Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Mcluhan, Marshall

Best Quotes about Criticism

The avocation of assessing the failures of better men can be turned into a comfortable livelihood, providing you back it up with a Ph.D.

Algren, Nelson

There are two modes of criticism. One which crushes to earth without mercy all the humble buds of Phantasy, all the plants that, though green and fruitful, are also a prey to insects or have suffered by drought. It weeds well the garden, and cannot believe the weed in its native soil may be a pretty, graceful plant. There is another mode which enters into the natural history of every thing that breathes and lives, which believes no impulse to be entirely in vain, which scrutinizes circumstances, motive and object before it condemns, and believes there is a beauty in natural form, if its law and purpose be understood.

Fuller, Margaret

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

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

Johnson, Samuel

Let me walk three weeks in the footsteps of my enemy, carry the same burden, have the same trials as he, before I say one word to criticize.

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

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

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

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

10.

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

Lowell, James Russell

11.

A man must serve his time to every trade save censure -- critics all are ready made.

Byron, Lord

12.

Unless criticism refuses to take itself quite so seriously or at least to permit its readers not to, it will inevitably continue to reflect the finicky canons of the genteel tradition and the depressing pieties of the Culture Religion of Modernism.

Fiedler, Leslie

13.

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

14.

Never retract, never explain, never apologize; get things done and let them howl.

Mcclung, Nellie

15.

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

16.

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

Benjamin Disraeli

17.

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

Mascotte, John P.

18.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

19.

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

20.

If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.

Epictetus

21.

Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.

Fox, Dr. Emmit

22.

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

Hammarskjold, Dag

23.

A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.

Murdoch, Iris

24.

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

25.

If what they are saying about you is true, mend your ways. If it isn't true, forget it, and go on and serve the Lord.

Ironside, H. A.

26.

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

27.

There has never been a statue erected to honor a critic.

Ziglar, Zig

28.

A friend is a lot of things, but a critic isn't.

Williams, Bern

29.

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

30.

I demand that my books be judged with utmost severity, by knowledgeable people who know the rules of grammar and of logic, and who will seek beneath the footsteps of my commas the lice of my thought in the head of my style.

Aragon, Louis

31.

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

Updike, John

32.

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

Fielding, Henry

33.

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

34.

In an age of unscrupulous and shameless book-making, it is a duty to give notice of the rubbish that cumbers the ground. There is no credit, no real power required for this task. It is the work of an intellectual scavenger, and far from being specially honorable.

Hutton, R. H.

35.

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

36.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

37.

Self-laudation abounds among the unpolished, but nothing can stamp a man more sharply as ill-bred.

Buxton, Charles

38.

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.

Disraeli, Benjamin

39.

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

Smith, Sydney

40.

The biggest critics of my books are people who never read them.

Collins, Jackie

41.

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

42.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

43.

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

44.

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

45.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right. You'll be criticized anyway.

Roosevelt, Eleanor

46.

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

Schlegel, Friedrich

47.

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

Bible

48.

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

Nunn, Gregory

49.

A reader who quarrels with postulates, who dislikes Hamlet because he does not believe that there are ghosts or that people speak in pentameters, clearly has no business in literature. He cannot distinguish fiction from fact, and belongs in the same category as the people who send checks to radio stations for the relief of suffering heroines in soap operas.

Frye, Northrop

50.

I review novels to make money, because it is easier for a sluggard to write an article a fortnight than a book a year, because the writer is soothed by the opiate of action, the crank by posing as a good journalist, and having an air hole. I dislike it. I do it and I am always resolving to give it up.

Connolly, Cyril