Jean de la Bruyere Quotes

Women excel more in literary judgment than in literary production,--they are better critics than authors.

There's an enormous difference between being a critic and a reviewer. The reviewer reacts to the experience of that book.

I still found literary criticism to be a suspect activity

[Ulysses is] the work of a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples.

Literary critics, like a herd of cows or a school of fish, always face in the same direction, obeying that love for unity that every critic requires.

The curious hocus-pocus of criticism I can't take seriously. It consists in squirreling up some odd phrases and then waiting for a book to come running by.

The critic's hankering to be law-giver rather than servant of literature is irrepressible.

A literary critic is someone who can't write, but who loves to show he would have been a wonderful writer if only he could!

I don't know what to say about literary critics. I think it's probably best to say nothing.

Sometimes I read reviews, and without exception I will read critical essays that are sent to me. The critical essays are interesting on their own terms.

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.

I look upon book reviews as an infantile disease which new-born books are subject to.

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.

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.

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

To literary critics a book is assumed to be guilty until it proves itself innocent.

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.

There are many critics whose work I greatly admire. Even though I diverge from T.J. Reed in several important ways, I've learned greatly from his writings on Mann.

A critic is a lug-worm in the liver of literature.

I don't even know what a serious literary critic is.

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.

I do not mean to object to a thorough knowledge of the famous works we read. I object only to the interminable comments and bewildering criticisms that teach but one thing: there are as many opinions as there are men.

Some judge of authors' names, not works, and then Nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men.