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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=342634" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>A Dilemma</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Filled with a zeal to serve my fellow men,<br>For years I criticised their prose and verges:<br>Pointed out all their blunders of the pen,<br>Their shallowness of thought and feeling; then<br>Damned them up hill and down with hearty curses!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They said: 'That's all that he can do-just sneer,<br>And pull to pieces and be analytic.<br>Why doesn't he himself, eschewing fear,<br>Publish a book or two, and so appear<br>As one who has the right to be a critic?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Let him who knows it all forbear to tell<br>How little others know, but show his learning.'<br>The public added: 'Who has written well<br>May censure freely'-quoting Pope. I fell<br>Into the trap and books began out-turning,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Books by the score-fine prose and poems fair,<br>And not a book of them but was a terror,<br>They were so great and perfect; though I swear<br>I tried right hard to work in, here and there,<br>(My nature still forbade) a fault or error.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Tis true, some wretches, whom I'd scratched, no doubt,<br>Professed to find-but that's a trifling matter.<br>Now, when the flood of noble books was out<br>I raised o'er all that land a joyous shout,<br>Till I was thought as mad as any hatter!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">(Why hatters all are mad, I cannot say.<br>'T were wrong in their affliction to revile 'em,<br>But truly, you'll confess 'tis very sad<br>We wear the ugly things they make. Begad,<br>They'd be less mischievous in an asylum!)</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Consistency, thou art a'-well, you're _paste_!<br>When next I felt my demon in possession,<br>And made the field of authorship a waste,<br>All said of me: 'What execrable taste,<br>To rail at others of his own profession!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Good Lord! where do the critic's rights begin<br>Who has of literature some clear-cut notion,<br>And hears a voice from Heaven say: 'Pitch in'?<br>He finds himself-alas, poor son of sin<br>Between the devil and the deep blue ocean!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Ambrose+Bierce">Ambrose Bierce</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=342634" data-title="A Dilemma de Ambrose Bierce" data-description="Filled with a zeal to serve my fellow men,
For years I criticised their prose and verges:
Pointed out all their blunders of the pen,
Their shallowness of thought and feeling; then
Damned them up hill and down with hearty curses!

They said: 'That'..."></div>
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