Motivational Quotes

Criticism

The avocation of assessing the failures of better men can be turned into a comfortable livelihood, providing you back it up with a Ph.D.

- Algren, Nelson

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Gourmont, Remy De

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

Proverb, Chinese

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

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

Byron, Lord

Nothing would improve newspaper criticism so much as the knowledge that it was to be read by men too hardy to acquiesce in the authoritative statement of the reviewer.

Hutton, R. H.

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

Buxton, Charles

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

Clurman, Harold

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

10.

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

Kundera, Milan

11.

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.

12.

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

13.

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

France, Anatole

14.

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

Hammarskjold, Dag

15.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

16.

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

17.

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

Mizner, Wilson

18.

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

19.

He cannot be strict in judging, who does not wish others to be strict judges of himself.

Cicero, Marcus T.

20.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

21.

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

Cocteau, Jean

22.

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

Rostand, Jean

23.

The critical method which denies literary modernity would appear -- and even, in certain respects, would be -- the most modern of critical movements.

Man, Paul De

24.

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

Benjamin Disraeli

25.

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

Pollock, Channing

26.

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

Steinbeck, John

27.

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

Kael, Pauline

28.

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

Schlegel, Friedrich

29.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

30.

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

31.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

32.

If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water's edge

Hill, Napoleon

33.

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

34.

Neither praise or blame is the object of true criticism. Justly to discriminate, firmly to establish, wisely to prescribe, and honestly to award. These are the true aims and duties of criticism.

Simms, William Gilmore

35.

Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do criticize him, you'll be a mile away and have his shoes.

36.

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

37.

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

38.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

39.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Buxton, Charles

43.

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

44.

To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession, to establish in fine a relation with the criticized thing and to make it one's own.

James, Henry

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

48.

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

Mcclung, Nellie

49.

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

50.

It is critical vision alone which can mitigate the unimpeded operation of the automatic.

Mcluhan, Marshall