Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a
mediocrity of success.
It was only his apprenticed boys whose irrepressible spirits were not affected by the solemn and respectable
mediocrity of that artist.
The kind of renown most accessible and acceptable to
mediocrity. A Jacob's-ladder leading to the vaudeville stage, with angels ascending and descending.
His attentions to Miss King were now the consequence of views solely and hatefully mercenary; and the
mediocrity of her fortune proved no longer the moderation of his wishes, but his eagerness to grasp at anything.
"It is cruel to discover one's
mediocrity only when it is too late.
I will not hesitate, however, to avow my belief that it has been my singular good fortune to have very early in life fallen in with certain tracks which have conducted me to considerations and maxims, of which I have formed a method that gives me the means, as I think, of gradually augmenting my knowledge, and of raising it by little and little to the highest point which the
mediocrity of my talents and the brief duration of my life will permit me to reach.
The term of nine years appears to be a prudent
mediocrity between a total exclusion of adopted citizens, whose merits and talents may claim a share in the public confidence, and an indiscriminate and hasty admission of them, which might create a channel for foreign influence on the national councils.
He was one of those choice spirits who abhor everything that is common, and who often lose a good chance through not taking the way of the vulgar, that high road of
mediocrity which leads to everything.
He was unaware of her gaze, and she watched him intently, speculating fancifully about the strange warp of soul that led him, a young man with signal powers, to fritter away his time on the writing of stories and poems foredoomed to
mediocrity and failure.
Her attainments were limited, her intellect noways above
mediocrity. She had a fine voice, and could sing like a nightingale, and accompany herself sufficiently well on the piano; but these were her only accomplishments.
But though he had a fine flux of words, and delivered his little voice with great pomposity and pleasure to himself, and never advanced any sentiment or opinion which was not perfectly trite and stale, and supported by a Latin quotation; yet he failed somehow, in spite of a
mediocrity which ought to have insured any man a success.
I told you long ago that I had never been resigned even to the
mediocrity of my powers; how could I be resigned to the loss of the one thing which had ever come to me on earth with the promise of such deep joy as would give a new and blessed meaning to the foregoing pain,--the promise of another self that would lift my aching affection into the divine rapture of an ever-springing, ever-satisfied want?