Wilfrid Sheed Quotes

United Kingdom, Novelist
December 27, 1930 – January, 19, 2011.

Wilfrid John Joseph Sheed was an English-born American novelist and essayist. Sheed was born in London, to Frank Sheed and Maisie Ward, prominent Roman Catholic publishers Sheed & Ward in the United Kingdom and the United States during the mid-20th century. Wilfrid Sheed spent his childhood in both England and the United States before attending Downside School and Lincoln College, Oxford where he earned BA 1954 and MA 1957 degrees.

Also known as Essayist

The American male doesn't mature until he has exhausted all other possibilities.

Wilfrid Sheed
For now, I'm supposing that all movements are equal, which they're not, except in this respect: that none of them gives a damn about artists beyond their immediate utility. Good movements will use a writer just as ruthlessly as bad ones; since they all fancy they have better things to do than worry about one man's artistic survival.

Wilfrid Sheed
- Worry
- Survival
- Artistic

The worse we treat people in this country, the more delicately we talk about them.

Wilfrid Sheed
- Country
- Worse
- Them
I myself have not met a self‐confessed liberal since the late fifties (and even then it was a tacky thing to admit, like coming from the middle class or the Middle West, those two gloomy seedbeds of talent), yet hardly a day passes that I don't read another attack on the “typical liberal” — as it might be announcing a pest of dinosaurs or a plague of unicorns.

Wilfrid Sheed
- Talent
- Middle
- Admit
Whether or not Big Brother is watching us, we certainly have to watch him, which may be even worse.

Wilfrid Sheed
- Watching
- Worse
- Certainly
Saloons provide moments of genuine ecstasy - but only if your soul is at peace and the rest of your life bears contemplating. Otherwise, they are palaces of misery.

Wilfrid Sheed
Mankind has always made too much of its saints and heroes, and how the latter handle the fuss might be called their final test.

Wilfrid Sheed
- Always
- Test
- Handle
It is a fallacy to think that carping is the strongest form of criticism: the important work begins after the artist's mistakes have been pointed out, and the reviewer can't put it off indefinitely with sneers, although some neophytes might be tempted to try: "When in doubt, stick out your tongue" is a safe rule that never cost one any readers. But there's nothing strong about it, and it has nothing to do with the real business of criticism, which is to do justice to the best work of one's time, so that nothing gets lost.

Wilfrid Sheed
- Time
- Important
- Business

The actual Irish weather report is really a recording made in 1922, which no one has had occasion to change. "Scattered showers, periods of sunshine."

Wilfrid Sheed
If the French were really intelligent, they'd speak English.

Wilfrid Sheed