Eugene Delacroix Quotes

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

A critic is a necessary evil, and criticism is an evil necessity.

I don't delve too deep into reviews.

Critics tend to praise as well as crucify you.

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.

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

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

The true work of a critic is not to make his hearer believe him, but agree with him.

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

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

Critics should be looked at simply as commentators.

When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living.

I believe in criticism.

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

Critics matter to me a lot.

I hate anything that seems like something that has been done.

I do wish that reviews were less like book reports. There was an era when reviewers had something to say about a book: when they painted context and drew conclusions. Many reviews these days are little more than plot summary.

Critics matter to me.

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

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.

For critics, as they are birds of prey, have ever a natural inclination to carrion.

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

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

If you pay attention to good critics, you have to listen to the bad. So you have to ignore them all really. You can't just cherry pick the glowing ones.

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.