The test of a good critic is whether he knows when and how to believe on insufficient evidence.

Samuel Butler
Some Similar Quotes
  1. Some people insist that 'mediocre' is better than 'best.' They delight in clipping wings because they themselves can't fly. They despise brains because they have none. - Robert A. Heinlein

  2. I started this dirty quote business when I noticed that I only tend to read authors when their quotes convince me of wit and style. In a world overflowing with bad literature and corrupted product-placement critics the only weapon one has is either word of... - Martijn Benders

  3. I have spent a good many years since―too many, I think―being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting... - Stephen King

  4. Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs.", October 31, 1977] - John Osborne

  5. Critics are to authors what dogs are to lamp-posts. - Jeffrey Robinson

More Quotes By Samuel Butler
  1. Prayers are to men as dolls are to children.

  2. All animals except man know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.

  3. Embryos think with each stage of their development that they have now reached the only condition that really suits them. This, they say, must certainly be their last, inasmuch as its close will be so great a shock that nothing can survive it. Every change...

  4. [P]oetry resembles metaphysics: one does not mind one's own, but one does not like anyone else's.

  5. Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.

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