Motivational Quotes

Criticism

Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do criticize him, you'll be a mile away and have his shoes.

Famous Inspirational Daily Quotes

Best Quotes about Criticism

I remember when I was in college, people told me I couldn't play in the NBA. There's always somebody saying you can't do it, and those people have to be ignored.

Cartwright, Bill

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

Benjamin, Walter

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

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

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

Native American Proverb

All the critics who could not make their reputations by discovering you are hoping to make them by predicting hopefully your approaching impotence, failure and general drying up of natural juices. Not a one will wish you luck or hope that you will keep on writing unless you have political affiliations in which case these will rally around and speak of you and Homer, Balzac, Zola and Link Steffens.

Hemingway, Ernest

Hardly a book of human worth, be it heaven's own secret, is honestly placed before the reader; it is either shunned, given a Periclean funeral oration in a hundred and fifty words, or interred in the potter's field of the newspapers back pages.

Dahlberg, Edward

In the arts, the critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising.

Kael, Pauline

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.

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

Holtz, Lou

11.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

12.

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

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

13.

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

Pope, Alexander

14.

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

Nolan, Sir Sidney

15.

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

16.

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

17.

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

James, Clive

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Johnson, Samuel

21.

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

Moliere

22.

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

23.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

24.

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.

25.

That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one's own soul. It is more fascinating than history, as it is concerned simply with oneself. It is more delightful than philosophy, as its subject is concrete and not abstract, real and not vague. It is the only civilized form of autobiography.

Wilde, Oscar

26.

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

27.

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

Shenstone, William

28.

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

Hammarskjold, Dag

29.

The critical method which denies literary modernity would appear -- and even, in certain respects, would be -- the most modern of critical movements.

Man, Paul De

30.

The whole effort of a sincere man is to erect his personal impressions into laws.

Gourmont, Remy De

31.

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

Bible

32.

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

33.

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

Elbert Hubbard

34.

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

Pollock, Channing

35.

Take heed of critics even when they are not fair; resist them even when they are.

Rostand, Jean

36.

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

Collins, Jackie

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

40.

Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain - and most fools do.

Dale Carnegie

41.

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

42.

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

Hampton, Christopher

43.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

44.

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

Kundera, Milan

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Nunn, Gregory

48.

What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.

Cocteau, Jean

49.

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

50.

Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do criticize him, you'll be a mile away and have his shoes.