Critics Quotes

At that shameful stage in the development of our criticism, literary abuse would overstep all limits of decorum; literature itself was a totally extraneous matter in critical articles: they were pure invective, a vulgar battle of vulgar jokes, double-entendres, the most vicious calumnies and offensive constructions. It goes without saying, that in this inglorious battle, the only winners were those who had nothing to lose as far as their good name was concerned. My friends and I were totally deluded. We imagined ourselves engaged in the subtle philosophical disputes of the portico or the academy, or at least the drawing room. In actual fact we were slumming it.

~ Vladimir Odoyevsky

Critics sometimes appear to be addressing themselves to works other than those I remember writing.

~ Joyce Carol Oates

Critical voices have to care about history. We have to care about the way in which things get controlled in the past because that's when the damage gets done and if we don't keep that historical memory, we will allow them to do it again next time.

~ Martin Baker

[The critic] serves up his erudition in strong doses; he pours out all the knowledge he got up the day before in some library or other, and treats in heathenish fashion people at whose feet he ought to sit, and the most ignorant of whom could give points to much wiser men than he.Authors bear this sort of thing with a magnanimity and a patience that are really incomprehensible. For, after all, who are those critics, who with their trenchant tone, their dicta, might be supposed sons of the gods? They are simply fellows who were at college with us, and who have turned their studies to less account, since they have not produced anything, and can do no more than soil and spoil the works of others, like true stymphalid vampires.

~ Théophile Gautier

Some reviews give pain. This is regrettable, but no author has the right to whine. He was not obliged to be an author. He invited publicity, and he must take the publicity that comes along.

~ E.m. Forster

Negative people will always be there to stain your pure image with their dirty tongues and brushes, but you'll always remain as white as snow, no matter how high the quality of paint they use.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

A critic can call any poem 'doggerel.' That is no more than a slur. 'Doggerel' or 'maudlin' or 'sappy' or 'sentimental' is in the ear of the listener. By the by, 'sentimental' is okay as it is defined as 'marked or governed by feeling, sensibility, or emotional idealism.' It is 'sentimentality' that is to be avoided, like the fiddleback spider, being as it is 'the quality or state of being sentimental to excess or in affectation.' Again we are faced with a judgement call and must keep a sharp eye on our outpourings to insure they are not overly gooey.The intellectual elite probably believe that most of the lyrics songwriters create are 'doggerel' of one kind or another--that is to say 'trivial......the young songwriter has now been warned about the implacable nature of the enemy. Under a rather large umbrella, preferred twentieth-century taste in art of all kinds has been characterized by a kind of detachment, or sangfroid. It is simply not chic to be carried away in one's emotional reaction to a subject. All serious communication or complaint must be carefully wrapped in a protective coating of irony and/or satire.

~ Jimmy Webb

A critic must be knowledgeable in several fields, practices, and mediums. Brushing off art that they personally don't understand, is not a critique.

~ Justin K. Mcfarlane Beau

If God has given you a mission, you must be tough enough to handle what people say and still not be distracted while doing what you were created to do. Are you tough enough? God and the enemy know the truth about you, and remember even great people doing great things for great causes meet negative criticisms. All criticism is not bad, just like all flattery is not good. Many times people don’t criticize you because they are evil; they do it because they have been trained to think anyone who doesn't perceive and see things in the same manner is an enemy. The critic is a prisoner to his own experiences and perspectives, erroneously believing his limited experiences are the sum of all truth. When you acknowledge your critics, you give them your power and validate their words. They are not important until you respond.

~ Bishop T.d. Jakes

When you say, ‘Women are untrustworthy bitches. They lie and cheat and will nail anything that moves.’ Do you know what I hear from your lips? Listen now, for I shall tell you. I hear you speak these words: 'I am an untrustworthy bastard. I lie and cheat and nail anything that moves.' André Chevalier

~ Nikki Sex

Wealthy people attract critics like wealthy ships attract pirates.

~ Orrin Woodward

These reasonings will furnish us with an adequate definition of a true critic: that he is a discoverer and collector of writers’ faults. Which may be farther put beyond dispute by the following demonstration: that whoever will examine the writings in all kinds, wherewith this ancient sect has honoured the world, shall immediately find, from the whole thread and tenor of them, that the ideas of the authors have been altogether conversant and taken up with the faults and blemishes, and oversights, and mistakes of other writers; and let the subject treated on be whatever it will, their imaginations are so entirely possessed and replete with the defects of other pens, that the very quintessence of what is bad does of necessity distil into their own, by which means the whole appears to be nothing else but an abstract of the criticisms themselves have made.

~ Jonathan Swift

Freedom of Speech has become Freedom of Stupidity on the internet. Some ignominious users should not be given a voice to comment at all.

~ Michael P. Naughton

And, instead of pelting these babbling idiots with their own freshly toasted marshmallows, everyone else sitting around the fire is often nodding and smiling and looking solemny thoughtful.

~ Stephen King

Procrastination threatens critics’ livelihood.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

There is something essentially ridiculous about critics, anyway: what is good is good without our saying so, and beneath all our majesty we know this.

~ Randall Jarrell

Critiquing a doer isn’t doing.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Magicians made magic but critics made it tricks.

~ Amit Kalantri

I want to say to the literature teacher who remains wilfully, even boastfully ignorant of a major element of contemporary fiction: you are incompetent to teach or judge your subject. Readers and students who do know the field, meanwhile, have every right to challenge your ignorant prejudice. Rise, undergraduates of the English departments! You have nothing to lose but your A on the midterm!

~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Those who write ill, and they who ne'er durst write,Turn critics out of mere revenge and spite.

~ John Dryden

There is probably no hell for authors in the next world--they suffer so much from critics and publishers in this one.

~ Christian Nestell Bovee

Anaemia is an illness primarily affecting characters in novels.

~ Marchel Reich-Ranicki

Loyalty in a critic is corruption.

~ George Bernard Shaw

It is advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck at one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends.

~ Samuel Johnson

But you don't hold yourself superior to all the judges of music? she protested.No, no, not for a moment. I merely maintain my right as an individual. I have just been telling you what I think, in order to explain why the elephantine gambols of Madame Tetralani spoil the orchestra for me. The world's judges of music may all be right. But I am I, and I won't subordinate my taste to the unanimous judgment of mankind. If I don't like a thing, I don't like it, that's all; and there is no reason under the sun why I should ape a liking for it just because the majority of my fellow-creatures like it, or make believe they like it. I can't follow the fashions in the things I like or dislike.

~ Jack London

Don't bow down to critics who have not themselves written great masterpieces.

~ Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The critics greeted this book with a churlish and horrified outcry. Certain virtuous people, in newspapers no less virtuous, made a grimace of disgust as they picked it up with the tongs to throw it into the fire. Even the minor literary reviews, the ones that retail nightly the tittle-tattle from alcoves and private rooms, held their noses and talked of filth and stench. I am not complaining about this reception; on the contrary I am delighted to observe that my colleagues have such maidenly susceptibilities.

~ Émile Zola

The chronic kicker, even the most violent critic, will frequently soften and be subdued in the presence of a patient, sympathetic listener— a listener who will be silent while the irate fault-finder dilates like a king cobra and spews the poison out of his system.

~ Dale Carnegie

The dilemma of the critic has always been that if he knows enough to speak with authority, he knows too much to speak with detach

~ Raymond Chandler

Many critics are born of envy.

~ Wayne Gerard Trotman

Far from being a pack of baying butchers,critics sometimes have a perverse habit of tending to the sick and wounded on the cinematic field of battle, rushing in where angels fear to tread, even when the patient is clearly without a pulse.

~ Mark Kermode

It’s hard to explain the fun to be found in seeing the right kind of bad movie.

~ Roger Ebert

The meaning you apply to what has happened to you is your decision. There will be critics that have their version, but God didn’t call them to be your audience, someone else did.

~ Shannon L. Alder

A guest sees more in an hour than the host in a year.

~ Polish Proverb

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.

~ Christopher Hampton

Book reviewers are little old ladies of both sexes.

~ John O'hara

Constant indiscriminate approval devalues because it is so predictable.

~ Kit Reed

Critics are biased and so are readers. (Indeed a critic is a bundle of biases held loosely together by a sense of taste.) But intelligent readers soon discover how to allow for the windage of their own and a critic's prejudices.

~ Whitney Balliett

Don't judge any man until you have walked two moons in his moccasins.

~ American Indian Saying

Henry James chews more than he bites off.

~ Mrs. Henry Adams