"Critic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... even such slender commercial success in letters as was really necessary to a man who liked 'plain living and high thinking.' He fell early in love with a city, with a place—he lost his heart to St. Andrews. Here, at all events, his critic can sympathise with him. His 'dear St. Andrews Bay,' beautiful alike in winter mists and in the crystal days of still winter sunshine; the quiet brown streets brightened by the scarlet gowns; the long limitless sands; the dark blue distant hills, and far-off snowy peaks of the Grampians; the ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... may be, but I have it not. Let any kind critic convince me that what I am now doing is useless, or has been done before, or that, if I leave it undone, some one else will do it to my mind; and I should fold up my papers, and watch the turnips grow in that field there, with a placidity that would, perhaps, seem very spiritless to your ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... remarkable, that Quintilian, in his list of Roman orators, has neither mentioned Maternus, nor Marcus Aper. The Dialogue, for that reason, seems to be improperly ascribed to him: men who figure so much in the enquiry concerning oratory, would not have been omitted by the critic who ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... indeed! M. Violette had a college friend upon whom all the good marks had been showered, who, having been successively schoolmaster, journalist, theatrical critic, a boarder in Mazas prison, insurance agent, director of an athletic ring—he quoted Homer in his harangue—at present pushed back the curtains at the entrance to the Ambigu, and waited for his soup at the barracks ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... portions of it into proper sequence, would have been a lengthy and difficult piece of work had I not been ably assisted by Mr. Harry L. Neligan, D.I.; but I leave it as a pleasant task to the Higher Critic to discover what portions of the book were done by him, and what should be ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... study of life, because poetry is the interpretation of life. Poetry is not a mere instrument for promoting enjoyment; it does not merely dazzle the imagination and excite the emotions. Through the emotions and the imagination it both interprets life and ministers to life. When the critic attempts to express that truth, that is, to interpret the interpreter, which he can do only by translating the poetry into prose, and the language of imagination and emotion into that of philosophy, he destroys the poem in the process, much as the botanist destroys the flower in analyzing it, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... 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 these ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... cited no authorities, and 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 ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... had seen the antique and had let themselves be seduced by it, despite their civilization and their religion. Let us only rejoice thereat. There are indeed some, and among them the great English critic who is irrefutable when he is a poet, and irrational when he becomes a philosopher;—there are some who tell us that in its union with antique art, the art of the followers of Giotto embraced death, and rotted away ever after. There are others, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... in the efficacy of violent exercise for cuts and bruises. Grundle's back was still bad, and the poor fellow with the broken leg could only be wheeled out in front of the verandah to look at the proceedings through one of those wonderful little glasses which enable the critic to see every motion of the players at half-a-mile's distance. He assured me that the precision with which Jack set his steam-bowler was equal to that of one of those Shoeburyness gunners who can hit a sparrow as far as they can see him, on condition only that they know the precise age ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... that Mr. Potter conceived at once a humorous opposition to the artistic enthusiasm of the critic, and, plunging into the garden, took a mischievous delight in its wildness and the victorious struggle of nature with the formality of art. At every step through the tangled labyrinth he could see where precision and order had been invaded, ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... description which lasts longer than two minutes is never attempted in conversation. The listener cannot hold the details enumerated. The clearest statement regarding this comes from Jules Lemaitre in a criticism upon some descriptions by Emile Zola which the critic says are praised by persons who have never read ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... A critic whose opinion is entitled to the greatest weight, having read the manuscript of this and the next chapter before it went to press, considered that, although we had written of Bligh's harshness to his men as proved, we had not specifically alluded to the ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... been that picture dealers are—picture dealers. Horses rank first in my mind as begetters and producers of unscrupulous agents, but pictures run them a very good second. Anyhow, we found out that our distinguished art-critic picked up his Rembrandt at this dealer's shop, and came down with it in his care the same ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... the more, thoughtful and refined for its unaffected simplicity. As criticism it is of the true sort; not captious or formal, still less engaged, as nearly all bad criticism is, more or less, with indirect suggestion of the critic himself as the one owl in a world of mice. Philip Sidney's care is towards the end of good literature. He looks for highest aims, and finds them in true work, and hears God's angel in the ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... a tone poet gifted with the faculty of making hearers feel as he felt, and see as he saw (with the inner eyes of tonal sense), no master ought to be placed above him. This is the general opinion now, of all the world. Taine, the French critic, in his work on art, names four great souls belonging to the highest order of genius—Dante, Shakespeare, Michael Angelo and Beethoven. The company is a good one, and Beethoven rightfully belongs in it. His early life was wholly different from that of the gifted Mozart. He was the son of a dissipated ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... themselves the "Serapion Brothers." They were all influenced by Remizov; they were taught (in the very precise sense of the word— they had regular classes) by Zamyatin; and explained the general principles of Art by the gifted and light-minded young "formalist" critic, Victor Shklovsky. Other writers emerged in all ends of Russia, all of them more or less obssessed by the dazzling ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... success was very great, and Geoffrey, the editor of a popular paper, in noticing the opera, exclaimed,—"O, if Mehul could compose as well as this, we might be satisfied with him." When the triumphant composer threw off his incognito, the unlucky critic was not a little mortified. The celebrated singer Jelyotte was from Bearn, and Louis the Fifteenth used to delight in hearing him sing his native melodies: in particular one beginning, "De cap a tu soy Marion," one of Despourrins' ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... minded to notice a point which, it seems to me, has been somewhat overworked within the last few years. Gervinus, the German critic, thinks—and our Mr. White agrees with him—that Shakespeare acquired all his best ideas of womanhood after he went to London, and conversed with the ladies of the city. And in support of this notion they cite the fact—for such it is—that the women ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... from the eyes of my friends. But it has rarely happened that anything has been objected to me which I had myself altogether overlooked, unless it were something far removed from the subject: so that I have never met with a single critic of my opinions who did not appear to me either less rigorous or less equitable than myself. And further, I have never observed that any truth before unknown has been brought to light by the disputations that are practised ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes
... two well-grown ones who should have been fighting. The names of some of them Jimson mentioned with awe. An unwholesome youth was Aronson, the great novelist; a sturdy, bristling fellow with a fierce moustache was Letchford, the celebrated leader-writer of the Critic. Several were pointed out to me as artists who had gone one better than anybody else, and a vast billowy creature was described as the leader of the new Orientalism in England. I noticed that these people, according to Jimson, were all 'great', and that they all ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... to reply to a critic who suggested that in emphasizing the role of the secret societies in World Revolution I had abandoned my former thesis of the Orleaniste conspiracy. I wish therefore to state that I do not retract one word I wrote in The French Revolution on the Orleaniste ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... turns of Sterne's pen bear inspiration. No less a critic than the severe Hazlitt was satisfied that "his works consist only ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... should be foolish indeed did we assert that those things omitted from such a code as Ptah-hotep's were not practised or not held to be important in his day. For example, he 'knows nothing'—as a Higher Critic would say—of kindness to animals; but we know from many things that the Egyptians treated animals kindly and made much of them as pets. In the very tomb of that Ptah-hotep mentioned above,[15] who may be ...
— The Instruction of Ptah-Hotep and the Instruction of Ke'Gemni - The Oldest Books in the World • Battiscombe G. Gunn
... critic stood with scornful eye Before a picture on the wall: "You call this art? Now see that fly, It is not ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... There, there, perhaps, such lines as these May take the simple villages; But for the court, the country wit Is despicable unto it. Stay, then, at home, and do not go Or fly abroad to seek for woe. Contempts in courts and cities dwell, No critic haunts the poor man's cell, Where thou mayst hear thine own lines read By no one tongue there censured. That man's unwise will search for ill, And may ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... night of some play. I was dramatic critic for the Saturday Review, and, weary of meeting the same lot of people over and over again at first nights, had recently sent a circular to the managers asking that I might have seats for second nights instead. I found that there existed as distinct and invariable a lot of second-nighters ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... of Andr Chnier, enjoyed a great reputation as a dramatic poet and critic. Aside from the Chant du dpart, which had a reputation approaching that of the Marseillaise, he is hardly to be considered as a ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... whole, the least important part of his work. He had a few good and brilliant ideas which came at just the right time to make a stir in the world, and these his logical mind and telling style enabled him to present to the best advantage. As a critic he is neither broad-minded, learned, nor comprehensive. Nor is he, except in the few ideas referred to, deep. He is, however, limitedly original—perhaps intensely original within his narrow scope. But ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... to his fellows. The tendency is toward a habit of fault-finding criticism which not only harms the object of the disparaging words, but which injures and undermines the usefulness of the life of the habitually unfair critic. ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... princesses of such a line, more ways than one of being a heroine? Maggie's way to-night was to surprise them all, truly, by the extravagance of her affability. She was doubtless not positively boisterous; yet, though Mrs. Assingham, as a bland critic, had never doubted her being graceful, she had never seen her put so much of it into being what might have been called assertive. It was all a tune to which Fanny's heart could privately palpitate: her guest was happy, happy as a consequence ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... teachers, few of whom are accustomed to write for the public eye, we offer the only apology for the imperfections of the work, which, in our judgment, the circumstances of the case demand. If this explanation shall not cause the critic to throw the work aside, we would welcome him to whatever pleasure he may find in its perusal. Of the defects which it contains, we prefer to share jointly the responsibility; and have, therefore, omitted to attach signatures to the several articles. The shorter paragraphs, scattered ...
— Our Gift • Teachers of the School Street Universalist Sunday School, Boston
... exactly as they are, but he is utterly unable to see Flavia as they see her. There you have the situation. Why can't he see her as we do? My dear, that has kept me awake o' nights. This man who has thought so much and lived so much, who is naturally a critic, really takes Flavia at very nearly her own estimate. But now I am entering upon a wilderness. From a brief acquaintance with her you can know nothing of the icy fastnesses of Flavia's self-esteem. It's like St. Peter's; you can't realize its magnitude at once. ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... Asphalte Paving Company, and having signed a contract to supply them for seventeen years with the best Pine Pitch on favourable terms, I have not the slightest interest to subserve in writing this letter, which I think any quite impartial critic will allow, curtly, but honestly, expresses ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, January 18, 1890 • Various
... advance-agent instinct strong within him he selected a clipping, and touching the violinist on the shoulder: "Let me read this one to you. It is by Herr Totenkellar. He is a hard nut to crack, but he did himself proud this time. Great critic when he ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... speedily began to play a more notable role. With the assistance of his devoted adherents, Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, Sir John Gorst and occasionally of Mr Arthur Balfour, and one or two others, he constituted himself at once the audacious opponent of the Liberal administration and the unsparing critic of the Conservative front bench. The "fourth party," as it was nicknamed, was effective at first not so much in damaging the government as in awakening the opposition from the apathy which had fallen upon it after its defeat at the polls. Churchill roused the Conservatives and gave them a fighting ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... been questioned, but by very few, and on no grounds that are perceptible to common sense. One critic imagines that it ascribes miraculous power to the Prophet in "its natural impression that the Prophet reproduces from memory and dictates all the words which the Lord has spoken to him."(34) There is no trace of miracle in the story. ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... the phenomenal distinctions on which science is based, for it draws its vital breath from a region which—whether above or below—is at least altogether different from that in which science dwells. A critic, however, who cannot disprove the truth of the metaphysic creed, can at least raise his voice in protest against its disguising itself in 'scientific' plumes. I think that all who have had the patience to follow me thus far will agree that ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... Amias Keston's unfinished picture, and, as usual, Malcolm had been holding forth in his role of art critic, when one of those sudden pauses which seem to drop softly between intimate friends followed his concluding speech. Verity held up her finger with the hackneyed allusion to a passing angel, ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... developed that it would be hard in these days to find a person whose skepticism concerning the Negro would find a doubtful expression as to the Negro's humanity. The light has become too strong for the existence of that kind of mist; hence the unsympathetic critic has been forced to find a new way of putting his ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... a generous, sensible critic, Madge," he said, quietly, although there was a flush of resentment on his face at his brother's words. "In the main you are right, but I still hold to my theory. At least, I believe that in all great music there is a ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... here, And the leaves curl up in sheer Disgust, And the cold rains fringe the pine, You really must Stop that supercilious whine—- Or you'll be shot, by some mephitic Angry critic. ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... unwilling to offer what might be regarded as an affront to the memory of one from whose opinions he still widely dissents, but to whose talents and virtues he admits that he formerly did not do justice. Serious as are the faults of the Essay on Government, a critic, while noticing those faults, should have abstained from using contemptuous language respecting the historian of British India. It ought to be known that Mr Mill had the generosity, not only to forgive, but to forget the unbecoming acrimony with which he had been assailed, and was, when ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... let her vexation grow. It was outrageous that this little pest should upset things so completely. She had been especially anxious to impress this Mr. Christiansen, whom she had recently met. He was a distinguished litterateur and critic, as well as a stunning giant of a man. The white lace gown had been entirely for his benefit. And yet because of Isabelle he had been critical of her. Man-like he had convictions about woman's job. He probably thought she should have been ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... critic's words verbatim. I really looked at the young lady in astonishment, that she should see nothing but a want of liveliness in a picture, which most of us feel to be sublime. But Miss D——- had an old grudge against you, for not having made her papa's ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... advanced in life,—I can be as minute in its details as I please; and the details of the misadventure which stripped the shipmaster of the earnings of long years of carefulness and toil, blended as they are with what an old critic might term a curious machinery of the supernatural, seem not unworthy of ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... Piazza succeeded Button's, or, rather, came into vogue afterwards when Garrick, Quin, Foote and others used it. The house stood at the north-east corner. It is described as a place of resort for critics. "Everyone you meet is a polite scholar and critic ... the merit of every production of the press is weighed and determined." Apparently a place where the conversation was a continual attempt at smartness; it must have been most fatiguing. The weak point, indeed, of this public life ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... so minutely works the examination of which leads to such bodily discomfort, I cannot imagine. But he did so, and his pages should be consulted. He is particularly interesting on "The Plague of Serpents." My own favourite is that of Moses striking the rock, from which, it is said, an early critic fled for his life for fear of the torrent. The manna scene may be compared with another and more vivid version of the same incident in S. ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... has subjoined to the different plays. In other respects he is not superior to the rest; in some, particularly in illustrating his author from antecedent or contemporary writers, he is inferior to them. A German critic of our own days, Schlegel, has surpassed him even in that which ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... squalor would imply. The peddler Felix had studied Hebrew theology in the hope of becoming a rabbi. Failing this, he was always much interested in declamation, public reading, and the recitation of poetry. He was, in his way, no mean critic of actors and actresses. Long before she was ten years of age little Rachel—who had changed her name from Elise—could render with much feeling and neatness of eloquence bits from the best-known French plays of ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... it always an artistic triumph. That year there was more than usual excitement over the event, because of the first appearance in public of Mademoiselle Dulany, whose voice had been enthusiastically written of by every critic whom Josef had permitted to hear her sing. Two of the greatest singers of the world, old pupils of Josef, had been bidden to sing with her. Campanali and Rigard, whose sonorous bass tones have thrilled two continents, came gladly at the bidding of their old master, to whom ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... age Maketh Unknowns so many and so shy? What but the critic's page? One hath a cast, he hides from the world's eye; Another hath a wen,—he won't show where; A third has sandy hair, A hunch upon his back, or legs awry, Things for a vile reviewer to espy! Another hath a mangel-wurzel nose,— Finally, this is dimpled, ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... liberty, clear views on democracy, an enormous capacity for work, and great skill as a pamphleteer, Lilburne was not to be ignored. The Government might have had him for a supporter; it unwisely decided to treat him as an enemy, and for ten years he was an unsparing critic, his popularity increasing with every fresh pamphlet he issued—and ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... all. Nevertheless, he very naturally rebelled against the strongly expressed adverse judgment of his enemy of the copying-clerk proposal, and begged to be allowed to appeal to a competent and impartial critic. To this request his father assented, and M. Surville, who was now engaged to Laure, proposed that M. Andrieux, of the Academie Francaise, formerly his own master at the Ecole Polytechnique, should be asked to give an opinion. Honore, his sister says, "accepted this literary elder as ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... sympathy with people who owned insanitary cottages. It had been her fond belief that she at least possessed none. And now here was Coryston, her eldest son, camped in the very midst of her property, not as her friend and support, but as her enemy and critic; poking his nose into every corner of the estates, taken in by every ridiculous complaint, preaching Socialism at full blast to the laborers, and Land Acts to the farmers, stirring up the Nonconformists to such antics as the Baptists had lately been playing on Sundays at her ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... by Milanesi, gives a fairly intelligible account of the system adopted by Michelangelo. "The outer walls of the bastion were composed of unbaked bricks, the clay of which was mingled with chopped tow. Its thickness he filled in with earth; and," adds this critic, "of all the buildings which remained, this alone survived the siege." It was objected that, in designing these bastions, he multiplied the flanking lines and embrasures beyond what was either necessary or safe. But, observes the anonymous writer, all that his duty as architect demanded was that ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... force. There was nothing affected or modish in his manner. He gave his readers an impression that he was clear in the conception of his own meaning, and he made it equally so to them. He aimed at no ornament: the beauty of his writings consisted in their perspicuity and strength. A verbal critic might discover inaccuracies in his compositions, but the man of sense would find in them nothing unmeaning—- nothing useless—nothing vapid. He was not a turner of fine periods—he was not a fine writer—but he ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... monopolized scholarly attention—much of which should be directed to the commentary. Johnson's love for Shakespeare's plays is well known; nowhere is this more manifest than in his notes on them. And it is on the notes that his claim to remembrance as a critic of Shakespeare must rest, for the famous Preface is, after all, only rarely an original and ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... a period extending over several years, a critic will undoubtedly discover instances of repetition and re-statement. Now and then, it has seemed advisable to include matter from earlier writings, long out of print; and new light has been thrown upon some phases of a perplexing problem. Will it tend to ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... poetry. As the latter have considered the work of the immortal bard as the perfect model from which the principles and rules of the epic art were to be drawn, and by which all similar works were to be judged, so this great political critic appears to have viewed the Constitution of England as the standard, or to use his own expression, as the mirror of political liberty; and to have delivered, in the form of elementary truths, the several characteristic principles of that ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... ceilings, coloured architraves, ornamental cornices, encaustic tiles, and all the other pretty things appertaining to a building designed in a "severe form of the style of the French Renaissance," as an architectural paper critic calls it. Ratepayers will also have pleasure in taking their money to and delivering it over in "one of the most convenient suites of poor-law offices in the kingdom," possibly deriving a little satisfaction from the fact ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... the presentation of his thought. These are conceded to him on every hand; and it does not detract from him, or alter the fact that he possesses them, that, here and there, an ill-humored or maliciously snappish critic calls them in question." It should be borne in mind here that Wolowski wrote in 1857; Contzen, like Wolowski, a politico-economical writer of mark, in ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... criticism and general demeanour on Show Sunday. But it is a proof of the triumph of civilization that nothing of this kind occurs. Peace prevails in the street and studio, and at the end of the day the artist must feel much as the critic does after the private view at the Royal Academy. The artist has been having a private view of the public on its good behaviour, and that wild contempt of the bourgeois which burns in every artist's breast must reach its highest temperature. However, the holidays are beginning, the working ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... the critic who will render the greatest gift to modern civilization is the one who will show us how to fuse the characters of Shakespeare and Swedenborg. One stands for intellect, the other for spirituality. We need both, but we tire of too much goodness, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... to take you away with me is the danger of spoiling your American point of view. Two years from now you can go over and have a look; we'll see to that; but meanwhile make yourself into a blotter that soaks up everything. I once met a literary critic who said that the only American literature that's worth anything or is ever going to be worth anything will be dug right out of the soil. I didn't know then that I had a little digger in my own family! No; the other gloves; and get me the pink ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... Venice through a long life. He had filled almost all the great offices which were intrusted to her nobles. He had governed her distant colonies, accompanied her armies in that position of proveditore, omnipotent civilian critic of all the movements of war, which so much disgusted the generals of the republic. He had been ambassador at the courts of both emperor and pope, and was serving his country in that capacity at Avignon when the news of his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... age, and also that he is free from the other conditions, is wholly absurd. But if he judges the ideas while he is in any 113 condition whatever, he is a part of the contradiction, and, besides, he is no genuine critic of external objects, because he is confused by the condition in which he finds himself. Therefore neither can the one who is awake compare the ideas of those who are asleep with those who are awake, nor can he who is in health compare the ideas of the sick with those of the well; ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick
... faults, their happiness, their misery, their love and friendships, their peculiarities, their power, their gentleness, their patience, their pride,—which Miss Robinson has not touched upon with conscientiousness and sympathy."—The Critic. ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... John's critic, quoted above, meant to convey the idea that in 1887 Sir John thought himself firmly entrenched in power, he was far from the mark. For Sir John went into the elections of 1887 believing that he would be defeated. The Riel movement in the province of Quebec had assumed ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... disappointed. The others submitted to my failure good-naturedly, and made it the subject of many droll, but not unkindly, witicisms. For myself, I could have borne the severest infliction from the pen of the most formidable critic with more fortitude than I bore the cutting up of my first ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... of the writer upon events in Tuscany of which she was a witness. "From a window," the critic may demur. She bows to the objection in the very title of her work. No continuous narrative nor exposition of political philosophy is attempted by her. It is a simple story of personal impressions, whose only ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... good man and a gentleman," said Mr. Buxton, as they rode away at last in the direction of Leigh after leaving Sidney to branch off towards Charket, "and I do not know why he is not a Catholic. And he is a critic and a poet, men ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... suggest good reasons; for was not this the kindest reward now left within his power—to let her think that the wish was not shared—to show even a little resentment and reproach? Max, the satirical critic of human nature, could see clearly the attractiveness of such a course,—knew himself a sufficiently good actor to play the game at least well enough to satisfy his artistic taste. But he did not yield to the temptation; had he done so he would have formed a more ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... . . full upon the Spectators," and that some members of the Restoration audience took printed copies into the playhouse in order to be able to follow the play on the stage.[10] It is a real loss to the historian of drama and to the critic that these two volumes were Laurence Echard's solitary adventure into the criticism ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... conscious deviation from truth, will give that undue prominence to certain features and aspects which in extreme cases may result in caricature. A Catholic biographer of Coventry Patmore would have been tempted to gratify the wish of a recent critic of Mr. Champneys' very efficient work, [1] and to devote ten times as much space as has been given to the account of his conversion, and a good deal, no doubt, to the discussion and correction of his eccentric views in certain ecclesiastical matters; thus giving us the history of an ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... The critic, too, of classic skill, Must dip in gall his gander quill, And scrall against the paper: Of all the literary fools Bred in our colleges and schools, ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... the fair faces that look out upon us at every turn, from court and salon, is that of the Duchesse de Longueville, sister of the Grand Conde, and heroine of the Fronde. Her lovely blue eyes, with their dreamy languor and "luminous awakenings," turn the heads alike of men and women, of poet and critic, of statesman and priest. We trace her brief career through her pure and ardent youth, her loveless marriage, her fatal passion for La Rochefoucauld, the final shattering of all her illusions; and when at last, tired of the world, she bows her beautiful head in penitent prayer, we too love and ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... landlord, "we can dispense with your criticisms. A pretty thing indeed for you, on the strength of knowing half-a-dozen words of Welsh, to set up for a Welsh critic in the house of a person who knows the ancient British ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... the world 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 combat ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... uncivil, impudent, dirty, slow, and provoking. Occasionally they are a little slow, it must be confessed; but I never met with one, male or female, who was uncivil, impudent, or provoking. If I supposed it possible that my voice should ever reach our late critic, whose good sense and good spirit Americans appreciate, and whose name they would be glad to honor if everything English had not become suspicious to us, the possible synonyme of Pharisaism or stupidity, I should ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... newspapers on President Wilson's note of June 9 was reported by THE TIMES staff correspondent in Berlin on June 12 as being "surprisingly restrained and optimistic." Captain L. Persius, the naval critic of the Berliner Tageblatt, which is close to Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg, writing under the caption, "On the Way to ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... of the main hall of the Central Police Headquarters, on the second story, in Mulberry street, is a desk at which sits an old rosy-cheeked, white-headed police officer, named McWaters. McWaters is famous in New York. He is the theatrical critic of the Police Department. His opinions on music and the drama are of weighty authority among members of the force, and, like most critics, he is dogmatic ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... therefore to our second question: Can we trust the Four Gospels? And this question must be answered in even fewer words than were given to the last. As to the external evidence, let us hear the judgment of the great German scholar, Harnack. Harnack is a critic who is ready to give to the winds with both hands many things which are dear to us as life itself; yet this is how he writes in one of his most recent works: "Sixty years ago David Friedrich Strauss thought that he had almost entirely destroyed the historical credibility, ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... object to criticism; and we do not expect that the critic will read the book before writing a notice of it: We do not even expect the reviewer of the book will say that he has not read it. No, we have no anticipations of anything unusual in this age of criticism. But if the Jupiter, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Katherine. A wild 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 ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... mouths of the Communists themselves. At the second congress of the Third International, Trotsky remarked. "A party as such, in the course of the development of a revolution, becomes identical with the revolution." Lenin, on the same occasion, replying to a critic who said that he differed from, the Communists in his understanding of what was meant by the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, said, "He says that we understand by the words 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat' what is actually the dictatorship of its determined and conscious ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... is the article from Goethe's "Kunst und Alterthum," enclosed in this letter. The grave confidence with which the venerable critic traces the fancies of his brother poet to real persons and events, making no difficulty even of a double murder at Florence to furnish grounds for his theory, affords an amusing instance of the disposition so prevalent throughout Europe, to picture Byron as a man of marvels and mysteries, as well ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... wood—along the grain: if one thinks that there is a grain. But the two are never the same: the names never come in the same order in actual time as they come in any serious study of a spirit or a tendency. The critic who wishes to move onward with the life of an epoch, must be always running backwards and forwards among its mere dates; just as a branch bends back and forth continually; yet the grain in the branch runs true like an ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... to exist politically. This has two bad results: it does not strengthen the criticism of the administration, and it makes the office-holder very loath to leave office, and to surrender his power. An ex-cabinet officer in America or in England remains a valuable critic, but an ex-chancellor in Germany becomes a social recluse, a political Trappist. Even the leading political figures are after all merely shadowy servants of the Emperor. They represent neither themselves nor the people, and such subserviency ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... those days he maintained his own company of players; and we find them in 1581 giving performances at Cambridge and Ipswich. His comedies, moreover, though now lost were placed in the same rank as those of Edwardes by the Elizabethan critic Puttenham[99]. Now as secretary of such a man, and therefore in close intimacy with him, it would be the most natural thing in the world for Lyly to try his hand at play-writing, and, if his patron approved of his efforts, an introduction to Court could be procured, since Oxford was Lord High Chamberlain, ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... 'Christmas Carol' is the most striking, the most picturesque, the most truthful, of all the limnings which have proceeded from its author's pen. There is much mirth in the book, says a competent English critic, but more wisdom; wisdom of that kind which men possess who have gazed thoughtfully but kindly on human life, and have pierced deeper than their fellows into all the sunny nooks and dark recesses of the human breast. The barbarous notion has long been exploded, that ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... antiquated and romantic castle of Tegel, by the side of the pine forest, on the shore of the charming lake, near the beautiful city of Berlin, the great Humboldt, one hundred years ago to-day, was born, and there he was educated after the method suggested by Rousseau—Campe, the philologist and critic, and the intellectual Kunth being his tutors. There he received the impressions that determined his career; there the great idea that the universe is governed by law took possession of his mind, and there he dedicated his life to ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... disputed. In the case of the theatre, it cannot be pretended that the inferior situations have any separate attractions, unless the pit may be supposed to have an advantage for the purposes of the critic or the dramatic reporter. But the critic or reporter is a rarity. For most people, the sole benefit is in the price. Now, on the contrary, the outside of the mail had its own incommunicable advantages. These we could not forego. ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... my opinions and suggestions, and natural as it was that he should be swayed by such decided praise, I was surprised to find that I could not at first obtain credit with him for my judgment on Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. 'It was any thing but poetry—it had been condemned by a good critic—had I not myself seen the sentences on the margins of the manuscripts?' He dwelt upon the Paraphrase of the Art of Poetry with pleasure, and the manuscript of that was given to Cawthorn, the publisher of the Satire, to be ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... euphony which I have noticed in "Zanzibar" (vol. i. chap. x.). We should expect "Jina jako," whereas this would offend the native ear. It requires a scholar-like knowledge of the tongue to apply the curious process correctly, and the self-sufficient critic should beware how he attempts to correct quotations from ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... sentence implies that he was asked to give his opinion. The double negative, therefore, should be carefully avoided, for it is insidious and is liable to slip in and the writer remain unconscious of its presence until the eye of the critic detects it. ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... it is certain that a great many of the smaller buildings must be rather deep under the sand level by now, but that they are there, there can be little doubt, for fragments of tiles, bricks, vases, &c., strew the ground. No doubt the usual critic will wonder how it is that, if the houses are buried, these fragments are not buried also. The wind principally is responsible for their keeping on the surface of the sand. They are constantly shifted and are blown from place to place, until arrested ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... be stranger than this talk on the dark road with the girl who, too, should be naturally opposed to him. In fact, here at this very spot and at their first meeting she had announced herself as a critic and an enemy. He could smile over that now; she herself probably did smile at the recollection. Yet she was calmly discussing his situation without ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... business is publishing a journal (or more than one), or editing a journal, or writing for journals, especially a person who is regularly employed in some responsible directing or creative work on a journal, as a publisher, editor, writer, reporter, critic, etc. This use of the word is comparatively modern, and it is commonly restricted to persons connected with daily or weekly newspapers. Many older newspaper men scout it, preferring to be known as publishers, editors, writers, or contributors. Journalism, however, is a word that is needed for its ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... tongue, Intelligent wit and critic nostrils keen, O well and neatly may I trounce ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes
... overheard. You saw how I handled that shallow politician at my Lady Plausible's the other day. The same method I practise upon the crazed Tory, the bigot Whig, the sour, supercilious pedant, the petulant critic, the blustering coward, the fawning fool, the pert imp, sly sharper, and every other species of knaves and fools, with ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... it to anyone, take care it is only to a mutual friend or sister; it is not fit to meet the eye of a critic or indeed of anyone, but it is a note of the time from which a statement might with some further ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... This is an instance of the "point of view." The five romances studied with a different purpose might have given different results, even with a critic so warmly interested in their favour. The great contemporary master of workmanship, and indeed of all literary arts and technicalities, had not unnaturally dazzled a beginner. But it is best to dwell on merits, for it is these that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tossing of the waves of time, the accidental smothers the essential, and life turns into a commonplace instead of a romance. And so, like every other story, this little story will perhaps be very differently judged, according to the reader's sex. The bearded critic will see it with eyes very different from those with which it may be viewed by the fair voter with no beard upon her chin; for women, as the great god says at the end, have scant mercy on their own sex, and the heroine of the ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... plunged into dramatic criticism as the avowed partisan of Norwegian ideals, holding himself, in some sort, the successor of Wergeland, Who had died about ten years earlier. Before becoming a dramatic critic, he had essayed dramatic authorship, and the acceptance by the theatre of his juvenile play, "Valborg," had led to a somewhat unusual result. He was given a free ticket of admission, and a few weeks of theatre-going opened his eyes to the defects of his ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... up children is so difficult is that example is so much more important than precept. I am a qualified literary critic, although I never wrote a novel; I am a qualified drama critic, although I never wrote a play; I am a qualified baseball and lawn tennis critic, although I never was a first-class player. But when parents endeavor to bring up children to reflect honor ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... figures and animal-like fragments of modems (his friends with tails, wings, etc.), hastily wash his hands, trot along in front of them to his place of business, and in a brief space of time turn out some complicated legal instrument with which it would defy the sharpest critic to find anything amiss. ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... devotedly. Well, he can write grammatical, readable English. What if Lord Ormont were to take him as a secretary while the Memoirs are in hand? He might help to chasten the sentences laughed at by those newspapers. Or he might, being a terrible critic of writing, and funny about styles, put it in an absurd light, that would cause the Memoirs to be tossed into the fire. He was made for the post of secretary! The young man's good looks would be out of harm's way then. If any ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to be gained by the late publication of this third volume, is the criticism of friends on the two former ones. Amid many errors, I have been admonished, by my kind adviser and critic, Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Esq., of having erred in accepting the common authorities in regard to the celebrated and unfortunate Lady Grange. Whatever were the sorrows of that lady, her faults and the provocation she gave to her irritated husband, ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... passed away with Luigi Cherubini, the great Italian composer. Cherubini, many of whose works were brought out during the previous century was so popular by the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, that he was esteemed above Beethoven. A Viennese critic who ventured to say that Beethoven's "Fidelio" was of equal merit with Cherubini's "Fanisca" was laughed to scorn. Cherubini's best opera, "The Water Carrier," was brought out in Paris and London in 1800 and 1801. Owing to his disregard of Napoleon's musical opinions, Cherubini found himself ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... Painter in Athens, more intent on excellence than on money, had done a God of War; and sent for a real Critic to give him his opinion of it. On survey, the Critic shook his head: "Too much Art visible; won't do, my friend!" The Painter strove to think otherwise; and was still arguing, when a young Coxcomb [GECK, Gawk] stept in: "Gods, what a masterpiece!" ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... qualities in our fiction. We have been judged by Englishmen and Irishmen who do not know our work and by Americans who do know it. We have been appraised at our real worth by Mr. Edward Garnett, who is probably the only English critic competent through sufficient acquaintance to discuss us. Mr. Owen Wister and Mr. Henry Sydnor Harrison have discussed us with each other, and bandied names to and fro rather uncritically. And Mr. Robert Herrick ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... and so it was forgotten, until it was revived again in Germany. Though the text is meagre, the opera had great success on the stages of Berlin, Leipsic, Vienna and Dresden, and so its Publisher, Paul Choudens in Paris was right, when he remarked years ago to a German critic: "l'Allemagne un jour comprendra ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... old she had wrapped her weakness as in a glittering garment. That ironical smile, worn through so many years, had gradually changed the lines of her face, and when she looked in the mirror she saw not herself, but the scathing critic, the amused observer and ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... material; where, that is, the man is his own material, and there is nothing between. With the actor the style is the man, in another, a more immediate, and a more obvious sense than was ever intended by that saying. Therefore we may allow the critic—and not accuse him of reaction—to speak of the division between art and Nature in the painting of a landscape, but we cannot let him say the same things of acting. Acting has ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... the novel suffered, perhaps deservedly, for what was involved in these intentions—for its quality of unexpectedness in particular—that unforgivable sin in the critic's sight—the immediate precursor of 'Ethelberta' having been a purely rural tale. Moreover, in its choice of medium, and line of perspective, it undertook a delicate task: to excite interest in a drama—if such a dignified ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... his doings observes, he suppressed Buddhism on the ground that it is a superstition but encouraged Taoism which is no better. Indeed the impartial critic must admit that it is much worse, at any rate for Emperors. Undeterred by the fate of his predecessors Wu-Tsung began to take the elixir of immortality. He suffered first from nervous irritability, then from internal pains, which were explained as due ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... 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 clearly defined by Boileau to a dull convention, ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... have been better entertained, and more informed by a few pages in the Pilgrim's Progress, than by a long discourse upon the will and the intellect, and simple and complex ideas.' Nothing short of extraordinary merit could have called for such a eulogy from so severe a critic. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan |
