Famous quotes containing the words test, public and/or void:
“The test of a real comedian is whether you laugh at him before he opens his mouth.”
—George Jean Nathan (1882–1958)
“We might make a public moan in the newspapers about the decay of conscience, but in private conversation, no matter what crimes a man may have committed or how cynically he may have debased his talent or his friends, variations on the answer “Yes, but I did it for the money” satisfy all but the most tiresome objections.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“The man Shelley, in very truth, is not entirely sane, and Shelley’s poetry is not entirely sane either. The Shelley of actual life is a vision of beauty and radiance, indeed, but availing nothing, effecting nothing. And in poetry, no less than in life, he is “a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain.””
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)