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The critic's symbol should be the tumble-bug: he deposits his egg in
somebody else's dung, otherwise he could not hatch it. I believe that the trade of critic, in literature, music, and the drama,
is the most degraded of all trades, and that it has no real value--certainly
no large value...However, let it go. It is the will of God that we must
have critics, and missionaries, and congressmen, and humorists, and we
must bear the burden. |
 AI image created by Barbara Schmidt |
| If a critic should start a religion it
would not have any object but to convert angels, and they wouldn't need
it. - Mark Twain, a Biography One mustn't criticize other people on grounds where he can't stand perpendicular
himself.
I like criticism, but it must be my way. |
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| Who write the dramatic critiques for the second-rate papers? Why, a parcel
of promoted shoemakers and apprentice apothecaries, who know just as much
about good acting as I do about good farming and no more. Who review the
books? People who never wrote one. Who do up the heavy leaders on finance?
Parties who have had the largest opportunities for knowing nothing about
it. Who criticise the Indian campaigns? Gentlemen who do not know a war-whoop
from a wigwam, and who never have had to run a foot race with a tomahawk,
or pluck arrows out of the several members of their families to build the
evening camp-fire with. Who write the temperance appeals, and clamor about
the flowing bowl? Folks who will never draw another sober breath till they
do it in the grave. - "How I Edited an Agricultural Paper" |
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