Mark Twain Quotes About Criticism

• If you have no will to change it, you have no right to criticize it.

  Mark Twain

  Criticism, Criticize, Ifs

• I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.

  Mark Twain

  Hate, Book, Writing

• The public is the only critic whose judgment is worth anything at all.

  Mark Twain

  Writing, Editors, Criticism

  "Life as I Find it".

• He gossips habitually; he lacks the common wisdom to keep still that deadly enemy of man, his own tongue.

  Mark Twain

  Men, Envy, Gossip

  Mark Twain, Arthur Grove Day (1975). “Mark Twain's Letters from Hawaii”, p.171, University of Hawaii Press

• One mustn't criticize other people on grounds where he can't stand perpendicular himself

  Mark Twain

  People, Criticism, Criticize

  Mark Twain (2014). “Mark Twain on Common Sense: Timeless Advice and Words of Wisdom from America's Most-Revered Humorist”, p.31, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

• Pity is for the living, envy is for the dead.

  Mark Twain

  Jealousy, Envy, Gossip

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.75, Courier Corporation

• You must not pay a person a compliment, and then straightway follow it with a criticism.

  Mark Twain

  Criticism, Pay, Compliment

  Mark Twain (1972). “Everyone's Mark Twain”

• It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden. Meantime, I seem to have been drifting into criticism myself. But that is nothing. At the worst, criticism is nothing more than a crime, and I am not unused to that.

  Mark Twain

  Criticism, Bears, Crime

  Mark Twain, Harriet Elinor Smith (2012). “Autobiography of Mark Twain: Reader's Edition”, p.201, Univ of California Press

• I like criticism, but it must be my way.

  Mark Twain

  Criticism, Way, My Way

  Mark Twain (2012). “My Autobiography: "Chapters" from the North American Review”, p.2, Courier Corporation

You May Also Like:

Charles Dickens

Ernest Hemingway

Oscar Wilde

Edgar Allan Poe

Jack London

Hal Holbrook

William Faulkner