Censure Quotes

1. "What should worry us is not the number of people who oppose us, but how good their reasons are for doing so. We should therefore divert our attention away from the presence of unpopularity to the explanations for it. It may be frightening to hear that a high proportion of a community holds us to be wrong, but before abandoning our position, we should consider the method by which their conclusions have been reached. It is the soundness of their method of thinking that should determine the weight we give to their disapproval. We seem afflicted by the opposite tendency: to listen to everyone, to be upset by every unkind word and sarcastic observation. We fail to ask ourselves the cardinal and most consoling question: on what basis has this dark censure been made? We treat with equal seriousness the objections of the critic who has thought rigorously and honestly and those of the critic who has acted out of misanthropy and envy."
Author: Alain De Botton

2. "And if you must sacrifice yourself, do that by marrying me. I'm not an easy man. You'll earn your martyr's crown before you're done. Don't condemn both of us to an eternity of unhappiness just because you're too stiff-necked to face society's censure."
Author: Anna Campbell

3. "I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be. All novels are or should be written for both men and women to read, and I am at a loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man."
Author: Anne Brontë

4. "Did I, my lines intend for public view,How many censures, would their faults pursue,Some would, because such words they do affect,Cry they're insipid, empty, uncorrect.And many, have attained, dull and untaught,The name of wit, only by finding fault.True judges, might condemn their want of wit,And all might say, they're by a woman writ."
Author: Anne Finch

5. "His way was like other people's; he mounted no high horse; he was justa man and a citizen. He indulged in no Socratic irony. But hisdiscourse was full of Attic grace; those who heard it went away neitherdisgusted by servility, nor repelled by ill-tempered censure, but onthe contrary lifted out of themselves by charity, and encouraged tomore orderly, contented, hopeful lives."
Author: Arthur Quiller Couch

6. "Criticism can never instruct or benefit you. Its chief effect is that of a telegram with dubious news. Praise leaves no glow behind, for it is a writer's habit to remember nothing good of himself. I have usually forgotten those who have admired my work, and seldom anyone who disliked it. Obviously, this is because praise is never enough and censure always too much."
Author: Ben Hecht

7. "TV is a major force in our lives - a FORCE. It must be handled very carefully, both its censure and its artistic honesty."
Author: Bill Bixby

8. "We shall, as we ripen in grace, have greater sweetness towards our fellow Christians. Bitter-spirited Christians may know a great deal, but they are immature. Those who are quick to censure may be very acute in judgment, but they are as yet very immature in heart. He who grows in grace remembers that he is but dust, and he therefore does not expect his fellow Christians to be anything more; he overlooks ten thousand of their faults, because he knows his God overlooks twenty thousand in his own case. He does not expect perfection in the creature, and, therefore, he is not disappointed when he does not find it. ... I know we who are young beginners in grace think ourselves qualified to reform the whole Christian church. We drag her before us, and condemn her straightway; but when our virtues become more mature, I trust we shall not be more tolerant of evil, but we shall be more tolerant of infirmity, more hopeful for the people of God, and certainly less arrogant in our criticisms."
Author: Charles H. Spurgeon

9. "That same spirit which makes us love the praise of men makes us dread the threats of men. You cannot be pleased with the adulation of mankind without becoming fearful of tour censure."
Author: Charles H. Spurgeon

10. "The Galatians are severely censured for giving heed to false doctrines, and are called to pronounce even an apostle anathema, if he preached another gospel."
Author: Charles Hodge

11. "Simos said, "Grief work must be shared. In sharing, however, there must be no impatience, censure or boredom with the repetition, because repetition is necessary for catharsis and internalization and eventual unconscious acceptance of the reality of the loss. The bereaved are sensitive to the feelings of others and will not only refrain from revealing feelings to those they consider unequal to the burden of sharing the grief but may even try to comfort the helpers." (97)"
Author: Charles L. Whitfield

12. "The readiest and surest way to get rid of censure, is to correct ourselves."
Author: Demosthenes

13. "It was not that ladies were inferior to men; it was that they were different. Their mission was to inspire others to achievement rather than to achieve themselves. Indirectly, by means of tact and a spotless name, a lady could accomplish much. But if she rushed into the fray herself she would be first censured, then despised, and finally ignored."
Author: E.M. Forster

14. "It did not do to think, nor, for the matter of that, to feel. She gave up trying to understand herself, and joined the vast armies of the benighted, who follow neither the heart nor the brain, and march to their destiny by catch-words. The armies are full of pleasant and pious folk. But they have yielded to the only enemy that matters--the enemy within. They have sinned against passion and truth, and vain will be their strife after virtue. As the years pass, they are censured. Their pleasantry and their piety show cracks, their wit becomes cynicism, their unselfishness hypocrisy; they feel and produce discomfort wherever they go. They have sinned against Eros and against Pallas Athene, and not by any heavenly intervention, but by the ordinary course of nature, those allied deities will be avenged."
Author: E.M. Forster

15. "This I would like to be- braver and bolder, Just a bit wiser because I am older, Just a bit kinder to those I may meet, Just a bit manlier taking defeat; This for the New Year my wish and my plea- Lord, make a regular man out of me. This I would like to be- just a bit finer, More of a smiler and less of a whiner, Just a bit quicker to stretch out my hand Helping another who's struggling to stand, This is my prayer for the New Year to be, Lord, make a regular man out of me. This I would like to be- just a bit fairer, Just a bit better, and just a bit squarer, Not quite so ready to censure and blame, Quicker to help every man in the game, Not quite so eager men's failings to see, Lord, make a regular man out of me. This I would like to be- just a bit truer, Less of the wisher and more of the doer, Broader and bigger, more willing to give, Living and helping my neighbor to live! This for the New Year my prayer and my plea- Lord, make a regular man out of me."
Author: Edgar A. Guest

16. "It was much less dangerous for the disciples of Christ to neglect the observance of the moral duties, than to despise the censures and authority of their bishops."
Author: Edward Gibbon

17. "Unfortunately, censure has cut history up."
Author: Erin Moure

18. "Against the censurers of brevity. - Something said briefly can be the fruit of much long thought: but the reader who is a novice in this field, and has as yet reflected on it not at all, sees in everything said briefly something embryonic, not without censuring the author for having served him up such immature and unripened fare."
Author: Friedrich Nietzsche

19. "I have often met with happiness after some imprudent step which ought to have brought ruin upon me, and although passing a vote of censure upon myself I would thank God for his mercy."
Author: Giacomo Casanova

20. "Man is more perfect than god. Although this woman's doctrine, in which she was brought up from childhood, told her than all men were lost sinners, I have never heard her censure a man with so much as half a word. All her life is symbolized in the only words which she knows in her dotage. Please do; and, God bless you."
Author: Halldór Laxness

21. "If I had been censured every time I have run my ship, or fleets under my command, into great danger, I should have long ago been out of the Service and never in the House of Peers."
Author: Horatio Nelson

22. "Une population parfaitement déterminée est en mesure non seulement de contraindre un dirigeant à fuir son pays, mais également de faire reculer un candidat à l'occupation de son territoire par la mise en œuvre d'un formidable ensemble de stratégies disponible : boycotts et manifestations, occupations de locaux et sit-in, arrêts de travail et grèves générales, obstructions et sabotages, grève des loyers et des impôts, refus de coopérer, refus de respecter les couvre-feux ou la censure, refus de payer les amendes, insoumission et désobéissance civile en tout genre."
Author: Howard Zinn

23. "The immediate advantage to herself was by no means inconsiderable, for it supplied her with endless jokes against them both. At the park she laughed at the colonel, and in the cottage at Marianne. To the former her raillery was probably, as far as it regarded only himself, perfectly indifferent; but to the latter it was at first incomprehensible; and when its object was understood, she hardly knew whether most to laugh at its absurdity, or censure its impertinence, for she considered it as an unfeeling reflection on the colonel's advanced years, and on his forlorn condition as an old bachelor."
Author: Jane Austen

24. "Yes, novels; for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom, so common with novel-writers, of degrading, by their contemptuous censure, the very performances to the number of which they are themselves adding; joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! if the heroine of one novel be not patronised by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I cannot approve of it. Let us leave it to the reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans. Let us not desert one another- we are an injured body."
Author: Jane Austen

25. "We put together a one-sentence petition asking Congress to censure President Clinton and move on to other pressing issues. We sent it to under 100 friends and family, and within a week we had 100,000 people sign the petition."
Author: Joan Blades

26. "By the way, leafing through my dictionary I am struck by the poverty of language when it comes to naming or describing badness. Evil, wickedness, mischief, these words imply an agency, the conscious or at least active doing of wrong. They do not signify the bad in its inert, neutral, self-sustaining state. Then there are the adjectives: dreadful, heinous, execrable, vile, and so on. They are not so much as descriptive as judgmental. They carry a weight of censure mingled with fear. Is this not a queer state of affairs? It makes me wonder. I ask myself if perhaps the thing itself - badness - does not exist at all, if these strangely vague and imprecise words are only a kind of ruse, a kind of elaborate cover for the fact that nothing is there. Or perhaps words are an attempt to make it be there? Or, again, perhaps there is something, but the words invented it. Such considerations make me feel dizzy, as if a hole had opened briefly in the world."
Author: John Banville

27. "[M]an is not permitted without censure to follow his own thoughts in the search of truth, when they lead him ever so little out of the common road."
Author: John Locke

28. "Censure acquits the raven, but pursues the dove."
Author: Juvenal

29. "Safe gender is being who and what we want to be when we want to be that, with no threat of censure or violence.Safe gender is going as far in any direction as we wish, With no threat to our health, or anyone else's.Safe gender is not being pressured into passing, not Having to lie, not having to hide.Sane gender is asking questions about gender - talkingTo people who do gender, and opening up about ourGender histories and our gender desires.Sane gender is probably very, very funny.Consensual gender is respecting each others' definitionOf gender, and respecting the wishes of some to be alone,And respecting the intentions of others to be inclusive inTheir own time.Consensual gender is non-violent in that it doesn't forceIts way in on anyone.Consensual gender opens its arms and welcomes all People as gender outcasts - whoever is willing to admit it."
Author: Kate Bornstein

30. "Rien n'est plus intolérable que la tolérance de l'intolérance surtout si cette dernière est basée sur l'ignorance et si, en outre, elle s'accompagne de censure et d'intimidation"
Author: Mahdi Elmandjra

31. "Those who live alone slide into the habit of vertical eating: why bother with the niceties when there's no one to share or censure? But laxity in one area may lead to derangement in all."
Author: Margaret Atwood

32. "The prevailing taste of the public for anecdote has been censured and ridiculed by critics, who aspire to the character of superior wisdom: but if we consider it in a proper point of view, this taste is an incontestible proof of the good sense and profoundly philosophic temper of the present times. Of the numbers who study, or at least who read history, how few derive any advantage from their labors!"
Author: Maria Edgeworth

33. "As adults we choose our own reading material. Depending on our moods and needs we might read the newspaper, a blockbuster novel, an academic article, a women's magazine, a comic, a children's book, or the latest book that just about everyone is reading. No one chastises us for our choice. No one says, 'That's too short for you to read.' No one says, 'That's too easy for you, put it back.' No one says 'You couldn't read that if you tried -- it's much too difficult.'Yet if we take a peek into classrooms, libraries, and bookshops we will notice that children's choices are often mocked, censured, and denied as valid by idiotic, interfering teachers, librarians, and parents. Choice is a personal matter that changes with experience, changes with mood, and changes with need. We should let it be."
Author: Mem Fox

34. "L'avantage de tenir un discours moral, c'est que ce type de propos a été soumis à une censure si forte, et depuis tant d'années, qu'il provoque un effet d'incongruité et attire aussitôt l'attention de l'interlocuteur ; l'inconvénient, c'est que celui-ci ne parvient jamais à vous prendre tout à fait au sérieux. (La possibilité d'une île, Daniel 1,15)"
Author: Michel Houellebecq

35. "I armed her against the censure of the world, showed her that books were sweet unreproaching companions to the miserable, and that if they could not bring us to enjoy life, they would at least teach us to endure it."
Author: Oliver Goldsmith

36. "If you are ignorant of Lora Delane Porter's books that is your affair. Perhaps you are more to be pitied than censured. Nature probably gave you the wrong shape of forehead. Mrs. Porter herself would have put it down to some atavistic tendency or pre-natal influence. She put most things down to that. She blamed nearly all the defects of the modern world, from weak intellects to in-growing toe-nails, on long-dead ladies and gentlemen who, safe in the family vault, imagined that they had established their alibi. She subpoenaed grandfathers and even great-grandfathers to give evidence to show that the reason Twentieth-Century Willie squinted or had to spend his winters in Arizona was their own shocking health ‘way back in the days beyond recall."
Author: P.G. Wodehouse

37. "Mankind censure injustice fearing that they may be the victims of it, and not because they shrink from committing it."
Author: Plato

38. "Non è stato il Governo a decidere; non ci sono stati in origine editti, manifesti, censure, no! ma la tecnologia, lo sfruttamento delle masse e la pressione delle minoranze hanno raggiunto lo scopo, grazie a Dio!"
Author: Ray Bradbury

39. "Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their peers, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change."
Author: Robert F. Kennedy

40. "All censure of a man's self is oblique praise. It is in order to show how much he can spare."
Author: Samuel Johnson

41. "Watch the too indignantly righteous. Before long you will find them committing or condoning the very offence which they have so fiercely censured."
Author: Śrī Aurobindo

42. "How can you ask us to go back to our parlors?" I said, rising to my feet. "To turn our backs on ourselves and on our own sex? We don't wish the movement to split, of course we don't—it saddens me to think of it—but we can do little for the slave as long as we're under the feet of men. Do what you have to do, censure us, withdraw your support, we'll press on anyway. Now, sirs, kindly take your feet off our necks."
Author: Sue Monk Kidd

43. "And there it was. The prim face of censure he'd been seeking. A strange sense of satisfaction descended on him. Divine justice, perhaps. Other men, better men, confessed their sins to priests and saints, but Gray had chosen for his confessor this governess. The most beautiful woman he'd ever set eyes on, in all his years of chasing pleasure from one horizon to the next. The only woman to stir this desperate yearning in his breast. And this was his penance-to watch her shrink back into her chair, to see those clear eyes glaze with mistrust as she at last recognized him for the devil he was.Yes, this was his due. And she wasn't finished yet, his petite, austere inquisitor."
Author: Tessa Dare

44. "I had requested all who might find aught meriting censure in my writings, to do me the favor of pointing it out to me, I may state that no objections worthy of remark have been alleged against what I then said on these questions except two, to which I will here briefly reply."
Author: Thomas Hobbes

45. "The laying of a Country desolate with Fire and Sword, declaring War against the natural rights of all Mankind, and extirpating the Defenders thereof from the Face of the Earth, is the Concern of every Man to whom Nature hath given the Power of feeling; of which Class, regardless of Party Censure, is"
Author: Thomas Paine

46. "A magnificent cad, you mean. He's positively gaping at your bosom, Lyddie!" Mariah said in a scandalized whisper. "I swear he's undressing you with his eyes!"Lydia's lip twitched. "How lurid you sound. I really must censure your reading material.""There can be no doubt you have his attention now," Mariah giggled."
Author: Victoria Vane

47. "The moral I draw is that the writer should seek his reward in the pleasure of his work and in release from the burden of thought; and, indifferent to aught else, care nothing for praise or censure, failure or success."
Author: W. Somerset Maugham

48. "He who would acquire fame must not show himself afraid of censure. The dread of censure is the death of genius."
Author: William Gilmore Simms

49. "Fear no more the heat o' the sun,Nor the furious winter's rages;Thou thy worldly task hast done,Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages;Golden lads and girls all must,As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.Fear no more the frown o' the great;Thou art past the tyrant's stroke:Care no more to clothe and eat;To thee the reed is as the oak:The sceptre, learning, physic, mustAll follow this, and come to dust.Fear no more the lightning-flash,Nor the all-dreaded thunder-stone;Fear not slander, censure rash;Thou hast finished joy and moan;All lovers young, all lovers mustConsign to thee, and come to dust. No exorciser harm thee! Nor no witchcraft charm thee! Ghost unlaid forbear thee! Nothing ill come near thee! Quiet consummation have; And renownéd be thy grave!"
Author: William Shakespeare

50. "O me, what eyes hath Love put in my head,Which have no correspondence with true sight!...Or, if they have, where is my judgment fled,That censures falsely what they see aright?If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote,What means the world to say it is not so?If it be not, then love doth well denoteLove's eye is not so true as all men's 'No.'How can it? O, how can Love's eye be true,That is so vex'd with watching and with tears? No marvel then, though I mistake my view;The sun itself sees not till heaven clears.O cunning Love! with tears thou keep'st me blind,Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find. - Shakespeare's Sonnet 148"
Author: William Shakespeare

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