Silence is the severest criticism.—Charles Buxton.
All the other powers of literature are coy and haughty, they must be long courted, and at last are not always gained; but criticism is a goddess easy of access and forward of advance, she will meet the slow and encourage the timorous. The want of meaning she supplies with words, and the want of spirit she recompenses with malignity.—Johnson.
It is a barren kind of criticism which tells you what a thing is not.—Rufus Griswold.
The legitimate aim of criticism is to direct attention to the excellent. The bad will dig its own grave, and the imperfect may be safely left to that final neglect from which no amount of present undeserved popularity can rescue it.—Bovée.
There are some critics who change everything that comes under their hands to gold, but to this privilege of Midas they join sometimes his ears!—J. Petit Senn.
Cruelty.—Cruelty, the sign of currish kind.—Spenser.
One of the ill effects of cruelty is that it makes the by-standers cruel. How hard the English people grew in the time of Henry VIII. and Bloody Mary.—Charles Buxton.
Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn.—Burns.
Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity.—George Eliot.
Cultivation.—Cultivation is the economy of force.—Liebig.