Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

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

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

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

Tynan, Kenneth

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

Elbert Hubbard

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

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

There are two insults no human will endure. The assertion that he has no sense of humor and the doubly impertinent assertion that he has never known trouble.

Lewis, Sinclair

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

Nunn, Gregory

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

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Mizner, Wilson

15.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

16.

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

Guinon, Albert

17.

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

Conrad, Joseph

18.

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

19.

Not even the most powerful organs of the press, including Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times, can discover a new artist or certify his work and make it stick. They can only bring you the scores.

Wolfe, Thomas

20.

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

21.

Recognize the cunning man not by the corpses he pays homage to but by the living writers he conspires against with the most shameful weapon, Silence, or the briefest review.

Dahlberg, Edward

22.

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

23.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

24.

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

Buxton, Charles

25.

Of course you're always at liberty to judge the critic. Judge people as critics, however, and you'll condemn them all!

James, Henry

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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.

29.

The great critic must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.

Maugham, W. Somerset

30.

Harsh counsels have no effect; they are like hammers which are always repulsed by the anvil.

Helvetius, Claude A.

31.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

32.

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

33.

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

Franklin P. Jones

34.

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

Benjamin, Walter

35.

A critic is a reader who ruminates. Thus, he should have more than one stomach.

Schlegel, Friedrich

36.

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

Turner, Ted

37.

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

Proverb, Chinese

38.

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

Aikman, Leo

39.

Each generation produces its squad of moderns with peashooters to attack Gibraltar.

Pollock, Channing

40.

When a man spends his time giving his wife criticism and advice instead of compliments, he forgets that it was not his good judgment, but his charming manners, that won her heart.

Rowland, Helen

41.

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

42.

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

Burns, Robert

43.

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

Paz, Octavio

44.

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture; it's a really stupid thing to want to do.

Costello, Elvis

45.

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.

46.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

47.

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

48.

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

W. H. Auden

49.

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

Hill, Napoleon

50.

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