A Quote by Stephen Spender

There is a certain justice in criticism. The critic is like a midwife - a tyrannical midwife.

Stephen Spender

Quote Topics

Certain Critic Criticism Justice Like Midwife Tyrannical

Quote Author

Stephen Spender
English - Novelist
February 28, 1909 - July 16, 1995

Socrates called himself a midwife of ideas. A great book is often such a midwife, delivering to full existence what has been coiled like an embryo in the dark, silent depths of the brain.

Clifton Fadiman

Whoever heard of a midwife as a literary heroine? Yet midwifery is the very stuff of drama. Every child is conceived either in love or lust, is born in pain, followed by joy or sometimes remorse. A midwife is in the thick of it, she sees it all.

Jennifer Worth

Working with the dying is like being a midwife for this great rite of passage of death. Just as a midwife helps a being take their first breath, you help a being take their last breath.

Ram Dass

A critic is not a creative artist, is a commenter, a midwife of creativity, but not creative himself.

Terry Teachout

Socrates, whose mother was a midwife, used to say that his art was like the art of the midwife. She does not herself give birth to the child, but she is there to help during its delivery. Similarly, Socrates saw his task as helping people to 'give birth' to correct insight, since real understanding must come from within. . . . Everybody can grasp philosophical truths if they just use their innate reason.

Jostein Gaarder

I still deliver like a midwife

Drake

I'm obsessed with that show 'Call The Midwife'. Although I had to take a break at a certain point in my pregnancy because every episode is about having babies.