A Quote by Howard Jacobson

Everything is allowable in literature, but what is not allowable in criticism is objection on the grounds of probability.

Howard Jacobson

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Criticism Everything Grounds Literature Objection Probability

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Howard Jacobson
British - Novelist
Born: August 25, 1942

Too often, complaint is not about principled objection on moral grounds, but opportunistic objection on grounds of self-interest. To rectify this, we need to work on mastering the art of complaint.

Julian Baggini

Severity is allowable where gentleness has no effect.

Pierre Corneille

Though laughter is allowable, a horse-laugh is abominable.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Love and war are the same thing, and stratagems and policy are as allowable in the one as in the other.

Miguel de Cervantes

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and EPA, et cetera, had worked out what allowable releases are.

William Scranton

If it were ever allowable to forget what is due to superiority of rank, it would be when the privileged themselves remember it.

Sophie Swetchine

It is always allowable to ask for artichoke jelly with your boiled venison; however there are houses where this is not supplied.

Lewis Carroll

Only just the right quantum of wit should be put into a book; in conversation a little excess is allowable.

Joseph Joubert

In dinner talk it is perhaps allowable to fling any faggot rather than let the fire go out.

James M. Barrie

Facetiousness is allowable when it is the most proper instrument of exposing things apparently base and vile to due contempt.

Isaac Barrow

If we are perplexed by an apparent contradiction in Scripture, it is not allowable to say, 'The author of this book is mistaken'; but either the manuscript is faulty, or the translation is wrong, or you have not understood.

Saint Augustine

No blur of inexactness, no cloud of vagueness, is allowable in good writing; from the first seeing to the last putting down, there must be steady lucidity and uncompromise of purpose.

Eudora Welty

Is it philosophical, is it quite allowable, to assume without evidence from fossil plants that the family or any of the genera was once larger and wide spread? and occupied a continuous area?

Asa Gray

In Southern California along the coast, if the only thing you can do with the land is agriculture, it would be substantially less (in value) than property that has almost any other allowable use.

Bill Vaughan

I think coldness is chic among writers, and particularly ironic coldness. What is absolutely not allowable is sadness. People will do anything rather than to acknowledge that they are sad.

Mary Gordon

Egotism is more like an offense, than a crime; though it is allowable to speak of yourself, provided nothing is advanced in favor; but I cannot help suspecting that those who abuse themselves are, in reality, angling for approbation.

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

A Quote by Howard Jacobson

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