Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

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

Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.

Lawrence, D. H.

No matter how well you perform there's always somebody of intelligent opinion who thinks it's lousy.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.

Fox, Dr. Emmit

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

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

Hill, Napoleon

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

France, Anatole

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

10.

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

Nunn, Gregory

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

14.

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

15.

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

16.

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

Kurt Vonnegut

17.

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

Briton, Crand

18.

A man generally has the good or ill qualities he attributes to mankind.

Shenstone, William

19.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

20.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

21.

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

22.

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

Franklin P. Jones

23.

Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do criticize him, you'll be a mile away and have his shoes.

24.

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

Mcluhan, Marshall

25.

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

Updike, John

26.

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

Benjamin, Walter

27.

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

West, Rebecca

28.

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.

29.

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

Rayburn, Sam

30.

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

Byron, Lord

31.

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

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

32.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

33.

No man ever got very high by pulling other people down. The intelligent merchant does not knock his competitors. The sensible worker does not work those who work with him. Don't knock your friends. Don't knock your enemies. Don't knock yourself.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

34.

Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as men's judgments of one another.

Erasmus, Desiderius

35.

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.

36.

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

37.

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

38.

A good review from the critics is just another stay of execution.

Hoffman, Dustin

39.

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

Lowell, James Russell

40.

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

41.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

Eleanor Roosevelt

42.

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

Paz, Octavio

43.

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

Epictetus

44.

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

Elbert Hubbard

45.

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

Fuller, Margaret

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

49.

Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain - and most fools do.

Dale Carnegie

50.

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

Bible