Criticism of others is thus an oblique form of self-commendation. We think we make the picture hang straight on our wall by telling our neighbors that all his pictures are crooked.
It oughtn't to need a war to make us talk to each other in buses, and invent our own amusements in the evenings, and live simply, and eat sparingly, and recover the use of our legs, and get up early enough to see the sun rise. However, it has needed ...
In the simple moral maxim the Marine Corps teaches — do the right thing, for the right reason — no exception exists that says: unless there's criticism or risk. Damn the consequences.
[T]he downside of skepticism: it can easily turn into an arrogant position of a priori rejection of any new phenomenon or idea, a position that is as lacking in critical thinking as the one of the true believer, and that simply does not help either s...
Here is how the harmful becomes profitable: That which yesterday was reviled today ends up in Urban Outfitters. The critic Rebecca Solnit has summarized it this way: 'Eat your heart out on a plastic tray,' say the Sex Pistols. Now, we know where to b...
The ability to lie persuasively is one of the greatest gifts a woman can possess in this life. Some critics, principally men, will argue that deception in women is inherently evil; but having spent the last fifteen years of my life in the theater, I ...
Mr. Pembroke, watching his broad back, desired to bury a knife in it. The desire passed, partly because it was unclerical, partly because he had no knife, and partly because he soon blurred over what had happened. To him all criticism was "rudeness":...
This is the Modern Man. The man who seeks himself without ever seeking, because he does not want to find; The man who does not hesitate to criticize the other, although he behaves in the same way;
For a scientist must indeed be freely imaginative and yet skeptical, creative and yet a critic. There is a sense in which he must be free, but another in which his thought must be very precisely regimented; there is poetry in science, but also a lot ...
Any man who criticizes my suicide and passes judgment on me with an expression of superiority, declaring (without offering the least help) that I should have gone on living my full complement of days, is assuredly a prodigy among men quite capable of...
Insofar as the theorist wins, therefore, by constructing an increasingly closed and terrifying machine, to that very degree he loses, since the critical capacity of his work is thereby paralysed, and the impulses of negation and revolt, not to speak ...
Oh literature is a wonderful thing, Varenka, a very wonderful thing: I discovered that from being with those people the day before yesterday. It is a profound thing. It strengthens people’s hearts and instructs them,… Literature is a picture, or ...
[I]t is the writer's duty to write fiction which promotes virtue, the good, the beautiful, and above all, the true. ... It is the writer's duty to hate injustice, to defy the powerful, and to speak for the voiceless. To be ... the severest critics of...
I looked up "skin" in the encyclopedia and confirmed that, sure enough, it is the human body's largest organ, a fact that suggests our surfaces are critical to who we are, not just the gateway to physical or spiritual depths but a profoundly importan...
I have tried to write about politics in an allusive manner that draws upon other interests and to approach literature and criticism without ignoring the political dimension. Even if I have failed in this synthesis, I have found the attempt worth maki...
Cyril Connolly, twentieth-century writer and critic, wrote that ‘words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living.’ That was how I wanted to use books: as an escape back to life. I wanted to engulf myself in books and c...
In a world where critical thinking skills are almost wholly absent, repetition effectively leapfrogs the cognitive portion of the brain. It helps something get processed as truth. We used to call it unsubstantiated buy-in. Belief without evidence. It...
Being willing to listen to others and let them speak into our lives is a critical attitude leaders must have. It is not weakness to get good advice - it is strength to seek it out.
If you first take a minute, an hour or a month to let go of feeling annoyed, frustrated or critical of the person or situation that may be driving you crazy, you set yourself up for much greater leadership and personal success.
If he lacks verbal expression of it, you may find his love profoundly in his works, deeds and creativity; so recognize rather than criticize.
My best friend Jerry started a boat-washing business, and it was one of the most critical experiences of my life. I got to meet a lot of people who were entrepreneurs. My parents were schoolteachers, and I was now meeting people who owned companies. ...
