|
CRITICs quotes
He, whose first emotion on the view of an excellent production is to undervalue it, will never have one of his own to show.
There is scarcely a good critic of books born in our age, and yet every fool thinks himself justified in criticising persons.
To be a mere verbal critic is what no man of genius would be if he could; but to be a critic of true taste and feeling, is what no man without genius could be if he would.
The critical faculty has its value in correcting errors, reforming abuses, and demolishing superstitions.—But the constructive faculty is much nobler in itself, and immeasurably more valuable in its results, for the obvious reason that it is a much nobler and better thing to build up than to pull down.—It requires skill and labor to erect a building, but any idle tramp can burn it down.—Only God can form and paint a flower, but any foolish child can pull it to pieces.
The severest critics are always those who have either never attempted or who have failed in original composition.
Critics are a kind of freebooters in the republic of letters, who, like deer, goats, and diverse other graminivorous animals, gain subsistence by gorging upon buds and leaves of the young shrubs of the forest, thereby robbing them of their verdure and retarding their progress to maturity.
It behooves the minor critic, who hunts for blemishes, to be a little distrustful of his own sagacity.
The eyes of critics, whether in commending or carping, are both on one side, like those of a turbot.
Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews, to challenge every new author.
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 out from the top of the house, as if they had built it.
There are some critics who change everything that comes under their hands to gold; but to this privilege of Midas they join sometimes his ears.
Critics must excuse me if I compare them to certain animals called asses, who, by gnawing vines, originally taught the great advantage of pruning them.
Of all mortals a critic is the silliest; for, inuring himself to examine all things, whether they are of consequence or not, he never looks upon anything but with a design of passing sentence upon it; by which means he is never a companion, but always a censer.
|
