Motivational Quotes

Criticism

Self-laudation abounds among the unpolished, but nothing can stamp a man more sharply as ill-bred.

- Buxton, Charles

Best Quotes about Criticism

Hardly a book of human worth, be it heaven's own secret, is honestly placed before the reader; it is either shunned, given a Periclean funeral oration in a hundred and fifty words, or interred in the potter's field of the newspapers back pages.

Dahlberg, Edward

In the arts, the critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising.

Kael, Pauline

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

For if there is anything to one's praise, it is foolish vanity to be gratified at it, and if it is abuse -- why one is always sure to hear of it from one damned good-natured friend or another!

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

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

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

Auden, W. H.

Post-modernism has cut off the present from all futures. The daily media add to this by cutting off the past. Which means that critical opinion is often orphaned in the present.

Berger, John

Essays, entitled critical, are epistles addressed to the public, through which the mind of the recluse relieves itself of its impressions.

Fuller, Margaret

10.

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

Rayburn, Sam

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.

Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much cherished aspect of academic freedom.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

13.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

14.

The greatest honor that can be paid to the work of art, on its pedestal of ritual display, is to describe it with sensory completeness. We need a science of description. Criticism is ceremonial revivification.

Paglia, Camille

15.

A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.

Murdoch, Iris

16.

Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain - and most fools do.

Dale Carnegie

17.

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

18.

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

Raphael, Frederic

19.

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

Wilde, Oscar

20.

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

Hampton, Christopher

21.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

Eleanor Roosevelt

22.

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

23.

One does not lash hat lies at a distance. The foibles that we ridicule must at least be a little bit our own. Only then will the work be a part of our own flesh. The garden must be weeded.

Klee, Paul

24.

All the critics who could not make their reputations by discovering you are hoping to make them by predicting hopefully your approaching impotence, failure and general drying up of natural juices. Not a one will wish you luck or hope that you will keep on writing unless you have political affiliations in which case these will rally around and speak of you and Homer, Balzac, Zola and Link Steffens.

Hemingway, Ernest

25.

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

Hoffman, Dustin

26.

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

27.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

28.

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

Moliere

29.

Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.

West, Rebecca

30.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

31.

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

32.

I'd rather be hissed at for a good verse, than applauded for a bad one.

Hugo, Victor

33.

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

34.

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

35.

The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.

France, Anatole

36.

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

Mascotte, John P.

37.

A louse in the locks of literature.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

38.

There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

39.

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.

Disraeli, Benjamin

40.

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.

Christopher Hampton

41.

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

Native American Proverb

42.

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

Hill, Napoleon

43.

Social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings.

Paz, Octavio

44.

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

Shenstone, William

45.

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

46.

You're never s good as everyone tells you when you win, and you're never as bad as they say when you lose.

Holtz, Lou

47.

The easiest thing a human being can do is to criticize another human being.

Little, Lynn M.

48.

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

49.

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