Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Clurman, Harold

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Holtz, Lou

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

Briton, Crand

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

Hampton, Christopher

A critic is a reader who ruminates. Thus, he should have more than one stomach.

Schlegel, Friedrich

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

If I care to listen to every criticism, let alone act on them, then this shop may as well be closed for all other businesses. I have learned to do my best, and if the end result is good then I do not care for any criticism, but if the end result is not good, then even the praise of ten angels would not make the difference.

Lincoln, Abraham

A drama critic is a person who surprises the playwright by informing him what he meant.

Mizner, Wilson

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

Little, Lynn M.

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

10.

The best criticism doesn't trap an employee or child in a dead end. It gives them an escape route.

11.

Writing prejudicial, off-putting reviews is a precise exercise in applied black magic. The reviewer can draw free-floating disagreeable associations to a book by implying that the book is completely unimportant without saying exactly why, and carefully avoiding any clear images that could capture the reader's full attention.

Burroughs, William S.

12.

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

Kurt Vonnegut

13.

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

Wilde, Oscar

14.

Take heed of critics even when they are not fair; resist them even when they are.

Rostand, Jean

15.

I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.

Pound, Ezra

16.

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

17.

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

Pope, Alexander

18.

The great critic must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.

Maugham, W. Somerset

19.

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

Costello, Elvis

20.

The biggest critics of my books are people who never read them.

Collins, Jackie

21.

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

Gourmont, Remy De

22.

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Helvetius, Claude A.

26.

Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.

Benjamin, Walter

27.

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

Hugo, Victor

28.

Of course you're always at liberty to judge the critic. Judge people as critics, however, and you'll condemn them all!

James, Henry

29.

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

30.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

31.

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

32.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

33.

I remember when I was in college, people told me I couldn't play in the NBA. There's always somebody saying you can't do it, and those people have to be ignored.

Cartwright, Bill

34.

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

Rayburn, Sam

35.

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

36.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

37.

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

Burns, Robert

38.

Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do criticize him, you'll be a mile away and have his shoes.

39.

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

Jones, Franklin P.

40.

Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.

Fox, Dr. Emmit

41.

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

42.

Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs.

Picasso, Pablo

43.

Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge ourselves with railing against it.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

44.

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

45.

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

46.

No degree of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it fascinating.

Harold Rosenberg

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.

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

49.

Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.

Steinbeck, John

50.

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

Dale Carnegie