"Mediocre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... attained his majority and assumed the reins of government, nominally at least, for the regent had taken care to give him Dubois for prime minister. Both these illustrious personages, however, died in the course of the year, and were succeeded by the Duc de Bourbon, "ugly and one-eyed, low, mediocre, hypocritical, a man of little led by a woman of nothing, Madame de Prie," and who renewed the persecution of the Protestants and the Jansenists. The young king contented himself with "showing at the council table his handsome and impassible ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... Dennis, the son of a saddler in London, born 1657, was a mediocre writer, and rather better critic of the time, with whom Pope came a good deal into collision. Addison's tragedy of Cato, for which Pope had written a prologue, had been attacked by Dennis. Pope, to defend Addison, wrote an imaginary report, pretending ...
— An Essay on Criticism • Alexander Pope
... garden and his rediscovery of the sprites, forgotten during his twenty years of business life. And these sprites were as familiar to them now as those of their own childhood. They little knew that at night they met and talked with them. Daddy had put them all into the Wumble Book, achieving mediocre success with the rhymes, but amply atoning with the illustrations. The Woman of the Haystack was evidently a monster pure and simple, till Jinny announced that she merely had 'elephantitis,' and thus explained her satisfactorily. The Lamplighter, with shining ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... drily, yet flushing a little, too, "I can see very clearly that I shall hereafter have very mediocre recitations from the girls of Central High. They will no longer ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... and Mme Guyon possess moderate talent acquit themselves well, and are much liked, generally speaking. At present Ligier is considered their best tragedian, but principally owes what fame he has, to their actors in that department being of so mediocre a description, some people prefer Beauvallet but not the majority, their abilities are very nearly of the same stamp. Guyon is a fine young man, and plays the parts of young heroes very fairly. Geffroy is another, possessing sufficient merit to escape condemnation. As ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... buttress in a fives court. If the ball hit him, as it frequently did, the player waiting for it was at liberty either to play it or claim a let. This arrangement added a piquant and pleasing variety to what is too often—especially when indulged in by mediocre players—a ...
— Scally - The Story of a Perfect Gentleman • Ian Hay
... timers with their indifferent dress, their vernacular and free manners of the mountains and ranges brushed elbows with the more modern folk of the poor and the middle class of the Middle West. They were uninteresting and mediocre, these newcomers, yet the sort who thrive astonishingly upon new soil, who become prosperous and self-important in an atmosphere of equality. There were, too, educated failures from the East and—people who had blundered. But all alike ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... especially great, because the study of it from the living—or dying—model is so easy, and to many has been the most impressive part of their own personal experience; while, if the description be given even with mediocre accuracy, a very large section of readers will admire its truth, and cherish its melancholy: Few authors of second or third rate genius can either record or invent a probable conversation in ordinary life; but few, on the other hand, are so destitute of observant faculty ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... explain to you why this Theosophical Society, so weak, is yet so strong—weak in its numbers, weak in the qualifications of its members, not numbering amongst its adherents the most learned and the most mighty of the earth, made up of very mediocre, average people, not the great leaders of the civilisation of the day; but in them all, else would they not be members of the Theosophical Society, is the dawning aspiration after a nobler condition, and some willingness to sacrifice themselves in order that the coming of that ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... The mediocre poet has had a hard fate pronounced against him of old; but the minor novelist, perhaps because he is much more likely to get some good things in his own time, has usually a harder lot still, and in more than one way, after physical or popular death. In fact it may be ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... India general assessment: mediocre service; local and long distance service provided throughout all regions of the country, with services primarily concentrated in the urban areas; major objective is to continue to expand and modernize long-distance network to keep pace with rapidly growing number ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... assessment: the domestic system is mediocre, but improving; service is adequate for government and business use, in part because major businesses have established their own private systems; since 1988, the government has promoted investment in the ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... 29.] M obscurum in extremitate dictionum sonat, ut templum, apertum in principio, ut magnus; mediocre ...
— The Roman Pronunciation of Latin • Frances E. Lord
... It was not well advised; though probably the great blunderers were the Admiralty, in sending as second a man who had shown himself so exceptionally and uniquely capable of supreme command, and so apt to make trouble for mediocre superiors. If Lord St. Vincent's surmise was correct, Parker, who was a very respectable officer, had been chosen for his present place because in possession of all the information acquired during the last preparation for a Russian ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... of Amiel's malady is sublime, and the expression of it wonderful." So ran one of the last paragraphs of the Introduction, and one may see in the sentences another instance of that courage, that reasoned rashness, which distinguishes the good from the mediocre critic. For it is as true now as it was in the days when La Bruyere rated the critics of his time for their incapacity to praise, and praise at once, that "the surest test of a man's critical power is his judgment of contemporaries." ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... treadmill, painting was released by the intervention of another art. The painters were hopelessly mediocre; their art was snatched from them by the sculptors. Orcagna himself, perhaps the only Giottesque who gave painting an onward push, had modelled and cast one of the bronze gates of the Florence baptistery; the generation of artists who arose at the beginning of the fifteenth century, ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... "and—really, how can one expect them to get good results with no training for their work and only a few years in office? Take men like Johnson, Tyler, Polk, Hayes, Buchanan, Pierce, Filmore, Harrison, McKinley. Mediocre figures, are they not? What ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... at all, except Shakespeare, whom am going through from beginning to end. That tones you up and puts new air into your lungs, just as if you were on a high mountain. Everything appears mediocre beside that prodigious felow. ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... pathetic figure of Laura is most affecting, the author did not fully reach the goal he had set for himself, yet "no mediocre mind or ordinary imagination could ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... contrived to use language which was a medley of commonplaces mixed with maxims and computations served up in flowing phrases mildly put forth, which sounded to the ears of superficial people like eloquence. Thus he pleased that great majority, mediocre by nature, who are condemned to perpetual labor and to views which are of the earth earthy. Cesar, however, lost so much time in court that his wife obliged him finally to resign the ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... necessary for the success of his discourses; nothing in him was extreme but the orator: the man was by no means so, neither was he at all cruel. Studious, but without imagination; copious, but without warmth, his intellect was mediocre, his mind honest, his will variable, his heart in the right place. His talent, which they affected to compare with Mirabeau's, was nothing more than a power of skilfully rivetting public attention. His habit of pleading gave him, with its power of extempore speaking, an apparent ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... into his new house, furnished it partly: bought a quantity of mediocre wood-carving, and improved it; put specimens in his window, and painted his name over the door. This, at his mother's request and tearful entreaties, he painted out again, ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... detain her at the school for a more advanced position which she would probably not be allowed to take on account of her youth and inexperience. Students in this department need to be watched with especial care to determine whether they are well adapted for their occupation, and the mediocre worker would better enter some other field where the opportunities for her are more encouraging. As the advance is slow the girl also whose poverty is hurrying her into wage-earning would better not elect ...
— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman
... themselves off as a separate sect, and who carried on to some extent the work of Hellenistic Judaism. Perhaps the true judgment about him is that he was neither noble nor villainous, neither champion nor coward, but one of those mediocre men of talent but of weak character and conflicting impulses struggling against adversity who succumb to the difficulties of the time in which their life is passed, and sacrifice their individuality to comfort. But ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... professor of mathematics and physics at Halle. His work on parallels is the Versuch einer voellig berichtigten Theorie der Parallellinien (1779). He also wrote a work entitled Anfangsgruende der mathematischen Wissenschaften (1780), but neither of these works was more than mediocre. ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... of this timid hope. He was now in his element, knew all about it, rushed into details, and sawed away all doubt from their minds. The sum was this. Dodd's general performance was mediocre, but passable; he was plucked for his Logic. Hardie said he was very sorry for it. "What does it matter?" answered ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... adduced of Swift's genuine and earnest belief in the dignity of a clergyman of the Church than this letter. In spite of the sarcasms which here and there are levelled against the mediocre members of the class, it is evident Swift felt that these might be made worthy teachers and preachers of the doctrines of an institution founded, in his opinion, for the best regulation of mankind. The letter serves also to present us with an outline of a picture of the clergyman ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... it can stand only on a broad base; its primary prerequisite is a strong and soundly consolidated mediocrity. The handicrafts, commerce, agriculture, science, the greater part of art, in brief, the whole range of occupational activities, are compatible only with mediocre ability and aspiration; such callings would be out of place for exceptional men; the instincts which belong to them stand as much opposed to aristocracy as to anarchism. The fact that a man is publicly useful, that he is a wheel, a function, ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... But there is, moreover, a base vengeance, when the man, to satisfy it, employs means exposed to contempt. The base always implies something gross, or reminds one of the mob, while the common can be found in a well-born and well-bred man, who may think and act in a common manner if he has only mediocre faculties. A man acts in a common manner when he is only taken up with his own interest, and it is in this that he is in opposition with the really noble man, who, when necessary, knows how to forget himself to procure ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... his business steadfastly to jot down what he sees, and it is not impossible that in the course of a long and laborious life a man might in this way cultivate to a reasonable growth a turn for observation originally less than mediocre; but it is not the natural observer's method of seeing things, and it is not the natural artist's method of presenting them. If the critics in this case were in the right we should have to acknowledge an auctioneer's catalogue ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... into epics moulded upon the Henriade, and tedious odes in the style of Boileau and Jean Baptiste Rousseau. Oustrialov, the historian, truly characterizes most of the voluminous writers of this epoch, as mediocre verse makers, for claiming merits in the cases of Bogdanovich, Khemnitzer, Von Vizin, Dmitriev, and Derzhavin. Bogdanovich wrote a very pretty lyric piece, styled Dushenka based on the story of Cupid and Psyche, and partly imitated from ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... existence. When his brother-in-law had been appointed ambassador to America, he had accompanied him to the United States with a vague idea that he would be thrown in contact with warlike tribes of Indians, the aborigines of the soil, whose novel and barbarous usages might afford him some mediocre measure of excitement. We need hardly ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... leaders, whether in the fields of thought or action, whether in the council-chamber of the statesman, on the battle-field of the warrior, in the study of the writer, or in the laboratory of the scientist—all have been men of genius. No mediocre man ever was a great leader ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... the first of his species who wisheth for the prosperity of all and never setteth his heart on the misery of others, who is truthful in speech, humble in behaviour, and hath all his passions under control. That man is regarded as a mediocre in goodness who never consoleth others by saying what is not true; who giveth having promised; and who keepeth an eye over the weakness of others. These, however, are the indications of a bad man, viz., incapacity to be controlled; liability to be ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... world ever saw; and the absence of the vertebrata, or at least the inconspicuous place which they occupied if they were at all present, must have imparted to the whole, as a group, a humble and mediocre character. It seems to have been for many ages together a creation of molluscs, corals, and Crustacea. At length, in an upper bed of the system, immediately under the base of the Old Red Sandstone, the remains of the earliest known fishes appear, blent ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... Nothing is more striking in the life of Jesus than His affection for ordinary men. The cultured Pharisees, the philosophical Sadducees seem to have much less attraction to Him than the rude fisherman and the toiler. These men were often weak, sometimes cowardly, obstinate, dull, mediocre; yet He committed His kingdom to them; He believed in them. Before they had faith in Him He had faith in them; and that ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... sculptors, stupefied by Rodin, achieved sections of human anatomy protruding from lumps of clay and marble; its dramatists, drugged by Mallarme and Maeterlinck, dabbled in dullness, platitude and mediocre psychology; its writers wrote as bloodily, as squalidly, and as immodestly as they dared; its poets blubbered with Verlaine, spat with Aristide Bruant, or leered with the alcoholic muses ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... hand, I am bound to urge in the Pope's behalf that the colleges are numerous, well endowed, and provided with ample means for turning out mediocre priests. The monasteries devote themselves to the education of little monks. They are taught from an early age to hold a wax taper, wear a frock, cast down their eyes, and chant in Latin. If you wish to admire the ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... strength with the officers of the army. They have no confidence either in his character or in his ability; not that they think his character bad or deny his ability, but only that they regard him as a shallow, vacillating, and mediocre person who made himself valuable to the Republican politicians by going into alliances with them to which other officers of strong character and high ability would not stoop. As for the quarrel between Boulanger and these politicians, it is a beggars' quarrel, to be made ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... The strong, fit worker in a skilled trade, where there is little labor pressure, is well compensated. He is a king compared with his less fortunate brothers in the unskilled occupations where the labor pressure is great. The mediocre worker not only is forced to be idle a large portion of the time, but when employed is forced to accept a pittance. A dollar a day on some days and nothing on other days will hardly support a man and wife and send children to school. And not only do the masters bear heavily upon him, ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... mean, mediocre. You can have schemes for raising the level of this mean, but not for making every one two inches taller than his neighbour, and this is ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... and is a brilliant example of what can be accomplished by the aid of an indomitable will and untiring energy. Although his early advantages of education and position were of a most ordinary description, nothing he has ever attempted failed, and none of his successes have been mediocre. As a soldier he rose from a private to the rank of captain, and was known as one of the bravest officers on the field—one of the best disciplinarians in camp; as an author his works are found in nearly every home in the land, ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... country, and the chances are that he or she is still looking forward to 'finishing' with some European artist. They are not satisfied until they have secured the foreign stamp of approval. While this is true of the advanced pianist, it is even more in evidence in the mediocre player. He, too, is dreaming of the 'superior advantages,' as he calls them, of European study. He may have no foundation to build upon—may not even be able to play a scale correctly, but still thinks he must ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... tie that bound Harley P. Hennage to San Pasqual was severed. His soul was not mediocre; he could dwell no longer in San Pasqual without feeling himself accursed. Never again could he bear to sit on his high stool at the lunch counter in the railroad eating- house, where he had boarded for ten years, and ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... not look at Maxine when he answered. He looked at Johnny and said, "I'll be frank, kiddo. You have the talent, but you don't have the salesmanship to promote it. Do you want a mediocre job while the weather boys exploit you for the rest of your life or—do you want greatness, riches, ...
— Summer Snow Storm • Adam Chase
... spite of her physical charms, had found life hard during the earlier years of her career. She had become a mediocre actress merely for the sake of having some profession, and had frequented the night restaurants in quest of a wealthy lover. It was only after a long delay that fortune had smiled upon her, and she had arrived at the enviable position of being the ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... there be of our improving the breed by deliberate selection? If we developed the intellect, we would probably stunt the physique or the moral nature; if we aimed at a general culture of all faculties alike, we would probably end by a Chinese uniformity of mediocre dead level. ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... land, with its rocks and lakes and heathery hills. This was because he really had the poet's eye and heart. Such do not need to traverse the whole wide world to find enough of beauty; it is only the mediocre and the commonplace who care to gaze superficially at the landscapes of two continents. But Wilson knew his land not only with the eye of a poet, but also with that of a naturalist. His favorite pastime was ornithology, ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... scarcely touched. On the sixteenth of April he was elected a member of the Commune by the 6th arrondissement of Paris, and forthwith appointed Director of the Beaux Arts. Until this time his life had been purely professional, and consequently of mediocre interest for the general public. He was born at Ornans, department of the Doubs, in 1819, and received his primary instructions from the Abbe Gousset, afterwards Archbishop of Rheims. He first applied ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... which we must therefore be content to be ignorant. All that we can see is, that either personal merit or official rank and position must have enabled him to establish himself; for he certainly did not derive any assistance from his birth, which must have been mediocre, if not actually obscure. It is the custom of the Babylonian and Assyrian kings to glory in their ancestry, and when the father has occupied a decently high position, the son declares his sire's name and ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... rapidity of locomotion, but it has been at the expense of its vigor, endurance, and health; it can run with great velocity for a short distance, but in a four-mile heat, and mounted by a man of average weight, a mediocre horse of the style of the middle of the last century would come to the post long before the winner ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... only a few lyric actors more versatile and gifted than he, or who have achieved their rank in the teeth of so many difficulties and disadvantages. His voice was limited in compass, inferior in quality, and habitually out of tune, his power of musical execution mediocre, his physical appearance entirely without grace, picturesqueness, or dignity. Yet Ronconi, by sheer force of a versatile dramatic genius, delighted audiences in characters which had been made familiar to the public through the splendid personalities of Tamburini and ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... portraits which he sketched of the daughters of Khuniatonu playing undressed at their mother's side, are examples of a reserved and delicate grace. But these models, when once composed and finished even to the smallest details, were entrusted for execution to workmen of mediocre powers, who were recruited not only from Thebes, but from the neighbouring cities of Hermopolis and Siut. These estimable people, with a praiseworthy patience, traced bit by bit the cartoons confided to them, omitting or adding individuals ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... how would the papal government in these days appear compared with the great kingdoms of Europe? Formerly mediocre men succeeded to the pontifical throne at an age in which one breathes well only after resting. At this period of life routine and habit are everything; and nothing is considered but the elevated position, and how to make it redound ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... during the period immediately succeeding him, and he became an authority and a pattern for many Russian writers, who imitated his pseudo-classical poetry, and even copied his language, as the acme of literary perfection. In reality, although he acquired a certain technical skill, he was a very mediocre poet; yet he was as an eagle among barnyard fowls, and cleverly made use of the remarkable possibilities of the Russian language as no other man did, although he borrowed his models from the pseudo-classical productions then in vogue ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... anonymous writer. He has never had sufficient intellectual character to do anything well. The downward side of middle age finds him afflicted with various physical ailments, entirely dependent upon a precarious position at a moderate salary, without influential friends, completely disillusioned, with a mediocre mind now much fagged, devoid of high ambition, and with a most unstimulating prospect before him. His attitude toward the business of book reviewing is that he wishes he had gone into the tailor business or that his father had left him a grocery store. He would not have succeeded, however, as ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... discretion, and sees to every detail of the stage-management. In this respect she differs from all other foreign artists that I have seen. I have always regretted that Duse should play as a rule with such a mediocre company and should be apparently so indifferent to her surroundings. In "Adrienne Lecouvreur" it struck me that the careless stage-management utterly ruined the play, and I could not bear to see Duse as Adrienne beautifully dressed while the Princess and ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... a good-humoured air of affront, 'you thought me serious? Don't you know I'm the ninth, instead of the nineteenth-century man, under your wing? I'd promise you to be a bishop, only, you see, I'm afraid I couldn't be mediocre enough.' ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... artistry, in all unusualness and all genius something deeply ambiguous, deeply dubious, deeply disreputable, and which fills me with this lovelorn weakness for the simple, candid, and agreeably normal, for the decent and mediocre. ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... or figures are noble, others mediocre, others again may be sensual and degrading, but they have one quality in common—for good or bad, they are ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... only existed in pugilism. At peace, Veuillot was no more than a mediocre writer. His poetry and novels were pitiful. His language was vapid, when it was not engaged in a striking controversy. In repose, he changed, uttering banal litanies and mumbling ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... responded Valdor promptly; "Only it happens that they are not! They treat me merely as a laquais de place,—just as they would treat Zouche, had he accepted his Sovereign's offer. But this I will admit,—that mediocre musicians always get on very well with Royal persons! I have heard a very great Majesty indeed praise a common little American woman's abominable singing, as though she were a prima-donna, and saw him give ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... order to put to shame, in some sort, those by whom they have been outraged, they become very often great men, whereas, by staying quietly in their country, they would peradventure have had little more than a mediocre success in their arts. Antonio Viniziano, who betook himself to Florence in the wake of Agnolo Gaddi in order to learn painting, grasped the good method of working so well that he was not only esteemed and loved by the Florentines, but also greatly cherished by reason of this talent and ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... novelty of the things! The demand for strangeness in the things themselves is the demand of the sophisticated mind: the mind which has lost its simplicity in the process of continuing unenlightened. It is this demand which betrays the mediocre mind of the Anglo-Saxon race, the sophistication of the English mind, and the obfuscation (which is sophistication at second-hand) of the American mind. The non-imaginative person is nowhere so much at home ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... although you can not understand it, who have never seen bad acting or heard bad singing, how this ability of one troupe to play or sing to the whole earth at once has operated to take away the occupation of mediocre artists, seeing that everybody, being able to see and hear the best, will hear ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... me sharply—horribly. Without waiting to listen to the comment of her companion I hurried out of the building into the cold, white sunlight that threw into bold relief the mediocre houses of the street. Here was everyday life, but the portrait had suggested that which might have been—might be yet. What did I mean by this? I didn't know, I didn't care to define it,—a renewal of her friendship, of our intimacy. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... condemnation, can scarcely have failed to embitter and harden a soul naturally disposed to pessimism and melancholy. Nor can we omit from the influences at work upon him, that dramatic instinct which makes a mediocre and colourless attitude impossible for those who are strongly under its influence. Perhaps no nation is more governed by it than the French, with their partiality for tableaux and sensation; and in De Lamennais its presence was most marked, as the pages ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... profession. Hawthorne enjoyed no such advantages, nor did he even think of becoming a connoisseur. His whole experience in the art of design might be included within twelve months, and his original basis was nothing better than his wife's water-color painting and the mediocre pictures in the Boston Athenaeum; but he brought to his subject an eye that was trained to the closest observation of Nature and a mind experienced beyond all others [Footnote: At least at that time.] in the mysteries of human life. He begins tentatively, and as ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... given by Apicius in some instances. But just such figures can be used artfully to conceal a trap. Any mediocre cook, gaining possession of a choice collection of detailed and itemized recipes would have been placed in an enviable position. Experimenting for some time (at his master's expense) he would soon reach that perfection ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... raising of the hooked nose-which Mrs. Parker Bangs of Chicago, who had met the duchess once or twice, described as "genuine Plantagenet"—"but they will go away wise in their own conceits, and satisfied with their own mediocre performances. My idea is to let them do it, and then show them how it should ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... the non-elementary schools is largely a snare and a delusion. A few are turned out with a musicianly equipment, largely in spite of the system rather than by its aid, but the vast majority have little more than a smattering of musical knowledge and a mediocre standard of executive ability as the result of years of study. But the growth of the artistic soul is not accomplished through the fingers, and indeed it is not infrequently strangled at ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... all previous records in the Charchester match. By the rules of the dramatic, nothing else is possible. But truth, though it crush me, and truth compels me to admit that his performance was in reality distinctly mediocre. One of his weak points as a bowler was that he was at sea when opposed to a left-hander. Many bowlers have this failing. Some strange power seems to compel them to bowl solely on the leg side, and nothing but long hops and full pitches. ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... consisted in being master of your subject, such mastery being attainable only through continuous application and study. Hence it happens that the men who have most moved the world, have not been so much men of genius, strictly so called, as men of intense mediocre abilities, and untiring perseverance; not so often the gifted, of naturally bright and shining qualities, as those who have applied themselves diligently to their work, in whatsoever line that might lie. "Alas!" said a widow, speaking ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... she saw only uninteresting, queer creatures, affected or stupid people. She thought of all the people she knew in the district, and could not remember one person of whom one could say or think anything good. They all seemed to her mediocre, insipid, unintelligent, narrow, false, heartless; they all said what they did not think, and did what they did not want to. Dreariness and despair were stifling her; she longed to leave off smiling, to leap up and cry out, ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... War—and particularly the loss of Minorca—seemed to confirm the gloomiest prognostications of the most hopeless pessimists, came William Pitt; and in eighteen months changed the face of the world, not for his generation only, but for ours. Indifferent as an administrator, mediocre as a financier, passionate, haughty, headstrong, with many of the worst faults of an orator, he was still a man with ideals—a patriot among placemen, pure where all were corrupt. And the effect of his touch ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... of the Almanack seems to me very successful. But the historical Calendar might gain in interest by omissions and additions. Mediocre local celebrities such as "H.S. in E., T.D. in B., L.A. in L.," etc., etc., do not need to figure as historical. As little do a couple of first performances that were given in Weimar under my conductorship. See to it, dear friend, ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... I think I must have read in that curious collection of fantasies and observations, Hawthorne's Note Book. It was to be the story of a man who found life dull and his circumstances altogether mediocre. He had loved his wife, but now after all she seemed to be a very ordinary human being. He had begun life with high hopes—and life was commonplace. He was to grow fretful and restless. His discontent was to lead to some action, some irrevocable action; but upon the nature ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... Lords; and all the biographies that have ever been written could not furnish more illustrations of the ups and downs of life, especially the downs, nor of more illustrious men. The names of all the great and mediocre people who visited the famous rendezvous would fill a respectable Court guide, and the money transactions that have taken place would pay off the National Debt. All this is a pleasant outcome of ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... It is one of the qualifications for his magistracy. Other qualifications are equally easy. He must have done nothing, expressed nothing, imagined nothing. He must be obscure, insignificant and mediocre—in thought, act, speech and sympathy. He must know nothing of art, of life—and of himself. For if he did he would not dare to be what he is. Like that much questioned and mysterious bird, the phoenix, he sits amongst the cold ashes of ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... proposition is: 'I am stronger than you, therefore you shall fag for me.' Its grown up form is: 'I am cleverer than you, therefore you shall fag for me.' The state of things we produce by submitting to this, bad enough even at first, becomes intolerable when the mediocre or foolish descendants of the clever fellows claim to have inherited their privileges. Now, no men are greater sticklers for the arbitrary dominion of genius and talent than your artists. The great painter is not satisfied with being sought after and admired because ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... Michel Angelo, Mozart—how very little which is absolutely new, how slight a variation, how inevitable a combination, marks, after all, the greatest strokes of genius in all things, it seems quite laughable to expect the mediocre person, mere looker-on or listener, far from creative, to reach at once, without a similar sequence of initiation, a corresponding state of understanding and enjoyment. But, as a rule, this thought does not occur to us; and, while we expatiate on the creative originality ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... the life of a great man, I mean a man eminently successful, you will perceive all the qualities given to him are the qualities necessary even to a mediocre rogue. "He possessed," saith the biographer, "the greatest address [namely, the faculty of wheedling]; the most admirable courage [namely, the faculty of bullying]; the most noble fortitude [namely, the faculty of bearing to be bullied]; the most ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... which we seem to recognize the former actor. Undoubtedly the editor even in these respects retained what was successful in the originals rather than furnished contributions of his own. Those portions of the pieces which can with certainty be traced to the translator are, to say the least, mediocre; but they enable us to understand why Plautus became and remained the true popular poet of Rome and the true centre of the Roman stage, and why even after the passing away of the Roman world the theatre has repeatedly reverted ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Taste in house furnishings or in clothes or in selecting a cook, is as nothing compared to taste in people! Some people have this "sense"—others haven't. The first are the great hosts and hostesses; the others are the mediocre or the failures. ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... As the daughter and pupil from childhood of her famous mother, she was supposed to be an ideal exponent of the Marchesi method. Professional singers and instructors flocked to her first concert. It was to be an experience, an object-lesson. Well—it was. They saw a fine-looking woman with a mediocre voice and a worse method, a method so hopelessly bad that even her undoubted musicianship could not atone ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... brothers! What could one do for you which would not be insufficient, unworthy, mediocre? We can at least give up everything and devote ourselves heart and soul to our holy and ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... in the 17th century; followers of the Brescian and Cremonese types; mediocre character of their earlier efforts, with a few exceptions—De Comble and the second French School; Pique, Lupot, and Francois Gand; Silvestre, of Lyons—Introduction of the practice of Fiddle-baking; its failure—The copyist, and the Mirecourt factory, the ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... rigidity to allow measurements to be made. It must be allowed that, unfortunately, no physicist or chemist has been as lucky as these two botanists; and the attempts to reproduce semi-permeable walls completely answering to the definition, have never given but mediocre results. If, however, the experimental difficulty has not been overcome in an entirely satisfactory manner, it at least appears very probable that ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... Foinet, who was coming towards them with Mrs. Otter. Mrs. Otter, meek, mediocre, and self-satisfied, wore an air of importance. Foinet sat down at the easel of an untidy little Englishwoman called Ruth Chalice. She had the fine black eyes, languid but passionate, the thin face, ascetic but sensual, the skin like old ivory, ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... his portrait along with that of his second wife, Jeanne de Laval. In the place is his statue, a mediocre work, holding a bunch of Muscat grapes, a species he first introduced to Europe. I sought in vain at Aix for a photograph of the Merry Monarch taken from the authentic picture, and was offered one from the characterless statue, which I declined. ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... young man continued "All our plan of life in England, you see, is founded on the assumption that only people of mediocre and diluted passion will hold the stage. We allow our girls to go about freely with young ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... were ill," he rejoined. "But she seems to me to be simply callous and cold. She has entirely altered. Last night she was a great artist. This evening she is merely a commonplace, mediocre actress." ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... think that the mediocre quality of most book-reviewing is due to low payment. It is a result, I believe, of a wrong conception of what a book-review should be. My own opinion is that a review should be, from one point of view, a portrait of a book. It should present ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... you don't give up poetry and magazine work and get a position as poster-writer for a circus. You are only a mediocre magazinist, but in the poster business you'd ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... quality of his work down to the level of hopeless hackery. For yielding to this influence; for stooping, in his necessity, to the service of Bagley, who had wronged him; for failing to find a way out of the slough of mediocre production, poor pay, and company inferior to him in mind, he ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the while but slouch through the minutes. The other may be taut and intensive, working at white heat, and the output will be more extensive and of better quality. The mind that ambles through the period shows forth results that are both meager and mediocre; but the mind whose impact is both forceful and incisive produces results that serve to magnify the work of the school. Thus we have placed before us two basic considerations, one of which is the time itself, in actual minutes, and the other is the character of the reactions to external ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... getting on faster while I was merely a plodder. The world is so fond of that droll fable, the hare and the tortoise,—it really believes because (I suppose the fable to be true!) a tortoise once beat a hare that all tortoises are much better runners than hares possibly can be. Mediocre men have the monopoly of the loaves and fishes; and even when talent does rise in life, it is a talent which only differs from mediocrity by being ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book IV • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... more regardful of us than they are here, duke. The greater the world the uglier the farce; no obscenities and fooleries of the buffoon are more disgusting than the characters of the great, mediocre and insignificant, all mingled together. I prayed this morning for courage to hold out to the end, and to hasten the consummation. I am grateful for the benefit of the journey—but I pray the gods not to conduct themselves toward us as their image-man, for I should swear to them ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... about him seemed to have been merged in his American citizenship, and he looked more like a Yankee cultivator than a King of Spain and the Indies. Though there was nothing to see in Joseph, who is, I believe, a very mediocre personage, I could not help gazing at him, and running over in my mind the strange events in which he had been concerned in the course of his life, and regarding him as a curiosity, and probably as the most extraordinary living instance of the freaks of fortune and instability ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... generals, except Bonaparte, who was absent in Egypt. The executive of France had deeply declined. Carnot was in exile; the work of organisation which he had pursued with such energy and disinterestedness flagged under his mediocre and corrupt successors. Skilful generals and brave soldiers were never wanting to the Republic; but no single controlling will, no storm of national passion, inspired the Government with the force which it had possessed under the Convention, and which returned ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... JOHNSON, gifted author of Boswell's Biography (applause), once rather humorously remarked, on witnessing a nautch performed by canine quadrupeds, that—although their choreographical abilities were of but a mediocre nature—the wonderment was that they should be capable at all to execute such a hind-legged feat and tour ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... everyone, and even the serious Germans deigned to be pleased with them; for all these works appeared indeed at a happy and favorable time. They were all written in the spirit which we have developed above. Frequently the fortunate poet undertook the artistic task of giving a high value to very mediocre materials by revising them; and though it cannot be denied that he sometimes permits reason to triumph over the higher powers, and at other times allows sensuality to prevail over the moral qualities, yet we must also grant that, in its proper place, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... he must have as his background a thorough knowledge of the stage upon which he may base a comparison or a contrast and with which he may make intelligent statements. The following illustrates what may be done with a paid report of a mediocre vaudeville show in which every act must be praised—the report was written on Monday of a week's run and is intended to induce people to ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... they found sentimental), and to the "Beggar's Opera" again Gerda had her own ideas, very definite and critical, about dramatic merit. Barry enjoyed discussing the plays with her, listening to her clear little silver voice pronouncing judgment. Gerda might be forever mediocre in any form of artistic expression, but she was an artist, with the artist's love of merit ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... drawing room needs all that to be filled. Being the source of all preferment and of every favor, it is natural that it should overflow[2129]. It is the same in our leveling society (in 1875), where the drawing room of an insignificant deputy, a mediocre journalist, or a fashionable woman, is full of courtiers under the name of friends and visitors. Moreover, here, to be present is an obligation; it might be called a continuation of ancient feudal homage; the staff of nobles is maintained as the retinue of its born general. In the language of the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... sordid common sense; besides, did she not seem to prefer Jean? Without confessing it to himself too bluntly, this preference had a great deal to do with his low opinion of the widow's intellect; for, though he loved his brother, he could not help thinking him somewhat mediocre and believing himself the superior. However, he was not going to sit there till nightfall; and as he had done on the previous evening, he anxiously asked himself: "What ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... a breath of relief. The first arrival was only Lady Lundie's solicitor—invited to attend the proceedings on her ladyship's behalf. He was one of that large class of purely mechanical and perfectly mediocre persons connected with the practice of the law who will probably, in a more advanced state of science, be superseded by machinery. He made himself useful in altering the arrangement of the tables and chairs, so as to keep ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... will not go," answered Sara, "if I cannot go with honour, and in my own way! I will not be mixed up in a mass of every-day mediocre people! It is in my power to become distinguished and uncommon. That is now, for once, my humour. I will not live to be trammelled. I would rather not ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... of Tennessee, and Senator Wigfall, of Texas, denounced the President yesterday as mediocre and malicious—and that his blunders ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... dramatic temperament in her private affairs, had been such as to make it impossible for her sincerely to impress audiences with real emotional power, and, therefore, despite the influences which she always had at hand, she remained a mediocre artist. ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... loved his children tenderly—so at least one would conclude from the different pieces of poetry he wrote on the appearance of their first, second, and third teeth. He wrote ballads and odes on familiar and patriotic subjects. Among these is the national hymn of Holland, a mediocre production which the people sing about the streets and the boys chant at school. There is a little poem, perhaps the best of his works, on the expedition which the Dutch sent to the Polar Sea toward the end of the sixteenth century. The people ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... yards of garden hose a week was a fine measure of success. "And your name will go ringing down the ages." She would never let him lose confidence in his own powers. Circumstances alone had thrown him into a mediocre position in a small town, but they ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... training, fail to win promotion because their persons are not clean, their breath offensive, their clothes suggestive of disorderly, uncleanly habits. Persons of extraordinary capacity not infrequently achieve only mediocre results because they fail to cultivate habits of cleanliness and health. An employer can easily protect his business from loss due to alcoholism among his own employees; but loss through employees' constipation, headache, bad ventilation at home, irregular meals, improper diet, too many ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... ignoble," he thought, surveying his guests from a little distance, where he was gathering together the plates. He glanced at them all, stooping and swaying and gesticulating round the table-cloth. Amiable and modest, respectable in many ways, lovable even in their contentment and desire to be kind, how mediocre they all were, and capable of what insipid cruelty to one another! There was Mrs. Thornbury, sweet but trivial in her maternal egoism; Mrs. Elliot, perpetually complaining of her lot; her husband a mere pea ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... the internal execution of this book marks also its externals. The plates of eggs—four in number, comprising thirty eggs—are admirable; while the plates representing birds are Of the most mediocre description, and do discredit to the work. With all these merits and demerits, the book is of much value, because an unsatisfactory manual is far better than none. It does not take the place of that revised edition of Nuttall, which is still the great desideratum, but we may use meanwhile an ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... In this way the intellectual process is bound up with the moral process, and a man must give his character firmness and fibre before he can make his talent effective or his genius fruitful. The way of the most gifted workman is no easier than that of the most mediocre; he learns his lesson more easily, but he must learn the same lesson. The familiar story of the Sleeping Princess protected by a hedge of thorns, told in so many languages, is a parable of all success of a high order. The highest prizes are always ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... host-in-himself was at last allowed to manipulate (with accompanying lecture) a marvellous bivouac-tin containing a compound called beef a la mode, which came provided with its own spirits of wine and wick, both of which proved ineffectual to raise the temperature of the beef above a mediocre tepidity. Parker, having heard that the remains of this toothsome dish were intended for his breakfast, wisely hid it with such care that the dog stole it and consumed it, with results which cannot be ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... as a stick, or, rather, a too pliant sapling—her inane "yes's" and lisping "no's" having an opportunity of being "weighed in the balance," and consequently, in my opinion, "found wanting." All were mediocre beside her. Perhaps I was prejudiced; but, now, the remarks of the other girls seemed to ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... to any foreign despotism, kingdom, or empire—there is not a bit of difference. History is to record those three Presidentiads, and especially the administrations of Fillmore and Buchanan, as so far our topmost warning and shame. Never were publicly display'd more deform'd, mediocre, snivelling, unreliable, false-hearted men. Never were these States so insulted, and attempted to be betray'd. All the main purposes for which the government was establish'd were openly denied. The ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... an artist of mediocre creative talent but great aims and amazing belief in himself. He had a fine critical faculty which was shown in his appreciation of the Elgin marbles, in opposition to the most respected authorities of his day. Mainly ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... at a show in this country was Mr. Berrie's Flo. This was, however, such a mediocre specimen that it did not appeal to the taste of the English dog-loving public. In 1888 Dr. Seelig brought over Skip, Drieske, and Mia. The first-named was purchased by Mr. E. B. Joachim, and the two ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... beings not any lower than the angels. Between the two extremes there was one fine moralist who knew how to hold a just balance, perceiving that language is the expression of relations and proportions, that when we speak of virtue and genius we mean qualities that compared with those of mediocre souls deserve these high names, that greatness and happiness are comparative terms, and that there is nothing to be said of the estate of man except relatively. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... young men and young women tempted away from manual labor and avocations for which they are fit into "professions'' for which they are unfit. The more FIRST-RATE young men and young women our universities and technical schools educate the better; but the more young men and women of mediocre minds and weak purpose whom they push into the ranks of poor lawyers, poor doctors, poor engineers, and the like, the more injury they do ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... not much to view in the city of odors—Coleridge's city of "two and seventy" smells. Only the cathedral. Although the museum is mediocre Gard dropped in there at noon to fill in his time. After wandering about he became aware that there was, in the distance, another visitor whose occasional shuffling footsteps first attracted his attention among the eye-obstructing objects. Then he saw, at times, a bulky form bending over some ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... women, and as far as they have been made known to us in literary biography, the unwomanly and unamiable, the poor wives, and daughters, and sisters, have been the rare exceptions. I mean not alone "women of genius," but would include those of mere talent, of mediocre talent even, devoted to letters as a profession, and who, by their estimable characters and blameless lives, are ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... superlative writers to be heaven-sent teachers, to be prophets, to be discoverers, what do we ask of them? Is it to write in a particular style, in a given lucid style, a given figurative style, or a given dignified style? Nay, it is only very mediocre writers who could obey such precepts. Every supreme writer has his own style, inalienable and inimitable, which is as much a part of him as his own soul, the look in his eyes, or his tones of voice. Bethink yourselves of Carlyle, how his abrupt, crabbed, but ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... really seems some charm, some magic in the walls, so great is the similarity of colouring in these chefs d'oeuvres, the clear, the subdued, the pearly tints, a variety of delicious colour, and none of the dirty hues you see in mediocre old paintings. ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... person and a lifelong invalid; nor is it surprising, on the same theory, that his poetry took no deep root, and that it will not be likely to survive long, except perhaps in his weird ballad of "Ravelston." But he represents a large class of masculine intellects, of secondary and mediocre quality, whose opinions on this subject are not so much opinions as instinctive prejudices against a competitor who may turn out their superior. Whether they know it, or not, their aversion to the authorship of women is very much like the conviction ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the living for herself and her boy; she had trained that boy into manhood and placed his foot on the first rung of business success. She had transformed the T. A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company from a placidly mediocre concern to a thriving, flourishing, nationally known institution. All this might have turned another woman's head. It only served to set Emma McChesney's more splendidly on her shoulders. Not too splendidly, however; for, with her marriage to her handsome business partner, ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... good living had an enervating effect on his morality. Mediocre in capacity as these persons appeared to him, he felt proud of knowing them, and internally longed for the respectability that attached to a wealthy citizen. A mistress like Madame Dambreuse ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... fear of abstractions. Don't retail in mediocre verse what has already been done in ...
— Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry • T.S. Eliot
... Mediterranean and at the seaward base of the Ligurian Apennines, just where this range opens two passes of only 1,800 feet elevation to the upper Po Valley, made an active maritime town of Genoa from Strabo's day to the present. In its incipiency it relied upon one mediocre harbor on an otherwise harborless coast, a local supply of timber for its ships, and a road northward across the mountains.[523] The maritime ascendency in the Middle Ages of Genoa, Pisa, Venice, and Barcelona proves that no long indented ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... accommodations for the cargo of mules and horses. Cappy was particularly interested in the ventilating system below decks, for he was fond of horses and had resolved to deliver the cargo without the loss of a single animal. Of no mediocre turn of mind mechanically, he, assisted by Terry Reardon, made a few suggestions that the British veterinaries in charge were very glad ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... daring and self-sacrificing project was this: He knew that the editor of the Hearthstone relied strongly upon Miss Puffkin's judgment in the manuscript of romantic and sentimental fiction. Her taste represented the immense average of mediocre women who devour novels and stories of that type. The central idea and keynote of "Love Is All" was love at first sight—the enrapturing, irresistible, soul-thrilling feeling that compels a man or a woman to recognize his or her spirit-mate ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... white cravat, his customary attire every evening, and still had time to show himself in a political salon on the left side, where he met Moichod, the author of that famous Histoire de Napoleon, in which he proves that Napoleon was only a mediocre general, and that all his battles were gained by his lieutenants. Jocquelet wished to go to the Odeon and hear, for the tenth time, the fifth act of a piece of the common-sense school, in which the hero, after haranguing against money for four acts ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... blankness answered too well to the desolate regard which in the early 'Sixties he turned upon life. The women are homely, even plain, like James Lee's wife, with her "coarse hands and hair," and Edith in Too Late, with her thin, odd features, or mediocre, like the speaker in Dis Aliter Visum; and they have homely names, like "Lee" or "Lamb" or "Brown," not gratuitously grotesque ones like Blougram, Blouphocks, or the outrageous "Gigadibs." "Sludge" stands on a different footing; for it ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... than Tennyson—and neither ever wrote a great one. Longfellow, so inferior in most respects to his two great English contemporaries, was an incomparably superior sonnetteer. Tennyson's sonnets are all mediocre: Browning did not publish a single sonnet in the final complete edition of his works. He did however print a very few on special occasions, and when he was twenty-two years old, between the composition of Pauline and Paracelsus, there appeared ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... But where the tactics of the "contrabandista" no longer availed, where surprises were impossible and mysterious disappearances not easy, and where the bulk of the people were not willing spies, the aspect of affairs was different. They were mediocre marksmen with long-range arms of precision, and had no proper conception of allowances for wind or sun. Target-practice was not encouraged, and yet it was not through thrift of ammunition, for the waste ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... end of the gallery, beyond the foreign sections, is a tier of four rooms, 117-120, ranging from the mediocre to the admirable. In No. 117 are seven interesting canvases by Frieseke, the grand-prize winner, already mentioned. These pictures show the artist's scope. No. 1816 and others are strikingly like Plinio Nomellini's No. 86 in the Italian section. No. 1811 is as different from these ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... all payments in advance, or delays made in the payments of earnest-money, all leases and lettings, which Courcelle-Seneuil calls un mediocre degre de credit, insurances and even all contracts for wages where the payment is delayed for a long period of time, are species of credit. For a nice distinction between leasing (Pacht) and letting (Miethe), see Knies, Tuebinger Ztschr., 1860, 180 ff., and the Freiburger Univ. Programm., ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... you express in Fanny Ellsler, you will be glad to hear that her success here has been triumphant. I believe the great mass of people always recognize and acknowledge excellence when they see it, though their stupid or ignorant toleration of what is mediocre, or even bad, would seem to indicate the contrary.... The general mind of man is capable of perceiving the most excellent in all things, and prompt to seize it, too, when it meets with it. Even in morals it does so theoretically, however the difficulty of adhering to high standards may ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... those who are born to throw light on the creations of the poets, just as there are others born to be poets. These interpreters give a new life to the works of the masters, AEschylus, Congreve, Tchekhov. When, as more frequently happens, they are called upon to play mediocre parts it is with their own personal force, their atmospheric aura that they create something more than the author himself ever intended or dreamed of. How could Joseph Jefferson play Rip Van Winkle for thirty years (or longer) with scenery in tatters and a company of mummers which Corse ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... the normal Washington process. To this place, out of the way of everywhere, come the senators and congressmen, mostly leaving their families behind them in their states of origin, and hither, too, are drawn a multitude of journalists and political agents and clerks, a crowd of underbred, mediocre men. For most of them there is neither social nor intellectual life. The thought of America is far away, centred now in New York; the business and economic development centres upon New York; apart from the President, it is in New York that one meets the people who matter, and the New York ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... of all mediaeval European history upon a screen, to deliver oneself without apology from any such task. It may be for this reason that there is no history of Germany in the English tongue, that ranks above the elementary and the mediocre. There is a masterly and scholarly history of the Holy Roman Empire by an Englishman, which no student of Germany may neglect, but he who would trace the beginnings of Germany from 113 B. C. down to the time of the Great Elector, 1640, must be his own guide ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... not even a mediocre at anything unless it is at what I'm doing now, dangling and helping spend the money some one else has worked all day to earn." He looked his astonished friend fair in ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... to last, relatively a long time, several generations—what we call 'permanent.' The intermediate position is necessarily insecure. It is not really wanted. What is lost by society when one of these mediocre masterpieces is overlooked? A sensation, a single ray in a sunset, missed by a small literary coterie! The circle is perhaps eclectic. It may seem hard that good work is overwhelmed in the cataract of production, while relatively bad, garish work is rewarded. But so it must be. 'The growing flood ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing |
