Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

Best Quotes about Criticism

If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.

Epictetus

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

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

Moliere

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

Porchia, Antonio

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

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

Conrad, Joseph

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

When everyone is against you, it means you are absolutely wrong -- or you are absolutely right.

Guinon, Albert

Abuse if you slight it, will gradually die away; but if you show yourself irritated, you will be thought to have deserved it.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

10.

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

Mcluhan, Marshall

11.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

12.

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

Kundera, Milan

13.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

14.

A critic is a man who knows the way, but can't drive the car.

Tynan, Kenneth

15.

Social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings.

Paz, Octavio

16.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

17.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

18.

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

19.

A louse in the locks of literature.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

20.

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.

Johnson, Samuel

21.

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

Auden, W. H.

22.

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

Rostand, Jean

23.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

24.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

25.

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

26.

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

27.

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

28.

Professional critics are incapable of distinguishing and appreciating either diamonds in the rough or gold in bars. They are traders, and in literature know only the coins that are current. Their critical lab has scales and weights, but neither crucible or touchstone.

Joubert, Joseph

29.

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

30.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

31.

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

Smith, Sydney

32.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

33.

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

34.

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

35.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

36.

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

37.

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

38.

Recognize the cunning man not by the corpses he pays homage to but by the living writers he conspires against with the most shameful weapon, Silence, or the briefest review.

Dahlberg, Edward

39.

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

Collins, Jackie

40.

A man generally has the good or ill qualities he attributes to mankind.

Shenstone, William

41.

There are two insults no human will endure. The assertion that he has no sense of humor and the doubly impertinent assertion that he has never known trouble.

Lewis, Sinclair

42.

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

Mcclung, Nellie

43.

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

Briton, Crand

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.

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

Costello, Elvis

46.

The television critic, whatever his pretensions, does not labor in the same vineyard as those he criticizes; his grapes are all sour.

Raphael, Frederic

47.

You're never s good as everyone tells you when you win, and you're never as bad as they say when you lose.

Holtz, Lou

48.

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

49.

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

50.

A negative judgment gives you more satisfaction than praise, provided it smacks of jealousy.

Baudrillard, Jean