Motivational Quotes

Criticism

We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.

- Beecher, Henry Ward

Best Quotes about Criticism

Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world -- in order to set up a shadow world of meanings.

Sontag, Susan

If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.

Franklin, Benjamin

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

Let me walk three weeks in the footsteps of my enemy, carry the same burden, have the same trials as he, before I say one word to criticize.

Doubtless criticism was originally benignant, pointing out the beauties of a work rather that its defects. The passions of men have made it malignant, as a bad heart of Procreates turned the bed, the symbol of repose, into an instrument of torture.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

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

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

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

The whole effort of a sincere man is to erect his personal impressions into laws.

Gourmont, Remy De

10.

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

11.

Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

12.

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.

13.

Criticism of others is futile and if you indulge in it often you should be warned that it can be fatal to your career.

Carnegie, Dale

14.

A wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic.

Lowell, James Russell

15.

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

Mizner, Wilson

16.

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

17.

Any jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build it.

Rayburn, Sam

18.

Critics are usually kinder to cheaper movies than to those they perceive to be big Hollywood releases. They cut you a lot more slack if you spend less money, which makes no sense.

Coen, Ethan

19.

Though by whim, envy, or resentment led, they damn those authors whom they never read.

Churchill, Charles

20.

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

21.

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

22.

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

Kurt Vonnegut

23.

If I make a move, like raise my eyebrows, some critic says I'm doing Nicholson. What am I supposed to do, cut off my eyebrows?

Slater, Christian

24.

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

25.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

26.

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

27.

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

28.

The text is merely one of the contexts of a piece of literature, its lexical or verbal one, no more or less important than the sociological, psychological, historical, anthropological or generic.

Fiedler, Leslie

29.

Do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend's forehead.

Proverb, Chinese

30.

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

Cocteau, Jean

31.

A louse in the locks of literature.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

32.

The critical method which denies literary modernity would appear -- and even, in certain respects, would be -- the most modern of critical movements.

Man, Paul De

33.

The pleasure we feel in criticizing robs us from being moved by very beautiful things.

La Bruyere, Jean De

34.

Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge ourselves with railing against it.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

35.

All the world's a stage, and all the clergymen critics.

Nunn, Gregory

36.

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

37.

I never met anybody who said when they were a kid, "I wanna grow up and be a critic."

Richard Pryor

38.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

39.

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

Flagg, Fannie

40.

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

Hill, Napoleon

41.

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

Henry Fielding

42.

The strength of criticism lies in the weakness of the thing criticized.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

43.

That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one's own soul. It is more fascinating than history, as it is concerned simply with oneself. It is more delightful than philosophy, as its subject is concrete and not abstract, real and not vague. It is the only civilized form of autobiography.

Wilde, Oscar

44.

Not even the most powerful organs of the press, including Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times, can discover a new artist or certify his work and make it stick. They can only bring you the scores.

Wolfe, Thomas

45.

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

46.

No degree of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it fascinating.

Harold Rosenberg

47.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

48.

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.

49.

One of the grotesqueries of present-day American life is the amount of reasoning that goes into displaying the wisdom secreted in bad movies while proving that modern art is meaningless. They have put into practice the notion that a bad art work cleverly interpreted according to some obscure Method is more rewarding than a masterpiece wrapped in silence.

Rosenberg, Harold

50.

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

Wilde, Oscar