Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Schlegel, Friedrich

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

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

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

Steinbeck, John

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

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

Miller, Henry

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

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

Auden, W. H.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

10.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

11.

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

12.

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.

13.

The greatest honor that can be paid to the work of art, on its pedestal of ritual display, is to describe it with sensory completeness. We need a science of description. Criticism is ceremonial revivification.

Paglia, Camille

14.

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

Nunn, Gregory

15.

The strength of criticism lies in the weakness of the thing criticized.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

16.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

17.

That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one's own soul. It is more fascinating than history, as it is concerned simply with oneself. It is more delightful than philosophy, as its subject is concrete and not abstract, real and not vague. It is the only civilized form of autobiography.

Wilde, Oscar

18.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

19.

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

Shenstone, William

20.

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

Tynan, Kenneth

21.

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

22.

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.

23.

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

Kundera, Milan

24.

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.

25.

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

Christopher Hampton

26.

If I care to listen to every criticism, let alone act on them, then this shop may as well be closed for all other businesses. I have learned to do my best, and if the end result is good then I do not care for any criticism, but if the end result is not good, then even the praise of ten angels would not make the difference.

Lincoln, Abraham

27.

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

Collins, Jackie

28.

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

29.

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

Mcclung, Nellie

30.

Most of our censure of others is only oblique praise of self, uttered to show the wisdom and superiority of the speaker. It has all the invidiousness of self-praise, and all the ill-desert of falsehood.

Edwards, Tryon

31.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

32.

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.

33.

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

Conrad, Joseph

34.

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

35.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

36.

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

37.

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

Paz, Octavio

38.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

39.

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

40.

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

41.

Professional critics are incapable of distinguishing and appreciating either diamonds in the rough or gold in bars. They are traders, and in literature know only the coins that are current. Their critical lab has scales and weights, but neither crucible or touchstone.

Joubert, Joseph

42.

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

Rostand, Jean

43.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

44.

All the critics who could not make their reputations by discovering you are hoping to make them by predicting hopefully your approaching impotence, failure and general drying up of natural juices. Not a one will wish you luck or hope that you will keep on writing unless you have political affiliations in which case these will rally around and speak of you and Homer, Balzac, Zola and Link Steffens.

Hemingway, Ernest

45.

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

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

46.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

47.

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

48.

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

49.

Criticism of others is futile and if you indulge in it often you should be warned that it can be fatal to your career.

Carnegie, Dale

50.

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