Motivational Quotes

Criticism

Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject; bad critical writing by the necessity of maintaining the professional standing of the critic.

- Chandler, Raymond

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

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

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

James, Clive

It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

Woolf, Virginia

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

Briton, Crand

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

In my conscience I believe the baggage loves me, for she never speaks well of me herself, nor suffers any body else to rail at me.

Congreve, William

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

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

Hugo, Victor

10.

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

Native American Proverb

11.

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture; it's a really stupid thing to want to do.

Costello, Elvis

12.

Temperament is the primary requisite for the critic -- a temperament exquisitely susceptible to beauty, and to the various impressions that beauty gives us.

Wilde, Oscar

13.

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

Dale Carnegie

14.

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

Mascotte, John P.

15.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

16.

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

17.

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

Hampton, Christopher

18.

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.

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Holtz, Lou

22.

When the critics come around it's always too late.

Nolan, Sir Sidney

23.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

24.

Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works.

Keats, John

25.

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

Shenstone, William

26.

Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe

27.

Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.

Fox, Dr. Emmit

28.

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

Wilde, Oscar

29.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

30.

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

31.

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

32.

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

33.

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

34.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

35.

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

West, Rebecca

36.

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

Hammarskjold, Dag

37.

It is critical vision alone which can mitigate the unimpeded operation of the automatic.