1804 quotes by critics for you to enjoy

Harpo Marx looks like a musical comedy. Walter Kerr

Comedy Musical Musical Comedy Marx Like Looks

Experience, already reduced to a group of impressions, is ringed round for each one of us by that thick wall of personality through which no real voice has ever pierced on its way to us, or from us to that which we can only conjecture to be without. Walter Pater

The Renaissance of the fifteenth century was, in many things, great rather by what it designed then by what it achieved. Walter Pater

Great Rather Renaissance Achieved Century Fifteenth Then Many Things Designed

No account of the Renaissance can be complete without some notice of the attempt made by certain Italian scholars of the fifteenth century to reconcile Christianity with the religion of ancient Greece. Walter Pater

Religion Made Christianity Complete Ancient Reconcile Some Attempt Scholars Renaissance Without Italian Account Greece Century Fifteenth Notice Certain

The various forms of intellectual activity which together make up the culture of an age, move for the most part from different starting-points, and by unconnected roads. Walter Pater

Together Age Culture Various Part Roads Most Make Make Up Intellectual Up Move Different Which Forms Activity

At first sight experience seems to bury us under a flood of external objects, pressing upon us with a sharp and importunate reality, calling us out of ourselves in a thousand forms of action. Walter Pater

Experience Reality First Action Sight Pressing Ourselves Out Thousand Seems Objects Sharp Calling Bury Forms Us Flood External

In a sense it might even be said that our failure is to form habits: for, after all, habit is relative to a stereotyped world, and meantime it is only the roughness of the eye that makes two persons, things, situations, seem alike. Walter Pater

With this sense of the splendour of our experience and of its awful brevity, gathering all we are into one desperate effort to see and touch, we shall hardly have time to make theories about the things we see and touch. Walter Pater

Time Experience Desperate Sense Gathering Our See About Touch Shall Splendour Make Effort Brevity Theories Awful Hardly Things

One of the most beautiful passages of Rousseau is that in the sixth book of Confessions, where he describes the awakening in him of the literary sense. Of such wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for its own sake, has most. Walter Pater

'The Dictator' lands somewhere between wan Mel Brooks and good Adam Sandler, whose 'You Don't Mess With the Zohan,' about an Israeli Special Forces soldier at a hair salon, manages to strike better contrasts with vaguely similar culture differences - it's a nuttier movie, too. Wesley Morris

Good You Culture Better Somewhere Hair Differences Too Strike Mel Brooks Soldier Brooks About Similar Between Mess Forces Israeli Salon Dictator Movie Sandler Lands Special Special Forces Whose Adam Adam Sandler Vaguely

You didn't have to read 'Playboy,' visit the mansion, wear pajamas, or even be straight: The effects of its ideas about women on the American psyche were totalizing. Women were inferior to men because, for 'Playboy,' they were scenery - pretty, passive, usually white, often blonde, there. Wesley Morris

You Women Men White Visit Wear Pretty About Scenery Ideas Read Because Were Passive Blonde Effects Inferior American Often Psyche Straight Mansion Even Pajamas Playboy

Poor decisions and bad luck are contingencies of most horror films. Wesley Morris

Bad Luck Luck Films Bad Horror Horror Films Most Decisions Poor

There's power in turning to the past to illuminate the current state of things. Wesley Morris

Power Past State Current Current State Turning Illuminate Things

Anyone who watches a lot of television, or listens to pop music, is familiar with a certain vision of America. If not exactly colorblind, this America is one in which different races easily interact, in which a white person might have an Asian boss, Hispanic stepson, or African-American frenemy. Wesley Morris

Music Vision White Television Easily Exactly Boss Colorblind Hispanic Lot Familiar Person America Listens Interact Different African-American Anyone Which Asian Might Races Pop Certain Pop Music Who Watches

The bravery of Stanley Kramer's 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner' amounted to two Hollywood legends - Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy - telling the world that a black son-in-law is something they can live with, and so should you, especially if he looks like Sidney Poitier and has degrees. Wesley Morris

You World Black Dinner Live Guess Spencer Spencer Tracy Telling Degrees Something Son-In-Law He Like Looks Tracy Coming Kramer Legends Bravery Hollywood Should Stanley Hepburn Two

Nudity has never seemed to bother Grace Jones. Her art has thrived, in part, on a physical candor that both shocked people and redrew the boundaries of taste, beauty, and eroticism around her masculinity, ebony skin, and unrelenting intensity. Wesley Morris

'The Tree of Life' is a collection of conversations that lost souls and true believers have with themselves while keeping their heads to the sky. But the movie is church via the planetarium. Wesley Morris

Life Sky Church Life Is A Lost Tree Tree Of Life Collection True True Believers Heads Souls Via Movie While Conversations Themselves Believers Keeping

The enormous success of 2009's 'The Blind Side,' in which Sandra Bullock makes a black teenager one of the family, demonstrates that America isn't post-racial. It is thoroughly mired in race - the myths that surround it, the guilt it inspires, the discomfort it causes, the struggle to transcend it. Wesley Morris

Success Family Struggle Guilt Black Enormous Side Teenager Thoroughly Mired Inspires Myths Blind Makes Discomfort Causes Surround America Transcend Which Race Sandra Sandra Bullock

Computers are scary. They're nightmares to fix, lose our stuff, and, on occasion, they crash, producing the blue screen of death. Steve Jobs knew this. He knew that computers were bulky and hernia-inducing and Darth Vader black. He understood the value of declarative design. Wesley Morris

Death Value Black Lose Design Our Jobs Darth Darth Vader Scary Computers He Knew Stuff Steve Steve Jobs Occasion Understood Were Fix Blue Screen Crash Producing Vader Nightmares

Most Pixar films are better than most live action films. Wesley Morris

Better Action Live Films Most Than Pixar Action Films Live Action

Quotes by Critics