Quotes by Critics - Page 59

The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.
John Updike
Never call anyone a baboon unless you are sure of your facts.
Will Cuppy
An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it makes a better soup.
H.L. Mencken
I’m an atheist and I thank God for it.
George Bernard Shaw
The play was a great success, but audience was a dismal failure.
George Bernard Shaw
I require three things in a man: he must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid.
Dorothy Parker
Take me or leave me; or, as is the usual order of things, both.
Dorothy Parker
That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can't say 'No' in any of them.
Dorothy Parker
A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.
George Bernard Shaw
My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world.
George Bernard Shaw
Brevity is the soul of lingerie.
Dorothy Parker
That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.
Dorothy Parker
I don't know much about being a millionaire, but I'll bet I'd be darling at it.
Dorothy Parker
I like to have a martini,Two at the very most.After three I'm under the table,after four I'm under my host.
Dorothy Parker
If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.
George Bernard Shaw
Don't look at me in that tone of voice.
Dorothy Parker
Heterosexuality is not normal, it's just common.
Dorothy Parker
The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
H.L. Mencken
Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.
Dorothy Parker
If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.
Dorothy Parker
Animals are my friends...and I don't eat my friends.
George Bernard Shaw
If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a car or walking or doing housework you can still be writing, because you have that space.
Joyce Carol Oates
You’re not a human being until you value something more than the life of your body. And the greater the thing you live and die for the greater you are.
Orson Scott Card
A daydreamer is prepared for most things.
Joyce Carol Oates
Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure.
George E. Woodberry
If you have the guts to be yourself, other people'll pay your price.
John Updike
After all, if you do not resist the apparently inevitable, you will never know how inevitable the inevitable was.
Terry Eagleton
A photographer is like a cod, which produces a million eggs in order that one may reach maturity.
George Bernard Shaw
It serves me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard.
Dorothy Parker
The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.
George Bernard Shaw
And if my heart be scarred and burned,The safer, I, for all I learned.
Dorothy Parker
Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself.
George Orwell
You see things; you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say 'Why not?
George Bernard Shaw
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
George Orwell
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
George Orwell
Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
George Bernard Shaw
I feel very adventurous. There are so many doors to be opened, and I'm not afraid to look behind them.
Elizabeth Taylor
In heaven an angel is no one in particular.
George Bernard Shaw
Live all you can: it's a mistake not to. It doesn't matter what you do in particular, so long as you have had your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?
Henry James
You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.
H.L. Mencken
Life is full of grief, to exactly the degree we allow ourselves to love other people.
Orson Scott Card
Suspect each moment, for it is a thief, tiptoeing away with more than it brings.
John Updike
Fate loves the fearless.
James Russell Lowell
This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal who absented himself from it would have his rations reduced by half.
George Orwell
At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.
George Orwell
When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.
George Bernard Shaw
I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty...But I am too busy thinking about myself.
Edith Sitwell
There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.
George Bernard Shaw
Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.
Guillaume Apollinaire
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
George Bernard Shaw
People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.
Logan Pearsall Smith
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
George Bernard Shaw
Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
George Bernard Shaw
Where's the man that could ease a heart like a satin gown?
Dorothy Parker
In love there are two things - bodies and words.
Joyce Carol Oates
Happiness is the china shop love is the bull.
H.L. Mencken
The sun's gone dim, and the moon's gone black. For I loved him, and he didn't love back.
Dorothy Parker
The worst thing: to give yourself away in exchange for not enough love.
Joyce Carol Oates
Traveling in the company of those we love is home in motion.
Leigh Hunt
What you are to do without me I cannot imagine.
George Bernard Shaw