“the labors of the true critic are more essential to the author, even, than to the reader.”

A puppy is but a dog, plus high spirits, and minus common sense.

There is an optimism which nobly anticipates the eventual triumph of great moral laws, and there is an optimism which cheerfully tolerates unworthiness.

No man pursues what he has at hand. No man recognizes the need of pursuit until that which he desires has escaped him.

It has been wisely said that we cannot really love anybody at whom we never laugh.

The clear-sighted do not rule the world, but they sustain and console it.

A world of vested interests is not a world which welcomes the disruptive force of candor.

To have given pleasure to one human being is a recollection that sweetens life.

Guests are the delight of leisure, and the solace of ennui.

It takes time and trouble to persuade ourselves that the things we want to do are the things we ought to do.

A dead grief is easier to bear than a live trouble.

Traveling is, and has always been, more popular than the traveler.

Who that has plodded on to middle age would take back upon his shoulders ten of the vanished years, with their mingled pleasures and pains? Who would return to the youth he is forever pretending to regret?

This is the sphinx of the hearthstone, the little god of domesticity, whose presence turns a house into a home.

Innovations to which we are not committed are illuminating things.

The man who never tells an unpalatable truth ‘at the wrong time’ (the right time has yet to be discovered) is the man whose success in life is fairly well assured.

Philadelphians are every whit as mediocre as their neighbors, but they seldom encourage each other in mediocrity by giving it a more agreeable name.

Souness critics must eat humble pie as he transforms Newcastle.

Sometimes you feel critics are wrong all the time, but I don ‘t take objection to it, because that’s the way it goes. They can be wrong, they can be right. They can be cruel, they can be kind.

The film critics don’t know my artwork and the art world doesn’t know my films.

Some critics have commented that understanding the specific Brazilian political context of the novel is helpful for reading Quiet Creature. This may be true, but it’s not prerequisite for understanding it.

I produced a play in New York that got nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award for Best American Play.

If you make action movies, the critics will savage you, and then your movies are outdated the following week with the new wave of special effects.

I’m my own worst critic and I think everyone in the band is a perfectionist.

Critic, relent!Your hope for repentanceWill meet with disapppointment.For this is the life,Not desert tents,Not camel’s milk!