Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Buxton, Charles

Best Quotes about Criticism

The best criticism doesn't trap an employee or child in a dead end. It gives them an escape route.

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.

One does not lash hat lies at a distance. The foibles that we ridicule must at least be a little bit our own. Only then will the work be a part of our own flesh. The garden must be weeded.

Klee, Paul

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

Mcclung, Nellie

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

Steinbeck, John

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

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

Nunn, Gregory

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

Updike, John

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

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

10.

A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time. A great drama critic also perceives what is not happening.

Tynan, Kenneth

11.

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

12.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

13.

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

Moliere

14.

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.

15.

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

Franklin P. Jones

16.

No man ever got very high by pulling other people down. The intelligent merchant does not knock his competitors. The sensible worker does not work those who work with him. Don't knock your friends. Don't knock your enemies. Don't knock yourself.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

17.

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

Dale Carnegie

18.

I remember when I was in college, people told me I couldn't play in the NBA. There's always somebody saying you can't do it, and those people have to be ignored.

Cartwright, Bill

19.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

20.

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

21.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

22.

As a work of art it has the same status as a long conversation between two not very bright drunks.

James, Clive

23.

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

24.

The person of analytic or critical intellect finds something ridiculous in everything. The person of synthetic or constructive intellect, in almost nothing.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

25.

Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.

Fox, Dr. Emmit

26.

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

27.

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

Turner, Ted

28.

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

Kundera, Milan

29.

I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so.

Smith, Sydney

30.

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

31.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

32.

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

33.

Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.

Steinbeck, John

34.

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

35.

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

Cioran, E. M.

36.

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

37.

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

Gourmont, Remy De

38.

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

39.

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.

40.

We have been educated to such a fine -- or dull -- point that we are incapable of enjoying something new, something different, until we are first told what it's all about. We don't trust our five senses; we rely on our critics and educators, all of whom are failures in the realm of creation. In short, the blind lead the blind. It's the democratic way.

Miller, Henry

41.

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

42.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

43.

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

44.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

48.

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

49.

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

Christopher Hampton

50.

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