How is it, I wonder, that all religious officials, from God the Father to the parish beadle, should be so arbitrary and exacting. - Samuel Butler

The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat, or takes in its milk, on the principle that it is cheaper to do this than to keep a cow. So it is, but the milk is more likely to be watered.

Feeling is an art and, like any other art, can be acquired by taking pains.

Critics generally come to be critics by reason not of their fitness for this but of their unfitness for anything else. Books should be tried by a judge and jury as though they were crimes, and counsel should be heard on both sides.