Quotes & Sayings About Censure

A magnificent cad, you mean. He's positively gaping at your bosom, Lyddie!" Mariah said in a scandalized whisper. "I swear he's undressing you with his eyes!"
Lydia's lip twitched. "How lurid you sound. I really must censure your reading material."
"There can be no doubt you have his attention now," Mariah giggled. — Victoria Vane

A man must serve his time to every trade,
Save censure-critics all are ready made.
Take hackney'd jokes from Miller, got by rote
With just enough learning to misquote ... — Lord Byron

Neither human applause nor human censure is to be taken as the best of truth; but either should set us upon testing ourselves. — Richard Whately

Whoever would do good in the world, ought not to deal in censure. We ought not to destroy, but rather construct. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

And there is a proud kind of moderation likewise, when men will take upon them to censure both parties, as if they were wiser than both, — Richard Sibbes

The praise of the envious is far less creditable than their censure; they praise only that which they can surpass, but that which surpasses them they censure. — Charles Caleb Colton

Imagine the state of distrust in which I move through the world. Revealing anything shameful to anyone, I run the risk of exposure, censure, mockery. Everyone should be told this about fame before they start pursuing it: you will never trust anyone again. You will be a kind of damned person, not only because you can't trust anyone but, still worse, you must always be considering how important you are, how newsworthy, and this divides you from yourself and poisons your soul. It sucks to be well-known, Pip. And yet everyone wants to be well-known, it's what the whole world is made of now, this wanting to be well-known. — Jonathan Franzen

Those who are quick to censure others, who speak words that cut and bruise the already wounded soul, are doing Satan's work, and are laborers with the prince of darkness.... — Ellen G. White

They that censure, should practice. Or else let them have the first stone, and the last too. — William Penn

Censure is willingly indulged, because it always implies some superiority: men please themselves with imagining that they have made a deeper search, or wider survey than others, and detected faults and follies which escape vulgar observation. — Samuel Johnson

In the heart of Christ, where reigned perfect harmony with God, there was perfect peace. He was never elated by applause, nor dejected by censure or disappointment. Amid the greatest opposition and the most cruel treatment, He was still of good courage. But many who profess to be His followers have an anxious, troubled heart, because they are afraid to trust themselves with God. They do not make a complete surrender to Him; for they shrink from the consequences that such a surrender may involve. Unless they do make this surrender, they cannot find peace. It — Ellen G. White

Some men are more easily broken by kindness than censure. — Patrick W. Carr

We put together a one-sentence petition asking Congress to censure President Clinton and move on to other pressing issues. We sent it to under 100 friends and family, and within a week we had 100,000 people sign the petition. — Joan Blades

Mankind censure injustice fearing that they may be the victims of it, and not because they shrink from committing it. — Plato

Assuming that two-thirds of the Senate will not vote to remove the president, what is the alternative? I think we need to explore that in debate, .. Some have suggested censure. I think it is certainly a possibility that the Senate will decide on some alternative to removing the president from office. — Thad Cochran

I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding?joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid leaves with disgust. — Jane Austen

If a man has the assurance within his own heart that he is worthy, and that he is laboring to the best of his ability to do good, he can stand up under the condemnation, the criticism and the censure of those by whom he is surrounded. — Heber J. Grant

History has demonstrated that efforts to censure and control communication will not succeed. — Ricardo Salinas Pliego

I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure. — Mikhail Bakunin

I'm opposed to censure, .. Whether or not one will be permitted, it's under discussion. It isn't ruled out, but it's not a dead-bang certainty either. — Henry Hyde

In living literature no person is a competent judge but of works written in his own language . I have expressed my opinion concerning a number of English writers; it is very possible that I may be mistaken, that my admiration and my censure may be equally misplaced, and that my conclusions may appear impertinent and ridiculous on the other side of the Channel. — Francois-Rene De Chateaubriand

The founding fathers gave the House of Representatives one function when it comes to cleansing the office of the presidency and that is impeachment, .. Whether or not a resolution of censure is appropriate is something beyond our constitutional authority. — Henry Hyde

Censure no more shall brand my humble name
The child of passion and the fool of fame — George Gordon Byron

No author, I think, is deserving of much censure for vanity if, taking down one of his ten-year-old books, he exclaims: "Great heavens, did I write as well as that then?" for the implication always is that one does not write any longer so well and few are so envious as to censure the complacencies of an extinct volcano. — Ford Madox Ford

Abortion ... was probably regarded by the average Roman of the later days of Paganism much as Englishmen in the last century regarded convivial excesses, as certainly wrong, but so venial as scarcely to deserve censure. — William Edward Hartpole Lecky

In a drama of the highest order there is little food for censure or hatred; it teaches rather self-knowledge and self-respect. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

All the satires of the stage should be viewed without discomfort. They are public mirrors, where we are never to admit that we seeourselves; one admits to a fault when one is scandalized by its censure. — Moliere

They were completely vague. They expressed everything and nothing. 'It is the Aeolian harp of style,' thought Julien. 'Amid the most lofty thoughts about annihilation, death, the infinite, etc., I can see no reality save a shocking fear of ridicule. — Stendhal

All censure of a man's self is oblique praise. It is in order to show how much he can spare. — Samuel Johnson

Most of our censure of others is only oblique praise of self, uttered to show the wisdom and superiority of the speaker. It has all the invidiousness of self-praise, and all the ill-desert of falsehood. — Tryon Edwards

Why should I expect to be exempt from censure; the unfailing lot of an elevated station? My Heart tells me it has been my unremitted aim to do the best circumstances would permit; yet, I may have been very often mistaken in my judgment of the means. — George Washington

That said, your values will not always be the object of public admiration. In fact, the more you live by your beliefs, the more you will endure the censure of the world. — Mitt Romney

The risk is enormous to Democrats. Even talking about censure or impeachment threatens to really agitate the Republican base. — Charlie Cook

When you do anything from a clear judgment that it ought to be done, never shrink from being seen to do it, even though the world should misunderstand it; for if you are not acting rightly, shun the action itself; if you are, why fear those who wrongly censure you? — Epictetus

His way was like other people's; he mounted no high horse; he was just
a man and a citizen. He indulged in no Socratic irony. But his
discourse was full of Attic grace; those who heard it went away neither
disgusted by servility, nor repelled by ill-tempered censure, but on
the contrary lifted out of themselves by charity, and encouraged to
more orderly, contented, hopeful lives. — Arthur Quiller-Couch

By the way, leafing through my dictionary I am struck by the poverty of language when it comes to naming or describing badness. Evil, wickedness, mischief, these words imply an agency, the conscious or at least active doing of wrong. They do not signify the bad in its inert, neutral, self-sustaining state. Then there are the adjectives: dreadful, heinous, execrable, vile, and so on. They are not so much as descriptive as judgmental. They carry a weight of censure mingled with fear. Is this not a queer state of affairs? It makes me wonder. I ask myself if perhaps the thing itself - badness - does not exist at all, if these strangely vague and imprecise words are only a kind of ruse, a kind of elaborate cover for the fact that nothing is there. Or perhaps words are an attempt to make it be there? Or, again, perhaps there is something, but the words invented it. Such considerations make me feel dizzy, as if a hole had opened briefly in the world. — John Banville

My dream, even now, is to walk for weeks with some friend that I love, leisurely wandering from place to place, with no route arranged and no object in view, with liberty to go on all day or to linger all day, as we choose; but the question of luggage, unknown to the simple pilgrim, is one of the rocks on which my plans have been shipwrecked, and the other is the certain censure of relatives, who, not fond of walking themselves, and having no taste for noonday naps under hedges, would be sure to paralyse my plans before they had grown to maturity by the honest horror of their cry, "How very unpleasant if you were to meet any one you know!" The relative of five hundred years back would have said "How Holy! — Elizabeth Von Arnim

All our distinctions ire accidental; beauty and deformity, though personal qualities, are neither entitled to praise nor censure; yet it so happens that they color our opinion of those qualities to which mankind have attached responsibility. — Johann Georg Ritter Von Zimmermann

Religion does not censure or exclude
Unnumbered pleasures, harmlessly pursued. — William Cowper

If your church continues in this liberty of conscience, making no scruple to take away what she pleases, soon the Scripture will fail you, and you will have to be satisfied with the Institutes of Calvin, which must indeed have I know not what excellence, since they censure the Scriptures themselves! — Francis De Sales

If Congress were to censure, fine or otherwise try to punish a president, it would dramatically alter the balance of power between the branches.. — Mike DeWine

As the malicious disposition of mankind is too well known, and the cruel pleasure which they take in destroying the reputation of others, the use we are to make of this knowledge is, to afford no handle for reproach; for bad as the world is, it seldom falls on anyone who hath not given some slight cause for censure. — Henry Fielding

Better mendacities Than the classics in paraphrase! Some quick to arm, some for adventure, some from fear of weakness, some from fear of censure, some for love of slaughter, in imagination, learning later ... some in fear, learning love of slaughter; Died some, pro patria, non "dulce" non "et decor" . walked eye-deep in hell believing in old men's lies, the unbelieving came home, home to a lie. — Ezra Pound

I was involuntarily struck by the aptitude which the Russian displays for accommodating himself to the customs of the people in whose midst he happens to be living. I know not whether this mental quality is deserving of censure or commendation, but it proves the incredible pliancy of his mind and the presence of that clear common sense which pardons evil wherever it sees that evil is inevitable or impossible of annihilation. — Mikhail Lermontov

It is folly for an eminent man to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution. — Joseph Addison

Get a single, solitary thought in your mind, and that thought - the precious love of Jesus. Go and live it out, and come what may, you will be respected though abused. They may say you are an enthusiast, a fanatic, a fool, but those names from the world are titles of praise and glory. The world does not take the trouble to nickname a man unless he is worth it. It will not give you any censure unless it trembles at you. — Charles Spurgeon

Tender inner weaknesses, revolting at mild touches of censure, are like diseased parts of the body, recoiling before even delicate handling. — Sri Yukteswar Giri

It is harder to avoid censure than to gain applause; for this may be done by one great or wise action in an age. But to escape censure a man must pass his whole life without saying or doing one ill or foolish thing — David Hume

Horace appears in good humor while he censures, and therefore his censure has the more weight, as supposed to proceed from judgment and not from passion. — Edward Young

I have often met with happiness after some imprudent step which ought to have brought ruin upon me, and although passing a vote of censure upon myself I would thank God for his mercy. — Giacomo Casanova

A censure would put an indelible scar on the president's place in history, .. Monica Lewinsky is not Watergate. Let he who has no sin in this chamber cast the first stone. — Bob Menendez

The I feel a contentment in defeat, I reflected, simply because defeat has come, because it is infinitely connected to all the acts that are, that were, and that shall be, because to censure or deplore a single real act is to blaspheme against the universe. — Jorge Luis Borges

Why should we censure Othello when the Criterion Lover says, "Thou shalt have no other Gods before Me"? — Emily Dickinson

Censors never go after books unless kids already like them. I don't even think they know to go after books until they know that children are interested in reading this book, therefore there must be something in it that's wrong. — Judy Blume

[T]he 47th proposition in Euclid might now be voted down with as much ease as any proposition in politics; and therefore if Lord Hawkesbury hates the abstract truths of science as much as he hates concrete truth in human affairs, now is his time for getting rid of the multiplication table, and passing a vote of censure upon the pretensions of the hypotenuse. — Sydney Smith

How can you ask us to go back to our parlors?" I said, rising to my feet. "To turn our backs on ourselves and on our own sex? We don't wish the movement to split, of course we don't - it saddens me to think of it - but we can do little for the slave as long as we're under the feet of men. Do what you have to do, censure us, withdraw your support, we'll press on anyway. Now, sirs, kindly take your feet off our necks. — Sue Monk Kidd

To censure my own faults in some other person seems to me no more incongruous than to censure, as I often do, another's in myself. They must be denounced everywhere, and be allowed no place of sanctuary. — Michel De Montaigne

It follows that the one thing we should not do to the men and women of past time, and particularly if they ghost through to us as larger than life, is to take them out of their historical contexts. To do so is to run the risk of turning them into monsters, whom we can denounce for our (frequently political) motives - an insidious game, because we are condemning in their make-up that which is likely to belong to a whole social world, the world that helped to fashion them and that is deviously reflected or distorted in them. Censure of this sort is the work of petty moralists and propagandists, not historians (p. 5). — Lauro Martines

No weakness of the human mind has more frequently incurred animadversion, than the negligence with which men overlook their own faults, however flagrant, and the easiness with which they pardon them, however frequently repeated. — Samuel Johnson

Every age might perhaps produce one or two geniuses, if they were not sunk under the censure and obloquy of plodding, servile, imitating pedants. — Jonathan Swift

The immediate advantage to herself was by no means inconsiderable, for it supplied her with endless jokes against them both. At the park she laughed at the colonel, and in the cottage at Marianne. To the former her raillery was probably, as far as it regarded only himself, perfectly indifferent; but to the latter it was at first incomprehensible; and when its object was understood, she hardly knew whether most to laugh at its absurdity, or censure its impertinence, for she considered it as an unfeeling reflection on the colonel's advanced years, and on his forlorn condition as an old bachelor. — Jane Austen

It is the business of a virtuous clergy to censure vice in every appearance of it. — Patrick Henry

Mankind are very odd creatures:
one half censure what they practice,
the other half practice what they censure;
the rest always say and do as they ought. — Benjamin Franklin

The silence of a man who loves to praise is a censure sufficiently severe. — Charlotte Lennox

Censure and criticism never hurt anybody. If false, they can't hurt you unless you are wanting in manly character; and if true, they show a man his weak points, and forewarn him against failure and trouble. — William E. Gladstone

Jesus Christ has undertaken by His redemption to put in me a heart so pure that God can see nothing to censure. — Oswald Chambers

Against Him those women sin who torment their skin with potions, stain their cheeks with rouge and extend the line of their eyes with black coloring. Doubtless they are dissatisfied with God's plastic skill. In their own persons they convict and censure the Artificer of all things. — Tertullian

It is folly to censure him whom all the world adores. — Publilius Syrus

Censure acquits the raven, but pursues the dove. — Juvenal

In this world, [of Flash and Filigree] nothing is true, and censure or outrage is simply irrelevant. — William S. Burroughs

Let such teach others who themselves excel, And censure freely who have written well. — Alexander Pope

Self-love makes us deceive ourselves in almost all matters, to censure others, and to blame them for the same faults that we do not correct in ourselves; we do this either because we are unaware of the evil that exists within us, or because we always see our own evil disguised as a good. — Madeleine De Souvre, Marquise De ...

The stage I chose
a subject fair and free
'Tis yours
'tis mine
'tis public property.
All common exhibitions open lie,
For praise or censure, to the common eye.
Hence are a thousand hackney writers fed;
Hence monthly critics earn their daily bread.
This is a general tax which all must pay,
From those who scribble, down to those who play. — Charles Churchill

Even if people censure me, they should do so hat in hand. — Gustav Mahler

There are but three ways for a man to revenge himself of the censure of the world,
to despise it, to return the like, or to endeavor to live so as to avoid it; the first of these is usually pretended, the last is almost impossible, the universal practice is for the second. — Jonathan Swift

If an author be supposed to involve his thoughts in voluntary obscurity, and to obstruct, by unnecessary difficulties, a mind eager in the pursuit of truth; if he writes not to make others learned, but to boast the learning which he possesses himself, and wishes to be admired rather than understood, he counteracts the first end of writing, and justly suffers the utmost severity of censure, or the more afflicting severity of neglect. — Samuel Johnson

Censure is like the lightning which strikes the highest mountains. — Baltasar Gracian

Every age and every nation has certain characteristic vices, which prevail almost universally, which scarcely any person scruples to avow, and which even rigid moralists but faintly censure. Succeeding generations change the fashion of their morals with the fashion of their hats and their coaches; take some other kind of wickedness under their patronage, and wonder at the depravity of their ancestors. — Thomas B. Macaulay

Every man's censure is first moulded in his own nature. — George Herbert

Ten censure wrong for one who writes amiss. — Alexander Pope

I have never worked for fame or praise, and shall not feel their loss as I otherwise would. I have never for a moment lost sight of the humble life I was born to, its small environments, and the consequently little right I had to expect much of myself, and shall have the less to censure, or upbraid myself with for the failures I must see myself make. — Clara Barton

If there should chance to be any mathematicians who, ignorant in mathematics yet pretending to skill in that science, should dare, upon the authority of some passage of Scripture wrested to their purpose, to condemn and censure my hypothesis, I value them not, and scorn their inconsiderate judgement.
De Revolutionibus Coelestibus — Nicolaus Copernicus

We must defend freedom of expression and if I had to chose, I prefer the excess of caricature over the excess of censure. — Nicolas Sarkozy

What a strange fate for Muslim memory, to be called upon in order to censure and punish! What a strange memory, where even dead men and women do not escape attempts at assassination, if by chance they threaten to raise the hijab that covers the mediocrity and servility that is presented to us as tradition. How did the tradition succeed in transforming the Muslim woman into that submissive, marginal creature who buries herself and only goes out into the world timidly and huddled in her veils? Why does the Muslim man need such a mutilated companion? — Fatema Mernissi

Just as some historians seemed more shocked that the author of the Declaration of Independence had sex with Sally Hemmings than by the fact that he owned her, Clinton received far more censure for his sexual misdeeds than for other moral lapses, such as his politically motivated decision to ignore the finding of a bipartisan panel that issuing needles to drug addicts would save lives and curtail the spread of AIDS without increasing drug addiction. — Stephanie Coontz

I think the dignity of Congress and the dignity of the country demands something more than merely censure here. — William Weld

She shrugged. "She's nice and I think she can't help it." Zara gave me a look of censure and went back to her strawberry ice cream. Something along the lines of: Only a real dickhead would make fun of how someone talks, you idiot. — Raine Miller

The Presidency, even to the most experienced politicians, is no bed of roses; and [Zachary] Taylor like others, found thorns within it. No human being can fill that station and escape censure. — Abraham Lincoln

They must first judge themselves, that presume to censure others: And such will not be apt to overshoot the Mark. We are too ready to retaliate, rather than forgive, or gain by Love and Information. And yet we could hurt no Man that we believe loves us. Let us then try what Love will do: For if Men did once see we Love them, we should soon find they would not harm us. Force may subdue, but Love gains: And he that forgives first, wins the [Laurel]. If I am even with my Enemy, the Debt is paid; but if I forgive it, I oblige him for ever. [From Fruits of Solitude, 1693] — William Penn

Unfortunately, censure has cut history up. — Erin Moure

Julian was not insensible of the advantages of freedom. From his studies he had imbibed the spirit of ancient sages and heroes; his life and fortunes had depended on the caprice of a tyrant; and, when he ascended the throne, his pride was sometimes mortified by the reflection that the slaves who would not dare to censure his defects were not worthy to applaud his virtues. — Edward Gibbon

Never be afraid of the world's censure; it's praise is much more to be dreaded. — Charles Spurgeon

Affectation proceeds from one of these two causes,
vanity or hypocrisy; for as vanity puts us on affecting false characters, in order to purchase applause; so hypocrisy sets us on an endeavor to avoid censure, by concealing our vices under an appearance of their opposite virtues. — Henry Fielding

Even a trashy movie can make you cry. There were deep emotional reactions that ducked the censure of the higher reasoning processes and forced us to enact, however vestigially, our roles - me, the indignant secret lover revealed; Clarissa the woman cruelly betrayed. — Ian McEwan

Censure pardons the ravens but rebukes the doves. [The innocent are punished and the wicked escape.] — Juvenal

He did not defy convention: when it did not interfere with whatever line of conduct he meant to pursue he conformed to it; and when it did he ignored it, affably conceding to his critics their right to censure him, if they felt so inclined, and caring neither for their praise nor their blame. — Georgette Heyer

It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise. — W. Somerset Maugham

When Actions are a Censure upon themselves, the Reciter will always be consider'd as a Satirist. — Charlotte Lennox

He sat there among them, listened to the buzz of their conversation. He was captivated by them. In that racket every voice touched a key in his soul. He didn't understand life. He had no conception of why he had been born into the world. As he saw it, anyone to whose lot fell this adventure, the purpose of which was unknown but the end of which was annihilation, that person was absolved from all responsibility and had the right to do as he pleased - for example, to lie full length in the street and begin to moan without any reason - without deserving the slightest censure. But precisely because he considered his life as a whole an incomprehensible thing, he understood its little details individually - every person without exception, every elevated and lowly point of view, every concept - and those he assimilated at once. — Dezso Kosztolanyi

What is this?"

"It's a Harley."

I looked at him from the corner of my eye before turning my silent censure back onto his bike.

"I was implying that you should take me to your big boy mode of transportation instead. — Adrianne Brooks