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Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins.
-American Indian Proverb
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Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.
-Chinese Proverb
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Do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend's forehead.
-Chinese Proverb
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Fix the problem, not the blame.
-Japanese Proverb
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There is so much good in the worst of us,
And so much bad in the best of us,
That it ill behooves any of us,
To say anything about the rest of us.
-Anon.
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All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism.
-Anon., "North DeKalb Kiwanis Club Beacon"
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Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.
-Proverb
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Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.
-Joseph Addison
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Culture is only true when implicitly critical, and the mind which forgets this revenges itself in the critics it breeds. Criticism is an indispensable element of culture.
-Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno
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Most of us are umpires at heart; we like to call balls and strikes on somebody else.
-Leo Aikman
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The avocation of assessing the failures of better men can be turned into a comfortable livelihood, providing you back it up with a Ph.D.
-Nelson Algren
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I demand that my books be judged with utmost severity, by knowledgeable people who know the rules of grammar and of logic, and who will seek beneath the footsteps of my commas the lice of my thought in the head of my style.
-Louis Aragon
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The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most part, they are manifestations of his debate with himself as to what he should do next and what he should avoid.
-W. H. Auden
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Criticism should be a casual conversation.
-W. H. Auden
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To be just, that is to say, to justify its existence, criticism should be partial, passionate and political, that is to say, written from an exclusive point of view, but a point of view that opens up the widest horizons.
-Charles Baudelaire
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It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.
-Charles Baudelaire
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A negative judgment gives you more satisfaction than praise, provided it smacks of jealousy.
-Jean Baudrillard
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We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.
-Walter Benjamin
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The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion.
-Walter Benjamin
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Post-modernism has cut off the present from all futures. The daily media add to this by cutting off the past. Which means that critical opinion is often orphaned in the present.
-John Berger
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Be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath.
-Bible
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The covers of this book are too far apart.
-Ambrose Bierce
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Satire is often the reflection of a kind of moral nausea.
-Crand Briton
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Let the refining and improving of your own life keep you so busy that you have little time to criticize others.
-H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
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Books about Criticism
