Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Harold Rosenberg

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Native American Proverb

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

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.

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.

Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves.

Cioran, E. M.

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.

A louse in the locks of literature.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

Never retract, never explain, never apologize; get things done and let them howl.

Mcclung, Nellie

There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

10.

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

11.

The biggest critics of my books are people who never read them.

Collins, Jackie

12.

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

13.

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

14.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

15.

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

Hoffman, Dustin

16.

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

Aikman, Leo

17.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

18.

You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism.

Maugham, W. Somerset

19.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

20.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

21.

I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.

Thoreau, Henry David

22.

As a work of art it has the same status as a long conversation between two not very bright drunks.

James, Clive

23.

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

24.

All the critics who could not make their reputations by discovering you are hoping to make them by predicting hopefully your approaching impotence, failure and general drying up of natural juices. Not a one will wish you luck or hope that you will keep on writing unless you have political affiliations in which case these will rally around and speak of you and Homer, Balzac, Zola and Link Steffens.

Hemingway, Ernest

25.

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

26.

Not even the most powerful organs of the press, including Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times, can discover a new artist or certify his work and make it stick. They can only bring you the scores.

Wolfe, Thomas

27.

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

28.

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

29.

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

30.

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

Flagg, Fannie

31.

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

32.

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

France, Anatole

33.

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

Christopher Hampton

34.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

35.

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

36.

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

37.

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

Rayburn, Sam

38.

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

West, Rebecca

39.

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

Gourmont, Remy De

40.

What we ask of him is, that he should find out for us more than we can find out for ourselves. He must have the passion of a lover.

Symons, Arthur

41.

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

42.

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

43.

There are two modes of criticism. One which crushes to earth without mercy all the humble buds of Phantasy, all the plants that, though green and fruitful, are also a prey to insects or have suffered by drought. It weeds well the garden, and cannot believe the weed in its native soil may be a pretty, graceful plant. There is another mode which enters into the natural history of every thing that breathes and lives, which believes no impulse to be entirely in vain, which scrutinizes circumstances, motive and object before it condemns, and believes there is a beauty in natural form, if its law and purpose be understood.

Fuller, Margaret

44.

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

Nunn, Gregory

45.

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

46.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

47.

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

Little, Lynn M.

48.

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

49.

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

Proverb, Chinese

50.

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

Mcluhan, Marshall