Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Benjamin, Walter

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

Kundera, Milan

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

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

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

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

Native American Proverb

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

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

Flagg, Fannie

When I am abroad, I always make it a rule to never criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.

Churchill, Winston

10.

If I care to listen to every criticism, let alone act on them, then this shop may as well be closed for all other businesses. I have learned to do my best, and if the end result is good then I do not care for any criticism, but if the end result is not good, then even the praise of ten angels would not make the difference.

Lincoln, Abraham

11.

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

Murdoch, Iris

12.

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

Mascotte, John P.

13.

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

Hoffman, Dustin

14.

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

Epictetus

15.

A man must serve his time to every trade save censure -- critics all are ready made.

Byron, Lord

16.

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

Lowell, James Russell

17.

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

18.

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

Pope, Alexander

19.

The rule in carving holds good as to criticism; never cut with a knife what you can cut with a spoon.

Buxton, Charles

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Schlegel, Friedrich

23.

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

24.

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

Tynan, Kenneth

25.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

26.

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

27.

The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure.

Wilde, Oscar

28.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

29.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Buxton, Charles

33.

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

Kael, Pauline

34.

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

Dale Carnegie

35.

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.

36.

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

37.

There is an air of last things, a brooding sense of impending annihilation, about so much deconstructive activity, in so many of its guises; it is not merely postmodernist but preapocalyptic.

Lehman, David

38.

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

W. H. Auden

39.

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

Nunn, Gregory

40.

I remember when I was in college, people told me I couldn't play in the NBA. There's always somebody saying you can't do it, and those people have to be ignored.

Cartwright, Bill

41.

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

42.

He cannot be strict in judging, who does not wish others to be strict judges of himself.

Cicero, Marcus T.

43.

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

Holtz, Lou

44.

God knows people who are paid to have attitudes toward things, professional critics, make me sick; camp following eunuchs of literature. They won't even whore. They're all virtuous and sterile. And how well meaning and high minded. But they're all camp followers.

Hemingway, Ernest

45.

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

46.

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

Mcluhan, Marshall

47.

I'd rather be hissed at for a good verse, than applauded for a bad one.

Hugo, Victor

48.

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

49.

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

50.

Harsh counsels have no effect; they are like hammers which are always repulsed by the anvil.

Helvetius, Claude A.