Blight Quote by Thomas Love Peacock

The critic does his utmost to blight genius in his infancy.

— Thomas Love Peacock

“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

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

“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

“[The critic] serves up his erudition in strong doses; he pours out all the knowledge he got up the day before in some library…

— Théophile Gautier

Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than…

— Jean de la Bruyere

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps…

— Samuel Johnson

The novelist must be his own most harsh critic and also his own most loving admirer and about both he must say nothing.

— Angus Wilson

Criticism is now become mere hangman's work, and meddles only with the faults of authors ; nay, the critic is disgusted less with their…

— John Dryden

Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on…

— John Keats

A critic is never too severe when he only detects the faults of an author. But he is worse than too severe when, in…

— Walter Savage Landor

“When the critic has said everything in his power about a literary text, he has still said nothing; for the very existence of literature…

— Todorov Tzvetan