Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Kael, Pauline

Best Quotes about Criticism

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.

Johnson, Samuel

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

Turner, Ted

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

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

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

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

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

W. H. Auden

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

The great critic must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.

Maugham, W. Somerset

10.

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

Benjamin, Walter

11.

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

12.

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

Auden, W. H.

13.

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

14.

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

15.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

16.

Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.

Johnson, Samuel

17.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

18.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Burns, Robert

22.

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

23.

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

Hugo, Victor

24.

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

25.

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

Tynan, Kenneth

26.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

27.

A negative judgment gives you more satisfaction than praise, provided it smacks of jealousy.

Baudrillard, Jean

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

31.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

32.

Doubtless criticism was originally benignant, pointing out the beauties of a work rather that its defects. The passions of men have made it malignant, as a bad heart of Procreates turned the bed, the symbol of repose, into an instrument of torture.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

33.

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

Pollock, Channing

34.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

35.

Most of us are umpires at heart; we like to call balls and strikes on somebody else.

Aikman, Leo

36.

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

37.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

38.

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

39.

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

Franklin P. Jones

40.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

41.

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

Steinbeck, John

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

45.

Any jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build it.

Rayburn, Sam

46.

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

Wilde, Oscar

47.

Do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend's forehead.

Proverb, Chinese

48.

It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one's children will become than for the children one's mature critics often are.