Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

Any jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build it.

Rayburn, Sam

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

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

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

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

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

Mcclung, Nellie

10.

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

11.

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

Collins, Jackie

12.

A negative judgment gives you more satisfaction than praise, provided it smacks of jealousy.

Baudrillard, Jean

13.

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

14.

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

James, Clive

15.

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

16.

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

W. H. Auden

17.

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

18.

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

Lowell, James Russell

19.

Writing prejudicial, off-putting reviews is a precise exercise in applied black magic. The reviewer can draw free-floating disagreeable associations to a book by implying that the book is completely unimportant without saying exactly why, and carefully avoiding any clear images that could capture the reader's full attention.

Burroughs, William S.

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

23.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

24.

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

Cocteau, Jean

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.

Most of our censure of others is only oblique praise of self, uttered to show the wisdom and superiority of the speaker. It has all the invidiousness of self-praise, and all the ill-desert of falsehood.

Edwards, Tryon

27.

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

Updike, John

28.

Abuse if you slight it, will gradually die away; but if you show yourself irritated, you will be thought to have deserved it.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

29.

You're never s good as everyone tells you when you win, and you're never as bad as they say when you lose.

Holtz, Lou

30.

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

Smith, Sydney

31.

Harsh counsels have no effect; they are like hammers which are always repulsed by the anvil.

Helvetius, Claude A.

32.

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

Turner, Ted

33.

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

Jones, Franklin P.

34.

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

35.

Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as men's judgments of one another.

Erasmus, Desiderius

36.

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

37.

The easiest thing a human being can do is to criticize another human being.

Little, Lynn M.

38.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

39.

It is wrong to be harsh with the New York critics, unless one admits in the same breath that it is a condition of their existence that they should write entertainingly about something which is rarely worth writing about at all.

Chandler, Raymond

40.

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

41.

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

Proverb, Chinese

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.

A louse in the locks of literature.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

47.

I'd rather be hissed at for a good verse, than applauded for a bad one.

Hugo, Victor

48.

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

Gourmont, Remy De

49.

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

Guinon, Albert

50.

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