Critics Quote by John Dryden

One reason writers write is out of revenge.

— Cynthia Ozick

“A bad composition carries its own punishment—contempt and ridicule; a good one excites envy and entails upon its author a thousand mortifications; he finds…

— Matthew Gregory Lewis

The animadversions of critics are commonly such as may easily provoke the sedatest writer to some quickness of resentment and asperity of reply

— Samuel Johnson

“[I]t is the writer's duty to write fiction which promotes virtue, the good, the beautiful, and above all, the true. ... It is the…

— Edward Abbey

“He made writing look easy and critics hate that. They like evidence of a struggle, of creative agony, wringing the masterpiece out of one’s…

— Jessica Zafra

Though by whim, envy, or resentment led, they damn those authors whom they never read.

— Charles Churchill

We owe few of the rules of writing to the acuteness of critics, who have generally no other merit than that, having read the…

— Samuel Johnson

“I disliked them all immediately, sitting around acting clever and superior. They nullified each other. The worst thing for a writer is to know…

— Charles Bukowski

“And while self-love each jealous writer rules, Contending wits become the sport of fools: But still the worst with most regret commend, For each…

— Alexander Pope

“Moreover, people invariably take a greater interest in the suffering of others than in their well-being. Hence writers must constantly fight against the most…

— Minae Mizumura

Critics, at least generally, want to regard works of fiction as independent entities, whose virtues and failures must be reckoned apart from the circumstances…

— Paul Di Filippo

I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to…

— Jane Austen