A wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic.

If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water's edge''

Do what you feel in your heart to be right. You'll be criticized anyway.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Criticism of others is futile and if you indulge in it often you should be warned that it can be fatal to your career.

Prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash but constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feeling whatever.

Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.

If you believe in what you are doing, then let nothing hold you up in your work. Much of the best work of the world has been done against seeming impossibilities. The thing is to get the work done.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.

God knows people who are paid to have attitudes toward things, professional critics, make me sick; camp following eunuchs of literature. They won't even whore. They're all virtuous and sterile. And how well meaning and high minded. But they're all camp followers.