Joseph Joubert Quotes

A critic is a gong at a railroad crossing clanging loudly and vainly as the train goes by.

But what is criticism? Criticism is purely destructive; anyone can destroy, but not everyone can build up.

Did some more sober critics come abroad? If wrong, I smil'd; if right, I kiss'd the rod.

Criticism is as often a trade as a science, requiring, as it does, more health than wit, more labour than capacity, more practice than genius.

No man can be criticised but by a greater than he. Do not, then, read the reviews.

Worship the spirit of criticism. If reduced to itself it is not an awakener of ideas or a stimulant to great things, but, without it, everything is fallible; it always has the last word.

Because I'm a former critic, I view criticism differently than most do. I can take criticism, but if you're going to eviscerate us, be specific.

We criticize a man or a book most sharply when we sketch out their ideal.

Criticism is like champagne, nothing more execrable if bad, nothing more excellent if good.

Criticism per se does not worry me. I've always solicited it as part of the design process.

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.

Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.

No degree of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it fascinating.

A good review from the critics is just another stay of execution.

The strength of criticism lies in the weakness of the thing criticized.

I don't think of myself as a critic at all. I'm a reviewer and essayist. I mainly hope to share with others my pleasure in the books and authors I write about, though sometimes I do need to cavil and point out shortcomings.

Who knows what critics are thinking? I know that you make more of a name for yourself, make more of an interesting review, if you're kind of mean-spirited.

Criticism is fine and conversation is fine, but the person who's criticizing should know what they're saying and whom they're criticizing.

I never knew a critic who made it his business to lash the faults of other writers that was not guilty of greater himself--as the hangman is generally a worse malefactor than the criminal that suffers by his hand.

Some critics are like chimney-sweepers; they put out the fire below, and frighten the swallows from their nests above; they scrape a long time in the chimney, cover themselves with soot, and bring nothing away but a bag of cinders, and then sing from the top of the house as if they had built it.

Pedants make a great rout about criticism, as if it were a science of great depth, and required much pains and knowledge--criticism however is only the result of good sense, taste and judgment--three qualities that indeed seldom are found together, and extremely seldom in a pedant, which most critics are.

You find very few critics who approach their job with a combination of information and enthusiasm and humility that makes for a good critic. But there is nothing wrong with critics as long as people don't pay any attention to them. I mean, nobody wants to put them out of a job and a good critic is not necessarily a dead critic. It's just that people take what a critic says as a fact rather than an opinion, and you have to know whether the opinion of the critic is informed or uninformed, intelligent of stupid -- but most people don't take the trouble.

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

A critic at best is a waiter at the great table of literature.

This editor is a critic. He has pulled out his carving-knife and his tomahawk and is starting after a book which he is going to have for breakfast.