Criticism Quotes - Page 37

• The legitimate aim of criticism is to direct attention to the excellent. The bad will dig its own grave.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Attention, Excellent, Graves

  5 Copy quote

• No work deserves to be criticized that has not much in it that deserves to be applauded.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Deserve

  5 Copy quote

• The method of the critic is to balance praises with censure, and thus to do justice to the subject and--his own discrimination.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Justice, Balance, Discrimination

  4 Copy quote

• It is a fallacy to think that carping is the strongest form of criticism: the important work begins after the artist's mistakes have been pointed out, and the reviewer can't put it off indefinitely with sneers, although some neophytes might be tempted to try: "When in doubt, stick out your tongue" is a safe rule that never cost one any readers. But there's nothing strong about it, and it has nothing to do with the real business of criticism, which is to do justice to the best work of one's time, so that nothing gets lost.

  Wilfrid Sheed

  Strong, Real, Mistake

  "Essays in Disguise" by Wilfrid Sheed, Knopf, (pp. xvi-xvii), 1990.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I want no criticism of America at my table. The Americans criticize themselves more than enough.

  Winston Churchill

  America, Tables, Want

  "Churchill By Himself" by Ed. Langworth, p. 128, 2008.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Collect all the facts that can be collected about the life of Racine and you will never learn from them the art of his verse. All criticism is dominated by the outworn theory that the man is the cause of the work as in the eyes of the law the criminal is the cause of the crime. Far rather are they both the effects.

  Paul Valery

  Art, Eye, Men

  "Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci". Book by Paul Valery, 1895.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In dealing with Mr. Nixon, it is not easy to be unfair. He invites and justifies all available criticism.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Easy, Unfair, Justify

  "Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went". Book by John Kenneth Galbraith. Chapter XX, "Where It Went," p. 285, 1975.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every dictatorship has ultimately strangled in the web of repression it wove for its people, making mistakes that could not be corrected because criticism was prohibited.

  Robert Kennedy

  Mistake, People, Dictatorship

  Robert F. Kennedy (1998). “Make Gentle the Life of the World: The Vision of Robert F. Kennedy”, Harcourt

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Art, Clever, Mean

  "Letters to a Young Poet". Book by Rainer Maria Rilke. Letter Three (April 23, 1903), 1929.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Art too is just a way of living, and however one lives, one can, without knowing, prepare for it; in everything real one is closer to it, more its neighbor, than in the unreal half-artistic professions, which, while they pretend to be close to art, in practice deny and attack the existence of all art - as, for example, all of journalism does and almost all criticism and three quarters of what is called (and wants to be called) literature.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Art, Real, Practice

  Rainer Maria Rilke (2001). “Letters to a Young Poet”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Thoughtful, Government, Important

  Carter, Jimmy (1981). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Jimmy Carter, 1980-1981”, p.2890, Best Books on

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Literary criticism has about it neither rigour nor proof. Where it is honest, it is passionate, private experience seeking to persuade.

  George Steiner

  Passionate, Honest, Proof

  George Steiner (1987). “George Steiner: A Reader”, p.165, Oxford University Press on Demand

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men's genius.

  George Steiner

  Writing, Men, Hands

  George Steiner (2010). “Language and Silence”, p.3, Faber & Faber

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The practice of "reviewing"... in general has nothing in common with the art of criticism.

  Henry James

  Art, Practice, Common

  Henry James, William Veeder, Susan M. Griffin (1986). “The Art of Criticism: Henry James on the Theory and the Practice of Fiction”, p.232, University of Chicago Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The effect, if not the prime office, of criticism is to make our absorption and our enjoyment of the things that feed the mind as aware of itself as possible, since that awareness quickens the mental demand, which thus in turn wanders further and further for pasture. This action on the part of the mind practically amounts to a reaching out for the reasons of its interest, as only by its ascertaining them can the interest grow more various. This is the very education of our imaginative life.

  Henry James

  Office, Mind, Demand

  Henry James (1969). “Notes on Novelists: With Some Other Notes”, p.315, Biblo & Tannen Publishers

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I hold with the old-fashioned criticism that Browning is not really a poet, that he has all the gifts but the one needful and the pearls without the string; rather one should say raw nuggets and rough diamonds.

  Gerard Manley Hopkins

  Nuggets, Pearls, Poet

  Gerard Manley Hopkins (1991). “Selected Letters”, Oxford University Press, USA

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Candour is the brightest gem of criticism.

  Isaac D'Israeli

  Candour, Gems

  "Curiosities of Literature". Book by Isaac D'Israeli, 1791 - 1834.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Criticism will need an injection of humility that is, a recognition of its role as ancillary to the arts, needed only occasionally in a temporary capacity. Since the critic exists only for introducing and explaining, he must be readily intelligible; he has no special vocabulary: criticism is in no way a science or a system.

  Jacques Barzun

  Art, Humility, Vocabulary

  Jacques Barzun (1989). “The Culture We Deserve”, p.20, Wesleyan University Press

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am more the inspirational type of speller. I work on hunches rather than mere facts, and the result is sometimes open to criticism by purists.

  Robert Benchley

  Facts, Sometimes, Results

  Robert Benchley (2016). “My Ten Years in a Quandary and How They Grew”, p.178, Pickle Partners Publishing

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Our universities should produce good criticism; they do not or, at best, they do so only as federal prisons produce counterfeit money: a few hardened prisoners are more or less surreptitiously continuing their real vocations.

  Randall Jarrell

  Real, Prison, Should

  "Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964". Book by Randall Jarrell, "Contemporary Poetry Criticism" (p. 62), 1980.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The usual criticism of a novel about an artist is that, no matter how real he is as a man, he is not real to us as an artist, since we have to take on trust the works of art he produces.

  Randall Jarrell

  Art, Real, Men

  "The Third Book of Criticism". Book by Randall Jarrell,"An Unread Book", p. 20, 1969.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the hyper-sensitised reality of the region in which any criticism of Israel is swiftly and often unfairly branded as anti-Semitic, it can become counterproductive to inflame rather than explain and this means to hear the narratives of both sides, to articulate the suffering on both sides, not just the Palestinians.

  Jane Fonda

  Mean, Reality, Israel

  "Jane Fonda apologises over Toronto petition" by Ben Child, www.theguardian.com. September 15, 2009.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• For me, there is only one means of ensuring that I do not lose respect for myself: constant criticism.

  Christian Morgenstern

  Mean, Constant, Loses

  10 Copy quote

• The eyes of critics, whether in commending or carping, are both on one side, like a turbot's.

  Walter Savage Landor

  Eye, Sides, Critics

  Walter Savage Landor (1856). “Selections from the Writings of Walter Savage Landor”, p.121

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Isolation in creative work is an onerous thing. Better to have negative criticism than nothing at all.

  Anton Chekhov

  Creative, Negative, Isolation

  Anton Chekhov's letter to his brother A.P. Chekhov, May 10, 1886.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source