The press, the pulpit, and the stage,
Conspire to censure and expose our age.
Advice Quotes
Shakespeare and Alexander Pope tie for the most entries, with Charles Churchill, La Rochefoucauld and Franklin behind. The dependable sourced lines are the cynical ones. Wilde, in An Ideal Husband (1895), says he always passes on good advice because it is never of any use to oneself, and Bierce, in 1911, defines advice as the smallest current coin. Disraeli’s definition of critics, in Lothair (1870), as men who have failed in literature and art is filed here too.
Flagged: “Many receive advice, few profit by it,” credited to Publilius Syrus and disputed; “Most men give advice by the bucket, but take it by the grain,” credited to Tom Stoppard, and “When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice,” credited to Saul Bellow, both marked misattributed.
If you can't even clean up your own room, who the hell are you to give advice to the world?
The generous Critic fann'd the Poet's fire,
And taught the world with reason to admire.
Ah, ne'er so dire a thirst of glory boast,
Nor in the Critic let the Man be lost.
Criticism often takes from the tree
Caterpillars and blossoms together.
I pray thee cease thy counsel,
Which falls into mine ears as profitless
As water in a sieve.
Advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill.
Though by whim, envy, or resentment led,
They damn those authors whom they never read.