Jean de la Bruyere Quotes

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

The use of criticism, in periodical writing, is to sift, not to stamp a work.

Let us consider the critic, therefore, as a discoverer of discoveries.

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

I don't read the critics.

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.

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. The power of invention has been conferred by nature upon few, and the labour of learning those sciences which may, by mere labour, be obtained, is too great to be willingly endured; but every man can exert some judgment as he has upon the works of others; and he whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of critic.

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

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

Criticism, though dignified from the earliest ages by the labours of men eminent for knowledge and sagacity, has not yet attained the certainty and stability of science.

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.

Ours is an age of criticism, to which everything must be subjected.

Criticism even should not be without its charms. When quite devoid of all amenities, it is no longer literary.

A great deal of contemporary criticism reads to me like a man saying, 'Of course I do not like green cheese. I am very fond of brown sherry.

The function of criticism should not be confused with the function of reform.

A wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic.

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

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

The critic should describe, and not prescribe.

There are hardly five critics in America; and several of them are asleep.

Critics have a job to do. I understand that. It's not just to criticize. They're trying to interpret art for the public.

A critic is a legless man who teaches running.

There's no end to the inventiveness of critics, I tell you. Because they can't write fiction, they put their impulse into their analysis of work.

Those who do not read criticism will rarely merit to be criticised.

Certainly, critics are not all created equal.