Sean Lennon Quotes

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, 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.

Every literary critic believes he will outwit history and have the last word.

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

Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject; bad critical writing by the necessity of maintaining the professional standing of the critic.

I don't know anyone actually who does care what a critic says.

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

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

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

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

Criticism is like many other things, it drags along after what has already been said and doesn't get out of its rut.

For the critic, criticism is a form of natural self-expression, as poetry is to the poet. So, for a critic, criticism is a true thing. Criticism isn’t written for poets, it’s written for other readers. One hopes it is true for other readers if it’s true for oneself.

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.

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

Now, in reality, the world have paid too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them to be men of much greater profundity then they really are.

Certainly, critics are not all created equal.

For I am nothing if not critical.

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.

We read critics for the perceptions, for what they tell us that we didn't fully grasp when we saw the work. The judgments we can usually make for ourselves.

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

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

To me, there's a huge difference between criticism and reviewing. I really love reading good criticism of television and film. To me, a critic is someone who analyzes a show, describes it, talks about the people in it, puts it in historical context of other shows like it, compares it and stuff, and then talks about the intent of the show and whether it failed or didn't.

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

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

In truth it may be laid down as an almost universal rule that good poets are bad critics.