Criticism Quotes

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Hans Selye

Never defend yourself of words from a fool unless you are willing to become his/her equal.

Gene Crawford

The critical method which denies literary modernity would appear -- and even, in certain respects, would be -- the most modern of critical movements.

Paul De Man

I review novels to make money, because it is easier for a sluggard to write an article a fortnight than a book a year, because the writer is soothed by the opiate of action, the crank by posing as a good journalist, and having an air hole. I dislike it. I do it and I am always resolving to give it up.

Cyril Connolly

The easiest thing a human being can do is to criticize another human being.

Lynn M. Little

A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.

Iris Murdoch

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

Dorothy Parker

A critic is a reader who ruminates. Thus, he should have more than one stomach.

Friedrich Von Schlegel

Some people are always critical of vague statements. I tend rather to be critical of precise statements; they are the only ones which can correctly be labeled wrong.

Raymond Smullyan

It's too easy to criticize a man when he's out of favour, and to make him shoulder the blame for everybody else's mistakes.

Leo Tolstoy

Writing prejudicial, off-putting reviews is a precise exercise in applied black magic. The reviewer can draw free-floating disagreeable associations to a book by implying that the book is completely unimportant without saying exactly why, and carefully avoiding any clear images that could capture the reader's full attention.

William S. Burroughs

Critics! Those cut-throat bandits in the paths of fame.

Robert Burns

I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so.

Sydney Smith

When everyone is against you, it means you are absolutely wrong -- or you are absolutely right.

Albert Guinon

The covers of this book are too far apart.

Ambrose Bierce

Now, in reality, the world have paid too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them to be men of much greater profundity than they really are.

Henry Fielding

She turned to examine Dr. Breed, looking at him with helpless reproach. She hated people who thought too much. At that moment, she struck me as an appropriate representative for almost all mankind.

Kurt Vonnegut

A drama critic is a man who leaves no turn unstoned.

George Bernard Shaw

In an age of unscrupulous and shameless book-making, it is a duty to give notice of the rubbish that cumbers the ground. There is no credit, no real power required for this task. It is the work of an intellectual scavenger, and far from being specially honorable.

R. H. Hutton

Nothing would improve newspaper criticism so much as the knowledge that it was to be read by men too hardy to acquiesce in the authoritative statement of the reviewer.

R. H. Hutton