Quotes to inspire and reflect

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

I WISH PEOPLE WEREN’T SO SET ON BEING THEMSELVES, WHEN THAT MEANS BEING A BASTARD.

It’s not the tragedies that kill us, it’s the messes.

If you live long enough, you’ll see that every victory turns into a defeat.

Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.

ALWAYS BORROW MONEY FROM A PESSIMIST. HE WON’T EXPECT IT BACK.

Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic.

People who are paid to have attitudes toward things, professional critics, make me sick; camp following eunuchs of literature.

You need a high degree of corruption or a very big heart to love absolutely everything.

Write how you want, the critic shall show the world you could have written better.

Men over 40 are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.

Prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job.

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense.

I’D RATHER BE HISSED AT FOR A GOOD VERSE, THAN APPLAUDED FOR A BAD ONE.

A bad review may spoil your breakfast but you shouldn’t allow it to spoil your lunch.

It’s easier to write about those you hate – just as it’s easier to criticise a bad play or a bad book.

We are always the same age inside.

HAS ANYBODY EVER SEEN A DRAMA CRITIC IN THE DAYTIME? I DOUBT IT.

Old age comes on suddenly, and not gradually as is thought.

I DON’T BELIEVE IN AGEING. I BELIEVE IN FOREVER ALTERING ONE’S ASPECT TO THE SUN.

WE ARE SUCH STUFF AS DREAMS ARE MADE ON; AND OUR LITTLE LIFE IS ROUNDED WITH A SLEEP.

TRUE TERROR IS TO WAKE UP ONE MORNING AND DISCOVER THAT YOUR HIGH SCHOOL CLASS IS RUNNING THE COUNTRY.

We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.

AGE DOES NOT PROTECT YOU FROM LOVE. BUT LOVE, TO SOME EXTENT, PROTECTS YOU FROM AGE.

The wiser mind mourns less for what Age takes away, than what it leaves behind.

THE AFTERNOON KNOWS WHAT THE MORNING NEVER SUSPECTED.

PEOPLE ALWAYS LIVE FOREVER WHEN THERE IS ANY ANNUITY TO BE PAID THEM.

Time and tide will wait for no man, saith the adage. But all men have to wait for time and tide.

MY SUN SETS TO RISE AGAIN.

You can be young without money but you can’t be old without it.

THERE IS ONLY ONE CURE FOR GREY HAIR. IT WAS INVENTED BY A FRENCHMAN. IT IS CALLED THE GUILLOTINE.

To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

The older one grows, the more one likes indecency.

Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.

SOME EDITORS ARE FAILED WRITERS, BUT SO ARE MOST WRITERS.

I go so far as to say that any library is a good library that does not contain a volume by Jane Austen. Even if it contains no other book.

There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.

A fly, sir, may sting a stately horse, and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.

He hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink: his intellect is not replenished.

AS A SLEUTH YOU ARE POOR. YOU COULDN’T DETECT A BASS-DRUM IN A TELEPHONE-BOOTH.

NO ONE CAN HAVE A HIGHER OPINION OF HIM THAN I HAVE, AND I THINK HE’S A DIRTY LITTLE BEAST.

You look wise. Pray correct that error.

The work of a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples.

THERE ARE TWO WAYS OF DISLIKING POETRY, ONE WAY IS TO DISLIKE IT, THE OTHER IS TO READ POPE.

It is a wise child that knows its own father, and an unusual one that unreservedly approves of him.

A LADY, WITHOUT A FAMILY, WAS THE VERY BEST PRESERVER OF FURNITURE IN THE WORLD.

FAMILIES BREAK UP WHEN PEOPLE TAKE HINTS YOU DON’T INTEND AND MISS HINTS YOU DO INTEND.

There is no friend like a sister in calm or stormy weather.