#criticism

Criticism is an act of love. We can never learn those people we love, but we can learn about them in such ways as to perceive more clearly that unfathomable, mysterious core that is the source of their beauty. ↗

— Richard L. McGuire

#love #beauty

You do not have to do anything to defend yourself in life; just BE beautiful, and life will defend you. ↗

— Bryant McGill

#criticism #life-coaching #beauty

Recognising such dimensions implicit to the reading experience can distract from the immediacy of our response; it can substitute literary archaeology for novelistic reality. That is one pole. But the other extreme is equally limiting. By failing to realise the issues involved in communicating with fictional modes that are different to our own, in effect we do not read in the fullest sense. Between intellectual pedantry and cultivated ignorance I would pose a third approach to reading—that of the informed imagination. After occupying this position true evaluation can begin. ↗

— Ian Gregor

#communication

Pearl introduces an original story, in a form which was to become one of the most frequent in mediaeval literature, the dream-vision. Authors like Chaucer and Langland use this form, in which the narrator describes another world - usually a heavenly paradise - which is compared with the earthly human world. In Pearl, the narrator sees his daughter who died in infancy, 'the ground of all my bliss'. She now has a kind of perfect knowledge, which her father can never comprehend. The whole poem underlines the divide between human comprehension and perfection; these lines show the gap between possible perfection and fallen humanity which, thematically, anticipate many literary examinations of man's fall, the most well known being Milton's late Renaissance epic, Paradise Lost. ↗

— Ronald Carter

#dreams

At first I was glad for the help. My freshmen English class, "Mythology and Archetypal Experience," confounded me. I didn't understand why we couldn't just read books without forcing contorted interpretations on then ↗

— Alison Bechdel

#literary-criticism #university #experience

The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them. ↗

— Joseph Heller

#freedom #freedom-of-thought #independence #freedom

An acquaintance merely enjoys your company, a fair-weather companion flatters when all is well, a true friend has your best interests at heart and the pluck to tell you what you need to hear. ↗

— E.A. Bucchianeri

#advice #caring #caring-for-others #companion #constructive-criticism

A creative life cannot be sustained by approval any more than it can be destroyed by criticism. ↗

— Will Self

#inspirational #inspirational

There are those who see film and take it seriously as an artistic medium, and others who go to have a good time, to simply be entertained. I have to be careful , because it sounds like I am condemning, or criticizing what people are doing. I have nothing against that, in the same way that some people like rock music or to go dancing, and other people like to go to a Beethoven concert. It's just that I'm more interested in the one than the other. ↗

— Michael Haneke

#music

The trade of critic, in literature, music, and the drama, is the most degraded of all trades. ↗

— Mark Twain

#critics #drama #literature #writing #music