Category Archives: Quotes

As every second post on this site is a quote. You’ll find a deep and broad variety of quotes under this category, which overlap with several other tags and categories. Many of the quotes are larded with links for deeper reading on the subject of the quote, or connections between the subject of the quotes and other people, things, or ideas. See the Taxonomies page for more about this category.

Rotten Reviews: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“A gross trifling with every fine feeling…. Mr. Clemens has no reliable sense of propriety.”

Springfield Republican

Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.

Robert Benchley on Homework

“Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work he’s supposed to be doing at that moment.”

Robert Benchley

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.

Rotten Reviews: Wuthering Heights

“Here are all the faults of Jane Eyre (by Charlotte Bronte) are magnified a thousand fold, and the only consolation which we have in reflecting upon it is that it will never be generally read.”

James Lorimer, North British Review

“…wild, disjointed and improbable…the people who make up the drama, which is tragic enough in its consequences, are savages ruder than those who lived before the days of Homer.”

The Examiner

Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.

Helen Keller on the Excitement of Teaching

“Life is an exciting business, and most exciting when it is lived for others.”

Helen Keller (1880-1968)

Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.

Rotten Reviews: The Good Earth

“Since Mrs. Buck does not understand the meaning of the Confucian separation of man’s kingdom from that of woman, she is like someone trying to write a story of the European Middle Ages without understanding the rudiments of chivalric standards and the institution of Christianity.”

New Republic

Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.

Karl Kraus on Stupidity as an Elemental Force

“Stupidity is an elemental force for which no earthquake is a match.”

Karl Kraus

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.

Rotten Reviews: The Awakening

“That this book is strong and that Miss Chopin has a keen knowledge of certain phases of the feminine will not be denied. But it was not necessary for a writer of so great refinement and poetic grace to enter the overworked field of sex fiction.”

Chicago Times-Herald

Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.

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Oprah on Diversity and Achievement

“Excellence is the best deterrent to racism or sexism.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954-)

Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.

Rotten Reviews: Jane Austen

“I am at a loss to understand why people hold Miss Austen’s novels at so high a rate, which seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in the wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched and narrow. The one problem in the mind of the writer…is marriageableness…. Suicide is more respectable.”

Ralph Waldo EmersonJournal, 1961

“Mama says that she was then the prettiest, silliest, most affected, husband-hunting butterfly she ever remembers.”

Mary Russell Mitford, letter to Sir William Etford, 1815

Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.

Faith and Skepticism

“I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.”

Wilson Mizner

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.