Motivational Quotes

Criticism

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

- Adams, Scott

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Carlyle, Thomas

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

Now, in reality, the world have paid too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them to be men of much greater profundity than they really are.

Henry Fielding

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

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.

Murdoch, Iris

Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.

Fox, Dr. Emmit

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

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.

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

Elbert Hubbard

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Mizner, Wilson

13.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

14.

If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water's edge

Hill, Napoleon

15.

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

Hampton, Christopher

16.

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

17.

Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!

Meir, Golda

18.

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

Cocteau, Jean

19.

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

20.

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

Auden, W. H.

21.

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

22.

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

Kundera, Milan

23.

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

24.

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

Mcclung, Nellie

25.

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.

26.

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

Kundera, Milan

27.

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

28.

Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility.

Sontag, Susan

29.

It is just as hard to do your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shouting at you.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

30.

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

Franklin P. Jones

31.

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

32.

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

33.

Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.

Steinbeck, John

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

37.

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

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

38.

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

39.

Critics! Those cut-throat bandits in the paths of fame.

Burns, Robert

40.

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

Hugo, Victor

41.

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

Ziglar, Zig

42.

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

Nolan, Sir Sidney

43.

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

Mascotte, John P.

44.

The rule in carving holds good as to criticism; never cut with a knife what you can cut with a spoon.

Buxton, Charles

45.

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

46.

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

Tynan, Kenneth

47.

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

Moliere

48.

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

Hoffman, Dustin

49.

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

Flagg, Fannie

50.

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