top of page
Exlpore more Criticism quotes

"He saw that science had become as great a hoax as religion, that nationalism was a farce, patriotism a fraud, education a form of leprosy, and that morals were for cannibals."

"Some poems are written great, some poems are written swell. But then there are poems that could win a prize in Hell."

"Learn to brush off criticism as easily as you brush aside hollow compliments."

"Many reviews are useless because, while purporting to condemn the book, they only reveal the reviewer's dislike of the kind to which it belongs. Let bad tragedies be censured by those who love tragedy, and bad detective stories by those who love the detective story. Then we shall learn their real faults. Otherwise we shall find epics blamed for not being novels, farces for not being high comedies, novels by James for lacking the swift action of Smollett. Who wants to hear a particular claret abused by a fanatical teetotaller, or a particular woman by a confirmed misogynist?"

"People have boldness to criticize but not to sensitize."

"Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar. They offer consolation and solidarity and uplift, competing as they do in a marketplace. But we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people could not refuse."

"To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession, to establish in fine a relation with the criticized thing and to make it one's own."
Explore more quotes by Mark Twain

"I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but I won't."

"In prayer we call ourselves 'worms of the dust' but it is only on a sort of tacit understanding that the remark shall not be taken at par."

"The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right."

"T[he rules of writing] require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others."

"A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows."
bottom of page