Motivational Quotes

Criticism

Culture is only true when implicitly critical, and the mind which forgets this revenges itself in the critics it breeds. Criticism is an indispensable element of culture.

- Adorno, Theodor W.

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews, to challenge every new author.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Post-modernism has cut off the present from all futures. The daily media add to this by cutting off the past. Which means that critical opinion is often orphaned in the present.

Berger, John

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

Proverb, Chinese

God knows people who are paid to have attitudes toward things, professional critics, make me sick; camp following eunuchs of literature. They won't even whore. They're all virtuous and sterile. And how well meaning and high minded. But they're all camp followers.

Hemingway, Ernest

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

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

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

Clurman, Harold

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

10.

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.

11.

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

Buxton, Charles

12.

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

13.

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

Moliere

14.

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

15.

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

16.

Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

17.

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

Mcclung, Nellie

18.

A film is just like a muffin. You make it. You put it on the table. One person might say, Oh, I don't like it. One might say it's the best muffin ever made. One might say it's an awful muffin. It's hard for me to say. It's for me to make the muffin.

Washington, Denzel

19.

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

Helvetius, Claude A.

20.

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

Franklin P. Jones

21.

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.

22.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

23.

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

24.

Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.

West, Rebecca

25.

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

Kundera, Milan

26.

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

Buxton, Charles

27.

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

Updike, John

28.

Strike the dog dead, it's but a critic!

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

29.

Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

30.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

31.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

32.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

33.

The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art -- and, by analogy, our own experience -- more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.

Sontag, Susan

34.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

35.

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

36.

I remember when I was in college, people told me I couldn't play in the NBA. There's always somebody saying you can't do it, and those people have to be ignored.

Cartwright, Bill

37.

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

Hammarskjold, Dag

38.

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

39.

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

Mizner, Wilson

40.

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

41.

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

Cioran, E. M.

42.

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

43.

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

Wilde, Oscar

44.

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

45.

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

Tynan, Kenneth

46.

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

47.

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

Ziglar, Zig

48.

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

Auden, W. H.

49.

A louse in the locks of literature.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

50.

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