Motivational Quotes

Criticism

In judging others, folks will work overtime for no pay.

- Carruthers, Charles Edwin

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Costello, Elvis

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

Praise those of your critics for whom nothing is up to standard.

Hammarskjold, Dag

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

Buxton, Charles

Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!

Meir, Golda

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

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

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

Cioran, E. M.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

10.

Doubtless criticism was originally benignant, pointing out the beauties of a work rather that its defects. The passions of men have made it malignant, as a bad heart of Procreates turned the bed, the symbol of repose, into an instrument of torture.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

11.

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

12.

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.

13.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

14.

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

Briton, Crand

15.

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

16.

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

James, Clive

17.

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs.

Hampton, Christopher

18.

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

19.

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

20.

People want you to be a crazy, out-of-control teen brat. They want you miserable, just like them. They don't want heroes; what they want is to see you fall.

DiCaprio, Leonardo

21.

Unlike other people, our reviewers are powerful because they believe in nothing.

Clurman, Harold

22.

The critical method which denies literary modernity would appear -- and even, in certain respects, would be -- the most modern of critical movements.

Man, Paul De

23.

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

24.

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

25.

If what they are saying about you is true, mend your ways. If it isn't true, forget it, and go on and serve the Lord.

Ironside, H. A.

26.

A wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic.

Lowell, James Russell

27.

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

28.

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

Byron, Lord

29.

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

30.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

31.

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

Ziglar, Zig

32.

Post-modernism has cut off the present from all futures. The daily media add to this by cutting off the past. Which means that critical opinion is often orphaned in the present.

Berger, John

33.

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

Hoffman, Dustin

34.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

35.

Never make the mistake of assuming the critters will beat a path to your door.

Mascotte, John P.

36.

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

Jones, Franklin P.

37.

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

38.

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

Burns, Robert

39.

Take heed of critics even when they are not fair; resist them even when they are.

Rostand, Jean

40.

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

France, Anatole

41.

Nothing would improve newspaper criticism so much as the knowledge that it was to be read by men too hardy to acquiesce in the authoritative statement of the reviewer.

Hutton, R. H.

42.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

43.

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

James, Henry

44.

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

Gourmont, Remy De

45.

I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.

Thoreau, Henry David

46.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

47.

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.

48.

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

49.

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

Turner, Ted

50.

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

Little, Lynn M.