Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

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

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

Fuller, Margaret

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

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

Updike, John

It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

Woolf, Virginia

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

Moliere

No matter how well you perform there's always somebody of intelligent opinion who thinks it's lousy.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

10.

I never met anybody who said when they were a kid, "I wanna grow up and be a critic."

Richard Pryor

11.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

12.

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

Buxton, Charles

13.

The author himself is the best judge of his own performance; none has so deeply meditated on the subject; none is so sincerely interested in the event.

Gibbon, Edward

14.

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

15.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

16.

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

17.

Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.

Steinbeck, John

18.

Post-modernism has cut off the present from all futures. The daily media add to this by cutting off the past. Which means that critical opinion is often orphaned in the present.

Berger, John

19.

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

20.

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

Holtz, Lou

21.

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

22.

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

Smith, Sydney

23.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

24.

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

Schlegel, Friedrich

25.

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

26.

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

Paz, Octavio

27.

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture; it's a really stupid thing to want to do.

Costello, Elvis

28.

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

29.

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

Benjamin, Walter

30.

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

31.

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

32.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

33.

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

Nunn, Gregory

34.

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

35.

I demand that my books be judged with utmost severity, by knowledgeable people who know the rules of grammar and of logic, and who will seek beneath the footsteps of my commas the lice of my thought in the head of my style.

Aragon, Louis

36.

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

Proverb, Chinese

37.

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

Williams, Bern

38.

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.

39.

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

40.

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

41.

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

Hoffman, Dustin

42.

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

43.

Satire is often the reflection of a kind of moral nausea.

Briton, Crand

44.

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

Ziglar, Zig

45.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

46.

When the critics come around it's always too late.