Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Disraeli, Benjamin

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Conrad, Joseph

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

Pope, Alexander

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

There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Hugo, Victor

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

Jean Sibelius

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

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

10.

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

Kundera, Milan

11.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

12.

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

13.

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

Steinbeck, John

14.

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

Mizner, Wilson

15.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

16.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

17.

One does not lash hat lies at a distance. The foibles that we ridicule must at least be a little bit our own. Only then will the work be a part of our own flesh. The garden must be weeded.

Klee, Paul

18.

Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much cherished aspect of academic freedom.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

19.

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

Clurman, Harold

20.

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

Hoffman, Dustin

21.

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

22.

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

W. H. Auden

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

27.

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

28.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

29.

A louse in the locks of literature.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

30.

Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews, to challenge every new author.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

31.

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

32.

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

Wilde, Oscar

33.

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

34.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

35.

Be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath.

Bible

36.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

37.

They will say you are on the wrong road, if it is your own.

Porchia, Antonio

38.

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

Rostand, Jean

39.

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

40.

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

Hampton, Christopher

41.

To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession, to establish in fine a relation with the criticized thing and to make it one's own.

James, Henry

42.

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

Jones, Franklin P.

43.

Post-modernism has cut off the present from all futures. The daily media add to this by cutting off the past. Which means that critical opinion is often orphaned in the present.

Berger, John

44.

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

45.

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

Briton, Crand

46.

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

47.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

48.

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

Franklin P. Jones