A Quote by James Russell Lowell

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

James Russell Lowell

Quote Topics

Attribute Critic First Good Skepticism Wise

Quote Author

James Russell Lowell
American - Poet
February 22, 1819 - August 12, 1891

If the universe is so bad...how on earth did human beings ever come to attribute it to the activity of a wise and good Creator?

C. S. Lewis

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

PERFECTION, n. An imaginary state of quality distinguished from the actual by an element known as excellence; an attribute of the critic.

Ambrose Bierce

I was the first critic ever to win a Tony - for co-authoring 'Elaine Stritch at Liberty.' Criticism is a life without risk; the critic is risking his opinion, the maker is risking his life. It's a humbling thought but important for the critic to keep it in mind - a thought he can only know if he's made something himself.

John Lahr

There are good and bad critics like good or bad artists. A good critic says why they didn't like it. A bad critic gives it away that they don't like you as a person. I quite like that as well, because it means that I've won.

Ricky Gervais

The implication was that if you had any skepticism whatsoever, you were anti-science. I think there's a difference between having skepticism about science and having skepticism about the pharmaceutical industry.

Marianne Williamson

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

Bobby Lashley

The wise man delights in water, the Good man delights in mountains. For the wise move; but the Good stay still. The wise are happy; but the good secure.

Confucius

Who shall forbid a wise skepticism, seeing that there is no practical question on which anything more than an approximate solution can be had?

Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the movies first impressions are everything. Or, to put it less drastically, in the movies there are no later impressions without a first impression, because you will have stopped watching. Sometimes a critic persuades you to give an unpromising-looking movie a chance, but the movie had better convey the impression pretty quickly that the critic might be right.

Clive James

Far best is he who is himself all-wise, and he, too, good who listens to wise words; But whoso is not wise or lays to hear another's wisdom is a useless man.