There is a certain justice in criticism. The critic is like a midwife — a tyrannical midwife.
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Lecture at Brooklyn College, as quoted in The New York Times (20 November 1984)Stephen Spender
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The midwife bustled out to the four in the antechamber and announced that the Almighty (who had recently become a Protestant) had seen fit to bless milady with a son.
Brian Aldiss
My oh My,what a wretched Life.
I was born on the day that my poor mama died.
I was cut from Her belly with a stanley knife.
My daddy did a jig with the drunk midwifeNick Cave
Vietnam presumably taught us that the United States could not serve as the world’s policeman; it should also have taught us the dangers of trying to be the world’s midwife to democracy when the birth is scheduled to take place under conditions of guerrilla war.
Jeane Kirkpatrick
Opportunity marries with circumstance and is midwife to the resultant bartering of public office. The mutuality is advantage to the parties involved merely facilitates the spread of such practices. When it reaches the point of being commonplace and is pragmatically perceived as the most practical means of getting things done, it has become systemic and difficult to eradicate.
Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi
One would have thought that the notion of an impersonal critic was as patently absurd as that of an impersonal person: yet playwrights still cherish it as a sort of holy ideal. Admittedly, we all make mystiques: but this one is particularly wishful. The man who asks for an anonymous, impersonal criticism is trying to elevate criticism to the status of a science; whereas it is, I am afraid, only an art. The critic's business is to write readable English: the playwright's to write speakable English. Beyond that it is every man for himself.
Kenneth Tynan
Spender, Stephen
Spengler, Oswald
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