"Critic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... genius of Hood. It is strictly singular, and entirely his own. That which is his is completely his, and no man can cry halves with him, or quarters,—hardly the smallest fraction. The estimate of his genius, therefore, puts the critic to no trouble of elaborate discrimination or comparison. When we think of Hood as a humorist, there is no need that we should at the same time think of Aristophanes, or Lucian, or Rabelais, or Swift, or Sterne, or Fielding, or Dickens, or Thackeray. When we think of him as a poet,—except ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... calling while a young man, for in 1586 his name was on the list of the earl of Worcester's players, and he was eventually rated by common consent as the foremost actor of his time. Ben Jonson, a critic little prone to exalt the merits of men of mark among his contemporaries, bestowed unstinted praise on Alleyn's acting (Epigrams, No. 89). Nash expresses in prose, in Pierce Penniless, his admiration of him, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... present (April) number of The Newcomes. Clive writes a letter dated "May 1, 183—," which is at once answered by Pendennis, who sends him "an extract from Bagham's article on the Royal Academy," and Mr. Thackeray makes the critic ask, "Why have we no picture of the sovereign and her august consort from Smee's brush?" To which it may be answered, "Because, even if the '183—' represents the time of Victoria's reign, her ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 234, April 22, 1854 • Various
... who believe that true poetry may (if not "must") consist in "what oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed," Gray's "Churchyard" is a majestic achievement—perhaps (accepting the definition offered) the supreme achievement of its century. Its success, so the great critic of its day thought, lay in its appeal to "the common reader"; and though no friend of Gray's other work, Dr. Johnson went on to commend the "Elegy" as abounding "with images which find a mirrour in every ...
— An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard (1751) and The Eton College Manuscript • Thomas Gray
... winning back something of her usual serenity; but to both the incident was oddly discomposing; to Toni because for the first time she saw the critic in the husband, and trembled to think how often she must fall short of his high standard; to Owen because the affair seemed to open up such vast tracts of ignorance in the woman who was his wife, and showed, more clearly than ever ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... human nature and revive feeling, or sets forth a sentiment which human nature entertains, so that it shall be turned to better account. This involves the field which song has it in its power to cultivate and improve. But neither the pure moralist, nor the accomplished critic, must expect a very great deal to be done on this field at once. The song-writer has difficulties to contend with, both in regard to those by whom he would have his songs sung, and the airs to which he writes them. If in the latter case he would willingly substitute classical and sounding ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the 'History of the Reformation in Scotland,' and who outside that book was the utterer of many an armed and winged word which pursues and smites us to this day, must have been born with nothing less than genius—genius to observe, to narrate, and to judge. Even had he written as a mere recluse and critic, looking out upon his world from a monk's cell or from the corner of a housetop, the vividness, the tenderness, the sarcasm and the humour would still have been there. But Knox's genius was predominantly practical; and the ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... took up the next. Here the critic was more measured in his praise. The book he pronounced to be on the whole a good and very nearly a great one, a fine conception fairly worked out, but there was too strong a tendency in parts to ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... his closest friend and harshest critic. It didn't really matter to Booth what Leslie said of his paintings: he quite understood that he ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... subjects. They filled him with dislike of the legalization of marriage with a deceased wife's sister; they made him a vehement opponent of the bill which established the English Divorce Court in 1857, and a watchfully hostile critic of all divorce legislation in America afterward. Some of his friends traced to the same cause his low estimate of German literature and even his political aversion to the German Empire. He could not forget that Germany had been the fountain of rationalism, ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... type, no good "model." It is an age of "Go-as-you-please," and of tous les genres sont bons, surtout le genre ennuyeux. In almost any age of English literature, or indeed of any other literature, an experienced critic can detect the tone of the epoch at once in prose or verse. There is in them an unmistakeable Zeit-Geist in phraseology and form. The Elizabethan drama, essay, or philosophy could not be mistaken for the drama, essay, or philosophy of the Restoration; the heroic ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... are to regard as pure metaphor. Our friend 'Snooks,' at least, found that out; for, instead of re-viewing—i. e., viewing again and again his book, they pronounced it to be decidedly bad without any examination whatever. A 'critic' we all recognize in his character of judge or umpire; but is it that he always possesses discrimination—has he always insight (for these are the primary ideas attaching themselves to [Greek: krino], ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Sonnets does not seem to be favored by more recent authors. I find no indication of such an interpretation in Taine's English Literature, or in Grant White's edition of Shakespeare. Professor Edward Dowden, universally recognized as a fair and competent critic, says: "The natural sense, I am convinced, is the true one."[4] Hallam says: "No one can doubt that they express not only real but intense emotions of the heart."[5] Professor Tyler, in a work relating to the Sonnets, says: "The impress of reality is stamped on ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... It had been smoldering almost ever since she quitted him. "Reprehensible!" groans a moralist. Very. Everybody knows that, as Afy would say. But her heart, you see, had not done with human passions, and they work ill, and contrariness, let the word stand, critic, if you please, and precisely ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... as simple transference of external reality into artistic form. This is what Hazlitt seems to ignore very strangely in his judgment of Crabbe and Scott, and this is, I think, an interesting point in the history of criticism, especially when it is remembered that Hazlitt was a critic of painting, and himself a painter. He speaks almost as if realities passed direct into the verse of Crabbe; as if Scott's imagination in the novels were merely recollection and transcription of experience. Speaking of the difference between the genius of Shakespeare and ...
— Sir Walter Scott - A Lecture at the Sorbonne • William Paton Ker
... Stephens never did anything which in his own mind was in the least disloyal. And yet it was Stephens who, in the autumn of 1864, was singled out by artful men as a possible figurehead in the conduct of a separate peace negotiation with Sherman. A critic very hostile to Stephens and his faction might here raise the question as to what was at bottom the motive of Governor Brown, in the autumn of 1864, in withdrawing the Georgia militia from Hood's command. Was there ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... the defects of his great qualities, the over-ideality, the haste, the incoherence, and the want of grasp on narrative, are glaringly apparent in these early works. But while this is true, the qualities themselves are absent. A cautious critic will only find food in "Zastrozzi" and "St. Irvyne" for wondering how such flowers and fruits of genius could have lain concealed within a germ apparently so barren. There is even less of the real Shelley discernible in these productions, than of the real ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... cannot be correctly formed if they be not well observed. To listen to one's self carefully and constantly is a most valuable but little practised art. The student should listen as an inexorable critic, accepting only ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... explanation, I now leave the book to speak for itself, and to testify to its own character. Whether viewed with a charitable eye by the kindly reader, who will make due allowance for the difficulties attending its execution, or received by the critic, who will judge of it only by its own merits, with the unfriendly welcome which it very probably deserves, I trust that I shall at least be pardoned for making an attempt, a failure in which does not necessarily imply disgrace, and which, by leading the way, may perhaps become the means of ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... to think that no writer in London worked so hard; and he paid the penalty in shattered health. It is a pleasure to me, who in those days owed much to his kindness, to witness the renewal of his early activities, and to welcome volume after volume from his prolific pen. Mr. Kegan Paul, essayist, critic, editor, and ex-clergyman, was always an interesting figure; and his successive transitions from Tractarianism to Latitudinarianism, and from Agnosticism to Ultramontanism, gave a peculiar piquancy to his utterances on religion. He deserves remembrance on two quite different ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... to separate the man from his work, if you are to be a good critic," Mrs. Faulkner said, and though this remark may be true enough I did not answer it, for Nina was looking extremely bored by the conversation we had been ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... of Somerset, he says, that "music is yet but in its nonage, a forward child. 'Tis now learning Italian, which is its best master." And in the preface to his Sonatas, he tells us that he "faithfully endeavoured at a just imitation of the most famed Italian masters." An able critic has also remarked, that he thinks he can perceive the obligations which Purcell had to Carissimi in his recitative, and to Lulli both in recitative and melody; and also that it appears that he was fond of Stradella's manner, though he seems never ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... amusing or touching; and—most important—himself passionately addicted to literature. You cannot like Lamb without liking literature in general. And you cannot read Lamb without learning about literature in general; for books were his hobby, and he was a critic of the first rank. His letters are full of literariness. You will naturally read his letters; you should not only be infinitely diverted by them (there are no better epistles), but you should receive from them ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... now I do not approve of Hawkes' style. His footwork is wrong, hopelessly wrong and I fear that unless he corrects it, it may keep him from attaining the place his natural abilities promise. "Austral," the famous critic, describes him as "having ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... not a critic," said the author of the drawing, coming forward and grasping the canvas with no gentle hand.—"Ladies, if you wish to find fault, turn to your own studies. That proportion is frightful"—she pointed to different sketches as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... as a critic ruled the Danish world of taste for many years, and by his writings did much to elevate dramatic art and public sentiment. The greatest authoress that Denmark has produced is the Countess Gyllenbourg (1773-1856). Her knowledge of life, sparkling ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... When we were next called upon for compositions, I coaxed Launa to go with me at the nooning to the shade of the old blacksmith shop, where I proposed that we should write them together. There sentence by sentence I made my little essay, covering one side of my slate, with Launa for inspirer and critic. My subject was the saw-mill, that one I knew best. There was a pricking of ears in the school-room when I named my humble subject, and an elder boy by my side whispered, "Now, give us some sawdust." I prospered ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... indulged in a series of impartial hand-shakes, accompanied by a "Happy to make your acquaintance, sir." He looked at Madame de Cintre, but she was not looking at him. If his personal self-consciousness had been of a nature to make him constantly refer to her, as the critic before whom, in company, he played his part, he might have found it a flattering proof of her confidence that he never caught her eyes resting upon him. It is a reflection Newman did not make, but ...
— The American • Henry James
... read before you turn critic," said Joe, taking up the baskets that had been brought out of the house. He then led the way, quarrelling all the time with Sneak, while Glenn, placing Mary's arm in his, and William imitating the example, followed ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... horses, elephants, and monkeys. Thus stripped of their all, and left to shift for themselves as they may in this hard world, their pursuit and seeming attainment of knowledge under such peculiar difficulties are interesting to contemplate. However, we are not so sure as is the critic that instinct regularly increases downward and decreases upward in the scale of being. Now that the case of the bee is reduced to moderate proportions,[III-19] we know of nothing in instinct surpassing that of an animal so high as a bird, ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... popular with them all; because when they inquired into the state of his soul he represented it as humble, penitent, and purified. Two of these gentlemen were High-Church, and he noticed their peculiarities: one was a certain half-musical monotony in speaking which might be called by a severe critic sing-song. Perhaps they thought the intoning of the service in a cathedral could be transferred with ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... made her seem much more desirable than she really was. (I speak of her personal charm and not of her agreeable costumes, which are for the pens of more instructed reviewers. I got nothing out of a lady near me, whom I recognised as a dramatic critic by a question that her neighbour put to her. "Do you know this frock," she asked, "or will you have to go behind?") Apart from the delightful picture which Miss COOPER always presents she has a most swift and delicate feeling for the details of her craft. She has the confidence that avoids ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 16, 1917. • Various
... sense of life. In his separation of the utterance of whole truths from insistance upon accidents of detail, Reynolds was right, because he guarded the expression of his view with careful definitions of its limits. In the same way Boileau was right, as a critic of Literature, in demanding everywhere good sense, in condemning the paste brilliants of a style then in decay, and fixing attention upon the masterly simplicity of Roman poets in the time of Augustus. Critics by rule of thumb reduced the principles ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... we dedicate this "waif of weary moments" to some warm-hearted, watchful spirit, who might shelter it from the pitiless assaults of the wide, wide world. But will not our simple booklet prove too insignificant a mark for the critic's arrows? ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... "Corinne" not only revealed for the first time to the Frenchmen of her day the grandeur and mystery and charm of Italy, but also showed the national characteristics of French and Englishmen for the first time in their respective, and in a European light. Moreover, as one European critic has pointed out, it is also one of the first, and still one of the subtlest, studies in the psychology of sex and emancipation of woman of the nineteenth century. Madame de Stael's relations with the clever and ambitious young statesman and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... earlier work by Metastasio. Cold and formal, and almost totally devoid of dramatic interest, it naturally failed to inspire the composer. The form in which it was cast compelled him to return to the conventions of opera seria, from which he had long escaped, and altogether, as an able critic remarked at the time, the work might rather be taken for the first attempt of budding talent than for the product of a mature mind. The story deals with the plotting of Vitellia, the daughter of the deposed Vitellius, to overthrow the Emperor Titus. She persuades her lover Sextus ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... a critic of discernment, as he passed from drawing to drawing, "Frank Reynolds is right, right—right every time." This is praise to which one can ...
— Frank Reynolds, R.I. • A.E. Johnson
... that the editor of the Athenaeum, in my time, was a charming and accomplished writer; he is also my very good friend and too generous critic, and I should be a wretch if I did not love him. But on the evening when a weekly paper goes to press, when the pages are pouring in, and some one, as likely as not, is waiting at the Cafe Royal, even the most cultivated and considerate of editors will be an editor. ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... tug when the auxiliary cruiser was in the neighborhood. His account to some extent filled the gaps that Don Sebastian's narrative had left, but now he came to put the different points together and consider them as a whole, their significance seemed less. He began to see how a hostile critic would look at the thing. Much of his evidence was based upon conjecture that might be denied. Yet, while it was not ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... strain on the dragging reins. Also a tranquil cognisance of favourable comment, exchanged by competent judges— no excitement, no admiration, remember; not a trace of new-chum interest, but a certain dignified and judicious approbation, honourable alike to critic and artist. Fools admire, but men ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... Peter Quick Banta. "Maybe you think you could do it better." The world-old retort of the creative artist to his critic! ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... soon developed all the airs of independence and all the jargon of two professions. Working with consuming energy and ambition, she pushed her gifts so far as to become at least a very intelligent, eager, and confident critic of the art of other people—which is much. But though art stirred and trained her, gave her new horizons and new standards, it was not in art that she found ultimately the chief excitement and motive-power of her new life—not ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the eminent critic has pointed out, the stories give us curious glimpses of life in the 15th Century. We get a genuine view of the social condition of the nobility and the middle classes, and are pleasantly surprised to learn from the mouths of the nobles themselves that the peasant ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... eminent critic has called Tacitus' account of this battle an 'historical nightmare', but those who do not suffer from a surfeit of military knowledge may find that it lies easy upon them. It is written for the plain man with an eye for situations and ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... necessity for a sane and vigorous patriotism began to be dimly realized. One of the earliest symptoms of this new attitude was the publication, in 1903, of Federigo Garlanda's La terza Italia; the book professed to be written by a friendly American observer and critic of Italian affairs, and the author regards the absence of militant patriotism as the chief cause of Italy's weakness in comparison with other nations. Mario Morasso, in his volume, L'Imperialismo nel Secolo XX, published in 1905, opened fire on ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... works. It is not a constitutional difference of endowments in the aesthetic respect, but rather a difference in the code of reputability which specifies what objects properly lie within the scope of honorific consumption for the class to which the critic belongs. It is a difference in the traditions of propriety with respect to the kinds of things which may, without derogation to the consumer, be consumed under the head of objects of taste and art. With a certain allowance for variations to be accounted for on other grounds, these ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... finally determine its scope. The advocate may not be the judge. My animus is that I heartily desire most if not all the ends proposed by abstract Socialism, which I understand to be a perfectly just distribution of comfort. If, therefore, I am a critic of Socialism, I am a friendly critic, my objections to its progress resting mainly on a conviction that it would not remove, but would intensify, the evils which it is intended to mitigate." That is quite sufficient in ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams
... of which nothing less can be said than that, both in spirit and substance, style and argument, it fixes irreversibly the name of its author as a leading classic in the Christian literature of Britain." An American critic says: "His succinct analysis of the doctrines held by the various schools of modern atheism are admirable, and his criticisms on their doctrines original and profound; while his arguments in defence of the Christian faith against ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... was said about it; but Breen was bullied and badgered in the watch below,—the lubberly nomenclature becoming a byword of derision and contempt,—until, patience leaving him, he doubled his sore fingers into fists one dog-watch, and thrashed the Irishman—his most unforgiving critic—so quickly, thoroughly, and scientifically that persecution ceased; for the Irishman had been the master spirit of ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... discovering this method, or of founding this school of criticism. We have heard village critics of the loom and the forge discuss such questions as are handled by Colenso, and the Essays and Reviews, and often with much more acuteness and penetration. With what eclat has our village critic unhorsed the itinerant preacher with the inquiry, What became of the forks belonging to the nine and twenty knives which Ezra brought back from Babylon? but was, alas! himself routed in the moment of triumph by the inquiry as to the ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... requisite, therefore, of material gathered in such a manner is that it be reproduced exactly as first delivered. The man who told a woman that a critic had pronounced her singing "heavenly" had good intentions but he was not entirely accurate in changing to that nattering term the critic's actual adjective "unearthly." The frequency with which ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... little window. Her disappointment amounted to actual physical pain. She found no comfort, as a wiser person might have done, in certain of Miss Delia's expressions; she only realized that her best friend and her most generous critic could find nothing good in what she had done. Her duty this afternoon was only to make up the mail for the down train; then her time was her own till the next mail train came up at half-past five. At two o'clock she closed the office again and started ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... glowed with a sense of his own generous wisdom. He had never felt so keen a self-approval. Indeed, that emotion seldom came to solace him; for the most part he was the severest critic of his own doings and sayings. But for once it appeared to him that he uttered golden words, the ripe fruit of experience and reflection. That personal unrest had anything to do with the counsel he offered to his wife, he did ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... probably ready to meet with an open mind the scorings of their young, sole critic, thinking that his urgency might advance themselves no less than him. Well, in the autumn Johnny turned up at the Academy with an equipment that included everything approved and needed; and he was not long in letting us know that his father was manager in the supply-yard ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... shall anybody read one of these books? We fancy not even a critic; for the race so vigilantly malign in other days has lost its bitterness, or has been broken of its courage by the myriad numbers of the versifiers once so exultingly destroyed. Indeed, that cruel slaughter was but a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... anatomy can not appreciate either sculpture or painting! A knowledge of optics, of botany and of natural history, are necessary, equally to the artist or to the connoisseur; a knowledge of acoustics to the musician and musical critic. "No artist," says Mr. Spencer, "can produce a healthful work of whatever kind without he understands the laws of the phenomena he represents; he must also understand how the minds of the spectator or listener ...
— The Philosophy of Teaching - The Teacher, The Pupil, The School • Nathaniel Sands
... language was exhausted, ingenuity was put on the rack, in the search after images and expressions vile enough—insolent enough—to convey the unutterable contempt avowed for all that he had written, by the fashionable critics. One critic—who still, I believe, edits a rather popular journal, and who belongs to that class, feeble, fluttering, ingenious, who make it their highest ambition not to lead, but, with a slave's adulation, to obey and to follow all the caprices of the public mind—described Mr. Wordsworth as resembling, in ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... opposite the one set aside for royalty the Lady Shalem sat in well-considered prominence, confident that every press critic and reporter would note her presence, and that one or two of them would describe, or misdescribe, her toilet. Already quite a considerable section of the audience knew her by name, and the frequency with which she graciously ...
— When William Came • Saki
... thing. And if I hadn't, Llewellyn Stanhope would; Stanhope cherishes Duff as he cherishes the critic of the Chronicle. He refers to him as a pillar of the legitimate. Whenever he begs me to turn the Norwegian crank, he says, 'I'm sure Mr. Lindsay ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... the author of a beautiful volume on the eve of publication, on the History of the Musical Drama. One hundred and sixty pages are devoted to "Parodi and the Opera." Mr. Pray is a capital critic in this department; he has been many years familiar with the various schools of musical art, and at home behind the scenes in the great opera houses of Europe: so that probably no writer in America has more ample material for such a work ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... "'The critic eye—that microscope of wit— Sees hairs and pores, examines bit by bit; How parts relate to parts, or they to whole. The body's harmony, the beaming soul, Are things which Kuster, Burmann, Wasse, shall see, When man's whole frame is obvious ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... Civil Service Commission should receive the careful attention of the opponents as well as the friends of this reform. The Commission invites a personal inspection by Senators and Representatives of its records and methods, and every fair critic will feel that such an examination should precede a judgment of condemnation either of the system or its administration. It is not claimed that either is perfect, but I believe that the law is being executed with impartiality and that the system ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... scurrying over Europe when Field had counted on having his companionship in London carried the former back to Washington, where he joined with some other equally sanguine writers in the attempt to float a literary and political periodical named The Critic. On February 15th, 1890, Field wrote to his friend from No. ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... you have to agree with him even when you don't agree with him; & he can discover & praise such merits as a book has even when they are merely half a dozen diamonds scattered through an acre of mud. And so he has a right to be a critic. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the purpose of Christian Science to "educate the idea of God, or treat it for disease," as is alleged 346:1 by one critic. I regret that such criticism confounds man with Adam. When man is spoken of as made in God's 346:3 image, it is not sinful and sickly mortal man who is referred to, but the ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... the vagaries of successive Popes. Therefore, when he came at last to paint the Last Judgment, he was a worn man, exhausted in services of many divers sorts. And, what is most perplexing to the reconstructive critic, nothing in his correspondence remains to indicate the stages of his labour. The letters tell plenty about domestic anxieties, annoyances in his poor craftsman's household, purchases of farms, indignant remonstrances with stupid brethren; but we find in them, as I have said, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... comprehensive one. It was acute, analytical, perspicacious, discriminating, unimaginative, quick to conceive things in detail, but not calculated to entertain masses of ideas. He would never have gained celebrity as an author; but as a critic, upon whatever subject, his qualifications have rarely been surpassed, though in literary matters and the fine arts they were only exhibited in conversation. His colloquial powers were impressive and fascinating, though he generally seemed ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... romantic school, CHARLES-AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE (1804-69), developed, as time went on, into the great critic of the naturalistic method. In his Tableau de la Poesie Francaise au XVIe Siecle he found ancestors for the romantic poets as much older than the ancestors of classical art in France as Ronsard is older than Malherbe. Wandering endlessly from author to author in his Portraits ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... keenness and wit when she heard them, recurred to her at this time, and some way, with Flossy's low, earnest voice filling her heart, they dwindled into shallowness and coarseness. All the same, their baneful influence was on her, and helped to hold her back from opening her lips, for the critic had been Professor Ellis. ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... never getting tired, so that the officers had no lack of partners, and voted it great fun. There were many very pretty girls among them, and several with much more of the rose on their cheeks than usually falls to the share of West Indian damsels. Some censorious critic even ventured to hint that it was added by the hand of art. That this was false was evident, for the weather was so hot that had rouge been used it would have inevitably been detected; but the island damsels trusted to their good figures and features, and their lively manners and conversation, ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... been much pressed to publish them, and other old sermons, which I dare not do, upon several considerations; knowing that sermons would have past then, and very edifying, which will not pass now, in this critic and censorious age, without reflections; not knowing how they were taken from their mouth, nor what hands they have come through since." Biographia Presbyteriana, vol. ii. ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... of the shepherd's figure. But, for all this, Paul Potter's bull was crowned with glory as one of the noblest examples of art, and Europe considers it as the greatest work of the prince of animal-painters. An illustrious critic very rightly said that "Paul Potter with his bull has written the true idyl ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... 2: As Augustine says in the same book: "Perchance by reason of the blood some keener critic will press us and say; If the blood was" in the body of Christ when He rose, "why not the rheum?" that is, the phlegm; "why not also the yellow gall?" that is, the gall proper; "and why not the black gall?" that is, the bile, "with ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... waste In critic peep or cynic bark, Quarrel or reprimand: 'T will soon be dark; Up! mind thine own aim, ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... felt the need of none, being themselves the people thus celebrated. And if the thing was questioned, or if it was hinted that there might be one small virtue in which they were not perfect and supreme, they wasted no time examining themselves to see if what the critic said was true, but fell upon him and hooted him and cursed him, for they were sensitive. So Bibbs, learning their ways and walking with them, harkened to the voice of the people and served Bigness with them. For the voice of the people is ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... the honor, were more fortunate. Among my fellow-reporters who, like myself, came to scoff, and remained to pray, was Henri Pene du Bois, for some time, until his recent death, the brilliant critic of art and music of the American. Then he was on the Times, and Henry N. Cary, now of the Morning Telegraph, was ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... position of literary adviser. These are paid salaries ranging from $25 to $50 a week. Manuscripts are read by the piece for from $3 to $5 each. Book reviews are paid for at all prices, from the possession of the book alone to the payment of a cent a word. It is best for the aspiring critic to practice herself on book reviews first. In these she can with profit display her power to analyze the artistic construction of books, and so develop her abilities as ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... are a score or more of soldiers of lesser note, only soldiers, spurred and sabre-girt,—except at the very back; and there, just where the tail of Frederick's horse droops over, stand—whom think you?—no others than Leasing, critic and poet, most gifted and famous; and Kant, peer of Plato and Bacon, one of the most gifted brains of all time. Just standing room for them among the hoofs and uniforms at the tail of Frederick's horse! Every third man one met in Berlin was a soldier off duty. Batteries ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... he was a South German art-critic, from Wuerzburg, with a great reputation. She had already met him ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... History, novels, voyages and travels, and various specific treatises of fancy or fact, invite perusal, and like a common acquaintance, it requires some moral effort to negative their claims. "Judgment," says a celebrated critic, "is forced upon us by experience. He that reads many books must compare one opinion, or one style with another, and when he compares must necessarily distinguish, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... objected to—is even welcomed, however frequent it may be, provided only that it is suggested from inside. An immediate result is 'unreality and formalism of peace training'—to quote a recent thoughtful military critic. ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... was to experience an illogical elation—and to feel justified in it. He was an unsparing critic of things as they are, but his criticism left us in no mood of depression. Our interest is with things as they are going to be. The universe is growing. Let us grow ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... "discretion" was exercised in such a manner as at once to place its victims in the same category as Emmet, Wolf Tone, and the Manchester Martyrs. In a word, to use the words of an English critic, "It gave the Sinn Feiners the real victory, for it was looked upon as the verification of all that they had feared and prophesied, and for which they had, until that point, been looked upon ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... most egregious scribbler, i. 350; wrote his own memoirs, 351; good advice in the postscript to the epistle dedicatory of that work, ib.; his memoirs, ii. 538; anecdote of him and De L'Etang, a critic, 539; notices of his voluminous works, ib.; his magnificent collection of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... of that most impartial and worthy critic, Lord Jeffrey, which is, that tourists should describe those things which make the pleasantest impression on their own minds, I should begin with an account of the delightful entertainment which genuine hospitality and courtesy have here favored me with. I passed Blannerhasset's Island once, ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... in the works of Niccolo Amati. The backs are mostly of even grain, and compact; the modelling can only be found fault with near the purfling, where its sharpness at once catches the attention of the critic in these matters, and divulges the true author. The varnish, though good, is not equal to that of Amati. The scroll is inferior to the body in merit. The purfling is of whalebone, like that of most of ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... moments a nightmare of imbecility and in your more expansive moments a high adventure of immeasurable possibilities, you are straitened between cold despairs and immense hopes, you will readily forgive this irreverent, self-confident critic-journalist any crude things he may have said in his haste for sake of his flashes of perception, his happily descriptive phrases, his inspiring anticipations, his uncalculating candour, and above all his generous preoccupation with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... is one fytte[109] of Harold's pilgrimage: Ye who of him may further seek to know, Shall find some tidings in a future page, If he that rhymeth now may scribble moe. Is this too much? stern Critic! say not so: Patience! and ye shall hear what he beheld In other lands, where he was doomed to go: Lands that contain the monuments of Eld, Ere Greece and Grecian arts by barbarous hands ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... missed. Then as to sugar or milk: it is evidence of exaggerated personality (conceit, some call it), to declare that milk or cream or sugar injure the flavor of tea. As well insist upon a special spice being used for all viands because the critic likes it. To hold the Chinese up as examples of what is proper in tea drinking is to offer a limit to human progress. As milk or cream neutralize the tannin to a considerable extent, they are so far desirable, without regard ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... is to harmonize the Word of God with his conclusions. That of the believer is to harmonize his conclusions with the Word. The program of the rationalist is to become a critic of the Word and sit in judgment on it. That of the believer is to let the Word become his critic and sit in ...
— The Church, the Schools and Evolution • J. E. (Judson Eber) Conant
... the time. The Yankees may not give us another chance. Across yonder, where you see that dim light trying to shine through the dirty window, Winthrop is printing his paper, which comes out this morning. As he is a critic of the Government, I suggest that we go over and see ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... certainly even the most cursory reading will show that he had Lembcke at hand. But comparison will also show that variations from Lembcke are numerous and considerable. Lassen was a man of letters, a critic, and a good student of foreign languages, but he was no poet, and his Merchant of Venice is, generally speaking, much inferior to Lembcke's. Compare, for example, the exquisite ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... known the mamma for twenty years," said this judicious critic, "and if you ask any of the people who have been living here as long as I, you will find they remember her well. I have held the beautiful Christina on my knee when she was a little wizened baby with a very red face and no promise of beauty but those magnificent eyes. ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... entirely missed the meaning. While praising the 'cleverness' he asked plainly between the lines of his notice 'What does it mean?' This unconscious exposure of his own ignorance amused his reader while it also piqued him. The critic, expert in dealing with a political article, was lamentably at sea over an ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... "Living Writers of the South" has made his name well known as a critic and student of literature, and his labors in behalf of Southern letters entitle ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... remarkable for the utmost perfection on that head, namely, propriety; and as to the latter, Aristotle, whom doubtless you have read over and over, is very diffuse. I shall mention but one thing more, which that great critic in his division of tragedy calls Opsis, or the scenery; and which is as proper to the epic as to the drama, with this difference, that in the former it falls to the share of the poet, and in the latter ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... free; speaking our language with uncommon propriety, French and German still better, and Italian like a native, and often expressing himself with singular strength and picturesqueness,—reminding me of the Italian poet and critic, Ugo Foscolo,—whom I saw at the time he was furnishing the papers translated by Mrs. Sarah ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... defiance surged up and overmastered her, her nerves broke, and her hot words tumbled out hysterically. "You think you are a God-anointed critic of humanity, but you are only a heartless, conceited cad! Just wait—I'll show you what your judgment of me is worth! I am going to clear my father! I am going to make this Westville that condemns me kneel at my feet! and as for you—you can think what ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... born in 1866. A poet of great mastery and a refined critic, his thought, is steeped in hellenism and in ...
— The Shield • Various
... would of them, and reprint them with alterations if he chose, under the conviction that their main scope could not be damaged by such a process. It was the same with me afterwards, as regards other publications. For two years I furnished a certain number of sheets for the British Critic from myself and my friends, while a gentleman was editor, a man of splendid talent, who, however, was scarcely an acquaintance of mine, and had no sympathy with the Tracts. When I was Editor myself, from 1838 to 1841, in my very first number I suffered to appear a critique unfavorable to ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... fact, that a woman's book was then to be treated with more critical leniency than a man's. But criticism nowadays never thinks of asking whether a book be a woman's or a man's, as a preliminary to administering praise or blame. In the Academy of Design, the critic deals as severely with a picture painted by a woman as with one painted by a man. This is right. Would you have it otherwise? Not at all! We are to stand ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... costume was simple and correct, from his well-fitting black coat to his trousers, which showed off the shape of his handsome leg, and his silk stockings, and low, well-polished shoes. The most severe critic could not have found the slightest fault with him, except perhaps that his coat shone too much, as if it was just out of ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... say anything that will add to this volume of discussion. My age at the time was but eighteen, and my position that of a common soldier in the ranks. It would therefore be foolish in me to assume the part of a critic. The generals, who, from reasonably safe points of observation, are sweeping the field with their glasses, and noting and directing the movements of the lines of battle, must, in the nature of things, be the ones to furnish the facts that go to make history. The ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... possessed with no technique to cope with it. He has very largely been operating in a void. It is not so much that he has been tried and found wanting. He has not even been heard. Because the musical world has been unable to follow him, it has dismissed him entirely from its consciousness. Scarcely a critic has been able to express what it is about his music that he likes or dislikes. They have either ridiculed him or written cordially about him without saying anything. There is nothing more demoralizing ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... humiliation is of a piece with the legend that Keats died of a broken heart because of a bitter review of his poetry. The fact being, of course, that Keats' death was due to constitutional weakness, and that the emotion inspired by the attack upon his art was a burning desire to punch the critic's head. ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... likely to mislead the spectator into thinking that it is of sufficient importance to affect the ultimate denouement, when it really has no bearing upon it. Reverse this, and you have another good rule to follow in writing the scenario. As one critic said in substance, if you intend to have one of your characters die of heart disease toward the end of the play, prepare your audience for this event by "registering" in an earlier scene the fact that his heart is affected. Do not drag in a scene to ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... Blasco is almost the typical Socialist—iconoclastic, oratorical, sentimental, theatrical—a fervent advocate of all sorts of lofty causes, eagerly responsive to the shibboleths of the hour. Baroja is the analyst, the critic, almost the cynic. If he leans toward any definite doctrine at all, it is toward the doctrine that the essential ills of man are incurable, that all the remedies proposed are as bad as the disease, that it is almost a waste of time to bother about humanity ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja |
