Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Maugham, W. Somerset

Best Quotes about Criticism

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as men's judgments of one another.

Erasmus, Desiderius

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

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

Cioran, E. M.

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

James, Henry

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

France, Anatole

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

Flagg, Fannie

You should never assume contempt for that which it is not very manifest that you have it in your power to possess, nor does a wit ever make a more contemptible figure than when, in attempting satire, he shows that he does not understand that which he would make the subject of his ridicule.

Melbourne, Lord

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

Sontag, Susan

10.

No sadder proof can be given of a person's own tiny stature, than their disbelief in great people.

Carlyle, Thomas

11.

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

Nunn, Gregory

12.

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

13.

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.

14.

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

15.

Some people are always critical of vague statements. I tend rather to be critical of precise statements; they are the only ones which can correctly be labeled wrong.

Smullyan, Raymond

16.

A critic is a reader who ruminates. Thus, he should have more than one stomach.

Schlegel, Friedrich

17.

Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

18.

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

19.

Criticism of others is futile and if you indulge in it often you should be warned that it can be fatal to your career.

Carnegie, Dale

20.

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.

21.

The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure.

Wilde, Oscar

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Moliere

25.

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

Hammarskjold, Dag

26.

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

27.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

28.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

29.

Unlike other people, our reviewers are powerful because they believe in nothing.

Clurman, Harold

30.

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.

31.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

32.

A louse in the locks of literature.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

33.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

34.

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

Nolan, Sir Sidney

35.

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

Costello, Elvis

36.

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

37.

After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them and invent others.

Edith Wharton

38.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

39.

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

Pollock, Channing

40.

A man generally has the good or ill qualities he attributes to mankind.

Shenstone, William

41.

A film is just like a muffin. You make it. You put it on the table. One person might say, Oh, I don't like it. One might say it's the best muffin ever made. One might say it's an awful muffin. It's hard for me to say. It's for me to make the muffin.

Washington, Denzel

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

45.

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

46.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

47.

One of the grotesqueries of present-day American life is the amount of reasoning that goes into displaying the wisdom secreted in bad movies while proving that modern art is meaningless. They have put into practice the notion that a bad art work cleverly interpreted according to some obscure Method is more rewarding than a masterpiece wrapped in silence.

Rosenberg, Harold

48.

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

Steinbeck, John

49.

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

Native American Proverb

50.

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

Lowell, James Russell