be his new papa. But ten; a judge and a critic; a creature who knew so much and so little. Half a dozen times she cleared her throat to begin, to lead the conversation back to Theo, to make some attempt at disclosure: but another look at his face chilled the words on her lips. She could not do it: how could she ever do it? They went out and ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... of picturesque concision. "Why did I stop and sign the preliminaries of Leoben? Because I played vingt-et-un and was satisfied with twenty." His insight into (dramatic) character is that of the most sagacious critic. "The 'Mahomet' of Voltaire is neither a prophet nor an Arab, only an impostor graduated out of the Ecole Polytechnique."—"Madame de Genlis tries to define virtue as if she were the discoverer of it."—(On Madame de Stael): ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... to see us last evening, and talked for about two hours in a very amusing and interesting style, his topics being taken from his own personal experience, and shrewdly treated. He spoke much of Greenough, whom he described as an excellent critic of art, but possessed of not the slightest inventive genius. His statue of Washington, at the Capitol, is taken precisely from the Plodian Jupiter; his Chanting Cherubs are copied in marble from two figures in a picture by Raphael. He did nothing that was ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... old lady paused it was evident she had produced a sensation, for Saul smiled at the fire, Ruth looked dismayed at this assault upon one of her idols, and the young ladies were both astonished and amused at the keenness of the new critic who dared express what they had often felt. Randal, however, was quite composed and laughed good-naturedly, though secretly feeling as if a pail of cold water had ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... the real worth of his work. There are more lives spoiled by undue harshness, than by undue gentleness. More good work is lost from want of appreciation than from too much of it; and certainly it is not the function of friendship to do the critic's work. Unless carefully repressed, such a spirit becomes censorious, or, worse still, spiteful, and has often been the means of losing a friend. It is possible to be kind, without giving crooked counsel, or oily flattery; and it is possible to be true, without ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... and culture have been loudly proclaiming that Browning, whatever he was, was not a poet; he was ingenious, he was thoughtful, a philosopher, if you like, but surely no poet. When The Ring and the Book was published, a thoroughly respectable British critic wrote, "Music does not exist for him any more than for the deaf." On the other hand, the accomplished poet, musician, ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... adorable half-fledged creature, whom he had known five days! Supposing Elsmere had been there to hear—Elsmere with his sane eye, his laugh! As he leant over the gate he found himself quivering with impatience to be away—by himself—out of reach—the critic in him making the most bitter remorseless mock of all these heroics and despairs the other self had been indulging in. But for the life of him he could not find a word to say—a move to make. He stood hesitating, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... represents a particular period of M. Zola's own career and work. Some years, indeed, before the latter had made himself known at all widely as a novelist, he had acquired among Parisian painters and sculptors considerable notoriety as a revolutionary art critic, a fervent champion of that 'Open-air' school which came into being during the Second Empire, and which found its first real master in Edouard Manet, whose then derided works are regarded, in these later days, as masterpieces. Manet died before his genius was fully ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... about you, but of a great deal more. Not long since the kind postman brought a paper containing a valuable piece of criticism, which stated—"This author states he was born in such and such a year. It is a lie. He was born in the year so and so." The critic knew better: of course he did. Another (and both came from the country which gave MULLIGAN birth) warned some friend, saying, "Don't speak of New South Wales to him. He has a brother there, and the family never mention his name." But this ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... The critic stood with scornful eye Before a picture on the wall: "You call this art? Now see that fly, It is ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... in 1668, with the separately printed edition of Boileau's ninth satire; in the same year it was included in a collected edition of the satires. It was occasioned, evidently, by a critic's complaint that the modern satirist, departing from ancient ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... perceive very clearly that throughout his ardent speculations on the 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 ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... Major-General Fremont has been forced, by the threatening progress of the Southern armies, to declare martial law for the whole State of Missouri, coupled with the offer of freedom to the slaves. A military critic, writing from the Potomac and the lower counties of Maryland, is urging the application of the same policy to that region, as a means of defeating the contemplated passage of the river by the forces of the South. Whether the rumor so announced prove to be literally correct or not, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... It was a mechanical response while Berta's eyes narrowed in the intensity of her application. "Now I wonder what that question-mark on the margin can mean. She is the vaguest critic I ever had. Suggestive, ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... questioned, but by very few, and on no grounds that are perceptible to common sense. One critic imagines that it ascribes miraculous power to the Prophet in "its natural impression that the Prophet reproduces from memory and dictates all the words which the Lord has spoken to him."(34) There is no trace of miracle in the story. It is a straight tale ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... original is, "jis Ki itni ta'rif aur ishtiyak zahir kiya," where the word kiya agrees with ishtiyak only, being the noun nearest. A shallow critic would be apt to say ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... finance and diplomacy, until the possession of such a significant organ has become almost the sine qua non of an individual destined to be famous or successful. Varieties of course existed, such as when combined with beetling brows and sunken eyes one recognized the professor or arch-critic of his generation. Or, when taken with the square forehead, thin mouth and visionary eyes of the military genius, one saw some great general. Or simply existing in some silly scion of good family, and meaning ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... might be the separate proportions of the two men in each particular department of the three here noticed, think as the reader will upon that point, sure we are that either subject is ample enough to make a strain upon the amplest faculties. How alarming, therefore, for any honest critic, who should undertake this later subject of Coleridge, to recollect that, after pursuing him through a zodiac of splendors corresponding to those of Milton in kind, however different in degree—after weighing him as a ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... analysis farther. When an author bases two volumes of quibbles on foundations so uncertain, it may be boldly declared that his work, whatever the amount of learning displayed in it, is a mess of nonsense unworthy a critic's attention. ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... or by some adequate authority; it is often emended by conjecture. A motion is amended by the mover or by the assembly; a constitution is amended by the people; an ancient text is emended by a critic who believes that what seems to him the better reading is what the author ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... kid," said Hetty, poising her knife, "is it as bad art as that? I ain't a critic; but I thought it kind of brightened up the room. Of course, a manicure-painter could tell it was a bum picture in a minute. I'll take it down if you say so. I wish to the holy Saint Potluck we ...
— Options • O. Henry
... mausoleum of the illegitimate French drama. Miss CARLOTTA LECLERCQ, an actress who deserves the highest praise, and who would receive it were it not that a doubt as to the proper pronunciation of her name prevents the bashful critic from mentioning her when flushed with the generous enthusiasm of beer, played PAULINE, and a number of Uncertain People played the dickens with the rest of the dramatis person. Every one knows the play, and no one cares ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... of which one cannot adequately fulfil, which seems so disgraceful and unconscientious a handling of life to the young, is often a pathetic clinging to youth. Such veterans do not reflect that the only effect of such tenacity is partly that other people do their work, and partly also that the critic observes that if a post can be adequately filled by so old a man it is a proof that such a post ought not to exist. The tendency ought to be met as far as possible by fixing age-limits to all positions. Because even if the old ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... when we meet, and that I can form my judgment upon ocular and auricular evidence, I shall no more let the least impropriety, indecorum, or irregularity pass uncensured, than my predecessor Cato did. I shall read you with the attention of a critic, not with the partiality of an author: different in this respect, indeed, from most critics, that I shall seek for faults only to correct and not to expose them. I have often thought, and still think, that there are ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... favored by more recent authors. I find no indication of such an interpretation in Taine's English Literature, or in Grant White's edition of Shakespeare. Professor Edward Dowden, universally recognized as a fair and competent critic, says: "The natural sense, I am convinced, is the true one."[4] Hallam says: "No one can doubt that they express not only real but intense emotions of the heart."[5] Professor Tyler, in a work relating to the Sonnets, says: "The impress of ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... studies and concert work fill all my days. I do not think that one can both teach and play successfully. If I were teaching I should no doubt acquire the habit of analyzing and criticizing the work of others; of explaining and showing just how a thing should be done. But I am not a critic nor a teacher, so I do not always know how I produce effects. I play 'as the bird sings,' to ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... certain of his faculties into play, or, at least, he had not as yet connected with his art certain faculties which become essential characteristics of his later work. There is no humour in these early poems, or (since Naddo and the critic tribe of Sordello came to qualify the assertion) but little; there is no wise casuistry, in which falsehood is used as the vehicle of truth; the psychology, however involved it may seem, is really too simple; the central personages are too abstract—knowledge ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... Browning. The design was unique, needful, valuable, stimulative. The originality, audacity, and brilliancy of the attempt are always a tonic to my brain and spiritual nature. With good reason has this poem been termed "extraordinary;" and that thinker and critic, James Mudge, has named it "the finest illustration of grotesque art in ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... books is a little too just for the age he lives in; he has read all, but approves of very few. His familiarity with the customs, manners, actions, and writings of the ancients, makes him a very delicate observer of what occurs to him in the present world. He is an excellent critic, and the time of the play is his hour of business; exactly at five he passes through New Inn, crosses through Russell Court, and takes a turn at Will's until the play begins; he has his shoes rubbed and his periwig powdered ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... times the human figures seem as subordinate as those in Corot's landscapes. And yet these human struggles are intensely real, the human drama intensely genuine. Whatever may be thought of the wisdom of presenting the sex problem so frankly, Mr. Allen's sharpest critic must confess that in no other American book is atmosphere so pervasive, so potential, so ...
— James Lane Allen: A Sketch of his Life and Work • Macmillan Company
... 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 ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... superstition, yet it has its historical importance. Supposing it were possible to prove that none of the persons mentioned in the Bible from Adam down to the Apostles ever lived, even the most sceptical critic would still have to admit that the history of a great portion of the human race has been materially affected by the belief in the examples of their alleged lives. Something similar may be said of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... seen that I adopt, in my Third and Fourth Lectures, that scheme of reconciliation between the Geologic and Mosaic Records which accepts the six days of creation as vastly extended periods; and I have been reminded by a somewhat captious critic that I once held a very different view, and twitted with what he terms inconsistency. I certainly did once believe with Chalmers and with Buckland that the six days were simply natural days of twenty-four hours each,—that they had compressed ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... normal attitude toward the Old Testament leads to the wholesome conclusion that its different books are of very different values. The great critic of Nazareth again set the example. As we have just seen, certain of the Old Testament laws he distinctly abrogated; others he quietly ignored; others, as, for example, the law of love (Deut. vi. 5, and ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... for the most fair-minded critic to find in the character of Joseph Smith anything to commend, except an abundance of good-nature which made him personally popular with the body of his followers. He has been credited with power as a leader, and it was certainly little less than marvellous that he ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... a Parisian friend of Christophe's, who was passing through Switzerland, discovered his retreat. He was a musical critic who in old days had been an excellent judge of his compositions. He was accompanied by a well-known painter, who was avowedly a whole-hearted admirer of Christophe's. They told him of the very considerable success of his work, which was being played all over Europe. ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... forehead. He's a high-brow. We'll make him dramatic critic. In the meantime, I'll be little fairy godmother, an' if you'll get on your bonnet I'll stake you and the young 'un to strawberry shortcake an' chocolate ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... hear some well-balanced critic say, "is not worth very much." In the first place Lord Lufton is not my hero; and in the next place, a man may be very imperfect and yet worth a great deal. A man may be as imperfect as Lord Lufton, and yet worthy of a good mother and ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... St Magan, he went to Quimperle to see the monastery which St Corbasius was building there, but he began to praise the architecture of his own church, and this so enraged the master builder that he dropped his hammer on the critic's head. To add to the grief of St Magan, St Corbasius endeavoured to appropriate the body of the murdered Saint. He consented, however, to allow St Magan to have such bones as he was able to identify as belonging to his brother, whereupon St Magan prayed all night, and next ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... or three of the guests present were celebrities. Amongst them was England's greatest critic sitting beside an ambassador. There happened to be a lull in the talk. All ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... him with attention and the most unequivocal sympathy, whilst the young man gave such free scope to his thoughts and presentiments as he had never ventured to do before in the presence of the severe critic. But the truth is, there belongs to a dweller on the borders of the kingdom of death a peculiar rank, a peculiar dignity, and man believes that the whispering of spirits from the mysterious land reaches the ear which bows itself ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... was more jolly to be out of, and faraway heads giving genial bobs, and sea-legs straddled in predicaments desirable rather for study than for practice. All was highly picturesque and nice, and charming for the critic who had ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... within the machine, a base of resistance on which the steam might act in propelling the moveable piston." He did not quite overcome this difficulty, but he succeeded in producing what the foremost critic in this department of manufacture describes—after a lapse of thirty years unrivalled for their development of ingenuity—as "the most perfect engine of the class ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... Some unhappy critic has said that the "icicle that hangs on Diana's temple" is not colder than other icicles. We pity him, and would like to try the comparison to-day. We have already tried "thinking on the frosty Caucasus," and quite agree with Claudio—was it, or ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... opposite of what is intended. This sentence implies that he was asked to give his opinion. The double negative, therefore, should be carefully avoided, for it is insidious and is liable to slip in and the writer remain unconscious of its presence until the eye of the critic ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... your sombre moments a nightmare of imbecility and in your more expansive moments a high adventure of immeasurable possibilities, you are straitened between cold despairs and immense hopes, you will readily forgive this irreverent, self-confident critic-journalist any crude things he may have said in his haste for sake of his flashes of perception, his happily descriptive phrases, his inspiring anticipations, his uncalculating candour, and above ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... the interpolation of the Classics by the later Jews and early Christians is well worth your perusal as a scholar and critic. ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... Pritchard's one hope. Presently, she sought out an old friend who had been a musician of note and later a teacher and musical critic on an evening paper, and confided her difficulty to him. Hearing her story, he was interested and very sympathetic. He advised her to drop the concert idea and dwell wholly upon the possibility of opera as a lure: only the dramatic form and setting could compete ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... 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 ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... use he would of them, and reprint them with alterations if he chose, under the conviction that their main scope could not be damaged by such a process. It was the same with me afterwards, as regards other publications. For two years I furnished a certain number of sheets for the British Critic from myself and my friends, while a gentleman was editor, a man of splendid talent, who, however, was scarcely an acquaintance of mine, and had no sympathy with the Tracts. When I was Editor myself, from 1838 ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... strike back with something more tangible than a sarcastic verse. He quite admitted, even to himself, that a critic had every right to criticise—that was what he was for—but he claimed that a man who pretended to be an author's friend and who praised his books to his face, had no right to go behind his back and pen a criticism so scathing as that which appeared ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... at her; my unfriendly critic shall sneer at her. As a heroine of a novel she deserves it; but I hope for their own sakes neither will undervalue the original in their passage through life. These average women are not the spice of fiction, but they are the salt ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... (1824) says "there is a hint of some deeper cause of grief (see the confession to the brother), but it is highly problematical." For all this the delicacy of James Ballantyne is to blame—his delicacy, and Scott's concessions to a respectable man and a bad critic. ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... filling their place. These public affections, combined with manners, are required sometimes as supplements, sometimes as correctives, always as aids to law. The precept given by a wise man, as well as a great critic, for the construction of poems, is equally true as to states:—"Non satis est pulchra esse poemata, dulcia sunto." There ought to be a system of manners in every nation which a well-formed mind would be disposed ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Valladolid made no concession to the prisoner. He asked to be allowed to go to confession, and to say Mass once a fortnight in the hall where his case was heard.[79] Apparently a deaf ear was turned to his entreaties. A hostile critic might be tempted to say that a vindictive spirit prevailed in the ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... Ah, but if the critic could have looked into Dig's heavy heart as he floundered through the mud that night he would have told a different tale. Often enough our friend seems to us like an ordinary friend. We have our ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... answer, 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 short ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... first characteristic of a good style is clearness—that is, to say what you mean and to mean what you say. Quintilian, the great critic, says that the aim of the translator should be, not that the reader may understand if he will, but that he must understand whether he will or not. The more you read the greatest Authors the more you will see that, as Coleridge says, 'there ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... here because of the great influence it has had in forming popular notions regarding the Beowulf. The eminence of Mr. Brooke as a critic and as a poet has given him the attention of an audience hardly commanded by any other writer included in ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker
... with very little knowledge of the finer shades of character," interrupted Mr. Malcolm. "I wonder why you, as a critic, can compare our brilliant modern literature to ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... "'The critic eye—that microscope of wit— Sees hairs and pores, examines bit by bit; How parts relate to parts, or they to whole. The body's harmony, the beaming soul, Are things which Kuster, Burmann, Wasse, shall see, When man's whole frame is obvious to ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... of Applied Arts sent Paul Horti as its representative. Mr. Paul Horti is a well known art critic of Hungary. Mr. R.E. Rombauer was also ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... and the entire public, conclude that his skill is his genius, and that skill is art. This, alas, has at all times been the too prevalent notion of what art is, divergence of opinion existing not on the principle, but on the kind of dexterity to be prized, each generation, each critic, having an individual standard, based always on the several peculiar problems and difficulties that interest them. At Florence these inverted notions about art were especially prevalent because it was a school of art with a score of men of genius and a thousand mediocrities all egging ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... little about it to show what obstacles a Crusoe has to overcome, and how hard he has to work to gain his ends. He has no one to pat his back when he is triumphant, nor anyone to sympathise with him over a failure. He is his own critic and censor. Suffice it to say that in due course I had patches of barley, clover, lucerne, mangold, carrots, etc., sown, and when once the seeds were in I had plenty of ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... are birds of prey, have ever a natural inclination to carrion: and though such poor writers as I are but beggars, no beggar is so poor but he can keep a cur, and no author is so beggarly but he can keep a critic. I am far from thinking the attacks of such people any honour or dishonour even to me, much less to Mr. Dryden. I agree with you that whatever lesser wits have arisen since his death are but like stars appearing when the sun is set, that twinkle ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... insultingly reminds him of "his Master," Shaftesbury, and of that school which made morality an object of taste, shrewdly hinting that Akenside was "a man of taste;" a new term, as we are to infer from Warburton, for "a Deist;" or, as Akenside had alluded to Spinoza, he might be something worse. The great critic loudly protested against the practice of ridicule; but, in attacking its advocate, he is himself an evidence of its efficacy, by keenly ridiculing "the Poet" and his opinions. Dyson, the patron of Akenside, nobly stepped forwards to rescue ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... last become accustomed. She is not at all a perfect beauty. Her features are not as finely chiseled as a Greek statue; she is taller, we are invariably told, than the model height, her nose is retrousse; and "in some lights" an unfavorable critic might affirm that her hair was positively tawny. But there is a well of feeling in her big brown eyes, which, when united to genius, invariably bowls over the hero of the book. And the passion she excites is of that stirring kind ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... observer who had wit which he commonly concealed; a humourist who was satisfied to laugh silently at his own humour; a diplomatist who used the mask of frankness with great effect; Lord Skye was one of the most popular men in Washington. Every one knew that he was a ruthless critic of American manners, but he had the art to combine ridicule with good-humour, and he was all the more popular accordingly. He was an outspoken admirer of American women in everything except their ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... them is not necessary here, nor is any one of them so indispensable to our object as that close familiarity with the plays, that native strength and justice of perception, and that habit of reading with an eager mind, which make many an unscholarly lover of Shakespeare a far better critic ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... this rather severe critic to his comrade confidentially, "there's one advantage in fast readin', that it gets the business soon over, which is some sort o' comfort to fellows that has got to attend whether they like it or not, hot or cold, fresh or tired, unless dooty prevents. But the hofficer that did dooty to-day ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... equal terms. The works of Raphael were photographed and lithographed until the Sistine Madonna became as commonly known as the face of any strenuous and popular statesman of the day. With the aid of these art productions, and John Addington Symonds, every woman with leisure became an art critic. If economics was not interesting, sociology was available; and it could be democratized to any degree desired. If travel was troublesome, one could leave it to Cook; buy a ticket and he would ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... impact of experience is eased. The grind of ordinary intercourse is dimmed. The rawness of Family and Business is refined or removed. But now once more the world comes in to him, in the form of the Critic. Here again, in a sharp concentrated sense, the world moves on him: its complacency, its hysteria, its down-tending appetites and fond illusions, its pathetic worship of yesterdays and hatred of tomorrows, ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... point, Mac sent her on New Year's Day a little book plainly bound and modestly entitled Songs and Sonnets. After reading this with ever-growing surprise and delight, Rose never had another doubt about the writer's being a poet, for though she was no critic, she had read the best authors and knew what was good. Unpretentious as it was, this had the true ring, and its very simplicity showed conscious power for, unlike so many first attempts, the book was not full of "My Lady," neither did it ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... the most delightful bits of character work ever seen on the Casino stage," observed the stage critic of the "Sun." "It is a bit of quiet, unassuming drollery which warms like good wine. Evidently the part was not intended to take precedence, as Miss Madenda is not often on the stage, but the audience, with the characteristic perversity of such bodies, selected for ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... incapable of imagining he could mean it of his own general character as a man, that he attributes the utterance to shame for the postponement of a vengeance, which indeed he must have been such as his critic to be capable of performing upon no better proof than he had yet had. When the man whose unfolding I would now represent, regards even his dearest love, he finds it such a poor, selfish, low-lived thing, that in his heart he shames himself before ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... Faucitt, soothingly. The kindest critic could not have claimed that Sally had been eloquent: nevertheless Mr. Maxwell Faucitt was conscious of ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... from or corollary to the preceding? If it is not Kantian philosophy, it is certainly Goethean. Margaret Fuller was the first American critic, if not the first of all critics, to point out that Goethe in writing "Elective Affinities" designed to show that an evil thought may have consequences as serious and irremediable as an evil action—in addition to the well-known homily that evil thoughts lead to evil actions. In his "Hall of Fantasy" ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... is necessary for you to feel rather than to see her meaning. What distinguished her yet more was the ability by means of this style to interpret music into words. Although this may not be correct practice, there was never a musical critic who did not now and then attempt it: musicians themselves never do, because music is to them nothing to see or to describe, but the air they breathe, and in fact a state of being. Do you remember that tone-wreath of heather and honeysuckle? "It was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... All unacquainted with each classic rule, We feel we've need enough to go to school; And trembling stand, afraid to come before ye, And of the Schoolfellows to tell the story. Yet need this be? I see no critic here; No surly newspaper have we to fear; Our scenery may be bad, but this is certain, Bright decorations are before the curtain, Under whose influence, you may well believe, We do not sigh for Stanfield, grieve for Grieve! Yet not too far to carry innovation, And to comply with settled regulation, ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... are so dreadfully ignorant. You must forgive me if it's necessary to explain." Then she turned to me. "Mr. Van Busche Taylor is the distinguished American critic. If you haven't read his book your education has been shamefully neglected, and you must repair the omission at once. He's writing something about dear Charlie, and he's come to ask me if I ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... of the "Union" and the "Excelsior,"—the Excelsiors won by ten tallies, I should say, the return match to come off at Smithville the next month,—and then looked at the meagre form and wan countenance of their critic, I thought to myself, "Dolorosus, my boy, you are killing something besides Time, if ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... the three who has accomplished nothing," was Winter's rueful comment. Nor could any critic have gainsaid him, for he seemed to have been wasting precious hours while his subordinates were making ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... by a standard far more stringent than any other book, not excepting the other sacred books. No critic would think of treating any other book as he treats the Bible, nor of requiring of any other book what he requires of the Bible. The more men hate God, the more they hate his Word; and this has a deep, underlying reason, and that ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... or Hippolyta the wiser critic of 'the story of the night'; and which of them is the wiser critic of the play of ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... state of the Codex, but the critic of the ninth or tenth century already referred to introduced a great many changes. Not only did he deepen the colour of the ink; he, as Dean Burgon tells us, also accentuated the words carefully throughout, marking all the initial vowels with their ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... things as they are? Things as they are have become insupportable. If you make any of the constitutional changes that have been proposed, we are told, parliamentary government, as Englishmen now know it, is at an end; and our critic stands amazed at those "who deem it a slighter danger to innovate on the Act of Union than to remodel the procedure of the House of Commons." As if that were the alternative. Great changes in the rules may do other good ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... was at this moment in such vogue on the French stage, that her admirers struck a medal in honour of her, and wore it as a kind of order. A critic of the name of Fr'eron, however, did not partake these sentiments, and drew, in his journal, an injurious character of Mademoiselle Clairon. This insult so outraged the tragedy queen, that she and her ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... any German to waste time in artistic hair-splitting when the Germanic peoples, in greater danger than in their entire history, stood with their back to the wall, facing and holding back the world. A Berlin dramatic critic, going through the motions of reviewing a new performance of "Hedda Gabler" the other morning, finally dismissed the matter as "Women's troubles—if anybody can be interested in that nowadays!" Yet a woman, asking at the same time that ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... lashes which bordered the large and voluptuous eyelids. She was more than a woman; she was a masterpiece! In that unhoped-for creation there was love enough to enrapture all mankind, and beauties calculated to satisfy the most exacting critic. ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... colloquies, and Greek dialogs. But to-day we have no rank; we are all first scholars. The hero in his laurels sits next to the divine rustling in the dry garlands of his doctorate. The poet in his crown of bays, the critic, in his wreath of ivy, clasp each other's hands, members of the same happy family. This is the birthday feast for every one of us whose forehead has been sprinkled from the font inscribed "Christo et Ecclesioe." We have no badges but our diplomas, no distinctions but our years ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... customs, and usages (although by his own marriage he had violated one of the first of the laws of his class, and by his unfailing fidelity to his wife continued to resist it), superstitious rather than religious, an immense admirer of the Kaiser, and a decidedly hostile critic of our own country—such was the general impression made on one British ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... Apollo Delphos. The second, half a foot, with the toes entire, of the Juno Lucina. The third, the Caduceus of the Mercurius Infernalis. The fourth, the half of the leg of the Infant Hercules. All indisputable antiques, and of the Memphian marble.' One critic objects to a swelling on the foot of Juno as a defect in its proportion; but the auctioneer informs him that the swelling is intended to represent a corn, and the defect is thereupon pronounced an absolute master-stroke. Presently the auctioneer proceeds: 'Bring forward the head from ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook |
