"Dilettantish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... up for everything. Italy, all the same, had spoiled a great many people; he was even fatuous enough to believe at times that he himself might have been a better man if he had spent less of his life there. It made one idle and dilettantish and second-rate; it had no discipline for the character, didn't cultivate in you, otherwise expressed, the successful social and other "cheek" that flourished in Paris and London. "We're sweetly provincial," said ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... Preludes that Ignaz Moscheles first comprehended Chopin and his methods of execution. The German pianist had found his music harsh and dilettantish in modulation, but Chopin's originality of performance—"he glides lightly over the keys in a fairy-like way with his delicate fingers"—quite reconciled the elder man ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... discussion of Tolstoy. Dostoievsky was a profounder nature, greater than Tolstoy, though he was not the finished literary artist. All that Tolstoy tried to be, Dostoievsky was. He did not "go to the people" (that pose of dilettantish anarchy)—he was born of them; he did not write about Siberian prisons from hearsay, he lived in them; he did not attempt to dive into the deep, social waters of the "submerged tenth," because he himself seldom emerged to the surface. In a word, Dostoievsky ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... took time—much time. At first great things were expected by the farmers of the State, but gradually their confidence waned. As they saw the new professor walking over the farm in a dilettantish way, superintending operations with gloved hands, and never touching any implement, doubts arose which soon ripened into skepticism. Typical were the utterances of our farm manager. He was a plain, practical farmer, who had taken the first ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White |
