96 Quotes by Ben Hecht

Criticism can never instruct or benefit you. Its chief effect is that of a telegram with dubious news. Praise leaves no glow behind, for it is a writer's habit to remember nothing good of himself. I have usually forgotten those who have admired my work, and seldom anyone who disliked it. Obviously, this is because praise is never enough and censure always too much.

Love is the magician that pulls man out of his own hat.

A wise man will always allow a fool to rob him of ideas without yelling “Thief.”If he is wise he has not been impoverished.Nor has the fool been enriched.The thief flatters us by stealing.We flatter him by complaining.

There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South. Here in this pretty world, Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind...

I know that a man who tries to convert me to any causeis actually at work on his own conversion,unless he is looking for funds under the mask of some fancied nobility.

A wise man will not trust too much those who admire him, even for his wisdom. He knows that an admirer is never truly satisfied until he can substitute pity for his admiration and disdain for his applause. Our admirers are always on the lookout for evidence of our collapse. They find a solace in the fact that our superiority was transitory and that we end as they do—old and useless.

Time is a circus, always packing up and moving away.

I know that a man who shows me his wealth is like the beggar who shows me his poverty; they are both looking for alms from me, the rich man for the alms of my envy, the poor man for the alms of my guilt.

In Hollywood, a starlet is the name for any woman under thirty who is not actively employed in a brothel.