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

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

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

Kundera, Milan

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

Hubbard, Elbert

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

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

Holtz, Lou

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

A friend is a lot of things, but a critic isn't.

Williams, Bern

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

Turner, Ted

It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one's children will become than for the children one's mature critics often are.

Walker, Alice

10.

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

11.

There are two modes of criticism. One which crushes to earth without mercy all the humble buds of Phantasy, all the plants that, though green and fruitful, are also a prey to insects or have suffered by drought. It weeds well the garden, and cannot believe the weed in its native soil may be a pretty, graceful plant. There is another mode which enters into the natural history of every thing that breathes and lives, which believes no impulse to be entirely in vain, which scrutinizes circumstances, motive and object before it condemns, and believes there is a beauty in natural form, if its law and purpose be understood.

Fuller, Margaret

12.

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

13.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

14.

Though by whim, envy, or resentment led, they damn those authors whom they never read.

Churchill, Charles

15.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

16.

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

Byron, Lord

17.

Let me walk three weeks in the footsteps of my enemy, carry the same burden, have the same trials as he, before I say one word to criticize.

18.

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

Jones, Franklin P.

19.

Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe

20.

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.

Johnson, Samuel

21.

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

Hill, Napoleon

22.

In an age of unscrupulous and shameless book-making, it is a duty to give notice of the rubbish that cumbers the ground. There is no credit, no real power required for this task. It is the work of an intellectual scavenger, and far from being specially honorable.

Hutton, R. H.

23.

The text is merely one of the contexts of a piece of literature, its lexical or verbal one, no more or less important than the sociological, psychological, historical, anthropological or generic.

Fiedler, Leslie

24.

On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one's mind. It becomes a pleasure.

Wilde, Oscar

25.

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

26.

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

Nunn, Gregory

27.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

28.

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

Steinbeck, John

29.

A man generally has the good or ill qualities he attributes to mankind.

Shenstone, William

30.

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

Kael, Pauline

31.

I know I'm never as good or bad as one single performance. I've never believed in my critics or my worshippers, and I've always been able to leave the game at the arena.

Barkley, Charles

32.

A good review from the critics is just another stay of execution.

Hoffman, Dustin

33.

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

34.

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

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

35.

After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them and invent others.

Edith Wharton

36.

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

37.

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

38.

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

39.

If I care to listen to every criticism, let alone act on them, then this shop may as well be closed for all other businesses. I have learned to do my best, and if the end result is good then I do not care for any criticism, but if the end result is not good, then even the praise of ten angels would not make the difference.

Lincoln, Abraham

40.

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

41.

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

Buxton, Charles

42.

Most of us are umpires at heart; we like to call balls and strikes on somebody else.

Aikman, Leo

43.

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

Gourmont, Remy De

44.

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

45.

The pleasure we feel in criticizing robs us from being moved by very beautiful things.

La Bruyere, Jean De

46.

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.

47.

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

48.

Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs.

Picasso, Pablo

49.

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

Hugo, Victor

50.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell