Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: July 16, 2025
He was eminently the sculptor of an educated class, and appealed to a cultivated appreciation. Coming as he did at the acme of the French Renaissance, when France was borrowing with intelligent selection whatever it considered valuable from Italy, he pleased the dilettanti. There is something distinctly "swell" in his work.
But I could have made a far better bargain if I'd only waited a fortnight. Just my luck! One two four autograph fiends! The last a lady, of course! wants a page of the first lecture. Calm! Invitations from the Scottish Athenaeum the Newcastle Academy the Birmingham Literary Guild the Glasgow Poetic Society the 'British Philosophers' the Dublin Dilettanti! Heavens! how many more!
The borrowed contempt of Horace Walpole and the coterie of superficial dilettanti, from which Smollett's book has somehow never wholly recovered, could then easily be outflanked and the Travels might well be in reasonable expectation of coming by their own again.
He stood before it for some moments in silence, and she watched him with breathless eagerness for his opinion was of more value to her than that of all the dilettanti and connoisseurs who would soon inspect it. Gradually his dark cold face kindled, and she had her reward.
The most splendid illustration of this kind of homage was the career of Jenny Lind in America. It was rather the fashion among the dilettanti to undervalue her excellence as an artist. A popular superficial criticism was fond of limiting her dramatic power to inferior roles. She was denied passion and great artistic skill; she was accused of tricks.
The first modern American painting that arrested me was one by Grover, of Chicago. I remember it with gratitude. Often, especially in New York, I was called upon by stay-at-home dilettanti to admire the work of some shy favorite, and with the best will in the world I could not, on account of his too obvious sentimentality.
In the first place, old men are not dilettanti. Their pessimism comes to them not casually from outside, but from the depths of their own brains, and only after they have exhaustively studied the Hegels and Kants of all sorts, have suffered, have made no end of mistakes, in fact when they have climbed the whole ladder from bottom to top.
The word amateur has come by the thousand oddities of language to convey an idea of tepidity; whereas the word itself has the meaning of passion. Nor is this peculiarity confined to the mere form of the word; the actual characteristic of these nameless dilettanti is a genuine fire and reality.
In Sculpture, Pliny and Cicero are the most noted critics. There is a fine article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica on this subject. In Smith's Dictionary are the Lives and works of the most noted masters. Müller's Ancient Art alludes to the leading masterpieces. Montfauçon's Antiquité Expliquée en Figures; Specimens of Ancient Sculpture, by the Society of Dilettanti, London, 1809; Ancient Marbles of the British Museum, by Taylor Combe; Millin, Introduction
"Those who bore the daggers were Dutchmen," said Ranuzi, apathetically; "they do not understand this sort of work. One must learn to handle the dagger in my fatherland." "Have you learned?" said Giurgenow, sharply. "I have learned a little of every thing. I am a dilettanti in all." "But you are master in the art of love," said Belleville, smiling. "Much is said of your love-affairs, monsieur."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking