quotations about criticism
Probably you have noted the resemblance of the critic to the crank.
EDGAR WATSON HOWE
Country Town Sayings
The finer house you build the sharper will be the criticism.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
The pleasure of criticism takes away from us the pleasure of being deeply moved by very fine things.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Characters
When virtues are pointed out first, flaws seem less insurmountable.
JUDITH MARTIN
Common Courtesy
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
Criticism often takes from the tree caterpillars and blossoms together.
JEAN PAUL RICHTER
Titan
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
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
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
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
If you absolutely can't tolerate critics, then don't do anything new or interesting.
JEFF BEZOS
bOinGbOinG, June 1, 2016
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
All the critics who could not make their reputations by discovering you are hoping to make them by predicting hopefully your approaching impotence, failure and general drying up of natural juices.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
"A Letter from Cuba,", Esquire, Dec. 1934
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
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
Time is the only critic.
JAMES M. CAIN
The Paris Review, spring-summer 1978
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
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
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
To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.
ARISTOTLE
attributed, The Writer's Workout