quotations about criticism
The finer house you build the sharper will be the criticism.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
Probably you have noted the resemblance of the critic to the crank.
EDGAR WATSON HOWE
Country Town Sayings
Time is the only critic.
JAMES M. CAIN
The Paris Review, spring-summer 1978
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
When virtues are pointed out first, flaws seem less insurmountable.
JUDITH MARTIN
Common Courtesy
The pleasure of criticism takes away from us the pleasure of being deeply moved by very fine things.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Characters
To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.
ARISTOTLE
attributed, The Writer's Workout
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
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
Criticism often takes from the tree caterpillars and blossoms together.
JEAN PAUL RICHTER
Titan
If you absolutely can't tolerate critics, then don't do anything new or interesting.
JEFF BEZOS
bOinGbOinG, June 1, 2016
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
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
Many critics are like woodpeckers, who, instead of enjoying the fruit and shadow of a tree, hop incessantly around the trunk, pecking holes in the bark to discover some little worm or other.
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
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
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
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
Take heed of critics even when they are not fair; resist them even when they are.
JEAN ROSTAND
"A Biologist's Thoughts,", The Substance of Man
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