Motivational Quotes

Criticism

No man ever got very high by pulling other people down. The intelligent merchant does not knock his competitors. The sensible worker does not work those who work with him. Don't knock your friends. Don't knock your enemies. Don't knock yourself.

- Tennyson, Lord Alfred

Best Quotes about Criticism

Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.

Benjamin, Walter

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

Williams, Bern

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

Hoffman, Dustin

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

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

People want you to be a crazy, out-of-control teen brat. They want you miserable, just like them. They don't want heroes; what they want is to see you fall.

DiCaprio, Leonardo

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

In my conscience I believe the baggage loves me, for she never speaks well of me herself, nor suffers any body else to rail at me.

Congreve, William

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

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

Mcclung, Nellie

10.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

11.

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

Lowell, James Russell

12.

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

Shenstone, William

13.

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

14.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

15.

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

Tynan, Kenneth

16.

Literary criticism can be no more than a reasoned account of the feeling produced upon the critic by the book he is criticizing. Criticism can never be a science: it is, in the first place, much too personal, and in the second, it is concerned with values that science ignores. The touchstone is emotion, not reason. We judge a work of art by its effect on our sincere and vital emotion, and nothing else. All the critical twiddle-twaddle about style and form, all this pseudoscientific classifying and analyzing of books in an imitation-botanical fashion, is mere impertinence and mostly dull jargon.

Lawrence, D. H.

17.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

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.

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

20.

Every writer is necessarily a critic -- that is, each sentence is a skeleton accompanied by enormous activity of rejection; and each selection is governed by general principles concerning truth, force, beauty, and so on. The critic that is in every fabulist is like the iceberg -- nine-tenths of him is under water.

Wilder, Thornton

21.

It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.

Baudelaire, Charles

22.

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

Guinon, Albert

23.

David Lynch came out of it a genius, and I came out of it a fat girl. I'm sorry that the only comment I get about the part is the way I look. [Commenting on the critics' response to her performance in Blue Velvet]

Rossellini, Isabella

24.

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

25.

A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time. A great drama critic also perceives what is not happening.

Tynan, Kenneth

26.

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

27.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

28.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

29.

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

30.

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

Schlegel, Friedrich

31.

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

Mizner, Wilson

32.

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

Miller, Henry

33.

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

34.

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

Kundera, Milan

35.

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

Cioran, E. M.

36.

It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

Woolf, Virginia

37.

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

Churchill, Charles

38.

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

Nolan, Sir Sidney

39.

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

Christopher Hampton

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

James, Henry

43.

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.

44.

The person of analytic or critical intellect finds something ridiculous in everything. The person of synthetic or constructive intellect, in almost nothing.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

45.

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

46.

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.

47.

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

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

48.

They will say you are on the wrong road, if it is your own.

Porchia, Antonio

49.

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

Pope, Alexander

50.

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