Quotes by Critics - Page 13

It is a delicious moment certainly that of being well-nestled in bed and feeling that you shall drop gently to sleep. The good is to come not past the limbs are tired enough to render the remaining in one posture delightful the labor of the day is gone.
Leigh Hunt
The same reason makes a man a religious enthusiast that makes a man an enthusiast in any other way ... an uncomfortable mind in an uncomfortable body.
William Hazlitt
Zeal will do more than knowledge.
William Hazlitt
To burn always with this hard gemlike flame. To maintain this ecstasy is success in life.
Walter Pater
A strong passion for any object will ensure success for the desire of the end will point out the means.
William Hazlitt
Without passion man is a mere latent force and possibility like the flint which awaits the shock of the iron before it can give forth its spark.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
There are two things to aim at in life: first to get what you want and after that to enjoy it.
Logan Pearsall Smith
An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.
George Bernard Shaw
fights you on patriotic principles he robs you on business principles he enslaves you on imperial principles.
George Bernard Shaw
The English have an extraordinary ability for flying into a great calm.
Alexander Woollcott
England and America are two countries separated by the same language.
George Bernard Shaw
The English instinctively admire any man who has no talent and is modest about it.
James Agate
Queen Victoria - a mixture of national landlady and actress.
V.S. Pritchett
It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him.
George Bernard Shaw
The difference between the vanity of a Frenchman and an Englishman seems to be this: The one thinks everything right that is French the other thinks everything wrong that is not English.
William Hazlitt
Enemies could become the best companions. Companionship is based on a common interest and the greater the interest the closer the companionship. What makes enemies of people if not the eagerness the passion for the same thing?
Bernard Berenson
Universities are the cathedrals of the modern age. They shouldn't have to justify their existence by utilitarian criteria.
David Lodge
What when drunk one sees in other women one sees in Garbo sober.
Kenneth Tynan
Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!) Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace.
Leigh Hunt
I am only a beer teetotaller not a champagne teetotaller.
George Bernard Shaw
The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides never decides.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
There are trees that seem to die at the end of autumn. There are also the evergreens.
Gilbert Maxwell
There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it.
George Bernard Shaw
What men value in the world is not rights but privileges.
H.L. Mencken
A man must be able to cut a knot for everything cannot be untied.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide ... And the choice goes by forever t'wixt that darkness and that light.
James Russell Lowell
I couldn't claim that I have never felt the urge to explore evil but when you descend into hell you have to be very careful.
Kathleen Raine
The soul of dispatch is decision.
William Hazlitt
Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence.
Joseph Wood Krutch
Reason with most people means their own opinions.
William Hazlitt
I cannot forgive my friends for dying: I do not find these vanishing acts of theirs at all amusing.
Logan Pearsall Smith
It cost me never a stab nor squirm To tread by chance upon a worm. 'Aha my little dear' I say 'Your clan will pay me back one day.'
Dorothy Parker
If this is dying I don't think much of it.
Lytton Strachey
Poisons pain you Rivers are damp Acid stains you And drugs cause cramp. Guns aren't lawful Nooses give Gas smells awful You might as well live.
Dorothy Parker
All human things are subject to decay And when fate summons monarchs must obey.
John Dryden
You can lose a man like that by your own death but not by his.
George Bernard Shaw
Danger for danger's sake is senseless.
Leigh Hunt
A cynic is a man who when he smells flowers looks around for a coffin.
H.L. Mencken
A critic at best is a waiter at the great table of literature.
Louis Dudek
To many people dramatic criticism must seem like an attempt to tattoo soap bubbles.
John Mason Brown
A critic is a man who knows the way but can't drive the car.
Kenneth Tynan
A critic is a legless man who teaches running.
Channing Pollock
Nature fits all her children with something to do He who would write and can't write can surely review.
James Russell Lowell
The critic is the duenna in the passionate affair between playwrights actors and audiences - a figure dreaded and occasionally comic but never welcome never loved.
Robertson Davies
It is easy - terribly easy - to shake a man's faith in himself. To take advantage of that to break a man's spirit is devil's work.
George Bernard Shaw
More and more people think of the critic as an indispensable middle man between writer and reader and would no more read a book alone if they could help it than have a baby alone.
Randall Jarrell
Analysis kills spontaneity. The grain once ground into flour springs and germinates no more.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier.
George Bernard Shaw
It is fairly obvious that those who are in favour of the death penalty have more affinity with assassins than those who are not.
Rémy de Gourmont
In creating the only hard thing's to begin A grass-blade's no easier to make than an oak.
James Russell Lowell
Nature they say doth dote And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan Repeating us by rote.
James Russell Lowell
The more things change the more they remain the same.
Alphonse Karr
Change lays her hand not upon the truth.
Algernon Swinburne
Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.
Bernard Berenson
The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinion.
James Russell Lowell
Progress is impossible without change and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
George Bernard Shaw
The most fatal illusion is the settled point of view. Since life is growth and motion a fixed point of view kills anybody who has one.
Brooks Atkinson
Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets. We attempt nothing great but from a sense of the difficulties we have to encounter we persevere in nothing great but from a pride in overcoming them.
William Hazlitt
When moral courage feels that it is in the right there is no personal daring of which it is incapable.
Leigh Hunt
When it comes to the pinch human beings are heroic.
George Orwell