"Critic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Our critic exposes himself to reproof from the manner in which he has conveyed his severe remark: show a rhyme is sometimes made. The omission of the relative, a too common practice with our writers, is ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... of this I note the following example: "No severer critic of Socialists ever lived than Karl Marx. No one more bitterly attacked them and their policy toward the trade unions than he.... And yet Socialists regard him as their patron saint." Mr. Samuel Gompers, in ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... or may not, have observed, that the Times critic says, that "of one thing there can be no doubt"—and that is—"Miss Ewing's nationality. No one but a Scotchwoman bred and born could have written the 'Laird and ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... salaries ranging from $25 to $50 a week. Manuscripts are read by the piece for from $3 to $5 each. Book reviews are paid for at all prices, from the possession of the book alone to the payment of a cent a word. It is best for the aspiring critic to practice herself on book reviews first. In these she can with profit display her power to analyze the artistic construction of books, and so develop her abilities ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... Lady Agatha said, with admiration. "What a pity she isn't with us, Mary! What a pity she is only a destructive critic! Don't ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... nightmare of imbecility and in your more expansive moments a high adventure of immeasurable possibilities, you are straitened between cold despairs and immense hopes, you will readily forgive this irreverent, self-confident critic-journalist any crude things he may have said in his haste for sake of his flashes of perception, his happily descriptive phrases, his inspiring anticipations, his uncalculating candour, and above all his generous preoccupation with things that matter enormously. "What we prosperous people who have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... Krafft round to the desired subject. It seemed that one of the masters in the Conservatorium had expressed a very unequivocal opinion of Schilsky's talents as a composer, and Krafft was now sarcastic, now merry, at this critic's expense. Maurice laid down his knife, and, in the first break, asked abruptly: "When does ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... appeared about the same time, nor of earlier plays on the subject by Ben Jonson and others. The struggle in Ibsen's play is centered in the soul of Catiline; not once do his political opponents appear on the scene. Only one critic raised his voice in behalf of the play at the time of its appearance, and only a few copies of the original edition survive. Ibsen issued in 1875 a revised edition in celebration of his twenty-fifth anniversary as an author. Since then a third edition has been issued in 1891, ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... him first as a poet, then as a literary critic. Next came a rather hazy impression that he was an educational reformer whose suggestions might be worth attending to. It was not till 1869 that his countrymen became fully aware of him as a social critic, a commentator on life and society. ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... not fail to profit by an introduction to one Karl (etc.) von Fuernberg, one of the old stamp of wealthy patrons of musicians. They loved to "discover" rising talent, did these ancient, obsolete types of amateurs of art. They were as proud of a brilliant protege as a modern literary critic is when he "discovers" a new minor poet. Von Fuernberg did his best for Haydn. He enabled him to write the first eighteen quartets; he helped him to get better terms for teaching—five florins a month instead ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman
... simple cheer. These are the scenes to be enacted here, Shown to you straightway in a simple guise. Youthful the scenes that we shall here devise On which the beads of history are strung. Remember that our players, too, are young. All critic-knowledge, then, behind you leave, And in the spirit of the day receive What we would give, and let there come to you The Joy of Youth, with purpose ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... nineteenth century the most casual survey discovers conflicting views on matters of fundamental importance to the translator. Who are to be the readers, who the judges, of a translation are obviously questions of primary significance to both translator and critic, but they are questions which have never been authoritatively settled. When, for example, Caxton in the fifteenth century uses the "curious" terms which he thinks will appeal to a clerk or a noble gentleman, his critics complain because the common people cannot understand his words. A similar situation ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... The critic who condemns as wholly discordant the variant notes of our multitudinous verse-writers may point out that we should have had more right to expect concord if we had shown some discernment in sifting true poets from false. Those who have least claim to the title of poet ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... critic who tells you the handicap's absolute rot, For this is chucked in, and that's hopeless, and somebody ought to be shot. How is it he can't make a fortune himself when ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... have advised the Marcia Reale Italiana, because that composition, on account of its inherent frivolity, has always seemed to me unfit for the accompaniment of any manifestation of power. To despise Bellini because he is not Schubert would be to adopt the attitude of the buffo's critic who escaped from Paris in the teatrino at Palermo; nevertheless the countrymen of Schubert have known how to appear before the world clothed in the solemn splendour of Haydn's majestic Hymn to the Emperor, while the Italians come mountebanking along in an ill-fitting, machine-made ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... neglected of an idle mind, Hides for a moment from the eyes of men; Or lightly opened by a critic wind, Affrightedly ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... always thought, that you undervalue Harcourt. He is a fine fellow in his way. I like a man to be strong, and Harcourt is strong—he has no pettiness in his nature. He is rather a severe critic, perhaps—and demands a little too much from other people—but you will find that he always ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the main with the American critic of sermons, who said if a preacher can't strike ile in ten minutes he has got a bad organ, or he is boring in the wrong place. It is always unfair to bore in the pulpit, because the congregation have no means of retaliation except by subsequently staying away, and in the country that is not compatible ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... have been reviewed. The "Monthly" has cataracted panegyric on me; the "Critical" cascaded it, and the "Analytical" dribbled it with civility. As to the "British Critic", they durst not condemn, and they would not praise—so contented themselves with commending me as a "poet", and allowed me "tenderness of sentiment and elegance of fiction." I am so anxious and uneasy that I really ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... following singular burst of critical indignation from the Reverend author of the present Essay:—"It provokes a smile on serious topics,"—(a kind of impropriety which the Vice-Principal of Lampeter will not commit except under protest and with an apology!)—"to observe the zeal with which our critic vindicates the personality of Jonah, and the originality of his hymn, (the latter being generally thought doubtful), while he proceeds to explain that the narrative of our book in which the hymn is imbedded, ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... his matchless style, to be sure! You can have read very little of M——y, I should think," said the subordinate, with the true sneer of an official and a critic. ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sympathy we were one, and in the division of labor we exactly complemented each other. In writing we did better work together than either could alone. While she is slow and analytical in composition, I am rapid and synthetic. I am the better writer, she the better critic. She supplied the facts and statistics, I the philosophy and rhetoric, and together we have made arguments that have stood unshaken by the storms of thirty long years: arguments that no man has answered. Our ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... dress?" asked Aunt Victoria, as they drove away. "You don't even notice it, and I put it on 'specially to please you—you're the one discriminating critic in this town!" As Sylvia made no answer to this sally, she went on: "It's hard to get into alone, too. I had to ask the hotel chambermaid to hook it up on ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... whom he had known five days! Supposing Elsmere had been there to hear—Elsmere with his sane eye, his laugh! As he leant over the gate he found himself quivering with impatience to be away—by himself—out of reach—the critic in him making the most bitter remorseless mock of all these heroics and despairs the other self had been indulging in. But for the life of him he could not find a word to say—a move to make. He stood hesitating, gauche, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... respectable sheet, the London Athenaum. A very competent Frenchman was there criticising a recent book entitled "Idealism in France." Reference was by him made to what, in France, is known as the "scrutin d'arrondissement," or, in other words, the district representative system. The critic declares that this system has there "created a party machine which has brought the country under the sway of a sort of Radical-Socialist Tammany, and bound together the voter and the deputy by a tie of mutual corruption, the candidate ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams
... own great soul the canvass warms, Creates, inspires, impassions human forms, Spurns critic rules, and seizing safe the heart, Breaks down the former frightful bounds of Art; Where ancient manners, with exclusive reign, From half mankind withheld her fair domain. He calls to life each patriot, ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... reason,—in tight inexpressibles, with "a belt such as is worn by the old German students." You will pardon me for treating such an awful person as this somewhat lightly; but there is always, I think, such a dash of the ridiculous in the French sublime, that the critic should try and do justice to both, or he may fail in giving a fair account of either. This character of Hebronius, the type of Mrs. Sand's convictions—if convictions they may be called—or, at least, the allegory under which her doubts are represented, is, in parts, very finely drawn; ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... lascivum, obscoenum, maledicum, obsequiosum, senum conversatione se delectantem, varium, ancipitem, impur[u], et dolis mulierum obnoxium, calumniatorem, et omnino incognitum propter naturae et morum repugnantiam, etiam his cum quibus assidue versor." The critic at once goes on to state that in his opinion this description, drawn by the person who ought to know best, is, in the main, a correct one. What better account could you expect, he asks, of a man who put faith in dreams and portents and auguries; ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... Another critic of my criticism insists that, "while the Indians, if left to themselves, possess harmony of color which seems never to fail, they always demand startling effects from us." This, I am inclined to question. The Indians' color-sense in their basketry is perfect, as also in their blankets, and I see ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... the learned reader remember that the Hebrew—language of history and prophecy—hath only a past and a future tense, but hath no present? Yet that language succeeded tolerably in expressing the present griefs or joys of David and of Solomon. Bear with me, then, O critic! if even in 1870 I use the so- called past tenses in narrating what remaineth of this history up to the summer of 1872. End of ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... irreproachable, his disposition was exacting, but his ability was great. He was capable of instructing even her on many subjects, and they became well acquainted by the elective sympathy of scholarship. She became the critic and depositary of his manuscripts. Finally, one day, after asking leave, in her father's presence the worthy man actually kissed her, on his departure for Italy. Her father, sinking lower and lower, squandered ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... agree in their opposition.—Voltaire, with texts in hand, pursues it from one end to the other of its history, from the first biblical narration to the latest papal bulls, with unflagging animosity and energy, as critic, as historian, as geographer, as logician, as moralist, questioning its sources, opposing evidences, driving ridicule like a pick-ax into every weak spot where an outraged instinct beats against its mystic walls, and into all doubtful places where ulterior patchwork disfigures the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Fleet Street," said Barron; "let the press people tell you where you are wrong. I am no critic and I know what a mountain of ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... ('The Dutch School of Painters') Albert Duerer's 'Melancholia' (same) Ingres ('Life of Ingres') Calamatta's Studio ('Contemporary Artists') Blanc's Debut as Art Critic (same) Delacroix's 'Bark of Dante' (same) Genesis of the 'Grammar' Moral Influence of Art ('Grammar of Painting and Engraving') Poussin's 'Shepherds of Arcadia' (same) Landscape (same) Style (same) Law of Proportion in ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... Company, and having signed a contract to supply them for seventeen years with the best Pine Pitch on favourable terms, I have not the slightest interest to subserve in writing this letter, which I think any quite impartial critic will allow, curtly, but honestly, expresses ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, January 18, 1890 • Various
... are a critic! Knowing nothing of sunshine except that it warms you, and never having touched paint, you are going to tell about them to a man who spends his life studying them! You look up in the night and the truth you see is that the moon and stars are crossing the ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... The dry critic who daily labors, and with success, to destroy them, may be knowing; but he is not wise. Every seeming acquisition really impoverishes him. The noble Mendelssohn once said, "Life without illusions is only death." The ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... who is not just 'busting' himself with Titanic intellectualities, but who is a readable dramatic critic.... Mr. Hale is a modest and sensible, as well as an acute and sound critic.... Most people will be surprised and delighted with Mr. ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... round, merry face covered with freckles, hair indisputably red and a retrousse nose. Also she possessed a pair of wonderful blue eyes—eyes that danced and scintillated with joyous good humor—eyes so captivating that few ever looked beyond them or noted the plain face they glorified. But the critic admitted that the face was charmingly expressive, the sweet and sensitive mouth always in sympathy with the twinkling, candid eyes. Life and energy radiated from her small person, which Miss Von Taer grudgingly conceded to possess unusual fascination. Here was a creature quite ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... systems, the wonderful stirrings of a new life which were beginning to be felt everywhere with the close of the Middle Age and the dawning of the Renaissance, had filled the minds of men with wonder, and caused them to turn to the writings of the Apocalyptic Seer with keenest interest. A recent critic, commenting upon his work as represented in these engravings, says: "The energy and undismayed simplicity of his imagination enable him, in this order of creations, to touch the highest point of human ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... A critic of the new constitution, intent on ascertaining how it affects the relation of Great Britain and Ireland, will do well to divert his attention from the numerous details of the Home Rule Bill, important as many of them are,[25] and fix his mind almost ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... you have fostered independence of thought and the search for new truth; hence you cannot complain if the fierce light which you have taught the world to turn full and fair upon cults and creeds, should be employed to discern the false logic of the great critic himself. ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... in the way of the critic unprofessional, as I know by experience. Our most sweet voices are scarcely admissible among the most sour ones ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... into his pockets and handed me that knife in solemn silence, I fully realized that he was making a sacrifice on the altar of friendship. Any critic of this writing will be justified in objecting that I did not probably formulate the idea in just these terms, but this is about the size of ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... ecstasies on breathing in the patchouli and vetiver used for Cashmere shawls. She had also a taste for music. Nestling upon a pile of scores, she would listen most attentively and with every mark of satisfaction to the singers who came to perform at the critic's piano. But high notes made her nervous, and she never failed to close the singer's mouth with her paw if the lady sang the high A. We used to try the experiment for the fun of the thing, and it never failed once. It was quite impossible to fool my ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... A burst of appreciative laughter, in which Chase himself was forced to join, bore witness to the effectiveness with which the cynical critic had been politely answered. However it might be on after occasions, for to-day Chase became content to enjoy his broiled chicken and strawberry-shortcake without further comment on the inconsistency of their appearance upon the table at ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... But the soundness of this analogy we disputed. In the case of the theatre, it cannot be pretended that the inferior situations have any separate attractions, unless the pit may be supposed to have an advantage for the purposes of the critic or the dramatic reporter. But the critic or reporter is a rarity. For most people, the sole benefit is in the price. Now, on the contrary, the outside of the mail had its own incommunicable advantages. These we could not forego. The higher price we would willingly have paid, but not ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... execution, all his own. The commentators have collected with infinite industry all the sources of the plot; but to the grand creation of Isabella, they award either silence or worse than silence. Johnson and the rest of the black-letter crew, pass over her without a word. One critic, a lady-critic too, whose name I will be so merciful as to suppress, treats Isabella as a coarse vixen. Hazlitt, with that strange perversion of sentiment and want of taste which sometimes mingle with his piercing and powerful intellect, dismisses ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... had been arrested in Duesseldorf at the same time that Marx and his circle had been arrested at Cologne. He was then only twenty-three years of age. Yet his defense of his actions in court is said to have been a masterpiece. Even the critic George Brandes has spoken of it as the most wonderful example of manly courage and eloquence in a youth that the history of the world ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... the experiences of those who have passed on. The verbal are by trance mediums, whose utterances appear to be controlled by outside intelligences. The written from automatic writers whose script is produced in the same way. At these words the critic naturally and reasonably shies, with a "What nonsense! How can you control the statement of this medium who is consciously or unconsciously pretending to inspiration?" This is a healthy scepticism, and should animate every experimenter who tests a new medium. ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... gignomena], Brahm and Maya, Wille und Vorstellung, the emotional and the intellectual life of man, or, untechnically, what he feels and his communication of those feelings to others as a social being. With the first of these the critic has nothing to do; the matter is given; all he has to consider is whether it has found adequate expression—that is, to try to understand the language, that when he has mastered it he may help others to do so according to his ability. I do not say that ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... rising, did not give up his place. The First Consul only stayed a short time, and when he came back he showed great discontent at this affectation of pride and of vanity. Wishing to get rid of a man whom he looked on as a blundering flatterer and a clumsy critic, he sent him away as charge d'affaires to the young extemporized King of Etruria, where Clarke expiated his folly in a sort of exile. This is all the "great disfavour" which has been so much spoken about, In the end General Clarke returned to favour. Berlin ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... the wheel' To let such fribbles feel the critic steel With scalpel-like severity? Granted! But will no pangs the victims urge To abate that plague of bores, which is the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various
... shows how illusory it is to speak of 'white' light as synonymous with simple light, in distinction to 'coloured' light. And yet this has been customary with scientists from the time of Newton until today, not excluding Newton's critic, Eddington. In fact, white exists visibly for the eye as part of the manifested world, and is therefore properly characterized as a colour. This is, therefore, how Goethe spoke of it. We shall see presently the special ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... die: there is no hope in sleep. Witness, you gods, who sent me on the earth To be a joy to men: and witness you Who stand around: if ever a small malice Hath governed me: what critic have I feared? What rival? Have I used this mighty throne To baulk opinion or suppress dissent? Have I not toiled for art, forsworn food, sleep, And laboured day and night to win the crown, Lying with weight of lead upon my chest? Ye gods, there ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... is said for or against the Anglo-Indian army, the unprejudiced critic cannot fail to admit that they are the finest body of fighting men in existence, a force against which it would be impossible for an equal number of the soldiers of any other country to contend. That the old dominant spirit of the British soldier is yet rampant as ever ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... Gaillard, Histoire de Francois premier (Paris, 1769), vi. 397. It was the unpardonable offence of Lefevre in the eyes of his critic that he, a simple master of arts, had dared to investigate matters that fell to the province of doctors of theology alone. Letter of H. C. Agrippa (1519), in Herminjard, Correspondance des Reformateurs, i. 51: "Tantum virum semel atque iterum ... vocarunt hominem stultum, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... going to say, but you wouldn't let me finish my sentence. Oh, yes, he was quite a success. One old gentleman wanted to know if he would accept the part of art critic on his paper. It was very exciting." She leans back in her chair, the troubled look on her face growing intensified. She seems glad to be silent, and with downcast eyes plays with the gloves lying in ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... No sober critic, applying to the American statesmen of the first generation the standards which he would apply to their English contemporaries, can blame them in the least because they framed their Constitution as best they could and were not deterred by ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... of this stanza is bad;—the last four lines of it simply and purely execrable. Mr Macaulay is far too judicious a critic not to be fully aware of the danger of any weak passage in a short poem of incident; and we trust, in the next edition, to see this palpable eye-sore removed. But it is in the ballad of Virginia that his besetting tendency towards declamation becomes most thoroughly apparent. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... circumstances. And the eternally tragic aspect of the drama lies in this: that the problem set before us is one the elements of which can be but imperfectly known, and of which even an approximately right solution rarely presents itself, until that stern critic, aged experience, has been furnished with ample justification for venting his sarcastic humour upon the irreparable ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... story vividly to the Imagination of the reader, we should have no more complaints of the dulness of History. Who ever found Irving or Prescott dull? and yet they are accurate and faithful as the most stately and oracular. The carping critic may sneer at them because they are not philosophical and profound; but to have been read with delight by thousands who would never have reached a second chapter had they been other than they are, may well satisfy ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... with that forehead. He's a high-brow. We'll make him dramatic critic. In the meantime, I'll be little fairy godmother, an' if you'll get on your bonnet I'll stake you and the young 'un to strawberry shortcake an' ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... remain; but others may yet be found. The Spaniards say the faults of a great writer are not left in the ink-stand. Spain, in Cervantes' day, had passed the chivalric age, though many relics of it still remained in its legends, songs, and proverbs. Cervantes becomes his own critic in his "Supplement to a Journey to Parnassus," and speaking of his dramas, says: "I should declare them worthy the favor they have received were they not my own." Unfortunately, his comedy of "La ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... of the chair of Fine Arts and Archaeology, was the first critic to publish a detailed analysis of the master's methods and purpose. The article was illustrated by engravings which (though they had cost the magazine a fortune) were declared by Professor Wildmarsh to give but an imperfect suggestion ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... which renders a full and fair review of this little book an impossible thing for us. Let us briefly call to notice some of its peculiar excellences, and indicate the line of thought which we think its sympathetic critic will follow. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... rule, spoils his case by overstating it. With all his passion for imperialism, there is something about Mr. Mahaffy that is, if not parochial, at least provincial, and we cannot say that this last book of his will add anything to his reputation either as an historian, a critic, or a man ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... been an active servant of Venice through a long life. He had filled almost all the great offices which were intrusted to her nobles. He had governed her distant colonies, accompanied her armies in that position of proveditore, omnipotent civilian critic of all the movements of war, which so much disgusted the generals of the republic. He had been ambassador at the courts of both emperor and pope, and was serving his country in that capacity at Avignon when the news ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... thoroughly. It was impossible, however, to avoid touching on certain points of ethnology and philology, which can be securely handled only by those who have made these sciences the object of special study. Here the mere literary critic must owe his whole safety to his tact in choosing authorities to follow, and whatever he advances must be understood as advanced with a sense of the insecurity which, after all, attaches to such a mode of proceeding, and as put ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... faith in the conclusions arrived at by the learned critic, we would yet add to the considerations on which he relies another, viz. that it is most improbable that Louis XIV should ever have considered it necessary to take such rigorous measures against the Duc de Beaufort. Truculent and self-confident as he was, he ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... 'it is very unhappy for a man to be born in such a stormy and tempestuous season.' [Footnote: Spectator 125.] He may not have been a great poet, but he was an exquisite critic of life; he shared his contemporaries' lack of enthusiasm, but he possessed a fine discrimination, and those less practical, more irresponsible qualities would have been merely an incumbrance to the apostle of good sense and moderation. ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... to them be ne'er refusing: Say, fair one, master loves thee dear as life; Would he were here to gaze on thy sweet look. Should known or unknown student, freed from strife Of logic and the schools, explore my book: Cry mercy critic, and thy book withhold: Be some few errors pardon'd though observ'd: An humble author to implore makes bold. Thy kind indulgence, even undeserv'd, Should melancholy wight or pensive lover, Courtier, snug cit, or carpet knight so trim Our blossoms cull, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... wall she is easy game for anybody—as likely to marry a jockey or a professional forger as one of the young men of her desire. One should not blame a rich girl too much for marrying a titled and perhaps attractive foreigner. The would-be critic has only to step into a Fifth Avenue ballroom and see what she is offered in his place to sympathize with and perhaps applaud her selection. Better a year of Europe than a cycle of—shall we say, Narragansett? After ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... in the house. It was quite needless for Lady Loring to whisper to her, "Father Benwell, my dear!" Her antipathy identified him as readily as her sympathy might have identified a man who had produced a favorable impression on her. "I have no pretension to be a critic," she answered, with frigid politeness. "I only know what I ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... hypochondriac. But why should he defend his opinion by arguments at once unfair and untrue? it is not true, that "in the present case the public has decided" in favour of the altered play: "Cordelia," says the critic, "from the time of Tate has always retired with victory and felicity:" but does he mean to assert, that the original drama, before Tate's corruption, was not well received by the public? he cannot assert this, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... though a spirit of criticism had entered into all the Poketownites. There was Walky Dexter scoffing at her Uncle Jason; and here was Selectman Moore criticising the father of little Lottie. Yet neither critic, as far as Janice could see, set much of an example for his ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... The critic denies the painter not only a sense of truth in art, but all imagination as a landscape painter 'Of men of name,' Mr Ruskin writes, 'Perhaps Claude is the best instance of a want of imagination, nearly total, ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... Maginn's writings, "You have a glorious opportunity, where you have no fear of libel before your eyes. Maginn's best things can never be published till his victims have passed from the scene." How significant is this! Then Pott's "combining his information," his "cramming" critic, his using the lore of the Encyclopedia Britannica for his articles suggest Maginn's classical lucubrations. A well-known eminent Litterateur, to whom I suggested this view, objected that Pott is not shown to be such a blackguard ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... forward as he does so usually convulses his audience and makes a virtue of what would otherwise be a defect. The veteran speaker Barney Berlyn says, every little while, "you understand," but he is so terribly in earnest, and so forceful in his style, that no one but a cold blooded critic ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis
... AND GENTLEMEN: I cannot but remember that the last time I heard this toast proposed in this room the task which now devolves upon me was discharged by that true poet and great critic whose recent loss all England is deploring. In few respects did Mr. Arnold render a greater service to Literature than by the stress he always placed upon the importance of its artistic side—upon that "grand style," as he loved to call it, which the very last words he uttered in public were employed ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... quite grandly, on the strength of my contributing an occasional magazine article at stray intervals to one of the current periodicals—getting one accepted for every dozen that were "declined with thanks;" and, being the "musical critic" of a ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... wholesale onslaught he made in the "Bards and Reviewers," we must remember that it was a reply to a most unwarrantable and offensive attack made upon him by the "Edinburgh Review," written as though the fact of the author being a nobleman had increased the spleen of the critic. ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... German speculation he was probably quite ignorant. I find indeed that Place had called his attention to the account of Kant, published by Wirgman in the Encyclopaedia Londinensis 1817. Mill about the same time tells Place that he has begun to read The Critic of Pure Reason. 'I see clearly enough,' he says, 'what poor Kant would be about, but it would require some time to give an account of him.' He wishes (December 6, 1817) that he had time to write a book which would 'make the human mind as plain as the road from Charing ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... obviously a man of birth, and one who had mixed in the very best society of other capitals, save London alone. He ate very little, but he drank two glasses of my "Regents" Chambertin, with the air of a critic. He declined cigars, but he carried my cigarette box off with him into the study; and he accepted without hesitation some '47 brandy with his coffee. All the time, however, he had the air of a man with something ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... not be suspected of the presumption of hinting or implying that Pattison himself was a dilettante, or anything like one. There never was a more impertinent blunder than when people professed to identify the shrewdest and most widely competent critic of his day with the Mr. Casaubon of the novel, and his absurd Key to all Mythologies. The Rector's standard of equipment was the highest of our time. 'A critic's education,' he said, 'is not complete till he has in his mind a conception of the successive ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... against aught that is herein written, let him bear in mind that I am the author of not less than a stack of great histories, which have already so multiplied my literary fame, that the mere announcement of another book by me sends that only great and generous critic, the public at large, into ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... never think of the reflection from the glass, but paint a dark gray under the hand, just as if no glass were there. But a great painter would be sure to think of the true effect, and paint it; and then comes the stupid critic, and wonders why the hand is so light ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... Goethe's own words, then, the caution of a recent critic (Felix Melchior in Litt. Forsch. XXVII Heft, Berlin, 1903) against applying the term Weltschmerz to "Werther," would seem to miss the mark entirely. Werther is a type, just as truly as is Faust, though in a smaller way, and ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... estimating the different degrees of merit in the principal historical painters." This famous balance is a piece of critical coxcombry with which we never could have tolerable patience. It is an absurd assumption of superiority in the critic over all the masters that ever were; as if he alone were able to conceive perfection, to which no painter has ever been able to advance; that perfection on which the critic, or rather De Piles, had his eye, is Number 20; that no Painter has ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... successful one. The verses are easy, and, though rather in the ballad style, are free from any palpable irreverence. The plates are after the works of masters, and in the style, both of drawing and colouring, remind one of the severe and simple effect of old painted windows."—British Critic. ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... given us invaluable assistance in this Revision, we wish specially to name Prof. Henry M. Worrell, of the Polytechnic Institute; and in this edition of the work, as in the preceding, we take pleasure in acknowledging our great indebtedness to our critic, the distinguished Prof. Francis ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... so thoroughly shared the opinions of Prince Maurice, every military man in the provinces of any consideration, was opposed to, the scheme. Especially Lewis William—than whom no more sagacious military critic or accomplished strategist existed in Europe, denounced it with energy and even with indignation. It was, in the opinion of the young stadholder of Friesland, to suspend the existence of the whole commonwealth upon a silken thread. Even success, he prophesied, would bring no permanent, fruits, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... wonderful achievements of the Fleet, past and present, his description of the constant efforts to increase it both in ships and men, and his quietly confident prophecy that with this sure shield we might face the future in cheerful serenity, there were little sidethrusts at an imaginary critic. Some people had been silly enough to suggest that the new Board of Admiralty was so content with what had been done by "my right hon. and learned—I beg his pardon—gallant friend" that it had adopted a policy of "rest and be thankful". But there was no justification for "a certain ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... critic of the Herold was captivated by her capricious playing. He called her an extraordinary talent, and predicted a brilliant future for her. Andreas Doederlein accepted the congratulations in the spirit of a seasoned ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... Pleasure-giving laws that make the curves we recognize as beauty Practical or not, the good people affectingly wish to be Shun comparisons So the frog telleth tadpoles Socially and politically mean one thing in the end Story that she believed indeed, but had not quite sensibly felt The critic that sneers The language of party is eloquent The slavery of the love of a woman chained There may be women who think as well as feel; I don't know them Trust no man Still, this man may be better than that man Use your religion ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... it difficult to explain his distaste for the thing to Dresser, what would he have to say to other people—to the Hitchcocks? Yet he made his reservations to himself at least: he was not committed to his "career"; he should be merely a spectator, a free-lance, a critic, who keeps the precious treasure of his own independence. Almost at the start, however, he was made to realize that this nonchalance, which vindicated himself in his own eyes, could not be evident to others. As he was entering ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... is an instance of the "point of view." The five romances studied with a different purpose might have given different results, even with a critic so warmly interested in their favour. The great contemporary master of workmanship, and indeed of all literary arts and technicalities, had not unnaturally dazzled a beginner. But it is best to dwell on merits, for it is these that are ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... witness above suspicion; Cave, an able Anglican critic; Grotius and other distinguished Protestant writers, do not hesitate to re-echo the unanimous voice of ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... and who was still handsome in her advanced age. Her figure was very good. She was tall and of fine proportion, though by no means verging to that state of body which our excellent American friend and critic Mr Hawthorne has described as beefy and has declared to be the general condition of English ladies of Lady Monk's age. Lady Monk was not beefy. She was a comely, handsome, upright, dame,—one of whom, as regards her outward appearance, England might be proud,—and of whom Sir Cosmo Monk ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... heart sank a little. He had read a certain amount of poetry at school, and once he had won a prize of three shillings and sixpence for the last line of a Limerick in a competition in a weekly paper; but he was self-critic enough to know that poetry was not his long suit. Still there was a library on board the ship, and no doubt it would be possible to borrow the works of some standard bard and bone them up from time ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... things.... In them the priest will find a storehouse of hints on matters spiritual; from them the layman will reap crisp and clear information on many ecclesiastical points; the critic can listen to frank opinions of literature of every shade; and the general reader can enjoy the choice bits of description and morsels of humour scattered lavishly ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... how the work of Wigand was received by the non-christian press a quarter of a century ago. It was either ridiculed or ignored. The two methods of treatment were applied to his writings which are always readily employed when the critic has nothing pertinent to say. It is interesting to note that Darwin himself employed this method. Wigand once told me that he had sent Darwin a copy of his work and had addressed a letter to him at the same time merely stating that he had ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... mistress of ceremonies," said the queen, who was still standing in front of the looking glass and contemplating her own form, not with the contented looks of a conceited woman, but with the calm, stern eyes of a critic examining a work of art—"no, my dear mistress of ceremonies, we shall take good care not to raise a hue and cry about it. And Mr. Himmel is not so culpable, after all, as he seems ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... poets have sung the praises of coffee. L. Barotti wrote his poem, Il Caffe in 1681. Giuseppe Parini (1729-1799), Italy's great satirical and lyric poet and critic of the eighteenth century, in Il Giorno (The Day), gives a delightful pen picture of the manners and customs of Milan's polite society of the period. William Dean Howells quotes as follows from these poems (his own translation) in his ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers |
