"Craftsmanship" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the War-smith, he it was who beheld the Burg too much given to pleasure, and delighting in the softness of life; and he took order to harden our hearts, and to cause all freemen to learn the craft of war and battle, and let the women and thralls and aliens see to other craftsmanship and to chaffer; and even so is it done as he would; and ye shall find us hardy of heart enough, though belike not so joyous as might be. Yet at least we shall not be ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... would have this series put artistic craftsmanship before people as furnishing reasonable occupations for those who would gain a livelihood. Although within the bounds of academic art, the competition, of its kind, is so acute that only a very few per cent. can fairly hope to succeed as painters and sculptors; yet, as artistic craftsmen, there ...
— Wood-Block Printing - A Description of the Craft of Woodcutting and Colour Printing Based on the Japanese Practice • F. Morley Fletcher
... socialists without knowing it!" Despite all the ugliness which had so repelled Ruskin, the squalor which moved Matthew Arnold to the fiercest scorn in all his writings, Morris's appreciation arose from his craftsman's knowledge and respect for supreme craftsmanship. The great ships building upon the Clyde were for him "the greatest achievement of [Page: 106] humanity since the days of the cathedral-builders," nay, for him actually surpassing these, since calling forth an even more complex combination and "co-operation of all the material ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... clay, which is often wanting in work tooled up when the clay is hard. To my thinking, the best work is always that which looks as though it had been thrown off in a happy moment, and which has a certain number of the tool marks showing, as though the worker were not ashamed to let his craftsmanship be seen. Work which has been touch and retouched, and rubbed down and smoothed until all life, vigour, and crispness have departed from it, looks what it is, amateurish (in the ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various
... is that a modest, polite, cheerful, industrious, skilful, and in the best sense of the word artistic hereditary craftsmanship is proving only too easy a prey to the new industrial system. It is a sad reflection that the country which, owing to her long period of seclusion, had the opportunity of applying to all the things of common life so remarkable a skill and artistry, should be so little conscious of ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... abstractions, is to my mind incredible. In the composition of his later plays he had the necessities of a given plot, incidents, or other fashioning cause, to determine the characters which it was in its turn to illustrate, and here he showed resourceful craftsmanship. In the case of the present play he had to fashion characters in vacuo and then weave them into such a plot as they might be capable of sustaining. In other words, he reversed the formai order of artistic creation, and attempted to make the abstract generate the concrete, ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... the first and last lines of this. I tried, with bent brows, to resolve the discord. But I did not take my failure as wholly incompatible with a meaning in Soames's mind. Might it not rather indicate the depth of his meaning? As for the craftsmanship, "rouged with rust" seemed to me a fine stroke, and "nor not" instead of "and" had a curious felicity. I wondered who the "young woman" was and what she had made of it all. I sadly suspect that Soames could not have made more of it than she. Yet even now, if one ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm
... body of writers officially recognized by the authorities of the State has undoubtedly given a peculiar prestige to the profession of letters in France. It has emphasized that tendency to take the art of writing seriously—to regard it as a fit object for the most conscientious craftsmanship and deliberate care—which is so characteristic of French writers. The amateur is very rare in French literature—as rare as he is common in our own. How many of the greatest English writers have ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... multifariously agonised; and an aesthete may speculate as to how far such objects offend, in expression of blank misery and horror, against the canons of what is held to be artistically desirable. The nearest approach to them in human craftsmanship, and as regards Auffassung, are perhaps some little Japanese wood-carvings whose creators, labouring consciously, likewise overstepped the boundaries of the grotesque and indulged in nightmarish effects of line similar to those which the ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... in the painting which evade analysis by a mere amateur, and yet involve supreme craftsmanship—such things as precision of line, perfect mastery of the palette, clever brush-work, management of shadow, perspective, proportion, and relation of the parts to the whole; but I leave all that to the professionals whose business it is to appreciate ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... stories, and they have a certain interest as a quiet chronicle of an old social order which has gone never to return. The comparison of Mr. Marshall's work with that of Anthony Trollope is as inevitable as it is to the former's disadvantage. This volume shows honest, sincere craftsmanship, and never rises nor falls below an average ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... looked like masks of death; some were smeared with red, some barred with blue. Most, however, showed merely the high-boned, sphinx-like brown of their faces free from war-paint. The costumes of many were extremely beautiful, the wonderful beadwork on tunic and moccasins being a thing of amazing craftsmanship, though the elk-tooth decorations, though of great value, ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... mournfully he disengaged himself, not because he did not believe in his principles, but because he saw that the difficulties were insuperable. He came back to the old life; he flung himself with renewed ardour into art and craftsmanship. He began to write the beautiful and romantic prose tales, with their enchanting titles, which are, perhaps, his most characteristic work. He learnt by slow degrees that a clean sweep of an evil system cannot be made ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... early life was worth the telling, and he has told it himself, as no one else could tell it, with all the consummate skill of his perfected craftsmanship, with all the reverent love of an admiring son, and with all the happy exuberance of a careless youth remembered in all its brightness in the years of his maturity. Finally, the book teaches a beautiful lesson of fortitude in adversity, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a coffer wrought by his own skilful fingers; and from this coffer he drew forth a suit of triple mail, wondrously fashioned, beholding the which, Beltane's eyes glistened because of the excellence of its craftsmanship. ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... precisely the same way all attempts to recreate the forms of another age must sacrifice emotional expression to imitative address. Old-world merry-making can no more satisfy sharp spiritual hunger than careful craftsmanship or half hours with our "Art Treasures." Passionate creation and ecstatic contemplation, these alone will satisfy men in search of ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... recited by so many generations of school-children, and whose exquisite flagons, cups, ladles, and sugar tongs not only compared with the best Continental work of that period, but have set a name and standard for American craftsmanship ever since. ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... molding. The drawing room mantels, capped by the traditional broken arch, dominate these rooms. All openings are dog-eared, as well as the panels of the chimney breasts. The hall arches, wainscoting, handrails, and stairways are noble examples of early craftsmanship. Upstairs the woodwork is equally good, though more delicate, while the paneled mantels lack ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... birth, Three rays they wrought of writhen storm, three of the watery wrack; Nor do the three of ruddy flame nor windy winging lack: 430 And now the work of fearful flash, and roar, and dread they won, And blent amid their craftsmanship the flame that followeth on. But otherwhere they dight the wain and winged wheels of Mars, Wherewith the men and walls of men he waketh up to wars. There angry Pallas's arms they wrought and AEgis full of fear, And set the gold and serpent scales, and did ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... Mrs. Radcliffe is a figure whom it is impossible to ignore in the history of the novel. Her influence was potent on Lewis and on Maturin as well as on a host of forgotten writers. Scott admired her works and probably owed something in his craftsmanship to his early study of them. She appeals most strongly in youth. The Ettrick Shepherd, who was by nature and education "just excessive ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... have been dealing fell within the most flourishing period of Roman, or rather Graeco-Roman, taste and craftsmanship. A hundred years later both taste and execution were declining, and by the age of Constantine—two centuries and a half after Nero—not one artist could pretend to achieve such work as had belonged to a multitude between the reigns of Augustus ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... taken rubbings off a few and present an untouched photograph of them just as I rubbed them off the stones (Fig. 17). The whole of the originals are to be found in the neighbouring churchyards of Shorne and Chalk, two rural parishes on the Rochester Road, and exhibit with all the fidelity possible the craftsmanship of the village sculptors. They will doubtless also excite some speculation as to their meaning. My belief, as already expressed, is that the uppermost four are the embodiment of the rustic yearning for the ideal; in other words, attempts ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... cried "Clubs?" and cracked his neighbours' heads with the precision and fineness of touch which only manual craftsmanship can give. The housewives who flatly refused to cook the hot dinner knew how much or how little, cold meat there was in the house. The sailor who defied discipline by mutinying at the Nore did not defy discipline in the sense of falling off the rigging or letting the water into the hold. Similarly ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... simplicity about the man and his words; a simplicity, an earnestness, a complete honesty. And when he sets down, in his book on oratory, "A man has no right to use words carelessly," he stands for that respect for word-craftsmanship that every successful ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... may always count on a story of absorbing interest, turning on a complicated plot, worked out with dexterous craftsmanship.—Literary Digest, New York. ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of our ingenuity and ability into the improvement of processes and tools of production. We have until recently greatly neglected the human factor that is so large an element in our very productivity. The development of vast repetition in the process of industry has deadened the sense of craftsmanship, and the great extension of industry has divorced the employer and his employee from that contact that carried responsibility for the human problem. This neglect of the human factor has accumulated much of the discontent and unrest throughout our great industrial population and has reacted ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... not apparatus for many pupils to work, so the class had been limited to seniors, among whom Doris Deane, Ruth White, and Stephanie Radford had begun to distinguish themselves. Each had made a small pendant, and while the craftsmanship might be amateurish, the general effect was artistic. Miss Teddington was delighted, and wishing to air her latest hobby, she decided to send the three pendants, together with some other specimens of school handiwork, ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... good translator. That is obvious given the translation of the Prophets at Worms which although carefully done and approximating my own German quite closely, does not show much reverence for Christ due to the Jews who shared in the translation. Aside from that it shows plenty of skill and craftsmanship there. ...
— An Open Letter on Translating • Gary Mann
... for the craftsmanship of one of our most celebrated women- journalists! When such a person, writing over her own name in the columns of a renowned and powerful paper, may thus brazenly ignore the elementary principles of composition, it may be guessed what latitude of carelessness ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... Richard watched this oncoming vessel, I took up Don Federigo's sword, and, struck by its beauty, began to examine it as I had not done hitherto. And indeed a very noble weapon it was, the hilt of rare craftsmanship, being silver cunningly inlaid with gold, long and narrow in the blade, whereon, graven in old ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... The tradition of craftsmanship in metallurgy, an art that was practiced from the earliest times, was during the speculative period of human culture, saturated with philosophy. Especially was this the case in Egypt, where metallurgy, ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... emergence, from out the present chaos, of this social element equipped, organized, educated, conscious of itself and of distinctive aims, in the next hundred years? In the first place there is the spirit of trade unionism, the conservative contagion of the old craftsmanship. Trade Unions arose under the tradition of the old order, when in every business, employer and employed stood in marked antagonism, stood as a special instance of the universal relationship of gentle or intelligent, who supplied no labour, and simple, who ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... wrought his stanzas with greater faithfulness to an exacting standard of craftsmanship than Mr. Aldrich, or has known better when to leave a line loosely cast, and when to reinforce it with correction or with a syllable that might seem, to an ear less true, redundant. This gives to his most carefully chiseled productions an air of spontaneous ease, and has made him ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... work fixed it. The lid would stand open of itself until tipped at a considerable angle, when it would fall and lock. Only on the outer shell was there a lock: that one was a good bit of craftsmanship. ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the all-important homo additus naturae part of Boswell's work: the setting his subject in the light of his own imaginative and emotional insight. But there was more than that. Boswell had not only the temperament of the artist: he had an artist's craftsmanship. The Life makes four large octavo volumes, each of some 500 pages, in the great Oxford Edition by Birkbeck Hill: and the Tour to the Hebrides makes a fifth. That is a big book: yet so perfect an artist is Boswell, that scarcely once ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... suggest a nomadic tradition, but for its craftsmanship. It seems independent of any obvious supply of food and their equivalent of water, if any. Nor were any provisions in evidence for the disposal of waste products. Yet the city had the appearance of age and continual usage. If you notice, the floor of the recess was worn unevenly ...
— General Max Shorter • Kris Ottman Neville
... and good one) to acknowledge his lie and give up his plunder, and the excellent but somewhat obtuse Robert recovers his wife as well. A good end if ever there was one, and not a badly told tale in parts. But, from some utterly mistaken idea of craftsmanship, the teller must needs kill Robert for no earthly reason, except in order that Jehane may become the third wife of Florus and bear him children. A more disastrous "sixth act" has seldom been imagined; for most readers will have forgotten all about Florus, who has had neither ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... supreme diligence by Niccolo Grosso, called Il Caparra, a smith of Florence. In those marvellous lanterns may be seen cornices, columns, capitals, and brackets of iron, fixed together with wonderful craftsmanship; nor has any modern ever executed in iron works so large and so difficult, and with such ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... hand became cooler, her breathing more easy; she smiled to us. Once more I could work by snatches, and was glad, but what was the result to me compared to the joy of hearing that voice from the other room? There lay all the work I was ever proud of, the rest is but honest craftsmanship done to give her coal and food and softer pillows. My thousand letters that she so carefully preserved, always sleeping with the last beneath the sheet, where one was found when she died - they are the only writing of mine of which I shall ever boast. I would not there had been one less though I ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... of craftsmanship in Rossetti's sonnets was early recognised; but the fertility of thought, and range of emotion compassed by this part of his work constitute an excellence far higher than any that belongs to perfection of form, rhythm, or metre. Mr. Palgrave has well said that ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine |
