Motivational Quotes

Criticism

Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.

- Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Pope, Alexander

Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins.

Native American Proverb

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

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

Costello, Elvis

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

Flagg, Fannie

All my life people have said that I wasn't going to make it.

Turner, Ted

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

Self-laudation abounds among the unpolished, but nothing can stamp a man more sharply as ill-bred.

Buxton, Charles

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

10.

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

Burns, Robert

11.

For if there is anything to one's praise, it is foolish vanity to be gratified at it, and if it is abuse -- why one is always sure to hear of it from one damned good-natured friend or another!

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

12.

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

Franklin P. Jones

13.

The great critic must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.

Maugham, W. Somerset

14.

If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, then ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.

Lincoln, Abraham

15.

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

16.

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

17.

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

18.

I review novels to make money, because it is easier for a sluggard to write an article a fortnight than a book a year, because the writer is soothed by the opiate of action, the crank by posing as a good journalist, and having an air hole. I dislike it. I do it and I am always resolving to give it up.

Connolly, Cyril

19.

Do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend's forehead.

Proverb, Chinese

20.

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

Benjamin, Walter

21.

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

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

22.

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

Updike, John

23.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

24.

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

Gourmont, Remy De

25.

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

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.

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

28.

Never make the mistake of assuming the critters will beat a path to your door.

Mascotte, John P.

29.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.

30.

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

Elbert Hubbard

31.

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

32.

Critics are usually kinder to cheaper movies than to those they perceive to be big Hollywood releases. They cut you a lot more slack if you spend less money, which makes no sense.

Coen, Ethan

33.

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

34.

A louse in the locks of literature.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

35.

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

36.

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

Kael, Pauline

37.

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

38.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

42.

No degree of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it fascinating.

Harold Rosenberg

43.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

44.

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

45.

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

46.

A reader who quarrels with postulates, who dislikes Hamlet because he does not believe that there are ghosts or that people speak in pentameters, clearly has no business in literature. He cannot distinguish fiction from fact, and belongs in the same category as the people who send checks to radio stations for the relief of suffering heroines in soap operas.

Frye, Northrop

47.

We have been educated to such a fine -- or dull -- point that we are incapable of enjoying something new, something different, until we are first told what it's all about. We don't trust our five senses; we rely on our critics and educators, all of whom are failures in the realm of creation. In short, the blind lead the blind. It's the democratic way.

Miller, Henry

48.

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

49.

A friend is a lot of things, but a critic isn't.

Williams, Bern

50.

I never met anybody who said when they were a kid, "I wanna grow up and be a critic."

Richard Pryor