"Artistry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... others. Thus, the starling is more ready to borrow other birds' notes than the thrush, while the marsh-warbler borrows so much that his singing is mainly composed of borrowings. The nightingale is, perhaps, an exception. His voice excels in power and purity of sound, and what we may call his artistry is exceptionally perfect; this may account for the fact that he does not borrow from other birds' songs. I should say, from my own observation, that all songsters are interested in the singing of other species, or at all events, in certain notes, especially the ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... said a thing or two in the modern vein, affected the socialism of William Morris and learnt some Swinburne by heart, it was out of a conscious wildness. He did not wish to be a prig. He had taken a far more genuine interest in the artistry of ritual. ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... is being looked forward to expectantly by those who admire the vital and distinguished artistry of his work. The author, it will be remembered, was employed in a firm of ginger-beer bottlers before he took to literature, and Mr. WELLS, who contributes a Preface, dwells happily on the stimulating and phosphorescent quality which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... Ten days later a pair of massive golden pepper-pots came to me, and, as the King had intimated would be the case, there was nothing about them to show whence they had come. Taken altogether, they were the most exquisitely wrought specimens of the goldsmith's artistry that I had ever seen, and upon their under side was inscribed in a cipher which no one unfamiliar with the affair of that midnight fracas would even have observed—'A.R. to C.C.'—Alphonso Rex to Carrington Cox being, of course, the significance ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... it was so long ago. How young I was—turned twenty-four! And after that I had learned the bitter lesson that even deathless grief may die; and I had laughed again and done my share of philandering with the pretty, ferocious moths that fluttered around the light of my fortune and artistry; and after that, in turn, I had retired disgusted from the lists of woman, and gone on long lance-breaking adventures in the realm of mind. And here I was, on board the Elsinore, unhorsed by my encounters with the problems of the ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... he sat brooding in the quiet library of the club. He had tried to eat; but all the artistry of the famous French chef could not conjure up an appetite. Men passed by him, glancing curiously at the usually jovial companion; the twisted, drawn expression surprised them. He tried to read a magazine; the ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... were he rich in good traditions, would pause in admiration of the pure collegiate-gothic style of the low hall that extended north and south three hundred feet in either direction from the base of the great tower; he would note the artistry of the iron-braced, oaken doors, flanked at the lintels by inscrutable faces of carven stone, of the windows with their diamonded panes of milky glass peeping through a wilderness of encroaching vines. Nor would this be all. Had he ever viewed the quadrangles of Oxford and Cambridge, he might ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... paler and more frail than was his habit, which is not wonderful, considering that he had been four weeks abed while his wound was mending. He was dressed, again by the hands of the incomparable Leduc, in a deshabille of some artistry. A dark-blue dressing-gown of flowered satin fell open at the waist; disclosing sky-blue breeches and pearl-colored stockings, elegant shoes of Spanish leather with red heels and diamond buckles. His chestnut hair had been dressed with ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... bold conception Outcarried with that artistry for which The author's name is guarantee. We have No hesitation in commending to our readers ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... hereditary craftsmanship is proving only too easy a prey to the new industrial system. It is a sad reflection that the country which, owing to her long period of seclusion, had the opportunity of applying to all the things of common life so remarkable a skill and artistry, should be so little conscious of the pace at which her industrial rake's progress is proceeding, so insensible to the degree to which she is prodigally sacrificing that which, when it is lost to her, can never be recovered. It is no doubt true that ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... it was I had penned those poems that were the marvel of the Court, she must of necessity have guessed my secret, for to such quick wits as hers it must have been plain at once that they were no vapourings of artistry, but the hot expressions of a burning truth. It was in that—in their supreme sincerity—that their chief ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... because the profession holds that which would appeal to a great many different ideas as to what a complete life consists of. Engineering as a profession is scientific, idealistic, constructive, profitable. It is combative—in the sense that it shapes nature's forces—and it calls for a sense of artistry in its practitioners. Added to these, it embraces a certain kind of profound knowledge the possession of which is always a source of pride to ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton
... in those qualities which are distinctive of his particular art and which separate it most sharply from the other arts. In that sense we are right to call Frans Hals a greater painter than Raphael. But if we estimate a man's artistry by the same standard, whatever the form of art in which it expresses itself, rating him by his power of co-ordinating and composing notes or forms or colors into a harmonious and beautiful unity, ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... as the greatest. Within his limits he was as pure a craftsman as the great John Sebastian in his. The difference between the two is the difference of their ages and races, not the difference of their artistry. For few composers can match with their own Debussy's perfection of taste, his fineness of sensibility, his poetic rapture and profound awareness of beauty. Few have been more graciously rounded and balanced than he, have been, like him, ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... that I am of the same make as the brothers composing those mosaics, and trying to imagine what the intricate patterns will do at the Resurrection Day, I cannot command myself. Neither am I supported by the sight of some skeletons, the raw material of that grewsome artistry, deposited whole in their coffins in the niches next the ground, though their skulls smile so reassuringly from their cowls; their cheeriness cannot make me like them. But my companion seemed to be merely interested; and I fancied her deciding that it all quite came up to her expectations, ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... first period Shakespeare was often unable to give his puppets individual life; in maturity he was interested in the puppets themselves and used them with considerable artistry; in the third period he had grown a little weary of them and in "The Tempest" showed himself inclined, just as Goethe in later life was inclined, to turn his ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... about the 'Prince of Crooks'? Artistry in crime, wasn't it, you said?" They were quoting from his editorials of bygone days, a half dozen reporters of rival papers, grinning and joshing him good-naturedly, seemingly quite unaffected by what lay within arm's reach of ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... as Brent, both in his real character of detective and in the assumed futility of his disguise as a genial idiot, was equally excellent, and again proved his gift for quick-change artistry. Miss MARY JERROLD'S Fraeulein Schroeder was extraordinarily Teutonic in all but her quiet humour, which she seemed to have caught from the country of her adoption. The Fritz of Mr. HENRY EDWARDS was another delightful sketch, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... will demand, and will develop, a far completer discipline and tradition of honour. Against the development and persistence of all such honourable codes now, against every attempt at personal nobility, at a new chivalry, at sincere artistry, our present individualist system wages pitiless warfare, says in effect, "Fools you are! Look at Rockefeller! Look at Pierpont Morgan! Get money! All your sacrifices only go to their enrichment. You cannot serve humanity however much you seek to do so. They block your way, enormously receptive ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... named. Occasionally in the flood of short stories appears one that compels attention. Aldrich's "Marjorie Daw," Edward Everett Hale's "The Man without a Country," Stockton's "The Lady or the Tiger,"—each of these impresses us so forcibly by its delicate artistry or appeal to patriotism or whimsical ending that we hail it as a new classic, forgetting that the term "classic" carries with it the implication of something old and proved, safe from change or criticism. Undoubtedly a few of our recent stories ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... Victorians, upholders of the ethics of Mr. Pickwick, and the artistic theories of Bulwer-Lytton. Here are the bogies of outworn conservatism, numbered like a football team. Mark their names, and know from now on that most of the books that you have supposed were solid in artistry and mature in thought, though perhaps novel in tone or in method, were written ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... of those who write of their childhood is that unconscious artistry will steal or sneak in to erase unseemly lines and blots, to retouch, and colour, and shade and falsify the picture. The poor, miserable autobiographer naturally desires to make his personality as interesting to the reader as it appears to himself. I feel this strongly in reading other ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... elements. Herein is its real wonder, for the more carefully one analyzes the beauty of the Yosemite Valley, the more difficult it is to conceive its ensemble the chance of Nature's functioning rather than the master product of supreme artistry. ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... She saw him on lonely scouts, or in the midst of the yelling, Indians at Salt Meadows, when of his command he returned with one man in ten. And in the picture she had of him, in the physical semblance she had made of him, was reflected his spiritual nature, reflected by her worshipful artistry in form and feature and expression—his bravery, his quick temper, his impulsive championship, his madness of wrath in a righteous cause, his warm generosity and swift forgiveness, and his chivalry that epitomized codes and ideals primitive as the days of ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... now flashed his lantern over a low, timbered door, studded with ancient nail heads in a design whose artistry did not arrest her. From a peg beside it he took down a key of brass, fitted it to the lock and turned it with a deliberation maddening ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... off Mr. Haas's brow, had not so much as whitened, or the slight paunchiness enhanced even the moving-over of a button. When Mr. Haas smiled, his mustache, which ended in a slight but not waxed flourish, lifted to reveal a white-and-gold smile of the artistry of careful dentistry, and when, upon occasion, he threw back his head to laugh, the roof of his mouth was ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... sketch called "The Father" is the supreme example of Bjoernson's artistry in this kind. There are only a few pages in all, but they embody the tragedy of a lifetime. The little work is a literary gem of the purest water, and it reveals the whole secret of the author's genius, as displayed in his early tales. It is by these tales of peasant ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... first rank, and is so full of matter that more than one article would be requisite to present its whole scope. All that I shall attempt to deal with here will be the chief aspects—its artistry and its thought. ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... is a woman in the case, somehow or other. This woman is closely connected with the firebug. As for the firebug, whoever it may be, he performs his crimes with cold premeditation and, as De Quincey said, in a spirit of pure artistry. The lust of fire propels him, and he uses his art to secure wealth. The man may be a tool in the hands of others, however. It's unsafe to generalise on the meagre facts we now have. Oh, well, there is nothing we can do just yet. Let's take a walk, get an early dinner, ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... poet's hate of their wickedness. It was people of this sort, grandees of the town, Browning fancies, who again "hinder loving," breaking in upon the poet and seizing him unawares forsooth at this intimate moment of loving artistry. "Chancing to turn my head," Dante continues, "I perceived that some were standing beside me to whom I should have given courteous greeting, and that they were observing what I did: also I learned afterwards that ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... whole, the feather is one of the most perfect products of nature because the material used is the one best thing throughout, the engineering principles involved are without fault, the mathematical plan is precise, the construction is perfect, the coloring and artistry are flawless, and there is not one single point about it ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... their artistry, highest place being given to the tattooers, the carvers, the designers, and builders of canoes, the architects, doctors, and warriors. Men and women rose to influence and chiefly rank only by deeds that won popular admiration. These people were hero-worshippers, ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... for the fact that artists are men when they are not women," Duff said. "I don't believe their behaviour is a bit more affected by their artistry than it would be by a knowledge of ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... prompted that "half-mast" matter, and that if we could get just at that process in the child's mind, we should have something very valuable for all concerned. But we can only approximate the inner pictures. The quality of impressionism in artistry endeavours to do that—to hurl the fleeting things into some kind of lasting expression. The greatest expressionist can only approximate, even after he has emerged from the prison-house and perfected his instrument through a life of struggle. His highest ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... land of passion; and therefore at once, for its ardours of the heart—seen not in love alone but in carven capital and on frescoed wall—and for its casuistries of intellect, Browning looks to Italy for the material best fitted to his artistry. Between that group of personages whom we may call his characters of passion and that group made up of his characters of intelligence, lie certain figures of peculiar interest, by birth and inheritance children of the East, and by culture partakers, in a greater or a less degree, of the ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... than all goddesses displayed this gift of distinction; yet was she not too Diana-ish to be unapproachable. On the contrary, she blew about him as free as the wind.... That, in a muddle-headed way, was his impression of her: a subtle mingling of nature and artistry. On every side of her he beheld perfection. Physically, she was as elemental as the primitive woman superbly developed by daily conditions of hardship and danger; spiritually, as elemental as the elves and fairies; and over her mind played ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... dance and melody were separable if not alien features; and thus they demanded the composed and recited ballad, to the harm and ultimate ruin of that spontaneous song for the festal, dancing crowd. Still, even when artistry had found a footing in ballad verse, it long remained mere agent and mouthpiece for the folk; the communal character of the ballad was maintained in form and matter. Events of interest were sung in almost contemporary and entirely improvised verse; and the resulting ballads, carried over the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... and to marshal his own counter-arguments. But in Marcolina he had to cope with an opponent who was little inferior to himself in extent of knowledge and mental acumen; and who, moreover, excelled him, not perhaps in fluency of speech, but at any rate in artistry of presentation and clarity of expression. The passages Casanova had selected as demonstrating Voltaire's spirit of mockery, his scepticism, and his atheism, were adroitly interpreted by Marcolina as testifying to the Frenchman's scientific genius, to his skill as an author, ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... So great is the subtlety, the variety, the art, that they never fail of their intended effect. They are justifiable because they justify themselves—partly by their lofty and dignified content, partly of course by their sheer artistry. But when the same thing is attempted by unskilful hands it fails ingloriously. We say it has "a palpable design upon us," and balk. Gibbon and Burke, as inheritors of the seventeenth-century tradition, sometimes fell into the ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... especially in the novels previous to 1905, the conscientious artistry, the compactness of structure, and the unity of tone commonly associated with poetry. What other qualities characteristic of poetry ...
— Contemporary American Literature - Bibliographies and Study Outlines • John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert
... response to the sudden repentance and despair I felt after Messrs. Stone and Kimball had published the book in exquisite form with a beautiful frontispiece by Will H. Low. In any case, it is now too late to try and disabuse the minds of those who care for the little piece of artistry, and since 1894, when it was published, I have matured sufficiently in life's academy not to be too unduly sensitive either as to the merit or demerit of my work. There is, after all, an unlovable kind of vanity in acute self-criticism —as though it mattered deeply ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... commenced their career well before 1600. Just as in the drama, therefore, something of the Elizabethan spirit remains in the lyric poetry; yet here also before many years there is a perceptible change; the Elizabethan spontaneous joyousness largely vanishes and is replaced by more self-conscious artistry or thought. ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... them had certainly not written the other two. The letter which Audrey had handed to Mr. Dennie was penned in the style commonly known as commercial—plain, commonplace, utterly lacking in the characteristics which are supposed to denote imagination and a sense of artistry. It was the sort of caligraphy which one comes across every day in shops and offices and banks—there was nothing in any upstroke, downstroke or letter which lifted it from the very ordinary. But the other two letters were evidently written by a man of literary and artistic sense, possessing ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... dazzled by the consummate artistry of Miss Dabtree's clinging toilettes, the built-up luxuriousness of her hair, the pink and white complexion, the stenciled eyebrows, and the Lady Vere de Vere attitudes to dare to entertain ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... Fourth Edition. 'In "The Gateless Barrier" it is at once evident that, whilst Lucas Malet has preserved her birthright of originality, the artistry, the actual writing, is above even the high level of the books that were ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... should the immorality of the artist's life be laid at the doors of fair Bohemia?) The artist's life is wrapped up in making his readings of master works more significant, more eloquent, more beautiful. He is interested in everything that contributes to his artistry, whether it be literature, science, history, art or the technic of his own interpretative development. He penetrates the various mystic problems which surround piano playing by the infallible process of persistent study and reflection. The psychical phase of his work ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... the possession of a cook whose artistry was beyond question, if the same could not be said of the guests to whom she so frequently ministered. She was a descendant of the French, that race which makes everything tend towards development of the soul, and consequently looks upon a meal as something of a sacrament. She prepared ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... mean, and to the moral reason. Unreal as such a thought is, a glimpse of some such feeling toward nature is discernible in the work of some impressionist landscape painters, who present colour and atmosphere and space without human intention, as a kind of artistry of science, having the same sort of elemental substance and interest that scientific truth has as an object of knowledge,—a curious form of ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... never empty. Always a little red flame licked the smoke fog before him like the tongue of an angered snake. He was getting on in years but in all his full life his technic had never been so perfect, his artistry of death so flawless, as on this day which prefaced the closing of his chapter. The bodies of his enemies clogged the space about their cannon; the rivulets of red trickled from the heap across the ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... remains in the picture when she is not singing or speaking. Mary Garden knows how to listen on the stage. She does not need to move or speak to make herself a part of the action and she is never guilty of such an offence against artistry as that committed by Tamagno, who, according to Victor Maurel, allowed a scene in Otello to drop to nothing while he prepared himself to ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... expenses while he trailed Overland and Collie. They had even guaranteed him protection from the law—such as it was on the Mojave. He had every reason to be grateful to them, but he was just a step or two above them in criminal artistry. He had been a "killer." Like the lone wolf that calls the pack to the hunt, he turned instinctively to Gophertown, a settlement in the hills not unknown to a few of the authorities, but unmolested by them. The atmosphere of Gophertown was not ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... flannel shirt, still open on his throat, was of good quality. The trousers that were thrust into high laced boots were not so new as to attract undue attention, but they fitted him. The note of carelessness was maintained—but with artistry to accentuate the extraordinary effect of physique and feature. He ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... the floor when he was excessively annoyed, so that she went with her head bound for a year thereafter, are excused on the ground of his general decency. And indeed he was a lovable old boy, and the simple and unselfconscious artistry with which the author develops his character, and that of his daughter-in-law, SOFYA NIKOLAYEVNA, delights the jaded literary palate. AKSAKOFF has a quite singular power of selecting just the incident, the phrase, the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various
... room are white, and are relieved here and there by the most beautiful tapestries. The few furnishings of the room express beauty through the artistry that is born ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... of the aerial martins, must always be a principal element in the beautiful effect. Nor do I know a building where Nature has done more in enhancing the loveliness of man's work with her added colouring. The way too in which the colours are distributed is an example of Nature's most perfect artistry; on the lower, heavier buttressed parts, where the darkest hues should be, we find the browns and rust-reds of the minute aerial alga, mixed with the greys of lichen, these darker stainings extending ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... of many of their ills. Upon another occasion and by daylight, the warriors would doubtless have leaped to attack him, but at night, and this night of all others, when they were wrought to such a pitch of nervous dread by the uncanny artistry of their witch-doctor, they were helpless with terror. As one man they turned and fled, scattering for their huts, as Tarzan advanced. For a moment one and one only held his ground. It was the witch-doctor. More than half self-hypnotized into a belief in his own charlatanry ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... that I quite agree with that," said Ashton-Kirk. He lighted a cigar and its smoke drifted across the high ceilinged room. "Crimes are growing no fewer; and if we must have crimes I should personally prefer their perpetrators to have some little artistry." ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... himself to be flushing like a girl. It was an error of artistry that he had committed; a heinous crime! "So silly of ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... persuades the captain to share the mate's illusion that 8 deg. 20'—The Shadow Line (DENT)—is possessed by the dead scoundrel. I found the book less interesting as a yarn than as an example of the astonishingly conscious and perfect artistry of this really great master of the ways of men and words. Mr. CONRAD never made me believe that the new captain would go so near sharing his mate's superstitious panic (which is perhaps because I know little of sailor-men save what he has taught ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various
... a lack of artistry that administers the most numerous defeats to the novice free lance. It is a lack of market judgment. When he has completed his manuscript he sits down and hopefully mails it out to the first market that strikes his fancy. He shoots into the dark, ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... Butcher relates that the average reader who patronizes the New York public library prefers Conan Doyle's detective stories to any others. Quite naturally. There is more artistry in Poe, and the tales about the Frenchman, Arsene Lupin, are ten times more ingenious than Doyle's; but Doyle has infused the adventures of Sherlock Holmes with the undefinable something known as romance, and that has ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... of personal character, even the moderns will agree that many-sidedness is a merit and a merit that may easily be overlooked. This balance and universality has been the vision of many groups of men in many ages. It was the Liberal Education of Aristotle; the jack-of-all-trades artistry of Leonardo da Vinci and his friends; the august amateurishness of the Cavalier Person of Quality like Sir William Temple or the great Earl of Dorset. It has appeared in literature in our time in the most ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... gleams above the glow; For that high glory of the impartial sun,— The golden noonings big with promised life; The matchless pageant of the evening skies. The wide-flung gates,—the gleams of Paradise,— Supremest visions of Thine artistry; The sweet, soft gloaming, and the friendly stars; The vesper stillness, and the creeping shades; The moon's pale majesty; the pulsing dome, Wherein we feel Thy great heart throbbing near; For sweet laborious days and restful nights; For work to do, and strength to do the work; ...
— Bees in Amber - A Little Book Of Thoughtful Verse • John Oxenham
... couple of critical Americans picking their steps, the walls tattered and befouled breast-high, dampness and decay striking in on your heart, and the scene overbowed by these heavenly frescoes, moulering there in their airy artistry! It's poignant; it provokes tears; it tells so of the waste of effort. Something human seems to pant beneath the grey pall of time and to implore you to rescue it, to pity it, to stand by it somehow. But you ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... with Tom's sweeping damnation of American novelists and poets. He enjoyed both Vachel Lindsay and Booth Tarkington, and admired the conscientious, if slender, artistry of Edgar Lee Masters. ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... that pass the echoing minster-gate, and of the clamorous daws that fall asleep in the ancient belfry to the sound of the drowsy chimes. Rossetti, in so many ways a continuator of Keats' artistry, devoted to Chatterton the first of his sonnet-group, "Five English Poets,"[29] of which the sestet ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... something he had not expected to see—a real play, with real magic to it, such magic as all his cunning stage artifice, all the studied artistry of his fearfully and wonderfully salaried stellar attachments somehow missed achieving. He tried afterwards to explain to Carol Clay, his favorite star, just what the quality of the magic was, but somehow he could not get it into words. It wasn't exactly wordable perhaps. It was something that rendered ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... to let well enough alone after enlarging the house, laying turf, and planting shrubs and flowers. He found The Hollies a ramshackle place, and left it even more so, but with a new note of artistry and several unexpectedly charming vistas. Thus, the big double window opened straight into an irregular garden which merged insensibly into a sloping lawn bounded by a river-pool. The bank on the other side of the stream rose sharply and was well wooded. Above the ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... River, and where the coral souls had manifestly indulged a thousand fancies in contour and color. After the million years of their labor in throwing up the bastion of the reef, with all its architectural niceties, they had found in the repose behind it opportunities for the indulgence of their artistry. They were the sculptors, painters, and gardeners ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... in such topics; he knew the singers and the musicians of the world, and, which was much more than that, he was himself of them; humble, no doubt, in circumstances and achievement as yet, but clearly to Michael of the blood royal of artistry. That was the essential thing about him as regards his relations with his fellow-traveller, though, when next morning the spires of Cologne and the swift river of his Fatherland came into sight, he burst out into a sort of rhapsody of patriotism ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... death, the tragedy of these three moves to its climax in the forest is the work of an artist in emotion, such as by this time we know Mr. Walpole to be. The trouble was that I had at the moment no wish for artistry. To sum up, I am left with the impression that an uncommonly good short story rather tiresomely distracted my attention ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol 150, February 9, 1916 • Various
... she had seen that. So they were sculptor's hands. What a revelation, and what a pity that he was blind! She fell to wondering if he really was good at his work, or whether he merely fancied he was and hewed away without real artistry, deceived by his blindness. She studied his face in repose. Then her mind came back to his hands, and she felt a sudden sense of displeasure, a little chagrin, and some wonder, accompanied by the feeling that she wished he had not carried her. She did not quite know why, yet the dependence ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... proverb, "Ars est celare artem," and oblivious of the fact that, to be vital, to grip, such drama is in every respect as dependent on imagination, construction, selection, and elimination—the main laws of artistry—as ever was the romantic or rhapsodic play: The question of naturalistic technique will bear, indeed, much more study than has yet been given to it. The aim of the dramatist employing it is obviously to create such an illusion of actual life passing on the stage as to compel the spectator to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... touch Mark Twain. He read but few novels at most, and, skilful as was the artistry of the English favorite, he found his characters artificialities—ingeniously contrived puppets rather than human beings, and, on the whole, overrated by their creator. Diana of the Crossways was read aloud, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... miraculous power had been restored in a moment." Paul and I often exchanged ideas on Shakespeare. He was lost in wonder at Shakespeare's creative power, his inexhaustible fertility, the universality of his range, the perfection of his portraiture, his mastery over all moods, his cunning artistry in the use of words, his exuberant imagery and effortless ease. He made a pilgrimage to Stratford-on-Avon to see with his own eyes the spots and scenes amid which Shakespeare's youth and declining years were spent. The smiling beauty of Stratford ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... Speed the garment! It may chance, Long hereafter, meet the glance, Of Oenone; when her lord, Now thy Paris, shall go tow'rd Ida, at his last sad end, Seeking her, his early friend, Who alone can cure his ill, Of all who love him, if she will. It were fitting she should see In that hour thine artistry, And her husband's speechless corse In the ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... Hasselaer and his wife Geertruyt van Erp, by Hals, in one of the cabinets, are painted with such consummate artistry that you gasp. The thin paint, every stroke of which sings out, sets you to thinking of John Sargent and how he has caught the trick of brush-work—at a slower tempo. But not even Sargent could have produced the collar and cuffs. A Whistler, a full-length, in another gallery, looks ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... to steal the kine was laid at the door of the Black Colonel, rightly so, and when he heard of it and its failure he swore at Red Murdo, saying he had lost all a henchman and provider's artistry. He was one of those men, very numerous in the world, who could ill-support a failure made by himself, and could not bear it at all when another failed ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... the man whose self-expressions aroused the widest interest and touched the tenderest chords. To be called perhaps an alien, and certainly no monumental German character, Heine nevertheless made use, with consummate artistry, of the fulness of German culture at a time when many of the after-born staggered under the weight of a heritage ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... me like angry hornets. Our red-headed Kate was no scholar, but at any rate her reading was more useful in our little world than mine; for this was where she learned the artistry of the dainties and devices Jack Dobson and I were so fond of. And if I did not soon learn to do something well, even were it only how to farm my five hundred acres to a profit, Kate's cooking would ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... and particular country to which the artist belongs (it is doubtful how long the latter distinction will continue to exist). (3) Every artist, as a servant of art, has to help the cause of art (this is the element of pure artistry, which is constant in all ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... wind that blows from the atmosphere created by the Frenchman's objective artistry is by the Russian commingled with the warm breath of a great human sympathy. Maupassant never tells where his sympathies lie, and you don't know; you only guess. Chekhov does not tell you where his sympathies lie, either, but you know all the same; you don't have to guess. ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... ranging in age from thirty-five to sixty-five gathered about the board in a private dining-room of heavily carved black walnut, with pictures of elder citizens of Chicago on the walls and an attempt at artistry in stained glass in the windows. There were short and long men, lean and stout, dark and blond men, with eyes and jaws which varied from those of the tiger, lynx, and bear to those of the fox, the tolerant mastiff, and the ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... Although the grown people in sight were indeed to him as walking trees, his dramas were accomplished principally by suggestion and symbol. His "Whoas" and "Bings" were delivered in a husky whisper, and his equestrianism was established by action mostly of the mind, the accompanying artistry of the feet ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... and served two young roosters for the evening meal with a finesse that cried for tribute. As he replaced the evening lamp on the cleared table in the big living room he listened to my fulsome praise of his artistry as Marshal Foch might hear me say that I considered him a rather good strategist. Lew Wee heard but gave no sign, as one set above the petty adulation of compelled worshipers. Yet I knew his secret soul made festival ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... discovers a similar absence from Huxley's work of the second contributory to the total effect produced by written words. Anything that may be said about absence of artistry in the use of words, may be said as to absence of artistry in building of the words into sentences, of the sentences into paragraphs and pages. In the first place, actual infelicities of sentence-building are frequent. Clause is piled on clause, qualifying phrases ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... is that the drama, when privily read, seems hard if not heavy in its diction, and to be so inornate, though by no means correspondingly simple, as to render any comparison between it and the dramatic work of Shakspere out of the question. But when acted, the artistry of the play is revealed. Its intense naturalness is due in great part to the stern concision of the lines, where no word is wasted, where every sentence is fraught with the utmost it can convey. The outlines which disturbed us by their ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... known to me are short stories told with such sweet austerity of art as in the Gospel parables—I can even imagine a high and learned artist in words, after rejecting them as divine on many grounds, surrendering in the end to their divine artistry. But for high seriousness combined with architectonic treatment on a great scale; for sublimity of conception, working malleably within a structure which is simple, severe, complete, having a beginning, a middle and an end; ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... contact with the man, which almost hypnotized those who knew him, from the more abiding charm which is in his writings: the revelation of a character the most attractive of his generation. Rarely, if ever before, have the qualities of artistry and fraternal fellowship been united in a man of letters to such a degree; most often they are found apart, the gods choosing to award ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... of human nature both masculine and feminine, and a keen apprehension of a phase of our social conditions, the book is a piece of rare artistry."—Phila. Evening Tel. ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... body of his writing which does not, in some degree, propose and enforce a definite poetic concept. Not elsewhere in his earlier work has MacDowell marshalled the materials of his art with so confident an artistry as he exhibits in this concerto. In substance the work is not extraordinary. The manner derives something from Grieg, more from Liszt, and there is comparatively little disclosure of personality. But the manipulation is, throughout, the work of ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... Harrietta unless you realize the deference with which she was treated in her own little sphere? If the world at large did not acclaim her, there was no lack of appreciation on the part of her fellow workers. They knew artistry when they saw it. Though she had never attained stardom, she still had the distinction that usually comes only to a star back stage. Unless she actually was playing in support of a first-magnitude star, her dressing ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... which greatly to the men's disgust mysteriously disappeared as soon as made; for when we indented for them in the trenches we received no more than 17 for the whole Brigade. Presumably they went to beautify the corps line, which was such a model of perfected trench artistry that it seemed almost a pity that it was never likely to be used. In this wood in company with a few fallow deer, a Navvies' Battalion lived under canvas, who performed most useful work in digging flints and repairing the roads. In age they ranged ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... McKay gives evidence that he has passed beyond the danger which threatens many of the new Negro poets—the danger of allowing the purely polemical phases of the race problem to choke their sense of artistry. ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... upon his Cockney birth. In the realm of Best Sellers, however, the hero of May Sinclair's novel, The Divine Fire, who is presumably modeled after Keats, is a lower class Londoner, presented with the most unflinching realism that the author can achieve. Consummate indeed is the artistry with which she enables him to keep the sympathy of his readers, even while he commits the unpardonable sin of dropping his h's. [Footnote: Another historical poet whose lowly origin is stressed in poetry is Marlowe, the son of a cobbler. See Alfred Noyes, At the ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... each descent. But his heart was not in the work. He hit whatever stone chanced to be nearest. There was no cunning selection in his hammer, nor any of these oddities of stroke which a curious and interested worker would have essayed for the mere trial of his artistry. ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... all. The amazed faces that stared at him, their passing moments of disbelief, their repressed but at times visible betrayals of horror, the steadiness of their eyes, the tenseness of their lips—all added to what he might have called, at another time, the dramatic artistry of his ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... I came to know Julot and Gigolette, And we would talk and drink a bock, and smoke a cigarette. And I would meditate upon the artistry of crime, And he would tell of cracking cribs and cops and doing time; Or else when he was flush of funds he'd carelessly explain He'd biffed some bloated bourgeois on the border of the Seine. So gentle and polite he was, just like a man of peace, And not a desperado and ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... him to the North Station to catch the nine o'clock train. She was irrepressibly the child, for the time being, and in her cheeks bloomed roses so colorful that Gertrude Merriman accused her of painting, while knowing well enough that joy needs no artistry. ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... self-sketched, and therefore peculiar to herself. In each of these mental houses of God there is revealed the same disposition, and that disposition is necessarily identical with that expressed in her profane artistry,[15] for the form of religion is as much a matter of national taste as is that which is embodied in literature, architecture, and painting. And this taste, as expressed in religion, isolates Brahmanic and Hinduistic India, placing her apart, both from the gloom of Egypt and the grace ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... Nature; for "Nature" is no more than the beautiful and classical word which recalls us to the objective spectacle which is the ultimate revelation of the complex vision. Nature is the supreme artist; but the apex-point of her artistry is nothing less than the apex-point of the artistry of ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... test of artistry is the gallows. Perfect behaviour at an enforced and public scrutiny may properly be esteemed an effect of talent—an effect which has not too often been rehearsed. There is no reason why the Scoundrel, fairly beaten at the ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... by nature the most brilliantly endowed woman he had ever met, the most naturally perceptive and artistic, albeit there was a touch of gorgeousness to the inherent artistry which time, training and experience would have chastened. Would have chastened? Was it not, then, chastened? Looking at her now, he knew that it was not. It was still there, he felt; but how much else was also there—of charm, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... gum-tree. It is the national tree of this curious continent, the oldest and the youngest of the countries of the earth. Some find the gum-tree "dull," because it has no flaring, flaunting brightness. But it is not dull to those who have eyes to see. Its spiritual lightness of form, its quiet artistry of colour, weave a spell around those who have any imagination. Australians abroad, who are Australians (there are some people who, though they have lived in Australia—perhaps have been born there—are too coarse in fibre to be ever really Australians), always welcome ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... great pleasure to the critic, when the stroke is cleanly brought off. It is the same pleasure indeed; the novelist makes the stroke, but the critic makes it again by perceiving it, and is legitimately satisfied by the sense of having perceived it with good artistry. It is spoilt, of course, if the stroke is handled tactlessly and obtrusively; the art of preparation is no art if it betrays itself at the outset, calling attention to its purpose. By definition it is unrecognizable ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... writer new to science fiction. In this story he displays the finesse, artistry and imagination of an old pro. Here is one of the tightest, tautest stories of interplanetary ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer |
