A Quote by James Payn

One forgives the critic - perhaps - but never the good-natured friend.

James Payn

Quote Topics

Critic Friend Good Good-Natured Never Perhaps

Quote Author

James Payn
English - Novelist
February 28, 1830 - March 25, 1898

Blame where you must, be candid where you can, And be each critic the Good-natured Man.

Oliver Goldsmith

Only God truly forgives, man sometimes forgives, nature never forgives.

Jerome Lejeune

God always forgives when you are totally repentant and you desire to change. He forgives... and He never gets tired of forgiving. Never. You may get tired asking. I hope not. He never, never tires of forgiving. Never.

Mother Angelica

Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer.

Oscar Wilde

An enemy can partly ruin a man, but it takes a good-natured injudicious friend to complete the thing and make it perfect.

Mark Twain

For if there is anything to one's praise, it is foolish vanity to be gratified at it, and if it is abuse - why one is always sure to hear of it from one damned good-natured friend or another!

Richard Brinsley Sheridan

The world is good natured to people who are good natured.

William Makepeace Thackeray

All men have parties and are pals who never let each other down. A pal can say terrible things which are forgotten the next day. A pal never forgives, he just forgets, and a woman forgives but never forgets. That's how it is. That's why women aren't allowed to have parties. Being forgiven is very unpleasant.

Tove Jansson

It is altogether an extraordinary growing, swarming, glittering, pushing, chattering, good-natured, cosmopolitan place, and perhaps in some ways the best imitation of Paris that can be found (with a great originality of its own).

Henry James

You find very few critics who approach their job with a combination of information and enthusiasm and humility that makes for a good critic. But there is nothing wrong with critics as long as people don't pay any attention to them. I mean, nobody wants to put them out of a job and a good critic is not necessarily a dead critic. It's just that people take what a critic says as a fact rather than an opinion, and you have to know whether the opinion of the critic is informed or uninformed, intelligent of stupid -- but most people don't take the trouble.

Edward Albee

The friend who holds up before me the mirror, conceals not my smallest faults, warns me kindly, reproves me affectionately, when I have not performed my duty, he is my friend, however little he may appear so. But if a man praises and lauds me, never reproves me, overlooks my faults, and forgives them before I have repented, he is my enemy, however much he may appear my friend.

Johann Gottfried Herder

You think God will never forgive you, but the only God is beauty and beauty always forgives. It forgives with its infinite indifference.

Glen Duncan

I am perfectly satisfied that my Father and my god is a cheerful, pleasant, lively, and good-natured Being. Why? Because I am cheerful, pleasant, lively and good-natured when I have His Spirit…. That arises from the perfection of His attributes; He is a jovial, lively person, and a beautiful man.

Heber C. Kimball

I never enter a new company without the hope that I may discover a friend, perhaps the friend, sitting there with an expectant smile. That hope survives a thousand disappointments.

A. C. Benson

When anybody goes to L.A. from London, there's always this slight sense of, 'What are you doing? Who do you think you are? It's never gonna happen.' It's the classic, good-natured British cynicism.