Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Helvetius, Claude A.

Best Quotes about Criticism

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

Wilde, Oscar

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

Helvetius, Claude A.

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

Mizner, Wilson

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

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.

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

Mcluhan, Marshall

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

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

Hugo, Victor

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

Smith, Sydney

10.

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

11.

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.

Disraeli, Benjamin

12.

The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most part, they are manifestations of his debate with himself as to what he should do next and what he should avoid.

Auden, W. H.

13.

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

Elbert Hubbard

14.

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

Paz, Octavio

15.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

16.

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

Nunn, Gregory

17.

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

Holtz, Lou

18.

Literary criticism can be no more than a reasoned account of the feeling produced upon the critic by the book he is criticizing. Criticism can never be a science: it is, in the first place, much too personal, and in the second, it is concerned with values that science ignores. The touchstone is emotion, not reason. We judge a work of art by its effect on our sincere and vital emotion, and nothing else. All the critical twiddle-twaddle about style and form, all this pseudoscientific classifying and analyzing of books in an imitation-botanical fashion, is mere impertinence and mostly dull jargon.

Lawrence, D. H.

19.

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

Jones, Franklin P.

20.

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

21.

Abuse if you slight it, will gradually die away; but if you show yourself irritated, you will be thought to have deserved it.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

22.

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

Byron, Lord

23.

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

Proverb, Chinese

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Updike, John

27.

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

28.

A negative judgment gives you more satisfaction than praise, provided it smacks of jealousy.

Baudrillard, Jean

29.

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

Porchia, Antonio

30.

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

Kael, Pauline

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

34.

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

35.

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

Fuller, Margaret

36.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

37.

In an age of unscrupulous and shameless book-making, it is a duty to give notice of the rubbish that cumbers the ground. There is no credit, no real power required for this task. It is the work of an intellectual scavenger, and far from being specially honorable.

Hutton, R. H.

38.

The television critic, whatever his pretensions, does not labor in the same vineyard as those he criticizes; his grapes are all sour.

Raphael, Frederic

39.

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

40.

There are two insults no human will endure. The assertion that he has no sense of humor and the doubly impertinent assertion that he has never known trouble.

Lewis, Sinclair

41.

Criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters.

Conrad, Joseph

42.

The literary critic, or the critic of any other specific form of artistic expression, may detach himself from the world for as long as the work of art he is contemplating appears to do the same.

James, Clive

43.

There has never been a statue erected to honor a critic.

Ziglar, Zig

44.

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

Steinbeck, John

45.

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

46.

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

Burns, Robert

47.

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

Rayburn, Sam

48.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

49.

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?