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

You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism.

Maugham, W. Somerset

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

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one's mind. It becomes a pleasure.

Wilde, Oscar

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

Moliere

We might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds when we read a book and feel an emotion about it, for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism.

Eliot, T. S.

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

Nunn, Gregory

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

Ziglar, Zig

Let me walk three weeks in the footsteps of my enemy, carry the same burden, have the same trials as he, before I say one word to criticize.

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

10.

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

Guinon, Albert

11.

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

12.

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

13.

Most of us are umpires at heart; we like to call balls and strikes on somebody else.

Aikman, Leo

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Lowell, James Russell

17.

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

18.

I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so.

Smith, Sydney

19.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

20.

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

Mcclung, Nellie

21.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

22.

Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.

Steinbeck, John

23.

Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works.

Keats, John

24.

He cannot be strict in judging, who does not wish others to be strict judges of himself.

Cicero, Marcus T.

25.

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

26.

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

27.

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

28.

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

29.

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

Updike, John

30.

Many great ideas have been lost because the people who had them could not stand being laughed at.

31.

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

32.

Unless criticism refuses to take itself quite so seriously or at least to permit its readers not to, it will inevitably continue to reflect the finicky canons of the genteel tradition and the depressing pieties of the Culture Religion of Modernism.

Fiedler, Leslie

33.

All my life people have said that I wasn't going to make it.

Turner, Ted

34.

The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure.

Wilde, Oscar

35.

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

36.

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

Pollock, Channing

37.

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

Native American Proverb

38.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

42.

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture; it's a really stupid thing to want to do.

Costello, Elvis

43.

If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, then ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.

Lincoln, Abraham

44.

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

45.

I demand that my books be judged with utmost severity, by knowledgeable people who know the rules of grammar and of logic, and who will seek beneath the footsteps of my commas the lice of my thought in the head of my style.

Aragon, Louis

46.

Criticism of others is futile and if you indulge in it often you should be warned that it can be fatal to your career.

Carnegie, Dale

47.

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

48.

Remember if people talk behind your back, it only means you're two steps ahead!

Flagg, Fannie

49.

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

50.

Do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend's forehead.

Proverb, Chinese