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

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

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

Nolan, Sir Sidney

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

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

Christopher Hampton

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

Lowell, James Russell

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

France, Anatole

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

10.

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

Kael, Pauline

11.

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

Cioran, E. M.

12.

The text is merely one of the contexts of a piece of literature, its lexical or verbal one, no more or less important than the sociological, psychological, historical, anthropological or generic.

Fiedler, Leslie

13.

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

14.

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

W. H. Auden

15.

A louse in the locks of literature.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

16.

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

17.

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

18.

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

19.

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

West, Rebecca

20.

Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

21.

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

22.

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

Native American Proverb

23.

Each generation produces its squad of moderns with peashooters to attack Gibraltar.

Pollock, Channing

24.

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

25.

Prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash but constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feeling whatever.

Orwell, George

26.

On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one's mind. It becomes a pleasure.

Wilde, Oscar

27.

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

Buxton, Charles

28.

When I am abroad, I always make it a rule to never criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.

Churchill, Winston

29.

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

Buxton, Charles

30.

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

31.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

32.

In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable.

Sontag, Susan

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Clurman, Harold

36.

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

37.

I review novels to make money, because it is easier for a sluggard to write an article a fortnight than a book a year, because the writer is soothed by the opiate of action, the crank by posing as a good journalist, and having an air hole. I dislike it. I do it and I am always resolving to give it up.

Connolly, Cyril

38.

Writing prejudicial, off-putting reviews is a precise exercise in applied black magic. The reviewer can draw free-floating disagreeable associations to a book by implying that the book is completely unimportant without saying exactly why, and carefully avoiding any clear images that could capture the reader's full attention.

Burroughs, William S.

39.

People want you to be a crazy, out-of-control teen brat. They want you miserable, just like them. They don't want heroes; what they want is to see you fall.

DiCaprio, Leonardo

40.

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

Elbert Hubbard

41.

God knows people who are paid to have attitudes toward things, professional critics, make me sick; camp following eunuchs of literature. They won't even whore. They're all virtuous and sterile. And how well meaning and high minded. But they're all camp followers.

Hemingway, Ernest

42.

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

Holtz, Lou

43.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

44.

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

45.

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?

Slater, Christian

46.

Unless criticism refuses to take itself quite so seriously or at least to permit its readers not to, it will inevitably continue to reflect the finicky canons of the genteel tradition and the depressing pieties of the Culture Religion of Modernism.

Fiedler, Leslie

47.

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

48.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.

49.

All my life people have said that I wasn't going to make it.

Turner, Ted

50.

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