Motivational Quotes

Criticism

If I care to listen to every criticism, let alone act on them, then this shop may as well be closed for all other businesses. I have learned to do my best, and if the end result is good then I do not care for any criticism, but if the end result is not good, then even the praise of ten angels would not make the difference.

- Lincoln, Abraham

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

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

Steinbeck, John

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

A louse in the locks of literature.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

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

Rayburn, Sam

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

Kundera, Milan

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

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

10.

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

11.

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

Updike, John

12.

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

Kurt Vonnegut

13.

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

14.

The biggest critics of my books are people who never read them.

Collins, Jackie

15.

A friend is a lot of things, but a critic isn't.

Williams, Bern

16.

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

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.

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

19.

In reality, the world have paid too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them men of much greater profundity than they really are.

Fielding, Henry

20.

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

West, Rebecca

21.

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

22.

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.

Walker, Alice

23.

If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water's edge

Hill, Napoleon

24.

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

25.

The greatest honor that can be paid to the work of art, on its pedestal of ritual display, is to describe it with sensory completeness. We need a science of description. Criticism is ceremonial revivification.

Paglia, Camille

26.

Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world -- in order to set up a shadow world of meanings.

Sontag, Susan

27.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

28.

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

29.

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

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

30.

Temperament is the primary requisite for the critic -- a temperament exquisitely susceptible to beauty, and to the various impressions that beauty gives us.

Wilde, Oscar

31.

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

32.

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

Ziglar, Zig

33.

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

34.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.

35.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

36.

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

37.

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

Mizner, Wilson

38.

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

Moliere

39.

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

Little, Lynn M.

40.

Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then it will gradually yield to him.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

41.

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.

42.

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

Jones, Franklin P.

43.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

44.

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

45.

A good review from the critics is just another stay of execution.

Hoffman, Dustin

46.

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

47.

They will say you are on the wrong road, if it is your own.

Porchia, Antonio

48.

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

49.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

50.

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

Jean Sibelius