Motivational Quotes

Criticism

Critics are already made.

- Byron, Lord

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

France, Anatole

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

Buxton, Charles

Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.

Lawrence, D. H.

Hardly a book of human worth, be it heaven's own secret, is honestly placed before the reader; it is either shunned, given a Periclean funeral oration in a hundred and fifty words, or interred in the potter's field of the newspapers back pages.

Dahlberg, Edward

Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Gourmont, Remy De

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

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

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

10.

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

11.

Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.

Benjamin, Walter

12.

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

13.

A louse in the locks of literature.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

14.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.

15.

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

Native American Proverb

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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.

19.

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

20.

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

Murdoch, Iris

21.

The author himself is the best judge of his own performance; none has so deeply meditated on the subject; none is so sincerely interested in the event.

Gibbon, Edward

22.

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

23.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

24.

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

Briton, Crand

25.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

26.

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

Cioran, E. M.

27.

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

Franklin P. Jones

28.

It is critical vision alone which can mitigate the unimpeded operation of the automatic.

Mcluhan, Marshall

29.

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

30.

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

Wilde, Oscar

31.

Remember if people talk behind your back, it only means you're two steps ahead!

Flagg, Fannie

32.

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

Johnson, Samuel

33.

No sadder proof can be given of a person's own tiny stature, than their disbelief in great people.

Carlyle, Thomas

34.

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

35.

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

Shenstone, William

36.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

37.

Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

38.

Social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings.

Paz, Octavio

39.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

40.

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

41.

Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world -- in order to set up a shadow world of meanings.

Sontag, Susan

42.

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

43.

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

Updike, John

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Jones, Franklin P.

47.

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

Aikman, Leo

48.

The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure.

Wilde, Oscar

49.

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

Holtz, Lou

50.

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