Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Disraeli, Benjamin

Best Quotes about Criticism

Nothing would improve newspaper criticism so much as the knowledge that it was to be read by men too hardy to acquiesce in the authoritative statement of the reviewer.

Hutton, R. H.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

Auden, W. H.

I demand that my books be judged with utmost severity, by knowledgeable people who know the rules of grammar and of logic, and who will seek beneath the footsteps of my commas the lice of my thought in the head of my style.

Aragon, Louis

Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then it will gradually yield to him.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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.

Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.

Miller, Henry

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

W. H. Auden

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

10.

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

11.

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

12.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

13.

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

14.

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

15.

Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as men's judgments of one another.

Erasmus, Desiderius

16.

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

Holtz, Lou

17.

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

18.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

19.

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

Rayburn, Sam

20.

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

21.

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

22.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

23.

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

24.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

25.

One ought to examine himself for a very long time before thinking of condemning others.

Moliere

26.

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

Collins, Jackie

27.

One of the grotesqueries of present-day American life is the amount of reasoning that goes into displaying the wisdom secreted in bad movies while proving that modern art is meaningless. They have put into practice the notion that a bad art work cleverly interpreted according to some obscure Method is more rewarding than a masterpiece wrapped in silence.

Rosenberg, Harold

28.

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

Christopher Hampton

29.

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

Hampton, Christopher

30.

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

31.

Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!

Meir, Golda

32.

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

Hammarskjold, Dag

33.

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.

34.

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

Kael, Pauline

35.

He cannot be strict in judging, who does not wish others to be strict judges of himself.

Cicero, Marcus T.

36.

You should not say it is not good. You should say you do not like it; and then, you know, you're perfectly safe.

Whistler, James Mcneill

37.

Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.

Steinbeck, John

38.

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

39.

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

Buxton, Charles

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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.

44.

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

45.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

46.

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

47.

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

Steinbeck, John

48.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

49.

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

Porchia, Antonio

50.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.