quotations about criticism
Probably you have noted the resemblance of the critic to the crank.
EDGAR WATSON HOWE
Country Town Sayings
When virtues are pointed out first, flaws seem less insurmountable.
JUDITH MARTIN
Common Courtesy
Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than native genius. In the hands of a man who has read widely but lacks judgment, applied to certain subjects it can corrupt both its readers and the writer himself.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères
The finer house you build the sharper will be the criticism.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
Time is the only critic.
JAMES M. CAIN
The Paris Review, spring-summer 1978
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
Criticism very often consists of measuring the learning and the wisdom of others, either by our own ignorance, or by our little technical and pedantic partialities and prejudices.... A book thus unfairly treated, may be compared to the laurel, of which there is honor in the leaves, but poison in the extract.
HORACE SMITH
The Tin Trumpet
If you absolutely can't tolerate critics, then don't do anything new or interesting.
JEFF BEZOS
bOinGbOinG, June 1, 2016
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
To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.
ARISTOTLE
attributed, The Writer's Workout
When a critic sets himself up as an arbiter of morality, a judge of the matter and not the manner of a work, he is no longer a critic; he is a censor.
EDWARD ALBEE
preface, The American Dream
It is quite cruel that a poet cannot wander through his regions of enchantment without having a critic forever, like the Old Man of the Sea, upon his back.
THOMAS MOORE
Lalla Rookh
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
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 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
The pleasure of criticism takes away from us the pleasure of being deeply moved by very fine things.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Characters
What he, the writer, is asking is impossible. Why should he expect this extraordinary being, the perfect critic (who does occasionally exist), why should there be anyone else who comprehends what he is trying to do? Aftar all, there is only one person spinning that particular cocoon, only one person whose business it is to spin it.
DORIS LESSING
Partisan Review, 1973
Criticism is just someone else’s opinion. Even people who are experts in their fields are sometimes wrong. It is up to you to choose whether to believe some of it, none of it, or all of it. What you think is what counts.
RODOLFO COSTA
Advice My Parents Gave Me
If we wear our worst reviews like a backpack, they travel with us.
JENNIFER LOVE HEWITT
The Day I Shot Cupid
A young critic is like a boy with a gun; he fires at every living thing he sees. He thinks only of his own skill, not of the pain he is giving.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Table-Talk