"Mediocre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sadly through the silent rooms—it was when she was ready for bed that she found the money under her pillow, and a scrawl from Scatchy, a breathless, apologetic scrawl, little Scatchett having adored her from afar, as the plain adore the beautiful, the mediocre ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... government, the country obtained the feeble and irresolute Directory, composed for the moment of the voluptuous Barres, the intriguing Sieyes, the brave Moulins, the insignificant Roger Ducos, and the honest but somewhat too ingenuous Gohier. The result was a mediocre dignity before the world at large and a very questionable ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... 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 ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... to blame for most of the vocal faults and sins of singers. Our country is full of beautiful natural voices; through lack of understanding many of them, even when devoting time and money to study, never become more than mediocre, when they might have developed into really glorious voices if they had only had the right ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... companionship of cultured men has given Mark Twain a sort of professional veneer, but it could not give him fine instincts or nice discriminations or elevated tastes. His works are pure and suitable for children, just as the work of most shallow and mediocre fellows. House dogs and donkeys make the most harmless and chaste companions for young innocence in the world. Mark Twain's humor is of the kind that teamsters use in bantering with each other, and his laugh is the gruff ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... Nietzsche gives us a reason for his occasional obscurity (see also verses 3 to 7 of "Poets"). As I have already pointed out, his philosophy is quite esoteric. It can serve no purpose with the ordinary, mediocre type of man. I, personally, can no longer have any doubt that Nietzsche's only object, in that part of his philosophy where he bids his friends stand "Beyond Good and Evil" with him, was to save higher men, whose ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... defence of truths of the greatest importance to the common happiness be the object of its zeal, the mischief is still worse. Everything true or useful which they propose is rejected without examination. Abuses and errors of every kind always have for their defenders that herd of presumptuous and mediocre mortals, who are the bitterest enemies of all celebrity and renown. Scarcely is a truth made clear, before those to whom it would be prejudicial crush it under the name of a sect that is sure to have already become odious, ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... is impossible to deny the inconceivable influence which military glory exercises upon the spirit of a nation. General Jackson, whom the Americans have twice elected to the head of their Government, is a man of a violent temper and mediocre talents; no one circumstance in the whole course of his career ever proved that he is qualified to govern a free people, and indeed the majority of the enlightened classes of the Union has always ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... secret of success 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 of her brilliant but careless son, "he has not the ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... artist repeated in an oil picture (10 feet by 8 feet), now in the Antwerp Museum. Overbeck had been made a "Membre effectif" of the Antwerp Academy in 1863, and the commission for this replica followed thereon. I am told on authority that in Antwerp "the work is considered very mediocre."] ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... shall gloat in Gautier-like cadence—if I can catch it—over each superb muscle and each splendid development. But my best article will be on Kitty Carew. Since Laura Bell and Mabel Grey our courtesans have been but a mediocre lot." ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... 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 war; while Nelson fancied that St. Vincent himself, as commander ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... poets,' I said encouragingly, 'who have ended far less creditably. For even an indifferent photographer is in closer harmony with nature than a mediocre poet.' ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... mighty theatre of Pompeius is encouraged and rewarded, the Prefect of the City is stimulated to greater activity in the repair of all the ruined buildings therein. "In Rome, praised beyond all other cities by the world's mouth, it is not right that anything should be found either sordid or mediocre". ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... the theatres where the blousard pays his money, and the amusement continues until after midnight. But it is not amusing. There are several pieces on the bill, but' the chief one, a drama in five acts, is a poor thing, played by mediocre actors in the most dismal manner possible. The scenery is worn and dilapidated and wretched; the play turns on the sufferings of the poor; there are two or three murders, a suicide, a death from starvation, and such a glut of horrors that the whole entertertainment is dismal and depressing to the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... 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 guarded from the facile ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... lady who thus formulated her admiration of her brilliant friend did not, in her own person, suggest such happy possibilities. Miss Gertrude Farish, in fact, typified the mediocre and the ineffectual. If there were compensating qualities in her wide frank glance and the freshness of her smile, these were qualities which only the sympathetic observer would perceive before noticing that her eyes were of a workaday ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... of feeling and openness of statement, these words went far beyond anything that had ever been said in this home, kept up on the wages of a secret industry eked out by the sale of more or less secret wares: the poor expedients devised by a mediocre mankind for preserving an imperfect society from the dangers of moral and physical corruption, both secret too of their kind. They were spoken because Mr Verloc had felt himself really outraged; but the reticent decencies of this ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... Potterism than they actually possessed. A certain amount, said Juke, is part of the make-up of very nearly every human being; it has to be fought down, like the notorious ape and tiger. But he thought that Gideon and Katherine Varick had less of it than any one else he knew; the mediocre was repellent to them; cant and sentiment made them sick; they made a fetish of hard truth, and so much despised most of their neighbours that they would not experience the temptation to grab at popularity. In fact, they would dislike it ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... be mentioned Morton and Wade, both bluff, coarse, and ungenerous, and thoroughly convinced that the Republican party had a monopoly of loyalty, wisdom, and virtues, and that by any means it must gain and keep control; Boutwell, fanatical and mediocre; and Benjamin Butler, a charlatan and demagogue. As a class the Western radicals were less troubled by humanitarian ideals than were those of the East and ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... 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 as soon as heart speaks ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... Philistine of culture." It is against this fat milch cow of wisdom that Huneker has brandished a spear since first there was a Huneker. He is a sworn foe to "the traps that snare the attention from poor or mediocre workmanship—the traps of sentimentalism, of false feeling, of cheap pathos, of the cheap moral." He is on the trail of those pious mountebanks who "clutter the marketplaces with their booths, mischievous half-art and tubs of tripe and soft soap." Superficially, as ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... his argument were not sound nothing could save his speech from failure as a speech. Perhaps no standing epithet of praise hangs with such a weight on a man's reputation as the epithet "honest." When the man is proved not to be a fraud, it suggests a very mediocre virtue. But the method by which Lincoln actually confirmed his early won and dangerous reputation of honesty was a positive and potent performance of rare distinction. It is no mean intellectual and spiritual achievement to be as honest in speech with a crowd ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... return to, she had reckoned without her henchman Jenkins, a new broom that was sweeping very clean indeed. It is an axiom that while it requires creative genius to start an enterprise, once the momentum is gained any mediocre intelligence may keep it going. Kate learned this ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... Japan towards national greatness is at times uncertain, it is due no doubt to the fascinations of many will-o'-the-wisps. There can be one basis only for the enlightened judgment of the world on the Japanese people: the degree to which they are able to distinguish the true from the mediocre and the resolution and common-sense with which ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... 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 ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... 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 ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... of his candidature. He did succeed in getting hold of an unfortunate under secretary of state, a studious and invaluable young peer, known as Earl De Griffin. He was a shy man, of enormous wealth, of mediocre intellect, and no great physical ability, who never amused himself; but worked hard night and day, and read everything that anybody could write, and more than any other person could read, about India. Had Mr Melmotte wanted to know the exact dietary of the peasants in Orissa, ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... who understood him well, he was not without some of those moral qualities by which a youth of mediocre intellect often matures into a ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... said Maria, but with mediocre interest; for she had cocked her eye at a harmless-looking youth, who was doing his best not to blush on passing the line of girls.—"I say, do look at that toff making eyes. ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... infrequent to see a mind of real capacity fall into error, where an intelligence of mediocre caliber asserts its efficiency. Indifference is the most serious obstacle to ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... shrewdness now and then, in his contempt of the showy exhibitors in public life. "The great orators," said he, "who rule the assemblies by the brilliancy of their eloquence, are in general men of the most mediocre talents. They should not be opposed in their own way, for they have always more noisy words at command than you. In my council there were men possessed of much more eloquence than I was, but I always defeated them by this simple argument,—Two and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... changes ever witnessed in the literature of any country, 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 ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... search of rest—to forget the unceasing complaints of His friends in the world, who, instead of appreciating the value of the Cross, receive it far more often with moans and tears. Would you then be as the mediocre souls? Frankly, this is not disinterested love. . . . It is for us to console our Lord, and not for Him to console us. His Heart is so tender that if you cry He will dry your tears; but thereafter He will go away sad, since you did ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... most harm to the nobility of the language is not this passing fashion with which people are soon disgusted, not the solecisms of fashionable people into which good authors do not fall, but the affectation of mediocre authors in speaking of serious things in a conversational style. Everything conspires to corrupt a language that is rather widely diffused; authors who spoil the style by affectation; those who write to foreign ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... charge that he sought to make himself master. The important thing is that his mastery could have served no great end for France; that it would have been like himself, poor, barren, and hopelessly mediocre. And this would have been seen on every side. France had important military tasks to perform before her independence was assured. Robespierre hated war, and was jealous of every victory. France was in urgent ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... Kennet robbed them 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 Kennet; "he ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... two glad lips of song have lifted many a mediocre soul up the slopes of happiness ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... marriage, for such questioning to seem the philosophy of disappointment. Indeed, the more she realized her own situation, the more she came to regard what others considered her sacrifice to her mother as a safeguard against the risk of a mediocre domesticity. Indeed, she began to feel a certain pride, as of a priestess, in the conservation of the dignity of her nature. It is better to be a vestal virgin ...
— Different Girls • Various
... Any Governor felt a certain relief in intrusting a regiment to any man who had ever eaten clandestine oysters at Benny Haven's, or had once heard the whiz of an Indian arrow on the frontier, however mediocre might have been all his other claims to confidence. If he failed, the regular army might bear the shame; if he succeeded, to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... be quite sure it did not. So long as any inept draughtsman can scrawl a few lines which they accept as a symbol of an engine, an elephant or a pussy cat, so long will the great army of invaders who are our predestined conquerors be content to laugh anew at the request of any one, be he good or mediocre, who ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... difficulty lay: I had prepared too big a canvas for him. Intellectually his scope was considerable, but it was like the digital reach of a mediocre pianist—it didn't make him a great musician. And morally he wasn't bad enough; his corruption wasn't sufficiently imaginative to be interesting. It was not so much a means to an end as a kind of virtuosity practised for its own sake, like a highly-developed skill in cannoning billiard ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... topic, that their number has been at least doubled. Almost all the men who ever taught a few pupils, with a great many more who never taught any, deem themselves qualified to say something original on education; and perhaps few books of the kind have yet appeared, however mediocre their general tone, in which something worthy of being attended to has not actually been said. And yet, though I have read not a few volumes on the subject, and have dipped into a great many more, I never yet found in them the sort of direction or encouragement ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... of Marlowe's work: in the latter half of The Jew of Malta, in the burlesque interludes of Doctor Faustus, and wellnigh throughout the whole scheme and course of The Massacre at Paris. Whatever in King Edward III. is mediocre or worse is evidently such as it is through no passionate or slovenly precipitation of handiwork, but through pure incompetence to do better. The blame of the failure, the shame of the shortcoming, cannot be ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... 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 ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... is the most tragic incident in the melancholy story of poor old Pons. There were a "Chevalier de Malte en Priere," by Sebastian del Piombo; a "Holy Family," by Fra Bartolommeo; a "Landscape," by Hobbema; and a "Portrait of a Woman," by Albert Durer. Apparently they were in reality mediocre as works of art, but they were a source of the utmost pride and delight to their owner, who said enthusiastically of one of them—the Sebastian del Piombo—that "human art can go no further." When we know ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... ground floor into a mezzanine and a shallow box (a device employed more frankly and usefully with an outer flight of steps on the East Side), there is nothing mean in the whole street from the Plaza to Washington Square. A lot of utterly mediocre architecture there is, of course—the same applies inevitably to every long street in every capital—but the general effect is homogeneous and fine, and, above, all, grandly generous. And the alternation of high and low buildings produces not infrequently the most agreeable ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... 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 have ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... is an interrogative comment on the strange mental vicissitudes of this mediocre poet, whose one inspired work, "A Song to David," was produced in a mad-house[126]. Of this "Song" Rossetti has said (I quote the "Athenaeum" of Feb. 19, 1887) in a published letter to Mr. Caine, "This wonderful poem of Smart's is the only great accomplished poem of the ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... La-Yesharim Tehillah by Luzzatto, imitations of it without number have been published, and for the eighteenth century alone allegorical dramas by the dozen might be enumerated.] Of the poems published in Ha-Meassef but a few deserve notice, and even they are nothing more than mediocre imitations of didactic pieces in the style of the day, or odes celebrating the splendor of contemporary kings and princes. A poem by Wessely forms a rare exception. It extols the residents of Basle, who, in 1789, welcomed Jewish refugees from ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... of all the dolts who can't succeed. They set up to be the only honest fellows in business. In my opinion, Monsieur, a timid and mediocre man should not insist upon remaining at the head of a bank, but should turn the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... it be better so, that Babel noises, Losing all course and ken, And grief that wails and gladness that rejoices Should never wake again To shock a world of modulated voices And mediocre men, ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... be expected that when many different portraits are fused into a single one, the result would be a mere smudge. Such, however, is by no means the case, under the conditions just laid down, of a great prevalence of the mediocre characteristics over the extreme ones. There are then so many traits in common, to combine and to reinforce one another, that they prevail to the exclusion of the rest. All that is common remains, all that is individual ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... other than the Goncourts, whose insignificance approached at times imbecility, and in addition, Alphonse Daudet, with the air of a cheap comedian and an armful of mediocre books—a truly French diet, feeble, but well seasoned. These poor Giants, of whom Zola would talk, have become so weak and shrunken with time, that nobody is able any longer to make ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... of victory—the present Kaiser's own idea—with the great men of the time on their right and left hands. People whose sense of taste, not to say of humour, may limit their statecraft had smiled at this monotonous and grandiose row of the dead bones of distinguished and mediocre royalty immortalized in marble to the exact number of thirty-two. But they were My Ancestors, O Germans, who made you what you are! Right dress and keep that line of royalty in mind! It is your royal line, ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... of 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 ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... have lost seems to benefit his tongue." The sculptor answered: "At any rate, the impetuous young artist might succeed better in proving himself, by its assistance, a good entertainer, than in creating more mediocre masterpieces ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... 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 as in a voluntary exile; and this may be why it was sometime said that ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... one sees illustrations of men of excellent mentality being cast aside and ones of mediocre or in some cases, little, if any, ability chosen to fill important places. The former are unable to impress their personality; they have great thoughts, great ideas, but these thoughts and ideas are locked up in their brains and are like prisoners behind the bars struggling to get free. The ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... slight skill in writing,[98] but he only thought of it as a possible recommendation for a secretaryship to some great person. He also appears to have practised verses, not for their own sake, for he always most justly thought his own verses mediocre, and they are even worse; but on the ground that verse-making is a rather good exercise for breaking one's self to elegant inversions, and learning a greater ease in prose.[99] At the age of one and twenty he composed a comedy, long afterwards damned as Narcisse. Such prelusions, ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... least sold prodigiously, and the boy's vanity was correspondingly flattered; but the father stepped in and discouraged such work, warning Benjamin that "verse-makers were generally beggars." So, perhaps, we were spared a mediocre poet and given a first-rate prose writer, for the stuff of poetry was not in ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... gained more than an antechamber or alcove influence, they would never have risen to political influence, had they not known how to pervert the noblest inclinations of the King, whilst flattering the lowest. Mediocre and secondary as was his place in the line of the Hohenzollerns, Frederick William was not devoid of all royal qualities. He was brave, he was kind-hearted, or rather he was a man of "sensibility"; he desired the public weal; he ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... furthered the cause of civil service reform and had protected his employees from political party assessments. These acts brought him into collision with the politicians, who had the ear of the President, and Cox had to retire. Both Hoar and Cox were succeeded by mediocre men. ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... was endowed with but mediocre power of creation, began to find himself in a quandary as to a means of extricating ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... upon one; always provided that he be not of those whom La Bruyere has described as being made into sages by a certain natural mediocrity of mind. Whatever else may be said of Pattison, at least he was never mediocre, never vapid, trite, or common. Nor was he one of those false pretenders to the judicial mind, who 'mistake for sober sense And wise reserve, the plea of indolence.' On the contrary, his industry and spirit of laborious acquisition were his best credentials. He was invested to our ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... gentleman of the Croy family, who, as well as his father, had rendered many important services to the crown. The appointment was, however, bestowed, through Granvelle's influence, upon the Seigneur d'Helfault, a gentleman of mediocre station and character, who was thought to possess no claims whatever to the office. Egmont, moreover, desired the abbey of Trulle for a poor relation of his own; but the Cardinal, to whom nothing in this way ever came amiss, had already obtained the King's ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Debauchery runs riot, and yet, strange to say, there is very little crime. The respectable classes are less well provided for as regards amusement. I went to the opera, and heard William Tell. The performance was mediocre, though far superior to anything that could be done upon the English operatic stage. But I was chiefly amused in watching the habits of the gentlemen ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... briery place, thicket. matrimonio matrimony; married couple. matrona matron. maxima maxim. mayo May. mayor greater, larger, older. mayoral head-shepherd. mecer to stir, to agitate. medallon m. medallion. media noche midnight. mediano middling, mediocre. mediante by means of. mediar to be at the middle, to share, to drink to the middle of a glass. medida measure. medio half; m. middle, way, mean. mediodia m. midday, south. medir to measure. meditar to meditate. Mediterraneo ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... of piling up the empty shells became daylight-clear, and when higher things strove perseveringly, even unmistakably, to beckon him on. Never, in fact, throughout his life did he exhibit more than two essential concerns: one for his family and clan; and one for the great outside mass of mediocre individuals through whose ineptitudes he ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... this order of subject is 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 ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... 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 ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... letter pull, when dozens of other letters, written by the same man to the same list on the same proposition, had attained only mediocre results? ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... 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
... 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 ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... her. "Although the mediocre support and execrable direction spoiled most of your opportunities. Now if I had directed that picture, you would have ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... chapter. She wanted Jim to get a good horse that he would love, but oh, how she prayed and hoped he would not happen on another speeder! She knew quite well that it was about one chance in ten thousand; but she also knew that Jim could make a good horse out of mediocre material; and it was with anxiety just the reverse of his that she watched the black colt when first they rode together. He was strong and hard, but, thank heaven, she thought, showed ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... king's perplexities on this subject, and of the measures he took to apply a remedy. We cannot regard this account as strictly historical; but it is a picture, vivid and morally true, of events and men as they were understood and conceived to be by a contemporary, a mediocre poet, but a spirited narrator. We will reproduce the principal features, modifying the language to make it more easily intelligible, but without altering ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... furiously, with lines of emphasis, and capitals, and exclamation-marks more and more thickly interspersed, so that the signs of his living passion are still visible to the inquirer of today on those thin sheets of mediocre paper and in the torrent of the ink. But he was a man of elastic temperament; he could not remain forever upon the stretch; he sought, and he found, relaxation in extraneous matters—in metaphysical digressions, or in satirical outbursts, or in the small details ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... deeply under the burdensome problems of the world. He could not emancipate himself sufficiently from the tumult of his own sympathies. At many a page both of Jacques le Fataliste, and of others of his pieces, we involuntarily recall the writer's own contention that excess of sensibility makes a mediocre actor. The same law is emphatically true of the artist. Diderot never writes as if his spirit were quite free—and perhaps it never was free. If we are to enjoy these reckless outbursts of all that is bizarre and grotesque, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... the three strange phases of it: To be a mediocre Englishman with no special talent; to die in horrible despair; and to leave behind a glorious legend. And for all these three things to contradict one another in the same life is unequaled in the ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... 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 himself to the study of mathematics, painting the while, and apparently ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... impressed as his batman. In fact, he'd often stayed in the larger cities, in hostelries as sumptuous as this, though only of Middle status. Kingston's best was on the mediocre side. He said, "They'd probably tell you ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... situations of only a few weeks ago; those safe little political situations which redounded so much to the credit of those that made them and did not contain any of the dread elements of our present very real and terrible one! Like soldiers who have degenerated from the chasing of mere vagabonds of mediocre importance, so have our Peking Ministers Plenipotentiary and Envoys Extraordinary fallen from their proud estate to mere diplomatic make-beliefs full of wind—wind-blown from much tilting at windmills, with their Governments rescuing ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... Rambouillet) had built, according to her own design, a place which is one of the finest in the world; she has found the art of constructing a palace of vast extent in a situation of mediocre grandeur. Order, harmony, and elegance are in all the apartments, and in the furniture also; everything is magnificent, even unique; the lamps are different from those of other palaces, her cabinets are full of objects which show the judgment of her who chose ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... combined to make these volumes, what American books are too apt not to be—a thing of permanent beauty. The publishers intend to bring out the edition quite rapidly. Five volumes are ready, and the others will follow at the rate of one each month. The present is the great era of mediocre men. A horde of novel writers gain their living successfully enough, and we take them up and talk about what they are doing, and how their works compare with each other, as if their doings had real importance. ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... this command, wrote the play within a fortnight. Unless this tradition be true, it is difficult to explain why Shakespeare should have written a comedy which is, in comparison with his other work of this period, at once conventional and mediocre. The subject—the intrigues of Falstaff with two married women, and the wooing of a commonplace girl by two foolish suitors and another as commonplace as herself—gave Shakespeare little opportunity for poetry and none for the portrayal of the types ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... this manner a whole age of Italian society; and even now his spirit haunts you as you read the gorgeous sins of Roman noblemen in the pages of Gabriele d'Annunzio. And Murillo, though the expert not unjustly from their special point of view, see in him but a mediocre artist, in the same way is the very quintessence of Southern Spain. Wielders of the brush, occupied chiefly with technique, are apt to discern little in an old master, save the craftsman; yet art is no more than a link in the chain of life and cannot be sharply sundered from ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... course, middle state; neutrality. mediocrity, least common denominator. V. split the difference; take the average &c. n.; reduce to a mean &c. n.; strike a balance, pair off. Adj. mean, intermediate; middle &c. 68; average; neutral. mediocre, middle-class; commonplace &c. (unimportant) 643. Adv. on an average, in the long run; taking one with another, taking all things together, taking it for all in all; communibus annis[Lat], in round numbers. Phr. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... hands met his, her soul gave a little half-humorous "Oh!" of surprise; for photography, which seems to have been invented to flatter the mediocre and belittle the exceptional, had indeed given Londonderry an "interesting face," as we have heard, but missed all the rest—"all the rest" of a large, mobile, talking face, not exactly handsome perhaps, but decidedly ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... a consistent, an intelligent guidance; operating, as it were, out of some completer survey of the facts at a given moment than my own abilities could possibly have compassed; my mediocre faculties seemed gathered together and perfected—with the result, in time, that my "intuition," as others called it, came to be regarded with a respect that in some cases amounted to half reverence. The adjective "uncanny" was applied to me. The natives, certainly, ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... for the miserly splitting, here and there, in the older edifices, of an inadequate ground floor into a mezzanine and a narrow box, there is nothing mean in the whole street from the Plaza to Washington Square. Much mediocre architecture, of course, but the general effect homogeneous and fine, and, above all, grandly generous.... The single shops, as well as the general stores and hotels on Fifth Avenue, are impressive in the lavish spaciousness of their disposition. Neither stores nor shops could ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... your smoker Boast your "shag," or even "twist," Every man were mediocre Save the blest tobacconist! He will point immortal morals, Make all common praises mute, Who shall win our grateful laurels With a ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... The lonely word 'mediocre' lengthens its first vowel by the 'alias' rule and also stresses it. Whether the penultima has more than a secondary stress ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... individualist," he said, "and I'm very largely concerned in seeing what Daniel Harwood, a poor young lawyer of mediocre abilities, can do with this thing we hear mentioned ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... vulgar and 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
... had begun to realize what things cost. In making the settlement I had not been consulted. Grandmamma and the Marquis had arranged matters with my future husband, and I remember her words: "We have only been able to secure for your personal use a very mediocre sum, but your jointure in case ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... 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 as "Sleep" ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... in his way, the tendency will be general to place the more popular candidates, those whose success is most feared, at the bottom of the list, so as to give them as few marks as possible. The result would be to favour mediocre men, or even in ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... Turkish cadi. During his whole period in office he 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 ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... 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
... we find weighty message and noble utterance in union, as we do in the magnificent remainder after even the severest ablation of the poor and mediocre portion of Browning's life-work, how beneficent seem the generous gods! Of this remainder most aptly may be quoted these lines from "The Ring and ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... for a genius remains a secret with Deity. The great man becomes great in spite of teachers and parents: and his near kinsmen, being color-blind, usually pooh-pooh the idea that he is anything more than mediocre. At Oxford, William Morris fell in with a young man of about his own age, by the name of Edward Burne-Jones. Burne-Jones was studying theology. He was slender in stature, dreamy, spiritual, poetic. Morris was a giant in strength, blunt in speech, bold in manner, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... obvious things that I notice as primarily beautiful: women, spring evenings, music at night, the sea; I don't catch the subtle things like 'silver-snarling trumpets.' I may turn out an intellectual, but I'll never write anything but mediocre poetry." ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... 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 ...
— Summer Snow Storm • Adam Chase
... Nothing. He still lives, and what his posthumous papers may say for him, I cannot say; but I know him well, and consequently expect nothing. As a lawyer, he was mediocre; as a statesman, vacillating and without any fixed principles; as an orator, (for some had claimed him to be such,) he was turgid and verbose—sometimes he was sarcastic, but only when the malignity of his nature found vent in the bitterness of words. His ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... proof could be 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 ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... highest. The examination of these classes passed off fairly enough to satisfy a reasonable audience. Among the pupils there was the usual proportion of "sharps, flats, and naturals"—otherwise of bright, dull, and mediocre individuals. After the examination of the three classes was complete, there remained the two youths, Walter Middleton and Ishmael Worth, who, far in advance of the other pupils, were not classed with them, and, being but two, could not be called a class of themselves. Yet they stood up and were ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... should study the Middle Ages; if he wishes to paint beautiful people, 'untrammelled by any considerations of historical accuracy,' he should turn to the Greek and Roman mythology; and if he is a 'mediocre painter,' he should choose his 'subject from the Old and New Testament,' a recommendation, by the way, that many of our Royal Academicians seem already to have carried out. To paint a real historical picture one requires the assistance of a theatrical costumier and a photographer. From the former ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... Alixe—" the familiarity brought with it no condescending reverberations—"has bothered me more than once. I shall be just as frank on my side. No, your husband has but little talent; original talent, none. He is mediocre—wait!" She started, her cheeks red with the blood that fled her heart when she heard this doleful news. "Wait! There are qualifications. In the first place, what do you expect ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... in the early years of the sixteenth century was that of Robert Copland. He was a man of considerable ability, a good French scholar, and a writer of mediocre verse. Apart from this, he was also, in the truest sense of the word, a book lover, and used his influence to produce books that were likely to be useful, or such as were worth reading. In the prologue to ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... 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 ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... supernatural, the legends of wandering spirits, of fairies, of gnomes, of ghosts, I might even say the conception of God, for our ideas of the Workman-Creator, from whatever religion they may have come down to us, are certainly the most mediocre, the stupidest, and the most unacceptable inventions that ever sprang from the frightened brain of any human creature. Nothing is truer than what Voltaire says: 'If God made man in His own image, man has ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... commonplace though terrifying. Thence sprang the popular belief in the supernatural, the legends of wandering spirits, of fairies, of gnomes, ghosts, I might even say the legend of God, for our conceptions of the workman-creator, from whatever religion they may have come down to us, are certainly the most mediocre, the stupidest and the most unacceptable inventions that ever sprang from the frightened brain of any human creatures. Nothing is truer than what Voltaire says: 'God made man in His own image, but man has certainly paid Him ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... them; and I have surprised three secrets that are more than technical discoveries, in the unexpected hiding-places of Nature. I have come nearer flying than any man has done. Could I have done as much if I had had a turn for obeying those rather mediocre professors at the college who proposed to train my mind? If I had been trained in research—that ridiculous contradiction in terms—should I have done more than produce additions to the existing store of little papers with blunted conclusions, of which ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... are never true. I have my share of physical courage, perhaps; that's a common, elementary virtue, like generosity, gratitude, sympathy. The most mediocre people ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... of the mildest, most innocent men I ever knew. He had a wife to whom he was devoted with a dog-like devotion; he went to church; he was shy and reserved, and he held a mediocre position in a firm of envelope-makers in the City. But he had a romantic soul, and whenever the public craving for envelopes fell off—and that is seldom—he used to allay his secret passion for danger, devilry and excitement by writing sensational ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various
... 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 ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... of useful, mediocre ability, eyed the younger man with curiosity, thinking that doubtless he had private means; that it was a pity he and Lindsay had fallen out, for he was ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... as a woodcarver. The city was beginning to expand, breaking its shell as a large village. Desnoyers spent many years ornamenting salons and facades. It was a laborious existence, sedentary and remunerative. But one day he became tired of this slow saving which could only bring him a mediocre fortune after a long time. He had gone to the new world to become rich like so many others. And at twenty-seven, he started forth again, a full-fledged adventurer, avoiding the cities, wishing to snatch money from untapped, natural sources. He worked farms in the forests of the North, ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... weaving; the pottery has always been of the cheaper, coarser kind, and although some attempt was made at the close of the last century, when the industry was revived, to bring it to a higher artistic level of colour and glaze, it still, to my mind, continues mediocre, and has neither the highly finished beauty of such work as the Ruskin pottery, nor the genuinely simple lines or colouring of "peasant pottery," such as that from Quimperle in Brittany. The Barum ware has a sort of bourgeois ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... youth's "proud livery" for the sombre garment of age. The years have turned the rebel of yesterday into the Royal Academician of to-day. The inspired young prophet who protested week by week against mediocrity in paint, settled down to keeping the mediocre paintings against which his protests were loudest. He who thundered against the degeneracy of journalism accepted the patronage of the titled promoter of the half-penny press. Architects carried their respectability ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... want to hear the latest news, Coello? Your pupil Navarrete has become faithless to you and the noble art of painting. Don Juan gave him the enlistment money fifteen minutes ago. Better be a good trooper, than a mediocre artist! What ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers |
