Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

Best Quotes about Criticism

Hardly a book of human worth, be it heaven's own secret, is honestly placed before the reader; it is either shunned, given a Periclean funeral oration in a hundred and fifty words, or interred in the potter's field of the newspapers back pages.

Dahlberg, Edward

Those who can -- do. Those who can't -- criticize.

The rule in carving holds good as to criticism; never cut with a knife what you can cut with a spoon.

Buxton, Charles

We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which, in all times, with one or another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer without its scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and fall -- which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people.

Carlyle, Thomas

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

Clurman, Harold

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

The avocation of assessing the failures of better men can be turned into a comfortable livelihood, providing you back it up with a Ph.D.

Algren, Nelson

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

Wilde, Oscar

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

10.

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

Steinbeck, John

11.

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

12.

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

13.

Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.

Fox, Dr. Emmit

14.

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

15.

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

Lowell, James Russell

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.

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

Schlegel, Friedrich

18.

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.

19.

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

20.

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

Mcluhan, Marshall

21.

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

22.

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

Proverb, Chinese

23.

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

Hammarskjold, Dag

24.

If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water's edge

Hill, Napoleon

25.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

26.

A louse in the locks of literature.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

27.

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

28.

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

Smith, Sydney

29.

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

Byron, Lord

30.

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

Hoffman, Dustin

31.

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

32.

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

Little, Lynn M.

33.

Now, in reality, the world have paid too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them to be men of much greater profundity than they really are.

Henry Fielding

34.

In the arts, the critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising.

Kael, Pauline

35.

Let us consider the critic, therefore, as a discoverer of discoveries.

Kundera, Milan

36.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

37.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

38.

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

39.

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

Hugo, Victor

40.

It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.

Baudelaire, Charles

41.

When a man spends his time giving his wife criticism and advice instead of compliments, he forgets that it was not his good judgment, but his charming manners, that won her heart.

Rowland, Helen

42.

I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works. An assault upon a town is a bad thing; but starving it is still worse.

Johnson, Samuel

43.

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

Costello, Elvis

44.

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

Gourmont, Remy De

45.

Essays, entitled critical, are epistles addressed to the public, through which the mind of the recluse relieves itself of its impressions.

Fuller, Margaret

46.

Many great ideas have been lost because the people who had them could not stand being laughed at.

47.

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

48.

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

Rayburn, Sam

49.

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

50.

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose