Motivational Quotes

Criticism

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

- Addison, Joseph

Best Quotes about Criticism

If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.

Franklin, Benjamin

It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

Woolf, Virginia

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

There is an air of last things, a brooding sense of impending annihilation, about so much deconstructive activity, in so many of its guises; it is not merely postmodernist but preapocalyptic.

Lehman, David

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

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

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

Rayburn, Sam

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

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

10.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right. You'll be criticized anyway.

Roosevelt, Eleanor

11.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

12.

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

Mcclung, Nellie

13.

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

14.

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

Hammarskjold, Dag

15.

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

Smith, Sydney

16.

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

Tynan, Kenneth

17.

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

Ziglar, Zig

18.

The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.

France, Anatole

19.

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

20.

We have been educated to such a fine -- or dull -- point that we are incapable of enjoying something new, something different, until we are first told what it's all about. We don't trust our five senses; we rely on our critics and educators, all of whom are failures in the realm of creation. In short, the blind lead the blind. It's the democratic way.

Miller, Henry

21.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

22.

Self-laudation abounds among the unpolished, but nothing can stamp a man more sharply as ill-bred.

Buxton, Charles

23.

Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

24.

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

Bible

25.

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

26.

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.

27.

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

28.

Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then it will gradually yield to him.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

29.

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

30.

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

Fuller, Margaret

31.

I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.

Pound, Ezra

32.

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

33.

The strength of criticism lies in the weakness of the thing criticized.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

34.

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

Wilde, Oscar

35.

The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most part, they are manifestations of his debate with himself as to what he should do next and what he should avoid.

Auden, W. H.

36.

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

37.

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

38.

A louse in the locks of literature.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

39.

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

40.

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

Burns, Robert

41.

Reviewers are usually people who would have been, poets, historians, biographer, if they could. They have tried their talents at one thing or another and have failed; therefore they turn critic.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

42.

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

Kundera, Milan

43.

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

Buxton, Charles

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

47.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

48.

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

49.

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

Rostand, Jean

50.

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

Elbert Hubbard