I pity you for being able to listen to such a thing quietly, without becoming filled with fiendish joy or rage, I tried to express this mood in a somewhat rattling, but I think not wholly meritless composition, which I call my sinfonia ironica.
"The Children of the World"
Paul Heyse
His aristocracy does not sit in a corner, deedless and meritless, brooding over a transmitted name and sucking the orange of empty self-conceit: it is the aristocracy of achievement and of nature-the solid superiority of having done the brightest and best deeds that could be done in his time and of being the greatest man of his generation.
"Shadows of the Stage"
William Winter