Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Churchill, Charles

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

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

Mcclung, Nellie

Without the meditative background that is criticism, works become isolated gestures, historical accidents, soon forgotten.

Kundera, Milan

People want you to be a crazy, out-of-control teen brat. They want you miserable, just like them. They don't want heroes; what they want is to see you fall.

DiCaprio, Leonardo

A louse in the locks of literature.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

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

Critics! Those cut-throat bandits in the paths of fame.

Burns, Robert

10.

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

11.

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

12.

Honest criticism is hard to take, especially from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger.

Jones, Franklin P.

13.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

14.

Pay no attention to what the critics say... Remember, a statue has never been set up in honor of a critic!

Jean Sibelius

15.

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

Lowell, James Russell

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.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

18.

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

Richard Pryor

19.

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

20.

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

Nolan, Sir Sidney

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Proverb, Chinese

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Costello, Elvis

27.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

28.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

29.

Most of our censure of others is only oblique praise of self, uttered to show the wisdom and superiority of the speaker. It has all the invidiousness of self-praise, and all the ill-desert of falsehood.

Edwards, Tryon

30.

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

31.

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

32.

After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them and invent others.

Edith Wharton

33.

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

Hoffman, Dustin

34.

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

Byron, Lord

35.

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

Smith, Sydney

36.

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

Johnson, Samuel

37.

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

Murdoch, Iris

38.

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.

39.

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

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

40.

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

Little, Lynn M.

41.

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

Ziglar, Zig

42.

Every writer is necessarily a critic -- that is, each sentence is a skeleton accompanied by enormous activity of rejection; and each selection is governed by general principles concerning truth, force, beauty, and so on. The critic that is in every fabulist is like the iceberg -- nine-tenths of him is under water.

Wilder, Thornton

43.

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

Sontag, Susan

44.

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

45.

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

Helvetius, Claude A.

46.

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

47.

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

48.

Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger.

Franklin P. Jones

49.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

50.

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