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Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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
Criticism Motivational Quotes



Best Quotes about Criticism

1.
A man generally has the good or ill qualities he attributes to mankind.
Shenstone, William

2.
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

3.
A reader who quarrels with postulates, who dislikes Hamlet because he does not believe that there are ghosts or that people speak in pentameters, clearly has no business in literature. He cannot distinguish fiction from fact, and belongs in the same category as the people who send checks to radio stations for the relief of suffering heroines in soap operas.
Frye, Northrop

4.
I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works. An assault upon a town is a bad thing; but starving it is still worse.
Johnson, Samuel

5.
Essays, entitled critical, are epistles addressed to the public, through which the mind of the recluse relieves itself of its impressions.
Fuller, Margaret

6.
We have been educated to such a fine -- or dull -- point that we are incapable of enjoying something new, something different, until we are first told what it's all about. We don't trust our five senses; we rely on our critics and educators, all of whom are failures in the realm of creation. In short, the blind lead the blind. It's the democratic way.
Miller, Henry

7.
In judging others, folks will work overtime for no pay.
Carruthers, Charles Edwin

8.
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

9.
In my conscience I believe the baggage loves me, for she never speaks well of me herself, nor suffers any body else to rail at me.
Congreve, William

10.
Without the meditative background that is criticism, works become isolated gestures, historical accidents, soon forgotten.
Kundera, Milan

11.
Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.
Miller, Henry

12.
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

13.
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.

14.
If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.
Epictetus

15.
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

16.
To avoid criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.
Elbert Hubbard

17.
Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.
Lawrence, D. H.

18.
Do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend's forehead.
Proverb, Chinese

19.
Pay no attention to what the critics say... Remember, a statue has never been set up in honor of a critic!
Jean Sibelius

20.
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

21.
In the arts, the critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising.
Kael, Pauline

22.
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

23.
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

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.
Blame is safer than praise.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo

26.
The rule in carving holds good as to criticism; never cut with a knife what you can cut with a spoon.
Buxton, Charles

27.
Abuse if you slight it, will gradually die away; but if you show yourself irritated, you will be thought to have deserved it.
Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

28.
Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs.
Picasso, Pablo

29.
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

30.
No matter how well you perform there's always somebody of intelligent opinion who thinks it's lousy.
Olivier, Sir Lawrence

31.
Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.
Steinbeck, John

32.
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

33.
Those who can -- do. Those who can't -- criticize.

34.
Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject; bad critical writing by the necessity of maintaining the professional standing of the critic.
Chandler, Raymond

35.
I never met anybody who said when they were a kid, "I wanna grow up and be a critic."
Richard Pryor

36.
The dread of criticism is the death of genius.
Simms, William Gilmore

37.
A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time. A great drama critic also perceives what is not happening.
Tynan, Kenneth

38.
Harsh counsels have no effect; they are like hammers which are always repulsed by the anvil.
Helvetius, Claude A.

39.
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

40.
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

41.
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

42.
Never make the mistake of assuming the critters will beat a path to your door.
Mascotte, John P.

43.
It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.
Disraeli, Benjamin

44.
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

45.
Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.
West, Rebecca

46.
The easiest thing a human being can do is to criticize another human being.
Little, Lynn M.

47.
Never retract, never explain, never apologize; get things done and let them howl.
Mcclung, Nellie

48.
Take heed of critics even when they are not fair; resist them even when they are.
Rostand, Jean

49.
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

50.
Remember if people talk behind your back, it only means you're two steps ahead!
Flagg, Fannie


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