Quotes by Critics - Page 11

Three things in human life are important: The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.
Henry James
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
George Bernard Shaw
In Heaven an angel is nobody in particular.
George Bernard Shaw
Lips that taste of tears they say are the best for kissing.
Dorothy Parker
Happiness is the china shop love is the bull.
H.L. Mencken
Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated.
George Bernard Shaw
Give a man health and a course to steer and he'll never stop to trouble about whether he's happy or not.
George Bernard Shaw
Only man clogs his happiness with care destroying what is with thoughts of what may be.
John Dryden
Human life is basically a comedy. Even its tragedies often seem comic to the spectator and not infrequently they actually have comic touches to the victim. Happiness probably consists largely in the capacity to detect and relish them.
H.L. Mencken
The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not.
George Bernard Shaw
Happiness is a way station between too little and too much.
Channing Pollock
To live we must conquer incessantly we must have the courage to be happy.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
There are two things to aim at in life: first to get what you want and after that to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.
Logan Pearsall Smith
A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.
Margaret Fuller
Unhappiness indicates wrong thinking just as ill health indicates a bad regimen.
Paul Bourget
True happiness we are told consists in getting out of one's self. But the point is not only to get out you must stay out. And to stay out you must have some absorbing errand.
Henry James
This is true joy of life-being used for a purpose that is recognized by yourself as a mighty one ... instead of being a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
George Bernard Shaw
We must be doing something to be happy.
William Hazlitt
The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.
George Bernard Shaw
Happiness and beauty are by-products. Folly is the direct pursuit of happiness and beauty.
George Bernard Shaw
Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply to enjoy simply to think freely to risk life to be needed.
Storm Jameson
This is wisdom: to love wine beauty and the heavenly spring. That's sufficient-the rest is worthless.
Theodore De Banville
The test of enjoyment is the remembrance which it leaves behind.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Live all you can it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that what have you had?
Henry James
Happiness is itself a kind of gratitude.
Joseph Wood Krutch
Happiness is the perpetual possession of being well deceived.
Lytton Strachey
Few people have ever seriously wished to be exclusively rational. The good life which most desire is a life warmed by passions and touched with that ceremonial grace which is impossible without some affectionate loyalty to traditional forms and ceremonies.
Joseph Wood Krutch
In some remote regions of Islam it is said a woman caught unveiled by a stranger will raise her skirt to cover her face.
Raymond Mortimer
The only cure for grief is action.
G. H. Lewes
Governments last as long as the undertaxed can defend themselves against the overtaxed.
Bernard Berenson
The art of government is the organization of idolatry.
George Bernard Shaw
The State that cawing rookery of committees and subcommittees.
V.S. Pritchett
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed and are right.
H.L. Mencken
Bureaucracy the rule of no one has become the modern form of despotism.
Mary McCarthy
A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
George Bernard Shaw
My only policy is to profess evil and do good.
George Bernard Shaw
If a man wants to be of the greatest possible value to his fellow-creatures let him begin the long solitary task of perfecting himself.
Robertson Davies
Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.
George Bernard Shaw
Darkness is strong and so is Sin But surely God endures forever!
James Russell Lowell
Whom the heart of man shuts out Sometimes the heart of God takes in.
James Russell Lowell
My debt to you Beloved Is one I cannot pay In any coin of any realm On any reckoning day.
Jessie Rittenhouse
Beware of the man whose God is in the skies.
George Bernard Shaw
God is a comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh.
H.L. Mencken
God'll send the bill to you.
James Russell Lowell
Only when men are connected to large universal goals are they really happy-and one result of their happiness is a rush of creative activity.
Joyce Carol Oates
There are two things to aim at in life: first to get what you want and after that to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.
Logan Pearsall Smith
The man who fails because he aims astray or because he does not aim at all is to be found everywhere.
Frank Swinnerton
True happiness we are told consists in getting out of one's self but the point is not only to get out you must stay out and to stay out you must have some absorbing errand.
Henry James
Not failure but low aim is crime.
James Russell Lowell
The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.
John Mason Brown
Use your health even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die do not outlive yourself.
George Bernard Shaw
This is true joy of life-the being used for a purpose that is recognized by yourself as a right one instead of being a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
George Bernard Shaw
For purposes of action nothing is more useful than narrowness of thought combined with energy of will.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
How then find the courage for action?... By accepting the human condition more simply and candidly by dreading troubles less calculating less hoping more.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
It's where we go and what we do when we get there that tells us who we are.
Joyce Carol Oates
An acre of performance is worth a whole world of promise.
W. D. Howells
Men expect too much do too little.
Allen Tate
All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.
James Russell Lowell
The mark of genius is an incessant activity of mind. Genius is a spiritual greed.
V.S. Pritchett
Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge.
James Russell Lowell