Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

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

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

Holtz, Lou

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

Little, Lynn M.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

You should never assume contempt for that which it is not very manifest that you have it in your power to possess, nor does a wit ever make a more contemptible figure than when, in attempting satire, he shows that he does not understand that which he would make the subject of his ridicule.

Melbourne, Lord

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

Mcclung, Nellie

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.

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

Byron, Lord

10.

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

11.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

12.

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

Hampton, Christopher

13.

No degree of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it fascinating.

Harold Rosenberg

14.

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

Hammarskjold, Dag

15.

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

Flagg, Fannie

16.

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

Proverb, Chinese

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

20.

Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject; bad critical writing by the necessity of maintaining the professional standing of the critic.

Chandler, Raymond

21.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

22.

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

23.

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

Dale Carnegie

24.

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.

25.

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

26.

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

Burns, Robert

27.

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

Shenstone, William

28.

The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most part, they are manifestations of his debate with himself as to what he should do next and what he should avoid.

Auden, W. H.

29.

The television critic, whatever his pretensions, does not labor in the same vineyard as those he criticizes; his grapes are all sour.

Raphael, Frederic

30.

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

Helvetius, Claude A.

31.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

Eleanor Roosevelt

32.

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

Mascotte, John P.

33.

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

34.

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

Mizner, Wilson

35.

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

Murdoch, Iris

36.

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

37.

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

38.

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

Tynan, Kenneth

39.

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

40.

I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.

Pound, Ezra

41.

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

42.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

43.

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

Cioran, E. M.

44.

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

Benjamin, Walter

45.

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

46.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

47.

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

France, Anatole

48.

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

Buxton, Charles

49.

After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them and invent others.

Edith Wharton

50.

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