Motivational Quotes

Criticism

I know I'm never as good or bad as one single performance. I've never believed in my critics or my worshippers, and I've always been able to leave the game at the arena.

- Barkley, Charles

Best Quotes about Criticism

Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger.

Franklin P. Jones

I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.

Pound, Ezra

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as men's judgments of one another.

Erasmus, Desiderius

Prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash but constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feeling whatever.

Orwell, George

The biggest critics of my books are people who never read them.

Collins, Jackie

The television critic, whatever his pretensions, does not labor in the same vineyard as those he criticizes; his grapes are all sour.

Raphael, Frederic

A drama critic is a person who surprises the playwright by informing him what he meant.

Mizner, Wilson

Neither praise or blame is the object of true criticism. Justly to discriminate, firmly to establish, wisely to prescribe, and honestly to award. These are the true aims and duties of criticism.

Simms, William Gilmore

10.

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

11.

Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world -- though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst -- the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!

Sterne, Laurence

12.

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

Wilde, Oscar

13.

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

Shenstone, William

14.

Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.

Lawrence, D. H.

15.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

16.

Most of our censure of others is only oblique praise of self, uttered to show the wisdom and superiority of the speaker. It has all the invidiousness of self-praise, and all the ill-desert of falsehood.

Edwards, Tryon

17.

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.

Johnson, Samuel

18.

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

Williams, Bern

19.

Satire is often the reflection of a kind of moral nausea.

Briton, Crand

20.

Professional critics are incapable of distinguishing and appreciating either diamonds in the rough or gold in bars. They are traders, and in literature know only the coins that are current. Their critical lab has scales and weights, but neither crucible or touchstone.

Joubert, Joseph

21.

No sadder proof can be given of a person's own tiny stature, than their disbelief in great people.

Carlyle, Thomas

22.

As a work of art it has the same status as a long conversation between two not very bright drunks.

James, Clive

23.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

24.

A good review from the critics is just another stay of execution.

Hoffman, Dustin

25.

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

26.

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

Elbert Hubbard

27.

Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins.

Native American Proverb

28.

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

29.

Praise those of your critics for whom nothing is up to standard.

Hammarskjold, Dag

30.

Some people are always critical of vague statements. I tend rather to be critical of precise statements; they are the only ones which can correctly be labeled wrong.

Smullyan, Raymond

31.

Pay no attention to what the critics say... Remember, a statue has never been set up in honor of a critic!

Jean Sibelius

32.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

33.

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

Moliere

34.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

35.

What we ask of him is, that he should find out for us more than we can find out for ourselves. He must have the passion of a lover.

Symons, Arthur

36.

I review novels to make money, because it is easier for a sluggard to write an article a fortnight than a book a year, because the writer is soothed by the opiate of action, the crank by posing as a good journalist, and having an air hole. I dislike it. I do it and I am always resolving to give it up.

Connolly, Cyril

37.

What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.

Cocteau, Jean

38.

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

Aikman, Leo

39.

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

Smith, Sydney

40.

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

Updike, John

41.

Remember if people talk behind your back, it only means you're two steps ahead!

Flagg, Fannie

42.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

43.

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

44.

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.

45.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

46.

Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility.

Sontag, Susan

47.

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs.

Hampton, Christopher

48.

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

Bible

49.

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

50.

Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do criticize him, you'll be a mile away and have his shoes.