"Critic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Chancellor under the circumstances was to consider any promise to be given to Austria from the standpoint of German interests, and to keep watch on the method of its fulfilment. The Chancellor, says his critic, did not hesitate to accept the decision of the Emperor, apparently imagining that Austria's position as a Great Power was already shaken and would collapse unless she could insist on being compensated at the expense of the ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... buildings whose dates are to be approximately divined from their plans, their structure, and their decorations; statues, statuettes, bas-reliefs, and all the various debris of a great civilization, when studied with the industrious ardour which distinguishes modern science, enable the critic to realize the vast antiquity of those Chaldaean cities, in which legend and history are so ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... somewhat in advance of the story. Henchard, being uncultivated himself, was the bitterest critic the fair girl could possibly have had of her own lapses—really slight now, for she read omnivorously. A gratuitous ordeal was in store for her in the matter of her handwriting. She was passing the dining-room door one evening, and had occasion to go in for something. It was not till she ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... situation, from beginning to end, is the work of Wilkie Collins. The actual writing is entirely his up to a certain point: from that point to the end it is partly his, but mainly mine. Where his writing ends and mine begins, I need not point out. The practised critic will, no doubt, at once lay his finger on ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... wings, etc.), hastily wash his hands, trot along in front of them to his place of business, and in a brief space of time turn out some complicated legal instrument with which it would defy the sharpest critic to ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... foreruns the ages, Anticipating all that shall be said! O happy Reader! having for thy text The magic book, whose Sibylline leaves have caught The rarest essence of all human thought! O happy Poet! by no critic vext! How must thy listening spirit now rejoice To be interpreted by such ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... believe in advertising. Someone may ask you who wrote The Winning of the Best, and you'll have to know it wasn't Colonel Roosevelt but Mr. Ralph Waldo Trine. The beauty of being a bookseller is that you don't have to be a literary critic: all you have to do to books is enjoy them. A literary critic is the kind of fellow who will tell you that Wordsworth's Happy Warrior is a poem of 85 lines composed entirely of two sentences, one of 26 lines and one of 59. What ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... the serene critic may take exception to this form of reasoning and produce examples of genius, such as Wordsworth, who lived a strictly pious life, never offending any moral law by a hairbreadth; but Wordsworth was not made like Byron; he had not the personality of the poor wayward cripple who at one ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... pleased at her praise, and wrote on while she put away the tea-things with a contented expression as though he had passed a high critic, and need not fear any other. Once he looked up with a quizzical expression and made a jocose remark about "our article," taking her into a sort of partnership with him in it, which set her heart to beating happily, until it ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... his army—which he had done—he had brought back nothing in safety but that "old impudent face of his."[32] Altogether it is a tirade of abuse very inferior to Cicero's dignity. Le Clerc, the French critic and editor, speaks the truth when he says, "Il faut avouer qu'il manque surtout de moderation, et que la gravite d'un orateur consulaire y fait trop souvent place a l'emportement d'un ennemi." It is, however, full of life, and amusing as an expression of honest hatred. The reader ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... suggested that this answer was borrowed from Virgil, and goes strongly against the genuineness of the manuscript. The Editor's memory was upon the stretch to recollect the words; the learned critic supplied them:- ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... words which form the second line in the Essay on Poetry Popes citation has made many familiar. Addison paid young Pope a valid compliment in naming him as a critic in verse with Roscommon, and, what then passed on all hands for a valid compliment, in holding him worthy also to be named as a poet in the same breath with ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... critic, Scaliger, made the principles of it so far his concern, that he was able personally to satisfy an Emperor's curiosity, as to the nature and meaning of the Pirrhic dance, by executing ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... of America have furnished an almost inexhaustible theme for the critic, the biographer, and the historian. In the year 1892 there was celebrated an event which has come by common consent to be regarded as a world-famous epoch, worthy to be held in everlasting remembrance. We commemorated ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... of Aubignac. Francois Hedelin, Abbe D'Aubignac, a famous critic and champion of the theatre, was born at Paris, 4 August, 1604. Amongst his best known works are: Terence justifie (4to, 1646, Paris), an attack on Menage; La Practique du theatre (4to, 1669, Paris); and Dissertations concernant le poeme dramatique en forme de remarques sur les deux tragedies ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... of the professor, the teacher pro tem. appended, as a criticism of an essay of Gilmour's on Utilitarianism, the words, "Wants thoroughness." This was a problem to the diligent student, who tackled his critic at the end of the hour, and apparently had the best of the argument; for he told me afterwards that he had puzzled the judge to explain his own verdict. There was a strong vein of combativeness in him; he liked to try ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... frock-coat—I hear him perhaps still more than I see him deliver himself on the then great subject of Jenny Lind, whom he seemed to have emerged from the wilderness to listen to and as to whom I remember thinking it (strange small critic that I must have begun to be) a note of the wilderness in him that he spoke of her as "Miss Lind"; albeit I scarce know, and must even less have known then, what other form he could have used. The rest of ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... and the necessity for a sane and vigorous patriotism began to be dimly realized. One of the earliest symptoms of this new attitude was the publication, in 1903, of Federigo Garlanda's La terza Italia; the book professed to be written by a friendly American observer and critic of Italian affairs, and the author regards the absence of militant patriotism as the chief cause of Italy's weakness in comparison with other nations. Mario Morasso, in his volume, L'Imperialismo nel Secolo XX, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... remains before all things a man of the world; his satire is more of manners and follies than of vice or impiety; and his excellent sense keeps him always to that "golden mean" in which he sums up the lesson of Epicurus. As a critic he shows the same general good sense, but his criticisms do not profess to be original or to go much beneath the surface. In Greek literature he follows Alexandrian taste; in Latin he represents the tendency of his age to undervalue the earlier efforts of the native genius and lay great ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... is it, dear master?" Porbus asked respectfully, while the young man with difficulty repressed his strong desire to beat the critic. ...
— The Unknown Masterpiece - 1845 • Honore De Balzac
... most frequent objections offered by the casual critic when the subject of expert testimony is discussed is to the effect that people write different hands with different pens, and he probably believes this to be true. A very slight acquaintance with the principles on which the expert works would satisfy this spontaneous critic of the fallacy ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... giving faith to the creations of the imagination that a man becomes a poet. It is by treating those creations as deceptions, and by resolving them, as nearly as possible, into their elements, that he becomes a critic. In the moment in which the skill of the artist is perceived, the spell ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... with the decorous attitude of a conventional audience. I marked one dapper catbird, perched on a poplar limb, who cocked his head and heard the singer through, and then made that almost imperceptible gesture with which a great critic indicates his approval of a novice. "Not half bad," he seemed to say,—this blase old habitue of the thicket music-halls. "I shouldn't wonder if something could be made of that voice if it ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... (c. 1490-1544), Italian critic, was born at Aquila, in the kingdom of Naples. He was a great favourite with Charles V., at whose court he resided for thirty-three years, and by whom he was employed on various foreign missions. To a perfect knowledge of Greek and Latin ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Pindaric ode, a predilection which won him a mention without honor in Johnson's life of Pope (Lives of the Poets, ed. Birkbeck Hill, III, 227). Even the heroic couplets of his poem on "Poetry" aim rather at pseudo-Pindaric diffuseness than at epigrammatic concentration of statement. As a critic Cobb deserves attention in spite of his mediocrity, or even because of it. He helps to fill out the picture of the literary London of his time, and his opinions and tastes provide valuable side-lights on such greater ...
— Discourse on Criticism and of Poetry (1707) - From Poems On Several Occasions (1707) • Samuel Cobb
... instances to be given that he does not lack merit are that the Jocelyns, whom he has offended by his birth, cannot change their treatment of him, and that the hostile women, whatever they may say, do not think Rose utterly insane. At any rate, Rose is satisfied, and her self-love makes her a keen critic. The moment Evan appeared, the sickness produced in her by the Countess passed, and she was ready to brave her situation. With no mock humility she permitted Mrs. Shorne to place her in a seat where glances could not ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... OF AN R.A.!—Everyone knows that a Critic is one, who would, professionally, roast and cut up his own father; but that some Critics go beyond this, may be gathered from the fact of the Art-Critic of the Observer, in one of his recent reviews of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 24, 1890 • Various
... raiment." Through history and literature the Tuskegee student is brought to develop a criticism, an appreciation of life and the worthier ends of human striving. To such a discipline, however elementary, the critic will not, I take it, begrudge ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... shades, then, be satisfied with the good things in the way of praise they received in their lives; for between us and them there is fixed a great gulf of oblivion, into which Time, the merciless critic from whose judgment there is no appeal, has ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... indeed be argued that the defects of his great qualities, the over-ideality, the haste, the incoherence, and the want of grasp on narrative, are glaringly apparent in these early works. But while this is true, the qualities themselves are absent. A cautious critic will only find food in "Zastrozzi" and "St. Irvyne" for wondering how such flowers and fruits of genius could have lain concealed within a germ apparently so barren. There is even less of the real Shelley discernible in these productions, ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... ordinary interpretation of this word. The word happened to connect itself—but that was no practical concern of mine; me it had not biassed in the one direction, nor should it have biassed any just critic in the counter, direction—happened, I say, to connect itself with the ancient dispute upon the duration of future punishments. What was meant by the aeonian punishments in the next world? Was the proper sense of the word eternal, or was it not? I, for my part, meddled not, nor upon ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... lady paused it was evident she had produced a sensation, for Saul smiled at the fire, Ruth looked dismayed at this assault upon one of her idols, and the young ladies were both astonished and amused at the keenness of the new critic who dared express what they had often felt. Randal, however, was quite composed and laughed good-naturedly, though secretly feeling as if a pail of cold water ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... Revised Life of Shelley a critic says, in a contemporary: "He puts the well-known boats of Archimedes into blank verse." These boats were, we presume, fitted ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 7, 1914 • Various
... advanced a new idea, no matter how great and noble, has been subjected to criticism, and therefore we too must expect it. And, in accordance with the spirit of the critic, will be the criticism. Whether dictated by the spirit of justice, kindness, gentleness, and charity, or by injustice, malice, rudeness, and intolerance, it is still an index of the man. But it is quite certain ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... experience of the thanklessness of critical honesty,—but it is a fact, that most writers, except sour and unsuccessful ones, tired of finding fault at about the time when they are beginning to grow old. As a general thing, I would not give a great deal for the fair words of a critic, if he is himself an author, over fifty years of age. At thirty we are all trying to cut our names in big letters upon the walls of this tenement of life; twenty years later we have carved it, or shut up our jack-knives. Then we are ready to help others, and care less to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... interest in the matter decently, with the veil of humorous affectation. They cannot spontaneously and sincerely make a business of it, as the French do in all good faith. Even if they had a genius for dining, we doubt if a critic is right in thinking they should dine at six o'clock or seven at latest. Whether in the country or in town, the business or amusement of the day claims more time. Sportsmen, for example, in early autumn could not possibly return home ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... fairly orthodox opinion concerning book-collectors is that their vices are many, their virtues of a negative sort, and their ways altogether past finding out. Yet the most hostile critic is bound to admit that the fraternity of bibliophiles is eminently picturesque. If their doings are inscrutable, they are also romantic; if their vices are numerous, the heinousness of those vices is mitigated by the fact that it is possible to sin humorously. Regard ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... the moment when the audience may be imagined to have comfortably settled for their nap a sudden explosive fortissimo chord is introduced. "There all the women will scream," said Haydn, with twinkling eyes. A contemporary critic read quite a different "programme" into it. "The 'Surprise,'" he wrote, "might not be inaptly likened to the situation of a beautiful shepherdess who, lulled to slumber by the murmur of a distant waterfall, starts alarmed by the unexpected firing of a fowling-piece." ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... of the 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
... which has yet befallen me, the most wanton blow below the belt which Fate has ever dealt me, is buried beneath the snows of twenty years. But even now I cannot recall it without a shudder. And if a carping critic ventures to point out that blows below the belt are not often buried beneath snow, then all I can say is that when I have made my meaning clear, I see no reason for a servile conformity ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... for the age at which it was written. Few boys at that age can write anything that will hang together as a poem. Young Longfellow was a better poet at thirteen than his father's friend, the Judge, was a critic. His verses were by no means stiff, but on the contrary showed indications of that natural grace and facility of expression for which he became afterwards distinguished. As for the originality of ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... free to follow his own pursuits, and to live in that political world which alone interested him, there was not an anecdote, a trait, a good thing said, or a bad thing done, which did not reach him by a fine critic and a lively narrator. He was always behind those social scenes which, after all, regulate the political performers, knew the springs of the whole machinery, the chang-ings and the shiftings, the fiery cars and golden chariots which men might mount, and ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... and, as these things all happened in the earliest chapters, I readily foresaw an ultimate end of the happiest nature and a solution of all difficulties worked out in defiance of the probabilities. A disappointed prophet is a captious critic and, the story turning out quite otherwise, I was very much on the alert for latent faults. Of these I found none. True, I did not altogether like Jim Westfield, but then I doubt if I was altogether meant to. Furthermore I give many extra marks to the author (as to whose ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... reconstruct that atmosphere to-day. A foreign critic [Dr. George Brandes, in vol. iv. of his 'Main Currents of Nineteenth Century Literature'] has summed it up by saying that England was then pre-eminently the home of cant; while in politics her native energy was diverted to oppression, in morals and religion it took the form of hypocrisy and ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... of blood and vulgarity, prince of ephemerals and idol of the unelect"—as a Chicago critic chortles—is dead. It is true. He is dead, dead and buried. And a fluttering, chirping host of men, little men and unseeing men, have heaped him over with the uncut leaves of Kim, wrapped him in Stalky & Co., for winding sheet, and for headstone reared his unconventional ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... sanguine Talbot, "you must make the most of the time. The Yankees may not give us another chance. Across yonder, where you see that dim light trying to shine through the dirty window, Winthrop is printing his paper, which comes out this morning. As he is a critic of the Government, I suggest that we go over and see the task ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... latter is most noteworthy. Hazlitt calls him the only purely contemplative character Shakespeare ever drew. From the beginning to the end of the play he does absolutely nothing except to think and moralize. Another critic has said, "Shakespeare designed Jaques to be a maker of fine sentiments, a dresser forth in sweet language of the ordinary commonplaces...." It has been suggested,[1] not without some show of reason, that Shakespeare in adapting Lodge's romance ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... have a sort of religion in literature, believing that no author can justly intrude upon the public without feeling that his writings may be of some benefit to mankind, I beg leave to apologize for this little book. I know, no critic can tell me better than I know myself, how much it falls short of what might have been done by an abler pen. Yet it is something—an index, I should say, to something better. The French in America may sometime find a champion. For my own part, I would that the gentler principles ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... fables de Pilpay, Lokman, d'Esope bien raisonnables." These tales, detached, but strung together by artificial means - pearls with a thread drawn through them - are manifest precursors of the Decamerone, or Ten Days. A modern Italian critic describes the now classical fiction as a collection of one hundred of those novels which Boccaccio is believed to have read out at the court of Queen Joanna of Naples, and which later in life were ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... knowledge of their language, I felt my only chance was to acquiesce in everything not positively sinful. The entrance of a menagerie and horticultural exhibition into the town—for thus I explained to myself what was going on before my eyes—could not be severely censured by the harshest critic, and I prepared to show my affability by joining in an innocent diversion ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... taste for frivolous employment and sensuality; feasts, and dances, and music, and tricks of players, and exhibitions of buffoons, were more attended to than all the serious and important cares of life. Every young man was a critic in the science of adjusting the folds of his robe, or of giving a studied negligence to his hair; every young woman was instructed in every art that serves to consume time or endanger modesty. Repeat to them an ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... pleasure to send a few lines in answer to your note, though it would be easy for a critic to say that I have long since passed the point where I could give a cold-blooded opinion of Mr. Wallace. I can write only from the stand-point of warm friendship and cannot be cold in my respect and admiration for my friend. Mr. Wallace is pre-eminently ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... met with flattering receptions, though they had appeared nervous. The Russian general especially, whose style, said the critic, was somewhat reminiscent of Mr. T. E. Dunville, had made himself a great favourite with the gallery. The report concluded by calling attention once more to the fact that the salaries paid to the two—eight hundred and seventy-five pounds a week each—established ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... aera, see the history and laws of Moses. Ancient Gaul is stigmatized by Diodorus Siculus, (tom. i. l. v. p. 356,) China by the Mahometar and Christian travellers, (Ancient Relations of India and China, p. 34 translated by Renaudot, and his bitter critic the Pere Premare, Lettres Edifiantes, tom. xix. p. 435,) and native America by the Spanish historians, (Garcilasso de la Vega, l. iii. c. 13, Rycaut's translation; and Dictionnaire de Bayle, tom. iii. p. 88.) ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... nephew was in bed from Master Mayrant's lusty blows. One could readily guess the manner in which young John, with his pent-up fury over the custom house, would "land" his chastisement all over the person of any rash critic! And what a talking about it must be going on everywhere to-day! If Kings Port tongues had been set in motion over me and my small notebook in a library, the whole town must be buzzing over every bruise given and taken in ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... that so much can be offered in favour of the old printers. And yet—were it not that the genuine text is always to be preferred—we could almost wish that the critic had left their blunder ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... being light in her youth, had become chestnut, and which she wore curled very plainly, and with much powder, admirably set off her face, in which the most rigid critic could only have desired a little less rouge, and the most fastidious sculptor a little more fineness ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... A competent musical critic writes to me of this work: "The counterpoint is clear and flowing, and is managed with considerable taste and effect. It would be difficult to explain the great cleverness shown in the construction of the Catch without diagrams to illustrate the movements of the parts. ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... rich imagination, a wealth of feeling, and the power of poetic expression went hand in hand with an indomitable will. In the spring of 1770 the young poet went to Strassburg to complete his law course. There Herder happened to be, even then a famed critic and scholar, and he aroused in Goethe a love and understanding of what was really great and genuine in literature: especially Homer, the Bible, Shakspere, and the Volkslied i.e., the simple folksong. In the ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... if literature so tested is found guilty of suppression, evasion or misinterpretation, we call the work insincere, though the author may have written in perfect good faith. That is a necessary distinction to keep in mind. If you call a man's work insincere, the superficial critic will take it as calling the man himself insincere; but the two are distinct, and it needs to be emphasised, for sincere men are making these propagandist plays, of which the manifest and glaring untruth is working mischief ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... 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 ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... then the cry of blame, too loudly rais'd. The fickle crowd, thy person loudly curs'd, And then thou fled, and dar'd them do their worst. Unfortunate in love, thy youthful heart Was pain'd, and likewise with the burning smart Thy vanity receiv'd from critic's pen, Which often makes sarcastic, stronger men. Let us be fair with thee, thy fate deplore, And grieve thy youthful death, if nothing more. Let us in mercy judge, for thus we can, E'en with thy faults, thou ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... introduced our private life upon the stage, our common habits; and 'twas bold of me, for everyone was at home with these and could be my critic; I did not burst out into big noisy words to prevent their comprehension; nor did I terrify the audience by showing them Cycni[480] and Memnons[481] on chariots harnessed with steeds and jingling bells. Look at his disciples and look at mine. His are Phormisius and Megaenetus of ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... 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
... let us take a glance at his court. It has often been said, and is no doubt taken from Vasari's book, that in the Borgia Apartment Pinturicchio painted Pope Alexander VI adoring the Virgin represented under the likeness of his beloved, Julia Farnese. The critic must have been confused, because none of these madonnas recalls the face of Giulia la bella, whom people used to call the Bride of Christ. The picture that Vasari refers to must be one in ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... after French's own heart. Indeed, his tenacity was probably equal to that of his critic. Hence this fine tribute: "The great soldier who defended Plevna refused to acknowledge such a word as defeat. When things were at their worst his outward demeanour was calmest and most confident. There ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... warm correspondence with Caesar, and through Quintus sent continued messages to him. Literature was a neutral ground on which he could approach his political enemy without too open discredit, and he courted eagerly the approval of a critic whose literary genius he esteemed as highly as his own. Men of genuine ability are rarely vain of what they can do really well. Cicero admired himself as a statesman with the most unbounded enthusiasm. He was proud of his verses, which were hopelessly commonplace. ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... sarcasm of Horace Walpole, Goldsmith's "Traveller," Shenstone's "Pastorals," and the attempt of Mrs. Montagu to bring Shakspeare into fashion,—in all these subjects the graceful wit and exquisite taste of Talbot shone pre-eminent; and he had almost succeeded in convincing a profound critic that Gray was a poet more likely to live than Mason, when the servant ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that the poet may labor according to an ideal— that the critic may judge from ideas, but that mere executive art is subject to contingencies, and depends for effect on the occasion. Managers will be obstinate; actors are bent on display—the audience is inattentive and unruly. Their object is relaxation, and they are disappointed if ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Elizabeth Elstob's grammar: "Our earthly possessions are indeed our patrimony, as derived to us by the industry of our fathers; but the language in which we speak is our mother-tongue, and who so proper to play the critic in this as the females?" But this particular female obtained the rudiments of her rare education from her mother, before she was eight years old, in spite of much opposition from her right reverend ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... materials, and contains also some suggestive comment on the facts presented; but as the passing of time has made an estimation of Scott's power more safe, students have lost interest in his work as a critic, and recent writers have devoted little attention to this aspect of the ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... I—me—Mr. Bernard Effingwell Dreux, the prominent cotillion leader, the second-hand dealer, the art critic and amateur detective. I unearthed the notorious and dreaded Sicilian desperado in his lair, and now he's cooling his heels in the parish prison along with his ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... to separate the man from his work, if you are to be a good critic," Mrs. Faulkner said, and though this remark may be true enough I did not answer it, for Nina was looking extremely bored by the conversation we ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... Critic of the craft, As stage tradition tells; And yet—perhaps 'twill only be The jester with ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... entry, and some sign of recognition passed between them. The next ball came swiftly and threateningly down upon the leg side, and Doe, perhaps with the nervousness consequent upon the arrival of a new critic before whom he would fain do well, stepped back. A shout went up as it was seen that the ball had taken the leg bail. Doe looked flurried at this sudden dismissal and a bit upset. He involuntarily shot a glance at Freedham and after some hesitation left the crease. ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... him. One day, Buonarotti came into the chapel as usual, and whistled and sneered at a copy which Torregiani was making. The aggrieved artist, a man of large proportions, very truculent of aspect, with a loud voice and a savage frown, sprang upon his critic, and dealt him such a blow upon the nose, that the bone and cartilage yielded under his hand, according to his own account, as if they had been made of dough,—"come se fosse stato un cialdone." This was when both were very young men; but Torregiani, when relating the story many ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... said, in a bitter mood, 'It is so easy to be a critic, so difficult to be a creator. You two, now would you even dare to try to create?' They were nettled by my tone, and showed it. I said, 'I have a magnificent subject for a conte, no work de longue haleine, a conte. If you like ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... of the main hall of the Central Police Headquarters, on the second story, in Mulberry street, is a desk at which sits an old rosy-cheeked, white-headed police officer, named McWaters. McWaters is famous in New York. He is the theatrical critic of the Police Department. His opinions on music and the drama are of weighty authority among members of the force, and, like most critics, he is ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... inaccuracy, besides those referred to by this eminent critic, might be cited, even from the latest Standard Prayer Book, that of 1871. It is hard, for instance, to imagine even the veriest martinet in such matters objecting to the redress of a great wrong done on page 36 of the volume mentioned, where the prayer ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... be most where man is least; So, where is neither church nor priest, And never rag of form or creed To clothe the nakedness of need,— Where farmer-folk in silence meet,— I turn my bell-unsummoned feet; I lay the critic's glass aside, I tread upon my lettered pride, And, lowest-seated, testify To the oneness of humanity; Confess the universal want, And share whatever Heaven may grant. He findeth not who seeks his own, The soul is lost that's saved alone. Not on one ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... perhaps significant that a German critic has of late reminded us that the one test which the most authoritative and dramatic portrayal of the Day of Judgment offers, is the social test. The stern questions are not in regard to personal and family relations, ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... let ourselves be disturbed by an angel's vengeful music too mighty our ears and too awful for our terrors? Thus it happens to us to be struck suddenly by the lightning of wrath. The reader will go on reading if the book pleases him and the critic will go on criticizing with that faculty of detachment born perhaps from a sense of infinite littleness and which is yet the only faculty that seems to assimilate man to the ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... be fair to the object of his scorn was so genuine that his critic felt a swift access ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... presence, always looking up to him, had been like the perpetual swinging of a censer perpetually giving the fragrant incense that his vanity craved. And now all this was changed. The gentle acolyte was gone, the censer no longer swung, and instead there was a keen critic armed with words as hard as stones. No, there was nothing strange in the fact that, when William Pressley finally turned his gaze on Ruth, he looked at her as if she had been a stranger whom he had never seen before; an utter stranger, ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... soon as the State has fairly taken its bent to authority and philanthropy, and laid the least touch on private property, the days of the independent journal are numbered. State railways may be good things and so may State bakeries; but a State newspaper will never be a very trenchant critic ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is the gem of the collection. It is by FRNND KHNPFF. Our Head Critic was so overcome by this great work that he went out to get assistance, but unfortunately, in trying to pronounce the painter's name, he dislocated his jaw, and is now in a precarious state. Our Assistant Critic, Deputy Assistant Critic, Deputy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, May 7, 1892 • Various
... fifteen years of his literary life Poe was connected with various newspapers and magazines in Richmond, Philadelphia and New York. He was faithful, punctual, industrious, thorough. N. P. Willis, who for some time employed Poe as critic and sub-editor on ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... philosophy, history, literature, and legend, some repute as a maker of verses, and a liberality that led him to assist his gifted son in following his bent. From his father Robert inherited his literary tastes and his vigorous health; in his father he found a critic and companion. His mother was described by Carlyle as a type of the true Scotch gentlewoman. Her "fathomless charity," her love of music, and her deep religious feeling ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... difficult to separate drawing from painting. As he grew up the sense of composition and colour harmony became stronger and stronger, and the faults passed. At the same time, Velazquez was a severe critic of his own work, and a careful examination shows that even those pictures to which no suspicion can attach were retouched and corrected ...
— Velazquez • S. L. Bensusan
... transmission of racial experience makes possible, can be made perfect by the critical spirit alone, and, indeed, may be said to be one with it. For who is the true critic but he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure. And who is the true man of culture, if not he in whom fine scholarship ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... youths, remarks an acute critic of modern life (Hellpach, Nervositaet und Kultur, p. 175), are merely actuated by traditional principles, or by shyness, fear of venereal infections, lack of self-confidence, want of money, very seldom by any consideration for a future wife, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... have vexed me to have been so long kept in ignorance of it. But this is a small matter. The chief point is that Reality has the pulse of life in it—in a word that it confirms its title; which, indeed, is about the highest praise that a critic can bestow. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 5th, 1914 • Various
... a poor man perfectly innocent, I mean the printer. A lawyer may pick out expressions and make them liable to exception, where no other man is able to find any. But how can it be supposed, that an ignorant printer can be such a critic? He knew the author's design was honest, and approved by the whole kingdom, he advised with friends, who told him there was no harm in the book, and he could see none himself. It was sent him in an unknown hand, but the same in which he received the three ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... all declare. There is nothing in the world that I can see to prevent him keeping his living and doing as he pleases, as most parsons do. However, that's his own business. It is Frank's case which is the edifying case to me. If my convictions of sin had gone just a step farther," said the pitiless critic, "if I had devoted myself to bringing others to repentance, as is the first duty of a reformed sinner, my aunt Leonora would not have hesitated to ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... cultivated a superb contempt for those beliefs which other people cherish; he rejoiced in an open rebellion against convention, and manifested this hostility in an exaggerated carelessness of dress and manner. It was perhaps his habit of thought as much as anything else that had made him a dramatic critic; but it was a knack for keen analysis and a natural, caustic wit that had raised him to eminence in his field. Outwardly he was a sloven and a misanthrope; inwardly he was simple and rather boyish, but years of experience in a box-office, then as ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... the celebrated Nicolo Tommaseo, to whom a statue has been erected in the public garden below the piazza, where Sanmichele's gate stands. He was born in 1802, and was philologist, philosopher, historian, poet, novelist, critic, psychologist, statist, politician, and orator, leaving behind him, when he died in 1874, some two hundred works. In its time of prosperity the city owned several islands, of which Zlarin is the ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... come over you, Hartmut? Yesterday and to-day you were fairly beaming with triumph and joy, and now I have scarcely left you for an hour and return to find you in the depths of melancholy. Have you seen anything in the papers which has annoyed you? Something from the pen of a malicious, spiteful critic, I'll be bound." ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... But you, critic, the reader undoubtedly will ask, what is your solution? Show us this synthesis which, retaining the responsibility, the personality, in short, the specialty of the laborer, will unite extreme division and the greatest variety in one complex and ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... elephants, and monkeys. Thus stripped of their all, and left to shift for themselves as they may in this hard world, their pursuit and seeming attainment of knowledge under such peculiar difficulties are interesting to contemplate. However, we are not so sure as is the critic that instinct regularly increases downward and decreases upward in the scale of being. Now that the case of the bee is reduced to moderate proportions,[III-19] we know of nothing in instinct surpassing that of an animal so high ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... years old, he had a wealth of first-hand experiences quite outside the range of the man who is just finishing his leisurely passage through a public school and university: of schools and offices, of parliaments and prisons, of the street and of the high road, he had been a diligent and observant critic; for many years he had practised the maxim of Pope: 'The proper ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... scenery was a prisoner because the war had broken out in France! Everything had to wait a year, and during that time Verdi wrote and rewrote, making his opera one of the most beautiful in the world. Finally "Aida" was produced, and the story of that night as told by the Italian critic Filippi is not out of place here, since the night is historic in opera ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... silent enjoyment of the harmonies. As for the honest old seaman, there was as much melody in the howling of a gale to his unsophisticated ears, as in any thing else, and he saw no difference between this feat of the Templeton band and the sighings of old Boreas; and, to say the truth, our nautical critic was not so much ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper |
