#criticism

[L]ife is a phenomenon in need of criticism, for we are, as fallen creatures, in permanent danger of worshipping false gods, of failing to understand ourselves and misinterpreting the behaviour of others, of growing unproductively anxious or desirous, and of losing ourselves to vanity and error. Surreptitiously and beguilingly, then, with humour or gravity, works of art--novels, poems, plays, paintings or films--can function as vehicles to explain our condition to us. They may act as guides to a truer, more judicious, more intelligent understanding of the world. ↗

— Alain de Botton

#art #criticism #desire #films #gravity

We are all failures- at least the best of us are. ↗

— J.M. Barrie

#learning #moving-on #self-criticism #success #success

Put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it." (Casual Chance, 1964) ↗

— Colette

#editing #self-criticism #writing #chance

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. ↗

— Winston Churchill

#state

Goya’s savage verve, his harsh, brutal genius, captivated Des Esseintes. On the other hand, the universal admiration his works had won rather put him off, and for years he had refrained from framing them, for fear that if he hung them up, the first idiot who saw them would might feel obliged to dishonour them with a few inanities and go into stereotyped ecstasies over them. ↗

— Joris-Karl Huysmans

#criticism #goya #life #art

What is vital and healthy does not necessarily survive... An art, a whole civilization, may at any time slip through men's fingers in a very few years and be gone beyond recovery. If we are alive when such a thing is happening we shall hardly notice it until too late; and it is most unlikely that we shall know its causes. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#art

Thank you for sending me a copy of your book. I'll waste no time reading it. ↗

— Moses Hadas

#books #classic-insult #irony #literary-criticism #time

Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed. ↗

— Herman Melville

#poverty #poor

If you show someone something you've written, you give them a sharpened stake, lie down in your coffin, and say, ‘When you’re ready’. ↗

— David Mitchell

#writing #criticism

The final proof of greatness lies in being able to endure criticism without resentment. ↗

— Elbert Hubbard

#being #criticism #endure #final #final proof