Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Christopher Hampton

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

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

Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility.

Sontag, Susan

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

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

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

Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves.

Cioran, E. M.

No man ever got very high by pulling other people down. The intelligent merchant does not knock his competitors. The sensible worker does not work those who work with him. Don't knock your friends. Don't knock your enemies. Don't knock yourself.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

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

Benjamin Disraeli

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Wilde, Oscar

13.

It is impossible to think of a man of any actual force and originality, universally recognized as having those qualities, who spent his whole life appraising and describing the work of other men.

Mencken, H. L.

14.

The literary critic, or the critic of any other specific form of artistic expression, may detach himself from the world for as long as the work of art he is contemplating appears to do the same.

James, Clive

15.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

16.

A critic is a man who knows the way, but can't drive the car.

Tynan, Kenneth

17.

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

Richard Pryor

18.

No sadder proof can be given of a person's own tiny stature, than their disbelief in great people.

Carlyle, Thomas

19.

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

20.

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

Hoffman, Dustin

21.

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

22.

The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most part, they are manifestations of his debate with himself as to what he should do next and what he should avoid.

Auden, W. H.

23.

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

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.

Criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters.

Conrad, Joseph

26.

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

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

27.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

28.

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

29.

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

Flagg, Fannie

30.

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

Smith, Sydney

31.

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

32.

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

Native American Proverb

33.

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

Shenstone, William

34.

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

James, Clive

35.

A reader who quarrels with postulates, who dislikes Hamlet because he does not believe that there are ghosts or that people speak in pentameters, clearly has no business in literature. He cannot distinguish fiction from fact, and belongs in the same category as the people who send checks to radio stations for the relief of suffering heroines in soap operas.

Frye, Northrop

36.

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

37.

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

Churchill, Charles

38.

Reviewers are usually people who would have been, poets, historians, biographer, if they could. They have tried their talents at one thing or another and have failed; therefore they turn critic.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

39.

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

40.

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

Williams, Bern

41.

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

Pope, Alexander

42.

Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.

Johnson, Samuel

43.

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

Wilde, Oscar

44.

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

Gourmont, Remy De

45.

If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, then ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.

Lincoln, Abraham

46.

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

47.

Most critical writing is drivel and half of it is dishonest. It is a short cut to oblivion, anyway. Thinking in terms of ideas destroys the power to think in terms of emotions and sensations.

Chandler, Raymond

48.

There has never been a statue erected to honor a critic.

Ziglar, Zig

49.

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

50.

Each generation produces its squad of moderns with peashooters to attack Gibraltar.

Pollock, Channing