To laugh often and much to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others to leave the world a little better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is the meaning of success.
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To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
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Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adults themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence.... When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.
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The definition of success--To laugh much; to win respect of intelligent persons and the affections of children; to earn the approbation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give o
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Critics! Those cut-throat bandits in the paths of fame.
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Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.
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Readers of the twenty-first chapter must decide for themselves whether it enhances the book they presumably know or is really a discardable limb. I meant the book to end in this way, but my aesthetic judgement may have been faulty. Writers are rarely their own best critics, nor are critics. 'Quod scripsi scripsi' said Pontius Pilate when he made Jesus Christ the King of the Jews. 'What I have written I have Written.' We can destroy what we have written but we cannot unwrite it. I leave what I wrote with what Dr. Johnson called frigid indifference to the judgement of that .00000001 of the American population which cares about such things. Eat this sweetish segment or spit it out. You are free.
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By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece.
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To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a little better; whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is the meaning of success.
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A man must serve his time to every trade save censure -- critics all are ready made.
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To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a little better; whether by a healthy child, a garden patch of a redeemed social condition; to know that one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is the meaning of success.
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Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left.
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To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
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Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts
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My critics feel there was a lack of fairness in the opera, because the Palestinians are treated with romantic harmonies and choruses of longing, and the Jews are treated unfairly because all we hear about them are their bodily ailments. And, yes, you do hear about Marilyn and Leon Klinghoffer's bodily problems, like their hip replacements, because that's exactly the sort of thing that a retired person on a cruise would talk about.
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My critics feel there was a lack of fairness in the opera, because the Palestinians are treated with romantic harmonies and choruses of longing, and the Jews are treated unfairly because all we hear about them are their bodily ailments, ... And, yes, you do hear about Marilyn and Leon Klinghoffer's bodily problems, like their hip replacements, because that's exactly the sort of thing that a retired person on a cruise would talk about.
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Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to the end, requires some of the same courage which a soldier needs.
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Contrary to the claims of some of my critics and some of the editorial pages, I am an ardent believer in the free market.
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What would you have me do? Search out some powerful patronage, and be Like crawling ivy clinging to a tree? No thank you. Dedicate, like all the others, Verses to plutocrats, while caution smothers Whatever might offend my lord and master? No thank you. Kneel until my knee-caps fester, Bend my back until I crack my spine, And scratch another’s back if he’ll scratch mine? No thank you. Dining out to curry favour, Meeting the influential till I slaver, Suiting my style to what the critics want With slavish copy of the latest can’t? No thanks! Ready to jump through any hoop To be the great man of a little group? Be blown off course, with madrigals for sails, By the old women sighing through their veils? Labouring to write a line of such good breeding Its only fault is that it’s not worth reading? To ingratiate myself, abject with fear, And fawn and flatter to avoid a sneer? No thanks, no thanks, no thanks! But just to sing, Dream, laugh, and take my tilt of wing, To cock a snook whenever I shall choose, To fight for yes and no, come win or lose, To travel without thought of fame or fortune Wherever I care to go to under the moon! Never to write a line that hasn’t come Directly from my heart: and so, with some Modesty, to tell myself: My boy, Be satisfied with a flower, a fruit, the joy Of a single leaf, so long as it was grown In your own garden. Then, if success is won By any chance, you have nothing to render to A hollow Caesar: the merit belongs to you. In short, I won’t be a parasite; I’ll be My own intention, stand alone and free, And suit my voice to what my own eyes see!
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Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today -- but the core of science fiction, its essence has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.
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Critics are like pigs at the pastry cart.
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It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one's children will become than for the children one's mature critics often are.
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The galleries are full of critics. They play no ball, they fight no fights. They make no mistakes because they attempt nothing. Down in the arena are the doers. They make mistakes because they try many things. The man who makes no mistakes lacks boldness and the spirit of adventure. He is the one who never tries anything. His is the brake on the wheel of progress. And yet it cannot be truly said he makes no mistakes, because his biggest mistake is the very fact that he tries nothing, does nothing, except criticize those who do things.
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Critics of visual arts and of music describe in words—that is to say, a system of signs other than those made by brushes on canvas or chisel...
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Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts.
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After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them and invent others.
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Critics are by no means the end of the law. Do not think all is over with you because you articles are rejected. It may be that the editor has his drawer full, or that he does not know enough to appreciate you, or you have not gained a reputation, or he is not in a mood to be pleased. A critic's judgment is like that of any intelligent person. If he has experience, he is capable of judging whether a book will sell. That is all.
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No degree of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it fascinating.
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All the critics who could not make their reputations by discovering you are hoping to make them by predicting hopefully your approaching impotence, failure and general drying up of natural juices. Not a one will wish you luck or hope that you will keep on writing unless you have political affiliations in which case these will rally around and speak of you and Homer, Balzac, Zola and Link Steffens.
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[Of the parralels between the railways and the church] both had their heyday in the mid-nineteenth century; both own a great deal of Gothic-style architecture which is expensive to maintain; both are regularly assailed by critics; and both are firmly convinced that they are the best means of getting man to his ultimate destination.
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