Every other enjoyment malice may destroy; every other panegyric envy may withhold; but no human power can deprive the boaster of h...is own encomiums.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No publisher should ever express an opinion on the value of what he publishes. That is a matter entirely for the literary critic t...o decide.... I can quite understand how any ordinary critic would be strongly prejudiced against a work that was accompanied by a premature and unnecessary panegyric from the publisher. A publisher is simply a useful middle-man. It is not for him to anticipate the verdict of criticism.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Now he sings of Jacky Horner, Sitting in the chimney corner,... Eating of a Christmas pie, Putting in his thumb, O fie! Putting in, O fie! his thumb, Pulling out, O strange, a plum.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All ye poets of the age, All ye witlings of the stage,... Learn your jingles to reform, Crop your numbers to conform. Let your little verses flow Gently, sweetly, row by row; Let the verse the subject fit, Little subject, little wit. Namby-Pamby is your guide, Albion's joy, Hibernia's pride.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The King [Charles II] after the Restoration accused the poet, Edmund Waller, of having made finer verses in praise of Oliver Cromw...ell than of himself; to which he agreed, saying, that Fiction was the soul of Poetry.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is nothing more natural than to consider everything as starting from oneself, chosen as the center of the world; one finds o...neself thus capable of condemning the world without even wanting to hear its deceitful chatter.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the zone of perdition where my youth went as if to complete its education, one would have said that the portents of an imminent... collapse of the whole edifice of civilization had made an appointment.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »