Books Quote by Charles Caleb Colton

The duty of criticism is neither to depreciate nor dignify by partial representations, but to hold out the light of reason, whatever it may…

— Samuel Johnson

“The critic's aim should be to interpret the work they are writing about and help readers appreciate it, by defining and analysing those qualities…

— David Cecil

A critic knows more than the author he criticizes, or just as much, or at least somewhat less.

— Henry Edward Manning

Critics should help people see for themselves; they should never try to define things, or impose their own explanations, though I admit that if...…

— Georges Braque

“Criticism is not a circumscription or a set of prohibitions. It provides fixed points of departure. It may startle a dull reader into alertness.”

— Ezra Pound

“Criticism as a form of knowledge is capable of robbing literature not only of its own implicit and explicit ideology but of its ideas…

— Toni Morrison

“Critics were rigid and hidebound, never willing to give due credit for anything that didn’t fit in with their predetermined parameters of what fiction…

— Therese Anne Fowler

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. The power of invention has been conferred by nature…

— Samuel Johnson

“The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to…

— Susan Sontag

Criticism will need an injection of humility that is, a recognition of its role as ancillary to the arts, needed only occasionally in a…

— Jacques Barzun

“To engage with criticism, is on some level, a validation of that which otherwise would go unnoticed.”

— Jordan Carl Curtis

“Before publication, and if provided by persons whose judgment you trust, yes, of course criticism helps. But after something is published, all I want…

— Truman Capote