Quotes About Criticism

That's the parent's lot! We bring these delightful creatures into the world—eagerly, happily—and then before long they are spying upon and judging us, rarely favourably. Having children is our fondest wish but, in doing so, we breed our acutest critics. It is a preposterous situation—but entirely of our own making." Susan

pillory raised up on a wooden pole, so that all the

The dull people decided years and years ago, as everyone knows, that novel-writing was the lowest species of literary exertion, and that novel reading was a dangerous luxury and an utter waste of time.

That detestable product of the folly of our fore-fathers—a feather-bed.

Bacon distrusts the people, who were in his day quite without access to education; "the lowest of all flatteries is the flattery of the common people";41 and "Phocion took it right, who, being applauded by the multitude, asked, What had he done amiss?

To observe processes and construct means is science; to criticize and coordinate ends is philosophy

It is difficult to be enthusiastic about Aristotle, because it was difficult for him to be enthusiastic about anything. His motto is nil admirari - to admire or marvel at nothing.

Laws against free speech are subversive of all law; for men will not long respect laws which they may not criticize.

Imitation is criticism.

The fox condemns the trap, not himself.

Now hear a plain fact: Swedenborg has not written one new truth. Now hear another: he has written all the old falsehoods.

Remorse is a virtue in that it is a stirrer up of the emotions but it is a folly to accept it is a criticism of conduct.

I had sent [the magazine] a batch of poems which they turned down flat. I was furious. Floss [my wife] said, 'If I were the editor of that magazine *I* would turn down what *you* sent.' So *she* picked a batch and they accepted them *all*.

You'll grow devilish fat upon this paper-diet!

It always takes a man that never made much at any thing to tell you how to run your business, though. Like these college professors without a whole pair of socks to his name, telling you how to make a million in ten years, and a woman that couldn't even get a husband can always tell you how to raise a family.

Only fools imply compliments. The wise man comes right out with it, point-blank. Imply criticism--unless the criticized isn't within earshot.

A hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe. (on Mark Twain)

The social doctors enjoy the satisfaction of feeling themselves to be more moral or more enlightened than their fellow-men. They

he abhorred these self-righteous, self-appointed arbiters of morality. He called them "the Anvil Chorus," pointing out that every new development in history had drawn the fear and suspicion of people like them.

But when other people criticise our own more exalted soul-flights by calling them "nothing but" expressions of our organic disposition, we feel outraged and hurt, for we know that, whatever be our organism's peculiarities, our mental states have their substantive value as revelations of the living truth; and we wish that all this medical materialism could be made to hold its tongue.

As well as being a fascist, he's just not very clever

There were those Hosts who thought something better could have been said and better thoughts therefore thought, had I only been made to do other things than I had. That I could have been a better simile for those in need of one to speak precisely; to speak about those somethings other than me that I was—they would have asserted— like. But those critics of course couldn't say what those thoughts would have been, because they could not have them.

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Joseph Conrad was a thoroughgoing racist. That this simple truth is glossed over in criticisms of his work is due to the fact that white racism against Africa is such a normal way of thinking that its manifestations go completely unremarked.