Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Baudelaire, Charles

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

There are two modes of criticism. One which crushes to earth without mercy all the humble buds of Phantasy, all the plants that, though green and fruitful, are also a prey to insects or have suffered by drought. It weeds well the garden, and cannot believe the weed in its native soil may be a pretty, graceful plant. There is another mode which enters into the natural history of every thing that breathes and lives, which believes no impulse to be entirely in vain, which scrutinizes circumstances, motive and object before it condemns, and believes there is a beauty in natural form, if its law and purpose be understood.

Fuller, Margaret

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

Auden, W. H.

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

Never retract, never explain, never apologize; get things done and let them howl.

Mcclung, Nellie

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

Hill, Napoleon

10.

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

11.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

12.

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

Franklin P. Jones

13.

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

14.

Those who can -- do. Those who can't -- criticize.

15.

It is wrong to be harsh with the New York critics, unless one admits in the same breath that it is a condition of their existence that they should write entertainingly about something which is rarely worth writing about at all.

Chandler, Raymond

16.

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

17.

A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time. A great drama critic also perceives what is not happening.

Tynan, Kenneth

18.

You should never assume contempt for that which it is not very manifest that you have it in your power to possess, nor does a wit ever make a more contemptible figure than when, in attempting satire, he shows that he does not understand that which he would make the subject of his ridicule.

Melbourne, Lord

19.

Harsh counsels have no effect; they are like hammers which are always repulsed by the anvil.

Helvetius, Claude A.

20.

Let us consider the critic, therefore, as a discoverer of discoveries.

Kundera, Milan

21.

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

Updike, John

22.

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

Williams, Bern

23.

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

Bible

24.

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

Mascotte, John P.

25.

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.

26.

On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one's mind. It becomes a pleasure.

Wilde, Oscar

27.

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

Moliere

28.

In judging others, folks will work overtime for no pay.

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

29.

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

30.

The author himself is the best judge of his own performance; none has so deeply meditated on the subject; none is so sincerely interested in the event.

Gibbon, Edward

31.

When I am abroad, I always make it a rule to never criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.

Churchill, Winston

32.

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.

33.

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

Hoffman, Dustin

34.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

35.

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

Smith, Sydney

36.

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

Briton, Crand

37.

The rule in carving holds good as to criticism; never cut with a knife what you can cut with a spoon.

Buxton, Charles

38.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

39.

Abuse if you slight it, will gradually die away; but if you show yourself irritated, you will be thought to have deserved it.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

40.

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

41.

You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism.

Maugham, W. Somerset

42.

If I care to listen to every criticism, let alone act on them, then this shop may as well be closed for all other businesses. I have learned to do my best, and if the end result is good then I do not care for any criticism, but if the end result is not good, then even the praise of ten angels would not make the difference.

Lincoln, Abraham

43.

Did some more sober critics come abroad? If wrong, I smil'd; if right, I kiss'd the rod.

Pope, Alexander

44.

It is just as hard to do your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shouting at you.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

45.

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

46.

A film is just like a muffin. You make it. You put it on the table. One person might say, Oh, I don't like it. One might say it's the best muffin ever made. One might say it's an awful muffin. It's hard for me to say. It's for me to make the muffin.

Washington, Denzel

47.

We have been educated to such a fine -- or dull -- point that we are incapable of enjoying something new, something different, until we are first told what it's all about. We don't trust our five senses; we rely on our critics and educators, all of whom are failures in the realm of creation. In short, the blind lead the blind. It's the democratic way.

Miller, Henry

48.

Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

49.

You should not say it is not good. You should say you do not like it; and then, you know, you're perfectly safe.

Whistler, James Mcneill

50.

All my life people have said that I wasn't going to make it.

Turner, Ted