"Artistry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... inexpressibly dreary. A stupid peasant scratching his head, a couple of critical Americans picking their steps, the walls tattered and befouled breast-high, dampness and decay striking in on your heart, and the scene overbowed by these heavenly frescoes, moulering there in their airy artistry! It's poignant; it provokes tears; it tells so of the waste of effort. Something human seems to pant beneath the grey pall of time and to implore you to rescue it, to pity it, to stand by it somehow. But you leave it to its lingering death without compunction, almost with pleasure; for the ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... temples built after designs which are not uniform, but are all self-sketched, and therefore peculiar to herself. In each of these mental houses of God there is revealed the same disposition, and that disposition is necessarily identical with that expressed in her profane artistry,[15] for the form of religion is as much a matter of national taste as is that which is embodied in literature, architecture, and painting. And this taste, as expressed in religion, isolates Brahmanic ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... opinion, are even more delightful and more dainty than the pen-and-ink pictures they assist in perfecting. Examples of these studies, accurately and simply drawn, are here reproduced, and they will be seen to reveal the draughtsman's graceful artistry more completely than any other ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... Eldred was waiting; and that by now retreat was out of the question. The thought roused her to a more normal state of confidence and courage. Putting away palette and brushes, she covered up her canvas: and because, for all her artistry, she was very much a woman, went straightway—not to her husband's door—but to her own mirror! The vision that looked out at her was by no means discouraging: a demure vision, in a simple, unconventional gown of green linen, with a Puritan collar, and ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... too completely dazzled by the consummate artistry of Miss Dabtree's clinging toilettes, the built-up luxuriousness of her hair, the pink and white complexion, the stenciled eyebrows, and the Lady Vere de Vere attitudes to dare to entertain a ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... citations verbatim, and to marshal his own counter-arguments. But in Marcolina he had to cope with an opponent who was little inferior to himself in extent of knowledge and mental acumen; and who, moreover, excelled him, not perhaps in fluency of speech, but at any rate in artistry of presentation and clarity of expression. The passages Casanova had selected as demonstrating Voltaire's spirit of mockery, his scepticism, and his atheism, were adroitly interpreted by Marcolina as ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... typical of the personal style he has adopted from the first. Studies by M. de Monvel have appeared before in THE STUDIO, so that it would be merely reiterating the obvious to call attention to the exquisite truth of character which he obtains with rare artistry. ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... in the novels previous to 1905, the conscientious artistry, the compactness of structure, and the unity of tone commonly associated with poetry. What other qualities characteristic of poetry appear in ...
— Contemporary American Literature - Bibliographies and Study Outlines • John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert
... are entirely unconnected. There is a series of jumps from one situation to another, with gaps and interruptions of considerable length, which break the chain of events. It is for this reason that, instead of seeing a historical fresco, we see a whole gallery of sketches, executed with subtle artistry, but insufficiently connected with the ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... deal, but it is saying the truth, and I do not mind owning that he has been one of my great literary passions, almost as great as Flaubert, and greater than Daudet or Maupassant, though I have profoundly appreciated the exquisite artistry of both these. No French writer, however, has moved me so much as the Spanish, for the French are wanting in the humor which endears these, and is the quintessence ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... or group of dancers you see at a show, and it may surprise you to discover how much the hands and arms have to do in adding to the effectiveness of the presentation. It is a compliment to the dancer's artistry that you have been absorbedly pleased by the complete effect, with no thought on your part of analyzing the ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... that many-sidedness is a merit and a merit that may easily be overlooked. This balance and universality has been the vision of many groups of men in many ages. It was the Liberal Education of Aristotle; the jack-of-all-trades artistry of Leonardo da Vinci and his friends; the august amateurishness of the Cavalier Person of Quality like Sir William Temple or the great Earl of Dorset. It has appeared in literature in our time in the most erratic and opposite shapes, set ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... really know Harrietta unless you realize the deference with which she was treated in her own little sphere? If the world at large did not acclaim her, there was no lack of appreciation on the part of her fellow workers. They knew artistry when they saw it. Though she had never attained stardom, she still had the distinction that usually comes only to a star back stage. Unless she actually was playing in support of a first-magnitude star, her dressing room was marked "A." Other ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... blows from the atmosphere created by the Frenchman's objective artistry is by the Russian commingled with the warm breath of a great human sympathy. Maupassant never tells where his sympathies lie, and you don't know; you only guess. Chekhov does not tell you where his sympathies lie, either, but you ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... he would have given us of that mighty gorge; of the crystal clearness of Mirror Lake; of the majesty of Cathedral Rock, of Sentinel Dome, or El Capitan; of the bright waterfalls, Vernal and the Bridal Veil; or in exquisite artistry of word painting how he would have pictured for us the wonderful coloring of the Yosemite, the morning tints of gray, the perfect white of noon shading into blue, the afternoon tinge of silver and gold, the sunset's ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... English songs and ballads. The passing Indian ceremonials she knew, and the perishing traditions. The tribal dress of the daughter of a chief she knew how to wear upon occasion. But for the most part she dressed as white women dress. Not for nothing was her needlework at the Mission and her innate artistry. She carried her clothes like a white woman, and she made clothes that could be ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... finished painting the cabin windows three days before, and was not obliged to expose his face to the chance of recognition. And yet it is doubtful if he would have been recognised, so direly had tribulation altered him. He finished his work for the morning with less artistry than usual, and was drawn upon deck shortly before the dinner-hour, by which time the galley's complement was brought on board for a short cruise. As Tristram rose and fell to his oar, that afternoon, he heard his father's voice just over his head, and ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... deceived by a seeming simplicity into forgetfulness of the old proverb, "Ars est celare artem," and oblivious of the fact that, to be vital, to grip, such drama is in every respect as dependent on imagination, construction, selection, and elimination—the main laws of artistry—as ever was the romantic or rhapsodic play: The question of naturalistic technique will bear, indeed, much more study than has yet been given to it. The aim of the dramatist employing it is obviously to create such an illusion of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... before 1600. Just as in the drama, therefore, something of the Elizabethan spirit remains in the lyric poetry; yet here also before many years there is a perceptible change; the Elizabethan spontaneous joyousness largely vanishes and is replaced by more self-conscious artistry ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... to which the artist belongs (it is doubtful how long the latter distinction will continue to exist). (3) Every artist, as a servant of art, has to help the cause of art (this is the element of pure artistry, which is constant in all ages and among ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy, the sciences, philosophy, history; craft, dexterity, clevernes, ingenuity, cunning, artifice. Associated Words: technical, paleotechnics, technics, technic, intransigeant, intransigeance, artist, artistic, artistry. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... about the 'Prince of Crooks'? Artistry in crime, wasn't it, you said?" They were quoting from his editorials of bygone days, a half dozen reporters of rival papers, grinning and joshing him good-naturedly, seemingly quite unaffected by what lay within arm's reach of them upon ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... palaciegas, or melodramatic pieces destined to be played before courtly audiences in the royal palace: La Banda y la flor and El Galan fantasma are charming illustrations of Calderon's genial conception and refined artistry. His historical plays (La Gran Cenobia, Las armas de la hermosura, &c.) are the weakest of all his formal dramatic productions; El Golfo de la sirenas and La Purpura de la rosa are typical zarzuelas, to be judged by the standard of operatic libretti, and the entremeses ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... itself an integral portion of the creative energy of Nature; for "Nature" is no more than the beautiful and classical word which recalls us to the objective spectacle which is the ultimate revelation of the complex vision. Nature is the supreme artist; but the apex-point of her artistry is nothing less than the apex-point of the ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... many different ideas as to what a complete life consists of. Engineering as a profession is scientific, idealistic, constructive, profitable. It is combative—in the sense that it shapes nature's forces—and it calls for a sense of artistry in its practitioners. Added to these, it embraces a certain kind of profound knowledge the possession of which is always a source ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton
... artistry, highest place being given to the tattooers, the carvers, the designers, and builders of canoes, the architects, doctors, and warriors. Men and women rose to influence and chiefly rank only by deeds that won popular admiration. These people ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... relates that the average reader who patronizes the New York public library prefers Conan Doyle's detective stories to any others. Quite naturally. There is more artistry in Poe, and the tales about the Frenchman, Arsene Lupin, are ten times more ingenious than Doyle's; but Doyle has infused the adventures of Sherlock Holmes with the undefinable something known as romance, and ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... moral reason. Unreal as such a thought is, a glimpse of some such feeling toward nature is discernible in the work of some impressionist landscape painters, who present colour and atmosphere and space without human intention, as a kind of artistry of science, having the same sort of elemental substance and interest that scientific truth has as an object of knowledge,—a curious form of the ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... nature the most brilliantly endowed woman he had ever met, the most naturally perceptive and artistic, albeit there was a touch of gorgeousness to the inherent artistry which time, training and experience would have chastened. Would have chastened? Was it not, then, chastened? Looking at her now, he knew that it was not. It was still there, he felt; but how much else was also there—of charm, of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the way of those who write of their childhood is that unconscious artistry will steal or sneak in to erase unseemly lines and blots, to retouch, and colour, and shade and falsify the picture. The poor, miserable autobiographer naturally desires to make his personality as interesting to the reader as it appears to himself. I feel this ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... nature both masculine and feminine, and a keen apprehension of a phase of our social conditions, the book is a piece of rare artistry."—Phila. Evening Tel. ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... the finest thing in the world. It was love that had worked the revolution in him, changing him from an uncouth sailor to a student and an artist; therefore, to him, the finest and greatest of the three, greater than learning and artistry, was love. Already he had discovered that his brain went beyond Ruth's, just as it went beyond the brains of her brothers, or the brain of her father. In spite of every advantage of university training, and in the face of her bachelorship of arts, his ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... was how I came to know Julot and Gigolette, And we would talk and drink a bock, and smoke a cigarette. And I would meditate upon the artistry of crime, And he would tell of cracking cribs and cops and doing time; Or else when he was flush of funds he'd carelessly explain He'd biffed some bloated bourgeois on the border of the Seine. So gentle and polite he was, ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... like angry hornets. Our red-headed Kate was no scholar, but at any rate her reading was more useful in our little world than mine; for this was where she learned the artistry of the dainties and devices Jack Dobson and I were so fond of. And if I did not soon learn to do something well, even were it only how to farm my five hundred acres to a profit, Kate's cooking would really require the miraculous aid suggested ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... to good advantage. They had paid his expenses while he trailed Overland and Collie. They had even guaranteed him protection from the law—such as it was on the Mojave. He had every reason to be grateful to them, but he was just a step or two above them in criminal artistry. He had been a "killer." Like the lone wolf that calls the pack to the hunt, he turned instinctively to Gophertown, a settlement in the hills not unknown to a few of the authorities, but unmolested by them. The atmosphere of Gophertown was ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... upon the map that hangs by me - Its shires and towns and rivers lined in varnished artistry - And I mark a jutting height Coloured purple, with a margin ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... other decorations which the Count, loyal to the traditions of old-world peasant architecture, had piously left unaltered—or, it may be, adapted to modern needs by touches so deft as not to reveal his own consummate artistry. Through the open door by which they had entered came breathings of warm wind laden with the suave odour of a tuft of Madonna lilies that grew, half neglected, in a shady corner. He had noticed them on his entry—how they ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... has prevented the inclusion of numerous other deserving artists and teachers, yet practically all of the greatest masters of the violin now in this country are represented. That the lessons of their artistry and experience will be of direct benefit and value to every violin student and every lover of violin music may be accepted as a ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... with Tom's sweeping damnation of American novelists and poets. He enjoyed both Vachel Lindsay and Booth Tarkington, and admired the conscientious, if slender, artistry of Edgar Lee Masters. ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... proportioning of carefully chosen elements. Herein is its real wonder, for the more carefully one analyzes the beauty of the Yosemite Valley, the more difficult it is to conceive its ensemble the chance of Nature's functioning rather than the master product of supreme artistry. ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... another, racking a crew overwhelmed with fever, almost persuades the captain to share the mate's illusion that 8 deg. 20'—The Shadow Line (DENT)—is possessed by the dead scoundrel. I found the book less interesting as a yarn than as an example of the astonishingly conscious and perfect artistry of this really great master of the ways of men and words. Mr. CONRAD never made me believe that the new captain would go so near sharing his mate's superstitious panic (which is perhaps because I know little of sailor-men save what he has taught me); and in the incident, so ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various
... he sat brooding in the quiet library of the club. He had tried to eat; but all the artistry of the famous French chef could not conjure up an appetite. Men passed by him, glancing curiously at the usually jovial companion; the twisted, drawn expression surprised them. He tried to read a magazine; the printed lines "pied" themselves before his twitching eyes, blurring ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... her teeth with a fine artistry. In truth she was spitting rather often, and had more than once seemed to strangle, but she held her weed jauntily between the first and second fingers and contrived an air ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... same make as the brothers composing those mosaics, and trying to imagine what the intricate patterns will do at the Resurrection Day, I cannot command myself. Neither am I supported by the sight of some skeletons, the raw material of that grewsome artistry, deposited whole in their coffins in the niches next the ground, though their skulls smile so reassuringly from their cowls; their cheeriness cannot make me like them. But my companion seemed to be merely interested; and I fancied her deciding that it all quite came up to her expectations, ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... theologue. She could be all things to one man. She was light-heartedly frivolous, soberly reflective, shallow, profound, cynical or naive, ingenuous, or inscrutable. She prized dearly the ecclesiastical background provided by her uncle, the bishop, and had him to dine with the same unerring sense of artistry that led her to select swiftly the becoming shade of sofa-cushion to put her blond ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... air of bright prosperity in the glowing and vivacious light of the fine and tasteful shops. They are good shops, and their windows are displayed with an artistry that one finds is characteristic throughout Canada. They offer the latest and smartest ideas in blouses and gowns, jewellery and boots and cameras—I should like to find out what percentage of the population of the American Continent does not ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... no literature known to me are short stories told with such sweet austerity of art as in the Gospel parables—I can even imagine a high and learned artist in words, after rejecting them as divine on many grounds, surrendering in the end to their divine artistry. But for high seriousness combined with architectonic treatment on a great scale; for sublimity of conception, working malleably within a structure which is simple, severe, complete, having a beginning, a ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... fixed the vice of finesse in her nature, for even a "good" woman accused parries by the use of trickery and wins her point by the artistry of the bagnio. Women and men are never really far apart anyway, and women are ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... certainly a great pleasure to the critic, when the stroke is cleanly brought off. It is the same pleasure indeed; the novelist makes the stroke, but the critic makes it again by perceiving it, and is legitimately satisfied by the sense of having perceived it with good artistry. It is spoilt, of course, if the stroke is handled tactlessly and obtrusively; the art of preparation is no art if it betrays itself at the outset, calling attention to its purpose. By definition it is unrecognizable until ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... imprecation the peddlers pushed on their carts to make place for a noisy, tuneless hurdy-gurdy. On the pavement at its side a dozen children congregated—none over ten—to dance the turkey trot and the "nigger," according to the most approved Bowery artistry ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... introduce fire-eating into their programmes, either in their own work or by the employment of a "Fire Artist." Although seldom presenting it in his recent performances, Ching Ling Foo is a fire-eater of the highest type, refining the effect with the same subtle artistry that marks all the work ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... a writer new to science fiction. In this story he displays the finesse, artistry and imagination of an old pro. Here is one of the tightest, tautest stories of interplanetary adventure ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... old wood-cuts?) had in a scant three hours been recreated for him by Knoblauch's fantastic drama with its splendid investment of scene and costume, its admirable histrionic interpretation, and the robust yet exquisitely tempered artistry of Otis Skinner. For three hours he had forgotten his lowly world, had lived on the high peaks of romance, breathing only their rare atmosphere that never ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... into his own again. On all sides this was the verdict, one long-haired critic of international fame even claiming openly that Henshaw had not only equaled his former best work, but had gone beyond it, in both artistry and technique. ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... felt himself to be flushing like a girl. It was an error of artistry that he had committed; a heinous crime! "So silly of me!" ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... on with a set and brooding face, and the Resident fell once more to pondering the queer scene of which he had been the witness. Even at that moment when his life was in the balance his thoughts would play with it, so complete a piece of artistry it seemed. There was the tomb itself—an earth grave and a rough obelisk without so much as a name or a date upon it set up at its head by some past Resident at Kohara. It was appropriate and seemly to the man ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... emphatically specialized phase of his diverse and variegated vocational activities, so his efficiency in it, in the humane sense of efficiency, is determined by its association with other callings. A person must have experience, he must live, if his artistry is to be more than a technical accomplishment. He cannot find the subject matter of his artistic activity within his art; this must be an expression of what he suffers and enjoys in other relationships—a thing which depends in turn upon the ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... which will impress itself upon you, when you have drawn some time carefully from Nature in light and shade, is the appearance of intentional artifice with which contrasts of this alternate kind are produced by her; the artistry with which she will darken a tree trunk as long as it comes against light sky, and throw sunlight on it precisely at the spot where it comes against a dark hill, and similarly treat all her masses of shade and color, is so great, ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... sphere he is every inch as perfect a workman as the greatest. Within his limits he was as pure a craftsman as the great John Sebastian in his. The difference between the two is the difference of their ages and races, not the difference of their artistry. For few composers can match with their own Debussy's perfection of taste, his fineness of sensibility, his poetic rapture and profound awareness of beauty. Few have been more graciously rounded and balanced than he, have been, like him, so fine that nothing which they could do could be tasteless ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... the North Station to catch the nine o'clock train. She was irrepressibly the child, for the time being, and in her cheeks bloomed roses so colorful that Gertrude Merriman accused her of painting, while knowing well enough that joy needs no artistry. ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... ever seen that wonderful artistry which she knew was hers, witnessed the half-crazy enthusiasm with which her audience received her, he would make allowance, judge her a little less harshly for what was, after all, a very natural assumption on the part ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... and you will have laid down, with a sigh for its brevity, a little book that is a very model of artistry. It is by Mr. E.V. LUCAS, and Outposts of Mercy is its happy name. But I am not to seek reflected glory by the praising of a colleague; simply for the sake of the cause that he pleads I wish to commend this fascinating account of the author's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 25, 1917 • Various
... A more polished artistry we find in Tennyson; a greater intellectual grip in Browning; a more haunting magic in Rossetti; but for easy mastery over his material and general diffusion of beauty ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... dry-eyed, frantic, pacing up and down her little sitting room which always looked so quaintly attractive with its jumble of paintings and bric-a-brac, its distinctive furniture and draperies—all symbolic of the helter-skelter artistry which was a part of Aleta's nature. She took Frank's hand ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... to Endymion) invaluable remarks—the inspiration of poetical practice turned into formulas of poetical theory. On the other hand, the famous advice to Shelley to "be more of an artist and load every rift with ore"—Shelley whose art transcends artistry and whose substance is as the unbroken nugget gold, so that there are no rifts in it to load—is, even when one remembers how often poets misunderstand each other,[29] rather "cold water to the ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... touch Mark Twain. He read but few novels at most, and, skilful as was the artistry of the English favorite, he found his characters artificialities—ingeniously contrived puppets rather than human beings, and, on the whole, overrated by their creator. Diana of the Crossways was read aloud, and, listening now and then, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... always is a woman in the case, somehow or other. This woman is closely connected with the firebug. As for the firebug, whoever it may be, he performs his crimes with cold premeditation and, as De Quincey said, in a spirit of pure artistry. The lust of fire propels him, and he uses his art to secure wealth. The man may be a tool in the hands of others, however. It's unsafe to generalise on the meagre facts we now have. Oh, well, there is nothing we can do just ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... at him and smiled, with interest as much as with invitation. He was brown from long exposure to the wind and the sun, that golden brown which is the gift of the sun-glitter on rocking seas. A traveler is generally indicated by this artistry of the sun, and once noted instantly creates a speculative interest. Even his light brown hair had faded at the temples, and straw-colored was the slender mustache, the ends of which had a cavalier twist. He ignored the lips which smiled and the eyes which invited, and ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... first period Shakespeare was often unable to give his puppets individual life; in maturity he was interested in the puppets themselves and used them with considerable artistry; in the third period he had grown a little weary of them and in "The Tempest" showed himself inclined, just as Goethe in later life was inclined, to turn his characters into ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... great critic were in response to the sudden repentance and despair I felt after Messrs. Stone and Kimball had published the book in exquisite form with a beautiful frontispiece by Will H. Low. In any case, it is now too late to try and disabuse the minds of those who care for the little piece of artistry, and since 1894, when it was published, I have matured sufficiently in life's academy not to be too unduly sensitive either as to the merit or demerit of my work. There is, after all, an unlovable kind of vanity in acute self-criticism —as though ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... question of mere executive skill and simple craftsmanship in Luis de Leon's poems. He is, indeed, always sound and competent in these respects; but artistry is not his supreme virtue as a poet. He is ever prone to be a little rugged in his manner, and this ruggedness has proved something of a trap to the unwary. Luis de Leon has no real mannerisms, and is no ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... respects, the little sketch called "The Father" is the supreme example of Bjoernson's artistry in this kind. There are only a few pages in all, but they embody the tragedy of a lifetime. The little work is a literary gem of the purest water, and it reveals the whole secret of the author's genius, as displayed in his early tales. It is by these ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... cadenced, voice; one could almost see him up there in the thick darkness, panting, ardent, in the spasm of his musical inspiration, utterly engrossed in his own beautiful little world of song, overwhelmed by the charm of his own artistry. ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... wife along the floor when he was excessively annoyed, so that she went with her head bound for a year thereafter, are excused on the ground of his general decency. And indeed he was a lovable old boy, and the simple and unselfconscious artistry with which the author develops his character, and that of his daughter-in-law, SOFYA NIKOLAYEVNA, delights the jaded literary palate. AKSAKOFF has a quite singular power of selecting just the incident, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various
... moments of disbelief, their repressed but at times visible betrayals of horror, the steadiness of their eyes, the tenseness of their lips—all added to what he might have called, at another time, the dramatic artistry ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... Keldermans, of the celebrated family of architects. He it was who designed the Bishop's Palace, and the great town halls of Louvain, Oudenaarde, and Brussels, although some authorities allege that Gauthier Coolman designed the Cathedral. But without denying the power and artistry of this latter master, we may still believe in the well-established claim of Keldermans, who showed in this great tower the height of art culminating in exalted workmanship. Keldermans was selected by Marguerite and Philip of Savoie to build the "Greatest Church in Europe," ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... attention, due no less to the romantic interest of the stories, the marvellous penetration into human motives, the grasp of historical atmospheres, than to the originality and perfection of their artistry. ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... the court itself and its falling-water motif than with the weightier sculpture it contains. They create a pleasing ripple of merriment. Their light and airy modeling has the beauty of unconscious and unforced artistry. The columns stand just within the northern entrance of the court, guarding a vista ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... That one lone star that gleams above the glow; For that high glory of the impartial sun,— The golden noonings big with promised life; The matchless pageant of the evening skies. The wide-flung gates,—the gleams of Paradise,— Supremest visions of Thine artistry; The sweet, soft gloaming, and the friendly stars; The vesper stillness, and the creeping shades; The moon's pale majesty; the pulsing dome, Wherein we feel Thy great heart throbbing near; For sweet laborious days and restful nights; For work to do, and strength ...
— Bees in Amber - A Little Book Of Thoughtful Verse • John Oxenham
... threads which scraped away the surface of the paper more delicately than any other tool that had been devised. There were the materials for his, their rehabilitation if they were placed in his wife's deft artist fingers. Here was all the chemistry and artistry of ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... disregard for the fact that artists are men when they are not women," Duff said. "I don't believe their behaviour is a bit more affected by their artistry than it would be by a ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... the realm of Best Sellers, however, the hero of May Sinclair's novel, The Divine Fire, who is presumably modeled after Keats, is a lower class Londoner, presented with the most unflinching realism that the author can achieve. Consummate indeed is the artistry with which she enables him to keep the sympathy of his readers, even while he commits the unpardonable sin of dropping his h's. [Footnote: Another historical poet whose lowly origin is stressed in poetry is Marlowe, the son of a cobbler. See Alfred ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... at its designated point, we proceeded to camouflage the guns with the artistry we had derived from our instruction, covering them ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... "The artistry of the novel, brutal, direct, detached, courageous, desperately poignant, is not to ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... is whether or not an artist remains in the picture when she is not singing or speaking. Mary Garden knows how to listen on the stage. She does not need to move or speak to make herself a part of the action and she is never guilty of such an offence against artistry as that committed by Tamagno, who, according to Victor Maurel, allowed a scene in Otello to drop to nothing while he prepared himself ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... simple in studios are wont to dilate upon, touches me no more, or very, very rarely. The books I love now are those which teach me something actual about the living world; and it troubles me not at all if any of them betray no sense of beauty and lack immortal words. Their artistry is nothing, what they say is everything. So on the shelf to which I mostly resort is a book on the Himalayas; a Lloyd's Shipping Register; a little work on seamanship that every would-be second mate knows; Brown's Nautical Almanacs; a Channel Pilot; a Continental ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... these vows I shall call, for want of a better term, the vow of "artistry,"—the pledge that the initiate takes to do the work that his hand finds to do in the best possible manner, without reference to the effort that it may cost or to the reward that it may ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... certain strange differences. Broadly speaking, modern American verse is sharp, vigorously experimental; full of youth and its occasional—and natural—crudities. English verse is smoother, more matured and, molded by centuries of literature, richer in associations and surer in artistry. Where the American output is often rude, extremely varied and uncoordinated (being the expression of partly indigenous, partly naturalized and largely unassimilated ideas, emotions, and races), the English product is formulated, precise and, in spite of its fluctuations, true to its past. It goes ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... 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 pace at which her industrial rake's progress is proceeding, so insensible to the degree to which she is prodigally sacrificing that which, when it is lost to her, can never be recovered. It is no ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... Skrimshanks's new novel is being looked forward to expectantly by those who admire the vital and distinguished artistry of his work. The author, it will be remembered, was employed in a firm of ginger-beer bottlers before he took to literature, and Mr. WELLS, who contributes a Preface, dwells happily on the stimulating and phosphorescent quality which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... alternately timorous and prehensile towards female society in the servants' hall, was the source of many poignant generalisations. Miss EDITH EVANS, as a mother-in-law manquee, showed a touch of real artistry; and Mr. GEORGE CARR had no difficulty in getting fun out of the part of a Japanese house-boy, almost the only novelty which we owed to the American origin of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... that "half-mast" matter, and that if we could get just at that process in the child's mind, we should have something very valuable for all concerned. But we can only approximate the inner pictures. The quality of impressionism in artistry endeavours to do that—to hurl the fleeting things into some kind of lasting expression. The greatest expressionist can only approximate, even after he has emerged from the prison-house and perfected his instrument through a life ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... it represents the very limited body of his writing which does not, in some degree, propose and enforce a definite poetic concept. Not elsewhere in his earlier work has MacDowell marshalled the materials of his art with so confident an artistry as he exhibits in this concerto. In substance the work is not extraordinary. The manner derives something from Grieg, more from Liszt, and there is comparatively little disclosure of personality. But the manipulation ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... that the directness and simplicity of the Americans is the directness and simplicity of the artist, the man who has no use for unessentials. And one gets this sense of artistry in an American's business dealings. He goes directly at his object, and he goes with a concentrated power and a zest that is exhilarating. Here, too, he exposes his hand in a way bewildering to the Britisher, ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... in the possession of a cook whose artistry was beyond question, if the same could not be said of the guests to whom she so frequently ministered. She was a descendant of the French, that race which makes everything tend towards development of the soul, and consequently ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... dumb-waiter shafts: they have been asphyxiated when the gas-range went out. And to think that only a moment ago, he had been vexed with her. The sight of each room, once so hideously commonplace, now so charming with Anna's artistry and the work of her own hands—her beautiful hands which ought to be so cared for—filled him with contrition and ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... hereafter, meet the glance Of Onone; when her lord, Now thy Paris, shall go t'ward Ida, at his last sad end, Seeking her, his early friend, Who alone can cure his ill Of all who love him, if she will. It were fitting she should see In that hour thine artistry, And her husband's speechless corse In the garment of remorse! But take heed that in thy work Naught unbeautiful may lurk. Ah, how little signifies Unto thee what fortunes rise, What others fall! Thou still shalt rule, Still shalt work the colored crewl. Though ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... and creation tend to make man an innovator, initiator, an improver. The side of man's nature that urges him to possess, directs him toward wealth and power. The side of his nature that leads him to create points to invention, to craftmanship, to artistry. Thus the possessive and the creative instincts are not merely at odds. Possession leads to status while ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing
... Reggie's artistry could not help watching the two women together with appreciative satisfaction. Yae was even smaller and finer-fingered than the pure-bred Japanese. Ever since he had first met Yae Smith he had compared and contrasted her in his mind with Asako ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... stock of the thing with idle fingers; in the blackness my finger-tips were all the eyes I had for so small a thing. It was about the size of a five-pound butter box, I should say; it seemed as it lay in my hand a sort of an old and polished casket, a thing done with an exotic artistry, broad, lacquered surfaces and curves and bits of intricate carving. And I thought it was empty till I shook it and felt the tiny impact of some chambered weight. Already the thing had taken my interest. Catching up I touched Rolldown's arm and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... more ways than one. In the first place he is the earliest novelist to practise a conscious artistry of plot. The Mystery of Edwin Drood remains mysterious, but those who essay to conjecture the end of that unfinished story have at last the surety that its end, full worked out in all its details, had been in its author's mind before ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... words or story, people began to feel that both dance and melody were separable if not alien features; and thus they demanded the composed and recited ballad, to the harm and ultimate ruin of that spontaneous song for the festal, dancing crowd. Still, even when artistry had found a footing in ballad verse, it long remained mere agent and mouthpiece for the folk; the communal character of the ballad was maintained in form and matter. Events of interest were sung in almost ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... of fair Bohemia?) The artist's life is wrapped up in making his readings of master works more significant, more eloquent, more beautiful. He is interested in everything that contributes to his artistry, whether it be literature, science, history, art or the technic of his own interpretative development. He penetrates the various mystic problems which surround piano playing by the infallible process of persistent study and reflection. The psychical phase of his work interests him ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke |
