"Hypercritical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... through grace; for he mightily convinced the Jews, and that publicly, shewing by the Scriptures that Jesus was Christ." [117:3] His surpassing rhetorical ability soon proved a snare to some of the hypercritical Corinthians, and tempted them to institute invidious comparisons between him and their great apostle. Hence in the first epistle addressed to them, the writer finds it necessary to rebuke them for their folly and fastidiousness. "While one saith, I am of Paul, and another, I am of Apollos, ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... the Divisional Commander contented himself, during his first visit, with merely observing and asking a question here and there. His subsequent visits were frequent and seldom welcomed by the rank and file, who found him awe-inspiring and hypercritical. He was, however, known to unbend and show generous appreciation of honest effort and good work. On rare occasions he unexpectedly revealed the possession ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... Vanderbilt usually begrudged what he looked upon as superfluous expense. The plainest of black clothes he wore, and he never countenanced jewelry. He scanned the table bill with a hypercritical eye. Even the sheer necessities of his physical condition could not induce him to pay out money for costly prescriptions. A few days before his death his physician recommended champagne for some ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... given her too much to do; she's on the stage in all of my biggest scenes, and has business enough in them to spoil my best effects. Of course, that can be arranged. And then the leading man's part—I don't want to seem hypercritical, but he's altogether too clever; you mustn't let him overshadow the heroine the way he does; some of his business is plainly hers—I can see myself doing it infinitely better than any leading man we could afford to engage. And those witty lines you've put into his mouth—I must have them; you ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... you into the commission of a great wrong upon an innocent woman, it is a sacred duty to your victim, as well as my privilege as your betrothed, to alleviate her suffering as much as possible, and to repair the injury for which you are responsible. When human life and reputation are at stake, hypercritical fastidiousness is less pardonable than the deplorable mistake that ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... at a first-rate place. 'Baker's' is the name of our house, but we don't address there; we prefer the tender care of the Post-Office, as more aristocratic (it is no use to telegraph even to the care of the Post-Office who does not give a single damn). Baker's has a prophet's chamber, which the hypercritical might describe as a garret with a hole in the floor: in that garret, sir, I have to trouble you and your wife to come and slumber. Not now, however: with manly hospitality, I choke off any sudden impulse. Because first, my wife and my mother are gone ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... some while, she combed and brushed out her glorious hair, shyly glad because of its length and splendour; and, having crowned her shapely head with it, viewed the effect with cold, hypercritical eyes. ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... the note over with hypercritical sensitiveness to its defects, but decided that it must do. Besides, she had used the last sheet of note-paper in the rack on her desk; more was not obtainable without a trip to the living-room. Then in desperation she appended, under the sign ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... remarked, that in history sheer extravagance has not even the merit of being agreeable; and the extravagance of eulogy is doubly repulsive, as extravagance, and as eulogy; at least it is only welcome to the vulgar majority, not to that critical, that perhaps hypercritical audience, whom no slip can escape, who are all eyes like Argus, but keener than he, who test every word as a moneychanger might his coins, rejecting the false on the spot, but accepting the good and heavy and true; it is they that we should have in mind as we write history, ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... dislike of the methods of politicians was followed by a strong animosity towards those who crossed his political path and some of those who went along beside it. He became hypercritical of those with whom he associated and allowed a natural germ of cynicism to develop and flourish within him. Little by little he has withdrawn from the active combat, a philosopher in politics enamored of public life but unwilling to suffer the ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... show of reason, be an error in grammar? Why, grammar is a science founded in our nature, referable to our ideas of time, relation, method; imperfect, doubtless, as to the system by which it is represented; but surely we can speak of error in that which is error's criterion! All this is hypercritical, but hypercriticism must be ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... at breakfast, for Clay's was not a house wherein one felt encouraged to coddle themselves without exceptional reason, and to all but a suspicious or hypercritical ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... many a grey-headed veteran, or clergyman would envy; and which is larger than the endowment of many Regius chairs. You do not care to make your University a school of manners for the rich; of sports for the athletic; or a hot-bed of high-fed, hypercritical refinement, more destructive to vigour and originality than are starvation and oppression. No; your little Bursaries of ten and twenty (I believe even fifty) pounds a year, enabled any boy who has ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... me a long time to overcome this religious melancholia, but I mastered it in the long run, and was greatly delighted when I found I could once more read without being hypercritical and doubtful of everything. Had I been cast on a luxuriant island, growing fruits and flowers, and inhabited at least by animals—how different would it have been! But here there was nothing to save the mind from madness—merely a tiny strip of sand, invisible a ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... universities the faculty is usually a corps of working scholars, each man intent upon his specialty and rather inclined to undervalue merely "literary" performance. In many cases the fastidious and hypercritical turn of mind which besets the scholar, the timid conservatism which naturally characterizes an ancient seat of learning, and the spirit of theological conformity which suppresses free discussion, have exerted their ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... at this festive season, and wish to intensify the effects of the malady, will do well to read a new book entitled Master of his Fate, by J. MACLAREN COBBAN, who, if he does not write well, that is, judging his style from a hypercritical purist's point of view, yet contrives to interest you with a story almost as sensational as that of Hyde and Jekyl. The Master of his Fate might have had for its second title, Or, The Accomplished ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... their new! And yet how short was the time and space which divided them! Less than an hour ago they had stood upon the summit of that rock, and had laughed and chattered, or grumbled at the heat and flies, becoming peevish at small discomforts. Headingly had been hypercritical over the tints of Nature. They could not forget his own tint as he lay with his cheek upon the black stone. Sadie had chattered about tailor-made dresses and Parisian chiffons. Now she was clinging, half-crazy, to the pommel of a wooden saddle, with suicide rising as a red star of hope in her ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to his hotel. He did not know what to do; the absence of the Iretons from Cairo had shattered his last hope. Surely it was ordained? He was to realize that he was reaping the punishment he deserved for his weakness and folly. It was obvious to his tired nerves and hypercritical senses that Margaret had purposely returned to England without leaving any indication of her destination. He would go to Cook's post-office the next morning; that was his last forlorn hope. If there was no letter awaiting him there, he would take ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... Some hypercritical person, and possibly some sincere soul, may ask: "Did such revival do any permanent good? Does not the so-near savage easily backslide?" To this may be given this partial reply: It depends somewhat on the sort of white folks there are in the immediate vicinity. As elsewhere stated ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... of being again deemed hypercritical, while on this subject, the misapplication of terms, I must question the correctness of the phrase "Under the circumstance." A thing must be in or amidst its circum-stances; it cannot be under them. I admit the commonness of the expression, but it is not the less ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 233, April 15, 1854 • Various
... years, by several psychologists of the new school (Parlagreco and Lombroso in Italy, Nisbet in England), who attempt to prove that Michelangelo was the subject of neurotic disorder. The most important and serious essay in this direction is a little book of great interest and almost hypercritical acumen published recently at Naples. Signor Parlagreco lays great stress upon Michelangelo's insensibility to women, his "strange and contradictory feeling about feminine beauty." He seeks to show, what is indeed, I think, capable of demonstration, that the man's intense devotion ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... it, his pliant toes closed upon it, and he hopped away with the treasure and disappeared round the corner. But only for a minute—only while he could button the flower inside his jacket, next his heart—or next his stomach, possibly, for he was not much posted in anatomy, and not hypercritical, anyway. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... outside reputation; he addressed it modestly, bringing into play, however, resources with which he had not been credited—a touch of humour and a pretty turn of sarcasm. He knew his facts too, and disposed of contradictions with a Blue-book and a smile. The hypercritical were not silenced; Marchmont still found the smile oily, and his friends traced the humour to districts which they supposed to lie somewhere east of the London Hospital; but they were bound to admit sorrowfully that, although all this was true, it might not, under democratic institutions, ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... his snowballs;—perhaps after all he had been hypercritical, perhaps one or two of those pages might be rescued and smoothed out and made to answer. After all, who else would be the better or the worse for it? All the public wanted of him was a piquant flavour for its jaded appetite and the details on which ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... to-day with no mental reservations, and with no purpose to construe the Constitution or laws by any hypercritical rules. And while I do not choose now to specify particular acts of Congress as proper to be enforced, I do suggest that it will be much safer for all, both in official and private stations, to conform to and abide by all those acts which stand unrepealed, than to violate any ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... to-day with no mental reservations, and with no purpose to construe the Constitution or laws by any hypercritical rules. * * * ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... official oath to-day with no mental reservations and with no purpose to construe the Constitution or laws by any hypercritical rules; and while I do not choose now to specify particular acts of Congress as proper to be enforced, I do suggest that it will be much safer for all, both in official and private stations, to conform to and abide by all those acts which stand ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... again, we left this sacred building, and went to St. Peter's, which received from the bright heavens the loveliest light possible, and every part of it was clearly lit up. As men willing to be pleased, we were delighted with its vastness and splendor, and did not allow an over-nice or hypercritical taste to mar our pleasure. We supprest every harsher judgment; ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... abnormality which sanctified persons show are of frequent occurrence. They get out of tune with other people; often they will have nothing to do with churches, which they regard as worldly; they become hypercritical towards others; they grow careless of their social, political, and financial obligations. As an instance of this type may be mentioned a woman of sixty-eight of whom the writer made a special study. She had been a member of one ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... prince was gathered to his fathers, and his cousin Augustus reigned in his stead. Until a certain politician who had been privy to this pious fraud——" The tutor shrugged. "How can I word it without seeming hypercritical?" ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... of popularity he begins to wish to put his faith positively; to offer some solid key to all creation. Perhaps the irony in the situation is this: that all the crowds are acclaiming him as the blasting and hypercritical buffoon, while he himself is seriously rallying his synthetic power, and with a grave face telling himself that it is time he had a faith to preach. His final success as a sort of charlatan coincides with his first grand failures ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... and purely selfish diplomacy, are sinful outgrowths of patriotism. We must learn to be fair and good-tempered, to appreciate the admirable in other nations, to thrill to their ideals, and banish all suspicious, sneering, or hypercritical attitudes toward them. It is a pity that the mass of our people get their conceptions of foreign peoples and rulers so largely through newspaper cartoons and caricatures, which emphasize and exaggerate their points of difference and inferiority instead of revealing their power and excellence. ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... is Morality. Properly, the thing testing is one thing; the thing tested another thing. The same objection would apply to the use of the word Standard; so that the only form of the first question of Ethics would be, What is morality? What does it consist in? [The remark is just, but somewhat hypercritical. The illustration from Chemical testing is not true in fact; the test of gold is some essential attribute of gold, as its weight. And when we wish to determine as to a certain act, whether it is a moral act, we compare it with what we deem the essential quality of ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... plum was the greengage, rather a shy bearer but always in demand. Living in a land of Goshen, like the Vale of Evesham, one gets quite hypercritical (or "picksome," as the local expression is), and scarcely cares to taste a fruit from a tree in passing; but I used to visit my greengages at times when the pickers had done with them, for they have to be gathered somewhat unripe to ensure travelling undamaged. I often ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... Linford found his first pastorate. Here from the very beginning he rendered apparent those gifts that were to make him a power among men. It was with a lofty but trembling hope that the young novice began his first service that June morning, before a congregation known to be hypercritical, composed as it was of seasoned city communicants, hardened listeners and watchers, who would appraise his vestments, voice, manner, appearance, and sermon, in the light ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... rural sociology is a real thing. There is far too much theorising about the countryman and the countrywoman, far too much idealising of them and far too much rating of them as clods. If country people of all lands are free-spoken let us be neither hypercritical nor hypocritical. A big gap seems to yawn between the paddy-field peasant in his breech clout and the immaculate clubman, but what difference is there between the savour of the average Bon song and of many a smoking-room jest which is not to the credit of the peasant? At an ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... of Hynds House. It had all the charm of a new and quaint field of exploration and research, and there was nothing in it to offend his hypercritical judgment. I have a shrewd suspicion that Mary Magdalen's cooking played no mean part in his satisfaction. His prowess as a trencherman aroused the admiration and respect of Fernolia, who waited on table. Fernolia had ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... is decidedly wrong. I will not be hypercritical, or I might suggest that in that case the words would have been "thither wend;" but I maintain that the change is contrary to the sense. The spirit of Hermione never could have been intended to say that the child should be left crying. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... Emperors of ancient Mexico, who took a solemn oath to make the Sun pursue his wonted journey, I too have vowed to corroborate and help sustain the Solar System; vowed that by no vexed thoughts of mine, no attenuating doubts, nor incredulity, nor malicious scepticism, nor hypercritical analysis, shall the great frame and first principles of things be compromised ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... Podvin's business, ostensibly, was that of keeping a low cabaret labelled "Rendez-Vous pour Cochers." It might have been more appropriately called a rendezvous for thieves, though this seems rather hypercritical when one knows the cabbies of the barriers. But the cabaret was really run by Madame Podvin, which robs monsieur of ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... and which I have endeavored to picture as true to the life as possible in the accompanying presentment The sceptic will perhaps remark on examination that the scene is characterized by somewhat too free a license to warrant the ideal of a "picnic." But he is hypercritical. There are picnics and picnics—picnics of high and of low degree. Do I not recall more than one notorious festive outing of the "next lower than the angels" in which the personnel seemed about similarly proportioned, and ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... point of destruction, and charred marks upon the handsome sideboard and table showed where glowing cigarette stumps had suffered a negligent demise. The spaniel was allowed to worry bits of food that left marks on the rug; his owner ate without appetite and in a hypercritical mood that took no account of the wasteful attempts to please her. Quite regardless of the patient little Jap, she alternately found fault with him and discussed with her guest matters of so frank a nature that ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... apparent in his recent utterance in which he observes that Fleischmann's whole aim is to accumulate observational data, meanwhile avoiding speculation as far as possible. His criticism is replete with bitter personal epithets, e.g., "reactionary," "mental incompetency," "dishonest mask of hypercritical exactness," which manifest the writer's inability to enter upon an objective discussion of ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... questions involved are intensely interesting, hence my queries. I hope they do not read as if I were hypercritical ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... torrid zone, nor the shepherdesses of Arcadia; but he transferred both to it,[22] because the design and import of his picture required them. Here he considered himself entitled to take the greatest liberties. He had not to do with a hair-splitting, hypercritical age like ours, which is always seeking in poetry for something else than poetry; his audience entered the theatre, not to learn true chronology, geography, and natural history, but to witness a vivid exhibition. I will undertake to prove that Shakespeare's anachronisms are, for the most ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke |
