Motivational Quotes

Criticism

A man must serve his time to every trade save censure -- critics all are ready made.

- Byron, Lord

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

It is very perplexing how an intrepid frontier people, who fought a wilderness, floods, tornadoes, and the Rockies, cower before criticism, which is regarded as a malignant tumor in the imagination.

Dahlberg, Edward

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

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

Lowell, James Russell

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

Strike the dog dead, it's but a critic!

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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.

10.

Unless criticism refuses to take itself quite so seriously or at least to permit its readers not to, it will inevitably continue to reflect the finicky canons of the genteel tradition and the depressing pieties of the Culture Religion of Modernism.

Fiedler, Leslie

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Wilde, Oscar

14.

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

15.

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

Christopher Hampton

16.

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.

17.

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

18.

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

West, Rebecca

19.

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

Benjamin Disraeli

20.

To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession, to establish in fine a relation with the criticized thing and to make it one's own.

James, Henry

21.

A negative judgment gives you more satisfaction than praise, provided it smacks of jealousy.

Baudrillard, Jean

22.

He cannot be strict in judging, who does not wish others to be strict judges of himself.

Cicero, Marcus T.

23.

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

24.

Unlike other people, our reviewers are powerful because they believe in nothing.

Clurman, Harold

25.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

26.

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

Mcclung, Nellie

27.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

28.

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

29.

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

Flagg, Fannie

30.

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

31.

You know lots of criticism is written by characters who are very academic and think it is a sign you are worthless if you make jokes or kid or even clown. I wouldn't kid Our Lord if he was on the cross. But I would attempt a joke with him if I ran into him chasing the money changers out of the temple.

Hemingway, Ernest

32.

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

Helvetius, Claude A.

33.

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

Raphael, Frederic

34.

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

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.

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

37.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

38.

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

Bible

39.

They will say you are on the wrong road, if it is your own.

Porchia, Antonio

40.

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

41.

If you burn your neighbors house down, it doesn't make your house look any better.

Holtz, Lou

42.

God knows people who are paid to have attitudes toward things, professional critics, make me sick; camp following eunuchs of literature. They won't even whore. They're all virtuous and sterile. And how well meaning and high minded. But they're all camp followers.

Hemingway, Ernest

43.

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

44.

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

45.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right. You'll be criticized anyway.

Roosevelt, Eleanor

46.

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

47.

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

48.

The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion.

Benjamin, Walter

49.

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

Briton, Crand

50.

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.