Motivational Quotes

Criticism

I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.

- Pound, Ezra

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

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

Aikman, Leo

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

Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world -- though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst -- the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!

Sterne, Laurence

Every writer is necessarily a critic -- that is, each sentence is a skeleton accompanied by enormous activity of rejection; and each selection is governed by general principles concerning truth, force, beauty, and so on. The critic that is in every fabulist is like the iceberg -- nine-tenths of him is under water.

Wilder, Thornton

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

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe

10.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

11.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

12.

A louse in the locks of literature.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

13.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.

14.

It is wrong to be harsh with the New York critics, unless one admits in the same breath that it is a condition of their existence that they should write entertainingly about something which is rarely worth writing about at all.

Chandler, Raymond

15.

A film is just like a muffin. You make it. You put it on the table. One person might say, Oh, I don't like it. One might say it's the best muffin ever made. One might say it's an awful muffin. It's hard for me to say. It's for me to make the muffin.

Washington, Denzel

16.

It is impossible to think of a man of any actual force and originality, universally recognized as having those qualities, who spent his whole life appraising and describing the work of other men.

Mencken, H. L.

17.

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

18.

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

Harold Rosenberg

19.

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

Kundera, Milan

20.

There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

21.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

22.

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

Auden, W. H.

23.

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

24.

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

Williams, Bern

25.

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

26.

One ought to examine himself for a very long time before thinking of condemning others.

Moliere

27.

Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.

Miller, Henry

28.

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

Collins, Jackie

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

France, Anatole

32.

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

33.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

34.

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

Wilde, Oscar

35.

Without the meditative background that is criticism, works become isolated gestures, historical accidents, soon forgotten.

Kundera, Milan

36.

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

37.

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

Johnson, Samuel

38.

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

39.

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

Burns, Robert

40.

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

41.

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

Proverb, Chinese

42.

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

43.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

44.

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

45.

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.

46.

Nothing would improve newspaper criticism so much as the knowledge that it was to be read by men too hardy to acquiesce in the authoritative statement of the reviewer.

Hutton, R. H.

47.

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

48.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

49.

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

50.

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

Franklin P. Jones