“Read as little as possible of literary criticism - such things are either partisan opinions, which have become petrified and meaningless, hardened and empty of life, or else they are just clever word-games, in which one view wins today, and tomorrow the opposite view. Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism.”

Letter Three (23 April 1903)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

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Rainer Maria Rilke 176
Austrian poet and writer 1875–1926

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“Either criticism is no good at all (a very defensible position) or else criticism means saying about an author the very things that would have made him jump out of his boots.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens Chapter VI "Old Curiosity Shop" (1911)

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