There are certain things in which mediocrity is intolerable: poetry, music, painting, public eloquence.
What torture it is to hear a frigid speech being pompously declaimed, of second-rate verse spoken with all a bad poet’s bombast!
[Il y a de certaines choses dont la médiocrité est insupportable: la poésie, la musique, la peinture, le discours public.
Quel supplice que celui d’entendre déclamer pompeusement un froid discours, ou prononcer de médiocres vers avec toute l’emphase d’un mauvais poète!]Jean de La Bruyère (1645-1696) French essayist, moralist
The Characters [Les Caractères], ch. 1 “Of Works of the Mind [Des Ouvrages de l’Esprit],” § 7 (1.7) (1688) [tr. Stewart (1970)]
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(Source (French)). Alternate translations:Several things are insupportable if they are but indifferent, as Poetry, Music, Painting and Public Speeches.
'Tis the worst punishment in the world to hear a dull Declamation deliver'd with Pomp and Solemnity, and bad Verses rehears'd with the Emphasis of a wretched Poet.
[Bullord ed. (1696)]Somethings are insupportable if they are but indifferent, as Poetry, Musick, Painting, and Publick Speeches.
What a Punishment is it to hear a cold Declamation deliver'd with Pomp and Solemnity, and indifferent Verses repeated with all the Emphasis of a bad Poet!
[Curll ed. (1713)]Some things won't bear a Mediocrity, as Poetry, Musick, Painting and Oratory.
What a cruel Torture is it to hear a dull Declamation delivered with Pomp and Solemnity, or bad Verses rehearsed with the Emphasis of a wretched Poet!
[Browne ed. (1752)]In certain things mediocrity is unbearable, as in poetry, music, painting, and eloquence. How we are tortured when we hear a dull soliloquy delivered in a pompous tone, or indifferent verses read with all the emphasis of a wretched poet!
[tr. Van Laun (1885)]There are some things that will not bear mediocrity; poetry, music, painting, oratory.
[tr. Lee (1903)]
Quotations about:
ordinary
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Innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain-tricks of Custom: but of all these, perhaps the cleverest is her knack of persuading us that the Miraculous, by simple repetition, ceases to be Miraculous.
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Scottish essayist and historian
Sartor Resartus, Book 3, ch. 8 (1831)
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Experience is nearly always commonplace; the present is not romantic in the way the past is, and ideals and great visions have a way of becoming shoddy and squalid in practical life. Literature reverses this process.
Northrop Frye (1912-1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist
The Educated Imagination, Talk 3 “Giants in Time” (1963)
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The difference between a man of genius seen in his works and in person, is like that of a lighthouse seen by night and by day, — in the one case only a great fiery brain, in the other only a white tower.
In reality, the likelihood of reaching the pinnacle of capitalist society today is only marginally better than were the chances of being accepted into the French nobility four centuries ago, though at least an aristocratic age was franker, and therefore kinder, about the odds. It did not relentlessly play up the possibilities open to all, … and so, in turn, did not cruelly equate an ordinary life with a failed one.
Alain de Botton (b. 1969) Swiss-British author
The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, ch. 9 “Entrepreneurship” (2009)
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There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations — these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn: We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously — no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner — no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat — the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer, literary scholar, lay theologian [Clive Staples Lewis]
“The Weight of Glory,” sermon, Oxford University Church of St Mary the Virgin (8 Jun 1941)
It’s so wrong to think that spectacular courage is the best bravery. The noblest bravery is battling against these dreadful daily assaults, often very minor, on one’s spirit.
Joanna Trollope (b. 1943) British writer [pseud. Caroline Harvey]
The Rector’s Wife (1991)
Routine is the death to heroism.
P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) Anglo-American humorist, playwright and lyricist [Pelham Grenville Wodehouse]
“The Man Upstairs” (1914)
