Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Costello, Elvis

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so.

Smith, Sydney

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

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.

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

Ziglar, Zig

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

Harold Rosenberg

The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art -- and, by analogy, our own experience -- more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.

Sontag, Susan

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

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

Hubbard, Elbert

10.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

11.

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

Hill, Napoleon

12.

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

Helvetius, Claude A.

13.

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

14.

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

Nolan, Sir Sidney

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Moliere

19.

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

Proverb, Chinese

20.

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

Wilde, Oscar

21.

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

Johnson, Samuel

22.

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

Pollock, Channing

23.

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

24.

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

25.

Give me the critic bred in Nature's school, who neither talks by rote, nor thinks by rule; who feeling's honest dictates still obeys, and dares, without a precedent, to praise.

Shee, Sir Martin Archer

26.

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

Williams, Bern

27.

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

Schlegel, Friedrich

28.

Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world -- though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst -- the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!

Sterne, Laurence

29.

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

30.

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

Nunn, Gregory

31.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

32.

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

Raphael, Frederic

33.

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

34.

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

35.

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

36.

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

Mcclung, Nellie

37.

A louse in the locks of literature.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

38.

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

Guinon, Albert

39.

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

40.

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

Collins, Jackie

41.

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

42.

Any jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build it.

Rayburn, Sam

43.

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

44.

Essays, entitled critical, are epistles addressed to the public, through which the mind of the recluse relieves itself of its impressions.

Fuller, Margaret

45.

Literary criticism can be no more than a reasoned account of the feeling produced upon the critic by the book he is criticizing. Criticism can never be a science: it is, in the first place, much too personal, and in the second, it is concerned with values that science ignores. The touchstone is emotion, not reason. We judge a work of art by its effect on our sincere and vital emotion, and nothing else. All the critical twiddle-twaddle about style and form, all this pseudoscientific classifying and analyzing of books in an imitation-botanical fashion, is mere impertinence and mostly dull jargon.

Lawrence, D. H.

46.

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

Mcluhan, Marshall

47.

Prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash but constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feeling whatever.

Orwell, George

48.

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

Auden, W. H.

49.

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

Churchill, Charles

50.

You know lots of criticism is written by characters who are very academic and think it is a sign you are worthless if you make jokes or kid or even clown. I wouldn't kid Our Lord if he was on the cross. But I would attempt a joke with him if I ran into him chasing the money changers out of the temple.

Hemingway, Ernest