"Hypercritical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Merrilies and a Dominie Sampson. He may have recognized a male Meg in Edie Ochiltree,the invaluable character who is always behind a wall, always overhears everything, and holds the threads of the plot. Or he may have been hypercritical enough to think that Elspeth of the Burnfoot is the Meg of the romance. Few will agree with him that Meg Merrilies, in either of these cases, is "good, but good ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... as elsewhere in Europe, the temper of the eighteenth century was cold, dissatisfied, and hypercritical. Old principles were called in question, and the literary man, the statesman, the philosopher, and the theologian found their tasks to be mainly those of attack or defence. The opinions of the nation ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... did, if you choose to accept the hypercritical interpretation of these latter-day Jeffersonians—Jefferson did buy the Louisianians, even "like sheep in the shambles," if you care so to describe it; and did proceed to govern them without the consent of the governed. Monroe bought the Floridians without their consent. Polk ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... appreciative observers, unless himself. Why waste such sweetness on the desert air of a lot of heedless midshipmen? With so many details regulated—if not enforced—from the length of our hair to the cut of our trousers, it did seem hypercritical to object to going shoeless for an hour. But who is consistent? The uncertainty of our position kept the chip ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... would envy; and which is larger than the endowment of many Regius chairs. You do not care to make your University a school of manners for the rich; of sports for the athletic; or a hot-bed of high-fed, hypercritical refinement, more destructive to vigour and originality than are starvation and oppression. No; your little Bursaries of ten and twenty (I believe even fifty) pounds a year, enabled any boy who has shown ability ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... long time to overcome this religious melancholia, but I mastered it in the long run, and was greatly delighted when I found I could once more read without being hypercritical and doubtful of everything. Had I been cast on a luxuriant island, growing fruits and flowers, and inhabited at least by animals—how different would it have been! But here there was nothing to save the mind from ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... first called attention to a class of rhymes which he denominated "Irish," seems to take it ill that I have dealt with his observations as somewhat "hypercritical." I acknowledge the justness of his criticism; but I did, and must still, demur to the propriety of calling certain false rhymes peculiarly Irish, when I am able to produce similes from poets of celebrity, who cannot stand excused by MR. BEDE'S explanation, that the rhymes in question "made music ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 • Various
... sanctified persons show are of frequent occurrence. They get out of tune with other people; often they will have nothing to do with churches, which they regard as worldly; they become hypercritical towards others; they grow careless of their social, political, and financial obligations. As an instance of this type may be mentioned a woman of sixty-eight of whom the writer made a special study. She had been a member of one of the most active and progressive churches in a busy part ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... know nothing whatever of bookbinding good or bad, requiring only that their volumes shall present a gorgeous appearance to the eye. Consequently the ordinary binder is rarely called upon to pay those minute attentions to detail demanded by a hypercritical collector. Bibliophiles are born, not made, and it were foolish to expect that every bookbinder has the love of books at heart. In nine cases out of ten it is our own fault if the binder goes wrong, for it means that our instructions have been either too meagre or lacking ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... the fragments which have come down to us, deserve the credence which is generally accorded to them. The paper is the production of a vigorous and independent intellect, and there are many observations which should be carefully weighed, but we do not believe that, as a whole, its hypercritical conclusions have any chance of being adopted. All recent progress in Egyptology and Assyriology goes to prove that the fragments in question contain much authentic and precious information, in spite of the ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... between the old and new school, and all on a question that would make a crab laugh,—questions that were hypercritical and infinite, and about which everybody knew nothing at all, and they thought they knew as well as God. Questions were talked of with positiveness, and argued; and, when I look back upon them, I cannot help ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... submit is decidedly wrong. I will not be hypercritical, or I might suggest that in that case the words would have been "thither wend;" but I maintain that the change is contrary to the sense. The spirit of Hermione never could have been intended ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... clarionet—now it caressed the ear like a speaking violin—and upon it poured forth volumes of harmony that filled all space, as the the booming organ fills the aisles of a vast and lofty cathedral. Gluck, the hypercritical Gluck, would have been ravished to hear his music as she sang it; and Frederick, who, up to this hour, had refused to acknowledge the genius of the great German, now sat breathless with rapture, as he listened to such music and such interpretation of ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... with hypercritical sensitiveness to its defects, but decided that it must do. Besides, she had used the last sheet of note-paper in the rack on her desk; more was not obtainable without a trip to the living-room. Then in desperation she appended, under ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... women who did not live superficial lives. Florence was breezy and frank, her sister quaint and not given much to speech. Madeline thought she would like to have these women near her if she were ill or in trouble. And she reproached herself for a fastidiousness, a hypercritical sense of refinement that could not help distinguishing what ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... of being again deemed hypercritical, while on this subject, the misapplication of terms, I must question the correctness of the phrase "Under the circumstance." A thing must be in or amidst its circum-stances; it cannot be under them. I admit the commonness of the expression, but it is not the less ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 233, April 15, 1854 • Various
... life as possible in the accompanying presentment The sceptic will perhaps remark on examination that the scene is characterized by somewhat too free a license to warrant the ideal of a "picnic." But he is hypercritical. There are picnics and picnics—picnics of high and of low degree. Do I not recall more than one notorious festive outing of the "next lower than the angels" in which the personnel seemed about similarly proportioned, and the fun and ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... and once she found herself comparing him with another man. She, however, broke off that train of thought abruptly, and once more endeavoured to find the explanation in herself. Weariness had induced this captious, hypercritical fit, and by and bye she would become used ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... universality of this type of regulation demonstrates a need and indicates widespread opinion in the profession that it is not necessarily incompatible with our constitutional freedoms. Is everybody out of step but this Court? * * * It seems hypercritical to strike down local laws on their faces for want of standards when we have no standards. And I do not find it required by existing authority. I think that where speech is outside of constitutional immunity the local community or the State is left a large ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... the official oath to-day with no mental reservations, and with no purpose to construe the Constitution or laws by any hypercritical rules; and, while I do not choose now to specify particular acts of Congress as proper to be enforced, I do suggest that it will be much safer for all, both in official and private stations, to conform to and abide by all those acts which ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... our house, but we don't address there; we prefer the tender care of the Post-Office, as more aristocratic (it is no use to telegraph even to the care of the Post-Office who does not give a single damn). Baker's has a prophet's chamber, which the hypercritical might describe as a garret with a hole in the floor: in that garret, sir, I have to trouble you and your wife to come and slumber. Not now, however: with manly hospitality, I choke off any sudden impulse. Because first, my wife and my mother are gone (a note for the latter, strongly ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... affectionate, magnetic, tolerant, spiritual, bold with the flavor and quality of simple, healthful, open-air humanity. He opposes culture and refinement only as he opposes that which weakens, drains, emasculates, and tends to beget a scoffing, carping, hypercritical class. The culture of life, of nature, and that which flows from the exercise of the manly instincts and affections, is the culture implied by "Leaves of Grass." The democratic spirit is undoubtedly more or less jealous of the refinements of our artificial culture and of the ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... may be thought to have taken a hypercritical view of things; I may even offend their susceptibilities—if I adulated them I should fail to chronicle the truth, and my work ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... intuition, or whether he is trading, for the purpose of his story, upon the popular superstition—maybe it is not a superstition—that this faculty is essentially feminine. But it is not a matter of the highest importance whether he has or not; it is not even worth while to be hypercritical in a discussion of the artistic quality of the story; it would be a waste of time and space to undertake to throw doubt upon the probability of any of the story's episodes, for when one is forced to make the acknowledgment that Mr. Carey has written a book that will not surrender its hold ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various |
