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More "Criticise" Quotes from Famous Books



... arch-enemy of criticism, that "blame is much more useful to the artist than praise," and that "the musician who goes to destruction because he is faulted, deserves destruction." He must stop the contention that only a musician is entitled to criticise a musician, and without abating one jot of his requirements as to knowledge, sympathy, liberality, broad-mindedness, candor, and incorruptibility on the part of the critic, he must quit the foolish claim that to pronounce ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... hard to predicate from them in what station of life she had been brought up. She certainly adapted herself well to whatever society she happened to be with; neither patricians nor plebeians found any thing to criticise; but, whether this were the result of tact, or owing merely to the adoption of a negative standard, no one could say. In language she was uniformly correct, without seeming at all scholastic; she occasionally used the idioms and dialectic peculiarities of those around ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne

... mildly, "you are not choosing a husband; you are choosing a career. To criticise his investments might be bad taste; to be able to extract what amusement you can out of Howard is a direct mercy from Heaven. Otherwise ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... motives impugned? Are not persecution, and even martyrdom, often their portion? Now all this is the result of sin. Those who call into question the deeds and motives of God's saints; those who upbraid, and criticise, and impute evil to the sincere, faithful servants of God, inflicting upon them dire evils, are but showing the effects of sin in themselves, are but giving exercise to the evil that rules within them. Their particular acts and words may be without present malice, they may be inwardly ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan

... Warricombe stepped into the circle irradiated by Bruno Chilvers; her husband and Sidwell pressed after. Buckland, with an exclamation of disgust, went off to criticise the hero among a ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... followed him in his raillery; but she caught his meaning. 'I know I ought to apologise for presuming to criticise you,' she said; 'but I was thinking with sorrow of the ill-will that has lately come among us at Barchester, and I spoke more freely than ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... by deductive nor inductive reasoning can we add a tittle to our implicit knowledge." (Jevons.) Explain and criticise. [S] ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... fallacious, heretical. You perceive I am not sparing myself in these admissions," he interposed, "but I have been doing some serious thinking during my return voyage, and now I am going to read that book again; not to criticise, but to get at its true inwardness ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... restaurant car of which we are sole occupants. The car is made for two tables, each for four people, and a man and a boy, both very neatly dressed, cook and serve, so you see the line is not yet overrun, and it is still cheap, and comfortable. If I might be so bold as to criticise what you, my Elder Brother, may be responsible for, I'd suggest that the place to sleep on might be made a shade softer.—Yes, we are becoming effeminate, I know—we were becoming so alas, as far ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... may now ask, What, then, is your idea of evolution? It certainly is easier to criticise than to do constructive work. An honest study of nature, however, inevitably leads us to the conclusion that the final solution of the problem is still far distant. Many a stone has already been quarried for the future edifice of evolution by unwearied research during the ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert

... the place, nor have I the space to criticise the various special theories of descent. One, however, must receive particular notice. According to Ameghino, the South American monkeys (Pitheculites) from the oldest Tertiary of the Pampas are the forms from which have arisen ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... Grog! And Her Highness herself may be thought a cleverer sketch of youthful femininity than even the Hellenic Helen. It is hard to judge the play now. Custom has worn its freshness and made it too familiar: we know it too well to criticise it clearly. Besides, the actors have now overlaid the action with over-much "business." But in spite of these difficulties the merits of the piece are sufficiently obvious: its constructive skill can be remarked; the first act, for example, is one of the best bits of exposition ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various

... at him. What right had he to criticise my manner of speech? He started to leave the room, after a perfunctory scramble to put his papers in order, but she broke off in the middle of a sentence to urge him to remain. She announced that she was calling ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... she returned loftily, "that if anyone has a right to complain of your costume, it is I. Know, therefore, monsieur le voyageur, that if I accept a man's arm, he is forthwith above the laws of fashion, nobody would venture to criticise him. You do not know the world, I see; I like you ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... young as he grew old, and it was his desire to bid farewell to earth with his eyes resting upon the Shakespeare that so constantly lay open before him. Nothing excited his indignation more than to hear little people of great pretension carpingly criticise the man of whom he makes Southey, in a discussion with Porson, declare, that "all the faults that ever were committed in poetry would be but as air to earth, if we could weigh them against one single thought or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... ones full of invited guests, brought up the rear. When a start was made, the little police force hustled vehicles out of the way and even stopped tram-cars when necessary; while the band tortured selections from Handel and Beethoven to the intense delight of passers-by, many of whom paused to criticise shortcomings in the procession among themselves. In about an hour it reached its destination, where Kumodini Babu's uncle received the guests. The family barber carried Samarendra in his arms to a chair which ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea

... in the little hunchback. "You are here, it seems, to frustrate our intentions; but I'm hanged if you shall criticise them too. Guard, ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... is more imposing on paper. There is something more impressive in it; I shall be better able to criticise myself and improve my style. Besides, I shall perhaps obtain actual relief from writing. Today, for instance, I am particularly oppressed by one memory of a distant past. It came back vividly to my mind a few days ago, and has remained haunting me like an annoying tune that one cannot get ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky

... then proceeded to criticise a statement commonly found in text books, that chemical combination suppresses altogether the properties of the combining bodies. The reverse of this statement is probably true. To take the case commonly given of the combination ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various

... It was only in respect to extraordinary taxes—"subsidies" and "tenths and fifteenths"—that Parliament was in a position effectually to make or mar the fiscal fortunes of the Government; except that, of course, it was always open to Parliament to criticise the financial expedients of the crown, such as the sale of monopolies, the levy of "impositions," and the collection of benevolences, and to influence, if it could, the policy pursued in relation ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... what Jock said when he walked with us to the elevator was pretty nearly right. You know he said we were criticising their copy the way a plumber would criticise the Parthenon—so busy finding fault with the lack of drains that we failed to see the ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber

... and impede Austria. First of all things, it is necessary for me to get rid of those newspaper editors and scribblers; they are arrogant, insolent fellows who imagine they know every thing and are able to criticise every thing, and who feel called upon to give their opinion about all things and on all occasions because they know how to wield a goose-quill. The best thing we could do would be to suppress all newspapers ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... Imagist at times, presenting his mood or picture with a Flaubertian precision of epithet that even Amy Lowell could not criticise. Consider, for example, his ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton

... understood, applauded? But yourself, YOU, great George Sand, you confess your solitude. Is there at this time, I don't say, admiration or sympathy, but the appearance of a little attention to works of art? Who is the critic who reads the book that he has to criticise? In ten years they won't know, perhaps, how to make a pair of shoes, they are becoming so frightfully stupid! All that is to tell you that, until better times (in which I do not believe), I shall keep Saint-Antoine in the bottom ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... the well-belaboured eighteenth century—when much was done of which the nineteenth talks, and massive books were written that we are content to criticise—we have the inevitable denunciations of scepticism, materialism, argumentation, logic; the quotation, (referred to a motto "in the Swiss gardens"), "Speech is silvern, silence is golden," and a loud assertion that all great things ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... says he will not attempt to do so by latitude and longitude, for that is a system of which the Latins have learned nothing. He himself, whilst still somewhat burdened by the authoritative dicta of "saints and sages" of past times, ventures at least to criticise some of the latter, such as Pliny and Ptolemy, and declares his intention to have recourse to the information of those who have travelled most extensively over the Earth's surface. And judging from the good use he makes, in his ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... antagonistic to the institutions of this country. Every apostle is directed by the law-breaking church monarch. Every apostle teaches by example and precept to the Mormon people that this church monarch is a prophet of God, to offend or criticise whom is a sin in the sight of the Almighty. Every apostle helps to appoint to office and sustain the seven presidents of seventies, who are below them in dignity, and they are directly responsible for them and their ...
— Conditions in Utah - Speech of Hon. Thomas Kearns of Utah, in the Senate of the United States • Thomas Kearns

... Disraeli's own words, used in another sense, the keynote of Lothair is "mockery blended with Ionian splendour." Never had he mocked so dauntlessly, never had his fancy been more exuberant, and those who criticise the magnificence must realise that it was intentional. It was thus that Disraeli loved to see life, and, most of all, the life he laughed at. He had always been gorgeous, but he let himself go in ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... thought for the sake of experience, the philosopher must transcend experience for the sake of thought. As the poet sees all, and all in each, so the philosopher, knowing each, must think all consistently together, and then know each again. It is the part of philosophy to collect and criticise evidence, to formulate and coordinate conceptions, and finally to define in exact terms. The reanimation of the structure of thought is accomplished primarily in religion, which is a general conception of the world made the basis ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... however, the prospect of the young people coming together was not encouraging. Martha was somewhat given to flirtation. George was as jealous as ever, and was unable to conceal his feelings, which, as he had now no right to criticise her conduct, so angered the girl that she not unfrequently gave encouragement to others solely to show her indifference ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty

... soul have been faithful; never an alien pleasure Lured me away from the light lit in your luminous eyes, But we have altered the World as pitiful man has leisure To criticise, balance, take ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.

... am so tired of being tied to a book,' he said passionately. 'Tied? I am a book. Everyone I meet sees in me, not a man to be judged and liked for himself, but something to criticise and flatter and compare with the nature he ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey

... and mean," not only because he had been drunk, but because he had taken advantage of the young girl's position to abuse her fiance in his stupid jealousy, knowing nothing of their mutual relations and obligations and next to nothing of the man himself. And what right had he to criticise him in that hasty and unguarded manner? Who had asked for his opinion? Was it thinkable that such a creature as Avdotya Romanovna would be marrying an unworthy man for money? So there must be something in him. The lodgings? ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... It is easy to criticise the naive intellectualism of such a view as this, which ignores or thrusts into the background the economic causes of advance and retrogression. But it is certainly not an unhistorical view. Burke dreaded fundamental discussions which "turn men's duties into doubts." ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford

... negation of the reason is what those Italians who do not scruple to practise it denominate Rationalism. And this very unwarrantable use of a word is in fact only a particular case of a general phenomenon. To criticise, means to examine the thoughts which present themselves to the mind in order to distinguish error from truth. The Frenchmen, who call themselves the critics, are men who require that the intellect shall make itself the impartial mirror of ideas, but shall renounce the while all discrimination ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... the front pair of wheels could be deflected at will, but only very slightly, and they afterwards found that in a hundred yards they could only turn their ship four yards from her course. But let not captains of comfortable battleships, or owners even of yachts, criticise too harshly a man who was not of their time and who knew not modern contrivances; it should be remembered also that Shard was no longer at sea. His steering may have been clumsy but he did ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany

... old time base ball star.—"I did not think it possible for one to become so interested in a book on base ball. I do not find anything in it which I can criticise." ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster

... people were in the act of warping her across the basin to still another berth, where she was to receive her ballast; thus when my eyes first rested upon her she was floating high out of the water, and I was afforded an excellent opportunity to view and criticise her lines. She was somewhat shallow of hull and flat in the floor, to give her a light draught of water, but to compensate for this she was extraordinarily "beamy," which had the twofold effect of imparting great stiffness under canvas, and affording ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood

... think that I am laying down the law," he said. "I have been out so little, the last few years, that I ought not, perhaps, to criticise. Lady Cynthia, however, seems to me to belong to the extreme section of the younger generation, the section who have a sort of craze for the unusual, whose taste in art and living is distorted and bizarre. You know what I mean, don't you—black drawing-rooms, futurist wall-papers, opium dens and ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... were innocent; but it appears to me you have not forgotten our father's wish—that you look upon me as a usurper, who has robbed you of your throne. You act as if you had the right to measure and criticise all my undertakings, and to make yourself a judge over me. I undertook this war with the conviction of my right and my royal duty. You dared to protest against it. You dared, in the presence of my generals, to speak of your claims and the claims ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... for organisation she seems almost unequalled. Her picnics are models for all future and past picnics; her combinations of feelings, of conversation, of gentlemen and ladies, are so natural and lifelike that reading to criticise is impossible to some of us—the scene carries us away, and we forget to look for the art by which it is recorded. Her machinery is simple but complete; events group themselves so vividly and naturally in her mind that, in describing imaginary ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)

... most opposite subjects, without ever forgetting his own identity or losing faith in his system." There were, however, in the case of M. Sainte-Beuve, further impediments to the assumption of an explicit and confident tone. Among the authors whom he was called upon to criticise were his acknowledged leaders, those by whom he had been initiated into the mysteries of modern art. Though he was fast outgrowing their influence, he was in no haste to proclaim his independence. An indefatigable student, he was accumulating stores of material without as yet drawing upon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... sweet-smelling drops or sugar-coated pills of varying hue and form—the result would doubtless he as satisfactory in one case as in the other. Since she had not demanded it as an inalienable right he gave her an opportunity to criticise and select, which she accepted by no means unwillingly. As a rule, the designs were, in her opinion, too elaborate and obtrusive. There were too many mouldings, there was too much carving, and too evident a ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner

... learned from their courteous hosts, and felt inclined to sympathize with the Southern people, for the negro is not counted as a Southerner, except to fix the basis of congressional representation. There might of course be things to criticise here and there, certain customs for which they did not exactly see the necessity, and which seemed in conflict with the highest ideals of liberty but surely these courteous, soft-spoken ladies and gentlemen, entirely ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt

... good humour he would talk of his own writings with a wonderful frankness and candour, and would even criticise them with the closest severity. One day, having read over one of his Ramblers, Mr. Langton asked him, how he liked that paper; he shook his head, and answered, "too wordy." At another time, when one was reading his tragedy of Irene to a company at a house in ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... of the rest of you have done as much for this town as Honer'ble Bickford," broke in the president, testily, "you can have the right to criticise. As it is, I can't see anything but jealousy in it. And I've heard enough of it. Now, to make this thing all pleasant and agreeable to the Honer'ble Bickford, we've got to have Cap'n Sproul and Hiram Look act as judges with him. 'Tis ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... Olivia's letters—I am sorry I sent them to you; for I see that they have lowered, instead of raising her in your opinion. But if you criticise letters, written in openness and confidence of heart to a private friend, as if they were set before the tribunal of the public, you are—may I say it?—not only severe, but unjust; for you try and condemn the subjects of one country by the laws ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... of every Scot—secured to him by the Treaty of Union and confirmed by the Disruption—to criticise his minister with much freedom, but this privilege is exercised with a delicate charity. When it is not possible for a conscientious hearer to approve a sermon, he is not compelled to condemnation. "There ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren

... much of anything, papa," she replied, "but I'm hungry for a little petting and a chance to hug and kiss my dear father; without anybody by to criticise," she concluded, with a low, ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley

... to criticise your taste in the only thing in which it is, in my opinion, reprehensible. You know I ought to know something of my own trade. Of pathos, sentiment, and point, you are a complete judge; but there is a quality more necessary than either in a song, and ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... affects to criticise Germany for not having "entrusted the security of her western frontier to the public opinion of Western Europe and to America and fought Russia, if attacked, with her rear not otherwise defended," ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... in addressing your Northern friends, is in perfect keeping with your apparent estimation of them. Though I should be the last, perhaps, to criticise mere style, I could not but be struck with the extremely simple manner of your letter. You seem to have thought you were writing a tract for benighted heathen, and telling wonders never before suggested to their imagination, and so far above their ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... with a face that remained serene as far at least as her husband and her children ever saw. Nor did she allow the whole weight of trials to taint the sweetness of her spirit or to dim her faith in God. Devoted to her husband, she refused to allow herself to criticise his business ability or methods. The failure, which she could not but admit, was not his fault; it was the fault of those debtors who declined ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor

... was casual; her manner had a quality somewhat aggressively democratic. It said that under her welcome lay the right to criticise, which she would have exercised with equal freedom had her visitor been the Lord Bishop John Calcutta himself; and it made short work of the idea that she might be over-gratified to receive Holy Orders in any form. She was not ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)

... reception at the hands of many of its reviewers. The Saturday Review was furious. "When a writer," it exclaimed, "who has not given as many weeks to the subject as Mr. Darwin has given years, is not content to air his own crude though clever fallacies, but assumes to criticise Mr. Darwin with the superciliousness of a young schoolmaster looking over a boy's theme, it is difficult not to take him more seriously than he deserves or perhaps desires. One would think that Mr. Butler was the travelled and laborious observer ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler

... the mean and frowsy room, and shuddered. Yet what could he do? What right had he to interfere, to criticise, to ameliorate? ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett

... literature as a safety-valve or time-passer, giving to the world the result of tired brain and over-wrought nerves; consequently, I sacrificed inclination to necessity, and have left my muse alone. However,"—and he was once more the worldling,—"I have reserved to myself the right to criticise; and when I see a young man of talent enter the field of letters, I conclude he is like a man about to marry, either a great hero ...
— The Writer, Volume VI, April 1892. - A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers • Various

... necessary then seriously to criticise such abuses of language? Yes, for very seriously are they put forth in our books and journals. Nor can we flatter ourselves that they are the careless expressions of uneducated writers, ignorant even of the terms ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat

... agreement with Onions Winter, and he produced it with a shamed countenance. He knew that Mark Snyder would criticise it. ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett

... have acted in a thoroughly capable and praiseworthy manner. The only point in your conduct which I would permit myself to criticise is your omission to slay the kid. That, however, was due, I take it, to the fact that you were interrupted. We will now proceed to examine the future. I cannot see that it is altogether murky. You have ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... circumstance crystallised and rendered immune from the necessity for self-search and spiritual struggle incidental to his neighbours. Since he was a man neither below nor above the average, it did not occur to him to criticise or place himself in opposition to a system which had gone on so long and was about to do him so much good. Like all average men, he was a believer in authority, and none the less because authority placed a large ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... "Doubtless you are in the right, Mr. Allonby," he said; "though, as you were of course going on to remark, you express yourself somewhat obscurely. Your meaning, I take it, is that I mayn't criticise the doings, of my guests? I stand corrected, and concede Sir Gresley acted with commendable moderation, and that Cambridge is, beyond question, the paramount ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... my eyes, and wished our bank might break before morning! Whether the "bit of sea" came up to expectations or not I know not. I was in no condition to criticise even my own movements. I believe that as time went on I became gradually amalgamated with the larger roiling heap of fellow-sufferers on the floor, and during the last hour or so of our misery rolled in concert with them. ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed

... it down that Alexander was a poltroon; a phthisicky professor, holding at every word a bottle of sal volatile to his nose, lectures on strength. Fellows who faint at the veriest trifle criticise the tactics of Hannibal; whimpering boys store themselves with phrases out of the slaughter at Canna; and blubber over the victories of Scipio, because they are obliged to ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... they like," Ruth laughed. "That is mere jealousy, and anybody can criticise. To me you are the greatest ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White

... would not be flippant when he is gravely told that the Greeks had no art-critics? I can understand it being said that the constructive genius of the Greeks lost itself in criticism, but not that the race to whom we owe the critical spirit did not criticise. You will not ask me to give you a survey of Greek art criticism from Plato to Plotinus. The night is too lovely for that, and the moon, if she heard us, would put more ashes on her face than are there already. ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde

... about it, be sure. He saw me in a hobble—I lost everything, all at once—and he went to work like a brick to get money for me. And that, when he felt more disposed to poison himself than to paint. Do you think I should criticise the work he ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing

... has confessed, in a new Preface, that this is "one of the most ambitious and least satisfactory" of his books; and explains that it was written against time, when he was on the verge of a serious illness. It is superfluous, therefore, to criticise it in detail, but one or two points in relation to the sociological ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford

... speaking is to get on good terms with your audience, and I claim that the best way to do this is to show them the human side of yourself. Some of your hearers are agin you; they have come out to criticise you. You disarm them at once by treating yourself as a joke. Of course you must suit your tactics to your audience. The tie remark will put me on good terms with a rural audience, but it would fail in a lecture to teachers in the ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill

... people in the church; the one is made up of those who do the hard work of the church, and the other of those who sit at home and—criticise. ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson

... I beg to remind you, Horsham, that from the first I've reserved myself liberty to criticise fundamental points ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker

... What an idea! Mais j'ai mon franc parler. I occasionally allow myself to criticise, but ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev

... his chief were certainly more rapid than those of Sickles on Saturday, and no one has undertaken to criticise the latter. Nor would Lee be lightly accused of tardiness for not attacking Sedgwick in force until Monday at six P.M., as will shortly be detailed, when he had despatched his advance towards him shortly after noon on Sunday, and had but a half-dozen ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge

... on in the little cabin across the arroyo, a reproduction of an old, old drama. Should we, after all, criticise these two descendants of the first sweet human woman of the world? Consider; to their young and inexperienced eyes appealed all the fascinations of this august but tempting object, new, strange, appealing. For a time their hearts were strong, upon their ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough

... Australian, was established by Mr. Wentworth and Dr. Wardell. A second of the same kind soon followed, and was called the Monitor. These papers found it to their advantage, during the unpopularity of Darling, to criticise severely the acts of that Governor, who was defended by the Gazette with intemperate zeal. This altercation had lasted for some time, when, in the third year of Darling's administration, a very small event was sufficient to set the ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland

... human race, nor a love for each individual of it, but a love for the race, or for the ideal of man, in each individual. In other and less pedantic words, he who is truly humane considers every human being as such interesting and important, and without waiting to criticise each individual specimen, pays in advance to all alike the tribute of good wishes and sympathy. Now this favourable presumption with regard to human beings is not a causeless prepossession, it is no idle superstition of ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... those who have not travelled, and who have no means of knowing the value of what they say, that are privileged to criticise?" ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... of Perugino is still solid and beautiful, immutably serene. It radiates peace and strength. I neither criticise nor admire; my attitude is much more nearly that of worship, not of Perugino's images, but of a far-away ineffable mystery, which he in his time humbly sought to make a little more symbolically visible to men than any that came before him. For here ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis

... to account to you for what I say or do? Let me tell you I allow no one to criticise my actions—no, not folks of far more consequence than you. I shall think of you as I choose to think of you. Others may say you're an honest man, but I look upon you as a brigand, and that's all about it. You seem anxious to hear my opinion, so here ...
— The Storm • Aleksandr Nicolaevich Ostrovsky

... troubles in business organizations the personal equation entered into it. Certain of the directors were inclined to criticise other directors and to be somewhat dictatory as to how the farmers' business should be conducted. With the idea of improving the system of management, the directors at this stage abolished the Board of Control and the President was made Managing-Director ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse

... hint things went along better in the engine room. When Hal Hastings came in to inspect he found nothing to criticise. ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies • Victor G. Durham

... literary defence, if I may so term it, my article would have been as ephemeral as the mood which induced its composition. I make full admission of Rossetti's claims to the purest kind of literary renown, and if I were to criticise his poems now, I should write very differently. But nothing will shake my conviction that the cruelty, the unfairness, the pusillanimity has been on the other side, not on mine. The amende of my Dedication in God ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine

... his thoughts and worshipped him, had chosen her husband herself, and, being of German family, had not been married after the French manner; still, she did not criticise it, as she thought it was perhaps adapted to the French people, and she had seen among her intimate acquaintances many happy marriages entered into for reasons of convenience. They had two children, a son, Ary, who died in 1900 after having made a name for himself as a painter, and written ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... "It was too late," he said, "to criticise the evidence, and the Court had neither the right nor the power to alter or review it. If," he added, "you have any reason to give why, either upon technical or moral grounds, the sentence should not be passed upon you, we will ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown

... wary youth replied In truth, fair lady, I could ne'er decide, To criticise what others round may do.— 'Tis not the line I'd willingly pursue; And I will freely say, that your discourse Has much surprised me, though 'tis void of force. To you it surely never can belong, To say variety in love is wrong; Besides, your sex, and decency, 'tis clear, ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine

... is, as one might say, the guest of a country, it does not become him to criticise that country. I have studied this strange people with interest, and often with astonishment, and if I now set down some of the differences between the English and the French, I trust that no note of criticism ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr

... it is asked. I believe the engineer employed by me to examine into the condition of my vessels is quite competent to judge in these matters, and I have unbounded confidence in him. When I placed you in command of the 'Nancy,' I meant you to navigate, not to criticise her; but if you are ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne

... "remains a difficulty for us as well as for the Greeks of the fourth century before Christ, and is the stumbling-block of Kant's Critic, and of the Hamiltonian adaptation of Kant as well as of the Platonic ideas. It has been said that 'you cannot criticise Revelation.' 'Then how do you know what is Revelation, or that there is one at all?' is the immediate rejoinder. 'You know nothing of things in themselves.'—'Then how do you know that there are things in themselves?' In some ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall

... for his offences as the erring or unsuccessful monarch. It must be difficult for a great classicist to be at the same time a believer in the divine right of kings; and it was a new idea for the mediaeval Scot accustomed to reverence the name, but to criticise in the sharpest practical way the acts of his sovereign. And we may imagine that the old scholar, who could not but hear from his window the shouts of the warfare between the Queen's party and the King's, would have a grim satisfaction as he sat high above them, protected more or ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... had the hardy nerve To criticise our depredations As unadapted to preserve The perfect comity of nations; No High Commissioner would doubt If brigandage was quite judicial; Indeed we mostly did without ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman

... Hart could bear. The manager of the King's House was forced into profanity. "Damn your sympathy," exclaimed he; and few would criticise him for it. He apologized as quickly, however, and turned to Nell. "There goes your scene, Nell. I'll buy your oranges, when you come off," he continued to plead, in desperation, scarcely less fearful of offending her than of offending ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.

... ill become me to criticise the style and method of our entertainment," put in the Professor, acidly, "otherwise I might be tempted to observe that it scarcely showed that regard for economy which I ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey

... John Bowring; and I would treat Sir John Bowring as I would treat Lord Canning. Do not let us have in the service of the State low-caste men who may be trampled upon at pleasure, and high-caste men whom nobody dare criticise. ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright

... of indignation, and uttered his views too freely. His fellow-grooms cautioned him; but his spirit was up, and he gave way to his feelings without restraint. Now, to laugh at the king's weaknesses, his gluttony or follies, was one thing; to criticise his military conduct was another. The one was merely badinage, and the king himself might have laughed had he heard it; the other was treason, and, moreover, likely to touch the monarch on the delicate matter of ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies

... thought and language, and there was no branch of speculative literature which he had not mastered. By adopting the form of dialogue, in which all his extant works have come down to us, he was enabled to criticise the various systems of philosophy then current in Greece, and also to gratify his own dramatic genius, and his almost unrivaled power of keeping up an assumed character. The works of Plato have been divided into three classes: ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... TO CRITICISE THE SUGGESTION.—The worker is expected to follow the suggestion of Scientific Management without delay, because he believes in the standardization on which it is made, and in the management that makes it. But the Systems afford him an opportunity of reviewing the reasonableness of the ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth

... of firearms in the world," is the unanimous verdict of the gun experts of the Colt, Remington and Winchester plants, whose business it is to study and criticise every development ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... minutes during the remainder of the afternoon Morris visited the safe and inspected the diamonds until Abe was moved to criticise his ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass

... mail just as well. I guarantee success in every case, or return the money. I send lessons, instructions, criticise and correct all exercises, until you can write 100 words a minute, for $10, payable ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth

... they act as if we were babies gurgling in cunning little cribs. And the rude way they interrupt us often and go on talking about their own affairs—well, I will not say more, for dear mamma has taught me not to criticise my elders, and I never do. But I watch them pretty closely, just the same, and when I see them doing something that is not right my brain works so hard it keeps me awake nights. If it's anything very dreadful, like Peggy's going and getting engaged, I point out the error, the way they're always ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo

... Flint refuses to criticise, because he too nearly agrees with him, is Renouvier. Taking this avowal in conjunction with two or three indiscretions on other pages, we can make a guess, not at the system itself, which is to console us ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... reported to have repressed his thoughts of an ecclesiastical character, and he probably cultivated with new diligence his blossoms of poetry, which, however, were in some danger of a blast; for, submitting his productions to some who thought themselves qualified to criticise, he heard of nothing but faults; but, finding other judges more favourable, he did not suffer himself to sink into despondence. He easily discovered that the only stage on which a poet could appear with any hope of advantage was London; a place too wide for the operation ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson

... truth. You daren't say a word of criticism about Ireland for fear you'd have the people jumpin' down your throat—an' that's a sign of weakness, Henry. Do you know why the English are as strong as they are? It's because they'll let you criticise them as much as you like, an' never lose their temper with you. The only time I ever knew them to be flabby and spineless was when the Boer War was on ... an' they'd scream in your face if you didn't say they were actin' like angels. They were only like that then, ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... traveller. For instance, he must avoid luxury, as says Seneca; and laziness, as say Horace and Ovid; he must be reticent about his wealth and learning and keep his counsel, like Ulysses. He must observe the morals and religion of others, but not criticise them, for different nations have different religions, and think that their fathers' gods ought to be served diligently. He that disregards these things acts with pious zeal but without consideration for ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard

... Why, as to that Boston singer,—an' by the way, they say Ellen Wilson's goin' to take lessons of her this winter,—she kind o' bewildered me, Lyddy! Of course, I ain't never been to any cities, so I don't feel altogether free to criticise; but what did you think of her, when she run up so high there, one time? I don't know how high she went, but I guess there wa'n't ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin

... not whether they can be justified by these tests but that it is not by these tests that they are judged even to-day, by the professors of the chief religions of the world. It is the temper and not the conclusions of the religious bodies that I would criticise. These sexual questions are guarded by a holy irascibility, and the most violent efforts are made—with a sense of complete righteousness—to prohibit their discussion. That fury about sexual things is only to be explained on the hypothesis that the Christian ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells

... favour. At this time there was an agitation for Parliamentary reform, and the better representation of the working classes; and it was on this topic that the letters were begun, though the writer went on to criticise the various social ideals then popular, and to propose his own. He had already done something of the sort in "Unto this Last"; but "Time and Tide" is much more complete, and the result of seven years' further thought and experience. His "Fors Clavigera" is a continuation of these letters, but ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood

... moment out of depths of dulness may suddenly rise a whirlwind, which he is expected forthwith to ride. Especially in connection with Bill like this now before Committee, Chairman is in state of tension from time he takes Chair till he leaves. Don't forget all this when you criticise MELLOR, still new to place. He's a good fellow, and a shrewd one; but has, among other difficulties, to fight against proneness to good-nature. Good-nature out of place in the Chair. COURTNEY knew ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 20, 1893 • Various

... but you are illogical. You acknowledge that this is a subject about which you know nothing, yet almost in the same breath you criticise and condemn. Men blame women for having no sense of justice, but they are just as bad. They are worse, and with less excuse. Women's perceptions are so keen that they see every side of a situation, so it happens sometimes ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... night you betrayed yourself into the committal of a serious imprudence, namely that of presuming to criticise unfavourably certain acts of our Lord the Inca, which, as you are surely aware, is a crime punishable with death. Do you ask how I happen to know this? I will tell you. It chanced that I was kept late from my bed last night by certain business connected with the approaching ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood

... could not criticise the style, but it affected her as something unclean; Hubert's very name suffered degradation when used in such a way. Prepared for worse things than that which she saw, no shock of feelings was manifest in her. She returned the paper ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... several occasions, and as he grew older this was one of his favourite spots for sketching. He would start off alone, or with John (Thomas?) or Charles, and remain till I fetched him in the afternoon. I would then criticise his work, and make him correct defects before we left the spot. Sometimes he would sketch in one field, sometimes in the other, but generally in the one beyond the old oak we see there, as it was more ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon

... been so volubly talking she had also been busily thinking. She knew that if Alfred were a fool his mother was not—at least, not in the way she meant. There had been no love lost between the ladies, so that Mrs. Dagon was disposed to criticise the other's conduct very closely. She saw, therefore, that if Alfred Dinks were not rich—and it certainly was a question whether he were so really, or only in expectation from Mr. Burt—then also he might ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... good sign in him or no. He set himself now and then to find fault with the sermon, but the preacher was so humble, so respectful, and above all, so earnest, that Donald Ross could not bring himself to criticise. ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor

... construction is not to be too severely blamed, since it is a question of pavilions which are to disappear after an existence of six months. Economical reasons are always worthy of respect, and the modesty of the Municipal Council on this occasion ought to be praised. But what one has a right to criticise is the unhappy idea which placed these pavilions in such a manner as to completely obstruct the view of the exterior porticos of the palaces and industrial sections when one stands before the central dome in the centre of the garden. ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various

... readers whom Orme and Mill have repelled. The materials placed at the disposal of Sir John Malcolm by the late Lord Powis were indeed of great value. But we cannot say that they have been very skilfully worked up. It would, however, be unjust to criticise with severity a work which, if the author had lived to complete and revise it, would probably have been improved by condensation and by a better arrangement. We are more disposed to perform the pleasing duty of expressing ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... day in Sydney, I think you might be interested to hear, I was sculpt a second time by a man called ——, as well as I can remember and read. I mustn't criticise a present, and he had very little time to do it in. It is thought by my family to be an excellent likeness of Mark Twain. This poor fellow, by the by, met with the devil of an accident. A model of a statue which he had just finished with a desperate effort was smashed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... withered into dust and are now forgotten, we cannot help wondering why there should be such a waste of life for apparently no purpose. I speak in a secular sense,—of course my Church has but one reply to doubt, or what we call 'despair of God's mercy'—that it is sin. We are not permitted to criticise ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli

... not criticise," continued their president, magnanimously, "nor do I complain of any one. Each in this world has his or her mission, and the most sacred ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... were in so bad a condition that the hyperbolical Sergeant Johnson calls them "half-starved, scorbutic skeletons." That worthy soldier, commonly a model of dutiful respect to those above him, this time so far forgets himself as to criticise his general for the "mad, enthusiastic zeal" by which he nearly lost the fruits of Wolfe's victory. In fact, the fate of Quebec trembled in the balance. "We were too few and weak to stand an assault," continues Johnson, "and we were almost in as deep a distress as we could be." At first there ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... I'm sorry, but you are illogical. You acknowledge that this is a subject about which you know nothing, yet almost in the same breath you criticise and condemn. Men blame women for having no sense of justice, but they are just as bad. They are worse, and with less excuse. Women's perceptions are so keen that they see every side of a situation, so it happens sometimes that they get confused, and appear contradictory. Men are so ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... difference to the people here if you interest yourself in them," he rejoined. "I tried to explain to Mr. Tredegar that I had no wish to criticise the business management of the mills—even if there had been any excuse for my doing so—but that I was sure the condition of the operatives could be very much improved, without permanent harm to the business, by any one who felt ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... us; that is the whole of it—just gotten ahead of us. Why is it Mr. Carnegie is criticised so sharply by an envious world? Because he has gotten more than we have. If a man knows more than I know, don't I incline to criticise somewhat his learning? Let a man, stand in a pulpit and preach to thousands, and if I have fifteen people in my church, and they're all asleep, don't I criticise him? We always do that to the man who gets ahead of us. Why, the man you are criticising has one hundred ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr

... better have married Lord Warburton; but this was only because she had refused that excellent man. If she had accepted him Ralph would certainly have taken another tone; he always took the opposite. You could criticise any marriage; it was the essence of a marriage to be open to criticism. How well she herself, should she only give her mind to it, might criticise this union of her own! She had other employment, however, and Ralph was welcome to relieve her of the ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James

... the professor whose duty it is to criticise and approbate the pieces for this exhibition wish they were better! —Ibid., ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... been affected by it? For what higher incentive to exertion could a writer have than to imagine such judges or such an audience of his works, and to give an account of his writings with heroes like these to criticise and ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus

... was a Fellow of that society, who, after the fashion of the times, had waited long for his living and his wife. Jane had known him well and liked him much, though with sufficient detachment to remember and to criticise his demonstrative manners, his love of instructing others, and other little peculiarities. The 'friend' of 1798 must have been a young Cambridge don; and she was not likely to have had an opportunity of knowing individually more than one of that limited community, who did not naturally come in ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh

... not her place to criticise her cousins' behavior, so she did the best she could to pour oil on ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells

... We are reluctant to criticise this dirty story, but duty compels us. God's Word is full of disgusting narratives, and if we scrupled to examine them we should have to leave the book alone. We have no love of filth, and if the Bible were not held up as a divine work we should never condescend to notice its beastly tales ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote

... blossoms twined in her wavy hair, his resolution began to waver. Perhaps there was a decent hotel in Silverton; he would inquire of Dr. Grant; at all events he would not take the first train as he had intended doing; and so he stayed, eating fried apples and beefsteak, but forgetting to criticise, in his appreciation of the rich thick cream poured into his coffee, and the sweet, golden butter, which melted in soft waves upon the flakey rolls. Again Uncle Ephraim was absent, having gone to the mill before Wilford left his room, nor ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... a famous work there is often little left to do but to criticise the critics—to bring to a focus the most salient things that have been said about it, to eliminate the absurd from the sensible, the discriminating from the commonplace. Don Juan, more than any of its precursors, is Byron, and it has been similarly handled. The early cantos were ushered ...
— Byron • John Nichol

... in another way; they forced me to laugh out aloud, which one seldom does alone. On a second slower reading I expect to be still better pleased, and then also I suppose I shall find out the faults. At present it has, in the Scotch phrase, 'taken me off my feet,' and I do not criticise, though I think you will believe me when I say I do not and will not flatter. One thing I regret, that like the author of The Antiquary, Jedediah did not add a glossary; because even I, a mongrel, occasionally paying long visits ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... impossible—but to see and be seen of men), but few had any suspicion that this strange man, with the shabby, old-fashioned apparel, and expression half nervous, half defiant, was the painter whose pictures they were pretending to criticise. ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... spectators), they were blinded by old ingrained predilection. And for a fourth, the risk the Master was supposed to stand in (supposed, I say—you will soon hear why) made it seem the more ungenerous to criticise; and, keeping them in a perpetual tender solicitude about his life, blinded them the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson

... slave-power was repeatedly and earnestly invited to lay down its traitorous arms, be forgiven, and keep its slaves. With Mr. Lincoln, as President, it was the Union, first, last, and all the time. And he but echoed the prevailing opinions of his time. I do not question or criticise his personal attitude; but what he himself called his "view of official duty" was to execute the will of the people, and that was not to abolish ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune

... speak and speak again To right the wrongs of many. Speech, thank God, No vested power in this great day and land Can gag or throttle; Press and voice may cry Loud disapproval of existing ills, May criticise oppression and condemn The lawlessness of wealth-protecting laws That let the children and child-bearers toil To purchase ease for idle millionaires. Therefore do I protest against the boast Of independence in this mighty ...
— Poems of Purpose • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... been full of interest, and the long, hot ride had for Diana been the height of physical enjoyment. They had reached the oasis where the first night was to be passed an hour before, and found the camp already established, tents pitched, and everything so ordered that Sir Aubrey could find nothing to criticise; even Stephens, his servant, who had travelled with him since Diana was a baby, and who was as critical as his master on the subject of camps, had no ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull

... great factor in the development of civilisation throughout the district. Had not the monastic system been good, it would not have lasted so long; had it not had within it the elements of weakness, it would not have come to such an untimely end. And even while we criticise it is well to recall the words of Newman: "Not a man in Europe who talks bravely against the Church, but owes it to the Church that he ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story

... would hardly have cared to print Gautier's "Odelette" beside his own. The tone of it is infinitely more manly: one seems to hear a deep, decisive voice replying to tones far less sweet and serious. M. De Banville revenged himself nobly in later verses addressed to Gautier, verses which criticise the genius of that workman better, we think, than anything else that has been written of him in prose ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang

... through the motley crowd of turbulent and ambitious persons. Timid as I am, I was ever tempted to select a plain and common-place career, which I might have ennobled inwardly. I had lost the desire to know, to scrutinise and to criticise; it seemed to me as if it was enough to love and to feel; but yet I quite feel that as soon as ever the heart throbbed more slowly, the head would once ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan

... "In an English family," says a social critic, "the father is the man who shouts." How the club-bore must shout when he is in his own castle, surrounded only by his trembling kindred and anxious retainers! In his castle there is no one to resist or criticise him—unless indeed his wife happen to be a lady, like Clytemnestra, of masculine resolution. In that case the arbitrary gent may be a father of a family who is not allowed to shout at home, but is obliged to give nature free play ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang

... history of Siam, [2] No man is better pay than I am; Or, since you're learn'd in Greek, let's see Something against the Trinity.' When wrinkling with a sneer his trunk, 'Friend,' quoth the elephant, 'you're drunk; E'en keep your money and be wise: Leave man on man to criticise; 70 For that you ne'er can want a pen Among the senseless sons of men. They unprovoked will court the fray: Envy's a sharper spur than pay. No author ever spared a brother; Wits are game-cocks ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... any other girl's inconsiderate mother whom you may find comfortably seated in a good position for criticism, and to make her suppose that you are an old rider, keep silence. Do not criticise your horse or his equipments, do not profess inability to mount, but when you master says "Now!" step forward and stand facing in the same direction of your horse, placing your right hand on the upper pommel of the two on the left of ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne

... privilege of suffocating in this compact little Black Hole? By my halidom, Comrade Gooch, that gentleman whose name you are so shortly to tell us has a very fair idea of how to charge! But who am I that I should criticise? Here are the simoleons, as our young friend, Comrade Maloney, would call them. Push me ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... or perverted sexual feeling, "We are surely all familiar in a general way with this method of discrediting states of mind for which we have an antipathy. We all use it in some degree in criticising persons whose states of mind we regard as overstrained. But when other people criticise our own exalted soul-flights by calling them 'nothing but' expressions of our organic disposition, we feel outraged and hurt, for we know that, whatever be our organism's peculiarities, our mental states have ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen

... the get-up should be more elaborate and brilliant than his when the festive occasions do come round. The aspect of the ladies, gallantry and an imperfect acquaintance with the language of millinery forbid one to criticise. Enough to say that they harmonize perfectly with the gentlemen. The music is generally pretty good on these public occasions, but apt to be over-brazen. It is often a military band. And to organize the dancers—not always an easy task in a crowded hall—and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various

... so that the two faces were nearly on a level, and a pretty picture they made together. Clifton had been making facetious remarks to his sister about the old-fashioned finery of the dressed-up village girls on their way to church, but he saw nothing to criticise in the straight, scant dress, of one dim colour, unrelieved by frill or collar, which Katie Fleming wore. He did not think of her dress at all, but of the slim, graceful figure and the bonny girlish face turned so gravely up to the sky. He was ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson

... must not fail to observe, that Plato says that speech is composed OF these, not BY these; nor must we find fault with Plato for omitting conjunctions, prepositions, and the rest, any more than we should criticise a man who should say such a medicine is composed of wax and galbanum, because fire and utensils are omitted, without which it cannot be produced. For speech is not composed of these; yet by their means, and not without them, speech must be composed. As, if a man says ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... gravely and decently. There was no pressing of excited and ignorant young people to the "anxious seats," no singing of "revival hymns." They sang the Psalms from first to last—the old, rough version, which people nowadays criticise and smile at, wondering how ever the cramped lines and rude metre could find so sure and permanent a place in the hearts and memories of their fathers. It is said now that these old psalms are quite insufficient for all occasions of praise; ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson

... shoal of herrings down his maw; A fox with geese his belly crams; A wolf destroys a thousand lambs: But search among the rhyming race, The brave are worried by the base. If on Parnassus' top you sit, You rarely bite, are always bit. Each poet of inferior size On you shall rail and criticise, And strive to tear you limb from limb; While others do as much ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... wearing a mauve silk skirt deeply flounced, a black cloth jacket embroidered in gold, and a mauve hat trimmed with plumes—appeared upon the threshold. She paused for a moment to admire the shrubs arranged in boxes on each window-sill, the crimson vines that brightened the grey walls; to criticise the fresh brown rosette under the near horse's ear; to bestow a swift glance upon the harness, the coachman's livery, and the groom's boots. Then she stepped into the ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... fellow-countrymen in Bosnia—that was one of her crimes. She must do so no more. Her newspapers were saying nasty things about Austria; they must do so no longer. That is the German spirit; you had it in Zabern. ["Hear, hear!" and applause.] How dare you criticise a Prussian official? [laughter,] and if you laugh, it is a capital offense—the Colonel in Zabern threatened to shoot if it was repeated. In the same way the Servian newspapers must not criticise Austria. I wonder what would have happened if we had ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various

... stamp, or of their harmonious relations. The science of tastes has yet to be founded. Till then, chefs de cuisine and the clever caterers for banquets will remain isolated geniuses or empirics; while, as regards wine-tasters and gastronomists, they approve or they criticise, but they do not establish any rules. It would be a curious collection that would comprise all the expressions used by wine-tasters, wine-merchants, commercial travellers, amateurs (by far, indeed, the most numerous class), to express the feelings they experience ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)

... a man to offer your advice unless it is asked. I believe the engineer employed by me to examine into the condition of my vessels is quite competent to judge in these matters, and I have unbounded confidence in him. When I placed you in command of the 'Nancy,' I meant you to navigate, not to criticise her; but if you are ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne

... David, who nevertheless was a holy king, that he did not ascend into the heavens, but, having fulfilled the will of God, fell asleep. Peter, so far from being willing to disparage David's office and rule, to criticise him therein for wrong-doing, rather magnifies it in glowing terms. David was a king, and cast not aside his crown; no, he retained his royal glory. He held his office as a God-intrusted one, in the execution whereof he served ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther

... from the normal course of the ship as she approached the coast, bound for the latitude of the Hudson, required only to be so trifling that the best sailor of the Pilgrim leaders would not be likely to note or criticise it, and it was by no means uncommon to make Cape Cod as the first landfall on Virginia voyages. The lateness of the arrival on the coast, and the difficulties ever attendant on doubling Cape Cod, properly turned to account, would increase ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames

... brilliant jests, until at last we retire one by one from the conversation and watch him with savage, weary eyes over our pipes. He invariably beats me at chess, invariably. People talk about him and ask my opinion of him, and if I venture to criticise him they begin to look as though they thought I was jealous. Grossly favourable notices of his books and his pictures crop up in the most unlikely places; indeed I have almost given up newspapers on account of him. Yet, ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... before the friends could meet, and meanwhile they agreed to correspond once a month. There were no events to chronicle in the Haworth letters. Quiet days, occupied in reaching, and feminine occupations in the house, did not present much to write about; and Charlotte was naturally driven to criticise books. ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... ways of going to a concert. You can be one of a party of fashionable people to whom music is a diversion, a pastime, an agreeable change from the assembly or the theatre. They applaud, they condemn, they criticise. They know all about it. Into such company as this, even I, whose poor old head is always getting itself wedged in where it has no business to be, have chanced to be thrown. This is torture. My cue is to turn into the Irishman's echo, which always returned for his "How d'ye do?" ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... they may not be strictly true, they illustrate the stern virtues for which he was celebrated among the Corsicans, and show what kind of men this harsh and gloomy nation loved to celebrate as heroes. This is not the place either to criticise these legends or to recount them at full length. The most famous and the most characteristic may, however, be briefly told. On one occasion, after a victory over the Genoese, he sent a message that the captives ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... of some part of the public, The Yellow Dwarf. That detestable creature (who does not even amuse me) had no business to triumph; and, what is more, I don't believe he did. Not being an original writer, I cannot tell the true history as it might be told; but I can criticise the false. I do not object to this version because of its violation of poetical justice—in which, again, I don't believe. But this is neither poetical, nor just, nor amusing. It is a sort of police report, and I have never much cared for police reports. I should like to have set Maimoune ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... your printed letter, which you might like to keep. It has amused me, especially the part in which you criticise yourself. To appreciate the letter fully I ought to have read the bishop's letter, which seems to ...
— Samuel Butler's Canterbury Pieces • Samuel Butler

... dilettanteism; virtu; fine art; culture, cultivation. [Science of taste] aesthetics. man of taste &c; connoisseur, judge, critic, conoscente, virtuoso, amateur, dilettante, Aristarchus^, Corinthian, arbiter elegantiarum [Lat.], stagirite^, euphemist. caviare to the general [Hamlet]. V. appreciate, judge, criticise, discriminate &c 465 Adj. in good taste, cute, tasteful, tasty; unaffected, pure, chaste, classical, attic; cultivated, refined; dainty; esthetic, aesthetic, artistic; elegant &c 578; euphemistic. to one's taste, to one's mind; after one's fancy; comme ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... hired ones full of invited guests, brought up the rear. When a start was made, the little police force hustled vehicles out of the way and even stopped tram-cars when necessary; while the band tortured selections from Handel and Beethoven to the intense delight of passers-by, many of whom paused to criticise shortcomings in the procession among themselves. In about an hour it reached its destination, where Kumodini Babu's uncle received the guests. The family barber carried Samarendra in his arms to a chair which had been provided for him. ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea

... from a lazy man like me. I shall only ask you to find time to again look through the speech which I made to my townsfolk at the dedication of the public library. I remember that you have already criticised a few points therein, but merely in a general way, and I now beg that you will not only criticise it as a whole, but will ply your pencil on particular passages as well, in your severest manner. For even after a thorough revision it will still be open to us to publish or suppress it as we think fit. Very likely the revision will help us out of our hesitation and enable us to decide ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger

... legislation and finance as well as for foreign policy and internal administration. On the other hand, there is what Burke used to call "the control on behalf of the nation," mainly exercised through Parliament, whose chief function is to criticise and control the action of Government, and to make the responsibility of Government to the nation a real and a felt responsibility. The discontents of to-day apply to both parts of the system, and I propose to deal with them in turn, first inquiring what ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various

... come not to criticise or complain. Not for ourselves or our friends do we ask redress of specific grievances, or posts of honor or emolument. We speak from no considerations of mere material gain; but, inspired by true patriotism, in this dark hour of our nation's destiny, we come to pledge ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... pen who will just possess quantum enough of mathematical knowledge to be able to read the first chapter without being able to follow you into its application, and as these, moreover, are the very people who will think themselves privileged to criticise and use their privilege with the least discretion, I cannot recommend too much clearness, fulness, and order in the expose of the principles. Were I you, I would devote to this first part at least double ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville

... ornament; in all things the middle way is the safest. A simple funeral has surely in it more that awakes true religious feeling than the pomp and splendour which are too frequently made the order of the day in these proceedings. In this case are not men sometimes led away to canvass and to criticise the splendour of the show, while they should be deducing a wholesome moral lesson for themselves, or offering up a fervent prayer to the Almighty for the peace of ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer

... Boffin was a gentleman who had belonged to the late Ministry, but had somewhat out-Heroded Herod in his Conservatism, so as to have been considered to be unfit for the Coalition. Of course, he was proud of his own staunchness, and a little inclined to criticise the lax principles of men who, for the sake of carrying on her Majesty's Government, could be Conservatives one day and Liberals the next. He was a laborious, honest man,—but hardly of calibre sufficient not to regret his own honesty in such an emergency as ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... visiting Egypt, at last I began to write of her. That is now five years ago. From time to time the stories which I offer to the public in this volume were given forth. It is likely that the old Anglo-Egyptian and the historical student may find some anachronisms and other things to criticise; but the anachronisms are deliberate, and even as in writing of Canada and Australia, which I know very well, I have here, perhaps, sacrificed superficial exactness while trying to give the more intimate meaning and spirit. I have never thought it necessary to apologise for this disregard of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... hen leading her young ones, to whom a little girl throws crumbs of bread; a basin full of water, and on the edge of it, one of the small chickens with its beak up in the air so as to let the water go down." Diderot then proceeds to criticise the details, telling us the very words that he hears the father addressing to the bridegroom, and as a touch of observation of nature, that while one of the old man's hands, of which we see the back, is tanned and brown, the other, of which we see the palm, is white. "To ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... Sacraments. Its Method is Private Judgment, not Church Authority. But private judgment generates authority; authority, first legitimate, that of knowledge, grows into the illegitimate authority of prescription, calling itself Orthodoxy. Then Private Judgment comes forth again to criticise and reform. It thus becomes the duty of each individual to judge the Church; and out of innumerable individual judgments the insight of the Church is kept living and progressive. We contribute one such private judgment; not, we ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... important. Then, sometimes, they pay attention and answer us, but usually they act as if we were babies gurgling in cunning little cribs. And the rude way they interrupt us often and go on talking about their own affairs—well, I will not say more, for dear mamma has taught me not to criticise my elders, and I never do. But I watch them pretty closely, just the same, and when I see them doing something that is not right my brain works so hard it keeps me awake nights. If it's anything very dreadful, like Peggy's going and ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo

... body well groomed. A bath and hair cut will change the out-look of life. Quit habits that weaken the body. Never talk about your bodily weakness, illness, or condition, nor listen to those of others. Criticise your body and it will fail you. Praise your body and it will serve you. Take air-baths, cold water plunges, or cold water sponges, every morning. Fix your mind upon having a sound and energized body and you will attract it. Exercise, walk, run, play, work, ...
— Supreme Personality • Delmer Eugene Croft

... the face. The kind of books one loves to read, the amusements one seeks, the friends he chooses, are all revelators. Recently an English traveler published a volume of impressions concerning America. Finding little to praise, the traveler finds much to criticise and blame. During his two or three weeks' sojourn in our cities, he tells us that he found sights and scenes that would shame Sodom and Gomorrah, and bemoans the fact that in this young, fresh land things should be as bad as in London and Paris, whither ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis

... the surprise which these presents gave to the King and the whole Court, some of those who composed it, and who, according to the customs of that place, endeavoured to criticise upon it, and who wished to contradict those who applauded it, or to show the justness of their own remarks, demanded where was the ninth slave. Dakianos, who expected the question, pointed to himself. The King, pleased with the turn of delicacy, which he joined to ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various

... if he retired before long. But this is between ourselves. Punctual as ever in his duties, he rarely spends the night here, but departs at six p.m. for his wife's farm, where Mrs. S. very naturally prefers to reside. Indeed, I wish she would absent herself altogether; for when she comes, it is to criticise the housekeeping, in which I regret to say she does not maintain that generous spirit of which she gave promise in the veal pies, etc., of that ever memorable morning. I never condescended to be a bride: yet I feel sure, that had I ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... Luther, for his part, incarnates the spirit of revolt against tyrannical authority, urges the necessity of a return to the essential truth of Christianity as distinguished from the idols of the Church, and asserts the right of the individual to judge, interpret, criticise, and construct opinion for himself. The veil which the Church had interposed between humanity and God was broken down. The freedom of the conscience was established. The principles involved in what we call the Reformation were momentous. Connected on the one side ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... the truth, that his stay in Paris had not been free from fault, and yet he did not feel inclined to do what most men in his situation must by all means have done, challenge Cuckoo's right to sit in judgment, or even for a moment to criticise any action of his. There was something about her, a frankness perhaps, which made it impossible to put her out of court by any allusion to her own life. And indeed that must have been cowardice and an impossibility. Besides, she ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... perhaps, than the first, and certainly as remarkable, is the very composition of the Celtic mind, which naturally tends to firm belief, because it is given exclusively to traditions, past events, narratives of poets, historians, and genealogists. Had the Irish at any time turned themselves to criticise, to doubt, to argue, their very existence, as a people, would have ceased. They must go on believing, or all reality vanishes from their minds, accustomed for so many ages to take in that solid knowledge founded, ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... beside his directness of aim, if not always of achievement, his clearness of vision, his almost business-like adjustment of effort to result, the vagueness and desultoriness of Coleridge look looser and, in the literary sense, more disreputable than ever. Here was a man who could not only criticise but create; who, though he may sometimes, like others, have convicted his preaching of falsity by his practice, and his practice of sin by his preaching, yet could in the main make practice and preaching fit together. Here was a critic ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury

... comprehension of the strength, composition, and location of most German brigades on the Western front. Possibly the Germans have of ours. One thing is certain. Any one who has seen the way in which an Intelligence staff builds up its data will not be inclined to criticise our military authorities for what may seem to an untutored mind a mere affectation of mystery about small things. In war it is never safe to ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan

... Miss Lavinia in the brief moment before Sylvia entered, for we were both too well bred to criticise a woman in her own house, even with our eyes, which had they met would ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright

... for Brigham to "bend his finger." If a governor could openly criticise polygamy, and a judge seek to undermine Young's legal and military authority, without a protest, his days of power were certainly drawing to a close. Accordingly, a big mass-meeting was held in Salt Lake City on March ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... have me go; she seemed to cling to me. She seemed to be a good, affectionate little creetur. And she said she would give anything almost if she could rehearse the hull lecture over to me, and have me criticise it. Sez she: ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)

... my person they oppose and impede Austria. First of all things, it is necessary for me to get rid of those newspaper editors and scribblers; they are arrogant, insolent fellows who imagine they know every thing and are able to criticise every thing, and who feel called upon to give their opinion about all things and on all occasions because they know how to wield a goose-quill. The best thing we could do would be to suppress all newspapers and periodicals. Shaping the course of politics ourselves, ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... thanks. Next came the reading of the twenty-fourth Psalm. Being a good way back, I could not hear distinctly, but knowing the Psalm by heart, memory served where hearing failed. This was more satisfactory. Next came the musical interlude, and the opening prayer followed. I hardly ever criticise a prayer; but when that prayer was through with it did occur to my mind that if it were to be suddenly answered none would probably be so much surprised as the preacher who offered it. A familiar hymn was now sung, and many in the congregation joined ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline

... of this work, though novel and to some extent is daring, it is chaste, practical and to the point, and will be a boon and a blessing to thousands who consult its pages. The world is full of ignorance, and the ignorant will always criticise, because they live to suffer ills, for they know no better. New light is fast falling upon the dark corners, and the eyes of many ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... during the time of Brisbane, an independent newspaper, the Australian, was established by Mr. Wentworth and Dr. Wardell. A second of the same kind soon followed, and was called the Monitor. These papers found it to their advantage, during the unpopularity of Darling, to criticise severely the acts of that Governor, who was defended by the Gazette with intemperate zeal. This altercation had lasted for some time, when, in the third year of Darling's administration, a very small event was sufficient to set the whole colony ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland

... particularly attracted to the spoiled baby. After the over-indulgent parent and caretaker have completed their thoughtless work, they themselves are ashamed of it and not infrequently begin to criticise the product of their own making—the formation of these unpleasant bad habits. More than anything else, the spoiled child needs a new environment, new ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... critics, and Taine is the critic of the French. This could not have been said with truth during the lifetime of Sainte-Beuve, but since his death it is true. There is nothing, apparently, which Taine is not competent to criticise, so subtle is his intellect, and so wide the range of his studies, but what he is most competent to criticise is Art. We have heard great things of a History of English Literature by him, but as it has not yet appeared in an English dress (although Messrs. Holt & Williams have a translation ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various

... ought not to criticise his birthplace, I presume, and yet, if I were to do it all over again, I do not know whether I would select that particular spot or not. Sometimes I think I would not. And yet, what memories cluster about that old house! There was the place where I first met my parents. It ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye

... of government by majorities, which Anarchists criticise, is in fact open to most of the objections which they urge against it. Still more objectionable is the power of the executive in matters vitally affecting the happiness of all, such as peace and war. But neither can be dispensed with ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell

... and somewhat dull Epoch, that awkward corner turned for days More quiet, when our moon's no more at full, We may presume to criticise or praise; Because Indifference begins to lull Our passions, and we walk in Wisdom's ways; Also because the figure and the face Hint, that 't is time to give the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... can give you, from memory, the Athenaeum's review in that number. The critic says 'It is rich in poetry ... including a fine, although too dreamy, ballad, The Poet's Vow. We are almost tempted to pause and criticise the work of an artist of so much inspiration and promise as the author of this poem, and to exhort him to a greater clearness of expression, and less quaintness in the choice of his phraseology, but this is not the time ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting

... read at an informal meeting at which only Grant and Stanton were with the President. General Grant did not criticise the paper. He said of it: "It was a civil matter and although I was anxious to have something done I did not intend to dictate any plan. I looked upon it simply as a temporary measure to establish a sort of government until Congress ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell

... mention any names. It is always a mistake to mention names. One cannot guard against it too carefully. But having done what she did ten years ago dear Adela Sellingworth should really—but it is not for me to criticise her. Only there is nothing people—women—are more sensitive about than the question of age. No one likes to be laid on the shelf. Adela Sellingworth has chosen to—well—one might feel such a very drastic step to ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... day was consumed in getting to the river, five miles away from the starting place, and as the afternoon waned the boys grew tired, while Jake Elliott began to manifest his old disposition to criticise Sam's plans. ...
— Captain Sam - The Boy Scouts of 1814 • George Cary Eggleston

... for you both always want to have your own way, and stick to it, too! I tell you, I fear this Long Ears. She is not to be trusted with babies," remarked Shunkaska, with a good deal of severity. But his wife made no reply, for she well knew that though he might criticise, he would not actually interfere ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... am going to criticise some one and let the criticism fall where it belongs. There has been a great injustice done the commercial fruit grower, or those trying to grow fruit commercially, by advising, urging, or anything else you choose to call it, the farmer or small ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various

... I wish to criticise the powers that be. They are the powers, therefore they may decree whatever they please; so I make bold only to criticise the ridiculousness of their decrees. All night long they make the homeless ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London

... as he made his way round a drawing-room at an evening party, and bowing like a French perruquier to some absurd fool of a foreigner; and we have seen him, a minute after, holding up his head and cocking his chin in defiance, if an English voice approached. When any of us ventured to criticise any thing foreign, he was up in arms, and cock-a-hoop for the climate, the customs, the constitution! He sneered awfully at a simple gaucherie, but, to make amends, had ever an approving wink for the meanest irreverence; any intellect, however feeble, being secure ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... counting the other things that he raised, carved, and caressed with the chisels, smoothed down with his file, and fashioned in a manner that would make their use intelligible to the mind of a greenhorn, and stain his verdure in a single day. The ladies would criticise these beauties, and all of them were smitten with the youthful Cappara. And the youthful Cappara would eye them up and down, swearing that the day one of them gave him her little finger to kiss, he ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac

... Henry produced the agreement with Onions Winter, and he produced it with a shamed countenance. He knew that Mark Snyder would criticise it. ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett

... one bouquet! I fancy that will do. And now I crave your patience and a boon, Which is to listen, while I read my rhyme, A floating fancy of the summer time. 'Tis neither witty, wonderful, nor wise, So listen kindly—but don't criticise My maiden effort of ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... these tests but that it is not by these tests that they are judged even to-day, by the professors of the chief religions of the world. It is the temper and not the conclusions of the religious bodies that I would criticise. These sexual questions are guarded by a holy irascibility, and the most violent efforts are made—with a sense of complete righteousness—to prohibit their discussion. That fury about sexual things is only to be explained on ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells

... always on the poet's side; but his ferocious hates and bigotries too often tempt us to hate the bigot, and always compel us to take part with the fellow-creatures whom he outrages. At least, such is their effect on myself. Nor will he or his worshippers suffer us to criticise his faults with mere reference to the age in which he lived. I should have been glad to do so; but the claims made for him, even by himself, will not allow it. We are called upon to look on him as a divine, a prophet, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt

... was not hers, her own was not sharply cut, and she persuaded herself that, in substance, his and her belief were identical. As she grew older her relationship to the Unseen became more and more intimate, but she was less and less inclined to criticise her husband's freedom, or to impose on the children a rule which they would certainly have observed, but only for her sake. Every now and then she felt a little lonely; when, for example, she read one or two books which were particularly her own; ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford

... shaken the Sylvania as he was shaking her now. He was a prudent young man, and I never had occasion to criticise what he did. He understood the present situation as well as I did. The levee force was waiting to close the gap, and thus save many more lives miles from the scene of its operations. We must get through at once, or the gap would be closed. The abrupt fall was not more than a foot ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic

... mischief would have it, at the very moment that the boys came out of school. A cursed hunch-backed rogue, I see him yet, spied out instantly that I had no shadow. He proclaimed the fact with a loud outcry to the whole assembled literary street youth of the suburb, who began forthwith to criticise me, and to pelt me with mud. "Decent people are accustomed to take their shadows with them, when they go into the sunshine." To defend myself from them I threw whole handfuls of gold amongst them and sprang into a hackney-coach, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... them all Could criticise, and quote tradition How depths of blue sublimed some pall —To get which, pricked a king's ambition; ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... the final judgment, in which each man shall give account of himself. What has that to do with the question in hand? This, that it ought to keep us from premature and censorious judging. We have something more pressing to do than to criticise each other. Ourselves are enough to keep our hands full, without taking a lift of our fellows' conduct. And this, further, that, in view of the final judgment, we should hold a preliminary investigation on our own principles of action, and 'decide' to adopt as the overruling law for ourselves, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... either by the common cut-and-dried designers for builders, or by academical imitators of bygone styles. Though they may be called experimental, no one can say that they are not born of thought and principle, as well as of great capacity for design. It is nowise our business to-night to criticise them. I suspect their authors, who have gone through so many difficulties (not of their own breeding) in producing them, know their shortcomings much better than we can do, and are less elated by their successes than we are. At any rate, they are gifts to our country which will always be respected, ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris

... sculpture of modern England. You may urge that I ought rather to describe the qualities of the refined sculpture which is executed in large quantities for private persons belonging to the upper classes, and for sepulchral and memorial purposes. But I could not now criticise that sculpture with any power of conviction to you, because I have not yet stated to you the principles of good sculpture in general. I will, however, in some points, tell ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... of people in the church; the one is made up of those who do the hard work of the church, and the other of those who sit at home and—criticise. ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson

... on Socialism describe, analyse, and criticise the Socialist doctrines only in the abstract as a rule. However, Socialism is not only an elaborate economic doctrine, it is at the same time a complete system of practical politics. Hence it does not suffice to study the doctrines of Socialism ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... Master, the Prince. I do not know exactly what that means, but there seem to be many people and— ladies. I have not shown thine Honourable Mother the picture, as she might ask thee to return at once. I do not criticise thy friends, nor could our Prince go to a place not fitting to his dignity, but— the ladies seem in my ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper

... element had frequently not more than one-fifth of the total representation of fifty members. The assembly too often exhibited a very domineering spirit, and attempted to punish all those who ventured to criticise, however moderately, their proceedings. The editor of the Quebec Mercury, an organ of the British minority, was arrested on this ground. Le Canadien was established as an organ of the French Canadian majority with the motto, Nos institutions, ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot

... Upon a perusal of your printed correspondence, I must beg leave to trouble you with an observation; not that I have claims to set forth, or relations to criticise. A sentence in your letter of —— is the only one I intend to mention. "Having said to Lord Cornwallis, that he may be opposed by about 2000 continentals; and, as Lafayette observes, a body of ill-armed militia," you are pleased to add, "as spiritless as the militia of the ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette

... Arkansas proof-reading, anyhow, and better than was needed in Arthur's day and realm. As a rule, the grammar was leaky and the construction more or less lame; but I did not much mind these things. They are common defects of my own, and one mustn't criticise other people on grounds where he ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... silent lest his color-grinder should laugh at him. Again, when he had painted a picture, and exposed it to public view, a cobbler pointed out a defect in the shoe-latchet; Apelles changed it, but when the man next proceeded to criticise the leg of the figure, Apelles replied, "Cobbler, stick to your last." These sayings have descended to our own day, and have become classical. All these anecdotes from so remote a time are in a sense doubtful; but they are very interesting—young people ought to be familiar ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement

... them would be the work of an historian, to criticise would be superfluous. They have been so many Malvolios, all alike anxious to win the favour of that capricious Lady Olivia Erin, and not one of them has succeeded, though several have merited better fortune than they ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey

... say something to you about Lady C—— L——'s criticism of my performance. In the first place, nothing is easier than to criticise by comparison, and hardly anything much more difficult than to form a correct judgment of any work of art (be it what it may) upon the foundation of abstract principles and fundamental rules of taste and criticism; for this sort of analysis is really a study. ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... all manner of wrong, their work disparaged, and their motives impugned? Are not persecution, and even martyrdom, often their portion? Now all this is the result of sin. Those who call into question the deeds and motives of God's saints; those who upbraid, and criticise, and impute evil to the sincere, faithful servants of God, inflicting upon them dire evils, are but showing the effects of sin in themselves, are but giving exercise to the evil that rules within them. ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan

... another car," she interrupted, loyally unwilling that even he should criticise the King of Krovitch. "It is his right. I, a subject, would not attempt to pass in judgment upon the acts of my sovereign." There was a sad weakening of voice as she completed her defense, which convinced Carter that she had seen the ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton

... now be explained without the assumption of an entelechy we are encouraged to hope that all forms may be thus explained." The author does not tell us what the mysterious adaptations are, nor does he offer us the explanations which, in his opinion, explain them. We cannot, therefore, criticise his views, and can only remind his readers that, because an explanation plausibly explains an occurrence, it is by no means always therefore certain to be the true explanation; it may, indeed, be ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle

... which novel Mr. HADDON CHAMBERS has adapted this play) was that many chapters went by before the reader realised that Madame Okraska was indeed an impossible woman. One began by liking her; went on to criticise; decided that she wasn't so nice as the author intended her to be; and then discovered suddenly that she wasn't intended to be a sympathetic character at all, and that, in fact, our changing attitude towards her had been just the changing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various

... criticise the table and arrange the name-cards. And, this accomplished, she ran upstairs again to her own room, where ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers

... them freely. He dreamed and brooded over lost Margaret until she became a vivid reality to him and lived in his pages. As the book progressed it took possession of him and he worked at it with feverish eagerness. He let Anne and Leslie read the manuscript and criticise it; and the concluding chapter of the book, which the critics, later on, were pleased to call idyllic, was modelled upon a suggestion ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... stirring of the Philistine in him that led him to prefigure weariness and banality in the prospect. Without in the least suspecting it, Griswold was a Brahmin of the severest sect on his social side; easily disposed to hold aloof and to criticise, and, as a man Eastern-bred, serenely assured that nothing truly acceptable in the social sense could come out of the Nazareth of ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... the proprieties require that you merely pay compliments to the guest of the occasion, and I am merely here to pay compliments to the guest of the occasion, not to criticise him in any way, and I can say only complimentary things ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Duerer, the precise, the perfect, able to say, "It cannot be better done," yet re-engraving a portion of his best-known plate, and frankly leaving the rejected portion half erased?[6] Titian, whose custom it was to lay aside his pictures for long periods and then criticise them, imagining that he was looking at them "with the eyes of ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall

... Mr. Chamberlain's telegram of July 7th, in which he "concurs generally" in Lord Milner's proposals, and leaves him "full discretion to deal with the details of the scheme, which it is not possible to criticise effectively" in London. ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold

... morning toilettes here, as we have no gentleman guests for whom to dress, nor ladies to criticise us; consequently a few brief moments before the mirror suffice to make us presentable. A black print wrapper made Gabrielle-fashion, with our hair brushed off plain from our faces, and flowing loosely a la belle ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland

... marshals them with unerring precision. In her special gift for organisation she seems almost unequalled. Her picnics are models for all future and past picnics; her combinations of feelings, of conversation, of gentlemen and ladies, are so natural and lifelike that reading to criticise is impossible to some of us—the scene carries us away, and we forget to look for the art by which it is recorded. Her machinery is simple but complete; events group themselves so vividly and naturally ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)

... rather casually too: I regarded Mr. Orbassanov, I must own, as beneath my level. The police-captain looked at me, patted me amicably on the shoulder, and said good-naturedly: "Come, come, Vassily Vassilyevitch, it's not for you and me to criticise men like that—how are we qualified to? Let the shoemaker stick to his last." "But, upon my word," I retorted with annoyance, "whatever difference is there between me and Mr. Orbassanov?" The police-captain took ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev

... my brother Bruin, is a blot On thy creation fair; And sooner than be painted I'd be shot, Were I, great sire, a bear." The bear approaching, doth he make complaint? Not he;—himself he lauds without restraint. The elephant he needs must criticise; To crop his ears and stretch his tail were wise; A creature he of huge, misshapen size. The elephant, though famed as beast judicious, While on his own account he had no wishes, Pronounced dame whale ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine

... occupied in traversing it was somewhat prolonged. Under similar circumstances, with such delightful company, the reader himself would perhaps have used every honorable device to consume as many minutes as possible before parting with his fair associate. I shall not criticise such a course, but will be just frank enough to say that this is ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey

... came with much greater force than a more formal declaration could have had. It appealed to her own simple nature. Indeed, few women at such a moment criticise the form in which the most fateful words of life—but one—are spoken. Words, while pleasant, are really superfluous. ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt

... 104) Guicciardini describes the rule of priests as founded on violence of two sorts; 'perche ci sforzano con le armi temporali e con le spirituali.' It may be well to collect the chief passages in Machiavelli and Guicciardini, besides those already quoted, which criticise the Papacy in relation to Italian politics. The most famous is at the end of the fourth book of the Istoria d' Italia (Edn. Rosini, vol. ii. pp. 218-30). Next may be placed the sketch of Papal History in Machiavelli's Istorie Fiorentine (lib. i. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... am not blind to defects, if there are defects. The Moonlight Sonata, for instance. You have often heard me say that the two last movements do not approach the first in perfection of form. And if I am permitted to criticise Beethoven, I hope I may be allowed to suggest that Mr Cortese has not produced an opera which will render Fidelio ridiculous. But really I am chiefly sorry for Miss Bracely. I should have thought it worth her while to render ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson

... had formerly received more than one passionate declaration, not signed indeed, but accompanied always by some clue to the identity of the writer, and she had carelessly thrown them into the fire. But there was no such indication here whereby she might discover who it was who had undertaken to criticise her, to cast upon her so unjust an accusation. Moreover, she was very angry and altogether thrown out of her usually calm humour. Her first impulse was to go to her husband, and in the strength of her innocence to show him ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford

... impossible to criticise Rudyard Kipling as part of Victorian literature, because he is the end of such literature. He has many other powerful elements; an Indian element, which makes him exquisitely sympathetic with the Indian; a vague Jingo influence which makes him sympathetic with the man ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... bonds, his writings and he himself with them were burnt; as happened to Bruno and Vanini. How completely an ordinary mind is paralyzed by that early preparation in metaphysics is seen in the most vivid way and on its most ridiculous side, where such a one undertakes to criticise the doctrines of an alien creed. The efforts of the ordinary man are generally found to be directed to a careful exhibition of the incongruity of its dogmas with those of his own belief: he is at great pains ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer

... last we retire one by one from the conversation and watch him with savage, weary eyes over our pipes. He invariably beats me at chess, invariably. People talk about him and ask my opinion of him, and if I venture to criticise him they begin to look as though they thought I was jealous. Grossly favourable notices of his books and his pictures crop up in the most unlikely places; indeed I have almost given up newspapers on account of him. Yet, ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... curiosity and interest altogether. We set aside the subject as one on which others have made up their minds for us, (as if we really could have ideas in their heads,) and are quite on the alert for the next new work, teeming hot from the press, which we shall be the first to read, to criticise, and pass an opinion on. Oh, delightful! To cut open the leaves, to inhale the fragrance of the scarcely-dry paper, to examine the type, to see who is the printer, (which is some clue to the value that is set upon the work,) to launch ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various

... took possession of her, for she knew that the world would criticise her severely for taking ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... his trunk up like a wipsy, "Friend," said the elephant, "you're tipsy: Put up your purse again—be wise; Leave man mankind to criticise. Be sure you ne'er will lack a pen Amidst the bustling sons of men; For, like to game cocks and such cattle, Authors run unprovoked to battle, And never cease to fight and fray them Whilst there's a ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay

... To criticise at length any single novel of Thackeray's would be far beyond the scope or purpose of this article. Our object is rather to illustrate the course and development of his distinctive literary qualities, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... are preserved (e.g. labour instead of labor, criticise instead of criticize, etc.); the translators' comments are in square brackets [...] as they are in the text; footnotes are indicated by * and appear immediately following the passage containing the note (in the text they appear at the bottom of the ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld

... or both.' 'Where then is the glory of salvation?' he said; I replied, 'In the atonement of Christ.' 'All this' said he, 'I know, but so the Mohammedans say, that Hosyn was an atonement for the sins of men.' He then began to criticise the translations he ...
— Life of Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia, 1781 to 1812 • Sarah J. Rhea

... "if you really had brought off this thing on your own, I should be the last to criticise your means of reaching such an end. You have not only scored off a far superior force, which had laid itself out to score off you, but you have put them in the wrong about you, and they'll eat out of your hand for the rest of ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung

... it seemed to her repellent that the man she was engaged to marry should be displaying such a craven spirit. At that moment she despised and hated Bream Mortimer. I think she was wrong, mind you. It is not my place to criticise the little group of people whose simple annals I am relating—my position is merely that of a reporter—; but personally I think highly of Bream's sturdy common-sense. If somebody loosed off an elephant-gun at me in a ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... the brave and experienced young officer who would have done all this?" said a cold sarcastic voice, which Syd recognised directly. "No: stop. Don't tell me, but tell him that it is a great mistake for young gentlemen in the midshipmen's berth to criticise the actions of their superior officers, who may be entirely wrong, but whether or no, their critics are more ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn

... that serene and somewhat dull Epoch, that awkward corner turn'd for days More quiet, when our moon 's no more at full, We may presume to criticise or praise; Because indifference begins to lull Our passions, and we walk in wisdom's ways; Also because the figure and the face Hint, that 't is time ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... by heart, and would often recite them when we were alone together. One she liked well was "Des Maedchens Klage:" that is, she liked well to repeat the words, she found plaintive melody in the sound; the sense she would criticise. She murmured, as we sat ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... of depths of dulness may suddenly rise a whirlwind, which he is expected forthwith to ride. Especially in connection with Bill like this now before Committee, Chairman is in state of tension from time he takes Chair till he leaves. Don't forget all this when you criticise MELLOR, still new to place. He's a good fellow, and a shrewd one; but has, among other difficulties, to fight against proneness to good-nature. Good-nature out of place in the Chair. COURTNEY knew that, and successfully overcame his natural ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 20, 1893 • Various

... I somewhat question whether it is quite the thing, however, to make a genuine woman out of an allegory we ask, Who is to wed this lovely virgin? and we are not satisfied to banish her into the realm of chilly thought. But I liked the statue, and all the better for what I criticise, and was sorry to see the huge package in which the finished marble lies bundled up, ready to be sent to our country,—which does not ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... atheistic, fallacious, heretical. You perceive I am not sparing myself in these admissions," he interposed, "but I have been doing some serious thinking during my return voyage, and now I am going to read that book again; not to criticise, but to get at its ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... time alone can impart. It was, excepting in vastness, like a cathedral interior, and in some ways better than even the best of these great fanes, wonderful as they are. Here, recalling them, one could venture to criticise and name their several deficits:—a Wells divided, a ponderous Ely, a vacant and cold Canterbury, a too light and airy Salisbury, and so on even to Exeter, supreme in beauty, spoilt by a monstrous organ in the wrong place. That wood and metal giant, standing as a stone bridge ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson

... this day to see the use of this reconnoitring, but at Ladysmith everything was equally mysterious and perplexing. It was perhaps that my knowledge of military matters was too limited to understand the subtle manoeuvres of those days. But I have made up my mind not to criticise our leader's military strategy, though I must say at this juncture that the whole siege of Ladysmith and the manner in which the besieged garrison was ineffectually pounded at with our big guns for several months, seem to me an unfathomable mystery, which, owing to Joubert's ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen

... rather to describe the qualities of the refined sculpture which is executed in large quantities for private persons belonging to the upper classes, and for sepulchral and memorial purposes. But I could not now criticise that sculpture with any power of conviction to you, because I have not yet stated to you the principles of good sculpture in general. I will, however, in some points, tell you ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... saved at a time when the island was sadly in want of money; the natural surface of the firm soil would have been preferred by all vehicles except during rain, when they would have adopted the metalled parallel way. It is easy to criticise after the event, and there can be no doubt that upon our first occupation of the island a much greater traffic was expected, and the road between the two capitals was arranged accordingly. We halted for the night at the new stone bridge, which, as usual in Cyprus, ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... called upon to criticise what I have now written, and to review all that I have seen, read, and heard on the subject, I would conscientiously declare that the importation of Cholera Morbus into England or anywhere else, had been clearly negatived, ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest

... and his repose. It is well, doubtless, to attack those who can reply with the pen, as then the consequences of the encounter do not reach beyond the ridicule which is often the portion of both adversaries. But Abbe Geoffroy fulfilled only one of the two conditions by virtue of which one can criticise,—he had much bitterness in his pen, but he was not a man of the sword; and every one knows that there are persons whom it is necessary to attack with ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... most young fellows go through," I said. "They then make sonnets to the moon, become pessimistic, criticise everything, and feel certain that they will become the hub of the universe one day. They prefer vegetable food ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill

... many different ways of going to a concert. You can be one of a party of fashionable people to whom music is a diversion, a pastime, an agreeable change from the assembly or the theatre. They applaud, they condemn, they criticise. They know all about it. Into such company as this, even I, whose poor old head is always getting itself wedged in where it has no business to be, have chanced to be thrown. This is torture. My cue is to turn into the ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... for the writers of the nineteenth century to criticise the actors of the fifteenth; and learned scholars, sitting in luxurious easy-chairs in great libraries, can pass swift and severe judgment upon the acts and motives of Columbus. But let them go back four hundred years, and divest themselves of the bias which the science of to-day unconsciously ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... done," yet re-engraving a portion of his best-known plate, and frankly leaving the rejected portion half erased?[6] Titian, whose custom it was to lay aside his pictures for long periods and then criticise them, imagining that he was looking at them "with the eyes of his ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall

... fear, be thought by those who condescend to criticise this lover's conduct and his mode of carrying on his suit, that he was very unfit for such work. Ladies will say that he wanted courage, and men will say that he wanted wit. I am inclined, however, to believe that he behaved ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... three marvellous powers: she could read by the touch alone: if she pressed her hand against the whole surface of a written or printed page, she acquired a perfect knowledge of its contents, not of the substance only, but of the words, and would criticise the type or the handwriting. A line of a folded note pressed against the back of her neck, she read equally well: she called this sense-feeling. Contact was necessary for it. Her sense of smell was at the same time singularly acute; when out riding one day, she said, "There is a violet," and cantered ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various

... is in the hands of men whose self-interest is coupled with a personal gratification in the altruistic basis whose nature you have learned from me. You are not competent to pass upon their motives, and until you are you should not venture to criticise." ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt

... mediocrity, compassionate with the weakness and defects of all, incapable of causing the slightest pain to those who were destitute of talent, even when art required that he should condemn them, his goodness was such, that he almost felt remorse whenever he had been led to criticise a work too severely. He deplored his having dealt too harshly with poor Blackett, as soon as the latter's position became known to him; and also with Keats, whose talent, though great, was raw in many respects, and who had become a follower of the ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... imperious, and inquiring: for certain parts, and to one who could have used it, the face was a fortune. His voice matched it well, being shrill, powerful, and uncanny, with a note like a sea-bird's. Where there are no fashions, none to set them, few to follow them if they were set, and none to criticise, he dresses—as Sir Charles Grandison lived—'to his own heart.' Now he wears a woman's frock, now a naval uniform; now (and more usually) figures in a masquerade costume of his own design: trousers and a singular jacket with shirt tails, the cut and fit wonderful for island workmanship, ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... proceeded to criticise a statement commonly found in text books, that chemical combination suppresses altogether the properties of the combining bodies. The reverse of this statement is probably true. To take the case commonly given ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various

... of the petitioners. The most important changes in the law of the land were not made, but grew, through the accumulated effect of judicial decisions. The chief function of Parliaments, after the voting of supplies, was to criticise and to complain; to indicate the shortcomings of a policy which they had not helped to make. Except as the guardians of individual liberty they cannot be said to have made medieval government more scientific or efficient. In the fifteenth century the English Commons criticised the government ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis

... individuality and grace of form, as in the coco-palm and banana of the tropics. The featheriness of the maple, and the arrowy straightness and pyramidal form of the cryptomeria, please me better than all else; but why criticise? Ten minutes of sunshine would transform ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... and men—that man! Is there any use for me to stammer out trite phrases of self-contempt? The fact remains that I am unfit to advise, criticise, or condemn anybody for anything; and it's high time I ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... moment she got home. He might ask her mother—he might ask the people next door. If Madame Carre didn't think she could work, she might have heard, could she have listened at the door, something that would show her. But she didn't think her even good enough to criticise—since that wasn't criticism, telling her her head was good. Of course her head was good—she needn't travel up to the quartiers excentriques to find that out. It was her mother, the way she talked, who gave the idea that she wanted to be elegant and moral and a femme du ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... police in Trafalgar Square without a word of accusation or explanation. The Home Secretary says that in his opinion the police are very nice people, and there is an end of the matter. A Member of Parliament attempts to criticise a peerage. The Speaker says he must not criticise a peerage, and ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton

... dominate the situation to her exclusion—unless, by the way, he has her permission and authority so to do, in which case he cannot do so too much—the verdict delivered upon my absent secretary was not by any means unfavourable, though, of course, there was much to criticise. ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay

... The Golden Bough, I asked my neighbour, who had read it, if to a Japanese who got its penetrating view some things could ever be the same again. He answered frankly, "There are things in our life which are too near to criticise. Do you know that there are parts of Japan where folklore is ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... upon it. I pick up a book and fling it aside with the comment, 'It's not worth reading!' or I look over a great vessel like this and say, 'How clumsily built!' but what if I were doomed to write a similar book, to plan a great steamer—just think of the results! I would never criticise again." ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... of them. They criticise me and make fun of me. Miss Barrows showed what I wrote about tuberculosis to every other ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon

... and often exhausted even them before the returns came in. If you have newspapers at all, they must, I fancy, be published by the government at the public expense, with government editors, reflecting government opinions. Now, if your system is so perfect that there is never anything to criticise in the conduct of affairs, this arrangement may answer. Otherwise I should think the lack of an independent unofficial medium for the expression of public opinion would have most unfortunate results. Confess, Dr. Leete, that a free ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... things the middle way is the safest. A simple funeral has surely in it more that awakes true religious feeling than the pomp and splendour which are too frequently made the order of the day in these proceedings. In this case are not men sometimes led away to canvass and to criticise the splendour of the show, while they should be deducing a wholesome moral lesson for themselves, or offering up a fervent prayer to the Almighty for the peace ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer

... hostess. Mr. Boffin was a gentleman who had belonged to the late Ministry, but had somewhat out-Heroded Herod in his Conservatism, so as to have been considered to be unfit for the Coalition. Of course, he was proud of his own staunchness, and a little inclined to criticise the lax principles of men who, for the sake of carrying on her Majesty's Government, could be Conservatives one day and Liberals the next. He was a laborious, honest man,—but hardly of calibre sufficient not to regret his own honesty in such an ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... lonely and sequestered glens of the south, from eyelids touched with fairy ointment, such visions as are vouchsafed to the minstrel alone—the dream of sweet Kilmeny, too spiritual for the taint of earth? I shall not attempt any comparison—for I am not here to criticise—between his genius and that of other men, on whom God in his bounty has bestowed the great and the marvellous gift. The songs and the poetry of the Shepherd are now the nation's own, as indeed they long have been; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various

... him. There is nothing left for people with no talent and mighty pretensions to do but to criticise those who are really gifted. I hope you enjoy the consolation ...
— The Sea-Gull • Anton Checkov

... half a century he had held himself in readiness to attend the bedside of all who might call upon him to speak cheering, hopeful words to the dying. But now our little community has become educated and they are able to criticise. As we look around the church we are lost in wonder as to what has come to the people. The older ones are sadder and a spirit of unrest seems to have seized upon the middle aged, while the very children have lost something ...
— Bohemian Society • Lydia Leavitt

... any names. It is always a mistake to mention names. One cannot guard against it too carefully. But having done what she did ten years ago dear Adela Sellingworth should really—but it is not for me to criticise her. Only there is nothing people—women—are more sensitive about than the question of age. No one likes to be laid on the shelf. Adela Sellingworth has chosen to—well—one might feel such a very drastic step to be quite uncalled for—quite uncalled for. ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... really looking the other way, exhibiting to the spectator all that remained of the face that launched the thousand ships of which half a dozen were shown riding at anchor behind her back. I did not venture to criticise, because the corporal knew all about it, having seen the Story of Hector done by the marionettes. Filomena was embroidering this most beautifully; I should say that the needle-working of it was as much above all praise as the design of it was ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones

... who took life seriously. If it were possible to imagine that he could criticise unfavourably anything said or done by his chief, it would be perhaps when the chief condescended to trifle about himself and his position. So Hamilton did not like the mild jest about the School Board. Indeed, his mind ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy

... time has brought in his revenges. The Doctor himself has been dead his century. He died on the 13th of December, 1784. Come, let us criticise him. ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell

... condemn and criticise is the sin of criticism and condemnation. There is no place we need such grace as in dealing with an erring one. A lady once called on us on her way to give an erring sister a piece of her mind. We advised her to wait until she could love her a little more. Only He who loved sinners ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson

... perhaps Anne Bradstreet's youth, and a sense that she could hardly criticise a judgment which had required the united forces of every church in the Colony to pronounce, that made her ignore one of the most stormy experiences of those early days, the trial and banishment of Anne Hutchinson. ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... before the public. A publisher from London was in our office the other day, signifying a desire to make some arrangement to bring it out there. I have heard almost no unfavorable criticism of the story—nothing which you could make serviceable in its revision. I have heard Dr. P. criticise Ernest—of course the character and not your portrayal. For myself I consider the character a natural and consistent one. Perhaps few men are found who are quite so blind to a wife's wants and yet so devoted, but—I don't know what the wives ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... articles, private readings of passages, interlinings, pointing to a history in that case which has not yet transpired; it was easy for such a one to do it, when the partner of his treasons would have had no chance to criticise his case, ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... placed his picture on the easel, and went to one of his former masters, a man of immense talent,—to Schinner, a kind and patient artist, whose triumph at that year's Salon was complete. Fougeres asked him to come and criticise the rejected work. The great painter left everything and went at once. When poor Fougeres had placed the work before him Schinner, after a glance, ...
— Pierre Grassou • Honore de Balzac

... mistake but a kind of take? What's nausea but a kind of -ausea? Sober, drunk, -unk, astonishment. Everything can become the subject of criticism—how criticise without something to criticise? Agreement—disagreement!! Emotion—motion!!! Die away from, from, die away (without the from). Reconciliation of opposites; sober, drunk, all the same! Good and evil reconciled in a laugh! ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... himself to criticise adversely Lord Wellington's enactment against duelling, and Captain Tremayne defended it. They became a little heated, and the fact was mentioned that Samoval himself was a famous swordsman. Captain ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini

... Patsy, promptly. "You're quite right, and I'm just one of those stupid creatures who criticise the sun because there's a cloud before it. Probably there are all grades of society, because there are all ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne

... Navy is not more modern and powerful than it is has been made a cause of complaint against the Secretary of the Navy by persons who at the same time criticise and complain of his endeavors to bring the Navy that we have to its best and most efficient condition; but the good sense of the country will understand that it is really due to his practical action that we have at this time any effective naval ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... atmosphere into motion. That no one has ever seen the bird doing the work, or that the task is too great for any conceivable bird, is to the simple, uncultivated man no objection to this view. It is long, indeed, before education brings men to the point where they can criticise their first explanations ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... Miss Allison who brought matters to a climax. "I refuse to listen," said she, with something very like a stamp of her plump little foot. "Mr. Elmendorf forgets himself entirely when he attempts to—to criticise my conduct." ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King

... readers on matters more or less relevant to the story, but rather in the manner of a commentator and scholiast upon it than as actual parts of it. Of this more later: for the immediate purpose is to survey and not to criticise. ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury

... their hands, and yet every one was in a sort of seashore costume. I saw many men whom my nautical instinct detected at once to be naval officers,—some of whom must have been captains,—in round-abouts; but it was quite impossible to criticise toilettes that were so faultlessly neat, and so perfectly ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... ones, as long as public decorum is not infringed, and then it is severely punished. But they have none of that censoriousness or prying spirit in France which is so common in England to hunt out and criticise the private vices of their neighbours, which, in my opinion, does not proceed from any real regard for virtue, but from a fanatical, jealous, envious, and malignant spirit. Those vice-hunters never have the courage to attack a man of wealth and power; but a poor ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... nervousness on that point. Having got his brace or so of fish, and finished his studies of water, rise of fly, weeds and weather, and neatly (and oh! so orderly and accurately!) made his entries in his little notebook, he loved to play gillie to his friend for hours together, criticise his style of fishing, and give advice; naturally, after a time, if you are nervous, you are certain of one thing only: that you are the king of asses, and had better imitate the immortal colonel who hurled his book of salmon flies into the pool shouting ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior

... they conceived it to offer the best opportunity of seeing the country, they accordingly accepted the invitation. As it is to be presumed that they had no intention of taking any personal part in this marauding expedition, we are not disposed to criticise their acquiescence; otherwise there could be no doubt whatever, that they had no right to assist the king of Shoa in his foray on his neighbours, more than they would have had a right to assist his neighbours in their attacks upon the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... Gillen criticise Westermarck's use of the term "pretended group marriage" and assert it to be a fact among the Urabunna. On the very next page group marriage is spoken of as having preceded the present state of things. Both statements cannot ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas

... special appeal for the BENSON Bros. Only the other day did ROBERT HUGH write a clever and hauntingly horrible story round it, and now here is ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER discoursing at large upon the same theme in Where No Fear Was (SMITH, ELDER). It is a book that you will hardly expect me to criticise. One either likes those gentle monologues of Mr. BENSON or is impatient under them—and in any case the comments of a third party would be superfluous. Personally, I should call this one of the most charming of those many hortatory ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various

... proceed to criticise this state of things, I will mention one point on which I am glad to be able to bestow on the Royal Society the highest praise. I refer to the extreme regularity with which the volumes of the Transactions are published. The appearance of the half-volumes at intervals of six months, insures for ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage

... power all the various activities of the human mind. We can only point out a few of the lines of development which become prominent at this period. And firstly we notice the rise of rationalism, that is of the impulse to criticise belief and to ask for that element in it which approves itself to the reflecting mind. Reason asserts its right to judge of tradition; the doubter suggests emendations in the legend; the piously inclined turn their attention to those parts only which are capable of lofty treatment. ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... and sit down and wait until you are excused—" Doctor Hugh's level gaze seemed to draw the rebellious Sarah back to her chair. "If you don't care for the pudding you needn't eat it, but don't criticise anything that is ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence

... would be the work of half an hour to criticise—that is to say praise—the poem sufficiently to please Charlie. Then I had good reason to groan, for Charlie, discarding his favorite centipede metres, had launched into shorter and choppier verse, and verse with a motive at the back of it. This is ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... in me to criticise your action, perhaps," his companion continued. "I never did such a thing before, having always hesitated to set up my views against yours; but I cannot but fear you have made a sad mistake. And if you were contemplating any change of this kind, why did you not ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... struggle over the Prussian constitution. In a series of vigorous addresses (April, 1862, to February, 1863) he first criticised, then condemned, the Progressive party for its—as it seemed to him—pusillanimous policy. But Lassalle was not content merely to criticise and condemn. His restless energy found no adequate expression short of the creation of a new party of his own. His repudiation of the Progressives, however, was not dictated by differences over tactics alone. He rejected the fundamental principles of the liberal movement in German politics. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... various elements and constants used in the calculations, he arrives at a conclusion strikingly accordant with that put forward in the recently published volume. Having myself neither mathematical nor physical knowledge sufficient to enable me to criticise this elaborate paper, except on a few points, I will here limit myself to giving a short account of it, so as to explain its method of procedure; after which I may add a few notes on what seem to me doubtful points; while I also hope to be ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace

... the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—Dryden, Pope, Johnson—looked upon Shakespeare with an indulgent eye, as a great but irregular genius, after much the same fashion as did the old sea-dogs of Nelson's day regard the hero of Trafalgar. 'Do not criticise him too harshly,' said Lord St. Vincent; 'there can only be ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell

... he did not criticise her. He was only afraid that she might do herself harm by receiving a Bohemian who was ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France

... an ecclesiastical character, and he probably cultivated, with new diligence, his blossoms of poetry, which, however, were in some danger of a blast; for, submitting his productions to some who thought themselves qualified to criticise, he heard of nothing but faults; but, finding other judges more favourable, he did not suffer himself to sink ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... if I had to show this to Mr. Norman, and get him to criticise my writing as he offered to do, I couldn't put in such things; so perhaps it's as well I shall have to worry ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... effort which had resulted so disastrously to obtain a lesser one, and he had condemned her. He knew that women always used circuitous ways toward their results, just as men used sledge-hammer ones. Why should a man criticise a woman's method any more than a woman criticise a man's? Wilbur, blushing like a girl with pride and delight, listened to his wife and fairly lashed himself. He was wholly unworthy of ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... temperature. They cling to the customs of their fathers with an obstinacy that is incomprehensible to us, who are always ready to try experiments. Americans complain bitterly of the same freezing experiences in France and Germany, and in turn foreigners all criticise our over-heated houses and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... the cost of provisions and the charge she made for her table—was very good. Only it had become a habit for certain of the boarders, led by the jester, Crackit, to criticise the viands. ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd

... their voyage south. At a place called New Salem the flat-boat ran aground; but Lincoln's ingenuity got it off. He rigged up a queer contrivance of his own invention and lifted the boat off and over the obstruction, while all New Salem stood on the bank, first to criticise and then ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... The people put Mr. Lincoln in a position in which he was subjected to the most appalling, as it is the most vague, of all dangers, and then left him to take care of himself as best he could. It was ungenerous afterward to criticise him for exercising prudence in the performance of that duty which he ought never to have been called upon to ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse

... ourselves in the position to assimilate and to criticise any change in ultimate scientific conceptions we must begin at the beginning. So you must bear with me if I commence by making some simple and obvious reflections. Let us consider three statements, (i) 'Yesterday a man was run over on the Chelsea Embankment,' (ii) 'Cleopatra's Needle is on the ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead

... floats softly over the prairie, or the ringing, prolonged word of command marks some lazily-executed manoeuvre on the homeward way. Drill is over; the sharp eyes and sharper tongue of the major no longer criticise any faulty or "slouchy" wheel; the drill proper has been stiff and spirited, and now the necessary changes of direction are carried out in a purely perfunctory manner, while the battalion commander and his subaltern, troops and all, amble back and give their ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... to peruse and re-peruse, even though he has nothing more lively than Boston's Fourfold State, or Hervey's Meditations among the Tombs. But he knows well what he has so often read, and is quite competent to discuss and criticise his little row of volumes. A few of the Highland townships have literary societies in which every variety of subject is debated: the meetings are usually opened with prayer, but not always closed in ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... only to conduct, in the spirit of the author's intentions, a work with which the performers have already become acquainted, but he must also introduce new compositions and help the performers to master them. He has to criticise the errors and defects of each during the rehearsals, and to organize the resources at his disposal in such a way as to make the best use he can of them with the utmost promptitude; for, in the majority of European cities nowadays, musical ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz

... he read the chapters to Reardon, not only for his own satisfaction, but in great part because he hoped that this example of productivity might in the end encourage the listener to resume his own literary tasks. Reardon found much to criticise in his friend's work; it was noteworthy that he objected and condemned with much less hesitation than in his better days, for sensitive reticence is one of the virtues wont to be assailed by suffering, at all events ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing

... years the banker's cashier and protege, Prosper Bertomy, had been devoted in his attentions to Madeleine. Mme. Fauvel decided to do all in her power to hasten matters, so that, Madeleine once married and out of the house, there would be no one to criticise her own movements. She could then spend most of her time with Raoul without ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau

... The marriage law is too arbitrary; it allows no scope for individual action, and yet the subject is so delicate, so intricate, that none but the keenest and nicest balanced minds dare attempt to criticise, much less improve it. The misconstructions of a person's motives are so great that many who see its errors, tremble and fear to speak of them. But if we are to bring any good to the covenant, so sacred in its offices, we must ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams

... ride in another car," she interrupted, loyally unwilling that even he should criticise the King of Krovitch. "It is his right. I, a subject, would not attempt to pass in judgment upon the acts of my sovereign." There was a sad weakening of voice as she completed her defense, which convinced Carter that she had seen the whole ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton

... bad a condition that the hyperbolical Sergeant Johnson calls them "half-starved, scorbutic skeletons." That worthy soldier, commonly a model of dutiful respect to those above him, this time so far forgets himself as to criticise his general for the "mad, enthusiastic zeal" by which he nearly lost the fruits of Wolfe's victory. In fact, the fate of Quebec trembled in the balance. "We were too few and weak to stand an assault," continues Johnson, "and we were almost in as deep a distress as we could ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... tears fell on the little gift as I looked and remembered, no one will wonder or criticise. The potatoes were cooked for breakfast, and "Susie Jane" ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton

... an air of reserve (although there are times when I let myself go); quite correctly dressed; nothing to criticise and ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse

... You criticise as follows; "The apostles could not have been convinced of the fact of the resurrection by any evidence short of the fact itself. 2d. If the fact did exist there is no evidence which can counterbalance it. Ergo, as the apostles were ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou

... sustained him with the full power of the general government. My intense feeling, caused by the atrocities in Louisiana, may have unduly influenced me. But General Grant did not think this was his duty. I do not criticise his action, but only state the facts, He would only maintain the peace. He would not recognize Packard as governor, but I know, what is now an open secret, the strong bent of his mind, and at one time his decision was to withdraw the troops, to recognize ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... I owed to him the most agreeable and elevating hours of my youth, In memory of these hours I have written this eulogy. It is not worthy of particular mention, and the Academie Francaise will doubtless severely criticise my knowledge of their language. But it is impossible to write well, one moment in camp and another on the march. If it is unworthy of him whom it was intended to celebrate, I have at least availed myself of the freedom ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach

... distinguish this most momentous letter from others which came to him by almost every post, or to indicate that it was destined to change the whole current of his life. It was sent by an unknown woman, and the object of the writer was, while expressing intense admiration for Balzac's work, to criticise the view of the feminine sex taken by him in "La Peau de Chagrin." His correspondent begged him to renounce ironical portrayals of woman, which denied the pure and noble role destined for her by Heaven, and to return ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars

... he said, "to have acted in a thoroughly capable and praiseworthy manner. The only point in your conduct which I would permit myself to criticise is your omission to slay the kid. That, however, was due, I take it, to the fact that you were interrupted. We will now proceed to examine the future. I cannot see that it is altogether murky. You have lost a good job, but there are ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... on the carpet, wait till you hear the name of the painter. If it's Rubens, or any o' them old boys, praise, for it's agin the law to doubt them; but if it's a new man, and the company ain't most especial judges, criticise. "A leetle out o' keeping," says you. "He don't use his grays enough, nor glaze down well. That shadder wants depth. General effect is good, though parts ain't. Those eyebrows are heavy enough for stucco," says ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various

... phrase—she had heard something like it before. But there had been strength, and the power to do, and the will to act in every intonation of his speech. She remembered every word San Miniato had spoken, far better than he would remember it himself in a day or two, and she was ready to analyse and criticise now what had charmed and pleased her a moment earlier. Why was he going over it all to her mother, like a lesson learnt and repeated? She was so glad to be alone—she would have been so glad to think alone of what she had taken for the most delicious moment of her young life. If he were ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford

... to prove satisfactory or should they give rise to contradiction, we would repeat here what Newman wrote in his Preface to "Difficulties of Anglicans," "It has not been our practice to engage in controversy with those who felt it their duty to criticise what at any time we have written; but that will not preclude us under present circumstances, from elucidating what is deficient in them by further observations, should questions be asked, which, either ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly

... that the heart of man is naturally hard and unamiable. He conducted himself in his new situation with the most unexceptionable propriety, and the most generous benevolence. But there were men in his audience, men who loved better to criticise, than to be amended; and women, who felt more complacency in scandal, than eulogium. He displeased the one by disappointing them; it was impossible to disappoint the other. He laboured unremittedly, but his labours returned ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin

... no naval training and had worked his way up from the ranks. Perhaps his long fight against the practise of flogging unruly sailors helped to add to the number of his enemies, for those in authority were outraged that this Jewish upstart should criticise a custom so deeply rooted in the traditions of the navy. Another man of quieter temper might have tried to combat the prejudice and hatred which met him at every turn; but Levy's nature was not a patient one. When raised to the rank ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger

... and nickname their own mother; when they are allowed to drown the voice of the most honored guest at the table with their little bald chatter, so that even the cross-questioning genius of a Socrates would find itself at a discount; when they are allowed to criticise and contradict their elders in a way that would have appalled our grandmothers; when they are suffered to make remarks which are anything but reverent on sacred things—have I not some reason to fear that the one attribute which touches the character to fine issues is threatened ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... plainness to the fault-finding and insolent cavilers against Christians and to other factious leaders when he says, "Ye were led away unto those dumb idols, howsoever ye might be led." This class peremptorily judge and criticise the life and doctrine of the Church because they see therein a measure of defects, and even some divisions and disagreements; notwithstanding the fact is plainly evident to them that the Church possesses the Word of God in purity, a knowledge of Christ, an ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther

... is no business of mine to criticise your conduct; you can do as you please with your wife, but may I count upon your keeping your word with me? Well, then, promise me to tell her that her father has not twenty-four hours to live; that he looks in vain for her, and has cursed her already as he lies on his deathbed,—that ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac

... very bad, but "fair to middling," as the Yankees say, in quality and quantity. If a traveler wants anything more he must provide it himself. People who live in India and are accustomed to these things are perfectly satisfied with them, although the tourist who has just arrived is apt to criticise and condemn for ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... were not a poor hungry dastard, and even much of a blockhead withal, he would cease criticising his victuals to such extent; and criticise himself rather, what he ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... interest of such writings endures as the starting-point and foundation for future work. Butler out of England is hardly known, certainly he is not much valued either as a divine or a philosopher; but in England, though we criticise him freely, it will be a long time before he is out of date. Mr. Mozley's book belongs to that class of writings of which Butler may be taken as the type. It is strong, genuine argument about difficult matters, ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church

... you can say more. You can tell me which legend you disliked least; you can criticise my hero's conduct, and find fault with my heroine's manners; you can object to my plot, pick holes in my style. No, thank goodness, you can't do that; but you can take ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair

... pass your summer in a village?" he presently said, in the tone of a man who has ceased to rule, but not ceased to criticise. ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.

... by others; yet, as a whole, it is good; and if the subject demands a more creative power, and a higher daring than was habitual to him, we are yet charmed with the good sense throughout; and while we look, are indisposed to criticise. We have already remarked how much Sir Joshua was indebted to a picture by Domenichino for the "Tragic Muse." Every one knows that he borrowed the "Nativity" from the "Notte" of Correggio, and perhaps in detail from other ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... remarkably well made, and looking as if they all had come straight from Paris. I never saw a large party of prettier or better chosen toilettes. The dresses were generally of rich brocaded silk, but there was nothing to criticise, and all were in perfect taste. We assembled in a long drawing-room carpeted, and sufficiently supplied with chairs, but there being neither tables nor curtains, the room had rather a bare appearance, ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter

... the poet Longfellow. In addition to his celebrity as a poet, he is one of the most elegant scholars which America has produced, and, until recently, held the professorship of modern languages at the neighbouring university of Cambridge. It would be out of place here to criticise his poetry. Although it is very unequal and occasionally fantastic, and though in one of his greatest poems the English language appears to dance in chains in the hexameter, many of his shorter pieces well upwards from the heart, in a manner which is likely to ensure durable ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... sorry I sent them to you; for I see that they have lowered, instead of raising her in your opinion. But if you criticise letters, written in openness and confidence of heart to a private friend, as if they were set before the tribunal of the public, you are—may I say it?—not only severe, but unjust; for you try and condemn the subjects of one country ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... If it is anything, it consists of a score of men and women who chance to be spending their allotted time on earth in that corner of the globe in which I was born, who saw me grow to manhood, and who most inconsequently arrogate to themselves the privilege of criticising my actions, as they criticise each other's; who say loudly that this is right and that is wrong, and who will be gathered in due time to their insignificant fathers with their own insignificance thick upon them, as is meet and just. If that is the world I am not afraid ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford

... not hers, her own was not sharply cut, and she persuaded herself that, in substance, his and her belief were identical. As she grew older her relationship to the Unseen became more and more intimate, but she was less and less inclined to criticise her husband's freedom, or to impose on the children a rule which they would certainly have observed, but only for her sake. Every now and then she felt a little lonely; when, for example, she read one or two books which were particularly her own; when she thought of her ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford

... has taken place in the theory of socialism, among those who are its most thoughtful exponents, and in a certain sense its leaders. They represent what these leaders think and say among themselves, and what they put forward when disputing with opponents who are competent to criticise them. But what they do not represent is socialism as still preached to the populace, or the doctrine which is still vital for socialists as a popular party. This is still, just as it was originally, the socialism of Marx in an absolutely ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock

... of Brisbane, an independent newspaper, the Australian, was established by Mr. Wentworth and Dr. Wardell. A second of the same kind soon followed, and was called the Monitor. These papers found it to their advantage, during the unpopularity of Darling, to criticise severely the acts of that Governor, who was defended by the Gazette with intemperate zeal. This altercation had lasted for some time, when, in the third year of Darling's administration, a very small event was sufficient to set the whole ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland

... Justice Blackburne interrupted. "It was too late," he said, "to criticise the evidence, and the Court had neither the right nor the power to alter or review it. If," he added, "you have any reason to give why, either upon technical or moral grounds, the sentence should not be passed upon you, we will hear it, but it is too late for you to review ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown

... promised at Fairfax Station, or Centreville, where the army's supplies were to be sent. So, in spite of the high hopes and feverish unrest for the forward movement, there was a good deal of sober foreboding among the men, who held to the American right to criticise as the Briton maintains his right to grumble. For the soldier in camp or on the march is as garrulous as a tea gossip, and no problem in war or statecraft is too complex or sacred for him to attempt the solution. Of the thirty thousand men leaving the banks of the Potomac that 16th of July ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... folly of imitation has been exposed. As a result of this, I like to think that we shall have a finer type of expression, a richer kind of personal quality. Every artist is his own maker, his own liberator; he it is that should be the first to criticise, destroy and reconstruct himself, he should find no mood convenient, no attitude comfortable. What the lay-writer says of him in praise or blame will not matter so much in the future; he will respect first and last only those who have found the time to share his ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley

... the strong influence that other minds, Shakespeare notably, have produced upon this mind; here its attitude is never merely pessimistic. It does not criticise them, it ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... discuss political questions; they should not form clubs or societies with political intent of any kind; they should not even read agitating tracts and books. He could not help their thinking, but they should not criticise his government. They should be taught in schools directed by Roman Catholic priests, who were good classical scholars, good mathematicians, but who knew but little and cared less about theories of political economy, or even history unless modified to suit religious bigots of the Mediaeval ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord

... drawn, rather from precedents than reason, there is danger not only from the faults of an author, but from the errours of those who criticise his works; since they may often mislead their pupils by false representations, as the Ciceronians of the sixteenth century were betrayed into barbarisms by corrupt copies ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... holds, by general acclamation, the foremost place in the world's literature, and his overwhelming greatness renders it difficult to criticise or even to praise him. Two poets only, Homer and Dante, have been named with him; but each of these wrote within narrow limits, while Shakespeare's genius included all the world of nature and of men. In a word, he is the universal poet. To study nature in ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... done. And as she was the rather elderly if very wealthy daughter of a baronet, who considered that she had married decidedly beneath herself in taking Frank Harrowby, the untitled young barrister not even yet in silk, she had come down to the Hill prepared to criticise sharply; so that her approbation carried weight and ensured a large amount of satisfaction. Edgar, however, who was not so fastidious as his brother, thought the whole thing a failure and that no one looked ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various









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