One of the first and most important things for a critic to learn is how to sleep undetected in the theater.

Half of the secular unrest and dismal, profane sadness of modern society comes from the vain ideas that every man is bound to be a critic for life.

The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most part, they are manifestations of his debate with himself as to what he should do next...

If I make a move, like raise my eyebrows, some critic says I’m doing Nicholson. What am I supposed to do, cut off my eyebrows?

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

I’m my own worst critic. If I had a 20-point game, I felt I could have had 30 or 40. I just did not play at the level that I expected.

Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.

One ought to examine himself for a very long time before thinking of condemning others.

There are two modes of criticism. One which crushes to earth without mercy all the humble buds of Phantasy, all the plants that, though green and fruitful, are also a prey to insects or have...

My son is a harsh critic,

The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.

It is very perplexing how an intrepid frontier people, who fought a wilderness, floods, tornadoes, and the Rockies, cower before criticism, which is regarded as a malignant tumor in the imagination.

My son’s my worst critic.

Hardly a book of human worth, be it heaven’s own secret, is honestly placed before the reader; it is either shunned, given a Periclean funeral oration in a hundred and fifty words, or interred in...

The person of analytic or critical intellect finds something ridiculous in everything. The person of synthetic or constructive intellect, in almost nothing.

Recognize the cunning man not by the corpses he pays homage to but by the living writers he conspires against with the most shameful weapon, Silence, or the briefest review.

Strike the dog dead, it’s but a critic!

The critic should describe, and not prescribe.

Critics are already made.

In criticism I will be bold, and as sternly, absolutely just with friend and foe. From this purpose nothing shall turn me.

A man must serve his time to every trade save censure — critics all are ready made.

Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves.