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Instead of seeking to set forth vast subjects with the equality of mediocrity, like the Gaddi, or to invent architectonic compositions embracing the whole culture of their age, like the Lorenzetti, the painters were now bent upon realising some special quality of beauty, expressing some fantastic motive, or solving some technical problem of peculiar difficulty.

Philip looked up at him with surprise. The master forced his lips into a smile, but his eyes remained grave and sad. "It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it is too late. It does not improve the temper." He gave a little laugh as he said the last words and quickly walked out of the room. Philip mechanically took up the letter from his uncle.

It was his mediocrity as a teacher of arithmetic that the imps were always aiming at, but he would not be drawn into a discussion with them. Nilen repeated his question, while the others tittered; but Fris did not hear he was too deep in his paper. So the whole thing dropped. Fris looked at his watch; he could soon give them a quarter of an hour's play, a good long quarter of an hour.

Side by side with the great lyric or dramatic celebrities that have won their first renown at the concours of the Conservatoire there is always some other pupil of immense promise, who does as well as, if not better than, the future star at the moment of the competition, but who afterward disappears into the mists of mediocrity or of oblivion.

But these two were streets in advance of such mediocrity. To begin with, they had a strong contempt for most vocal efforts, considering them as merely a sop for the outside public.

His Cymon, his prologues and epilogues, and forty such pieces of trash, are below mediocrity, and yet delight the mob in the boxes as well as in the footman's gallery. I do not mention the things written in his praise; because he writes most of them himself. But you know any one popular merit can confer all merit.

Yet one day that too was mastered by fate, and in spite of my idleness pamphlets and papers went to arrange themselves in the shelves of a costly bureau.... It was thus that the edifying retreat of the philosopher became transformed into the scandalous cabinet of the farmer-general. Thus I too am insulting the national misery. "Of my early mediocrity there remained only a list carpet.

And just as this repudiation of big words and big visions has brought forth a race of small men in politics, so it has brought forth a race of small men in the arts. Our modern politicians claim the colossal license of Caesar and the Superman, claim that they are too practical to be pure and too patriotic to be moral; but the upshot of it all is that a mediocrity is Chancellor of the Exchequer.

He had conceived an extreme aversion for mediocrity, and generally rejected a man of that character when recommended to him; but if he had known such a man long, he yielded to the influence of habit, dreading nothing so much as change, or, as he was accustomed to say himself, new faces.

In those times no prize was beyond our grasp. But we cannot dwell upon remembered glory. We cannot afford to drift. We reject the prospect of failure or mediocrity or an inferior quality of life for any person. Our Government must at the same time be both competent and compassionate.