Motivational Quotes

Criticism

The biggest critics of my books are people who never read them.

- Collins, Jackie

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

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

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

I demand that my books be judged with utmost severity, by knowledgeable people who know the rules of grammar and of logic, and who will seek beneath the footsteps of my commas the lice of my thought in the head of my style.

Aragon, Louis

I'd rather be hissed at for a good verse, than applauded for a bad one.

Hugo, Victor

Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs.

Picasso, Pablo

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

One ought to examine himself for a very long time before thinking of condemning others.

Moliere

A friend is a lot of things, but a critic isn't.

Williams, Bern

10.

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

11.

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

Nunn, Gregory

12.

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.

13.

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

James, Henry

14.

Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility.

Sontag, Susan

15.

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

16.

Professional critics are incapable of distinguishing and appreciating either diamonds in the rough or gold in bars. They are traders, and in literature know only the coins that are current. Their critical lab has scales and weights, but neither crucible or touchstone.

Joubert, Joseph

17.

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

James, Clive

18.

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

Hill, Napoleon

19.

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

Churchill, Charles

20.

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

Mizner, Wilson

21.

For if there is anything to one's praise, it is foolish vanity to be gratified at it, and if it is abuse -- why one is always sure to hear of it from one damned good-natured friend or another!

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

22.

You should not say it is not good. You should say you do not like it; and then, you know, you're perfectly safe.

Whistler, James Mcneill

23.

When the critics come around it's always too late.

Nolan, Sir Sidney

24.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

25.

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

Pollock, Channing

26.

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

27.

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

Benjamin Disraeli

28.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

29.

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.

Johnson, Samuel

30.

Neither praise or blame is the object of true criticism. Justly to discriminate, firmly to establish, wisely to prescribe, and honestly to award. These are the true aims and duties of criticism.

Simms, William Gilmore

31.

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.

32.

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

Jones, Franklin P.

33.

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

34.

We might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds when we read a book and feel an emotion about it, for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism.

Eliot, T. S.

35.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

36.

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

Native American Proverb

37.

Be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath.

Bible

38.

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

39.

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

40.

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

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.

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

Wilde, Oscar

43.

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

Wilde, Oscar

44.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

45.

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

Dale Carnegie

46.

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

47.

I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works. An assault upon a town is a bad thing; but starving it is still worse.

Johnson, Samuel

48.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

49.

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

Murdoch, Iris

50.

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