A Quote by John Updike

The measure of artistic merit is the length to which a writer is willing to go in following his own compulsions.

John Updike

Quote Topics

Artistic Following Go His Length Measure Merit Own Which Willing Writer

Quote Author

John Updike
American - Novelist
March 18, 1932 - January 27, 2009

The individual, by means of the discipline imposed on him by sport, not only plays and finds relaxation from the various compulsions to which he is subjected, but without knowing it trains himself for new compulsions. ... Training in sports makes of the individual an efficient piece of apparatus which is henceforth unacquainted with anything but the harsh joys of exploiting his body and winning.

Jacques Ellul

How strangely inaccurate it is to measure length of living by length of life! The space between your birth and death is often far from a true measure of your days of living.

Edwin Way Teale

The moral duty of the free writer is to begin his work at home: to be a critic of his own community, his own country, his own government, his own culture. The more freedom the writer possesses, the greater the moral obligation to play the role of critic.

Edward Abbey

Successful businesses measure and count things. I think that's a safe assumption on top of which we can drop the following hypothesis: unsuccessful business either measure nothing, the wrong things, too many things, or finally, they measure the right things but they don't communicate the measurements efficiently.

Dick Costolo

It is certain that success naturally confirms in us a favourable opinion of our own abilities. Scarce any man is willing to allot to accident, friendship, and a thousand causes, which concur in every event without human contrivance or interposition, the part which they may justly claim in his advancement. We rate ourselves by our fortune rather than our virtues, and exorbitant claims are quickly produced by imaginary merit.

Samuel Johnson

A well-read fool is the most pestilent of blockheads; his learning is a flail which he knows not how to handle, and with which he breaks his neighbor's shins as well as his own. Keep a fellow of this description at arm's length, as you value the integrity of your bones.

Stanislaw I Leszczynski

To find the length of an object, we have to perform certain physical operations. The concept of length is therefore fixed when the operations by which length is measured are fixed that is, the concept of length involves as much as and nothing more than the set of operations by which length is determined.

Percy Williams Bridgman

Supreme Court says pornography is anything without artistic merit that causes sexual thoughts, that's their definition, essentially. No artistic merit, causes sexual thoughts. Hmm... Sounds like... every commercial on television, doesn't it? You know, when I see those two twins on that Doublemint commercial? I'm not thinking of gum. I am thinking of chewing, so maybe that's the connection they're trying to make.

Bill Hicks

The goal is to learn more about telomere length and other markers of ageing, how best to measure these markers, how they are related to health and lifestyle, and how people respond to learning their own telomere length results.

Elizabeth Blackburn

In the measure to which a man cuts off and humbles his own will, he proceeds toward success. But insofar as he stubbornly guards his own will, so much does he brings harm to himself.

Ephrem the Syrian

The thing you can't measure is someone's heart, someone's desire. You can measure a 40, his vertical, his bench press, and that might let you know things like, yeah, he can jump high. But desire, his dedication, his determination, that's something you can't measure. That's something you can't measure about Rod Smith.

Shannon Sharpe

If merit is not recognised, still it is merit, and it ought to be honoured as such; but if it is rewarded, it becomes valuable in the eyes of all, and everybody is encouraged to pursue that course in which merit obtains its due reward.

Keshub Chandra Sen

By denying its musical and artistic merit, hip hop's critics get to have it both ways: they can deny the legitimate artistic standing of rap while seizing on its pervasive influence as an art form to prove what a terrible effect it has on youth.

Michael Eric Dyson

No honest writer today can possibly avoid being influenced by Freud through his pioneering work into the Unconscious and by the influence of those discoveries on the scientific, philosophic, and artistic work of his contemporaries: but not, by any means, necessarily through Freud's own writing.

Dylan Thomas

I gave my artistic laugh and also threw in some quirky language for good measure. "Lawks-a-mercy, no! I'm going to have a long bath and..." I looked shyly down. Which is pretty impressive to have done artistic laugh, quirky language and shyness all in the space of ten seconds.