Motivational Quotes

Criticism

Most of us are umpires at heart; we like to call balls and strikes on somebody else.

- Aikman, Leo

Best Quotes about Criticism

A friend is a lot of things, but a critic isn't.

Williams, Bern

Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject; bad critical writing by the necessity of maintaining the professional standing of the critic.

Chandler, Raymond

A man generally has the good or ill qualities he attributes to mankind.

Shenstone, William

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.

Baudelaire, Charles

For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.

If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water's edge

Hill, Napoleon

In reality, the world have paid too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them men of much greater profundity than they really are.

Fielding, Henry

Every writer is necessarily a critic -- that is, each sentence is a skeleton accompanied by enormous activity of rejection; and each selection is governed by general principles concerning truth, force, beauty, and so on. The critic that is in every fabulist is like the iceberg -- nine-tenths of him is under water.

Wilder, Thornton

10.

I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so.

Smith, Sydney

11.

In my conscience I believe the baggage loves me, for she never speaks well of me herself, nor suffers any body else to rail at me.

Congreve, William

12.

Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.

Steinbeck, John

13.

The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure.

Wilde, Oscar

14.

Recognize the cunning man not by the corpses he pays homage to but by the living writers he conspires against with the most shameful weapon, Silence, or the briefest review.

Dahlberg, Edward

15.

The literary critic, or the critic of any other specific form of artistic expression, may detach himself from the world for as long as the work of art he is contemplating appears to do the same.

James, Clive

16.

It is critical vision alone which can mitigate the unimpeded operation of the automatic.

Mcluhan, Marshall

17.

Temperament is the primary requisite for the critic -- a temperament exquisitely susceptible to beauty, and to the various impressions that beauty gives us.

Wilde, Oscar

18.

Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews, to challenge every new author.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

19.

Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.

Fox, Dr. Emmit

20.

Writing prejudicial, off-putting reviews is a precise exercise in applied black magic. The reviewer can draw free-floating disagreeable associations to a book by implying that the book is completely unimportant without saying exactly why, and carefully avoiding any clear images that could capture the reader's full attention.

Burroughs, William S.

21.

I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.

Thoreau, Henry David

22.

When a man spends his time giving his wife criticism and advice instead of compliments, he forgets that it was not his good judgment, but his charming manners, that won her heart.

Rowland, Helen

23.

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

24.

Be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath.

Bible

25.

In an age of unscrupulous and shameless book-making, it is a duty to give notice of the rubbish that cumbers the ground. There is no credit, no real power required for this task. It is the work of an intellectual scavenger, and far from being specially honorable.

Hutton, R. H.

26.

I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works. An assault upon a town is a bad thing; but starving it is still worse.

Johnson, Samuel

27.

Never make the mistake of assuming the critters will beat a path to your door.

Mascotte, John P.

28.

Take heed of critics even when they are not fair; resist them even when they are.

Rostand, Jean

29.

It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one's children will become than for the children one's mature critics often are.

Walker, Alice

30.

The person of analytic or critical intellect finds something ridiculous in everything. The person of synthetic or constructive intellect, in almost nothing.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

31.

I remember when I was in college, people told me I couldn't play in the NBA. There's always somebody saying you can't do it, and those people have to be ignored.

Cartwright, Bill

32.

One ought to examine himself for a very long time before thinking of condemning others.

Moliere

33.

Without the meditative background that is criticism, works become isolated gestures, historical accidents, soon forgotten.

Kundera, Milan

34.

We might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds when we read a book and feel an emotion about it, for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism.

Eliot, T. S.

35.

Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs.

Picasso, Pablo

36.

David Lynch came out of it a genius, and I came out of it a fat girl. I'm sorry that the only comment I get about the part is the way I look. [Commenting on the critics' response to her performance in Blue Velvet]

Rossellini, Isabella

37.

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.

Hubbard, Elbert

38.

A critic is a man who knows the way, but can't drive the car.

Tynan, Kenneth

39.

Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!

Meir, Golda

40.

Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

41.

A critic is a reader who ruminates. Thus, he should have more than one stomach.

Schlegel, Friedrich

42.

Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then it will gradually yield to him.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

43.

When everyone is against you, it means you are absolutely wrong -- or you are absolutely right.