44 Critics' Noteworthy Quotes

In the realm of art, literature, cinema, and beyond, critics help guide us through the complex landscapes of creative expression, offering insights that can deepen our understanding and appreciation. Through their discerning eyes and eloquent language, critics illuminate nuances we might otherwise overlook, connecting us to the splendor and meaning embedded in various works. In this blog post, we delve into a carefully curated selection of the top 44 quotes from notable critics. Each quote reflects a unique perspective, capturing the essence of what makes certain pieces impactful, controversial, or revolutionary. Whether you're an avid consumer of critique or newly exploring this facet of cultural commentary, these noteworthy reflections promise to enrich your engagement with the arts. Join us as we explore these insightful and, at times, provocative observations that continue to resonate across time.

1. “How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.” - Benjamin Disraeli

2. “Critics are to authors what dogs are to lamp-posts.” - Jeffrey Robinson

3. “As for literary criticism in general: I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel or a play or a poem is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or a banana split.” - Kurt Vonnegut

4. “A man inherited a field in which was an accumulation of old stone, part of an older hall. Of the old stone some had already been used in building the house in which he actually lived, not far from the old house of his fathers. Of the rest he took some and built a tower. But his friends coming perceived at once (without troubling to climb the steps) that these stones had formerly belonged to a more ancient building. So they pushed the tower over, with no little labour, and in order to look for hidden carvings and inscriptions, or to discover whence the man's distant forefathers had obtained their building material. Some suspecting a deposit of coal under the soil began to dig for it, and forgot even the stones. They all said: 'This tower is most interesting.' But they also said (after pushing it over): 'What a muddle it is in!' And even the man's own descendants, who might have been expected to consider what he had been about, were heard to murmur: 'He is such an odd fellow! Imagine using these old stones just to build a nonsensical tower! Why did not he restore the old house? he had no sense of proportion.' But from the top of that tower the man had been able to look out upon the sea.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

5. “In criticism, I will be bold, and as sternly, absolutely just with friend and foe. From this purpose nothing shall turn me.” - Edgar Allan Poe

6. “Being a critic is a terrific method for killing your love of art” - David Toop

7. “Authors are far closer to the truths enfolded in mystery than ordinary people, because of that very audacity of imagination which irritates their plodding critics. As only those who dare to make mistakes succeed greatly, only those who shake free the wings of their imagination brush, once in a way, the secrets of the great pale world. If such writers go wrong, it is not for the mere brains to tell them so” - Gertrude Atherton

8. “Some people insist that 'mediocre' is better than 'best.' They delight in clipping wings because they themselves can't fly. They despise brains because they have none.” - Robert A. Heinlein

9. “When you criticize someone with followers, the followers recognize that, if you are correct, they have been sucked in. If they had been sucked in, then they must not be too bright, or at least they were not well enough informed to form a critical judgment which would have led them to identify their leader as someone not worth following. So, a criticism of the leader produces a particular response in the followers. They feel that there has been an attack on them personally. The critic is saying, loud and clear, that anyone who has followed this particular leader is not a good judge of character, intellect, or facts. They are quite correct. This is exactly what the critic is saying.” - Gary North

10. “Has anybody ever seen a drama critic in the daytime? Of course not. They come out after dark, up to no good.” - P.G. Wodehouse

11. “Some people have been unkind. If I say I want to grow as an actress, they look at my figure. If I say I want to develop, to learn my craft, they laugh. Somehow they don't expect me to be serious about my work.” - Marilyn Monroe

12. “Actions lie louder than words.” - Carolyn Wells

13. “Anyone who finds himself incapable of grasping the complexities of a work hides his withdrawal behind the most superficial pretext because he has not gotten past the surface.” - Julio Cortazar

14. “The uncreative will always waste their energies on the impossible. Be unable to recognize the boundaries, how much of the spiritual the objects can bear and assume.” - Carl Einstein

15. “Corporate irony not only ridicules the thing it is selling but the very act of selling it. In the process it disarms critics by making anyone who goes against the flow of commerce seem clueless.” - David Denby

16. “At that shameful stage in the development of our criticism, literary abuse would overstep all limits of decorum; literature itself was a totally extraneous matter in critical articles: they were pure invective, a vulgar battle of vulgar jokes, double-entendres, the most vicious calumnies and offensive constructions. It goes without saying, that in this inglorious battle, the only winners were those who had nothing to lose as far as their good name was concerned. My friends and I were totally deluded. We imagined ourselves engaged in the subtle philosophical disputes of the portico or the academy, or at least the drawing room. In actual fact we were slumming it.” - Vladimir Odoevsky

17. “Not a moment passes these days without fresh rushes of academic lemmings off the cliffs they proclaim the political responsibilities of the critic, but eventually all this moralizing will subside.” - Harold Bloom

18. “I'd like to emphasize that when a reader finishes a great novel, he will immediately begin looking for another. If someone loves your book, it increases the chance that he or she will look at mine. So there is no competition between writers. Another writer's success helps build a larger readership for all of us.” - David Farland

19. “It is a thing of no great difficulty to raise objections against another man's oration, it is a very easy matter; but to produce a better in it's place is a work extremely troublesome.” - Plutarch

20. “Anybody will do for you, but not for me. I must have somebody.” - Abraham Lincoln

21. “Critics are our friends, they show us our faults.” - Benjamin Franklin

22. “I have spent a good many years since―too many, I think―being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all.” - Stephen King

23. “Sharks are workers like the critics remoras.” - Miguel Ángel Sáez Gutiérrez «Marino»

24. “I've been all over the world and I've never seen a statue of a critic.” - Leonard Bernstein

25. “[The critic] serves up his erudition in strong doses; he pours out all the knowledge he got up the day before in some library or other, and treats in heathenish fashion people at whose feet he ought to sit, and the most ignorant of whom could give points to much wiser men than he.Authors bear this sort of thing with a magnanimity and a patience that are really incomprehensible. For, after all, who are those critics, who with their trenchant tone, their dicta, might be supposed sons of the gods? They are simply fellows who were at college with us, and who have turned their studies to less account, since they have not produced anything, and can do no more than soil and spoil the works of others, like true stymphalid vampires.” - Théophile Gautier

26. “The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.” - Oscar Wilde

27. “If you love my work, you are a good critic. If you do not love my work, you are a 'not good' critic.” - Roman Payne

28. “Tis a strange calling!’ muttered Hawkeye, with an inward laugh, ‘to go through life, like a catbird, mocking all the ups and downs that may happen to come out of other men’s throats.” - James Fenimore Cooper

29. “Hate the critics? I have nothing but compassion for them. How can one hate the crippled, the mentally deficient, and the dead?” - Ronald Harwood

30. “Before cruelly vilifying them from a great height, the mudslingers at newspapers and journals should bear in mind that all artistic endeavors were by and large a mixture of effort and imagination, the embodiment of a solitary endeavor, of a sometimes long-nurtured dream, when they were not a desperate bid to give life meaning.” - Félix J. Palma

31. “نحن لا يمكن أن نجبر فناناً على أن يعمل بخلاف ما تمليه عليه طبيعته وإلا كنا نجبره على التصنع والتكلف، وهذا شر لا يمكن أن يؤذي الأدب والفن، والمسألة في غاية البساطة مع ذلك، فإذا كنا نتيح للفنان حريته كاملة، فنحن أيضاً أحرار في تقييمنا للأعمال الفنية، فلا نمنح تقديرنا إلا لمن يقدم لنا العمل الفني الكامل، وهو العمل الفني الرفيع فنياً النافع إنسانياً واجتماعياً” - توفيق الحكيم

32. “Hell, I suppose if you stick around long enough they have to say something nice about you.” - Ava Gardner

33. “Readers, not critics, are the people who determine a book's eventual fate.” - Edward Abbey

34. “Ultimately one has to pity these poor souls who know every secret about writing, directing, designing, producing, and acting but are stuck in those miserable day jobs writing reviews. Will somebody help them, please?” - David Ives

35. “I have learned to read the papers calmly and not to hate the fools I read about.” - Edmund Wilson

36. “Critasism is just a way of saying i'm jelous of your talents” - Rayvon L. Browne

37. “Genius feels like an over extended Helium balloon about to burst, and everyone criticizes you for not having a conventional way of coping with it.” - Solange nicole

38. “Anaemia is an illness primarily affecting characters in novels.” - Marchel Reich-Ranicki

39. “[A] writer’s most powerful weapon, his true strength, was his intuition, and regardless of whether he had any talent, if the critics combined to discredit an author’s nose for things, he would be reduced to a fearful creature who took a mistakenly guarded, absurdly cautious approach to his work, which would end up stifling his latent genius.” - Félix J. Palma

40. “Picture this scene. A critic arrives at the gates of heaven. 'And what did you do?' asks Saint Peter. 'Well', says the dead soul. 'I criticised things'. 'I beg your pardon?' 'You know, other people wrote things, performed things, painted things and I said stuff like, "thin and unconvincing", "turgid and uninspired", "competent and serviceable,"...you know'.” - Stephen Fry

41. “Just as no monkey is as good-looking as the ugliest of humans, no academic is worthier than the worst of the creators” - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

42. “The problem of knowledge is that there are many more books on birds written by ornithologists than books on birds written by birds and books on ornithologists written by birds” - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

43. “The imagination of the genius vastly surpasses his intellect; the intellect of the academic vastly surpasses his imagination” - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

44. “Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race.” - Percy Bysshe Shelley