From ABC of Reading

"You can spot the bad critic when he starts by discussing the poet, not the poem."

And..

"Incredible as it now seems, the bad critics of Keats' time found his writing 'obscure,' which meant that they couldn't understand WHY Keats wrote."

And...

"If you wanted to know something about an automobile, would you go to a man who had made one and driven it, or to a man who had merely heard about it?"

And...

"Even if the general statement of an ignorant man is 'true,' it leaves his mouth or pen without any great validity. He doesn't KNOW what he is saying."