Motivational Quotes

Criticism

We might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds when we read a book and feel an emotion about it, for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism.

- Eliot, T. S.

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

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

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

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

Rostand, Jean

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

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

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

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

10.

Give me the critic bred in Nature's school, who neither talks by rote, nor thinks by rule; who feeling's honest dictates still obeys, and dares, without a precedent, to praise.

Shee, Sir Martin Archer

11.

The person of analytic or critical intellect finds something ridiculous in everything. The person of synthetic or constructive intellect, in almost nothing.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

12.

Remember if people talk behind your back, it only means you're two steps ahead!

Flagg, Fannie

13.

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

14.

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

15.

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

16.

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

Benjamin, Walter

17.

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.

18.

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

19.

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

Costello, Elvis

20.

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

Hill, Napoleon

21.

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

22.

It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

Woolf, Virginia

23.

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

24.

A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.

Murdoch, Iris

25.

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

26.

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

27.

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

28.

Criticism of others is futile and if you indulge in it often you should be warned that it can be fatal to your career.

Carnegie, Dale

29.

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

30.

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.

31.

No matter how well you perform there's always somebody of intelligent opinion who thinks it's lousy.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

32.

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

Burns, Robert

33.

You know lots of criticism is written by characters who are very academic and think it is a sign you are worthless if you make jokes or kid or even clown. I wouldn't kid Our Lord if he was on the cross. But I would attempt a joke with him if I ran into him chasing the money changers out of the temple.

Hemingway, Ernest

34.

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

Lowell, James Russell

35.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

36.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

37.

It is impossible to think of a man of any actual force and originality, universally recognized as having those qualities, who spent his whole life appraising and describing the work of other men.

Mencken, H. L.

38.

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

Schlegel, Friedrich

39.

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

Kael, Pauline

40.

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

Holtz, Lou

41.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

42.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

43.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

44.

Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject; bad critical writing by the necessity of maintaining the professional standing of the critic.

Chandler, Raymond

45.

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

46.

In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable.

Sontag, Susan

47.

The author himself is the best judge of his own performance; none has so deeply meditated on the subject; none is so sincerely interested in the event.

Gibbon, Edward

48.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

49.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

50.

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