Art Quote by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

We properly judge a critic's virtue not by his freedom from error but by the nature of the mistakes he does make, for he…

— Lionel Trilling

Reading is a majority skill but a minority art. Yet nothing can replace the exact, complicated, subtle communion between absent author and entranced, present…

— Julian Barnes

I realized early in my career that precisely what one reader doesn't like is what another reader loves. Collectively, any writer's audience presents a…

— Karen Marie Moning

“I am more optimistic, both about reading and about books. There will always be non-readers, bad readers, lazy readers – there always were. Reading…

— Julian Barnes

A good reader is nearly as rare as a good writer. People bring their prejudices, whether friendly or adverse. They are lamp and spectacles,…

— Robert Aris Willmott

Readers may be divided into four classes: 1) Sponges, who absorb all that they read and return it in nearly the same state, only…

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In any period it is upon a very small minority that the discerning appreciation of art and literature depends ... They are still a…

— F. R. Leavis

When what you read elevates your mind and fills you with noble aspirations, look for no other rule by which to judge a book;…

— Jean de la Bruyere

“One evening at a remote provincial college through which I happened to be jogging on a protracted lecture tour, I suggested a little quiz—-ten…

— Vladimir Nabokov

A piece of art - this goes for a painting or a sculpture or a book or whatever - really shouldn't have to do…

— Max Kellerman

As I see it, my job as a writer isn't to judge, but to take a reader as far inside as I can and…

— Adam Haslett

Critics are biased, and so are readers. (Indeed, a critic is a bundle of biases held loosely together by a sense of taste.) But…

— Whitney Balliett