Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

Best Quotes about Criticism

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.

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

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

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

Kundera, Milan

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

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

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

Hubbard, Elbert

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

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

10.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

11.

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

Mcclung, Nellie

12.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

13.

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

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Lowell, James Russell

17.

Culture is only true when implicitly critical, and the mind which forgets this revenges itself in the critics it breeds. Criticism is an indispensable element of culture.

Adorno, Theodor W.

18.

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

Hill, Napoleon

19.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

20.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

21.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

22.

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

23.

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

24.

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

25.

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

Franklin P. Jones

26.

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

27.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

28.

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

29.

Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs.

Picasso, Pablo

30.

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

Epictetus

31.

Did some more sober critics come abroad? If wrong, I smil'd; if right, I kiss'd the rod.

Pope, Alexander

32.

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

Steinbeck, John

33.

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

Wilde, Oscar

34.

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

35.

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

36.

Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than native genius. In the hands of a man who has read widely but lacks judgment, applied to certain subjects it can corrupt both its readers and the writer himself.

Bruyere, Jean De La

37.

In the arts, the critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising.

Kael, Pauline

38.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

39.

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

Bible

40.

The rule in carving holds good as to criticism; never cut with a knife what you can cut with a spoon.

Buxton, Charles

41.

There are two insults no human will endure. The assertion that he has no sense of humor and the doubly impertinent assertion that he has never known trouble.

Lewis, Sinclair

42.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

43.

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

Schlegel, Friedrich

44.

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

Burns, Robert

45.

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

Raphael, Frederic

46.

He cannot be strict in judging, who does not wish others to be strict judges of himself.

Cicero, Marcus T.

47.

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

48.

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

49.

Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!

Meir, Golda

50.

Remember if people talk behind your back, it only means you're two steps ahead!

Flagg, Fannie