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Criticism can never instruct or benefit you. Its chief effect is that of a telegram with dubious news. Praise leaves no glow behind, for it is a writer’s habit to remember nothing good of himself.

Ben Hecht

Chicago is a sort of journalistic Yellowstone Park, offering haven to a last herd of fantastic bravos.
BEN HECHT

Chicago Offering Yellowstone
The rest of the fraternity is deadwood. Yet, in a curious way, there is not much difference between the product of a good writer and a bad one. They both have to toe the same mark.
BEN HECHT

Between Curious Difference Good Mark Same Writer
The movies are an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming cultured people.
BEN HECHT

Eruption Mind People
The only practical way yet discovered by the world for curing its ills is to forget about them.
BEN HECHT

Forget Way World
As an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming a cultured people.
BEN HECHT

Country Cultured Mind People
I’m a Hollywood writer, so I put on my sports jacket and take off my brain.
BEN HECHT

Brain Hollywood Sports
For many years Hollywood held this double lure for me, tremendous sums of money for work that required no more effort than a game of pinochle.
BEN HECHT

Effort Games Years
I’ll tell you a secret. We live in a mad and inspiring world.
BEN HECHT

Mad Secret World
Criticism can never instruct or benefit you. Its chief effect is that of a telegram with dubious news. Praise leaves no glow behind, for it is a writer’s habit to remember nothing good of himself.
BEN HECHT

Christmas Criticism Dubious News Praise
Despite all our toil and progress, the art of medicine still falls somewhere between trout casting and spook writing.
BEN HECHT

Art Fall Medicine Writing
There is nothing as dull as an intellectual ally after a certain age.
BEN HECHT

Age Allies Intellectual
The honors Hollywood has for the writer are as dubious as tissue-paper cuff links.
BEN HECHT

Dubious Hollywood Honor
The rule in the art world is: you cater to the masses or you kowtow to the elite; you can’t have both.
BEN HECHT

Art Mass World
Out of the seventy movies I’ve written some ten of them were not entirely waste product.
BEN HECHT

Product Seventies Waste
Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.
BEN HECHT

Business Reading Time
When you overpay small people you frighten them. They know that their merits or activities entitle them to no such sums as they are receiving. As a result their boss soars out of economic into magic significance.
BEN HECHT

Blessing Money People
Prejudice is a raft onto which the shipwrecked mind clambers and paddles to safety.
BEN HECHT

Diversity Justice Safety
People’s sex habits are as well known in Hollywood as their political opinions, and much less criticized.
BEN HECHT

Opinions People Political Sex
Innocent people can get into terrible jams, too. One false move and you’re in over your head.
BEN HECHT

Fate Moving People
I know that a man who shows me his wealth is like the beggar who shows me his poverty; they are both looking for alms from me, the rich man for the alms of my envy, the poor man for the alms of my guilt.
BEN HECHT

Envy Guilt Men
In moderating, not satisfying desires, lies peace.
BEN HECHT

Deceit Desire Lying
H.L.Mencken’s war aims, according to the handful of observers who deigned to notice his conflict, were the overthrow of American Democracy, the Christian religion, and the YMCA. He was also credited with trying to wipe out poets and luncheon orators.
BEN HECHT

Art Christianity Conflict War
The movies are one of the bad habits that corrupted our century.Of their many sins, I offer as the worst their effect on the intellectual side of the nation. It is chiefly from that viewpoint I write of them.
BEN HECHT

Intellectual People Writing
That God has managed to survive the inanities of the religions that do Him homage is truly a miraculous proof of His existence.
BEN HECHT

Atheism Existence Proof
Movies are one of the bad habits that have corrupted our century. They have slipped into the American mind more misinformation in one evening than the Dark Ages could muster in a decade.
BEN HECHT

Age Dark Mind
Love is a hole in the heart.
BEN HECHT

Heart Holes Love
He was in love with life as an ant on a summer blade of grass.
BEN HECHT

June Life Love Summer

Criticism can never instruct or benefit you. Its chief effect is that of a telegram with dubious news. Praise leaves no glow behind, for it is a writer’s habit to remember nothing good of himself.

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Criticism can never instruct or benefit you. Its chief effect is that of a telegram with dubious news. Praise leaves no glow behind, for it is a writer’s habit to remember nothing good of himself.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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