CRITICISM QUOTES
quotations about critics and criticism
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I am more afraid of deserving criticism than of receiving it.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, Kavanagh: A Tale
They have a right to censure, that have a heart to help.
WILLIAM PENN, Some Fruits of Solitude
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 perfect critic is one ... that sees with the eyes of posterity.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY, Keystones of Thought
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
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
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
Optimists don't internalize pain or criticism. They take it for what it is worth and carry on.
ROBERT M. SHERFIELD, The Everything Self-Esteem Book
Reproof is a medicine, like mercury or opium; if it be improperly administered, it will do harm instead of good.
Some critics, and for that matter most of them, I fear, rejoice in faults as buzzards do in carrion, to feed upon it; but a true critic is a surgeon, who cuts away the wen, or imposthume, that he may rejoice in the cleanness of a body restored to health.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The finer house you build the sharper will be the criticism.
Criticism discloses that which it would fain conceal, but conceals that which it professes to disclose; it is therefore, read by the discerning, not to discover the merits of an author, but the motives of his critic.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
A critic is an old maid that writes instructions to you concerning the rearing of your own children.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY, Keystones of Thought
If you cannot patiently bear correction, endeavor to avoid fault.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
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
They that censure, should practice. Or else let them have the first stone, and the last too.
WILLIAM PENN, Some Fruits of Solitude
It is true, I suppose, that nobody finds it exactly pleasant to be criticized our shouted at, but I see in the faces of the human being raging at me a wild animal in its true colors, one more horrible than any lion, crocodile or dragon.
OSAMU DAZAI, No Longer Human
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
Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then criticism will gradually yield to him.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT, Table Talk
One becomes a critic when one cannot be an artist, just as a man becomes a stool pigeon when he cannot be a soldier.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, letter to Madame Louise Colet, Oct. 22, 1846
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
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