“Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good, to the praise that deceives them.”

“A critic is a man created to praise greater men than himself, but he is never able to find them.”

“Now it turns out that a few broadsheet film critics in Britain do indeed belong to a category of people who would have resisted Hitler when he came to power. So the great shame is, clearly film critics should have been running Austria at the time, because Hitler would have represented no problem to them at all. [The Guardian's] Peter Bradshaw would have known exactly what to do, and he would not have been remotely fallible to any Nazi who threatened his life. No, he would have died in heroic acts of individual resistance. So it's a privilege to live among people who enjoy such moral certainty.”

“People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.”

“Evie," Lillian interupted impatiently, "men expect to be deceived in these matters. They're happiest that way. If one were straightforward with them the whole prospect of marriage would be too alarming, and none of them would ever do it.”

“I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.The evil that men do lives after them;The good is oft interred with their bones”