Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

Best Quotes about Criticism

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

Every writer is necessarily a critic -- that is, each sentence is a skeleton accompanied by enormous activity of rejection; and each selection is governed by general principles concerning truth, force, beauty, and so on. The critic that is in every fabulist is like the iceberg -- nine-tenths of him is under water.

Wilder, Thornton

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

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

Kundera, Milan

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

Lowell, James Russell

A louse in the locks of literature.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

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

One of the grotesqueries of present-day American life is the amount of reasoning that goes into displaying the wisdom secreted in bad movies while proving that modern art is meaningless. They have put into practice the notion that a bad art work cleverly interpreted according to some obscure Method is more rewarding than a masterpiece wrapped in silence.

Rosenberg, Harold

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

10.

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

11.

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs.

Hampton, Christopher

12.

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

13.

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

Helvetius, Claude A.

14.

One ought to examine himself for a very long time before thinking of condemning others.

Moliere

15.

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

Pope, Alexander

16.

Prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash but constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feeling whatever.

Orwell, George

17.

Nothing would improve newspaper criticism so much as the knowledge that it was to be read by men too hardy to acquiesce in the authoritative statement of the reviewer.

Hutton, R. H.

18.

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

Updike, John

19.

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

20.

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

21.

Any jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build it.

Rayburn, Sam

22.

Praise those of your critics for whom nothing is up to standard.

Hammarskjold, Dag

23.

The pleasure we feel in criticizing robs us from being moved by very beautiful things.

La Bruyere, Jean De

24.

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

Holtz, Lou

25.

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

Williams, Bern

26.

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

27.

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

Paz, Octavio

28.

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.

29.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

30.

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

31.

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

32.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

33.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

34.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

35.

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

36.

The text is merely one of the contexts of a piece of literature, its lexical or verbal one, no more or less important than the sociological, psychological, historical, anthropological or generic.

Fiedler, Leslie

37.

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

Nunn, Gregory

38.

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

Murdoch, Iris

39.

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

40.

Professional critics are incapable of distinguishing and appreciating either diamonds in the rough or gold in bars. They are traders, and in literature know only the coins that are current. Their critical lab has scales and weights, but neither crucible or touchstone.

Joubert, Joseph

41.

Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then it will gradually yield to him.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

42.

Let me walk three weeks in the footsteps of my enemy, carry the same burden, have the same trials as he, before I say one word to criticize.

43.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

44.

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

Aikman, Leo

45.