Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Nunn, Gregory

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

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

What we ask of him is, that he should find out for us more than we can find out for ourselves. He must have the passion of a lover.

Symons, Arthur

Each generation produces its squad of moderns with peashooters to attack Gibraltar.

Pollock, Channing

Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

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

Kundera, Milan

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

Collins, Jackie

10.

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.

Johnson, Samuel

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.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

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.

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

15.

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

Briton, Crand

16.

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

Elbert Hubbard

17.

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

Guinon, Albert

18.

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

19.

Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

20.

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

21.

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

Jones, Franklin P.

22.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

23.

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

Shenstone, William

24.

Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

When subjected to the rain of criticism, let?s not curse the rain. Let?s accept it as a part of life. Let?s remember that the more criticism we can successfully handle, the more zest we will experience in our lives.

Sinha, Shall

29.

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

30.

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

Hampton, Christopher

31.

One of the grotesqueries of present-day American life is the amount of reasoning that goes into displaying the wisdom secreted in bad movies while proving that modern art is meaningless. They have put into practice the notion that a bad art work cleverly interpreted according to some obscure Method is more rewarding than a masterpiece wrapped in silence.

Rosenberg, Harold

32.

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

France, Anatole

33.

A louse in the locks of literature.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

34.

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

Kundera, Milan

35.

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

Tynan, Kenneth

36.

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

37.

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

38.

Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.

Fox, Dr. Emmit

39.

Though by whim, envy, or resentment led, they damn those authors whom they never read.

Churchill, Charles

40.

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

Mascotte, John P.

41.

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

42.

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.

43.

Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!

Meir, Golda

44.

A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.

Murdoch, Iris

45.

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

46.

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

Burns, Robert

47.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

48.

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

49.

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

Native American Proverb

50.

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

Cioran, E. M.