Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

Buxton, Charles

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

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

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

Bible

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

Harsh counsels have no effect; they are like hammers which are always repulsed by the anvil.

Helvetius, Claude A.

The author himself is the best judge of his own performance; none has so deeply meditated on the subject; none is so sincerely interested in the event.

Gibbon, Edward

10.

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

Christopher Hampton

11.

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

Smith, Sydney

12.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

13.

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

France, Anatole

14.

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

James, Henry

15.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

16.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

17.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

18.

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

19.

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

Clurman, Harold

20.

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

21.

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

Briton, Crand

22.

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

23.

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

24.

Neither praise or blame is the object of true criticism. Justly to discriminate, firmly to establish, wisely to prescribe, and honestly to award. These are the true aims and duties of criticism.

Simms, William Gilmore

25.

Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much cherished aspect of academic freedom.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

26.

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

W. H. Auden

27.

In judging others, folks will work overtime for no pay.

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

28.

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

Mizner, Wilson

29.

Essays, entitled critical, are epistles addressed to the public, through which the mind of the recluse relieves itself of its impressions.

Fuller, Margaret

30.

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

31.

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

Harold Rosenberg

32.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

33.

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

Buxton, Charles

34.

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

Burns, Robert

35.

As a work of art it has the same status as a long conversation between two not very bright drunks.

James, Clive

36.

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.

37.

You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism.

Maugham, W. Somerset

38.

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

39.

If I make a move, like raise my eyebrows, some critic says I'm doing Nicholson. What am I supposed to do, cut off my eyebrows?

Slater, Christian

40.

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

Fielding, Henry

41.

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

42.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

43.

The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art -- and, by analogy, our own experience -- more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.

Sontag, Susan

44.

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

45.

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

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

46.

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

Lowell, James Russell

47.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

48.

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

49.

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

Nolan, Sir Sidney

50.

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

Miller, Henry