Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Byron, Lord

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Briton, Crand

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

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

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.

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

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

10.

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.

11.

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

Mizner, Wilson

12.

The greatest honor that can be paid to the work of art, on its pedestal of ritual display, is to describe it with sensory completeness. We need a science of description. Criticism is ceremonial revivification.

Paglia, Camille

13.

There has never been a statue erected to honor a critic.

Ziglar, Zig

14.

It is wrong to be harsh with the New York critics, unless one admits in the same breath that it is a condition of their existence that they should write entertainingly about something which is rarely worth writing about at all.

Chandler, Raymond

15.

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

16.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

17.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

18.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

19.

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

Churchill, Charles

20.

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

Smith, Sydney

21.

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

Conrad, Joseph

22.

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

23.

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

Wilde, Oscar

24.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

25.

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

Gourmont, Remy De

26.

In reality, the world have paid too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them men of much greater profundity than they really are.

Fielding, Henry

27.

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

28.

In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable.

Sontag, Susan

29.

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

Epictetus

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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.

33.

I never met anybody who said when they were a kid, "I wanna grow up and be a critic."

Richard Pryor

34.

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

35.

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

Burns, Robert

36.

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

Rayburn, Sam

37.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

38.

When I am abroad, I always make it a rule to never criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.

Churchill, Winston

39.

It is very perplexing how an intrepid frontier people, who fought a wilderness, floods, tornadoes, and the Rockies, cower before criticism, which is regarded as a malignant tumor in the imagination.

Dahlberg, Edward

40.

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

41.

The easiest thing a human being can do is to criticize another human being.

Little, Lynn M.

42.

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

43.

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

44.

Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do criticize him, you'll be a mile away and have his shoes.

45.

A critic is a man who knows the way, but can't drive the car.

Tynan, Kenneth

46.

Now, in reality, the world have paid too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them to be men of much greater profundity than they really are.

Henry Fielding

47.

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

48.

A louse in the locks of literature.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

49.

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.

50.

The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.

France, Anatole