Motivational Quotes

Criticism

The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.

- France, Anatole

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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

Burns, Robert

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

Henry Fielding

A good review from the critics is just another stay of execution.

Hoffman, Dustin

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

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

Porchia, Antonio

The easiest thing a human being can do is to criticize another human being.

Little, Lynn M.

All the world's a stage, and all the clergymen critics.

Nunn, Gregory

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

10.

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

Steinbeck, John

11.

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

Shenstone, William

12.

The greatest honor that can be paid to the work of art, on its pedestal of ritual display, is to describe it with sensory completeness. We need a science of description. Criticism is ceremonial revivification.

Paglia, Camille

13.

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

Mascotte, John P.

14.

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

15.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

16.

A drama critic is a person who surprises the playwright by informing him what he meant.

Mizner, Wilson

17.

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

18.

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

Auden, W. H.

19.

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

20.

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

Elbert Hubbard

21.

It is just as hard to do your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shouting at you.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

22.

That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one's own soul. It is more fascinating than history, as it is concerned simply with oneself. It is more delightful than philosophy, as its subject is concrete and not abstract, real and not vague. It is the only civilized form of autobiography.

Wilde, Oscar

23.

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

24.

Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than native genius. In the hands of a man who has read widely but lacks judgment, applied to certain subjects it can corrupt both its readers and the writer himself.

Bruyere, Jean De La

25.

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Rostand, Jean

29.

I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works. An assault upon a town is a bad thing; but starving it is still worse.

Johnson, Samuel

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Paz, Octavio

34.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

35.

In my conscience I believe the baggage loves me, for she never speaks well of me herself, nor suffers any body else to rail at me.

Congreve, William

36.

Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain - and most fools do.

Dale Carnegie

37.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

38.

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

Smith, Sydney

39.

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

Jones, Franklin P.

40.

Hardly a book of human worth, be it heaven's own secret, is honestly placed before the reader; it is either shunned, given a Periclean funeral oration in a hundred and fifty words, or interred in the potter's field of the newspapers back pages.

Dahlberg, Edward

41.

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

42.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

43.

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

Fuller, Margaret

44.

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

45.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

46.

Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.

Johnson, Samuel

47.

David Lynch came out of it a genius, and I came out of it a fat girl. I'm sorry that the only comment I get about the part is the way I look. [Commenting on the critics' response to her performance in Blue Velvet]

Rossellini, Isabella

48.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

49.

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

James, Henry

50.

You should never assume contempt for that which it is not very manifest that you have it in your power to possess, nor does a wit ever make a more contemptible figure than when, in attempting satire, he shows that he does not understand that which he would make the subject of his ridicule.

Melbourne, Lord