Motivational Quotes

Criticism

Blame is safer than praise.

- Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Wilde, Oscar

Though by whim, envy, or resentment led, they damn those authors whom they never read.

Churchill, Charles

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

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

Of course you're always at liberty to judge the critic. Judge people as critics, however, and you'll condemn them all!

James, Henry

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

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

Fuller, Margaret

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

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

10.

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

11.

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

Smith, Sydney

12.

Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.

West, Rebecca

13.

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

Kundera, Milan

14.

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

Steinbeck, John

15.

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

Gourmont, Remy De

16.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

17.

A film is just like a muffin. You make it. You put it on the table. One person might say, Oh, I don't like it. One might say it's the best muffin ever made. One might say it's an awful muffin. It's hard for me to say. It's for me to make the muffin.

Washington, Denzel

18.

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

19.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

20.

There has never been a statue erected to honor a critic.

Ziglar, Zig

21.

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

22.

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

Christopher Hampton

23.

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

Benjamin, Walter

24.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Fielding, Henry

28.

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

29.

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

30.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

31.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

32.

When subjected to the rain of criticism, let?s not curse the rain. Let?s accept it as a part of life. Let?s remember that the more criticism we can successfully handle, the more zest we will experience in our lives.

Sinha, Shall

33.

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

Shenstone, William

34.

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

35.

Most of us are umpires at heart; we like to call balls and strikes on somebody else.

Aikman, Leo

36.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

37.

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

Updike, John

38.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

39.

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

Flagg, Fannie

40.

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

Murdoch, Iris

41.

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

Miller, Henry

42.

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

43.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

44.

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.

45.

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

46.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

47.

If what they are saying about you is true, mend your ways. If it isn't true, forget it, and go on and serve the Lord.

Ironside, H. A.

48.

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

49.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

50.

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