"Second-rate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... often said, however, that an allegory should never be pressed too far.” Are all the lovely passages of human passion and human pathos in these ‘Idylls’ allegorical—that is to say—make-believe? The reason why allegorical poetry is always second-rate, even at its best, is that it flatters the reader’s intellect at the expense of his heart. Fancy “the allegorical intent” behind the parting of Hector and Andromache, and behind the death of Desdemona! Thank Heaven, however, Tennyson’s allegorical ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... were wonderfully snug and comfortable for the second floor of a second-rate house in a small retired side street near the Embankment at Chelsea. He had made the most of the four modest little rooms, with his quick taste and his deft, cunning fingers:—four rooms, or rather boxes, one might almost call them; a bedroom each for himself ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... was content not to work hard at the manufacture of jewelry, although if she had been encouraged, she might have become almost second-rate in this minor art. She, too, was indolent, if not by disposition, by training, and Europe offers abundant distraction of a semi-intellectual sort to fill the days of people like Archie and Adelle. To loaf herself was not so fatal for Adelle ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... are his friends. I have been preparing for the occasion. I crowd cotton in my ears. I read all the reviews and magazines of the past month against the dreadful meeting, and I hope by these means to cut a tolerable second-rate figure. ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... for this digression, knowing that, to many minds, facts connected with the rise of the iron trade will have as much interest as notes on the scene of a battle or the birthplace of a second-rate poet, besides, as we omit to say what we do not know, it is necessary we ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
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