CRITICISM QUOTES

quotations about criticism

A true critic ought to dwell rather upon excellencies than imperfections, to discover the concealed beauties of a writer, and communicate to the world such things as are worth their observation.

JOSEPH ADDISON

The Spectator, Feb. 2, 1712


Give a critic an inch, he’ll write a play.

JOHN STEINBECK

"On Critics,", Writers at Work


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

WILLIAM PENN

Some Fruits of Solitude


A man who can't take a word of criticism hears it the most.

KEN ALSTAD

Savvy Sayin's


Criticism must never be sharpened into anatomy. The delicate veins of fancy may be traced, and the rich blood, that gives bloom and health to the complexion of thought, be resolved into its elements. Stop there. The life of the imagination, as of the body, disappears when we pursue it.

ROBERT ARIS WILLMOTT

Pleasures of Literature


You have one of two choices. Either you can panic and start making frantic attempts to reform under the glare of these awful critical eyes, or you can just say, "The hell with you! I know what I'm doing. If you don't yet, it's because you haven't given me an attentive reading.

SAUL BELLOW

Q & A at Howard Community College, Feb. 1986


Criticism discloses that which it would fain conceal, but conceals that which it professes to disclose; it is therefore, read by the discerning, not to discover the merits of an author, but the motives of his critic.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Lacon


I am more afraid of deserving criticism than of receiving it.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Kavanagh: A Tale


One becomes a critic when one cannot be an artist, just as a man becomes a stool pigeon when he cannot be a soldier.

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

letter to Madame Louise Colet, Oct. 22, 1846


The pleasure of criticism takes away from us the pleasure of being deeply moved by very fine things.

JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE

"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères


As a matter of fact, we are none of us above criticism; so let us bear with each other's faults.

L. FRANK BAUM

The Marvelous Land of Oz


Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then criticism will gradually yield to him.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe


A cruel critic has never made anything; his glibness is a way of inflicting his emptiness on others.

JOHN LAHR

"Questions for John Lahr", The New Yorker, Jan. 23, 2009


If criticism had any real power to harm, the skunk would have been extinct by now.

FRED ALLEN

attributed, 20,000 Quips & Quotes


The perfect critic is one ... that sees with the eyes of posterity.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought


Reproof is a medicine, like mercury or opium; if it be improperly administered, it will do harm instead of good.

HORACE MANN

Thoughts


Where there are critical books of immense plexity and learning, dealing, but often at second or third-hand, with original work -- novels, plays, stories. The people who write these books form a stratum in universities across the world -- they are an international phenomenon, the top layer of literary academia. Their lives are spent in criticizing, and in criticizing each other's criticism. They at least regard this activity as more important than the original work. It is possible for literary students to spend more time reading criticism and criticism of criticism than they spend reading poetry, novels, biography, stories. A great many people regard this state of affairs as quite normal, and not sad and ridiculous.

DORIS LESSING

Partisan Review, 1973


Some critics, and for that matter most of them, I fear, rejoice in faults as buzzards do in carrion, to feed upon it; but a true critic is a surgeon, who cuts away the wen, or imposthume, that he may rejoice in the cleanness of a body restored to health.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

OSCAR WILDE

Art and Morality


Optimists don't internalize pain or criticism. They take it for what it is worth and carry on.

ROBERT M. SHERFIELD

The Everything Self-Esteem Book