Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Richard Pryor

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

Johnson, Samuel

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

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

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

Nunn, Gregory

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

In an age of unscrupulous and shameless book-making, it is a duty to give notice of the rubbish that cumbers the ground. There is no credit, no real power required for this task. It is the work of an intellectual scavenger, and far from being specially honorable.

Hutton, R. H.

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

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

France, Anatole

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Harold Rosenberg

14.

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

Dale Carnegie

15.

Take heed of critics even when they are not fair; resist them even when they are.

Rostand, Jean

16.

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

Bible

17.

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

18.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

19.

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

20.

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

21.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Mcluhan, Marshall

25.

Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do criticize him, you'll be a mile away and have his shoes.

26.

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

27.

Critics are usually kinder to cheaper movies than to those they perceive to be big Hollywood releases. They cut you a lot more slack if you spend less money, which makes no sense.

Coen, Ethan

28.

The easiest thing a human being can do is to criticize another human being.

Little, Lynn M.

29.

Not even the most powerful organs of the press, including Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times, can discover a new artist or certify his work and make it stick. They can only bring you the scores.

Wolfe, Thomas

30.

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

Lowell, James Russell

31.

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.

32.

Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world -- though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst -- the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!

Sterne, Laurence

33.

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

Wilde, Oscar

34.

Praise those of your critics for whom nothing is up to standard.

Hammarskjold, Dag

35.

Every writer is necessarily a critic -- that is, each sentence is a skeleton accompanied by enormous activity of rejection; and each selection is governed by general principles concerning truth, force, beauty, and so on. The critic that is in every fabulist is like the iceberg -- nine-tenths of him is under water.

Wilder, Thornton

36.

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

37.

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

Native American Proverb

38.

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

Updike, John

39.

Let us consider the critic, therefore, as a discoverer of discoveries.

Kundera, Milan

40.

A man must serve his time to every trade save censure -- critics all are ready made.

Byron, Lord

41.

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

42.

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

43.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

44.

People want you to be a crazy, out-of-control teen brat. They want you miserable, just like them. They don't want heroes; what they want is to see you fall.

DiCaprio, Leonardo

45.

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

Cioran, E. M.

46.

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

47.

Harsh counsels have no effect; they are like hammers which are always repulsed by the anvil.

Helvetius, Claude A.

48.

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

49.

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

Epictetus

50.

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

James, Henry