Motivational Quotes

Criticism

Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews, to challenge every new author.

- Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Cocteau, Jean

What we ask of him is, that he should find out for us more than we can find out for ourselves. He must have the passion of a lover.

Symons, Arthur

When subjected to the rain of criticism, let?s not curse the rain. Let?s accept it as a part of life. Let?s remember that the more criticism we can successfully handle, the more zest we will experience in our lives.

Sinha, Shall

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

Burns, Robert

In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable.

Sontag, Susan

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

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

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

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.

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

11.

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

Pollock, Channing

12.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

13.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

14.

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

15.

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

16.

When the critics come around it's always too late.

Nolan, Sir Sidney

17.

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

18.

Criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters.

Conrad, Joseph

19.

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

Little, Lynn M.

20.

Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

21.

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

Nunn, Gregory

22.

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

23.

Social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings.

Paz, Octavio

24.

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

Mcclung, Nellie

25.

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

Kundera, Milan

26.

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

27.

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

Jean Sibelius

28.

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

29.

It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.

Baudelaire, Charles

30.

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

31.

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

Rayburn, Sam

32.

Satire is often the reflection of a kind of moral nausea.

Briton, Crand

33.

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

Steinbeck, John

34.

Self-laudation abounds among the unpolished, but nothing can stamp a man more sharply as ill-bred.

Buxton, Charles

35.

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.

36.

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

Mizner, Wilson

37.

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs.

Hampton, Christopher

38.

I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.

Thoreau, Henry David

39.

Never make the mistake of assuming the critters will beat a path to your door.

Mascotte, John P.

40.

It is just as hard to do your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shouting at you.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

41.

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

Gourmont, Remy De

42.

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

43.

On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one's mind. It becomes a pleasure.

Wilde, Oscar

44.

Culture is only true when implicitly critical, and the mind which forgets this revenges itself in the critics it breeds. Criticism is an indispensable element of culture.

Adorno, Theodor W.

45.

Reviewers are usually people who would have been, poets, historians, biographer, if they could. They have tried their talents at one thing or another and have failed; therefore they turn critic.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

46.

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

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

47.

A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.

Murdoch, Iris

48.

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

Proverb, Chinese

49.

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