Motivational Quotes

Criticism

David Lynch came out of it a genius, and I came out of it a fat girl. I'm sorry that the only comment I get about the part is the way I look. [Commenting on the critics' response to her performance in Blue Velvet]

- Rossellini, Isabella

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

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

Hoffman, Dustin

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

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

Benjamin Disraeli

It is just as hard to do your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shouting at you.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

Many great ideas have been lost because the people who had them could not stand being laughed at.

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

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works. An assault upon a town is a bad thing; but starving it is still worse.

Johnson, Samuel

10.

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

Johnson, Samuel

11.

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

12.

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

France, Anatole

13.

The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most part, they are manifestations of his debate with himself as to what he should do next and what he should avoid.

Auden, W. H.

14.

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

Byron, Lord

15.

I remember when I was in college, people told me I couldn't play in the NBA. There's always somebody saying you can't do it, and those people have to be ignored.

Cartwright, Bill

16.

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

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

17.

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

Jones, Franklin P.

18.

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.

19.

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Kundera, Milan

23.

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

Steinbeck, John

24.

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

25.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

26.

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.

27.

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

Paz, Octavio

28.

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

Hill, Napoleon

29.

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

30.

Abuse if you slight it, will gradually die away; but if you show yourself irritated, you will be thought to have deserved it.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

31.

Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge ourselves with railing against it.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

32.

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

33.

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

Updike, John

34.

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

35.

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

36.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

37.

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

38.

A louse in the locks of literature.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

39.

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

Dale Carnegie

40.

If you burn your neighbors house down, it doesn't make your house look any better.

Holtz, Lou

41.

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

Hammarskjold, Dag

42.

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.

43.

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

44.

Critics are usually kinder to cheaper movies than to those they perceive to be big Hollywood releases. They cut you a lot more slack if you spend less money, which makes no sense.

Coen, Ethan

45.

There is an air of last things, a brooding sense of impending annihilation, about so much deconstructive activity, in so many of its guises; it is not merely postmodernist but preapocalyptic.

Lehman, David

46.

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

Henry Fielding

47.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

48.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

49.

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

Moliere

50.

They will say you are on the wrong road, if it is your own.