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

All my life people have said that I wasn't going to make it.

Turner, Ted

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

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

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

When I am abroad, I always make it a rule to never criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.

Churchill, Winston

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

Burns, Robert

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

If I make a move, like raise my eyebrows, some critic says I'm doing Nicholson. What am I supposed to do, cut off my eyebrows?

Slater, Christian

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

10.

Prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash but constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feeling whatever.

Orwell, George

11.

To avoid criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.

Elbert Hubbard

12.

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

Little, Lynn M.

13.

Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.

Fox, Dr. Emmit

14.

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

Costello, Elvis

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Kundera, Milan

18.

It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

Woolf, Virginia

19.

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

Rayburn, Sam

20.

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

Briton, Crand

21.

I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so.

Smith, Sydney

22.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

23.

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

24.

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

25.

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.

Hubbard, Elbert

26.

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

Fuller, Margaret

27.

The television critic, whatever his pretensions, does not labor in the same vineyard as those he criticizes; his grapes are all sour.

Raphael, Frederic

28.

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

29.

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

Richard Pryor

30.

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

Schlegel, Friedrich

31.

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

Henry Fielding

32.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

33.

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

West, Rebecca

34.

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

35.

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

France, Anatole

36.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

37.

Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge ourselves with railing against it.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

38.

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

Auden, W. H.

39.

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

40.

If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.

Franklin, Benjamin

41.

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

42.

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

43.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

44.

As a work of art it has the same status as a long conversation between two not very bright drunks.

James, Clive

45.

You're never s good as everyone tells you when you win, and you're never as bad as they say when you lose.

Holtz, Lou

46.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

47.

Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!

Meir, Golda

48.

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

49.

The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most part, they are manifestations of his debate with himself as to what he should do next and what he should avoid.

Auden, W. H.

50.

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

Harold Rosenberg