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

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

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

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

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

Burns, Robert

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

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.

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

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

Cioran, E. M.

Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain - and most fools do.

Dale Carnegie

10.

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

11.

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

Murdoch, Iris

12.

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

Pollock, Channing

13.

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

Epictetus

14.

Never make the mistake of assuming the critters will beat a path to your door.

Mascotte, John P.

15.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

16.

It is critical vision alone which can mitigate the unimpeded operation of the automatic.

Mcluhan, Marshall

17.

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

Moliere

18.

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

West, Rebecca

19.

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

20.

Give me the critic bred in Nature's school, who neither talks by rote, nor thinks by rule; who feeling's honest dictates still obeys, and dares, without a precedent, to praise.

Shee, Sir Martin Archer

21.

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

22.

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

Ziglar, Zig

23.

Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

24.

There are two modes of criticism. One which crushes to earth without mercy all the humble buds of Phantasy, all the plants that, though green and fruitful, are also a prey to insects or have suffered by drought. It weeds well the garden, and cannot believe the weed in its native soil may be a pretty, graceful plant. There is another mode which enters into the natural history of every thing that breathes and lives, which believes no impulse to be entirely in vain, which scrutinizes circumstances, motive and object before it condemns, and believes there is a beauty in natural form, if its law and purpose be understood.

Fuller, Margaret

25.

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

Steinbeck, John

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Kael, Pauline

29.

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

Jean Sibelius

30.

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

31.

The avocation of assessing the failures of better men can be turned into a comfortable livelihood, providing you back it up with a Ph.D.

Algren, Nelson

32.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

33.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

34.

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

Fuller, Margaret

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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.

39.

It is impossible to think of a man of any actual force and originality, universally recognized as having those qualities, who spent his whole life appraising and describing the work of other men.

Mencken, H. L.

40.

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

Native American Proverb

41.

The person of analytic or critical intellect finds something ridiculous in everything. The person of synthetic or constructive intellect, in almost nothing.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

42.

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

43.

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

France, Anatole

44.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

45.

Nothing would improve newspaper criticism so much as the knowledge that it was to be read by men too hardy to acquiesce in the authoritative statement of the reviewer.

Hutton, R. H.

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Conrad, Joseph

49.

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

50.

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

Wilde, Oscar