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Those whose character is mean and vicious will rouse others to animosity against them.

I'm under the impression that this notion of decency is disappearing from our society where conflicts are made worse on cinema and on television, where people are nasty and cruel on the Internet and where, in general, everybody seems to be very angry.

A vile and overbearing temper becomes sometimes, in one long accustomed to the exercise of power, unendurable to those who are subject to its humors.

If anger proceeds from a great cause, it turns to fury; if from a small cause, it is peevishness; and so is always either terrible or ridiculous.

People react to criticism in different ways, and my way is definitely to come out fighting.

Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.

Societies can easily talk themselves into conflict and misery. But they can also talk, and act, their way out.

Half of the secular unrest and dismal, profane sadness of modern society comes from the vain ideas that every man is bound to be a critic for life.

My temper is of a recluse and contemplative cast; had it been otherwise, I should, perhaps, on some former occasions, have entered into the active concerns of the world and not have been connected with it merely as a writer of books.

The most noble criticism is that in which the critic is not the antagonist so much as the rival of the author.