But he heard much of Isaura; of the kindness which Madame de Grantmesnil had shown to her, when left by Selby's death alone in the world; of the interest which the friendship and the warm eulogies of one so eminent as the great French writer had created for Isaura in the artistic circles; of the intense sensation her appearance, her voice, her universal genius, had made in that society, and the brilliant hopes of her subsequent career on the stage the cognoscenti had formed.
"The Parisians, Book 11."
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
The significance of a picture, according to the cognoscenti, must be implicit in its forms; its essential quality is something which appeals directly to the sensibility of any sensitive person; and any reference to life, to be of consequence, must be a reference to that fundamental experience which is the common heritage of mankind.
"Since Cézanne"
Clive Bell
At last, just as he had pictured it from old recollections of a minor race he had once seen, there was the shouting and bawling of the odds, the clearing of the course, and then the preliminary canter of the ten competitors, among which he now made out the colours of Simoom, a big ordinary-looking horse, with nothing to draw attention to it, while the three first favourites of the cognoscenti were the perfection of equine beauty, and their admirers shouted with excitement as they flashed by.
"King of the Castle"
George Manville Fenn