Top 1112 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Critics - Page 17

When I was a graduate student, the leading spirits at Harvard were interested in the history of ideas.

Grammar school never taught me anything about grammar.

Governments will always misuse the machinery of the law as far as the state of public opinion permits.

A further point is that, little by little, in the current universe, everything is slowly being named; nor does this have anything to do with the older Aristotelian universals in which the idea of a chair subsumes all its individual manifestations.

I worked for a menial's hire, Only to learn, dismayed, That any wage I had asked of Life, Life would have paid.

The sad truth is that the civil rights movement cannot be reborn until we identify the causes of black suffering, some of them self-inflicted. Why can't black leaders organize rallies around responsible sexuality, birth within marriage, parents reading to their children and students staying in school and doing homework?

Everything looks beautiful in Life of Pi.

There is an insuperable problem about introducing immigrants to British values. There are no British values. Nor are there any Serbian or Peruvian values. No nation has a monopoly on fairness and decency, justice and humanity.

Most women loathe limericks, for the same reason that calves hate cookbooks.

Art is often confused with the skill of drawing. It is the skill of making.

All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.

Great progress was made when arbitration treaties were concluded in which the contracting powers pledge in advance to submit all conflicts to an arbitration court, treaties which not only specify the composition of the court, but also its procedure.

To achieve lasting literature, fictional or factual, a writer needs perceptive vision, absorptive capacity, and creative strength.

Nothing is more usual than the sight of old people who yearn for retirement: and nothing is so rare than those who have retired and do not regret it.

I think it's too easy to recount your unhappy memories when you write about yourself. You bask in your own innocence. You revere your grief. You arrange your angers at their most becoming angles.

In the voyeurism of Reality TV, the viewer's passivity is kept intact, pampered and massaged and force-fed Chicken McNuggets of carefully edited snippets that permit him or her to sit in easy judgment and feel superior at watching familiar strangers make fools of themselves. Reality TV looks in only one direction: down.

I want to attract as many people as I can to listen to my show, and I don't expect everyone to always agree with me.

Collaboration is a key [to success]. It really is.

The forms of art are inexhaustible; but all lead by the same road of aesthetic emotion to the same world of aesthetic ecstasy.

Patience is the ability to idle your motor when you feel like stripping your gears.

I've been playing Texas Hold 'em and other forms of poker since I was about 12.

The style of ancient Egyptian art is transcendently clear, something 8-year-olds can recognize in an instant. Its consistency and codification is one of the most epic visual journeys in all art, one that lasts 30 dynasties spread over 3,000 years.

Twentieth-century American poetry has been one of the glories of modern literature.

As so often happens in marriage, roles that had begun almost playfully, to give line and shape to our lives, had hardened like suits of armor and taken us prisoner.

I bargained with Life for a penny, And Life would pay no more, However I begged at evening When I counted my scanty store.

Politics is a way of ruling in divided societies without undue violence...politics is not just a necessary evil; it is a realistic good.

He's managed to make himself something highly unusual for a man at this stage of his career: unclassifiable. Unpredictable. Tom Jones is no joke

I don't see that there are any particular changes in popular music.

If I despised myself, it would be no compensation if everyone saluted me, and if I respect myself, it does not trouble me if others hold me lightly.

The movie Fifty Shades of Grey is considerably better written than the book. It is also sort of classy-looking, in a generic, TV-ad-for-bath-oil way.

There are two cinemas: the films we have actually seen and the memories we have of them.

Aesthetic freedom is like free speech; it is, indeed, a form of free speech.

Look up, laugh loud, talk big, keep the color in your cheek and the fire in your eye, adorn your person, maintain your health, your beauty and your animal spirits.

For behind all imperialism is ultimately the imperialistic individual, just as behind all peace is ultimately the peaceful individual.

To think of criticism as a conversation is to think of it as a social act, something that puts you in touch with other people who may think the way you do.

I believe couples should have separate bedrooms.

I am too childlike to be immature.

Genius and virtue are to be more often found clothed in gray than in peacock bright.

Although the French appellation system has its roots in the 1923 system created in Chateauneuf-du-Pape by Baron Le Roy, proprietor of the renowned Chateau Fortia, Chateauneuf-du-Pape never developed a reputation for quality or achieved the prestige enjoyed by such regions as Burgundy and Bordeaux.

It became normal for women on the internet to adopt gender-neutral or male screen names.

We must have zero tolerance for sexual harassment, even if the perpetrator is somebody we like and admire.

The greatest composer does not sit down to work because he is inspired, but becomes inspired because he is working.

Martha Stewart contributes more to our civility than the Baptist church.

You read these stories of people who were in Hollywood in the late '60s. After they found out about the murders, everybody was like, "Have you met [Charles] Manson? Have you been to that ranch?" In some way, everybody felt connected, but what was it like for people who really were connected.

If I had to catalog all the moronic plot turns in The Day After Tomorrow, we'd be here until the next ice age. It's just so very bad. You can have a pretty good time snickering at it-unless, like me, you think there's something to this global warming thing, and you shudder at the irony of a movie meant to warn people about a dangerous environmental trend that completely discredits it. Is it possible that the film is a plot to make environmental activists look as wacko as anti-environmentalists always claim they are?

A prettiness mummified by years of chalk dust.

I've always felt there are three sexes: men, women, and actors. And actors combine the worst qualities of the other two.

"Joy" is based, albeit loosely, on the life of Joy Mangano, an entrepreneur, inventor and QVC shopping network star with the mega-selling Miracle Mop. Jennifer Lawrence is excellent as Joy, but the film starts off on the wrong foot with woeful depictions of her background as the only sane person in her dysfunctional family.

Laughter is to life what shock absorbers are to automobiles. It won't take the potholes out of the road, but it sure makes the ride smoother

Sometimes a noble failure serves the world as faithfully as does a distinguished success.

They are words you don't easily forget: I don't have good news.

Power is never so overwhelming that there's no room for resistance.

Miss Petrowska,an excellent pianist, held the audience transfixed with Chou Wen-chung’s work. Miss Petrowska was coolness itself in getting the hardware into the piano and out again…in Messiaen, a feeling for the music’s reverent sobriety combined to produce an absorbing performance.

Feminism is hated because women are hated. Anti-feminism is a direct expression of misogyny; it is the political defense of women hating.

The pursuit of beauty is much more dangerous nonsense than the pursuit of truth or goodness, because it affords a stronger temptation to the ego.

I like technology, but 'Black Mirror' is more what the consequences are, and it doesn't tend to be about technology itself: it tends to be how we use or misuse it. We've not really thought through the consequences of it.

Donald Trump didn't just throw out the playbook, he set fire to it. And America loved it.

Politics is a pendulum.

Work hard. Through determination and self-focus and discipline, you can accomplish anything.

Thank you to all for your prayers and good wishes. It gave me the strength to persevere and warmed my heart.