12 Quotes by John Erskine

Music is the only language in which you cannot say a mean or sarcastic thing.

It is fatal to suppose the great writer was too wise or too profound for us ever to understand him; to think of art so is not to praise but to murder it, for the next step after that tribute will be neglect of the masterpiece.

In the Fourth Eclogue also Vergil has still the enthusiasm of youth. Few poems are so rich in magnificent lines or in stirring hopes... His hope is for a golden age in which there shall be no toil, no commerce, no sorrow, yet he still wants a high development of the intellectual life, the speculations of science, the practical application of knowledge.

Whenever we read a book we love, we change it, to some extent. We read into it our own interpretations, and the meanings which the words have taken on in our time. If a book is so rigid that it cannot lend itself to these fluctuations, it is useful only while it seems strictly true, and afterwards it is completely out of date.

There's a difference between beauty and charm. A beautiful woman is one I notice. A charming woman is one who notices me.

In the simplest terms, a leader is one who knows where she wants and gets up and goes.

Lets tell young people the best books are yet to written; the best painting, the best government the best of everything is yet to be done by them.

Opinion is that exercise of the human will which helps us to make a decision without information.

Only if we can restrain ourselves is good conversation possible. Good talk rises upon much discipline.