quotations about criticism
Criticism is too apt to sweep the blossoms from the tree, as well as the caterpillars.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Criticism is the child and handmaid of reflection.
RICHARD GRANT WHITE
Words and Their Uses
On the whole, however, the critic is far less of a professional faultfinder than is sometimes imagined. He is first of all a virtue-finder, a singer of praise. He is not concerned with getting rid of dross except in so far as it hides the gold. In other words, the destructive side of criticism is purely a subsidiary affair. None of the best critics have been men of destructive minds. They are like gardeners whose business is more with the flowers than with the weeds.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
The Art of Letters
If you cannot patiently bear correction, endeavor to avoid fault.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
The critical power is of lower rank than the creative. True; but in assenting to this proposition, one or two things are to be kept in mind. It is undeniable that the exercise of a creative power, that a free creative activity, is the true function of man; it is proved to be so by man's finding in it his true happiness. But it is undeniable, also, that men may have the sense of exercising this free creative activity in other ways than in producing great works of literature or art; if it were not so, all but a very few men would be shut out from the true happiness of all men; they may have it in well-doing, they may have it in learning, they may have it even in criticizing.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
"The Function of Criticism at the Present Time", Essays
Read as little as possible of literary criticism - such things are either partisan opinions, which have become petrified and meaningless, hardened and empty of life, or else they are just clever word-games, in which one view wins today, and tomorrow the opposite view. Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
letter, Letters to a Young Poet, Apr. 23, 1903
No two characters could, indeed, be found more opposite than the open, eager, buoyant poet, and the dark, threatening, unbelieving critic.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
I appreciate good criticism and I think it's really important. I don't like it when it's consumer advocacy, like how you should spend your $60. Great criticism is a kind of literature. I've written some criticism, and I really enjoy it because I think it's important for people to know that theatre is vital. Criticism is really unevenly distributed in this town. Obviously the power of the Times is discouraging. It's killing new plays, demolishing one after another.
ADAM RAPP
interview, Theatre Communications Group
Criticism of others is thus an oblique form of self-commendation. We think we make the picture hang straight on our wall by telling our neighbors that all his pictures are crooked.
FULTON J. SHEEN
Seven Words of Jesus and Mary
Criticism often takes from the tree caterpillars and blossoms together.
J. P. RICHTER
attributed, Day's Collacon
No work deserves to be criticized that has not much in it that deserves to be applauded.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
It is easy to criticize an author, but it is difficult to appreciate him.
VAUVENARGUES
attributed, Day's Collacon
Critics are like dead coals; they may blacken, but cannot burn.
ROBERT ANDERSON
The Works of the British Poets
A perfect work destroys the critic's art.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
The modern or metaphysical system of criticism, in short, supposes the question, Why? to be repeated at the end of every decision; and the answer gives birth to interminable arguments and discussion. The former laconic mode was well adapted to guide those who merely wanted to be informed of the character and subject of a work in order to read it: the present is more useful to those whose object is less to read the work than to dispute upon its merits, and go into company clad in the whole defensive and offensive armour of criticism.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Table Talk: Essays on Men and Manners
Never demean yourself by talking back to a critic, never. Write those letters to the editor in your head, but don't put them on paper.
TRUMAN CAPOTE
The Paris Review, spring-summer 1957
It is time to return to close reading, to a serious and painstaking examination of an author's methods, of his style. Do not be deterred by headaches. First of all, this would be proof of your lack of stamina. And then, migraines, piercing pain and sudden stabs at the temples are more likely the effects of syphilis than of hard work.
LOUIS ARAGON
Treatise on Style
I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.
MARK TWAIN
letter to A. B. Paine, Sep. 13, 1898
The necessity of reform mustn't be allowed to become a form of blackmail serving to limit, reduce, or halt the exercise of criticism. Under no circumstances should one pay attention to those who tell one: "Don't criticize, since you're not capable of carrying out a reform." That's ministerial cabinet talk. Critique doesn’t have to be the premise of a deduction that concludes, "this, then, is what needs to be done." It should be an instrument for those for who fight, those who resist and refuse what is.
MICHEL FOUCAULT
The Essential Foucault
The most accomplished literary work would be reduced to nothing by carping criticism, if the author would listen to all critics and allow every one to erase the passage which pleases him the least.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères