Motivational Quotes

Criticism

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

- Selye, Hans

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

Satire is often the reflection of a kind of moral nausea.

Briton, Crand

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

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

Pope, Alexander

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

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

Paz, Octavio

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

Hampton, Christopher

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

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

Steinbeck, John

10.

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

11.

Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews, to challenge every new author.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

12.

Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject; bad critical writing by the necessity of maintaining the professional standing of the critic.

Chandler, Raymond

13.

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

Hugo, Victor

14.

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

Hoffman, Dustin

15.

Never make the mistake of assuming the critters will beat a path to your door.

Mascotte, John P.

16.

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

17.

The great critic must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.

Maugham, W. Somerset

18.

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

19.

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

20.

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

Harold Rosenberg

21.

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

22.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

23.

Some people are always critical of vague statements. I tend rather to be critical of precise statements; they are the only ones which can correctly be labeled wrong.

Smullyan, Raymond

24.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

25.

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

26.

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

Updike, John

27.

The whole effort of a sincere man is to erect his personal impressions into laws.

Gourmont, Remy De

28.

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

29.

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

Lowell, James Russell

30.

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

Epictetus

31.

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

32.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

33.

You know lots of criticism is written by characters who are very academic and think it is a sign you are worthless if you make jokes or kid or even clown. I wouldn't kid Our Lord if he was on the cross. But I would attempt a joke with him if I ran into him chasing the money changers out of the temple.

Hemingway, Ernest

34.

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

Bible

35.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

36.

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

37.

Self-laudation abounds among the unpolished, but nothing can stamp a man more sharply as ill-bred.

Buxton, Charles

38.

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

Buxton, Charles

39.

When everyone is against you, it means you are absolutely wrong -- or you are absolutely right.

Guinon, Albert

40.

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

41.

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

Turner, Ted

42.

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

43.

God knows people who are paid to have attitudes toward things, professional critics, make me sick; camp following eunuchs of literature. They won't even whore. They're all virtuous and sterile. And how well meaning and high minded. But they're all camp followers.

Hemingway, Ernest

44.

Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins.

Native American Proverb

45.

Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves.

Cioran, E. M.

46.

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

Williams, Bern

47.

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

Wilde, Oscar

48.

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

49.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

50.

Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility.

Sontag, Susan