Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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.

Best Quotes about Criticism

Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world -- in order to set up a shadow world of meanings.

Sontag, Susan

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

Hampton, Christopher

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

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

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

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

Benjamin, Walter

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

Recognize the cunning man not by the corpses he pays homage to but by the living writers he conspires against with the most shameful weapon, Silence, or the briefest review.

Dahlberg, Edward

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

10.

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

11.

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

12.

We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which, in all times, with one or another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer without its scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and fall -- which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people.

Carlyle, Thomas

13.

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

Nunn, Gregory

14.

Be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath.

Bible

15.

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

16.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

17.

If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.

Franklin, Benjamin

18.

Unlike other people, our reviewers are powerful because they believe in nothing.

Clurman, Harold

19.

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

20.

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

Burns, Robert

21.

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

22.

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

Lowell, James Russell

23.

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

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

24.

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

Flagg, Fannie

25.

Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.

Lawrence, D. H.

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Buxton, Charles

29.

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

Steinbeck, John

30.

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

Pope, Alexander

31.

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

32.

I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.

Pound, Ezra

33.

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

34.

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

Briton, Crand

35.

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

Williams, Bern

36.

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

37.

Of course you're always at liberty to judge the critic. Judge people as critics, however, and you'll condemn them all!

James, Henry

38.

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

39.

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

40.

The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion.

Benjamin, Walter

41.

Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

42.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

43.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

44.

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

45.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

49.

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

50.

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

Hubbard, Elbert