CRITICISM QUOTES III

quotations about criticism

The legitimate aim of criticism is to direct attention to the excellent. The bad will dig its own grave.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

Intuitions and Summaries of Thought


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


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


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


Doubtless criticism was originally benignant, pointing out the beauties of a work, rather than its defects. The passions of men have made it malignant, as the bad heart of Procrustes turned the bed, the symbol of repose, into an instrument of torture.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Table-Talk


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


Thoughtful criticism and close scrutiny of all government officials by the press and the public are an important part of our democratic society.

JIMMY CARTER

Farewell Address, Jan. 14, 1981


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


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


Criticism is a life without risk.

JOHN LAHR

Light Fantastic


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


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


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

WILLIAM PENN

Some Fruits of Solitude


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


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


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


If Attila the Hun were alive today, he'd be a drama critic.

EDWARD ALBEE

Theater Week, 1988


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 exercise of criticism always destroys for a time, our sensibility to beauty by leading us to regard the work in relation to certain laws of creation. The eye turns from the charms of nature to fix itself upon the servile desterity of art.

ARCHIBALD ALISON

attributed, Day's Collacon


Time is the best critic.

AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT

Table Talk