Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Pope, Alexander

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

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.

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

Kundera, Milan

You should not say it is not good. You should say you do not like it; and then, you know, you're perfectly safe.

Whistler, James Mcneill

Criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters.

Conrad, Joseph

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

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

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

Updike, John

10.

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

11.

A louse in the locks of literature.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

12.

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

Bible

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Jones, Franklin P.

17.

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

18.

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

19.

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

Elbert Hubbard

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

23.

It is very perplexing how an intrepid frontier people, who fought a wilderness, floods, tornadoes, and the Rockies, cower before criticism, which is regarded as a malignant tumor in the imagination.

Dahlberg, Edward

24.

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.

25.

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

Johnson, Samuel

26.

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

27.

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

Fuller, Margaret

28.

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

29.

One does not lash hat lies at a distance. The foibles that we ridicule must at least be a little bit our own. Only then will the work be a part of our own flesh. The garden must be weeded.

Klee, Paul

30.

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

Shenstone, William

31.

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

32.

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

33.

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

34.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

35.

Praise those of your critics for whom nothing is up to standard.

Hammarskjold, Dag

36.

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

37.

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

38.

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.

39.

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

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.

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

Mascotte, John P.

42.

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

Wilde, Oscar

43.

You should never assume contempt for that which it is not very manifest that you have it in your power to possess, nor does a wit ever make a more contemptible figure than when, in attempting satire, he shows that he does not understand that which he would make the subject of his ridicule.

Melbourne, Lord

44.

Temperament is the primary requisite for the critic -- a temperament exquisitely susceptible to beauty, and to the various impressions that beauty gives us.

Wilde, Oscar

45.

I never met anybody who said when they were a kid, "I wanna grow up and be a critic."

Richard Pryor

46.

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

Guinon, Albert

47.

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

48.

No sadder proof can be given of a person's own tiny stature, than their disbelief in great people.