Motivational Quotes

Criticism

We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.

- Beecher, Henry Ward

Best Quotes about Criticism

Most of our censure of others is only oblique praise of self, uttered to show the wisdom and superiority of the speaker. It has all the invidiousness of self-praise, and all the ill-desert of falsehood.

Edwards, Tryon

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

Cioran, E. M.

A louse in the locks of literature.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

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

Hill, Napoleon

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

When a man spends his time giving his wife criticism and advice instead of compliments, he forgets that it was not his good judgment, but his charming manners, that won her heart.

Rowland, Helen

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

Hugo, Victor

10.

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

11.

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

12.

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.

13.

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

Guinon, Albert

14.

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

15.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

16.

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

Updike, John

17.

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

18.

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

19.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

20.

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

21.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

22.

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.

23.

In judging others, folks will work overtime for no pay.

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

24.

Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as men's judgments of one another.

Erasmus, Desiderius

25.

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

26.

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

France, Anatole

27.

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

28.

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

Steinbeck, John

29.

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

Burns, Robert

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

35.

It is just as hard to do your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shouting at you.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

36.

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

37.

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs.

Hampton, Christopher

38.

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

West, Rebecca

39.

For if there is anything to one's praise, it is foolish vanity to be gratified at it, and if it is abuse -- why one is always sure to hear of it from one damned good-natured friend or another!

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

40.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

41.

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

Elbert Hubbard

42.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

43.

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

44.

You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism.

Maugham, W. Somerset

45.

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

Kundera, Milan

46.

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

47.

Never make the mistake of assuming the critters will beat a path to your door.

Mascotte, John P.

48.

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.

49.

All the world's a stage, and all the clergymen critics.

Nunn, Gregory

50.

All my life people have said that I wasn't going to make it.