Literary Criticism

(265 votes)   There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-1882, American Poet, Essayist

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(223 votes)   No man ever got very high by pulling other people down. The intelligent merchant does not knock his competitors. The sensible worker does not work those who work with him. Don't knock your friends. Don't knock your enemies. Don't knock yourself.

Lord Alfred Tennyson
1809-1892, British Poet

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(222 votes)   Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world -- in order to set up a shadow world of ''meanings.''

Susan Sontag
1933-, American Essayist

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(218 votes)   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.

Edward Dahlberg
1900-1977, American Author, Critic

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(212 votes)   We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which, in all times, with one or another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer without its scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and fall -- which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people.

Thomas Carlyle
1795-1881, Scottish Philosopher, Author

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(197 votes)   A louse in the locks of literature.

Lord Alfred Tennyson
1809-1892, British Poet

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(194 votes)   Criticism should be a casual conversation.

W. H. Auden
1907-1973, Anglo-American Poet

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(193 votes)   Culture is only true when implicitly critical, and the mind which forgets this revenges itself in the critics it breeds. Criticism is an indispensable element of culture.

Theodor W. Adorno
1903-1969, German Philosopher, Sociologist, Music Critic

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(193 votes)   Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
1792-1822, British Poet

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(188 votes)   Let me walk three weeks in the footsteps of my enemy, carry the same burden, have the same trials as he, before I say one word to criticize.

Source Unknown

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(188 votes)   There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Scott Adams
American Cartoonist, ''Dilbert''

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(187 votes)   The avocation of assessing the failures of better men can be turned into a comfortable livelihood, providing you back it up with a Ph.D.

Nelson Algren
1909-1981, American Author

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

W. Somerset Maugham
1874-1965, British Novelist, Playwright

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(185 votes)   You know lots of criticism is written by characters who are very academic and think it is a sign you are worthless if you make jokes or kid or even clown. I wouldn't kid Our Lord if he was on the cross. But I would attempt a joke with him if I ran into him chasing the money changers out of the temple.

Ernest Hemingway
1898-1961, American Writer

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(176 votes)   In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable.

Susan Sontag
1933-, American Essayist

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