Critics Quote by Margaret Fuller

“Is not a critic," asks Professor Stoll, "... a judge, who does not explore his own consciousness, but determines the author's meaning or intention,…

— W.K. Wimsatt

Every good poet includes a critic, but the reverse is not true.

— William Shenstone

You do not become a critic until it has been completely established to your own satisfaction that you cannot be a poet.

— Theophile Gautier

The great critic … must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.

— W. Somerset Maugham

For the critic, the author does not exist; only a certain number of writings exist.

— Italo Calvino

I have never believed that the critic is the rival of the poet, but I do believe that criticism is a genre of literature…

— Harold Bloom

A literary critic is someone who can't write, but who loves to show he would have been a wonderful writer if only he could!

— Brian Lumley

In a writer there must always be two people - the writer and the critic.

— Leo Tolstoy

“[The poet] is no arguer . . . he is judgment. He judges not as the judge judges but as the sun falling around a helpless thing.”

— Walt Whitman

The critic is the duenna in the passionate affair between playwrights, actors and audiences - a figure dreaded, and occasionally comic, but never welcome,…

— Robertson Davies

“No man was ever yet a great poet, without at the same time being a profound philosopher.”

— Anonymous

A critic is someone who meddles with something that is none of his business.

— Paul Gauguin