Motivational Quotes

Criticism

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

- Mayor, Federico

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Kundera, Milan

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

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

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

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

They will say you are on the wrong road, if it is your own.

Porchia, Antonio

When everyone is against you, it means you are absolutely wrong -- or you are absolutely right.

Guinon, Albert

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

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

Pollock, Channing

10.

The text is merely one of the contexts of a piece of literature, its lexical or verbal one, no more or less important than the sociological, psychological, historical, anthropological or generic.

Fiedler, Leslie

11.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

12.

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

13.

Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.

Fox, Dr. Emmit

14.

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

15.

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

16.

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

Steinbeck, John

17.

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

Johnson, Samuel

18.

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

Raphael, Frederic

19.

Give me the critic bred in Nature's school, who neither talks by rote, nor thinks by rule; who feeling's honest dictates still obeys, and dares, without a precedent, to praise.

Shee, Sir Martin Archer

20.

It is very perplexing how an intrepid frontier people, who fought a wilderness, floods, tornadoes, and the Rockies, cower before criticism, which is regarded as a malignant tumor in the imagination.

Dahlberg, Edward

21.

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

Mascotte, John P.

22.

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

Updike, John

23.

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

24.

The pleasure we feel in criticizing robs us from being moved by very beautiful things.

La Bruyere, Jean De

25.

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

26.

Most of us are umpires at heart; we like to call balls and strikes on somebody else.

Aikman, Leo

27.

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

28.

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

Steinbeck, John

29.

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

30.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

31.

A negative judgment gives you more satisfaction than praise, provided it smacks of jealousy.

Baudrillard, Jean

32.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

33.

Not even the most powerful organs of the press, including Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times, can discover a new artist or certify his work and make it stick. They can only bring you the scores.

Wolfe, Thomas

34.

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

35.

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

36.

We might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds when we read a book and feel an emotion about it, for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism.

Eliot, T. S.

37.

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

Auden, W. H.

38.

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

West, Rebecca

39.

If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water's edge

Hill, Napoleon

40.

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.

Johnson, Samuel

41.

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

Churchill, Charles

42.

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

Proverb, Chinese

43.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

44.

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

45.

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

46.

Take heed of critics even when they are not fair; resist them even when they are.

Rostand, Jean

47.

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

48.

In judging others, folks will work overtime for no pay.

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

49.

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

50.

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