Critics search for ages for the wrong word, which, to give them credit, they eventually find.
Interpretation
Critics often focus on finding faults in a work rather than appreciating it. This highlights the tendency to dwell on negatives.
Peter Ustinov's quote critiques the nature of critics, suggesting that they spend an inordinate amount of time looking for flaws in someone else's work, particularly fixating on a single 'wrong word' that might amount to a larger critique. This sheds light on the often negative focus of criticism, which can overshadow the positive aspects of creativity and expression.
In practice
In a discussion about artistic expression, this quote serves to remind us that critics often look for flaws rather than celebrating creativity.
Marriage is like a three-speed gearbox - affection, friendship, love. It is not advisable to crash your gears and go right through to love straightaway. You need to ease your way through. The basis of love is respect, and that needs to be learned from affection and friendship.
I'm convinced there's a small room in the attic of the Foreign Office where future diplomats are taught to stammer.
I imagine hell like this: Italian punctuality, German humour and English wine.
Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth.
Because they have been in love they have survived everything that life could throw at them, even their own failures.
Corruption is nature's way of restoring our faith in democracy.
The Welsh are all actors. It's only the bad ones who become professional.
It seems to me that very sad things always contain an element of the comical
I don't know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.
Humour breaks down boundaries, it topples our self-importance, it connects people, and because it engages and entertains, it ultimately enlightens.
The appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth, so important to the success of comedy, cannot be understood unless one sits among the audience and feels the warmth created by the quality of laughter that the audience takes home with it.
A burglar who respects his art always takes his time before taking anything else.
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