quotes by Critic Quotes

“Five years of Prohibition have had, at least, this one benign effect: they have completely disposed of all the favorite arguments of the Prohibitionists. None of the great boons and usufructs that were to follow the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment has come to pass. There is not less drunkenness in the Republic, but more. There is not less crime, but more. There is not less insanity, but more. The cost of government is not smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for law has not increased, but diminished.”

“If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own.”

“Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit, in every work of art; since the author of it was not misled by anything short- livedor local, but abode by real and abiding traits.”

“That is the injustice of a woman's lot. A woman has to bring up her children; and that means to restrain them, to deny them things they want, to set them tasks, to punish them when they do wrong, to do all the unpleasant things. And then the father, who has nothing to do but pet them and spoil them, comes in when all her work is done and steals their affection from her.”

“The cruelest foe is a masked benefactor. The wars which make history so dreary have served the cause of truth and virtue.”

“The more he became truly wise, the more he distrusted everything he knew.”

“We are most alive when we're in love.”

“Let us draw a lesson from nature, which always works by short ways. When the fruit is ripe, it falls.”

“But that afternoon he asked himself, with his infinite capacity for illusion, if such pitiless indifference might not be a subterfuge for hiding the torments of love.”

“I could better eat with one who did not respect the truth or the laws, than with a sloven and unpresentable person. Moral qualities rule the world, but at shorter distances, the senses are despotic.”

“My evening visitors, if they cannot see the clock should find the time in my face.”

“When I go into the studio - it [words] has to sound the way I heard it in my head. So that's probably one of the biggest things that separates me when I'm working in the studio - just how I hear certain things.”

“All men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man improves.”

“I have no wish to take life, not even human life”

“Spend some time this weekend on home improvement; improve your attitude toward your family.”

“No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?”

“I don't enjoy being interviewed. I feel like it exhausts a lot of my energy. I feel empty after.”

“All successful newspapers are ceaselessly querulous and bellicose. They never defend anyone or anything if they can help it; if the job is forced on them, they tackle it by denouncing someone or something else.”

“There was something very comfortable in having plenty of stationery.”

“I have lived long enough to satisfy both nature and glory.”

“The task must be made difficult, for only the difficult inspires the noble-hearted.”

“Language is the most elementary aspect to our humanness, probably. In addition to that, it's the embodiment, it's the apotheosis of the human experience, it's the way we summarize ourselves.”

“Microsoft Research has a thing called the Sense Cam that, as you walk around, it's taking photos all the time. And the software will filter and find the ones that are interesting without having to think, 'Let's get out the camera and get that shot.' You just have that, and software helps you pick what you want.”

“I have never admitted the right of an elderly author to alter the work of a young author, even when the young author happens to be his former self.”

“We are ashamed of our thoughts and often see them brought forth by others.”

“You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not?”

“Media bias in editorials and columns is one thing. Media fraud in reporting 'facts' in news stories is something else. ...The issue is not what various journalists or news organizations' editorial views are. The issue is the transformation of news reporting into ideological spin, along with self-serving taboos and outright fraud.”

“Men such as they are, very naturally seek money or power; and power because it is as good as money.”

“I genuinely believe that any business can create a competitive advantage through giving outstanding customer care.”

“Two sorts of writers possess genius: those who think, and those who cause others to think.”

“In a utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected.”

“If you're reluctant to weep, you won't live a full and complete life.”

“If you can't beat them, arrange to have them beaten.”

“It is amazing how many people seem to think that the government exists to turn their prejudices into law.”

“There is a relation between the hours of our life and the centuries of time. As the air I breathe is drawn from the great repositories of nature, as the light on my book is yielded by a star a hundred millions of miles distant, as the poise of my body depends on the equilibrium of centrifugal and centripetal forces, so the hours should be instructed by the ages and the ages explained by the hours.”

“The house is a castle which the King cannot enter.”

“The typical American of today has lost all the love of liberty, that his forefathers had, and all their disgust of emotion, and pride in self- reliance. He is led no longer by Davy Crocketts; he is led by cheer leaders, press agents, word mongers, uplifters.”

“It's lonely at the top - if you don't like that, then you don't start a company.”

“Leftovers make you feel good twice. First, when you put it away, you feel thrifty and intelligent: 'I'm saving food!' Then a month later when blue hair is growing out of the ham, and you throw it away, you feel really intelligent: 'I'm saving my life!'”

“It is more blessed to give than to receive, but then it is also more blessed to be able to do without than to have to have.”

“In the studio, we adhere to a strict colour code. Developed over decades, the colour code consists of a finite and precise colour palate... The whole world as we experience it comes to us through the mystic realm of colour.”

“Our laws make law impossible; our liberties destroy all freedom; our property is organized robbery; our morality an impudent hypocrisy; our wisdom is administered by inexperienced or mal-experienced dupes; our power wielded by cowards and weaklings; and our honour false in all its points. I am an enemy of the existing order for good reasons”

“There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.”

“Amputees suffer pains, cramps, itches in the leg that is no longer there. That is how she felt without him, feeling his presence where he no longer was.”

“It is vain for the coward to flee; death follows close behind; it is only by defying it that the brave escape.”

“Life is our dictionary.”

“The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance - the idea that anything is possible.”

“Nature is the incarnation of thought. The world is the mind precipitated.”

“Clover was a stout motherly mare approaching middle life, who had never quite got her figure back after her fourth foal.”

“I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.”