Objective music may strike us with its brilliancy, but its achievement remains the handiwork of a mediocre talent.
Mediocre or merely talented musicians are eager to produce effects, but the ideal of a genius is to reproduce his very self, in unison with the object of his art.
But how can we pardon mediocre expression in pure artists?
And conversely, that contemplative men, philosophers, are often very mediocre in practical matters, weak willed, and therefore neglected and thrust aside in the tumult of life.
To such a mediocre and artificial mythology led the much-elaborated theory of the Modifications of the Beautiful.
Quitman, who deserved high respect, appeared to him unreliable, of mediocre ability and "afflicted with unbounded vanity.
Nevertheless, to go silly over a mediocre innovation is far more excusable than to be taken in by its equivalent in a familiar style.
At any rate he felt sure that Phyllis would be able to differentiate between the case of the author of "Revised Versions" and the case of the mediocreclergyman who defied his bishop on a question of--what was the question?
Mediocre men are not safe from the great dreams which have more than once seduced and ruined the greatest men.
He expressed a little impatience at the measureless flood of mediocre fiction, making a fluttering gesture conveying a sense of impotence to give it attention.
Gallery 118 is less mediocre on the whole, but lacks any features of special appeal.
Galleries 43 and 44 have a range from many mediocre to a few really good things, lacking anything that demands special attention.
Westwood was a professional actor of mediocre though useful attainments.
The School for Greybeards is, in fine, a modest and mediocre comedy of little value.
On the other hand, many mediocre authors, exercising the most complete sincerity, find ample appreciation in the vast mediocrity of the public, and are never troubled by any problem worse than the vagaries of their fountain-pens.
The reproach of the lack of a sense of beauty has been brought against nearly all original novelists; it is seldom brought against a mediocre novelist.
Why, then, should we extend to all, the exigencies of our dull and mediocre social system?
But the Talmudic information about Jerusalem is of mediocre authority.
How all other ways of escape from what is mediocre in our tangled lives grow pale beside that high and burning star!
The aerial perspective is mediocre and the composition shows as usual Michelangelo's supreme contempt for the sentiment of the subject.
What artist is there who has not felt this same irritation at the success of mediocre work exploited by the sentimentality of an uncritical public and who will not understand Michelangelo's haughty refusal to share this too easy success?
But what would it be in the hands of men of mediocre talent?
It is a mediocre play, and the same can even more truly be said of Mallet’s cold Elvira (1763).
It is entitled L’Adultère Innocent; but the comic underplot is very sketchily analyzed, scene by scene, and the whole is very mediocre withal.
But the noble, soaring spirit leaves no trace behind, and the dull, mediocre person plows his name in deep and enduring characters in the soil of his native land.
Nothing remained for him to live on except the interest that we had engaged to pay him, and the very mediocre revenue from his books.
Voltaire and Chateaubriand, for example, were mediocre for the same reasons, etc.
We never can turn a negro white and we never can hinder the mediocre from being mediocre.
He was not a model pupil, however; this term applies to mediocre natures and a calmness of spirit which was rare in those days.
In any case, however, the eugenists must depend upon the mass of the mediocre for a supply of geniuses and those of exceptional talent and depend upon the process of reproduction for securing that supply.
The mediocre have their innings now, and it is one of the great demands of democracy, both within and without the family, that the commonplace shall not miss its chance for learning how to serve and enjoy the best it can.
A fortune had been expended on Alice's musical education, yet she could do no more than rattle through somemediocre composition, with neither taste nor skill.
How many mediocre men of both ancient and modern times, have been rendered illustrious by achievements which were mainly due to their associates!
In this peace, in this mediocre order, the policy of expansion of Rome, finally rid of all the destructive forces, matured all the benefits inherent within it.
Augustus and Tiberius only prolonged indefinitely by means of expedients that mediocre order and that partial tranquillity re-established after Actium by the general weariness; but exactly for this reason were they so useful to the world.
