Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Jones, Franklin P.

Best Quotes about Criticism

Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility.

Sontag, Susan

Never retract, never explain, never apologize; get things done and let them howl.

Mcclung, Nellie

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

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.

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

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

Hugo, Victor

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

Wilde, Oscar

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

Nunn, Gregory

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

10.

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

Costello, Elvis

11.

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

12.

We might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds when we read a book and feel an emotion about it, for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism.

Eliot, T. S.

13.

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

14.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

Eleanor Roosevelt

15.

No degree of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it fascinating.

Harold Rosenberg

16.

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

17.

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

Hoffman, Dustin

18.

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

Steinbeck, John

19.

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

20.

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

Jean Sibelius

21.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

22.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

23.

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

24.

Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.

Miller, Henry

25.

You should not say it is not good. You should say you do not like it; and then, you know, you're perfectly safe.

Whistler, James Mcneill

26.

Without the meditative background that is criticism, works become isolated gestures, historical accidents, soon forgotten.

Kundera, Milan

27.

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

Nolan, Sir Sidney

28.

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

29.

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

Bible

30.

If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.

Epictetus

31.

As a work of art it has the same status as a long conversation between two not very bright drunks.

James, Clive

32.

For if there is anything to one's praise, it is foolish vanity to be gratified at it, and if it is abuse -- why one is always sure to hear of it from one damned good-natured friend or another!

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

33.

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

34.

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

35.

Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews, to challenge every new author.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

36.

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

37.

Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much cherished aspect of academic freedom.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

38.

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

39.

A louse in the locks of literature.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

40.

One does not lash hat lies at a distance. The foibles that we ridicule must at least be a little bit our own. Only then will the work be a part of our own flesh. The garden must be weeded.

Klee, Paul

41.

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

Hampton, Christopher

42.

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

43.

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

44.

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

Cioran, E. M.

45.

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

46.

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

Buxton, Charles

47.

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

48.

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

Benjamin Disraeli

49.

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

50.

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