"Mediocre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... long, large fingers; Kreisler is a larger man than I am but his fingers are small. It stands to reason that there must be a difference in the way in which we hold and use the bow. The difference between a great and a mediocre teacher lies in the fact that the first recognizes that bowing is an individual matter, different in the case of each individual pupil; and that the greatest perfection is attained by the development of the individual's capabilities within ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... of experience there always grows something finer than mere experience, and that in their different powers of ideal extension consists, for the most part, the difference between the great and the mediocre investigator. The kingdom of science, then, cometh not by observation and experiment alone, but is completed by fixing the roots of observation and experiment in a region inaccessible to both, and in dealing with which we are forced to fall back upon ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... consistent, an intelligent guidance; operating, as it were, out of some completer survey of the facts at a given moment than my own abilities could possibly have compassed; my mediocre faculties seemed gathered together and perfected—with the result, in time, that my "intuition," as others called it, came to be regarded with a respect that in some cases amounted to half reverence. The adjective ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... I had been boys together, and of all the comrades of my youth I should have selected him the last to distinguish himself in statecraft. He was a quiet, unobservant, and, as previously noted, self-absorbed man, with a sense of the picturesque, which took the form of mediocre water-colour sketching. His appearance was in his favour, for he was visibly a gentleman; a man, moreover, of refined thought and habit, whom burly Norfolk squires ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... number of the Almanack seems to me very successful. But the historical Calendar might gain in interest by omissions and additions. Mediocre local celebrities such as "H.S. in E., T.D. in B., L.A. in L.," etc., etc., do not need to figure as historical. As little do a couple of first performances that were given in Weimar under my conductorship. See to it, ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... mouthed that bit about cursing being the audible manifestation of a mediocre mind ...
— Attrition • Jim Wannamaker
... speaking in its entirety. And their tact is unerring. We could not stand women speaking the truth. We could not bear it. It would cause infinite misery and bring about most awful disturbances in this rather mediocre, but still idealistic fool's paradise in which each of us lives his own little life—the unit in the great sum of existence. And they know it. They are merciful. This generalisation does not apply exactly to Mrs Fyne's outburst of sincerity in a matter in which ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... the cargo of mules and horses. Cappy was particularly interested in the ventilating system below decks, for he was fond of horses and had resolved to deliver the cargo without the loss of a single animal. Of no mediocre turn of mind mechanically, he, assisted by Terry Reardon, made a few suggestions that the British veterinaries in charge were very glad ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... policy that his chief might approve. The breach between Jackson and Calhoun was widened by the disclosure of an old political secret, probably by Crawford of Georgia, a disappointed Presidential aspirant. Jackson's administration naturally fell more and more into the hands of mediocre men. ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... just as worthless as a feeble and incompetent disciple of anyone else—but, then, was our particular postulant so feeble after all? Also, we were fond of arguing that the liberating influence of Cezanne had made it possible for a mediocre artist to express a little store of recondite virtue which under another dispensation must have lain hid for ever. I doubt we exaggerated. We were much too kind, I fancy, to a number of perfectly commonplace young people, and said a number of foolish ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... weaving; the pottery has always been of the cheaper, coarser kind, and although some attempt was made at the close of the last century, when the industry was revived, to bring it to a higher artistic level of colour and glaze, it still, to my mind, continues mediocre, and has neither the highly finished beauty of such work as the Ruskin pottery, nor the genuinely simple lines or colouring of "peasant pottery," such as that from Quimperle in Brittany. The Barum ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... by regular rotation to the highest. The examination of these classes passed off fairly enough to satisfy a reasonable audience. Among the pupils there was the usual proportion of "sharps, flats, and naturals"—otherwise of bright, dull, and mediocre individuals. After the examination of the three classes was complete, there remained the two youths, Walter Middleton and Ishmael Worth, who, far in advance of the other pupils, were not classed ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... quantity of the results. The one may be busy all the while but slouch through the minutes. The other may be taut and intensive, working at white heat, and the output will be more extensive and of better quality. The mind that ambles through the period shows forth results that are both meager and mediocre; but the mind whose impact is both forceful and incisive produces results that serve to magnify the work of the school. Thus we have placed before us two basic considerations, one of which is the time itself, in actual minutes, and the ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... famous for her appreciation of Monsieur Rousseau. Indeed, there was something so unusual, so forceful in this large, almost masculine woman, that Calvert was as much impressed with her as he had been disappointed in Monsieur Necker. It seemed as if the mediocre talents of the Minister of Finance had flamed into genius in this leonine creature who was as much her mother's inferior in looks as her father's superior in intelligence. Mingled with this masculinity ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... reading anything at all, except Shakespeare, whom am going through from beginning to end. That tones you up and puts new air into your lungs, just as if you were on a high mountain. Everything appears mediocre ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... two glad lips of song have lifted many a mediocre soul up the slopes of happiness to the ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... Mr. Joseph Sexton of Santa Barbara, planted a sack of walnuts bought in the markets of San Francisco, which he had reason to believe had been grown in Chili. Of the resulting trees some were very good, others mediocre, and some worthless. Later on, nuts from the best of these trees were planted, and second generation seedlings produced. In this way the famous Santa Barbara Papershell type of walnut was evolved. With it developed an industry which among the tree products of southern California is now ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... coolly. "In short, my dear fellow, in literature you will not make money by hard work, that is not the secret of success; the point is to exploit the work of somebody else. A newspaper proprietor is a contractor, we are the bricklayers. The more mediocre the man, the better his chance of getting on among mediocrities; he can play the toad-eater, put up with any treatment, and flatter all the little base passions of the sultans of literature. There is Hector Merlin, who came from Limoges a short time ago; he is writing political ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... level, say a play of Shakespeare's, is translatable without too great a loss of character. If it moves in the upper rather than in the lower level—a fair example is a lyric of Swinburne's—it is as good as untranslatable. Both types of literary expression may be great or mediocre. ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... The cacique reminded them, however, that Guarionex was a hero, and had rendered him services when he fled to him for protection, for he had brought him royal presents. Moreover, he had taught both the cacique himself and his wife to sing and dance, a thing not to be held in mediocre consideration. Maiobanexius was determined never to surrender the prince who had appealed to his protection, and whom he had promised to defend. He was prepared to risk the gravest perils with him rather than to merit the reproach of having betrayed his guest. Despite the complaints ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... went the stories were true. Mr. Toscanini, as all the world knows by now, is the world's No. 1 musical purist. Nothing but perfection satisfies him. He hates compromise, loathes the half-baked and mediocre, refuses to put up with "something ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... want to hear the latest news, Coello? Your pupil Navarrete has become faithless to you and the noble art of painting. Don Juan gave him the enlistment money fifteen minutes ago. Better be a good trooper, than a mediocre artist! ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Meddle enmiksigxi. Medival mezepoka. Mediate peri. Mediate pera. Mediator perulo. Medical medicina. Medicament kuracilo. Medicinal medicina. Medicine kuracilo. Medicine (art) medicino. Mediocre malboneta. Meditate mediti. Meditation medito. Mediterranean Mezomaro. Medium (spiritualism) mediumo. Medium meza. Meek humilega. Meet renkonti. Meeting renkonto. Meeting (of club, etc.) kunveno. Meeting-place kunvenejo. Melancholy melankolio. Melancholy melankolia. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Woronzoff, built in the Italian style, with a tasteful garden adjoining. At the opposite end of the boulevard is the Exchange, also built in the Italian style, and surrounded by a garden. Not far from this is the Academy of Arts, a rather mediocre one-story building. The Theatre, with a fine portico, promises much outside, but is nothing great within. Next to the theatre is the Palais Royal, which consists of a pretty garden, round which are ranged large handsome shops, filled with costly goods. Many ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... Orange and other nobles, had demanded it for the Count de Roeulx, a gentleman of the Croy family, who, as well as his father, had rendered many important services to the crown. The appointment was, however, bestowed, through Granvelle's influence, upon the Seigneur d'Helfault, a gentleman of mediocre station and character, who was thought to possess no claims whatever to the office. Egmont, moreover, desired the abbey of Trulle for a poor relation of his own; but the Cardinal, to whom nothing in this way ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of the lack of a sense of beauty has been brought against nearly all original novelists; it is seldom brought against a mediocre novelist. Even in the extreme cases it is untrue; perhaps it is most untrue in the extreme cases. I do not mean such a case as that of Zola, who never went to extremes. I mean, for example, Gissing, a real extremist, who, it is now admitted, saw a clear and undiscovered beauty in forms ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... ask our superlative writers to be heaven-sent teachers, to be prophets, to be discoverers, what do we ask of them? Is it to write in a particular style, in a given lucid style, a given figurative style, or a given dignified style? Nay, it is only very mediocre writers who could obey such precepts. Every supreme writer has his own style, inalienable and inimitable, which is as much a part of him as his own soul, the look in his eyes, or his tones of voice. Bethink yourselves of Carlyle, ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... the other she fired off a rocket-like shower of original remarks, paradoxes, and brilliant criticism. She knew exactly where to scoff and where to be enthusiastic, jeered with all the ruthless slang of the Paris gamins at the pompously mediocre sights recommended to the tourists' admiration by Baedeker, and gave evidence of deep and true comprehension of all that was ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... Melbourne, of English parents, she came at an early age from Australia to San Francisco. Her father was connected in a business capacity with one of the local theatrical companies, and the young girl naturally drifted to the stage. She had only a mediocre histrionic talent, but what was perhaps more important, she had uncommon good looks, and she soon found that beauty was not only a valuable asset, but a sure lever to success. The critics praised her, not because she acted well, but because she dressed exquisitely, and pleased the eye. Managers ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... discuss the charge that he sought to make himself master. The important thing is that his mastery could have served no great end for France; that it would have been like himself, poor, barren, and hopelessly mediocre. And this would have been seen on every side. France had important military tasks to perform before her independence was assured. Robespierre hated war, and was jealous of every victory. France was in urgent need of stable government, of new laws, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... dressed in the extreme of the English fashion. He was probably excessively thin, to judge by his face and neck and hands, but he was made up admirably. He removed his hat and showed a forehead of mediocre proportions, over which his dark hair was conscientiously parted in the middle. Though not in appearance robust, he wore a moustache that would not have disgraced a Cossack, his eyes were small, gray, and near together, and his complexion ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... your smoker Boast your "shag," or even "twist," Every man were mediocre Save the blest tobacconist! He will point immortal morals, Make all common praises mute, Who shall win our grateful laurels With a ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... and beautifying, rather than subduing it. His work formed a palace, with a ruinous castle annexed as a curiosity. To Havill the conception had more charm than it could have to the most appreciative outsider; for when a mediocre and jealous mind that has been cudgelling itself over a problem capable of many solutions, lights on the solution of a rival, all possibilities in that kind seem to merge in ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... author [he goes on, later], as to the mediocre painter who still lingers over historical pictures, it is only the violence of the anecdote that appeals, and in his representation thereof does the entire interest of his work consist.... Indeed when I go to a theatre, I feel as though I were ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... than the Goncourts, whose insignificance approached at times imbecility, and in addition, Alphonse Daudet, with the air of a cheap comedian and an armful of mediocre books—a truly French diet, feeble, but well seasoned. These poor Giants, of whom Zola would talk, have become so weak and shrunken with time, that nobody is able any longer to make them out, ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... of useful, mediocre ability, eyed the younger man with curiosity, thinking that doubtless he had private means; that it was a pity he and Lindsay had fallen out, for he was a ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... and fifty dollars out of the deal, and Evan Adam Baldwin only got a few mediocre and amateur kisses, which he shared with me, for all his hard labor in plowing and tilling and restoring Elmnest and me to the point of being of value in the scheme of things. I got the best of that deal and why should I sulk?" I said to ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... a pretty little thing, but utterly mediocre and uninteresting, was clinging to the officer's arm, a second lieutenant in the ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... appropriate arms and costumes would entail the putting of all mediaeval European history upon a screen, to deliver oneself without apology from any such task. It may be for this reason that there is no history of Germany in the English tongue, that ranks above the elementary and the mediocre. There is a masterly and scholarly history of the Holy Roman Empire by an Englishman, which no student of Germany may neglect, but he who would trace the beginnings of Germany from 113 B. C. down to the time of the Great Elector, 1640, must be his own ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... making a class and then having that class receive the same wages, and it does nothing to encourage individual effort by consenting to the payment of higher wages to the man of experience, industry and skill than to the mediocre and lazy. It will in some way have to obviate that difficulty which works against the cause of labor and the interest of society. Moreover, its leaders do not discourage, as they should, lawlessness as a means of achieving their industrial ends. The history of the dynamiters in California and ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... small section of the population amongst whom, moreover, many must be able to afford the whole, or at least a larger proportion, of the cost of their children's education? Is it wise by making higher instruction so cheap to tempt parents to educate children often of poor or mediocre abilities out of their own plane of life? Would it not be better at any rate to raise the fees generally and to devote the sums yielded by such increase to exhibitions and scholarships for the benefit of the few amongst the humbler classes who ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... style about it and was overwrought and exaggerated. In shadows he seemed to have borrowed from Caravaggio. Vouet (1590-1649) was a student in Italy of Veronese's painting and afterward of Guido Reni and Caravaggio. He was a mediocre artist, but had a great vogue in France and left ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... He caught his father's arm, and whispered in his father's ear, and they plunged together into a side street broader than the asphalt thoroughfare, but with scarcely a break in either phalanx of drab mediocre dwellings, and not a creature stirring except themselves and a few who followed. The hog's back of a still more deserted bridge arched itself at the foot of the street, its suspension cables showing against the sky in foreshortened curves. ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... I adore good music, I hate bad, and I despise mediocre. Silence is golden, indeed, ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... not think that the mediocre quality of most book-reviewing is due to low payment. It is a result, I believe, of a wrong conception of what a book-review should be. My own opinion is that a review should be, from one point of view, a portrait of a book. It should present ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... popular legend that he had at one time joined a troop of banditti, and indulged in their excesses. The legend seems to have a familiarity with mountain passes, and his love of peopling them appropriately with banditti in action. Salvator Rosa was a dashing battle painter, a mediocre historical painter, and an excellent portrait painter as well as landscape painter. But it is chiefly by the savage grandeur of his mountain or forest landscapes, with their fitting dramatis personae, that he has won his renown. Mr Ruskin, while he allows Salvator's gift of imagination, ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... indecision of General McClellan drew from him the satiric broadside,—"Tardy George"—privately printed in 1865—Boker's thoughts were concerned with poetry. His official laureate consciousness did not serve to improve the verse. His "Our Heroic Themes"—written for the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa—was mediocre in everything but intent, recalling what Taylor wrote to him: "My Harvard poem, [he had read it in 1850 before the same fraternity] poor as it is, was received with great applause; but, alas! I published it, and thus killed the tradition of its excellence, ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... general assessment: mediocre service; local and long distance service provided throughout all regions of the country, with services primarily concentrated in the urban areas; major objective is to continue to expand and modernize long-distance network in order to keep pace with rapidly growing number of local subscriber ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... twenty-nine, while the thirtieth, indicted for murder, was convicted of manslaughter. In 1805 Martin was the acknowledged head of the American Bar, but at the same time he was undoubtedly a drunkard and a spendthrift. With an income of $10,000 a year, he was always in need. His mediocre stature, thinning locks, and undistinguished features created an impression which was confirmed by his slovenly attire and ungrammatical speech, which seemed "shackled by a preternatural secretion of saliva." Here, indeed, ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... but not to be mistaken—remained in his attitude toward her. He found indirect means for conveying his idea and that of her friends that she was wasting herself upon a folly, and was destined, if she persisted in it, to only the most mediocre success. An exhibition of her works, undertaken with the avowed wish to know "just where she stood," had been discouraging in its results. The art critics either refused to take her seriously or expressed the opinion that there were already in the world too many sculptors of distinguished ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... widespread myth, this does not usually involve some mysterious leap of hackerly brilliance, but rather persistence and the dogged repetition of a handful of fairly well-known tricks that exploit common weaknesses in the security of target systems. Accordingly, most crackers are only mediocre hackers. ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... concludes the third act of Prometheus Unbound. He is still repeating a lesson, and it calls forth less than the full powers of his imagination. The picture of perfection itself is cold, negative, and mediocre. The real genius of the poet breaks forth only when he allows himself in the fourth act to sing the rapture of the happy spirits who "bear Time to his tomb in eternity," while they circle in lyrical joy around the liberated earth. There sings Shelley. The picture itself is a faithful illustration ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... her. "Although the mediocre support and execrable direction spoiled most of your opportunities. Now if I had directed that picture, you would have ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... candidate for a commission. Any Governor felt a certain relief in intrusting a regiment to any man who had ever eaten clandestine oysters at Benny Haven's, or had once heard the whiz of an Indian arrow on the frontier, however mediocre might have been all his other claims to confidence. If he failed, the regular army might bear the shame; if he succeeded, to the State-House be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... victorious, and henceforth had nothing but disdain for his rival. But when, later on, Barbicane substituted simple howitzers of 600 lbs. for conical shots, the captain was obliged to go down in his own estimation. It fact, these projectiles, though of mediocre velocity, drilled with holes and broke to pieces ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... temptation, to weak writers, of this order of subject is especially great, because the study of it from the living—or dying—model is so easy, and to many has been the most impressive part of their own personal experience; while, if the description be given even with mediocre accuracy, a very large section of readers will admire its truth, and cherish its melancholy: Few authors of second or third rate genius can either record or invent a probable conversation in ordinary life; but few, on the other hand, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... Kaiser's own idea—with the great men of the time on their right and left hands. People whose sense of taste, not to say of humour, may limit their statecraft had smiled at this monotonous and grandiose row of the dead bones of distinguished and mediocre royalty immortalized in marble to the exact number of thirty-two. But they were My Ancestors, O Germans, who made you what you are! Right dress and keep that line of royalty in mind! It is your royal line, older than ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... from the Piraeus reconciled us to the very mediocre vessel which carried us to Smyrna. Our visit to Asia Minor we had inadvertently timed to the opening of the International College at Paradise near Smyrna. This college is the gift of Mrs. John Kennedy of New York. Mr. Ralph Harlow, our ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... questions; he reads Nietzsche, he ponders over many things, but he does not know how to think for himself. The fact that there are people who can find a way to express themselves appears to him as an inaccessible ideal; while mediocre minds have no attraction for him at all. It is from this feeling that all his sufferings come. So "a horse, carrying a heavy burden, breathes hard, falls to the ground, but is forced to rise and proceed by stinging lashes ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... an artist of mediocre creative talent but great aims and amazing belief in himself. He had a fine critical faculty which was shown in his appreciation of the Elgin marbles, in opposition to the most respected authorities of his day. ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... and intrigued in politics the rest of their lives, with frequent spice-work of duels. Esteeming personal courage as a supreme human virtue, and never wearying of prating their devotion to the highest standard of intrepidity, they never produced a General who was even mediocre; nor did any one ever hear of a South Carolina regiment gaining distinction. Regarding politics and the art of government as, equally with arms, their natural vocations, they have never given the Nation a statesman, ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... interest, and few will fail to read it with advantage. Upon the ordinary rules of whist, Pembridge supplies much sensible and thoroughly amusing comment. The best player in the world may gain from his observations, and a mediocre player can scarcely find a better counsellor. There is scarcely an opinion expressed with which we ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... There is a certain half-feudal glamour about England yet which appeals strongly to the callow author: it lends that rosy haze of romance and unreality which is popularly associated with fiction; but it was long ago done to death by mediocre writers and laughed out of good literary society, and to-day America will not ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... drawing room needs all that to be filled. Being the source of all preferment and of every favor, it is natural that it should overflow[2129]. It is the same in our leveling society (in 1875), where the drawing room of an insignificant deputy, a mediocre journalist, or a fashionable woman, is full of courtiers under the name of friends and visitors. Moreover, here, to be present is an obligation; it might be called a continuation of ancient feudal homage; the staff of nobles is maintained as the retinue of its born general. In the language ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... fame; to the publisher, the right of publishing a good book is solid capital,—an established house, in the long run, makes more money on "Standards" than on "Catchpennies"; and to the public the possession of the best literature is the breath of life, as that of the bad and mediocre is moral and intellectual decadence. But in practice the interests of the three do not harmonize. The author, even supposing his efforts are stimulated by the highest aspirations for excellence and not by any commercial instinct, is compelled by his circumstances to get the best price ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... many tourists, in their desire to appear singular, now take the nil admirari of Horace for their motto. To this dissatisfied class the colonel's only daughter, Miss Lydia, belonged. "The Transfiguration" has seemed to her mediocre, and Vesuvius in eruption an effect not greatly superior to that produced by the Birmingham factory chimneys. Her great objection to Italy, on the whole, was its lack of local colour and character. My readers must discover the sense of these expressions as best they may. A few years ago ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... school for a more advanced position which she would probably not be allowed to take on account of her youth and inexperience. Students in this department need to be watched with especial care to determine whether they are well adapted for their occupation, and the mediocre worker would better enter some other field where the opportunities for her are more encouraging. As the advance is slow the girl also whose poverty is hurrying her into wage-earning would better not elect ...
— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman
... two young men, of whom one will be admitted to be a genius of high order, the other scarcely above the point of mediocrity; yet you will see the genius sinking and perishing in poverty, obscurity, and wretchedness; while, on the other hand, you will observe the mediocre plodding his slow but sure way up the hill of life, gaining steadfast footing at every step, and mounting, at length, to eminence and distinction, an ornament to his family, a ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... with their indifferent dress, their vernacular and free manners of the mountains and ranges brushed elbows with the more modern folk of the poor and the middle class of the Middle West. They were uninteresting and mediocre, these newcomers, yet the sort who thrive astonishingly upon new soil, who become prosperous and self-important in an atmosphere of equality. There were, too, educated failures from the East and—people who had blundered. But all alike to-night, irrespective of pasts ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... ivory I feel, and improvised, but his themes are pluralistic, the immedicable and colossal ennui of life the chiefest. Woman—the "Eternal Madame," as Baudelaire calls her—is a being both magical and mediocre; she is also an escape from the universal world-pain. La fin de l'homme est proche ... Antigone va passer du menage de la famille au menage de la planete (prophetic words). But when lovely woman ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... that the familiar sounds echoed and reechoed sadly through the silent rooms—it was when she was ready for bed that she found the money under her pillow, and a scrawl from Scatchy, a breathless, apologetic scrawl, little Scatchett having adored her from afar, as the plain adore the beautiful, the mediocre the gifted:— ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... desired government, the country obtained the feeble and irresolute Directory, composed for the moment of the voluptuous Barres, the intriguing Sieyes, the brave Moulins, the insignificant Roger Ducos, and the honest but somewhat too ingenuous Gohier. The result was a mediocre dignity before the world at large and a very questionable tranquillity ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... monuments throw no light, and on which we must therefore be content to be ignorant. All that we can see is, that either personal merit or official rank and position must have enabled him to establish himself; for he certainly did not derive any assistance from his birth, which must have been mediocre, if not actually obscure. It is the custom of the Babylonian and Assyrian kings to glory in their ancestry, and when the father has occupied a decently high position, the son declares his sire's name and rank at the commencement of each inscription, but Sargon ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... a good-humoured air of affront, 'you thought me serious? Don't you know I'm the ninth, instead of the nineteenth-century man, under your wing? I'd promise you to be a bishop, only, you see, I'm afraid I couldn't be mediocre enough.' ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and his rediscovery of the sprites, forgotten during his twenty years of business life. And these sprites were as familiar to them now as those of their own childhood. They little knew that at night they met and talked with them. Daddy had put them all into the Wumble Book, achieving mediocre success with the rhymes, but amply atoning with the illustrations. The Woman of the Haystack was evidently a monster pure and simple, till Jinny announced that she merely had 'elephantitis,' and thus ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... not aware," Chia Cheng added with a smiling countenance, "that I've been, even in my young days, very mediocre in the composition of stanzas on flowers, birds, rockeries and streams; and that now that I'm well up in years and have moreover the fatigue and trouble of my official duties, I've become in literary compositions ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... months of guesswork and silly-season gush, bounced and ricochetted among the newspapers with astonishing ado. With the Whig in the forefront the local press began to echo the gossiping paragraphs and character sketches which, true, half true, and of whole cloth, padded the lean columns of a mediocre literary season, and New Babylon had faith. The last doubting Thomas yielded when it became necessary to convey the celebrity's mail to his home in a special bag; not even the ensuing plague of special correspondents, biographical dictionary solicitors, photographers, and worshipping ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... maintained that the qualities of higher forms of man are exhausted in a few generations, while the mass of mediocrities continually produce new genius. The fact that the descendants of distinguished men are often mediocre and that remarkable men suddenly arise from the common people, appears at first sight to support this superficial assertion. It is forgotten, however, that in a people whose average mass consists of thousands or millions of individuals, while men of higher powers are only counted by units ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... they make their works therein; and striving to become very excellent in order to put to shame, in some sort, those by whom they have been outraged, they become very often great men, whereas, by staying quietly in their country, they would peradventure have had little more than a mediocre success in their arts. Antonio Viniziano, who betook himself to Florence in the wake of Agnolo Gaddi in order to learn painting, grasped the good method of working so well that he was not only esteemed and loved by the Florentines, but also greatly cherished by reason of this talent and of his other ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... wash his hands of the entire business, and the sly swindlers must look elsewhere, in order to unload their property. The extravagant claims they had made for its richness could not be justified, because it was after all a very mediocre discovery, which would never pay for the working, so far ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... life and death and the business of the world. You will never love her as you will love Pisa or Siena or Rome or Florence, or almost any other city of Italy. We do not love the living as we love the dead. They press upon us and contend with us, and are beautiful and again ugly and mediocre and heroic, all between two heart beats; but the dead ask only our love. Genoa has never asked it, and never will. She is one of us, her future is hidden from her, and into her mystery none has ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... bring him under still heavier condemnation, can scarcely have failed to embitter and harden a soul naturally disposed to pessimism and melancholy. Nor can we omit from the influences at work upon him, that dramatic instinct which makes a mediocre and colourless attitude impossible for those who are strongly under its influence. Perhaps no nation is more governed by it than the French, with their partiality for tableaux and sensation; and in De Lamennais its presence ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... from bondage, these songs may at first seem to some readers trivial and almost wholly devoid of literary merit. In phraseology they may appear crude, lacking in that elegance and finish ordinarily associated with poetic excellence; in imagery they are at times exceedingly winter-starved, mediocre, common, drab, scarcely ever rising above the unhappy environment of the singers. The outlook upon life and nature is, for the most part, one of imaginative simplicity and child-like naivete; superstitions crowd in upon a worldly wisdom that is elementary, practical, ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... mestizos, but today's study is showing that trouble maker meant man who would stand up for his rights; one must not forget that mestizo was used as a reproach, that the leaders of the people were really typical of the people. By the old injustice those who were mediocre were called natives and whoever rose above his fellows was claimed as a Spaniard, but a fairer way would seem to be to consider Filipinos all ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... individual instances—Kant, Darwin, Michel Angelo, Mozart—how very little which is absolutely new, how slight a variation, how inevitable a combination, marks, after all, the greatest strokes of genius in all things, it seems quite laughable to expect the mediocre person, mere looker-on or listener, far from creative, to reach at once, without a similar sequence of initiation, a corresponding state of understanding and enjoyment. But, as a rule, this thought does not occur to us; and, ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... There have been only a few lyric actors more versatile and gifted than he, or who have achieved their rank in the teeth of so many difficulties and disadvantages. His voice was limited in compass, inferior in quality, and habitually out of tune, his power of musical execution mediocre, his physical appearance entirely without grace, picturesqueness, or dignity. Yet Ronconi, by sheer force of a versatile dramatic genius, delighted audiences in characters which had been made familiar to the public through ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... call forth anew, and for finer uses, the pioneer's love of creative individualism and provide for it a spiritual atmosphere friendly to the development of personality in all uplifting ways. It must check the tendency to act in mediocre social masses with undue emphasis upon the ideals of prosperity and politics. In short, it must summon ability of all kinds to joyous and earnest effort for the welfare and the spiritual enrichment of society. It must awaken new tastes and ambitions ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... well compares Cicero, "De Amicitia," xviii.: "Accedat huc suavitas quaedam oportet sermonum atque morum, haudquaquam mediocre condimentum amicitiae. Tristitia autem et in omni re severitas, habet illa quidem gravitatem: sed amicitia remissior esse debet, et liberior, et dulcior, et ad ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... common sense; besides, did she not seem to prefer Jean? Without confessing it to himself too bluntly, this preference had a great deal to do with his low opinion of the widow's intellect; for, though he loved his brother, he could not help thinking him somewhat mediocre and believing himself the superior. However, he was not going to sit there till nightfall; and as he had done on the previous evening, he anxiously asked himself: "What ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... that the one speech which gave glory and a nickname to Single-Speech Hamilton was written by Burke. It was wise, witty and profound—and never again did Hamilton do a thing that rose above the dull and deadly mediocre. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... rigidity to allow measurements to be made. It must be allowed that, unfortunately, no physicist or chemist has been as lucky as these two botanists; and the attempts to reproduce semi-permeable walls completely answering to the definition, have never given but mediocre results. If, however, the experimental difficulty has not been overcome in an entirely satisfactory manner, it at least appears very probable that ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... back, for in former times he had been intimate with a certain number of ecclesiastics, and had found them so mediocre, so lukewarm, above all so hostile to Mysticism, that he was revolted at the very notion of laying before them the schedule of his requirements ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... prodigiously, and the boy's vanity was correspondingly flattered; but the father stepped in and discouraged such work, warning Benjamin that "verse-makers were generally beggars." So, perhaps, we were spared a mediocre poet and given a first-rate prose writer, for the stuff of poetry was not in ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... coin with it, and in his grandfather's hands——! His grandfather had been a man of renown, a famous man. Pepet had never seen him, but he talked of him with admiration, giving him a higher place in his esteem than that evoked by his mediocre father. ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... almost a completed volume. There is yet one chapter to be added and I want to talk about it to the public. One man, Baron Singer, did more for midgets—little people—than any other person, in all time. He lifted them out of the mediocre; gave them standing and personality. I never met the Baron, but I want the public to know what great work he did for an underprivileged group. And I will ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... appeared at a show in this country was Mr. Berrie's Flo. This was, however, such a mediocre specimen that it did not appeal to the taste of the English dog-loving public. In 1888 Dr. Seelig brought over Skip, Drieske, and Mia. The first-named was purchased by Mr. E. B. Joachim, and the two others by Mr. G. R. Krehl. Later on Mr. Joachim became the owner of Mr. Green's Shtoots, and bought ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... to have been written by an impecunious and mediocre penman called Villemarest, who also wrote "Memoires de Constant" (the Emperor's valet), and both books have been very extensively read and believed. Men have got up terrific lectures from them, authors have quoted from them whenever they ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... than's in the catecheesm," remarked Salemina, yawning a little as she put away her darning-ball. "It is pathetic to see you waste your time painting mediocre pictures, when as a lecturer upon love you ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... footprint in the dust, which was apparently none too fresh, they took up the work of tracking. It is astonishing to see how a dog can tell which way a track leads. If in doubt, he runs quickly back and forth on the scent, and thus gauges the way the animal has progressed. A mediocre dog cannot do this, but we had dogs ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... capitalist economy with the public sector accounting for roughly half of GDP. Tourism is a major source of foreign exchange, and agriculture is self-sufficient, except for meat, dairy products, and animal feedstuffs. Macroeconomic problems include mediocre GDP growth, the huge public sector, substantial budget deficits, and 10% unemployment. The government's hard drachma policy and public sector wage restraint are largely responsible for the downward trend in inflation, now at the lowest level in 22 years. ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... have returned his salute with brass-hatted majesty, but now he smiled his broad ear-to-ear smile, thrust out his long arm and gripped the young man's hand. It was Smithson, one of his brigade staff—a youth of mediocre efficiency, on whom, as the youth remembered, he was wont most austerely to frown. But all ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... a safer line of defence.—Ten battles lost, he retorted, would scarcely force him to that last step. True, he now exposed his line of communications with France; but if the art of war consisted in never running any risk, glory would be the prize of mediocre minds. He must have a complete triumph. The question was not of abandoning this or that province: his political superiority was at stake. At Marengo, Austerlitz, and Wagram, he was in greater danger. His forces now were not in the air; they rested on the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... windows with shabby red curtains. On nails hung a few odd garments, one of which, the doublet anciently pierced by the fanatic's dagger, merely served as a memento, though not visibly older than the rest of his wardrobe. "Who puts a mediocre article into a costly envelope?" was the philosopher's sartorial standpoint. Over the mantel (on which among some old pipes lay two silver buckles, his only jewellery) was pinned a charcoal sketch of Masaniello in shirt-sleeves, with a net on his shoulder, done by Spinoza ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... charts and papers were made for use and are therefore of the greatest utility when most available. When I am at work I like my tools around me; if they are not handy, my work is interrupted, and an interruption often breaks the train of thought and renders impotent or at least mediocre an endeavor which elsewise would be excellent. In their ambition to "put things in shape," and to give me an object lesson in order and method, Alice and her vandal hired girl hide my tools of trade, disposing of ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... means that, I think," he said, "unless it be mediocre—then one is safe; one has scores of friends, and scarce a foe. Mediocrity succeeds wonderfully well nowadays—nobody hates it, because every one feels how easily they themselves can attain to it. Exceptional talent is aggressive—actual ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... promise of a battle to the end between Goshonne and Das Lan. Goshonne well knew that if the new cult gained a firm footing he would lose his influence and at best be but a mediocre medicine-man. Das Lan, on the other hand, knew that he must break the power of such a man as Goshonne, if he was to assume the leadership. Goshonne scoffed and scorned, and would have none of the new belief. Still, he was an Indian, and the prophecies of his rival gradually ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... instead of being jealous of it, and skillful in making this merit conduce to his own glory, will always be a good general, and may even pass for a great man. Unfortunately, the disposition to do justice to merit in others is not the most common quality: mediocre minds are always jealous, and inclined to surround themselves with persons of little ability, fearing the reputation of being led, and not realizing that the nominal commander of an army always receives almost all the glory of its success, even when ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... cathedral is his portrait along with that of his second wife, Jeanne de Laval. In the place is his statue, a mediocre work, holding a bunch of Muscat grapes, a species he first introduced to Europe. I sought in vain at Aix for a photograph of the Merry Monarch taken from the authentic picture, and was offered one from the characterless statue, which I declined. Poor king Rene's poems ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... breaths, counting the winkfuls of light, counting the final wrestles of her breaking heart, had been the belle of her section, and many good men had courted her hand. She had led a pleasant life, and children had been born to her—who shared her mediocre ambition and the invincibility of her will. If the charge of her guilt were proven, she was the ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... Danes, to whom they primarily appealed. They added nothing to the development of the drama, except in the person of N. K. Bredal (1733-1778), who became director of the Royal Danish Theatre, and the writer of some mediocre plays. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... conventionalized history as you—yourself a man of conventionality and a vulgarian—will digest easiest of all. Because by itself life is either exceedingly humdrum and tedious to you, or else as exceedingly improbable as only life can be improbable. And so you have the eternal mediocre history about an officer, about a shop clerk, about a baby and a superannuated father, who there, in the provinces, bewails his strayed daughter and implores her to return home. But mark you, Lichonin, all that I'm saying doesn't apply to you; in you, upon my word ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... energetic, but shakes his head a little too much. In the pulpit he never gets either fast asleep or hysterical. He can preach good original sermons—carefully worked out, well-balanced, neatly arranged; and he can give birth to some which are rather dull and mediocre. His action is easy, yet earnest—his style quiet yet dignified; his matter often scholarly, and never stolen. He is not a, "gatherer and disposer of other men's stuff," like some clerical greengrocers: what he says is his own, ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... account of his superior erudition and more practised delivery; but now his voluble gift of words deserted him. "He was much obliged to them," he said; "though perhaps, on the whole, it was better that men who placed themselves in a mediocre condition should be left to their mediocrity. He had no doubt himself of the justness of the lists. It would be useless for him to say that he had not aspired; all the world"—it was all the world to him—"knew too well that he had aspired. ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... Foinet, who was coming towards them with Mrs. Otter. Mrs. Otter, meek, mediocre, and self-satisfied, wore an air of importance. Foinet sat down at the easel of an untidy little Englishwoman called Ruth Chalice. She had the fine black eyes, languid but passionate, the thin face, ascetic but sensual, the ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... Prussia of insensibility, that he was not touched by the accident which happened to the man he seemed to love most. Too happy if one had only said that of him! He was supposed to be jealous of the merit of Schwerin and of Keith, and delighted to have got them killed. It is thus that mediocre people seek to lower great men, to diminish the immense space that lies ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... there is often in the public mind this poorer type of teacher; and when an idea or an ideal, however low, becomes once established, it is changed only with difficulty. The commonplace individual, the mediocre type of man or of woman, is by many regarded as a fairly typical representative of what the teacher usually is; or, as the statistician would express it, he is the "mode" rather than the average. The "mode" in any class of ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... entire people. Bernini expressed in this manner a whole age of Italian society; and even now his spirit haunts you as you read the gorgeous sins of Roman noblemen in the pages of Gabriele d'Annunzio. And Murillo, though the expert not unjustly from their special point of view, see in him but a mediocre artist, in the same way is the very quintessence of Southern Spain. Wielders of the brush, occupied chiefly with technique, are apt to discern little in an old master, save the craftsman; yet art is no more than a link in the chain of life ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... fusion. The beautiful varieties of porphyry — green, red, striped — which are obtained, often in big monoliths, near Kolyvan, are cut at the imperial stone-cutting factory into vases and other ornaments, familiar in the art galleries and palaces of Europe. Aquamarines of mediocre quality but enormous size (up to 3 in. in diameter) are found in the Korgon mine. The northern, or Salair, mining region is rich in silver ores, and the mine of this name used formerly to yield up to 93,300 oz. of silver in the year. But the chief wealth ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... arrive a few days before, each on a month's leave. As Happy was one of the moving spirits of the show, he was up to his eyes in business. Clever in everything he undertook, he was especially talented in music, playing well and composing in no mediocre manner. He had written practically all the score of the musical comedy to be given by the Masqueraders, and among other features, a ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... a breath of relief. The first arrival was only Lady Lundie's solicitor—invited to attend the proceedings on her ladyship's behalf. He was one of that large class of purely mechanical and perfectly mediocre persons connected with the practice of the law who will probably, in a more advanced state of science, be superseded by machinery. He made himself useful in altering the arrangement of the tables and chairs, ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... for me.' Its grown up form is: 'I am cleverer than you, therefore you shall fag for me.' The state of things we produce by submitting to this, bad enough even at first, becomes intolerable when the mediocre or foolish descendants of the clever fellows claim to have inherited their privileges. Now, no men are greater sticklers for the arbitrary dominion of genius and talent than your artists. The great painter is not satisfied with being sought after and admired ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... L'ENCLOS.—From the most handsome and amiable man in the world there could not come mediocre offspring. M. du Maine is your idol; the King has given him his noble bearing, with his intelligence; and you have inoculated him with your wit. Is it true that Madame de Montespan is no longer your friend? That is a rumour which has credit in the capital; ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... there can be no doubt. The general indignation and agitation caused by the summary proceedings during the strike, compelled President Cleveland to appoint a commission to investigate. Cleveland was a mediocre politician who, by a series of fortuitous circumstances, had risen from ward politics to the Presidency. After using the concentrated power of the Federal Government to break the strike, he then decided to "investigate" its ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... Boulangism,' he said, 'is Boulanger.' 'He has no strength with the officers of the army. They have no confidence either in his character or in his ability; not that they think his character bad or deny his ability, but only that they regard him as a shallow, vacillating, and mediocre person who made himself valuable to the Republican politicians by going into alliances with them to which other officers of strong character and high ability would not stoop. As for the quarrel between Boulanger and these politicians, it is a beggars' quarrel, to be made up ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... unusually flabby musculature, who showed a couple of signs that might possibly be regarded as stigmata of inferiority. Mentally, the main showing was irregularity of abilities; in some things he was distinctly subnormal, in others mediocre, but in language ability he was surprisingly good. No evidence of mental aberration was discovered. The diagnosis could be made, in short, that the boy was a subnormal verbalist. His character traits might be enumerated in part by saying that he was aggressive, unscrupulous, boastful, ambitious, ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... Nietzsche called "the Philistine of culture." It is against this fat milch cow of wisdom that Huneker has brandished a spear since first there was a Huneker. He is a sworn foe to "the traps that snare the attention from poor or mediocre workmanship—the traps of sentimentalism, of false feeling, of cheap pathos, of the cheap moral." He is on the trail of those pious mountebanks who "clutter the marketplaces with their booths, mischievous half-art and tubs of tripe and soft soap." Superficially, as I say, he seems to have made ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... and found a mediocre sunset on an easel. Brian went in for sunsets. He said so himself with an inexplicable air of weariness and disgust. He knew ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... like all parents, Duane's had been terribly excited over his infantile efforts at picture-making—one of the commonest and earliest developed of talents, but which never fails to amaze and delight less gifted parents and which continues to overstock the world with mediocre artists. ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... responded Valdor promptly; "Only it happens that they are not! They treat me merely as a laquais de place,—just as they would treat Zouche, had he accepted his Sovereign's offer. But this I will admit,—that mediocre musicians always get on very well with Royal persons! I have heard a very great Majesty indeed praise a common little American woman's abominable singing, as though she were a prima-donna, and saw him give a jewelled cigar-case to an amateur pianist, ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... far wrong in politics because they can't be very right. Our so-called representative system is unrepresentative in a deeper way than the reformers who talk about the money power imagine. It is empty and thin: a stifling of living currents in the interest of a mediocre regularity. ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... nothing could save his speech from failure as a speech. Perhaps no standing epithet of praise hangs with such a weight on a man's reputation as the epithet "honest." When the man is proved not to be a fraud, it suggests a very mediocre virtue. But the method by which Lincoln actually confirmed his early won and dangerous reputation of honesty was a positive and potent performance of rare distinction. It is no mean intellectual and spiritual achievement to be as honest in ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... this heavenly awe-inspiring object sailing through the skies, you will have trials of an unexpected nature to beset you, but by bravely combating these foes you will rise above the mediocre in ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... her early experience, it was a life of energy and excitement, of splendour and power, with a total absence of petty vexations and miseries, affording neither time nor cause for the wearing chagrin of a monotonous and mediocre existence. But the crowning joy of her emancipation was the prospect it offered of frequent enjoyment of the society ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... written in 1834 against the Emperor of Russia and the Russian system were from the pen of M. Girardin.—The maitre d'etude of former days became professor at the College of France—became deputy, and exhibited himself, able writer and dialectician as he was and is, as a mediocre speaker, and ultimately became academician and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... hope are to be received, it is supposed, with some qualification. But when the same person has ignominiously failed and begins to eat up his words, he should be listened to like an oracle. Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity. And since mediocre people constitute the bulk of humanity, this is no doubt very properly so. But it does not follow that the one sort of proposition ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... artificial excrescence, like the buttress in a fives court. If the ball hit him, as it frequently did, the player waiting for it was at liberty either to play it or claim a let. This arrangement added a piquant and pleasing variety to what is too often—especially when indulged in by mediocre players—a very dull game. ...
— Scally - The Story of a Perfect Gentleman • Ian Hay
... calculated to turn out a good, fairish, commonplace article; but the formula for a genius remains a secret with Deity. The great man becomes great in spite of teachers and parents: and his near kinsmen, being color-blind, usually pooh-pooh the idea that he is anything more than mediocre. At Oxford, William Morris fell in with a young man of about his own age, by the name of Edward Burne-Jones. Burne-Jones was studying theology. He was slender in stature, dreamy, spiritual, poetic. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... contempt continually follow and oppress them, and either stint their development, or force them to an ethnical mimicry which necessarily makes of them, instead of original types with a right to existence, mediocre or bad copies of foreign models. They therefore work methodically with a view to rendering the Jewish people once more a normal one, which lives on its own soil, and accomplishes all economical, intellectual, moral, and political functions of ...
— Zionism and Anti-Semitism - Zionism by Nordau; and Anti-Semitism by Gottheil • Max Simon Nordau
... As the daughter and pupil from childhood of her famous mother, she was supposed to be an ideal exponent of the Marchesi method. Professional singers and instructors flocked to her first concert. It was to be an experience, an object-lesson. Well—it was. They saw a fine-looking woman with a mediocre voice and a worse method, a method so hopelessly bad that even her undoubted musicianship ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... more statesmen than could get into the House of Lords; and all the biographies that have ever been written could not furnish more illustrations of the ups and downs of life, especially the downs, nor of more illustrious men. The names of all the great and mediocre people who visited the famous rendezvous would fill a respectable Court guide, and the money transactions that have taken place would pay off the National Debt. All this is a pleasant outcome of ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... pages are entirely Bode's own, and the individual alterations in word, phrase, allusion and sentiment are more numerous and unwarranted. The more significant of Bode's additions are here noted. "Die Moral" (pages 32-37) contains a fling at Collier, the author of a mediocre English translation of Klopstock's "Messias," and another against Klbele, acontemporary German novelist, whose productions have long ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... the Hundred Days and after Waterloo, remained in his dungeon, forgotten of earth and heaven. Danglars comprehended the full extent of the wretched fate that overwhelmed Dantes; and, when Napoleon returned to France, he, after the manner of mediocre minds, termed the coincidence, "a decree of Providence." But when Napoleon returned to Paris, Danglars' heart failed him, and he lived in constant fear of Dantes' return on a mission of vengeance. He therefore informed M. Morrel of his wish to quit ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the life of Jesus than His affection for ordinary men. The cultured Pharisees, the philosophical Sadducees seem to have much less attraction to Him than the rude fisherman and the toiler. These men were often weak, sometimes cowardly, obstinate, dull, mediocre; yet He committed His kingdom to them; He believed in them. Before they had faith in Him He had faith in them; and ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... has this life for us to-day, we the commonplace, the mediocre, the unknown to fame and fortune? Shall we fold our hands when we read of such heroes and say, "Ah, yes, he could be great, but I? I am weak and humble, I have not the opportunity?" Who was more humble than the poor boy spinning in the cotton-mill; ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... therefore only to stretch out his hand to win stone of a sufficiently varied nature from the soil of his own country or the flanks of its mountains. It was, of course, mediocre in quality but it had powers of resistance that fitted it for use in certain positions. At the first glance it is difficult to understand why so little use was made of it. But in truth stone was for ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... boats until I built them; and I have surprised three secrets that are more than technical discoveries, in the unexpected hiding-places of Nature. I have come nearer flying than any man has done. Could I have done as much if I had had a turn for obeying those rather mediocre professors at the college who proposed to train my mind? If I had been trained in research—that ridiculous contradiction in terms—should I have done more than produce additions to the existing store of little papers ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... bears witness to their gentle rule. People who would obtrude, now do not obtrude. The mediocre circle learns to demand that which belongs to a high state of nature or of culture. Your manners are always under examination, and by committees little suspected,—a police in citizen's clothes,—but are awarding or denying you very high prizes ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... part of Marlowe's work: in the latter half of The Jew of Malta, in the burlesque interludes of Doctor Faustus, and wellnigh throughout the whole scheme and course of The Massacre at Paris. Whatever in King Edward III. is mediocre or worse is evidently such as it is through no passionate or slovenly precipitation of handiwork, but through pure incompetence to do better. The blame of the failure, the shame of the shortcoming, cannot be ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... felicities. These seem to grow spontaneously in the soil of his mind; and there is no American writer whose style is more wholly free from worn and wasted images, phrases, and forms of expression. He is neither mediocre ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... pyramid: it can stand only on a broad base; its primary prerequisite is a strong and soundly consolidated mediocrity. The handicrafts, commerce, agriculture, science, the greater part of art, in brief, the whole range of occupational activities, are compatible only with mediocre ability and aspiration; such callings would be out of place for exceptional men; the instincts which belong to them stand as much opposed to aristocracy as to anarchism. The fact that a man is publicly useful, that he is a wheel, a ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... his editor wants him to say, he must have as his background a thorough knowledge of the stage upon which he may base a comparison or a contrast and with which he may make intelligent statements. The following illustrates what may be done with a paid report of a mediocre vaudeville show in which every act must be praised—the report was written on Monday of a week's run and is intended to induce people to ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... the other's brows contract for a second as though in keen annoyance or disappointment at this mediocre turn in a promising situation. He ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... the same bone and marrow as the drone who is always counseling halfspeed. "Don't sweat; just get by; extra work means short life; you're better off if they don't notice you." This chant can be heard by anyone who cares to listen; it's the old American invitation to mediocrity. But while mediocre, as commonly used, means "indifferent, ordinary," it also has in old English the odd meaning "a young monk who was excused from performing part of a monk's duties." And that, too, fits. It is always worthwhile to ask a few very senior officers what they think of these jokers who refuse ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... sides the plain, dull-red imprint of a hand, as if the corpse had made some post-mortem effort to rise from the grave. The portrait of the transplanted scion of Austria shows a haughty, I-am-of-superior-clay man, of a distinctly mediocre grade of intellect, with a forest of beard that strives in vain to conceal an almost ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... friendship, is permitted, and love's dictionary is as much prohibited, as at first sight one should think his ritual was. All you hear, and that pronounced with nonchalance, is, that Monsieur un tel has had Madame un telle. The Duc de Nivernois has parts, and writes at the top of the mediocre, but, as Madame Geoffrin says, is manqu'e par tout; guerrier manqu'e, ambassadeur manqu'e, homme d'affaires manqu'e and auteur manqu'e—no, he is not homme de naissance manqu'e. He would think freely, but has some ambition of being governor to the Dauphin, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... met his, her soul gave a little half-humorous "Oh!" of surprise; for photography, which seems to have been invented to flatter the mediocre and belittle the exceptional, had indeed given Londonderry an "interesting face," as we have heard, but missed all the rest—"all the rest" of a large, mobile, talking face, not exactly handsome perhaps, but decidedly good-looking and full of various commands ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... simply the final decomposition of impoverished, tainted, bourgeois blood, the sudden disappearance of a poor, mediocre being who, despite a facade of seeming health, had been ailing since childhood. But what an overwhelming blow it was both for the mother and for the father, all whose dreams and calculations it swept away! The only son, the one and ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... verse 7 of the second paragraph (as in verse I of paragraph 19 in "The Old and New Tables") Nietzsche gives us a reason for his occasional obscurity (see also verses 3 to 7 of "Poets"). As I have already pointed out, his philosophy is quite esoteric. It can serve no purpose with the ordinary, mediocre type of man. I, personally, can no longer have any doubt that Nietzsche's only object, in that part of his philosophy where he bids his friends stand "Beyond Good and Evil" with him, was to save ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... countersign-constitution, everything proceeds in military form. The French people consult the order of the day to know how they must get up, how they must go to bed, how they must dress, in what toilette they may go to the sitting of the court, or to the soiree of the prefect; they are forbidden to make mediocre verses; to wear beards; the frill and the white cravat are laws of state. Rule, discipline, passive obedience, eyes cast down, silence in the ranks; such is the yoke under which bows at this moment the nation ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... and of bringing your heaviest action to bear on one point: too many undertakings dissipate strength and prostrate work. There is a great deal of poor work done now; and it is said to have been somewhat mediocre so far through the nineteenth century, because time enough has not been taken to do thorough work. The strong desire is to get to the end of toil. We have hardly time to think what to get for dinner or what to wear; but we get something ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... her stupidity is ever a foil for his brilliancy. He soon grows to a point where he does not mentally defer to her in the slightest degree, but goes his solitary way, making good that maxim of Kipling, "He travels the fastest who travels alone." He learns to love the ideal. The mediocre quality of Parker's wife was, no doubt, a prime factor in bringing out the self-reliant qualities in his ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... received me in the hall, a large place, panelled and carved, hung round with portraits up to its curious ceiling—vaulted and ribbed like the inside of a ship's hull. He looked even more blond and pink and white, more absolutely mediocre in his tweed suit; and also, I thought, even more good-natured and duller. He took me into his study, a room hung round with whips and fishing-tackle in place of books, while my things were being carried upstairs. It was very damp, and a fire was smouldering. He gave the embers a nervous kick ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... the Danish Prison Department at the Stockholm Prison Congress. "Give me," he said, "the best possible regulations and a bad director, and you will have no success. But give me a good director, and, even with mediocre regulations, I will answer for it that everything will go on marvellously." In a recent handbook on prison management by Herr Krohne, an eminent prison director in the German service, the qualifications requisite for successful prison work ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison |
