William Blackwood welcomed any abuse that took his magazine out of "the calm of respectable mediocrity."

A decent mediocrity generally pervades it.

An energetic crudity, even a riotous absurdity, has more promise in it than a clever and elegant mediocrity, because it shows that the young man is speaking out of his own heart, and struggling to express himself in his own way rather than in the way he finds in other men's books.

Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of custom and trade and office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor moving wherever moves a man; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the center of things.

The ancient Fosse Way skirts the town on the E. It is a place of some antiquity, deriving its name from its former connection with the Mallets of Curry Mallet, and has had a career of respectable commercial mediocrity.

Men who in the ordinary fields of work might remain all their lives mere commonplace mediocrities, under the discipline of Indian service, find out and show their real value.

To speak faithfully, it was the comparative mediocrity, and occasional even positive badness, of the work done over his own name that formed one of the stumbling-blocks to the acceptance of the theory that William Sharp could be "Fiona Macleod."

The necessity of concealing treasure has long ceased; no man now needs counterfeit mediocrity, and condemn his plate and jewels to caverns and darkness, or feast his mind with the consciousness of clouded splendour, of finery which is useless till it is shown, and which he dares not show.

The most deplorable mediocrity began to show itself more repulsively than ever, and flatness and insipidity blew themselves up like the frog in the fable.

"Domestic mediocrity drove her to lewd fancies, marriage tendernesses to adulterous desires.

was a man of downright mediocrity, without foresight, volatile in his resolves and weak and fickle in the execution of them.

For this there was, of course, no proof, and it is only worth mentioning because it is one of a large class of cases, in which envious mediocrity, or crushed dulness, or jealous rivalry, has sought to snatch hard-won laurels from the brow of genius.

In this period of religious infidelity, moral torpor, fashionable mediocrity, unthinking pleasure-seeking, and royal orgies; when the people were spurned, insuited and burdened,Frederic ascends an absolute throne.

Yet he taught what he felt the people could receive, and the flat mediocrity of his character and his teachings has been stamped forever upon a people who, while they are kindly, gentle, forbearing, and full of family piety, are palpably lacking not only in the exaltation of Mysticism, but in any religious feeling, generally so-called.

You may set Xenophon down as a writer of graceful mediocrity.

He paints life in its grayness and sordidness and dull mediocrity.

It was not the heterogeneous mediocrity of the American summer hotel where the lack of any standard is the nearest approach to a tie, but an organized codified dulness, in conscious possession of its rights, and strong in the voluntary ignorance of any others.

It would be far better for them to wait till the present generation of honest mediocrities died out, and a new and differently educated generation were ready to take hold.

In America, the gross mistake has been made of supposing, that, because the mass rules in a political sense, it has a right to be listened to and obeyed in all other matters, a practical deduction that can only lead, under the most favourable exercise of power, to a very humble mediocrity.

The simplicity of our manners makes us easily contented in our material relations; we like rather to be free than to be rich; we look for an honourable profit, that we may have upon what to live; but we don't like to live for the sake of profit; augmentation of property and of wealth with us is not the aim of our lifewe prefer tranquil, independent mediocrity to the incessant excitement and incessant toil of cupidity and gain.

Indeed, that peculiar vital energy which is the characteristic of genius carries the man of genius cheerfully through masses of drudgery which would dismay and paralyze the vigor of industrious mediocrity.

Among these, the brilliant air and lively effrontery of Captain Kendal secured him a warm acceptance; and by frequenting the circle of Lady Emlyn, he had not only the gratification of escaping from the insipid mediocrity of the home his vices had created, but acquired the power of indulging in others which were now still dearer to his heart.

The dullness of the scholastic atmosphere the grey, intolerant mediocrity that is the natural or assumed quality of every upper-class schoolmaster, is the true cause of the spiritual etiolation of "Kappa's" young friend.

dear General, We in our lucky mediocrity Have ne'er experienced, cannot calculate, What dangerous wishes such a height may breed In the heart of such a man.

Men who in the ordinary fields of work might remain all their lives mere commonplace mediocrities, under the discipline of Indian service, find out and show their real value.