Motivational Quotes

Criticism

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

- Mayor, Federico

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

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

Mcluhan, Marshall

Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much cherished aspect of academic freedom.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

Doubtless criticism was originally benignant, pointing out the beauties of a work rather that its defects. The passions of men have made it malignant, as a bad heart of Procreates turned the bed, the symbol of repose, into an instrument of torture.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

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

Gourmont, Remy De

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

Costello, Elvis

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

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

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

10.

I know I'm never as good or bad as one single performance. I've never believed in my critics or my worshippers, and I've always been able to leave the game at the arena.

Barkley, Charles

11.

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

12.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

13.

Though by whim, envy, or resentment led, they damn those authors whom they never read.

Churchill, Charles

14.

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

15.

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

16.

The best criticism doesn't trap an employee or child in a dead end. It gives them an escape route.

17.

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

18.

Most of our censure of others is only oblique praise of self, uttered to show the wisdom and superiority of the speaker. It has all the invidiousness of self-praise, and all the ill-desert of falsehood.

Edwards, Tryon

19.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

20.

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

Mizner, Wilson

21.

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

Paz, Octavio

22.

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

23.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

24.

Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.

Benjamin, Walter

25.

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

Steinbeck, John

26.

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

Nolan, Sir Sidney

27.

Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works.

Keats, John

28.

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

29.

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

Burns, Robert

30.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

31.

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

Wilde, Oscar

32.

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.

33.

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

34.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

35.

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

West, Rebecca

36.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

37.

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

38.

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

Franklin P. Jones

39.

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

40.

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

41.

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

42.

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

Proverb, Chinese

43.

To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession, to establish in fine a relation with the criticized thing and to make it one's own.

James, Henry

44.

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.

45.

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

46.

If you burn your neighbors house down, it doesn't make your house look any better.

Holtz, Lou

47.

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

Flagg, Fannie

48.

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