Motivational Quotes

Criticism

Writing prejudicial, off-putting reviews is a precise exercise in applied black magic. The reviewer can draw free-floating disagreeable associations to a book by implying that the book is completely unimportant without saying exactly why, and carefully avoiding any clear images that could capture the reader's full attention.

- Burroughs, William S.

Best Quotes about Criticism

Unless criticism refuses to take itself quite so seriously or at least to permit its readers not to, it will inevitably continue to reflect the finicky canons of the genteel tradition and the depressing pieties of the Culture Religion of Modernism.

Fiedler, Leslie

David Lynch came out of it a genius, and I came out of it a fat girl. I'm sorry that the only comment I get about the part is the way I look. [Commenting on the critics' response to her performance in Blue Velvet]

Rossellini, Isabella

In my conscience I believe the baggage loves me, for she never speaks well of me herself, nor suffers any body else to rail at me.

Congreve, William

The biggest critics of my books are people who never read them.

Collins, Jackie

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

Porchia, Antonio

The television critic, whatever his pretensions, does not labor in the same vineyard as those he criticizes; his grapes are all sour.

Raphael, Frederic

We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which, in all times, with one or another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer without its scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and fall -- which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people.

Carlyle, Thomas

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

Mcclung, Nellie

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

10.

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

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

15.

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

Sontag, Susan

16.

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

Dale Carnegie

17.

No matter how well you perform there's always somebody of intelligent opinion who thinks it's lousy.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

18.

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

19.

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

Byron, Lord

20.

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

Kundera, Milan

21.

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.

22.

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

Guinon, Albert

23.

Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!

Meir, Golda

24.

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

Clurman, Harold

25.

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

Christopher Hampton

26.

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

Mascotte, John P.

27.

You know lots of criticism is written by characters who are very academic and think it is a sign you are worthless if you make jokes or kid or even clown. I wouldn't kid Our Lord if he was on the cross. But I would attempt a joke with him if I ran into him chasing the money changers out of the temple.

Hemingway, Ernest

28.

Abuse if you slight it, will gradually die away; but if you show yourself irritated, you will be thought to have deserved it.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

29.

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

Wilde, Oscar

30.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

31.

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

Proverb, Chinese

32.

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

33.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

34.

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

Hugo, Victor

35.

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

Nunn, Gregory

36.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Johnson, Samuel

40.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

41.

Culture is only true when implicitly critical, and the mind which forgets this revenges itself in the critics it breeds. Criticism is an indispensable element of culture.

Adorno, Theodor W.

42.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

47.

You're never s good as everyone tells you when you win, and you're never as bad as they say when you lose.