Motivational Quotes

Criticism

The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion.

- Benjamin, Walter

Best Quotes about Criticism

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.

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

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

Hardly a book of human worth, be it heaven's own secret, is honestly placed before the reader; it is either shunned, given a Periclean funeral oration in a hundred and fifty words, or interred in the potter's field of the newspapers back pages.

Dahlberg, Edward

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

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

James, Henry

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

Updike, John

They will say you are on the wrong road, if it is your own.

Porchia, Antonio

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

10.

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

Jean Sibelius

11.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

12.

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

Steinbeck, John

13.

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

Pope, Alexander

14.

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

15.

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

Mizner, Wilson

16.

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

Franklin P. Jones

17.

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

Gourmont, Remy De

18.

Criticism of others is futile and if you indulge in it often you should be warned that it can be fatal to your career.

Carnegie, Dale

19.

Recognize the cunning man not by the corpses he pays homage to but by the living writers he conspires against with the most shameful weapon, Silence, or the briefest review.

Dahlberg, Edward

20.

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

21.

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

22.

Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility.

Sontag, Susan

23.

Every writer is necessarily a critic -- that is, each sentence is a skeleton accompanied by enormous activity of rejection; and each selection is governed by general principles concerning truth, force, beauty, and so on. The critic that is in every fabulist is like the iceberg -- nine-tenths of him is under water.

Wilder, Thornton

24.

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

25.

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

Hill, Napoleon

26.

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

27.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

28.

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

West, Rebecca

29.

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

Epictetus

30.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

31.

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

Buxton, Charles

32.

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.

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

Kurt Vonnegut

37.

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

Nolan, Sir Sidney

38.

Criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters.

Conrad, Joseph

39.

Any jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build it.

Rayburn, Sam

40.

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

Dale Carnegie

41.

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

42.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

43.

Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.

Fox, Dr. Emmit

44.

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

Hugo, Victor

45.

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

46.

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

Moliere

47.

Not even the most powerful organs of the press, including Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times, can discover a new artist or certify his work and make it stick. They can only bring you the scores.

Wolfe, Thomas

48.

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

Nunn, Gregory

49.

What we ask of him is, that he should find out for us more than we can find out for ourselves. He must have the passion of a lover.

Symons, Arthur

50.

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

Guinon, Albert