Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

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

Steinbeck, John

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

Updike, John

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.

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

Native American Proverb

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

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

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

A critic is a man who knows the way, but can't drive the car.

Tynan, Kenneth

10.

That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one's own soul. It is more fascinating than history, as it is concerned simply with oneself. It is more delightful than philosophy, as its subject is concrete and not abstract, real and not vague. It is the only civilized form of autobiography.

Wilde, Oscar

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Murdoch, Iris

14.

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

Hampton, Christopher

15.

Culture is only true when implicitly critical, and the mind which forgets this revenges itself in the critics it breeds. Criticism is an indispensable element of culture.

Adorno, Theodor W.

16.

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

Raphael, Frederic

17.

We have been educated to such a fine -- or dull -- point that we are incapable of enjoying something new, something different, until we are first told what it's all about. We don't trust our five senses; we rely on our critics and educators, all of whom are failures in the realm of creation. In short, the blind lead the blind. It's the democratic way.

Miller, Henry

18.

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

Byron, Lord

19.

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

20.

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

Fuller, Margaret

21.

I remember when I was in college, people told me I couldn't play in the NBA. There's always somebody saying you can't do it, and those people have to be ignored.

Cartwright, Bill

22.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

23.

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

24.

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

Bible

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Gourmont, Remy De

29.

Take heed of critics even when they are not fair; resist them even when they are.

Rostand, Jean

30.

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

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

31.

Criticism of others is futile and if you indulge in it often you should be warned that it can be fatal to your career.

Carnegie, Dale

32.

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

Smith, Sydney

33.

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

Collins, Jackie

34.

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

Paz, Octavio

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.

The rule in carving holds good as to criticism; never cut with a knife what you can cut with a spoon.

Buxton, Charles

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Conrad, Joseph

41.

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

Cioran, E. M.

42.

Pay no attention to what the critics say... Remember, a statue has never been set up in honor of a critic!

Jean Sibelius

43.

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.

44.

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

Williams, Bern

45.

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

46.

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

47.

It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.

Baudelaire, Charles

48.

Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works.

Keats, John

49.

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

Ziglar, Zig

50.

The best criticism doesn't trap an employee or child in a dead end. It gives them an escape route.