CRITICISM QUOTES III

quotations about criticism

They have a right to censure, that have a heart to help.

WILLIAM PENN

Some Fruits of Solitude


Time is the best critic.

AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT

Table Talk


A critic is like an idler amusing himself with a spy-glass; he looks at the defects of a work through the end that magnifies, then inverts the instrument to discover the virtues.

E.P. DAY

Day's Collacon


A poet that fails in writing, becomes often a morose critic. The weak and insipid white wine makes at length excellent vinegar.

WILLIAM SHENSTONE

Essays on Men and Manners


Critics? Don't talk to me of critics! You think some jackanapes journalist, his soul eaten away by the maggots of jealousy and failure, has anything worthwhile to say of art? I don't.

JONATHAN RABAN

attributed, Looking Together: Writers on Art


In criticism I will be bold, and sternly, absolutely just with friend and foe. From this purpose nothing shall turn me.

EDGAR ALLAN POE

Letters of Edgar Allan Poe


Critics are like eunuchs in a harem. They see how it should be done every night. But they can't do it themselves.

BRENDAN BEHAN

attributed, As One Mad with Wine and Other Similes


From the writer’s point of view, critics should be ignored, although it’s hard not to do what they suggest. I think it’s unfortunate to have critics for friends. Suppose you write something that stinks, what are they going to say in a review? Say it stinks? So if they’re honest, they do, and if you were friends you’re still friends, but the knowledge of your lousy writing and their articulate admission of it will be always something between the two of you, like the knowledge between a man and his wife of some shady adultery.

WILLIAM STYRON

The Paris Review, spring 1954


Time is the only critic.

JAMES M. CAIN

The Paris Review, spring-summer 1978


Criticism is like champagne, nothing more execrable if bad, nothing more excellent if good; if meagre, muddy, vapid, and sour, both are fit only to engender colic and wind; but if rich, generous, and sparkling, they communicate a genial glow to the spirits, improve the taste, expand the heart, and are worthy of being introduced at the symposium of the gods.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Lacon


I find the pain of a little censure, even when it is unfounded, is more acute than the pleasure of much praise.

THOMAS JEFFERSON

letter to Francis Hopkinson, Mar. 13, 1789


Some kinds of criticism are as much too insipid as others are too pragmatical. It is not easy to combine point with solidity, spirit with moderation and candour. Many persons see nothing but beauties in a work, others nothing but defects. Those cloy you with sweets, and are 'the very milk of human kindness,' flowing on in a stream of luscious panegyrics; these take delight in poisoning the sources of your satisfaction, and putting you out of conceit with nearly every author that comes in their way. The first are frequently actuated by personal friendship, the last by all the virulence of party spirit.

WILLIAM HAZLITT

Table Talk: Essays on Men and Manners


The method of the critic is to balance praises with censure, and thus to do justice to the subject and--his own discrimination.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

Intuitions and Summaries of Thought


A critic is an old maid that writes instructions to you concerning the rearing of your own children.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought


If you are ever called upon to chasten a person, never chasten beyond the balm you have within you to bind up.

BRIGHAM YOUNG

Journal of Discourses


It is true, I suppose, that nobody finds it exactly pleasant to be criticized our shouted at, but I see in the faces of the human being raging at me a wild animal in its true colors, one more horrible than any lion, crocodile or dragon.

OSAMU DAZAI

No Longer Human


What flocks of critics hover here to-day,
As vultures wait on armies for their prey,
All gaping for the carcass of a play!
With croaking notes they bode some dire event,
And follow dying poets by the scent.

JOHN DRYDEN

prologue, All for Love


You find very few critics who approach their job with a combination of information and enthusiasm and humility that makes for a good critic. But there is nothing wrong with critics as long as people don't pay any attention to them. I mean, nobody wants to put them out of a job and a good critic is not necessarily a dead critic. It's just that people take what a critic says as a fact rather than an opinion, and you have to know whether the opinion of the critic is informed or uninformed, intelligent of stupid -- but most people don't take the trouble.

EDWARD ALBEE

"Edward Albee: An Interview", Edward Albee: Planned Wilderness


Having the critics praise you is like having the hangman say you’ve got a pretty neck.

ELI WALLACH

attributed, The Book of Classic Insults


In literary criticism the critic has no choice but to make over the victim of his attention into something the size and shape of himself.

JOHN STEINBECK

Travels with Charley