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Quotes by Critic
"No special writing rituals. And my desk is usually cluttered."
25
"It is not that the French are not profound, but they all express themselves so well that we are led to take their geese for swans."
25
"Good-nature, or what is often considered as such, is the most selfish of all the virtues: it is nine times out of ten mere indolence of disposition."
25
"If the world were good for nothing else, it is a fine subject for speculation."
24
"Some people are always grumbling because roses have thorns; I am thankful that thorns have roses."
24
"Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves."
24
"Every man has three characters - that which he exhibits, that which he has, and that which he thinks he has."
Man,
24
"Simply put, feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression. I liked this definition because it does not imply that men were the enemy."
24
"The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard."
24
"What matters in literature in the end is surely the idiosyncratic, the individual, the flavor or the color of a particular human suffering."
24
"The trouble with our age is all signposts and no destination."
24
"To regard all things and principles of things as inconstant modes or fashions has more and more become the tendency of modern thought."
24
"Almost every sect of Christianity is a perversion of its essence, to accommodate it to the prejudices of the world."
23
"A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man. It is a bugbear to the imagination, and, though we do not believe in it, it still haunts our apprehensions."
23
"A very intimate sense of the expressiveness of outward things, which ponders, listens, penetrates, where the earlier, less developed consciousness passed lightly by, is an important element in the general temper of our modern poetry."
23
"Enthusiasm is that temper of the mind in which the imagination has got the better of the judgment."
23
"I've always followed the rule that anything worth doing is worth doing excessively."
23
"We like to be the largest outside investor, and the first outside investor."
23
"One of the misfortunes of our time is that in getting rid of false shame we have killed off so much real shame as well."
23
"We grow like flowers, and bear desire, The odor of the human flowers."
23
"When we see love as the will to nurture one's own or another's spiritual growth, revealed through acts of care, respect, knowing, and assuming responsibility, the foundation of all love in our life is the same. There is no special love exclusively reserved for romantic partners. Genuine love is the foundation of our engagement with ourselves, with family, with friends, with partners, with everyone we choose to love."
22
"First of all, there was a volcano of words, an eruption of words that Shakespeare had never used before that had never been used in the English language before. It's astonishing. It pours out of him."
22
"Some of the characters in the story had a fortune in fantasy lives."
22
"Those people who are uncomfortable in themselves are disagreeable to others."
22
"Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food."
22
"Nature should have been pleased to have made this age miserable, without making it also ridiculous."
22
"Don't let young people tell you their aspirations; when they drop them they will drop you."
22
"In some situations, if you say nothing, you are called dull; if you talk, you are thought impertinent and arrogant. It is hard to know what to do in this case. The question seems to be, whether your vanity or your prudence predominates."
22
"Melville brought to the task a sound knowledge of actual whaling, much curious learning in the literature of the subject, and, above all, an imagination which worked with great power upon the facts of his own experience."
22
"We need to theorize the meaning of beauty in our lives so that we can educate for critical consciousness, talking through the issues: how we acquire and spend money, how we feel about beauty, what the place of beauty is in our lives when we lack material privilege and even basic resources for living, the meaning and significance of luxury, and the politics of envy."
22
"It fills one with a sense of architectural possibility."
22
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