"Critic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... said of Humphry Davy that he might have been the greatest poet of his time had he not chosen rather to be the greatest chemist, it is possible that the enthusiasm of the friend outweighed the caution of the critic. But however that may be, it is beyond dispute that the man who actually was the greatest poet of that time might easily have taken the very highest rank as a scientist had not the muse distracted his attention. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... Edward—if that young man's artistic ability had been equal to his sense of it there would have been less danger in taking him into the factory. Or probably Maria, with her great head for business—oh, Maria, I grant you, is like what the French critic said of the prophet Habakkuk, ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... more to say, so pray God to keep you, and give me patience to bear all the ill that will be spoken of me by more than one subtle and starched critic. Vale. ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... forth equally distinct and clear." In the Bible the various sorts of men are never confounded, but have the advantage of being exhibited by Nature herself, and are not a contrivance of the imagination. "Shylock," observes a recent critic, "seems so much a man of Nature's making, that we can scarce accord to Shakspeare the merit of creating him." What will you say of Balak, Nabal, Jeroboam? "Macbeth is rather guilty of tempting the Weird Sisters than of being tempted by them, and is surprised and horrified at his own hell-begotten ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... said that the editor of the Athenaeum, in my time, was a charming and accomplished writer; he is also my very good friend and too generous critic, and I should be a wretch if I did not love him. But on the evening when a weekly paper goes to press, when the pages are pouring in, and some one, as likely as not, is waiting at the Cafe Royal, even the most cultivated and considerate ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... demeaned himself much like a first-rate critic of the present day at a new opera. He reclined back upon his seat, with his eyes half shut; now, folding his hands and twisting his thumbs, he seemed absorbed in attention, and anon, balancing his expanded palms, he gently flourished them in time to the music. At ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... now—and I'm speaking as a friend, young man, and not as a captious critic—you have set this Italian camp all askew by giving them countenance in the first place. They haven't any regulators in their heads, you see! When you're feeding charity to that kind of ruck you've got to be careful ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... at the foot of the broad front steps, gayly chatting and jesting, with that ripple of laughter that comes so pleasingly from a bevy of girls. The father would be found seated in their midst, the centre of attention and compliment, witness, arbiter, umpire, critic, by his beautiful children's unanimous appointment, but the single vassal, too, of ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... vast number of Madonna pictures becomes manageable when studied by some method of classification. Several plans are possible. The historical student is naturally guided in his grouping by the periods in which the pictures were produced; the critic, by the technical schools which they represent. Besides these more scholarly methods, are others, founded on simpler and more obvious dividing lines. Such are the two proposed in the following pages, forming, respectively, Part I. and Part ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... shoulders at Chopin's compositions—nay, that one of them had the impudence to say that all they were good for was to be torn to pieces." In another article, after speaking in the most enthusiastic terms of Chopin's trio, in which "every note is music and life," he exclaims, "Wretched Berlin critic, who has no understanding for these things, and never will have—poor fellow!" And seven years later, in 1843, he writes, with fine contempt for his critical colleagues, that "for the typical reviewers Chopin never did write, anyway." And this, be it remembered, was only six years ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... plot, action and character. Approving mention must be made of Will Summer—no relation to Summer, the season of the year, who is referred to in the title—Henry the Eighth's Court Jester, who plays the part of 'presenter' and general critic, standing apart from the main action but thrusting in his remarks as the spirit moves him. He is responsible for the description of the performance as a show. His purpose is fully declared at the start, ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... in your writings—but if to utter things 'hard to understand' from that cause be an offence, why we may begin with 'our beloved brother Paul,' you know, and go down through all the geniuses of the world, and bid them put away their inspirations. You must descend to the level of critic A or B, that he may look into your face.... Ah well!—'Let them rave.' You will live when all those are under the willows. In the meantime there is something better, as you said, even than your poetry—as the giver is better than the ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... year about the absence of all literary 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 has endeavored to reassure us kindly and a little wistfully. Mr. Stephens has ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... revived by him and, outside his other strange notions, deserving of reprehension and anathema. A Compendious Warning with specimens by the aged and retired-from-active-life Na: Torporley. So that The critic may know The buyer may beware. It is not safe to trust to the bank, The bell-wether himself is ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... though you be done to the death, what then? If you battled the best you could, If you played your part in the world of men, Why The Critic will call it good. Death comes with a crawl, or comes with a pounce, And whether he's slow, or spry, It isn't the fact that you're dead that counts, But only—how did ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... was over; the shrunken russet fibres alone clung to their ugly stick. The horizon on the left of the road had a charm, however, there is something picturesque in the big, comfortable shoulders of the Cote. That delicate critic, M. Emile Montegut, in a charming record of travel through this region, published some years ago, praises Shakspeare for having talked (in "Lear") of "waterish Burgundy." Vinous Burgundy would surely ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... horseplay and a great capacity for primitive happiness. It was as if the people, having thrown off the more galling restraints of civilization and order, felt their limbs and spirits free for the first time, and exercised both with the freedom and, the austere critic may say, ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... it is true, might have discovered by close inspection that the brush had been too familiar with his coat and worn it threadbare, that his silk hat had been doctored to preserve its lustre and smoothness, and that his gloves were elaborately darned. If an inquisitive critic could have pried into the bottom of the vehicle, he would have detected a large crack in the side of the left boot, beneath which a gray stocking had been carefully masked with ink. Still, all these signs of poverty were so artfully concealed, and his dress worn ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... been an active servant of 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... But if I should describe the kitchen grate, the prodigious pots and kettles, the joints of meat turning on the spits, with many other particulars, perhaps I should be hardly believed; at least a severe critic would be apt to think I enlarged a little, as travellers are often suspected to do. To avoid which censure I fear I have run too much into the other extreme; and that if this treatise should happen ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... lebhafte Formen zu einem Styl zusammengedraengt der zu diesem Zwecke vor unserer Buechersprache grosse Vorzuege hat.' Of course I do not mean to imply that I have come near achieving any such success as the great critic here indicates, but I think the success is there, and to be plucked by ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... touches as on these clouds!" His joking friends clubbed him "Director-General of the Fine Arts for Scotland," a title which he complacently accepted. Besides showing off his pictures, Davie was an art critic, and wrote articles for the newspapers and magazines. Unfortunately, however, his attention to pictures prevented him from attending to his shop, and his customers (who were not artists) forsook him, and bought their clothes elsewhere. He accordingly shut up his shop, and devoted himself to art ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... received their college "parts,"—their orations, dissertations, disquisitions, colloquies, and Greek dialogs. But to-day we have no rank; we are all first scholars. The hero in his laurels sits next to the divine rustling in the dry garlands of his doctorate. The poet in his crown of bays, the critic, in his wreath of ivy, clasp each other's hands, members of the same happy family. This is the birthday feast for every one of us whose forehead has been sprinkled from the font inscribed "Christo ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... the officers had no lack of partners, and voted it great fun. There were many very pretty girls among them, and several with much more of the rose on their cheeks than usually falls to the share of West Indian damsels. Some censorious critic even ventured to hint that it was added by the hand of art. That this was false was evident, for the weather was so hot that had rouge been used it would have inevitably been detected; but the island ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... the pages when they corne to this" was the remark of a lively critic on reading this announcement; but while I promise my readers that hotels shall only be described once, I could not reconcile it to myself not to give them information on "Things as they are in America," when I had an ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... something in the spirit of the great modern masters abroad. She contended that it would be as false to refuse this tribute as to accept one that was not due him, and there could be no doubt but it was fully and richly merited. The critic wrote again in response to Maxwell, and they exchanged ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... The Critic of the new cult visited a tailor's establishment, and was delighted with all he saw. There were coats, and vests, and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 15, 1892 • Various
... the sentimentalists," answered the severe critic, "but that of exceeding feebleness. They have no bone and muscle in their genius—all is flaccid and rotund in its feminine symmetry. They seem to think that vigour consists in florid phrases and little aphorisms, and delineate all the mighty tempests of the human heart with the polished ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I mentioned to him this objection—"I admit the truth of your critic's facts, but I deny his conclusions. It is true that we have really in Flatland a Third unrecognized Dimension called 'height', just as it is also true that you have really in Spaceland a Fourth unrecognized Dimension, called by no name at present, but ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... pensioners from the high seas, living together in the evening of their days in a narrow court in a London slum, the one paralysed and the other blind; the one a most brilliant and imaginative story-teller, the other a most cautious, modest, tentative, and genial critic. And let us sit between their two chairs for a moment and listen to the moving story of Old Joe, believing it with all the simplicity, if not with all the stupefied, admiration of the little slum children who gaze at the pirate when his chair ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... Schleswig-Holstein question is one that involves the modern principle of "nationality," and, as such, enters of necessity into the present European crisis. It is broadly understood by Dr. Eliot and willfully misapprehended by his critic. ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... translating so much? I would need an entire year were I to point out the reasons and concerns behind my words. I have learned what an art and job translating is by experience, so I will not tolerate some papal ass or mule as my critic, or judge. They have not tried the task. If anyone does not like my translations, they can ignore it; and may the devil repay the one who dislikes or criticizes my translations without my knowledge or permission. Should it be criticized, I will do it myself. If I do not do it, then they can ...
— An Open Letter on Translating • Gary Mann
... finding the passage cited by M. M. E. at p. 38., I should have supposed that the Munich critic had referred to some other book with the same title. No one who has read this can suppose it was written by Tieck. The Catholic-romantic school, of which he was the most distinguished member, furnishes the chief objects of the author's ridicule. Novalis, Goerres, and F. Schlegel ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various
... reputed to make it up fully by supporting more than one poor family in a quiet way. He was liberal in his conduct as well as his belief, and his character and habits were above the reproach of the severest critic. Hence it was that the widow was forced to respect at least this one of our visitors, and to treat his niece with common civility, though cordiality was out ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... combined with his lack of experience in the difficulties of land operations to mislead his judgment in the particular instance. In a converse sense, there may be applied to him the remark of the French naval critic, that Napoleon lacked "le sentiment exact des difficultes de la marine." It was not only to British seamen, and to the assured control of the sea, that Nelson thought such an attempt offered reasonable prospect of ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... profitable investment, must simply stand for what it is worth. It may give useful hints, to be followed on a smaller or a larger scale, or it may arouse criticisms which will work for good, both to the critic and to the author. I do not claim experience, excepting the most limited; I do not claim originality, except that most of this work was new to me; I do not claim hardships or difficulties, for I ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... critic of the works in verse and prose that are shown me; but perhaps I speak my opinion with almost too great freedom. Another fault in me is that I have sometimes a spirit of delicacy far too scrupulous, and a spirit of criticism far too severe. ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... world's disdain, This half-flesh'd hag midst Wit's bright blossoms stalks, And, breathing winter, withers where she walks; Though there, long outlaw'd, desp'rate with disgrace, Invidious Dulness wields the critic mace, And sworn in hate, exerts his ruffian might Where'er young genius meditates his flight. Erewhile, when WHITE, by this fell fiend oppress'd, Felt Hope's fine fervours languish in his breast, When shrunk with scorn, and trembling to aspire, He dropp'd ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... now an eccentricity or a lost art which was once the fashion of an empire; and those only are perennial matters that rouse us to-day, and that roused men in all epochs of the past. There is a certain critic, not indeed of execution but of matter, whom I dare be known to set before the best: a certain low-browed, hairy gentleman, at first a percher in the fork of trees, next (as they relate) a dweller in caves, and whom I think I see squatting in cave-mouths, of a pleasant afternoon, ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... It was his most brilliant literary period, and during it his labors were astonishing in quantity and varied in subject, as the taste of the majority of readers in that period demanded. During this period he was not only a journalist, but also a poet, literary man, and critic. His poetical compositions are rather shallow, and monotonous in form, but were highly esteemed by his contemporaries. They are interesting at the present day chiefly because of their historical and ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... to waste time in artistic hair-splitting when the Germanic peoples, in greater danger than in their entire history, stood with their back to the wall, facing and holding back the world. A Berlin dramatic critic, going through the motions of reviewing a new performance of "Hedda Gabler" the other morning, finally dismissed the matter as "Women's troubles—if anybody can be interested in that nowadays!" Yet a woman, asking at the same time that the "finer ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... "you must make the most of the time. The Yankees may not give us another chance. Across yonder, where you see that dim light trying to shine through the dirty window, Winthrop is printing his paper, which comes out this morning. As he is a critic of the Government, I suggest that we go over and see the task ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... possible to attain a higher degree of separate excellence in the mimetic art. This we would very willingly allow. Cicero, it is true, speaks of the expression, the softness, and delicacy of the acting of Roscius, in the same terms that a modern critic would apply to Garrick or Schroder. But I will not lay any stress on the acting of this celebrated player, the excellence of which has become proverbial, because it appears from a passage in Cicero that he frequently played ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... a concert at the Chatelet with her brother. As he had just been appointed musical critic to a little Review, they were in better places than those they occupied in old days, but the people among whom they sat were much more apathetic. They had stalls near the stage. Christophe Krafft was to play. Neither of them had ever heard of the German musician. When she saw him ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... but there were a great many translations of Lenore about, and except by Scott's friends, little notice was taken of the volume. There were some excuses for the neglect, the best perhaps being that English criticism at the time was at nearly as low an ebb as English poetry. A really acute critic could hardly have mistaken the difference between Scott's verse and the fustian or tinsel of the Della Cruscans, the frigid rhetoric of Darwin, or the drivel of Hayley. Only Southey had as yet written ballad verses with equal vigour and facility; and, I think, he had ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... has not intended her book so much as a treatise for scholars as a surgical operation on the popular mind.—The Critic, New York. ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... and sincere efforts are made to do it. I suppose that is a fact; many, many poor souls are being taught and trained for heaven through all these various agencies which seem to a distant and idle critic to be so questionable ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... understood nothing—thus thought he. So he turned to other topics and conversed fluently on the matters dearest to their hearts—namely, their own works, with which he was well acquainted. They, on their part, had never met a listener more sympathetic, a critic more acute. Chandrapal left upon them the impression of his immense capacity for assimilating the products of Western thought; also the belief that they ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... Luther for example, they begin to what they call 'account' for him; not to worship him, but take the dimensions of him,—and bring him out to be a little kind of man! He was the 'creature of the Time,' they say; the Time called him forth, the Time did everything, he nothing—but what we the little critic could have done too! This seems to me but melancholy work. The Time call forth? Alas, we have known Times call loudly enough for their great man; but not find him when they called! He was not there; Providence ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... eyes, and hand laid along his forehead, as if to screen off an insupportable light and concentrate his gaze upon the words, read and re-read these sentences with an agony of scrutiny such as no critic ever yet directed upon a disputed passage in his favourite classic. But there was no possibility of fastening any consolatory interpretation upon the paragraph. It was all too plain ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... and we must be contented to take them with the alloys which belong to them, or live without them. Genius breaks from the fetters of criticism, but its wanderings are sanctioned by its majesty and wisdom when it advances in its path: subject it to the critic, and you tame it into dulness. Mighty rivers break down their banks in the winter, sweeping away to death the flocks which are fattened on the soil that they fertilize in the summer: the few may be ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... in laughter!" exclaimed the critic Carlyle. "It is the cipher-key wherewith we decipher the whole man. Some men wear an everlasting barren simper; in the smile of others lies the cold glitter, as of ice; the fewest are able to laugh what can be called laughing, but only ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... things of the mind may be meant by a foreigner when he speaks of curiosity, but with us the word always conveys a certain notion of frivolous and unedifying activity. In the Quarterly Review, some little time ago, was an estimate of the celebrated French critic, M. Sainte-Beuve, and a very inadequate estimate of it in my judgment it was. And its inadequacy consisted chiefly in this: that in our English way it left out of sight the double sense really involved ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... grade without authority. Such a practice puts into the official records matter which does not belong there, and which, however honestly stated, may be very unjust, because all the explanatory circumstances are not likely to be known to the critic. At any rate, the person criticised is not amenable to that tribunal, and this is enough in itself to cause a sense of injury. [Footnote: See Review of General Hazen's Narrative of Military Service, "The Nation," Nov. 5, 1885.] Sheridan took very kindly my mediation in Hazen's behalf, and probably ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... hand-mirror. Lady Lundie carefully surveyed herself in it down to the margin of the bedclothes. Above criticism in every respect? Yes—even when the critic ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... Arabella was critic enough to smile at this last. On the whole she was passably content for the moment, in a severe fashion, save to feel herself the dreadful lying engine and fruitlessly abject person ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... mansion on rue Barbet-de-Jouy. She died in 1843, two days prior to Celestin. She perished while trying to "cajole God"—to use her own expression. She bequeathed, as a restitution, 300,000 francs to Hector Hulot. Valerie Marneffe did not lack spirit. Claude Vignon, the great critic, especially appreciated this woman's intellectual ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... early Evangelical convictions, started an active correspondence with Newman, and was soon working for the new cause. He collected quotations, and began to translate the works of Optatus for Dr. Pusey. He wrote an article on Justin for the British Critic, "Newman's Magazine". He published a sermon on Faith, with notes and appendices, which was condemned by an evangelical bishop, and fiercely attacked by no less a person than the celebrated Mr. Bowdler. 'The sermon,' ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... frivolous employment and sensuality; feasts, and dances, and music, and tricks of players, and exhibitions of buffoons, were more attended to than all the serious and important cares of life. Every young man was a critic in the science of adjusting the folds of his robe, or of giving a studied negligence to his hair; every young woman was instructed in every art that serves to consume time or endanger modesty. Repeat to them an idle tale, the tricks of a gamester, ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... of the photograph, said the critic, displayed great taste and artistic promise, though unfortunately the execution did not quite come up to the high standard of excellence required by the firm. No doubt this deficiency was largely caused by a lack of proper materials, and he would strongly recommend ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... like the visible area round a man walking in a fog, or like what George Eliot calls 'the wall of dark seen by small fishes' eyes that pierce a span in the wide Ocean,' is an objective field which the next moment enlarges and of which it is the critic, and which then either suffers alteration or is continued unchanged. The critic sees both the first trower's truth and his own truth, compares them with each other, and verifies or confutes. HIS field of view is the reality independent ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... account to some extent filled the gaps that Don Sebastian's narrative had left, but now he came to put the different points together and consider them as a whole, their significance seemed less. He began to see how a hostile critic would look at the thing. Much of his evidence was based upon conjecture that might be denied. Yet, while it was not convincing, ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... is a careful critic; for on yesterday she eyed The new dress I was airing with a woman's natural pride, And she said, "Oh, how becoming!" and then softly added, "It Is really a misfortune that the basque ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Angelo? Why, "a beggar," says one of his greatest critics, "arose from his hand the patriarch of poverty; the hump of his dwarf is impressed with dignity; his infants are men, and his men are giants." And, says another critic, "he is the inventor of epic painting, in that sublime circle of the Sistine Chapel which exhibits the origin, progress, and final dispensation of the theocracy. He has personified motion in the cartoon of Pisa, portrayed meditation in the prophets and sibyls of the Sistine ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... hair, or her lustrous violet eyes with their long, black lashes, or her flashing white teeth; she glanced dismally at her shape and scornfully at her features, good, honest, irregular American features, that might not satisfy a Greek critic, but suited each other and pleased her countrymen. And then she would sigh heavily over her figure. Her friend had not the heart to impute the marquis's beautiful, artless compliments to mercenary ...
— Different Girls • Various
... strange and interesting, that it might not unfitly be enumerated among the curiosities of literature. He is generally supposed to have been a Greek of Asia Minor, of one of the Ionic Colonies, but the exact period in which he lived and wrote is yet unsettled. He is placed, by one critic,[14] as far back as the institution of the Achaian League, B.C. 250; by another as late as the Emperor Severus, who died A.D. 235; while others make him a contemporary with Phaedrus in the time of Augustus. At whatever time he wrote his version of Aesop, by some strange accident it seems to have ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... was another group discussing the music: Blythe, the musical critic, and Lawson, who had the reputation ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... criticism was deplorably misunderstanding. The writer had entirely missed the meaning. While praising the 'cleverness' he asked plainly between the lines of his notice 'What does it mean?' This unconscious exposure of his own ignorance amused his reader while it also piqued him. The critic, expert in dealing with a political article, was lamentably at sea over ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... CRITIC, Dramatic, a notorious prevaricator who tells the world to see all the shows, and thus preserves the ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... of his work, so much more than himself, so much more than what seems to be itself in the common light of day. America does not know what she is doing, neither do I know, nor any man. But the impulse that drives her, so mean and poor to the critic's eye, has perhaps more significance in the eye of God; and the optimism of this continent, so seeming-frivolous, is justified, may be, by ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... has very largely been operating in a void. It is not so much that he has been tried and found wanting. He has not even been heard. Because the musical world has been unable to follow him, it has dismissed him entirely from its consciousness. Scarcely a critic has been able to express what it is about his music that he likes or dislikes. They have either ridiculed him or written cordially about him without saying anything. There is nothing more demoralizing for the artist. At present they are even classing him with Prokofief. The virtuosi ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... not only be discouraged but prevented from propagating their kind. But among the writings of the representative Eugenists one cannot ignore the distinct middle-class bias that prevails. As that penetrating critic, F. W. Stella Browne, has said in another connection, "The Eugenics Education Society has among its numbers many most open-minded and truly progressive individuals but the official policy it has pursued for years has been inspired by class-bias and sex bias. The society laments with ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... Mr. Gandish, at a great age—though he was not older than several industrious Academicans—withdrew from the active exercise of his art and employed his learning and experience as Art Critic of the "Newcome Independent." The following critique appears to show traces of declining mental vigour ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... your attitude Was witty and satirical and shrewd, But, whether you were serious or skittish, Always a candid critic of things British, Though, when you were unable to admire us, Life's "little ironies" were free from virus. But since the War began your English readers Have welcomed MARTIN's admirable leaders— Which prove that all that's honest, clean and wise In the United ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various
... did not think the sound would escape by the chimney," said the chief of the Devourers, with the laugh of a critic, enchanted to detect a fault ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... form the second line in the Essay on Poetry Popes citation has made many familiar. Addison paid young Pope a valid compliment in naming him as a critic in verse with Roscommon, and, what then passed on all hands for a valid compliment, in holding him worthy also to be named as a poet in the same ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... to follow the critic from up-state in some of his venturesome explorations of other parts of New York. Those to whom he was to return, those for whose entertainment and instruction his book was written, wanted to hear of the ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... obtain a pledge of aid, on the strength of which he fought next day? It is not merely possible to quote experts on each side of this question; it is possible to quote the same expert on both sides. Ropes, for example, the latest Waterloo critic, devotes several pages to proving that the interview never took place, and then adds a note to his third edition declaring that he has seen evidence which convinces him it did take place! It is possible even to quote Wellington ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... swarms of literary blow flies will pounce upon the errors with delight, and, buzzing with the ecstasy of infernal joy, endeavour to hum their readers into a belief of the profundity of their critic erudition;—I shall nevertheless, with Churchill, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... negro gardens of the South. Near every negro hut is a garden patch large enough to supply the family with vegetables for the entire year, but it usually is neglected. "If they have any garden at all," says a negro critic from Tuskegee, "it is apt to be choked with weeds and other noxious growths. With every advantage of soil and climate and with a steady market if they live near any city or large town, few of the colored farmers get any benefit from this, one of the most profitable ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... follows naturally the idea that all prominence of individual voice must be discouraged, forbidden even. The songs and exercises must be led, it is true, but by the teacher and silently. Then, again, unless the teacher is silent she cannot be a good critic. Think of a voice-trainer singing each solfeggio and song with ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... afforded by the endemic use of "of sorts" which struck London while the writer was in that city a few years ago. Whence it came no one knew, but it was heard on every side. "She was a woman of sorts;" "he is a Tory of sorts;" "he had a religion of sorts;" "he was a critic of sorts." While it originally meant "of different or various kinds," as hats of sorts; offices of sorts; cheeses of sorts, etc., it is now used disparagingly, and implies something of a kind that is not satisfactory, or of ...
— Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases • Grenville Kleiser
... my dear critic, the ancient Aryans were just doddering—the old duffers: or babbling, the babes. But as for me, I have some respect for my ancestors, and believe they had more up their sleeve than just the marvel of the ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... customs and all covered over with a parasitic growth of legal decisions and political habits."[50] At no time has an attempt been made to collect and to reduce to writing this stupendous mass of scattered material, and no such attempt is likely ever to be made. "The English," as remarks the French critic Boutmy, "have left the different parts of their constitution where the waves of history have deposited them; they have not attempted to bring them together, to classify or complete them, or to make of it ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... called by the Arabians Roschd, translated and commented the works of Aristotle. According to Tiraboschi (storia della Lett. Ital. t. v. 1. ii. c. ii. sect. 4.) he was the source of modern philosophical impiety. The critic quotes some passages from Petrarch (Senil. 1. v. ep. iii. et. Oper. v. ii. p. 1143) to show how strongly such sentiments prevailed in the time of that poet, by whom they were held in horror and detestation He adds, that this fanatic admirer of Aristotle translated his writings ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... Philips, shines for aye The solitary Shilling. Pardon then, Ye sage dispensers of poetic fame! The ambition of one meaner far, whose powers Presuming an attempt not less sublime, Pant for the praise of dressing to the taste Of critic appetite, no sordid fare, A cucumber, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... on the faults and the weaknesses and the crimes of the opponent, with the result that both become destructive critics rather than constructive examples. Chesterton rightly says, "What is wrong with the critic is that he does not criticise himself * * * rather he identifies himself with the ideal." Seeing evil in others and flattering one's self is the antithesis of the spirit that would lead to the Great Peace, ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... is half-mythical, half-ethical; and he himself, true to the character which is given him in the Dialogue bearing his name, is half-sophist, half-enthusiast. He is the critic of poetry also, who compares Homer and Aeschylus in the insipid and irrational manner of the schools of the day, characteristically reasoning about the probability of matters which do not admit of reasoning. He ...
— Symposium • Plato
... first published in 1668, with the separately printed edition of Boileau's ninth satire; in the same year it was included in a collected edition of the satires. It was occasioned, evidently, by a critic's complaint that the modern satirist, departing from ancient practice, "offers ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... inferred from such strictures on the administration of justice, a matter on which, as an upright lawyer, Lauder was keenly sensitive, that he was an ill-natured critic of his professional brethren or of public men. On the contrary, the tone of his observations, though shrewd and humorous, is kindly and large-minded. He admired Lockhart, who was his senior at the bar, and whom he perhaps regarded more than ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... happiest men I read; that, sitting like a looker on Of this world's stage, dost note with critic pen The sharp dislikes of each condition; And, as one careless of suspicion, Ne fawnest for the favour of the great; Ne fearest foolish reprehension Of faulty men, which danger to thee threat; But freely dost, of what thee list, entreat, Like a great lord ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... in reading an effusion by one critic who, in discussing the question of the canal lines, remarked that he could not accept 'these one-man discoveries,' oblivious of the fact that they are the discoveries of many observers. He then very naively gives the illuminating ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... reception was approaching a perspiring and vociferous close when the Antiquary whispered an invitation to the Painter, the Patron, and the Critic. A Scotch woodcock at "Dick's" weighs heavily, even against the more solid pleasures of the mind, so terminating four conferences on as many tendencies in modern art, and abandoning four hungry souls, four hungry bodies bore down an avenue toward "Dick's" smoky realm, where they ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... we read the fiery denunciations of the clergy's evil practices, which may be found in the records of nearly every age, we must not forget that the critic is always prone to take the good for granted and to dwell upon the evil. This is particularly true in dealing with a great religious institution, where corruption is especially shocking. One wicked ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... a "stock" and a black frock-coat—I hear him perhaps still more than I see him deliver himself on the then great subject of Jenny Lind, whom he seemed to have emerged from the wilderness to listen to and as to whom I remember thinking it (strange small critic that I must have begun to be) a note of the wilderness in him that he spoke of her as "Miss Lind"; albeit I scarce know, and must even less have known then, what other form he could have used. The rest of my sense of him is tinged with the ancient pity—that of our so exercised response ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... (1657-1734).—Critic, etc., s. of a saddler, was b. in London, and ed. at Harrow and Caius Coll., Camb., from the latter of which he was expelled for stabbing a fellow-student, and transferred himself to Trinity Hall. He attached himself to ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... information.* (* It was "figuree assez grossierement et sans details.") These statements are useful as enabling us to understand why Baudin was so shy about showing his charts to Flinders. If they gave little satisfaction to the writer of the Moniteur article, we can imagine what a critic who had been over the ground himself would ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... above the mean passion, common to the day-labourers of Art, from Chaucer's Adam Scrivener down to the present carvers of marble, for modifying and improving the work of the master. The vain incapacity of a self-constituted critic will make him regard his poorest fancy as an emendation; seldom has he the insight of Touchstone to recognize, or his modesty to acknowledge, that although his own, it is none ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... otherwise, and they were companioned in the kitchen curiously, Cuba, the hot-water kettle, Armenia, the washing of the dishes, and the whole thing being jumbled. In regard to social misdemeanors, she who was simply the mausoleum of a dead passion was probably the most savage critic in town. This unknown woman, hidden in a kitchen as in a well, was sure to have a considerable effect of the one kind or the other in the life of the town. Every time it moved a yard, she had personally contributed an inch. She could hammer so stoutly upon the door of a proposition that ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... that he possessed the gift which to an artist is the very root of the matter. He saw Nature truly, he saw her as she is, and with his own eyes. The critic whom I have just quoted boldly pronounces him "the keenest eyed of all modern poets for what is deep and essential in nature." When he describes the daisy, casting the beauty of its star-shaped shadow on the smooth stone, or the boundless ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... Some unhappy critic has said that the "icicle that hangs on Diana's temple" is not colder than other icicles. We pity him, and would like to try the comparison to-day. We have already tried "thinking on the frosty Caucasus," and quite agree with Claudio—was it, or Romeo, or who?—that ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... The critic who prefers to condemn things will find small opportunity here, no matter how seriously ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... the author or by some adequate authority; it is often emended by conjecture. A motion is amended by the mover or by the assembly; a constitution is amended by the people; an ancient text is emended by a critic who believes that what seems to him the better reading is what ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... depth, its clearness, its comprehensiveness, seem to me to mark the author as a genuine critic of the broader and the ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... you listened at all, but I can't help talking of it. It was amazing. He began by speaking about Adam and Eve and original sin and the Garden of Eden as if he'd been there. There might never have been a Higher Critic in existence. Then he said what sin did, and that sin was only truly sin if it did do that. That was to hide the face of God, to put Him and a human being absolutely out of communication, so to speak. ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... passions and fears to which it ministered soon calmed down; and, its occupation being gone, it naturally gave up the ghost and died. Among other celebrities who now wrote for the newspapers are Porson, the accomplished but bibulous Greek scholar and critic; Tom Campbell, several of whose most beautiful poems first appeared in the columns of The Morning Chronicle, Charles Lamb, Southey, Wordsworth, and Mackintosh. These last five wrote for The Morning Post, and raised it, by their brilliant ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... has no adequate system of ethics—its theology has starved its ethics, and it lifts its followers, in the main, no higher than the level of exterior respectability. The task remains for some able critic to show how many of the important duties of life, though plainly implied by the fundamental law of Christianity, are ignored by ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... of some learned and intelligent writers who quarrel with certain versifiers; I confess myself, like them, unwilling to be stunned, by the Theseids of the hoarse Codri of the day. Bavius and Maevius undoubtedly are, as they ever were, insufferable persons. But it belongs to a philosophical critic to ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... of France prior to the revolution who had a tremendous power in hastening the downfall of the royal regime, three stand out more prominently than others, namely, Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau. Voltaire, keen critic and satirist, attacked the evils of society, the maladministration of courts and government, the dogmatism of the church, and aided and defended the victims of the system. He was a student of Shakespeare, Locke, and Newton, and of ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... why and in what sense the early days of life are the best days, and how rapidly the evil days succeed them, and consequently how infinitely important it is to use well the golden dawn of our being. But the verbal critic will content himself with the remark that Virgil always uses fugio of the flight of time, and always joins "old age" with "disease," and consequently that these are tags to be remembered, and plagiarized hereafter in ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... Mannheim, "I am sure you can. And besides, as soon as you are a critic you can do anything you like. You've no need to be afraid of the public. The public is incredibly stupid. It is nothing to be an artist: an artist is only a sort of comedian: an artist can be hissed. But a critic has the right to say: 'Hiss me that man!' The ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... regarded himself as a man with the larger view of citizenship, a critic of public affairs, and, in a measure, therefore, an item of that public opinion which moulded governments. Hence he had a finger, though but a little finger, in the destiny of nations and in the polity—a ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... himself could not have kept that quarter clean; the Augean stables were nothing to it. But look at these fellows we are coming to now. You seem to be a bit of a military critic; what do you think of them, and how ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... Mr. Hazard, musical critic of "The New-York Tribune," writes, "The effect of the music was magnificent beyond all description. It far surpassed all expectation; and the general verdict is that it is a triumph of the new school of ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... familiar, and to the people from whom he sprang. Yet, surely, the Lowlands of Scotland were more in his thoughts than the Zephyrean promontory, and the hard visage of John Knox peered from behind the mask of Zaleucus, when this passage left his pen. Nay, might not an acute German critic discern therein a reminiscence of that eminently Scottish institution, a "Holy Fair"? where as Hume's young ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... 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 ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... authority of the Egyptian priests; and the Egyptian priests took a pleasure in deceiving the Greeks.' He never appears to suspect that there is a greater deceiver or magician than the Egyptian priests, that is to say, Plato himself, from the dominion of whose genius the critic and natural philosopher of modern times are not wholly emancipated. Although worthless in respect of any result which can be attained by them, discussions like those of M. Martin (Timee) have an interest of their ...
— Critias • Plato
... in clash with its material, and produced in the mastery of this every-day material, commonly called sordid, a phantasmagoria intense with beauty. A clue to all Russian realism may be found in a Russian critic's observation about Gogol: "Seldom has nature created a man so romantic in bent, yet so masterly in portraying all that is unromantic in life." But this statement does not cover the whole ground, for ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol |
