Motivational Quotes

Criticism

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

- Addison, Joseph

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

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

A critic is a reader who ruminates. Thus, he should have more than one stomach.

Schlegel, Friedrich

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

France, Anatole

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

If I make a move, like raise my eyebrows, some critic says I'm doing Nicholson. What am I supposed to do, cut off my eyebrows?

Slater, Christian

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

It is impossible to think of a man of any actual force and originality, universally recognized as having those qualities, who spent his whole life appraising and describing the work of other men.

Mencken, H. L.

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

Updike, John

10.

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

Hammarskjold, Dag

11.

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

Hoffman, Dustin

12.

It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one's children will become than for the children one's mature critics often are.

Walker, Alice

13.

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

14.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

15.

Pay no attention to what the critics say... Remember, a statue has never been set up in honor of a critic!

Jean Sibelius

16.

If what they are saying about you is true, mend your ways. If it isn't true, forget it, and go on and serve the Lord.

Ironside, H. A.

17.

A man must serve his time to every trade save censure -- critics all are ready made.

Byron, Lord

18.

Social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings.

Paz, Octavio

19.

I never met anybody who said when they were a kid, "I wanna grow up and be a critic."

Richard Pryor

20.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

21.

I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works. An assault upon a town is a bad thing; but starving it is still worse.

Johnson, Samuel

22.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

23.

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

Lowell, James Russell

24.

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

25.

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

26.

Unlike other people, our reviewers are powerful because they believe in nothing.

Clurman, Harold

27.

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

Cocteau, Jean

28.

Doubtless criticism was originally benignant, pointing out the beauties of a work rather that its defects. The passions of men have made it malignant, as a bad heart of Procreates turned the bed, the symbol of repose, into an instrument of torture.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

29.

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

Dale Carnegie

30.

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

Nolan, Sir Sidney

31.

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

32.

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

Little, Lynn M.

33.

Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves.

Cioran, E. M.

34.

Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.

Johnson, Samuel

35.

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

36.

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

Guinon, Albert

37.

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

Mizner, Wilson

38.

A friend is a lot of things, but a critic isn't.

Williams, Bern

39.

David Lynch came out of it a genius, and I came out of it a fat girl. I'm sorry that the only comment I get about the part is the way I look. [Commenting on the critics' response to her performance in Blue Velvet]

Rossellini, Isabella

40.

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

Mcclung, Nellie

41.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

42.

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

Flagg, Fannie

43.

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

44.

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

Ziglar, Zig

45.

If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.

Epictetus

46.

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.

47.

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

48.

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

Smith, Sydney

49.

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

50.

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