Motivational Quotes

Criticism

Most of us are umpires at heart; we like to call balls and strikes on somebody else.

- Aikman, Leo

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Flagg, Fannie

There are two modes of criticism. One which crushes to earth without mercy all the humble buds of Phantasy, all the plants that, though green and fruitful, are also a prey to insects or have suffered by drought. It weeds well the garden, and cannot believe the weed in its native soil may be a pretty, graceful plant. There is another mode which enters into the natural history of every thing that breathes and lives, which believes no impulse to be entirely in vain, which scrutinizes circumstances, motive and object before it condemns, and believes there is a beauty in natural form, if its law and purpose be understood.

Fuller, Margaret

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

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

Baudrillard, Jean

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

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

Clurman, Harold

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

Williams, Bern

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

Lowell, James Russell

Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins.

Native American Proverb

10.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.

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.

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

Buxton, Charles

13.

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

Hugo, Victor

14.

If you burn your neighbors house down, it doesn't make your house look any better.

Holtz, Lou

15.

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

16.

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

17.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

18.

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

Burns, Robert

19.

Of course you're always at liberty to judge the critic. Judge people as critics, however, and you'll condemn them all!

James, Henry

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Franklin P. Jones

23.

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

24.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

25.

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

26.

Each generation produces its squad of moderns with peashooters to attack Gibraltar.

Pollock, Channing

27.

Did some more sober critics come abroad? If wrong, I smil'd; if right, I kiss'd the rod.

Pope, Alexander

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.

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

30.

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

31.

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.

Disraeli, Benjamin

32.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

33.

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

Cioran, E. M.

34.

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

35.

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

Kundera, Milan

36.

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

37.

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

Richard Pryor

38.

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.

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Elbert Hubbard

42.

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.

Christopher Hampton

43.

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

W. H. Auden

44.

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

45.

Satire is often the reflection of a kind of moral nausea.

Briton, Crand

46.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

47.

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.

48.

It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.

Baudelaire, Charles

49.

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

Johnson, Samuel

50.

Critics are usually kinder to cheaper movies than to those they perceive to be big Hollywood releases. They cut you a lot more slack if you spend less money, which makes no sense.

Coen, Ethan