Lord Byron Quotes

Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.

I don't watch it, but I know enough to comment on it.

A critic is a legless man who teaches running.

With just enough of learning to misquote.

I once wrote a song called 'No Laughing in Heaven,' which was about not wanting to go to Heaven due to the company I'd be keeping, and with a few exceptions, the Hall of Fame is pretty much the same thing.

A whipper-snapper of criticism who quoted dead languages to hide his ignorance of life.

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. The power of invention has been conferred by nature upon few, and the labour of learning those sciences which may, by mere labour, be obtained, is too great to be willingly endured; but every man can exert some judgment as he has upon the works of others; and he whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of critic.

I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who would call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one.

The world laughs at things it would really prefer to admire, and like Aesop's fox it criticizes things it covets.

[Hawthorne''s] pious blame is a chuckle of praise all the while.

Recognize the cunning man not by the corpses he pays homage to but by the living writers he conspires against with the most shameful weapon, Silence, or the briefest review.

When I see hipsters wearing Mao hats or Lenin T-shirts, I'm grateful. It's like truth-in-labeling. For now I know you are: Woefully ignorant, morally stunted, purposively asinine, or all three.

If I'm a cruel satirist at least I'm not a hyprocrite: I never judge what other people do. Neither a politician nor a priest, I never censor what others do. Neither a philospher nor a psychiatrist, I never bother trying to analyze or resolve my fears and neuroses.

It really gets me when the critics say I haven't done enough for the economy. I mean, look what I've done for the book publishing industry. You've heard some of the titles. 'Big Lies,' 'The Lies of George W. Bush,' 'The Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.' I'd like to tell you I've read each of these books, but that'd be a lie.

IMBECILITY, n. A kind of divine inspiration, or sacred fire affecting censorious critics of this dictionary.

No God and no religion can survive ridicule. No political church, no nobility, no royalty or other fraud, can face ridicule in a fair field, and live.

Solemnity is the shield of idiots

Some ministers would make good martyrs: they are so dry they would burn well.

Sometimes presenting the most ignorant point of view can be the best way to satirize the issue and highlight that ignorance.

They were Jesuits," she told me. "That means they believe in God but not in terlet paper. You should have seen their underwear. Disgusting.

A long memory is the most subversive idea in America. A tautology is a thing which is tautological. A witty saying proves nothing, but saying something pointless gets people's attention. If your kids look like you, it's hereditory. If they look like the neighbor, it's the environment. Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.

Mrs Forrester ... sat in state, pretending not to know what cakes were sent up, though she knew, and we knew, and she knew that we knew, and we knew that she knew that we knew, she had been busy all the morning making tea-bread and sponge-cakes.

The world is so full of ill-nature that I have lampoons sent me by people who cannot spell, and satires composed by those who scarce know how to write.

Satire, though it may exaggerate the vice it lashes, is not justified in creating it in order that it may be lashed.