Motivational Quotes

Criticism

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

- Proverb, Chinese

Best Quotes about Criticism

Post-modernism has cut off the present from all futures. The daily media add to this by cutting off the past. Which means that critical opinion is often orphaned in the present.

Berger, John

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

A critic is a man who knows the way, but can't drive the car.

Tynan, Kenneth

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.

Christopher Hampton

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

Nolan, Sir Sidney

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs.

Hampton, Christopher

What we ask of him is, that he should find out for us more than we can find out for ourselves. He must have the passion of a lover.

Symons, Arthur

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

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

10.

On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one's mind. It becomes a pleasure.

Wilde, Oscar

11.

I'd rather be hissed at for a good verse, than applauded for a bad one.

Hugo, Victor

12.

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

13.

Of course you're always at liberty to judge the critic. Judge people as critics, however, and you'll condemn them all!

James, Henry

14.

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

Mizner, Wilson

15.

The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion.

Benjamin, Walter

16.

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.

17.

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

18.

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

Rostand, Jean

19.

Most critical writing is drivel and half of it is dishonest. It is a short cut to oblivion, anyway. Thinking in terms of ideas destroys the power to think in terms of emotions and sensations.

Chandler, Raymond

20.

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

Hoffman, Dustin

21.

Reviewers are usually people who would have been, poets, historians, biographer, if they could. They have tried their talents at one thing or another and have failed; therefore they turn critic.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

22.

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

Mcclung, Nellie

23.

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

Paz, Octavio

24.

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

25.

No sadder proof can be given of a person's own tiny stature, than their disbelief in great people.

Carlyle, Thomas

26.

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

Steinbeck, John

27.

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

Franklin P. Jones

28.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

29.

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

Updike, John

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Harold Rosenberg

34.

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

Schlegel, Friedrich

35.

All my life people have said that I wasn't going to make it.

Turner, Ted

36.

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

Smith, Sydney

37.

Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Costello, Elvis

42.

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

43.

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

44.

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

45.

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

Dale Carnegie

46.

Unlike other people, our reviewers are powerful because they believe in nothing.

Clurman, Harold

47.

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

Nunn, Gregory

48.

Criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters.

Conrad, Joseph

49.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

50.

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.