Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

Best Quotes about Criticism

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.

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

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

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

France, Anatole

Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

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

Costello, Elvis

We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.

Beecher, Henry Ward

In judging others, folks will work overtime for no pay.

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

10.

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

Tynan, Kenneth

11.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

12.

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

Franklin P. Jones

13.

Professional critics are incapable of distinguishing and appreciating either diamonds in the rough or gold in bars. They are traders, and in literature know only the coins that are current. Their critical lab has scales and weights, but neither crucible or touchstone.

Joubert, Joseph

14.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

15.

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

Burns, Robert

16.

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

Elbert Hubbard

17.

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.

18.

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

Turner, Ted

19.

Literary criticism can be no more than a reasoned account of the feeling produced upon the critic by the book he is criticizing. Criticism can never be a science: it is, in the first place, much too personal, and in the second, it is concerned with values that science ignores. The touchstone is emotion, not reason. We judge a work of art by its effect on our sincere and vital emotion, and nothing else. All the critical twiddle-twaddle about style and form, all this pseudoscientific classifying and analyzing of books in an imitation-botanical fashion, is mere impertinence and mostly dull jargon.

Lawrence, D. H.

20.

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.

21.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

22.

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

23.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

24.

Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than native genius. In the hands of a man who has read widely but lacks judgment, applied to certain subjects it can corrupt both its readers and the writer himself.

Bruyere, Jean De La

25.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

26.

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

Gourmont, Remy De

27.

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

28.

Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!

Meir, Golda

29.

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

Ziglar, Zig

30.

He cannot be strict in judging, who does not wish others to be strict judges of himself.

Cicero, Marcus T.

31.

Most critical writing is drivel and half of it is dishonest. It is a short cut to oblivion, anyway. Thinking in terms of ideas destroys the power to think in terms of emotions and sensations.

Chandler, Raymond

32.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

33.

Did some more sober critics come abroad? If wrong, I smil'd; if right, I kiss'd the rod.

Pope, Alexander

34.

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

35.

Though by whim, envy, or resentment led, they damn those authors whom they never read.

Churchill, Charles

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.

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

Kundera, Milan

38.

What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.

Cocteau, Jean

39.

To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession, to establish in fine a relation with the criticized thing and to make it one's own.

James, Henry

40.

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

Rayburn, Sam

41.

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

West, Rebecca

42.

A drama critic is a person who surprises the playwright by informing him what he meant.

Mizner, Wilson

43.

You know lots of criticism is written by characters who are very academic and think it is a sign you are worthless if you make jokes or kid or even clown. I wouldn't kid Our Lord if he was on the cross. But I would attempt a joke with him if I ran into him chasing the money changers out of the temple.

Hemingway, Ernest

44.

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

Lowell, James Russell

45.

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

Sontag, Susan

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Aikman, Leo

49.

Of course you're always at liberty to judge the critic. Judge people as critics, however, and you'll condemn them all!

James, Henry

50.

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

Jean Sibelius