c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Since the general civilization of mankind I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
— James Madison
The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way  so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs or impede their efforts to obtain it.
— John Stuart Mill
We must be free or die  who speak the tongue That Shakespeare spake  the faith and morals hold Which Milton held.
— William Wordsworth
No amount of political freedom will satisfy the hungry masses.
— Vladimir Lenin
I would rather sit on a pumpkin  and have it all to myself  than to be crowded on a velvet cushion.
— Henry David Thoreau
I never saw a Purple Cow  I never hope to see one: But I can tell you  anyhow I'd rather see than be one.
— Gelett Burgess
There was an old man who said  "How Shall I flee from this horrible cow? I will sit on this stile  and continue to smile  Which may soften the heart of that cow."
— Edward Lear
The reality is that changes are coming. ... They must come. You must share in bringing them.
— John Hersey
After you've done a thing the same way for two years  look it over carefully. After five years  look at it with suspicion. And after ten years  throw it away and start all over.
— Alfred Edward Perlman
All that philosophers have done is interpret the world in different ways. It is our job to change it.
— Karl Marx
Christians are supposed not merely to endure change  nor even to profit by it  but to cause it.
— Harry Emerson Fosdick
If you have no will to change it  you have no right to criticize it.
— Anonymous
Changes are not predictable  but to deny them is to be an accomplice to one's own unnecessary vegetation.
— Gail Sheehy
We must learn to view change as a natural phenomenon-to anticipate it and to plan for it. The future is ours to channel in the direction we want to go ... we must continually ask ourselves  "What will happen if ... ?" or better still  "How can we make it happen?"
— Lisa Taylor
One must change one's tactics every ten years if one wishes to maintain one's superiority.
— Napoleon Bonaparte
New things cannot come where there is no room.
— Mario Morgan
The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.
— Charles Du Bos
When patterns are broken  new worlds emerge.
— Tuli Kupferberg
One must lose one's life in order to find it.
— Anne Morrow Lindbergh
This Mouse must give up one of his Mouse ways of seeing things in order that he may grow.
— Hyemeyohsts Storm
Compromise  if not the spice of life  is its solidity.
— Phyllis McGinley
The only alternative to war is peace and the only road to peace is negotiations.
— Golda Meir
Every one should keep a mental wastepaper basket and the older he grows the more things he will consign to it-torn up to irrecoverable tatters.
— Samuel Butler
Unless one says goodbye to what one loves  and unless one travels to completely new territories  one can expect merely a long wearing away of oneself and an eventual extinction.
— Jean Dubuffet
"How does one become a butterfly?" she asked pensively. "You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar."
— Trina Paulus
No matter how far you have gone on a wrong road  turn back.
— Turkish proverb
Duration is not a test of true or false.
— Anne Morrow Lindbergh
It is only an error in judgement to make a mistake  but it shows infirmity of character to adhere to it when discovered.
— Christian Bovee
If you board the wrong train  it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
It's never too late-in fiction or in life-to revise.
— Nancy Thayer
Any path is only a path  and there is no affront  to oneself or to others  in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you.
— Carlos Castaneda
There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go.
— Tennessee Williams
Being stuck is a position few of us like. We want something new but cannot let go of the old-old ideas  beliefs  habits  even thoughts. We are out of contact with our own genius. Sometimes we know we are stuck  sometimes we don't. In both cases we have to do something.
— Inga Teekens
My success was not based so much on any great intelligence but on great common sense.
— Helen Gurley Brown
Lose yourself wholly  and the more you lose  the more you will find.
— Saint Catherine of Siena
Heroes take journeys  confront dragons  and discover the treasure of their true selves.
— Carol Pearson
Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you  they're supposed to help you discover who you are.
— Bernice Johnson Reagon
Just as we outgrow a pair of trousers  we outgrow acquaintances  libraries  principles  etc.  at times before they're worn out and times-and this is the worst of all-before we have new ones.
— Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
It is best to learn as we go  not go as we have learned.
— Leslie Jeanne Sahler
Those interested in perpetuating present conditions are always in tears about the marvelous past that is about to disappear  without having so much as a smile for the young future.
— Simone de Beauvoir
I will not change just to court popularity.
— Margaret Thatcher
Innovation! One cannot be forever innovating. I want to create classics.
— Coco Chanel
Have no fear of change as such and  on the other hand  no liking for it merely for its own sake.
— Robert Moses
If you want to stand out  don't be different  be outstanding.
— Meredith West
The main dangers in this life are the people who want to change everything ... or nothing.
— Lady Astor
To change and to improve are two different things.
— German proverb
Our fathers valued change for the sake of its results  we value it in the act.
— Alice Meynell
We must beware of needless innovations  especially when guided by logic.
— Winston Churchill
All change is not growth  as all movement is not forward.
— Ellen Glasgow
Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed.
— Irene Peter
None are happy but by the anticipation of change. The change itself is nothing  when we have made it  the next wish is to change again.
— Samuel Johnson
To some will come a time when change itself is beauty  if not heaven.
— Edwin Arlington Robinson
Today is not yesterday  how can our works and thoughts  if they are always to be the fittest  continue always the same? Change  indeed  is painful  yet ever needful.
— Thomas Carlyle
Security can only be achieved through constant change  through discarding old ideas that have outlived their usefulness and adapting others to current facts.
— William O. Douglas
You had better be ready to change your mind when needed.
— Henry B. Wilson
Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
— Mark Twain
They were so strong in their beliefs that there came a time when it hardly mattered what exactly those beliefs were  they all fused into a single stubbornness.
— Louise Erdrich
We are chameleons  and our partialities and prejudices change place with an easy and blessed facility.
— Mark Twain
Our firmest convictions are apt to be the most suspect  they mark our limitations and our bounds. Life is a petty thing unless it is moved by the indomitable urge to extend its boundaries.
— Jose Ortega y Gasset
It often takes more courage to change one's opinion than to stick to it.
— Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
All our final resolutions are made in a state of mind which is not going to last.
— Marcel Proust
It's an ill plan that cannot be changed.
— Latin proverb
The death of dogma is the birth of reality.
— Immanuel Kant
If anyone accuses me of contradicting myself  I reply: Because I have been wrong once  or oftener  I do not aspire to be always wrong.
— Vauvenargues
He who cannot change the very fabric of his thought will never be able to change reality.
— Anwar Sadat
It is in the uncompromisingness with which dogma is held  and not in the dogma or want of dogma  that the danger lies.
— Samuel Butler
I wish to say what I think and feel today  with the proviso that tomorrow perhaps I shall contradict it all.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
The most significant change in a person's life is a change of attitude. Right attitudes produce right actions.
— William J. Johnston
You had better be ready to change your mind when needed  or your mind will change you.
— Henry B. Wilson
The most fatal illusion is the settled point of view. Since life is growth and motion  a fixed point of view kills anybody who has one.
— Brooks Atkinson
The world does not have to change.... The only thing that has to change is our attitude.
— Gerald Jampolsky
Oh  would that my mind could let fall its dead ideas  as the tree does its withered leaves!
— Andre Gide
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong  which is but saying ... that he is wiser today than yesterday.
— Jonathan Swift
We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.
— William James
It is well for people who think to change their minds occasionally in order to keep them clean. For those who do not think  it is best at least to rearrange their prejudices once in a while.
— Luther Burbank
New opinions are always suspected  and usually opposed  without any other reason but because they are not already common.
— John Locke
Do I contradict myself? Very well then  I contradict myself (I am large  I contain multitudes).
— Walt Whitman
I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors  and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be new views.
— Abraham Lincoln
Contradiction is not a sign of falsity  nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.
— Blaise Pascal
My opinion is a view I hold until... well  until I find something that changes it.
— Luigi Pirandello
He that never changes his opinions  and never corrects his mistakes  will never be wiser on the morrow than he is today.
— Tyron Edwards
Inconsistency is the only thing in which men are consistent.
— Horatio Smith
There is nothing in this world constant but inconstancy.
— Jonathan Swift
Consistency is only suitable for ridicule.
— Moliere
The world is quite right. It does not have to be consistent.
— Charlotte P. Gilman
The world's a scene of changes  and to be constant  in nature  is inconstancy.
— Abraham Cowley
We cannot remain consistent with the world save by growing inconsistent with our past selves.
— Havelock Ellis
True consistency  that of the prudent and the wise  is to act in conformity with circumstances  and not to act always the same way under a change of circumstances.
— John C. Calhoun
Consistency is a paste jewel that only cheap men cherish.
— William Allen White
Consistency is contrary to nature  contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead.
— Aldous Huxley
There are those who would misteach us that to stick in a rut is consistency  and a virtue  and that to climb out of the rut is inconsistency  and a vice.
— Mark Twain
Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as for the body.
— Aldous Huxley
With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. ... Speak what you think today in words as hard as cannon balls  and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again  though it contradicts everything you said today.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
People who honestly mean to be true really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try to be "consistent."
— Oliver Wendell Holmes
To be honest  one must be inconsistent.
— H. G. Wells
The only man who can't change his mind is a man who hasn't got one.
— Edward Noyes Westcott
Like all weak men  he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.
— W. Somerset Maugham
Nothing should be permanent except struggle with the dark side within ourselves.
— Shirley MacLaine
The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinion.
— James Russell Lowell
A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
— Winston Churchill
The circumstances of the world are so variable that an irrevocable purpose or opinion is almost synonymous with a foolish one.
— William H. Seward
If in the last few years you haven't discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one  check your pulse. You may be dead.
— Gelett Burgess
A stiff attitude is one of the phenomena of rigor mortis.
— Henry S. Haskins
It's the most unhappy people who most fear change.
— Mignon McLaughlin
Obstinacy and heat in sticking to one's opinions is the surest proof of stupidity. Is there anything so cocksure  so immovable  so disdainful  so contemplative  so solemn and serious as an ass?
— Michel de Montaigne
The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water  and breeds reptiles of the mind.
— William Blake
When people are least sure  they are often most dogmatic.
— John Kenneth Galbraith
A conclusion is a place where you got tired of thinking.
— Fischer's Law
Only fools and dead men don't change their minds. Fools won't. Dead men can't.
— John H. Patterson
The consistent thinker ... is either a walking mummy or else  if he has not succeeded in stifling all his vitality  a fanatical monomaniac.
— Aldous Huxley
Life is not a static thing. The only people who do not change their minds are incompetents in asylums  and those in cemeteries.
— Everett M. Dirksen
To hold the same views at forty as we held at twenty is to have been stupefied for a score of years and to take rank  not as a prophet  but as an unteachable brat  well birched and none the wiser.
— Robert Louis Stevenson
To do things today exactly the way you did them yesterday saves thinking.
— Woodrow Wilson
Any change  even a change for the better  is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.
— Arnold Bennett
Old habits are strong and jealous.
— Dorothea Brande
Every new truth begins in a shocking heresy.
— Margaret Deland
Birth is violent  whether it be the birth of a child or the birth of an idea.
— Marianne Williamson
Any truth creates a scandal.
— Marguerite Yourcenar
Even in slight things the experience of the new is rarely without some stirring of foreboding.
— Eric Hoffer
All changes  even the most longed for  have their melancholy  for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves  we must die to one life before we can enter into another.
— Anatole France
The key to change ... is to let go of fear.
— Rosanne Cash
Tears are sometimes an inappropriate response to death. When a life has been lived completely honestly  completely successfully  or just completely  the correct response to death's perfect punctuation mark is a smile.
— Julie Burchill
Since changes are going on anyway  the great thing is to learn enough about them so that we will be able to lay hold of them and turn them in the direction of our desires. Condi-tions and events are neither to be fled from nor passively acquiesced in  they are to be utilized and directed.
— John Dewey
He that has energy enough to root out a vice should go further  and try to plant a virtue in its place.
— Charles Caleb Colton
To change skins  evolve into new cycles  I feel one has to learn to discard. If one changes internally  one should not continue to live with the same objects. They reflect one's mind and psyche of yesterday. I throw away what has no dynamic  living use.
— Anais Nin
Today changes must come fast  and we must adjust our mental habits  so that we can accept comfortably the idea of stopping one thing and beginning another overnight.... We must assume that there is probably a better way to do almost everything. We must stop assuming that a thing which has never been done before probably cannot be done at all.
— Donald M. Nelson
We must therefore take account of this changeable nature of things and of human institutions  and prepare for them with enlightened foresight.
— Pope Pius XI
You don't have to be afraid of change. You don't have to worry about what's being taken away. Just look to see what's been added.
— Jackie Greer
When you're stuck in a spiral  to change all aspects of the spin you need only to change one thing.
— Christina Baldwin
The more things change  the more they remain the same.
— Alphonse Karr
Things good in themselves ... perfectly valid in the integrity of their origins  become fetters if they cannot alter.
— Freya Stark
Change lays her hand not upon the truth.
— Algernon Swinburne
The spectacle has changed  but our eyes remain the same.
— Joseph Joubert
Change is the constant  the signal for rebirth  the egg of the phoenix.
— Christina Baldwin
Change is what people fear most.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Change means the unknown.
— Eleanor Roosevelt
Nature's mighty law is change.
— Robert Burns
A human being does not cease to exist at death. It is change  not destruction  which takes place.
— Florence Nightingale
The old order changeth yielding place to new  and God fulfills himself in many ways.
— Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The only people in the world who can change things are those who can sell ideas.
— Lois Wyse
Everybody thinks of changing humanity and nobody thinks of changing himself.
— Leo Tolstoy
One person's constant is another person's variable.
— Susan Gerhart
The mill wheel turns  it turns forever  though what is uppermost remains not so.
— Bertolt Brecht
It's a bad plan that can't be changed.
— Publilius Syrus
In a way  winter is the real spring  the time when the inner things happen  the resurge of nature.
— Edna O'Brien
Mourning is not forgetting. ... It is an undoing. Every minute tie has to be untied and something permanent and valuable recovered and assimilated from the dust.
— Margery Allingham
It is never any good dwelling on goodbyes. It is not the being together that it prolongs  it is the parting.
— Elizabeth Asquith Bibesco
Such is the state of life that none are happy but by the anticipation of change. The change itself is nothing. When we have made it  the next wish is to change again.
— Samuel Johnson
New links must be forged as old ones rust.
— Jane Howard
The hearts of great men can be changed.
— Homer
You cannot step twice into the same river  for other waters are continually flowing on.
— Heraclitus
A man's fortune must first be changed from within.
— Chinese proverb
One change always leaves the way open for the establishment of others.
— Niccolo Machiavelli
There is danger in reckless change  but greater danger in blind conservatism.
— Henry George
Without imagination  nothing is dangerous.
— Georgette Leblanc
Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change.
— Katherine Mansfield
The moment of change is the only poem.
— Adrienne Rich
I have accepted fear as a part of life-specifically the fear of change. ... I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back. ...
— Erica Jong
As we learn we always change  and so our perception. This changed perception then becomes a new Teacher inside each of us.
— Hyemeyohsts Storm
We are restless because of incessant change  but we would be frightened if change were stopped.
— Lyman Lloyd Bryson
One must be thrust out of a finished cycle in life  and that leap is the most difficult to make-to part with one's faith  one's love  when one would prefer to renew the faith and recreate the passion.
— Anais Nin
When one door of happiness closes  another opens  but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.
— Helen Keller
If you want to make enemies  try to change something.
— Woodrow Wilson
Whenever man comes up with a better mousetrap  nature immediately comes up with a better mouse.
— James Carswell
Musical comedies aren't written  they are re-written.
— Stephen Sondheim
I see the playwright as a lay preacher peddling the ideas of his time in popular form.
— August Strindberg
The art of creation is older than the art of killing.
— Andrei Voznesensky
Human Salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
In the creative state a man is taken out of himself. He lets down as it were a bucket into his subconscious  and draws up something which is normally beyond his reach. He mixes this thing with his normal experiences and out of the mixture he makes a work of art.
— E. M. Forster
I do not seek. I find.
— Pablo Picasso
The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
The life of the creative man is led  directed and controlled by boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most important purposes.
— Saul Steinberg
An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn't know why they choose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why.
— William Faulkner
No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time. It is just that others are behind the time.
— Martha Graham
Doodling is the brooding of the hand.
— Saul Steinberg
I am a choreographer. A choreographer is a poet. I do not create. God creates. I assemble  and I will steal from everywhere to do it.
— George Balanchine
Workaholics are energized rather than enervated by their work - their energy paradoxically expands as it is expended.
— Marilyn Machlowitz
You lose it if you talk about it.
— Ernest Hemingway
In creating  the only hard thing's to begin  A grass-blade's no easier to make than an oak.
— James Russell Lowell
I can always be distracted by love  but eventually I get horny for my creativity.
— Gilda Radner
The End of every maker is himself.
— St. Thomas Aquinas
Now I really make the little idea from clay  and I hold it in my hand. I can turn it  look at it from underneath  see it from one view  hold it against the sky  imagine it any size I like  and really be in control  almost like God creating something.
— Henry Moore
No matter how old you get  if you can keep the desire to be creative  you're keeping the man-child alive.
— John Cassavetes
What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.
— Dean William R. Inge
Originality is nothing but judicious imitation.
— Voltaire
A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something.
— Frank Capra
Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.
— Jean Cocteau
What another would have done as well as you  do not do it. What another would have said as well as you  do not say it. What another would have written as well  do not write it. Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself- and thus make yourself indispensable.
— Andre Gide
It seems that the creative faculty and the critical faculty cannot exist together in their highest perfection.
— Thomas Babington Macaulay
I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's. I will not reason and compare  My business is to create.
— William Blake
In the beginning God created the Heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form  and void  and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said  Let there be light  and there was light.
— Bible
Nature they say  doth dote  And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan  Repeating us by rote.
— James Russell Lowell
All are but parts of one stupendous whole  Whose body Nature is  and God the soul.
— Alexander Pope
It is easier to suppose that the universe has existed from all eternity than to conceive a Being beyond its limits capable of creating it.
— Percy Bysshe Shelley
The world embarrasses me  and I cannot dream That this watch exists and has no watchmaker.
— Voltaire
God is in the world  or nowhere  creating continually in us and around us. Insofar as man partakes of this creative process does he partake of the divine  of God  and that participation is his immortality ....
— Alfred North Whitehead
You were placed on this earth to create  not to compete.
— Robert Anthony
Every moment of your life is infinitely creative and the universe is endlessly bountiful. )ust put forth a clear enough request  and everything your heart truly desires must come to you.
— Shakti Gawain
There is no greater joy than that of feeling oneself a creator. The triumph of life is expressed by creation.
— Henri Bergson
Creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives . . . most of the things that are interesting  important  and human are the results of creativity . . . when we are involved in it  we feel that we are living more fully than during the rest of life.
— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Creativeness often consists of merely turning up what is already there.
— Bernice Fitz-Gibbon
I saw an angel in the block of marble and I just chiseled 'til I set him free.
— Michelangelo
It is the child in man that is the source of his uniqueness and creativeness  and the playground is the optimal milieu for the unfolding of his capacities.
— Eric Hoffer
Many times we will get more ideas and better ideas in two hours of creative loafing than in eight hours at a desk.
— Wilfred Peterson
If you are seeking creative ideas  go out walking. Angels whisper to a man when he goes for a walk.
— Raymond Inman
In God we trust  all others must pay cash.
— American Saying
He that hath lost his credit is dead to the world.
— George Edward Herbert
No man's credit is as good as his money.
— E. W. Howe
Ah  take the cash  and let the credit go.
— Omar Khayyam
Better be too credulous than too skeptical
— Chinese proverb
Let us believe neither half of the good people tell us of ourselves  nor half the evil they say of others.
— J. Pettit-Senn
I wish I was as sure of anything as Macaulay is of everything.
— William Windham
A small demerit extinguishes a long service.
— Thomas Fuller
And the thing has been said and said well  have no scruple. Take it and copy it.
— Anatole France
Jupiter is slow looking into his notebook  but he always looks.
— Zenobius
The number of malefactors authorizes not the crime.
— Thomas Fuller
No one is entirely useless. Even the worst of us can serve as horrible examples.
— Anonymous prisoner
The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier.
— George Bernard Shaw
He who excuses himself accuses himself. (Qui s'excuse  s'accuse.)
— Anonymous
The study of crime begins with the knowledge of oneself.
— Henry Miller
Fear succeeds crime - it is its punishment.
— Voltaire
All punishment is mischief. All punishment in itself is evil.
— Jeremy Bentham
Speaking generally  punishment hardens and numbs  it produces concentration  it sharpens the consciousness of alienation  it strengthens the power of resistance.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
He only may chastise who loves.
— Rabindranath Tagore
If England treats her criminals the way she has treated me  she doesn't deserve to have any.
— Oscar Wilde
It is fairly obvious that those who are in favour of the death penalty have more affinity with assassins than those who are not.
— Remy de Gourmont
Prisons don't rehabilitate  they don't punish  they don't protect  so what the hell do they do?
— Jerry Brown
Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.
— Henry Ford
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard  chiefly  I think  because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
— Bertrand Russell
Much as he is opposed to lawbreaking  he is not bigoted about it.
— Damon Runyon
Crime  like virtue  has its degrees.
— Racine
Society prepares the crime  the criminal commits it.
— Henry Thomas Buckle
Many commit the same crimes with a very different result. One bears a cross for his crime  another a crown.
— Juvenal
One crime is everything  two nothing.
— Dorothee Deluzy
Whoever profits by the crime is guilty of it.
— French proverb
It is not the thief who is hanged  but one who was caught stealing.
— Czech proverb
We enact many laws that manufacture criminals  and then a few that punish them.
— Abraham Tucker
Yet each man kills the thing he loves  By each let this be heard  Some do it with a bitter look  Some with a flattering word  The coward does it with a kiss  The brave man with a sword.
— Oscar Wilde
Winston has written four volumes about himself and called it 'World Crisis'.
— Arthur Balfour
Poetry is the language of a state of crisis.
— Stephane Mallarme
There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
— Henry Kissinger
There is no crisis to which academics will not respond with a seminar.
— Old saying
Faced with crisis  the man of character falls back on himself.
— Charles de Gaulle
The crisis of today is the joke of tomorrow.
— H. G. Wells
The crisis you have to worry about most is the one you don't see coming.
— Mike Mansfield
Said the pot to die kettle  "Get away  blackface."
— Miguel de Cervantes
Critics are the men who have failed in literature and art.
— Benjamin Disraeli
As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair  so an unsuccessful author turns critic.
— Percy Bysshe Shelley
What a blessed thing it is that nature  when she invented  manufactured and patented her audiors  contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left!
— Oliver Wendell Holmes
Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.
— German proverb
I had rather be hissed for a good verse than applauded for a bad one.
— Victor Hugo
Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world -  though the cant of hypocrites ihay be the worst - the cant of criticism is the most tormenting.
— Laurence Sterne
A guest sees more in an hour than the host in a year.
— Polish proverb
Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.
— Christopher Hampton
Book reviewers are little old ladies of both sexes.
— John O'Hara
Constant  indiscriminate approval devalues because it is so predictable.
— Kit Reed
Critics are biased  and so are readers. (Indeed  a critic is a bundle of biases held loosely together by a sense of taste.) But intelligent readers soon discover how to allow for the windage of their own and a critic's prejudices.
— Whitney Balliett
Don't judge any man until you have walked two moons in his moccasins.
— American Indian saying
Henry James chews more than he bites off.
— Mrs. Henry Adams
I don't want to see the uncut version of anything.
— Jean Kerr
It is easy - terribly easy - to shake a man's faith in himself. To take advantage of that  to break a man's spirit is devil's work.
— George Bernard Shaw
The critic is an overgoer with pen-envy.
— Geoffrey Hartman
Two and two continue to make four  in spite of the whine of the amateur for three  or the cry of the critic for five.
— James McNeill Whistler
Tomorrow night I appear for the first time before a Boston audience - 4000 critics.
— Mark Twain
He has a right to criticize  who has a heart to help.
— Abraham Lincoln
More and more people think of the critic as an indispensable middle man between writer and reader  and would no more read a book alone  if they could help it  than have a baby alone.
— Randall Jarrell
It is not expected of critics that they should help us to make sense of our lives  they are bound only to attempt the lesser feat of making sense of the ways we try to make sense of our lives.
— Frank Kermode
Analysis kills spontaneity. The grain once ground into flour springs and germinates no more.
— Henri Frederic Amiel
His words leap across rivers and mountains  but his thoughts are still only six inches long.
— E. B. White
When critics disagree  the artist is in accord with himself.
— Oscar Wilde
The factor in human life provocative of a noble discontent is the gradual emergence of a sense of criticism  founded upon appreciation of beauty  and of intellectual distinction  and of duty.
— Alfred North Whitehead
To many people dramatic criticism must seem like an attempt to tattoo soap bubbles.
— John Mason Brown
The test of a good critic is whether he knows when and how to believe on insufficient evidence.
— Samuel Butler
Reprove not a scorner  lest he hate thee  rebuke a wise man and he will love thee.
— Bible
In judging others  folks will work overtime for no pay.
— Charles Edwin Carruthers
A critic is a man who knows the way but can't drive the car.
— Kenneth Tynan
If you are willing to take the punishment  you're halfway through the battle. That the issues may be trivial  the battle ugly  is another point.
— Lillian Hellman
A critic is a legless man who teaches running.
— Channing Pollock
Vilify! Vilify! Some of it will always stick.
— Pierre Beaumarchais
Always bring money along with your complaints.
— Plautus
Nature fits all her children with something to do He who would write and can't write  can surely review.
— James Russell Lowell
Nature  when she invented  manufactured and patented her authors  contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes
To escape criticism - do nothing  say nothing  be nothing.
— Elbert Hubbard
Any fool can criticize  and many of them do.
— Archbishop C. Garbett
Critics are like eunuchs in a harem: they know how it's done  they've seen it done every day  but they're unable to do it themselves.
— Brendan Behan
I am sitting in the smallest room in my house. I have your review in front of me. Soon it will be behind me.
— Max Reger
The good critic is he who narrates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.
— Anatole France
Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world  tho' the cant of hypocrites may be the worst  the cant of criticism is the most tormenting.
— Laurence Sterne
The critic is the duenna in the passionate affair between playwrights  actors and audiences - a figure dreaded  and occasionally comic  but never welcome  never loved.
— Robertson Davies
A critic at best is a waiter at the great table of literature.
— Louis Dudek
In Heaven an angel is nobody in particular.
— George Bernard Shaw
The mob has many heads but no brains.
— Thomas Fuller
A myth is a fixed way of looking at the world which cannot be destroyed because  looked at through the myth  all evidence supports that myth.
— Edward de Bono
Insanity in individuals is rare - but in groups  parties  nations  and epochs  it is the rule.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Every crowd has a silver lining.
— P. T. Barnum
When a hundred men stand together  each of them loses his mind and gets another one.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Wherever there is a crowd there is untruth.
— Soren Kierkegaard
The time when  most of all  you should withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd.
— Epicurus
You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men.
— Max Beerbohm
The average man's opinions are much less foolish than they would be if he thought for himself.
— Bertrand Russell
Man's inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands mourn!
— James Drummond Burns
It is not linen you're wearing out  But human creatures' lives.
— Thomas Hood
All cruelty springs from weakness.
— Seneca
I must be cruel  only to be kind.
— William Shakespeare
Culture  with us  ends in headache.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Reading makes a full man  conference a ready man  and writing an exact man.
— Sir Francis Bacon
Culture is what your butcher would have if he were a surgeon.
— Mary Pettibone Poole
Curiosity killed the cat.
— American Proverb
Ask me no questions  and I'll tell you no fibs.
— Oliver Goldsmith
Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.
— Samuel Johnson
Other times  other customs.
— Italian proverb
Ancient custom has the force of law.
— Legal maxim
Custom is the law of fools.
— Sir John Vanbrugh
A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past  he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future.
— Sidney J. Harris
Cynicism is humour in ill health.
— H. G. Wells
Cynicism such as one finds very frequently among the most highly educated young men and women of the West  results from the combination of comfort and powerlessness.
— Bertrand Russell
A cynic is a man who  when he smells flowers  looks around for a coffin.
— H. L. Mencken
Cynicism - the intellectual cripple's substitute for intelligence.
— Russell Lynes
Cynicism is that blackguard defect of vision which compels us to see the world as it is  instead of as it should be.
— Ambrose Bierce
Cynicism is intellectual dandyism  without the coxcomb's feathers.
— George Meredith
There is nothing to which men  while they have food and drink  cannot reconcile themselves.
— George Santayana
It's not that the Irish are cynical. It's rather that they have a wonderful lack of respect for everything and everybody.
— Brendan Behan
Watch what people are cynical about  and one can often discover what they lack.
— Harry Emerson Fosdick
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
— Oscar Wilde
A cynic can chill and dishearten with a single word.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion just as effectively as by bombs.
— Kenneth Clark
Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.
— Lillian Hellman
A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything  and the value of nothing.
— Oscar Wilde
The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man  and never fails to see a bad one. He is the human owl  vigilant in darkness and blind to light  mousing for vermin  and never seeing noble game. The cynic puts all human actions into two classes - openly bad and secretly bad.
— Henry Ward Beecher
On with the dance! Let joy be unconfin'd  No sleep till morn  when Youth and Pleasure meet.
— Lord Byron
No man in his senses will dance.
— Cicero
Come and trip it as ye go  On the light fantastic toe.
— John Milton
They who love dancing too much seem to have more brains in their feet than in their head.
— Terence
We triumph without glory when we conquer without danger.
— Corneille
Danger for danger's sake is senseless.
— Leigh Hunt
The pitcher that goes too often to the well is broken at last.
— Enclish Proverb
A timid person is frightened before a danger  a coward during the time  and a courageous person afterwards.
— Jean Paul Richter
Who dares nothing  need hope for nothing.
— Friedrich von Schiller
No one reaches a high position without daring.
— Syrus
A blind man in a dark room - looking for a black hat which isn't there.
— Lord Bowen
Darkness is strong  and so is Sin  But surely God endures forever!
— James Russell Lowell
Fear is the dark room in which negatives are developed.
— Anonymous
Even a small star shines in the darkness.
— Finnish proverb
It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
— Chinese proverb
The dreadful dead of dark midnight.
— William Shakespeare