Motivational Quotes

Criticism

For if there is anything to one's praise, it is foolish vanity to be gratified at it, and if it is abuse -- why one is always sure to hear of it from one damned good-natured friend or another!

- Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

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

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

Sontag, Susan

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

Mascotte, John P.

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

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

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

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

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

10.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

11.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

12.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

13.

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

Wilde, Oscar

14.

There has never been a statue erected to honor a critic.

Ziglar, Zig

15.

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

16.

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.

17.

Strike the dog dead, it's but a critic!

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

18.

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

Buxton, Charles

19.

I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.

Thoreau, Henry David

20.

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

Mizner, Wilson

21.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

22.

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

23.

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

Kundera, Milan

24.

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

Paz, Octavio

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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.

28.

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

Buxton, Charles

29.

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

Franklin P. Jones

30.

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

Burns, Robert

31.

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

32.

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

Moliere

33.

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

34.

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

W. H. Auden

35.

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.

36.

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

37.

The best criticism doesn't trap an employee or child in a dead end. It gives them an escape route.

38.

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

39.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

40.

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

Cioran, E. M.

41.

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

Johnson, Samuel

42.

A film is just like a muffin. You make it. You put it on the table. One person might say, Oh, I don't like it. One might say it's the best muffin ever made. One might say it's an awful muffin. It's hard for me to say. It's for me to make the muffin.

Washington, Denzel

43.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

44.

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

Pope, Alexander

45.

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

Holtz, Lou

46.

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.

47.

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

48.

I know I'm never as good or bad as one single performance. I've never believed in my critics or my worshippers, and I've always been able to leave the game at the arena.

Barkley, Charles

49.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

50.

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