"Amateurish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he did not encourage the rising young German poets Lessing and Goethe. He thought their work vulgar and uninspired. But he invited literary Frenchmen to come to Berlin, and he put new life into the Berlin Academy of Science. Even Voltaire was for a time a guest at Frederick's court, and the amateurish poems written in French by the Prussian king were corrected ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... demand upon direct draughtsmanship and power. I am a funny man, a caricaturist, by force of circumstances; an artist, a satirist, and a cartoonist by nature and training. The one requires technical knowledge—in the other, "drawing doesn't count." The more amateurish the work, the funnier the public consider it. The serious confession I have to make is that I have been mistaken for a caricaturist in the accepted and limited ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... to me, Gwyn," he said, "that something must have been known about the place and caused this amateurish ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... seen outside a college gridiron and was a revelation to him. Even by the end of the first week the first team was in what seemed to Clint end-of-season form, although in that Clint was vastly mistaken, and his own efforts appeared to him pretty weak and amateurish. But he held on hard, did his best and hoped to at least retain a place on the third squad until the final cut came. And it might just be, he told himself in optimistic moments, that he'd make the second! Meanwhile he was enjoying ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Work, taken up at odd hours to satisfy editorial importunity or add a few pounds to a narrow income, is apt to show the characteristic defects of all amateur performances. A very large part of the early numbers is amateurish in this objectionable sense. It is mere hand-to-mouth information, and is written, so to speak, with the left hand. A clever man has turned over the last new book of travels or poetry, or made a ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... have, I admit, been amateurish. But I shall acquire skill, and the appetite shall learn refinements, to keep it in health. I don't think it was bad sport, on the whole, to open with low comedy. It tickled me, anyhow, to watch Farrell emerge from a sort of bathing-machine upon the plage, ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... familiar, without any rehearsal, an offer which led me to regard him as a genius sent down from heaven on purpose for me. Nothing could, therefore, equal my amazement at the unbounded impudence of the man; for on the evening of the concert he executed his task with the most amateurish timidity; he did not enunciate a single note of the song clearly, and nothing but astonishment at so unprecedented a performance appeared to restrain the audience from breaking out into marked disapproval. Yet, in spite ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... they shall have their proper places. But here is a point: suppose one of them is gold, and heavy at that, but not finely finished, quite amateurish and ill proportioned, in fact—is he to take precedence of Myron's and Polyclitus's bronze, or Phidias's and Alcamenes's marble? or is workmanship ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... chiefly as she talked and wept upon the bridge below the old castle. We had got rid of some amateurish reporters from Biarritz, and had walked together in the hot morning sunshine down through Port Luzon. There, for a time, we stood leaning on the parapet of the bridge and surveying the distant peeks, the rich ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... Kidnapped—His Followers Swear Vengeance—Rumored that He Is Hidden Near The Oakwood Club." For a moment the blood left her face, and her nerves tightened, but when the trap was pulled up she was herself, and the smile she gave the soldier in charge brought forth an earnest but amateurish salute. ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... powers of resistance, she felt, should this impulse return again. For, as she walked along the street to her office, the force of all her customary objections to being in love with any one overcame her. She did not want to marry at all. It seemed to her that there was something amateurish in bringing love into touch with a perfectly straightforward friendship, such as hers was with Ralph, which, for two years now, had based itself upon common interests in impersonal topics, such as the housing of the poor, or the taxation ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... 1851—ceased, that is to say, when Punch was ten years old. The wonder about them was that, even before the days of photography, the likenesses of his subjects were so admirable, and his thrusts so happy, while his art, criticised strictly, was so very poor and amateurish. But as exaggeration found no trace in his designs, and his compositions aimed at raising little more than a suspicion of a smile in the beholder (save in the subjects of them), the word "cartoon" was more applicable to them than to any that preceded or have ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... movement in general and the movement, erstwhile devoted primarily to organization of trade unions, entered, urged on by the Lassalleans, into a series of political campaigns somewhat successful at first but soon succumbing to the inevitable fate of all amateurish attempts. Upon men of Strasser's practical mental grasp these petty tempests in the melting pot could only produce an impression of sheer futility, and he turned to trade unionism as the only activity worth his while. Strasser had been elected president of the Cigar Makers' International ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... They began about July, 1915. My experiences since that date were very interesting; but I found that much of the romance had left the trenches. The old days, from the beginning to July, 1915, were all so delightfully precarious and primitive. Amateurish trenches and rough and ready life, which to my mind gave this war what it sadly needs—a ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... being an emblem of authority, is also an instrument of the supernatural. An indispensable instrument, one may say; for was ever a magician depicted in book, in picture, or in the mind's eye, without a wand? Does even the most amateurish of prestidigitateurs attempt to emulate the performances of the once famous Wizard of the North, without the aid of the magic staff? The magician, necromancer, soothsayer, or conjurer, is as useless without his wand as a Newcastle pitman is without ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... the case of games and outdoor sports, the records of such pastimes as horse-racing, boxing, rowing, billiards, tennis and golf prove that here also the same contrast is generally to be found. Hence it has come about that the term "amateur,'' and more especially the adjectival derivative "amateurish,'' has acquired a secondary meaning, usually employed somewhat contemptuously, signifying inefficiency, unskilfulness, superficial knowledge ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the glass counter a little Sekhet boat, carved in wood and highly colored, and glanced up with a start. Truly my methods were amateurish; I had learnt nothing; I was unlikely to learn anything. I wondered how Nayland Smith would have conducted such an inquiry, and I racked my brains for some means of penetrating into the recesses of the establishment. Indeed, I had been seeking such a plan for the past half ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... further in precisely the same direction, brings his child to starvation on a diet of faith. In France and Russia experimenting in hypnotism on well persons has been restricted by law to licensed experts; what, compared with that, shall we say to this wholly amateurish experimenting with the diseased? Let the "healer" heal all he can, but let him not experiment to the extremity of life and death with the credulity and superstition of the people who think one "doctor" is ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... He was colouring like a boy. Lady Carey's thin lips curled. She had no sympathy with such amateurish love-making. Nevertheless, his embarrassment was ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... mountain-apple," ingenuous, ardent, wealthy—the typical "poor pretty thoughtful thing" with aspirations, for she tried to sing and draw, read verse and thought she understood—at any rate, loved the Great, the Good, and the Beautiful. But to him her "culture" seemed pitifully amateurish—him who took the arts in his stride, as it were, who could float wide and free over the whole province of them, as the sea-gull floats over the waters. Nevertheless he had walked and talked with her "twice" at the little remote, unspoilt seaside resort where they ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... watch; and yet I could not afford to free for an instant his left, armed as it was with that shabbiest of weapons. Hence I hung on to his wrists while he struggled to wrench them free, and we pulled one another backwards and forwards and round and round in the most absurd and amateurish manner, each trying to trip the other up and failing at every attempt. At last, in the course of our gyrations, we bumped through the open door into the passage leading to the museum; and here we came down together with a crash that ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... rather lamely it seemed, however. The editor said that it read amateurish, and he felt he would have to make a change. Carl made for some files where all the daily papers were kept, and read and re-read the yellowest of the yellow. As luck would have it, that very night a big fire broke out in ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... hope, been perfectly frank about its intentions. It is not a book upon Kriegspiel. It gives merely a game that may be played by two or four or six amateurish persons in an afternoon and evening with toy soldiers. But it has a very distinct relation to Kriegspiel; and since the main portion of it was written and published in a magazine, I have had quite a considerable correspondence ...
— Little Wars; a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books • H. G. Wells
... Hence, he began cultivating the sciences and arts, and his successors followed his example. As science and art were found to be sources of national power, they were as thoroughly promoted as was the army itself, while in this country [England] education remained amateurish. Men toyed with science and the universities rather ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... a lady of property. The mature young gentleman is a gentleman of property. He invests his property. He goes, in a condescending amateurish way, into the City, attends meetings of Directors, and has to do with traffic in Shares. As is well known to the wise in their generation, traffic in Shares is the one thing to have to do with in this world. Have no antecedents, no established character, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... of action, Mr. Shirley, for a mere interested friend! It is queer how wonderfully your mind has connected this work, and the various accidental happenings, to evolve this clever ruse in which I am to assist. It doesn't seem so amateurish as you would make it. ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... paper cover, open like a pamphlet. There must be some recognised professional way of doing it, and I should think one's more likely to get it taken if one sends it in the regular professional fashion, than if one makes it look too amateurish. I shall go in for the long envelope; at any rate, if not journalistic, ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... let her pupils use those, though," said Netta. "She calls it an amateurish dodge. I should think we shall have to hold each other up while ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... at all surprising that such a state of affairs exists. There has been so much secrecy about the whole subject and so much dependence upon amateurish and nonprofessional advice that it is almost impossible for anyone to procure reliable information or to recognize it when given. This is especially true in the United States where there are both federal and state laws to punish those who disseminate knowledge ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... Wally was held in great reputation by the Nimrods of the village, because he hunted partridges, not with "scatter-gun" and dog,—such amateurish bungling he disdained and swore against,—but in the good old-fashioned way of stalking with a rifle. And when he brought his bunch of birds to market, his admirers pointed with pride to the marks of his wondrous skill. Here was ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... fiction of something like the later modern type. First appeared a series of collections of short tales chiefly translated from Italian authors, to which tales the Italian name 'novella' (novel) was applied. Most of the separate tales are crude or amateurish and have only historical interest, though as a class they furnished the plots for many Elizabethan dramas, including several of Shakspere's. The most important collection was Painter's 'Palace of Pleasure,' in 1566. The earliest original, or partly original, English prose fictions to appear were ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... Continent agree to beguile the tedium of the journey by telling each other tales. Unfortunately the Nightingale does not sing on, and the young Englishmen and women who have collaborated in this volume have gone about their task in a frankly amateurish spirit. The stories by W. F. Harvey and Sherard Vines attain a measured success, and some mention may be made of M. Storm-Jameson's story, "Mother-love." It is to be hoped that in future volumes of the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... admire I cannot agree with them. Joubert, of course, has his own shortcomings as a pensee-writer. He is rococo beside La Bruyere, dilettante beside La Rochefoucauld, shallow beside Pascal. There is at times, even if you take him by himself, and without comparison, something thin and amateurish and conventional about him. But this is by no means always or very often the case; and his merits, very great in themselves, were even greater ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... am a fairly good navigator, and not a bad seaman, in an amateurish sort of way, you know. But do not trouble about the position of the island. I have here," producing his watch, "an excellent chronometer, showing Greenwich time, and books and instruments among my luggage which, with the aid of sun, moon, and stars, will enable ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... you mean, dear—thanks just the same. I mean those women tonight. They all seem to 'go in' for something—votes or charity or dancing or social service, or something—even the girls. And they all sounded so amateurish, so untrained, so unprepared, yet they seemed to ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... jesters. Professional Italian actors, players of the commedia dell'arte, who in the sixteenth century spread their gay and varied art all over Europe, also supplied English players with that touch of professional technique in which their somewhat vacillating and half-amateurish arts were ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... must first have regarded it in the ordinary way to judge of its photographic merits. Anyhow it is true that quite a good deal of her time was spent beneath the folds of a black cloth (she never condescended to anything so amateurish as a mere kodak), or in the seclusion of ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... for many pupils to work, so the class had been limited to seniors, among whom Doris Deane, Ruth White, and Stephanie Radford had begun to distinguish themselves. Each had made a small pendant, and while the craftsmanship might be amateurish, the general effect was artistic. Miss Teddington was delighted, and wishing to air her latest hobby, she decided to send the three pendants, together with some other specimens of school handiwork, to a small Art exhibition which was to be held shortly ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... printed for the most part privately in small editions from middle life onward after his great prose work had been written, taken as a whole, is of an amateurish and uneven quality. In it, however, that loveable freshness of personality, which his philosophical dejection never quenched, is everywhere in evidence. It is clear that he did not set himself to master ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... taken over all aircraft in process of construction, no matter how crude and amateurish, and has appointed a commission to investigate all patents. Of course, it was known that I was building an airship, and, as a result, I ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... body of mechanics and engineers. Every year, with the advance of invention, new branches of activity, that change in their nature and methods all too rapidly for the establishment of rote and routine workers of the old type, call together fresh levies of amateurish workers and learners who must surely presently develop into, or give place to, bodies of qualified and capable men. And the point I would particularly insist upon here is, that throughout all its ranks and ramifications, from the organizing ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... inclined to attribute to want of power and patient study. There is an old-fashioned formality in the composition of their landscapes, which does not seem to our eyes to belong to the world of to-day, and a decidedly amateurish treatment which is surprising. They repeat themselves and each other, without end, and evidently are thinking more about Beranger than the places of which he sang; they would seek (as some one expresses it) to 'reconcile literal ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... crayons, photography, ay, and even in pencil; most of them bearing evidence in their execution that they are the productions of amateurs, although here and there the eye detects work strong enough to suggest the hand and eye of the veteran professional painter. But, although so much of the work is amateurish, it is nevertheless thoroughly good, no picture being permitted to be hung upon the walls until it has been subjected to the scrutiny, and received the approval, of a Hanging Committee of artistic ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... never been ill before, never for five minutes. And this illness had driven me to a strange introspection. There had been time to think. I smiled at Captain Blaise's amateurish rhymings on the veranda of the manor-house. I had condemned him in my own mind for this death or that death of his irregular career; on that last night on the veranda I had even allowed him to read my thoughts of such matters. And now I could not ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... box was hardly a success, because bright eyes watching through the open door made us nervously amateurish. The Zeitoonli arrived true to his threat on the stroke of the half-hour, and we could not shut the door in his face because of the fumes of food and kerosene. (Two of the eggs, like us, were travelers and had been ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... How amateurish is the attitude of the Tolstoy disciple who cavils at his masterpieces. What is mere art compared to the message! And I say: what are all his vapourings and fatidical croonings on the tripod of pseudo-prophecy as compared to Anna Karenina? There ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... and technical stage, was intellectually large in academic and literary qualities, and comprehensive. It appears to me that the telling of the story was, in his estimation, the highest office of art, so that, while his drawing was bad in style, his execution scrappy and amateurish and deficient in breadth and subordination, his compositions were often masterly, fine in conception, and harmonious in line, in the pen-and-ink study; but the want of ensemble and the insubordination ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... his pose, that of tranquil youth with its eyes on the horizon. Leddy had the peculiar slouch of the desperado, which is associated with the spread of pioneering civilization by the raucous criers of red-blooded individualism. If Jack's bearing was amateurish, then Pete's was professional in its threatening pose; and his shadow, like himself, had an unrelieved hardness ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... different lengths to adjust the pots at various heights above the fire, depending on whether you wish to boil something furiously or merely to let it simmer. Do not suspend the kettles by running the bar through them. This is very amateurish. With a gypsy fire, the frying pan, coffee pot and gridiron will have to be set right on ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... No doubt it was this self-regarding memory which had resulted in the play. It was obviously a personal experience, and as she was rich enough to share the risk of producing it, he was more than ready to put it on. It was full of faults; it was melodramatic, it was amateurish, but it was passionately alive. The pit and the gallery would love it; and if the stalls found it a little cheap, what of that? He had considerable flair. He ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... awful possibility is enough to make any man feel lucky all his life. It's such fun to awaken in the morning with all your legs and arms and eyes and ears about you, waiting to be used again! So strong was this thought in me when we cast off, that even the memory of Bill's amateurish pancakes couldn't keep ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... "Very amateurish work," Alec protested, pleased nevertheless at Knight's praise. "The steer thought I looked so harmless that he took a big chance—that's how I came to ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... of paint and plaster appeared the original bricks; and as my architectural knowledge had led me rightly, the space I had cleared was directly over a vertical joint between firm, workmanlike masonry on one hand, and rough amateurish work on the other, bricks laid anyway, and without order ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... intelligence. True, they put an explosive charge into the cylinders of all their big engines and left us to get new cylinders cast in Scotland. They blew out the grease boxes of the trucks; but their performance, on the whole, was amateurish. For they blew up, with dynamite, the masonry of many bridges and contented themselves that the girders lay in the river below. But this was child's play to our Sappers and Miners. With hand jacks they ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... the normal standpoint, Beddoes' idea of the drama was something wildly amateurish. As a practical playwright he would be beneath contempt; but what he aimed at was something peculiar to himself, a sort of spectral dramatic fantasia. He would have admitted his obligations to Webster and Tourneur, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... rest was amateurish. We milled badly. Grim away in front had halted to let the line close, and we swarmed around him like a herd of steers that smell wolves, and nobody seemed to know which way to look, ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... cheque for a very considerable amount. "Leave us alone—entirely alone—for a year, and then I will write you another": it was with these words she handed him the little strip of paper that meant so much, feeling, as she did so, that surely Mrs. Farrinder herself could not be less amateurish than that. Selah looked at the cheque, at Miss Chancellor, at the cheque again, at the ceiling, at the floor, at the clock, and once more at his hostess; then the document disappeared beneath the folds of his waterproof, and she saw that he was putting it ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... and seemed especially to resent her music lessons, alluding to them with a sort of sneering impatience. She felt that he despised them as amateurish, and secretly resented it. He was often impatient, too, of the time she gave to the baby. His own conduct with the little creature was like all the rest of him. He would go to the nursery, much to Betty's alarm, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... beaten at croquet. It is we the bunglers who adore the occupation in the abstract. It is we to whom it is art for art's sake. If we may see the face of Croquet herself (if I may so express myself) we are content to see her face turned upon us in anger. Our play is called amateurish; and we wear proudly the name of amateur, for amateurs is but the French for Lovers. We accept all adventures from our Lady, the most disastrous or the most dreary. We wait outside her iron gates (I allude to the hoops), vainly ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... had been served. Cigarettes were being lighted. Again and again he was referred to. Did he think this and didn't he agree to that? Wasn't this true of the way in which men regarded women? Their differences of opinion seemed so trivial. Their views so immature and amateurish. He watched them with curious, brooding attention. They were so nobly tender in their outward forms. He appreciated the grace of their gestures, the fine-boned smallness of their bodies, the delicacy of their molding, the tendril thinness of their fingers, ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... and then turned rose-colour with the apprehension that it sounded amateurish to have counted them. "I thought it was one of your privileges to do ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... but apparently did not care to hear her sing. On the occasion that she did, it seemed to irritate him. Indeed, she knew she was merely the most amateurish of musicians, and could just accompany herself in a few songs, though the voice itself was a rare gift.... How perfect Aylmer had been!... There was a sharp ring. She closed the book, turned out the little ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... inspired this exhibition of feeling would probably not have affected the casual spectator to quite the same degree. He would have seen merely a very faulty and amateurish portrait of a singularly repellent little boy of about eleven, who stared out from the canvas with an expression half stolid, half querulous; a bulgy, overfed little boy; a little boy who looked exactly what he was, the spoiled child ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... her in the main salon. Cleigh, senior, stood before the phonograph listening to Caruso. The roll of the yacht in nowise disturbed the mechanism of the instrument. There was no sudden sluing of the needle, due to an amateurish device which Cleigh himself had constructed. The son, stooping, was searching the titles of a row of new novels. The width of the salon ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... costume was exquisitely graceful, and the evolutions and figures admirably exact—no mistake, nothing amateurish about the ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... any kind sound amateurish in the business that concerns us. Impressionistic philosophizing, like impressionistic watchmaking or land-surveying, is intolerable to experts. Serious discussion of the alternative before us forces me, therefore, ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... pulled out a microscopic bit of handkerchief and was dabbing at the blood in an amateurish way. Jeems moaned and turned his head as if to get away ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... others were pushing back their chairs, so Jane did not hear this other promise he would have made; for she was moving from the table with Doctor Stone, having pinned that gentleman as they first arose with no intention of letting him leave her. He had made one or two amateurish efforts to wait for Nancy, and now in a bewildered sort of way wondered why he continued with this other girl against his will. Doctor Stone's university course had not included psychodynamics in the female species. Thus it was that he walked from the dining-room ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... called them bravi; here in America we brutally call them gun-men, but honestly, Kronberg, in all respect and confidence, you really haven't brains and originality enough for a clever professional murderer. Amateurish killing is a sickly sort of sport. And the danger of it! Take for instance that night when you fancied you were a motor bandit and waylaid me on the way to the farm. I was very drunk and driving madly and ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... were not ashamed to let his craftsmanship be seen. Work which has been touch and retouched, and rubbed down and smoothed until all life, vigour, and crispness have departed from it, looks what it is, amateurish (in the worse ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various
... obvious and even trite; his letters may lack any flavour of personality; but these dispatches are literature. Like his hero Napoleon, like Caesar and Wellington, Sir John French has forged a literary style for himself. There is nothing amateurish or journalistic about his communications from the front. The dispatch from Mons, for instance, is a masterpiece of lucid and incisive English. It might well be printed in our school-histories, not merely as a vivid historic document, but as a model ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... but a dull, cloudy night is best, when they may be caught from the beach or river bank in shallow water. Very stout lines and heavy hooks are used, for a 90-lb. or l00-lb. jew-fish is very common. Baiting with a whole mullet or whiting, or one of the tentacles of an octopus, the most amateurish fisherman cannot fail to hook two or three jew-fish in a night. (Even in Sydney harbour I have seen some very large ones caught by people fishing from ferry wharves.) They are very powerful, and also very game, and ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... doctor did not say much. He quieted the raving with his hypodermic needle, removed the amateurish bandage from the hand and the arm, looked at the wound, applied a cooling lotion, and dexterously wound on a fresh bandage. It seemed very little, Mary Hope thought dully, for a doctor to come all the way ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... that does remain," said Betty, not unpleasantly at all, and still with her gentle air of mere unprejudiced speculation, "is that, if a man or woman is properly ill-treated—PROPERLY—not in any amateurish way—they reach the point of not caring in the least—nothing matters, but that they must get away from the horror of the unbearable thing —never to see or hear of it again is heaven enough to make anything else a thing to smile at. But one could settle the other point by experimenting. Suppose ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... that his constitutional energy was not very great, and needed to be husbanded. He was quite aware that he was not what would be called a cultivated person, that his knowledge both of art and music was feeble and amateurish; but he saw, or thought he saw, that people of wide cultivation often sacrificed in intensity what they gained in width; and as he became gradually aware that the strongest faculty he possessed was the literary faculty, ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... irrelevant ends, or if his powers do not admit of such perversion, he will have no use for them whatever. He will take some subordinate place in the world as a rather less than average man and, it may be, find the leisure to give just an amateurish ineffectual expression of the thing ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... was at an age when he was beginning to talk a little and walk a little and take a great interest in things. His walking was a bit amateurish, and his speech rather hard to follow unless you had the key to it. But nobody could have denied that his walk, though staggery, was a genuine walk, and his speech, though limited, genuine speech, within the ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... gift to beauty; gold but tempts the venal soul; Therefore, 'tis a song I send her on this amateurish scroll. Wind a page of saffron parchment round the white papyrus there, Polish well with careful pumice every silvery ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... Arty had guided Annie, the bashful maid, in serving the vegetable soup, and had coaxed her into bringing Mr. Wrenn a napkin, she took charge of the conversation, a luxury which she would never have intrusted to her flock's amateurish efforts. Mr. Poppins, said she, had spoken of meeting a friend of Mr. Wrenn's; Mr. Morton, was it not? A very nice man, she understood. Was it true that Mr. Wrenn and Mr. Morton had gone clear across the Atlantic on ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... the critics said,—only they've got a set of phrases for expressing it. They said it was amateurish, that it was in ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... She was still laughing, but her partner wore a grave face, and his eyes were lowered; he followed the intricate movements of the dance with some difficulty. To Lorelei he appeared disappointingly amateurish. Then a ripple of merriment, growing into a guffaw, advised her that something out of the ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... but for the moment France is the centre of your art, and you cannot remain at a distance from it! The French have organised their knowledge; it is available for all who come. Ours is still floating and amateurish—" ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Devonshire, now first printed (from Eg. MS., 1994[1]), is distinctly a well-written piece, the work of a practised hand. There is nothing amateurish in the workmanship; the reader is not doomed to soar into extravagances at one moment, and sink into flatnesses at another. Ample opportunities were offered for displays of boisterous riot, but the playwright's even-balanced mind was not to be disturbed. ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... be a little more difficult now than formerly. Of course," he added, "we have a certain sprinkling of humanitarians even here; the kind of man, I mean, who stands aside in fervent prayer while his daughter is being ravished by the Bulgars, and then comes forward with some amateurish attempt at First Aid, and probably makes a mess of it. But Italians as a whole—well, we are lovers of violent and disreputable methods; it is our heritage from mediaeval times. The only thing that annoys the ordinary native ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... generally far advanced when Beeching and Harry started in to clear the muddle of their amateurish night's camp, with all its preposterous litter of bedding, utensils (always unclean), and other wasteful truck such as no men can afford to carry in the northland. But the day would be half done by the time their ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... were, and their lack of foresight might well shock an oldtimer like Murphy. But he would have been still more shocked had he seen what poor amateurish preparations for the coming winter another young tenderfoot had been making. If he had seen the place which Jack Corey had chosen for his winter hide-out I think he would have taken a fit; and if he had seen the little pile ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... fussily out of Ashencombe station, leaving Magda, Gillian, and Coppertop, together with sundry trunks and suitcases, in undisputed possession of the extremely amateurish-looking platform. Magda ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... chose. It even seemed to me as I gazed that it was slowing down, out of spite. I longed to feel its pulses with a stop-watch in the other hand, and make sure. Could it be that, after all, Alb had changed his mind, and meant to betray me? No, it must be a trick of my amateurish fancy. ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... from the same phase of life as the proposition it explains. As Calhoun was discussing governmental regulation he supposed an example from majority rule. In the next the topic is copyright, so the illustration is not taken from patents. In introducing your own examples avoid the trite, amateurish expression ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... her words and then the audience became silent as the littlest scholar of the school rose and delivered the address of welcome. There followed music and more recitations, all amateurish, but they brought feelings of pride to many mothers and fathers who listened, smiling, to "Our John" or "Our Mary" ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... be amateurish at its best, for where could she possibly have learned to dance? What instruction could she, living in this out-of-the-way corner of the world, have received in the art? As for local enthusiasm, it ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... disposed, not on principle or from any divine inspiration but because his bodily organs are performing their proper functions. His judgment is not warped by the black humours of indigestion. He perceives that natural laws, however harsh they seem, are never so harsh as our amateurish attempts to circumvent them. Modern philanthropy is an attempt of this nature. It is crass emotionalism. Regarded from the point of view of the race, your philanthropy is a ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... the most direct questions about his occupation and his activities. His chief occupation was being the well provided heir of a capable lawyer, and his activities in the light of her inquiries struck him as being light and a trifle amateurish, qualities he had never felt as any drawback about them before. So that he had to rely rather upon aspirations and the possibility, under proper inspiration, of a more actively serviceable ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... that morning was by no means light, for Laura was fond of pictures, in a frivolous amateurish kind of way; and she ran from one canvas to another, like a fickle-minded bee that is bewildered by the myriad blossoms of a boundless parterre. But she fixed upon a picture which she said she preferred to anything she had seen in ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... "That's only amateurish and besides reprehensible," said the Tennessee Shad. "No, the highest principle in finance, the real cream de la creme, is to make others pay you for what you want them ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... anywhere in the world are you going to find me a woman who is my equal, who is my true mate? You will bring me cultivated governesses, or titled ladies who preside over salons, or anemic little literary women with their imitative verse or their amateurish political dreams. No, thank you. I am a man. I am a sick, sad man. I need a kind, beautiful woman to love and take care of me. She must be beautiful, remember, as well as kind— and she must be not merely ...
— Old Love Stories Retold • Richard Le Gallienne
... weakness is that if unduly prolonged it tends to deaden the spirit of offence. This is a truth so vital that some authorities in their eagerness to enforce it have travestied it into the misleading maxim, "That attack is the best defence." Hence again an amateurish notion that defence is always stupid or pusillanimous, leading always to defeat, and that what is called "the military spirit" means nothing but taking the offensive. Nothing is further from the teaching or the practice of the best masters. ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... me. Perhaps in this, however, I am not alone. The feeling is in part, I think, due to one's new surroundings, though chiefly to the facial expressions of the people, with which one is not familiar and probably does not quite understand. One may be a student of human character in only a very amateurish way, and yet without much difficulty guess by the twinkle in the eye, or the quivering of the underlip, whether a person is pleased or annoyed, but when a strange land is visited one is apt to be at first often deceived by appearances; and if, as has happened in my case, the ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... "Raffles," he replied with a chuckle. "He looks like an amateurish and very callow Raffles. He's ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... only a very small fraction of the population. Moreover, the expense of trade schools is enormous, and those who are best able to judge assure me that, inasmuch as the work which they do is not done under conditions of pecuniary success or failure, it is apt to be too amateurish and speculative, and that it does not prepare the worker for the real conditions under which he will have to carry out his work. In any case, the fact that the schools are very expensive, and the fact that they are accessible only to a small portion of the population, seem to me to ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley |
