A Quote by Hortense Calisher

I don't suppose there's really any critic except posterity.

Hortense Calisher

Quote Topics

Any Critic Except Posterity Really Suppose

Quote Author

Hortense Calisher
American - Writer
December 20, 1911 - January 13, 2009

Except that it’s not really 'now' that the inner critic attacks. It’s a few seconds or a minute ago. The inner critic depends upon comparison, and when we are fully aware in the present moment, when there is no past or future in our mind’s awareness, there is nothing to compare. There is only what is, as it is. The inner critic disappears.

Jan Chozen Bays

We lose everything because everything remains except us. And therefore any form of posterity may be an affront, and perhaps any memory, as well.

Javier Marías

The perfect critic is one ... that sees with the eyes of posterity.

Austin O'Malley

It is as hard to find a neutral critic as it is a neutral country in time of war. I suppose if a critic were neutral, he wouldn't trouble to write anything.

Katherine Anne Porter

Slyly, banteringly, but also overbearingly, the critic - the one who does not swallow anything whole, who waits until posterity has consecrated it before... howling - is among those who howl their admiration the way they howl their insults: don't be afraid, don't tremble - the beast doesn't have any nails or teeth, or even brain: it is stuffed.

Paul Gauguin

Music critics are, for the most part, bitter people who are intent at dragging people down for being successful at what they want to do, which is probably music. The oddity of being a critic is: You don't get a diploma, you just decide you're a critic. If someone listens to your opinion rather than their own, it's their mistake. Any critic's top 10, any year, it's something controversial or something that will make them look hipper-than-thou. The whole critic game, we've never played.

Paul Stanley

An art critic is someone who appreciates art, except for any particular piece of art.

Robert Breault

You find very few critics who approach their job with a combination of information and enthusiasm and humility that makes for a good critic. But there is nothing wrong with critics as long as people don't pay any attention to them. I mean, nobody wants to put them out of a job and a good critic is not necessarily a dead critic. It's just that people take what a critic says as a fact rather than an opinion, and you have to know whether the opinion of the critic is informed or uninformed, intelligent of stupid -- but most people don't take the trouble.

Edward Albee

Mindfulness is the primary tool in that we get a little space between ourselves and the thoughts and then we actually can be more responsive, as in: Do I want to listen to that? Do I want to ignore it? Do I want to say "no thank you". Do I want to inquire if that's really true or helpful? So we start with mindfulness and we're not engaging, because as soon as we do that, we've given the critic authority. Instead, we want to notice the critic but not give it any attention, not really give it much value.

Mark Coleman

Sir, very few people reach posterity. Who amongst us may arrive at that destination I presume not to vaticinate. Posterity is a most limited assembly. Those gentlemen who reach posterity are not much more numerous than the planets.

Benjamin Disraeli

The literary critic, or the critic of any other specific form of artistic expression, may detach himself from the world for as long as the work of art he is contemplating appears to do the same.

Clive James

Everybody wants to be a critic: a critic without the actual accolades to be a critic.

Bobby Lashley

Few can be induced to labor exclusively for posterity - Posterity has done nothing for us

Abraham Lincoln

Why should I care about posterity? What's posterity ever done for me?

Groucho Marx

Most of my professional work has been in these areas - as a historical critic, as a literary critic. I've done very little in the history of interpretation [as Elie Wiesel has]. I've been interested in it, but I have not contributed to that field, really.