Motivational Quotes

Criticism

Be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath.

- Bible

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Hugo, Victor

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.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

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

Native American Proverb

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

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

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

Guinon, Albert

10.

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

11.

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

12.

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

13.

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

James, Henry

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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.

17.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

18.

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

19.

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

Johnson, Samuel

20.

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

Helvetius, Claude A.

21.

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

Rostand, Jean

22.

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

23.

One of the grotesqueries of present-day American life is the amount of reasoning that goes into displaying the wisdom secreted in bad movies while proving that modern art is meaningless. They have put into practice the notion that a bad art work cleverly interpreted according to some obscure Method is more rewarding than a masterpiece wrapped in silence.

Rosenberg, Harold

24.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

25.

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

Holtz, Lou

26.

A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.

Murdoch, Iris

27.

Those who can -- do. Those who can't -- criticize.

28.

Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then it will gradually yield to him.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

29.

Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than native genius. In the hands of a man who has read widely but lacks judgment, applied to certain subjects it can corrupt both its readers and the writer himself.

Bruyere, Jean De La

30.

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

Jean Sibelius

31.

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

Proverb, Chinese

32.

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

Briton, Crand

33.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

34.

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

Pope, Alexander

35.

Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.

Miller, Henry

36.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

37.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

38.

I review novels to make money, because it is easier for a sluggard to write an article a fortnight than a book a year, because the writer is soothed by the opiate of action, the crank by posing as a good journalist, and having an air hole. I dislike it. I do it and I am always resolving to give it up.

Connolly, Cyril

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Clurman, Harold

43.

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

44.

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

Steinbeck, John

45.

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

Mizner, Wilson

46.

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

Burns, Robert

47.

Be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath.