Motivational Quotes

Criticism

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

- Addison, Joseph

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

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

Mcclung, Nellie

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

Proverb, Chinese

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

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

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

Ziglar, Zig

In my conscience I believe the baggage loves me, for she never speaks well of me herself, nor suffers any body else to rail at me.

Congreve, William

Prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash but constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feeling whatever.

Orwell, George

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

Collins, Jackie

10.

I review novels to make money, because it is easier for a sluggard to write an article a fortnight than a book a year, because the writer is soothed by the opiate of action, the crank by posing as a good journalist, and having an air hole. I dislike it. I do it and I am always resolving to give it up.

Connolly, Cyril

11.

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.

12.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

There are two insults no human will endure. The assertion that he has no sense of humor and the doubly impertinent assertion that he has never known trouble.

Lewis, Sinclair

17.

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

18.

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

Dale Carnegie

19.

Though by whim, envy, or resentment led, they damn those authors whom they never read.

Churchill, Charles

20.

Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge ourselves with railing against it.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

21.

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

James, Clive

22.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

23.

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

Nolan, Sir Sidney

24.

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

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

25.

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

Kael, Pauline

26.

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

27.

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

Mizner, Wilson

28.

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

29.

There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

30.

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

Gourmont, Remy De

31.

Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world -- though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst -- the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!

Sterne, Laurence

32.

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

33.

A reader who quarrels with postulates, who dislikes Hamlet because he does not believe that there are ghosts or that people speak in pentameters, clearly has no business in literature. He cannot distinguish fiction from fact, and belongs in the same category as the people who send checks to radio stations for the relief of suffering heroines in soap operas.

Frye, Northrop

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Steinbeck, John

39.

Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject; bad critical writing by the necessity of maintaining the professional standing of the critic.

Chandler, Raymond

40.

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

Hugo, Victor

41.

Literary criticism can be no more than a reasoned account of the feeling produced upon the critic by the book he is criticizing. Criticism can never be a science: it is, in the first place, much too personal, and in the second, it is concerned with values that science ignores. The touchstone is emotion, not reason. We judge a work of art by its effect on our sincere and vital emotion, and nothing else. All the critical twiddle-twaddle about style and form, all this pseudoscientific classifying and analyzing of books in an imitation-botanical fashion, is mere impertinence and mostly dull jargon.

Lawrence, D. H.

42.

Criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters.

Conrad, Joseph

43.

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

44.

The great critic must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.

Maugham, W. Somerset

45.

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

46.

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

47.

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

Rostand, Jean

48.

The literary critic, or the critic of any other specific form of artistic expression, may detach himself from the world for as long as the work of art he is contemplating appears to do the same.

James, Clive

49.

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

France, Anatole

50.

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

Steinbeck, John