Motivational Quotes

Criticism

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

- Mayor, Federico

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

A critic is a man who knows the way, but can't drive the car.

Tynan, Kenneth

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

Richard Pryor

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

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

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

Johnson, Samuel

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

Steinbeck, John

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

Costello, Elvis

10.

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

11.

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

Flagg, Fannie

12.

We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which, in all times, with one or another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer without its scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and fall -- which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people.

Carlyle, Thomas

13.

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

Auden, W. H.

14.

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Updike, John

18.

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

Burns, Robert

19.

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

20.

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

Franklin P. Jones

21.

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

Smith, Sydney

22.

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

23.

Did some more sober critics come abroad? If wrong, I smil'd; if right, I kiss'd the rod.

Pope, Alexander

24.

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

25.

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

26.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

27.

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

28.

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

Mcluhan, Marshall

29.

The critical method which denies literary modernity would appear -- and even, in certain respects, would be -- the most modern of critical movements.

Man, Paul De

30.

In the arts, the critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising.

Kael, Pauline

31.

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

Bible

32.

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

33.

The literary critic, or the critic of any other specific form of artistic expression, may detach himself from the world for as long as the work of art he is contemplating appears to do the same.

James, Clive

34.

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

35.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

36.

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

Hammarskjold, Dag

37.

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

38.

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

France, Anatole

39.

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.

Christopher Hampton

40.

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

41.

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

42.

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

43.

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

Cocteau, Jean

44.

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

Helvetius, Claude A.

45.

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.