Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

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

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

Hugo, Victor

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

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

Nunn, Gregory

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

Smith, Sydney

Did some more sober critics come abroad? If wrong, I smil'd; if right, I kiss'd the rod.

Pope, Alexander

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

Mizner, Wilson

A louse in the locks of literature.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

10.

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

France, Anatole

11.

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

Proverb, Chinese

12.

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

Ziglar, Zig

13.

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

Gourmont, Remy De

14.

He cannot be strict in judging, who does not wish others to be strict judges of himself.

Cicero, Marcus T.

15.

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

16.

In the arts, the critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising.

Kael, Pauline

17.

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

18.

In an age of unscrupulous and shameless book-making, it is a duty to give notice of the rubbish that cumbers the ground. There is no credit, no real power required for this task. It is the work of an intellectual scavenger, and far from being specially honorable.

Hutton, R. H.

19.

A film is just like a muffin. You make it. You put it on the table. One person might say, Oh, I don't like it. One might say it's the best muffin ever made. One might say it's an awful muffin. It's hard for me to say. It's for me to make the muffin.

Washington, Denzel

20.

Criticism of others is futile and if you indulge in it often you should be warned that it can be fatal to your career.

Carnegie, Dale

21.

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

22.

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

Collins, Jackie

23.

If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.

Epictetus

24.

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

25.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right. You'll be criticized anyway.

Roosevelt, Eleanor

26.

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

Little, Lynn M.

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

32.

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

33.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

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.

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

Wilde, Oscar

36.

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

Guinon, Albert

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Dale Carnegie

40.

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.

41.

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

Elbert Hubbard

42.

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

Wilde, Oscar

43.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

44.

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.

45.

David Lynch came out of it a genius, and I came out of it a fat girl. I'm sorry that the only comment I get about the part is the way I look. [Commenting on the critics' response to her performance in Blue Velvet]

Rossellini, Isabella

46.

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

Franklin P. Jones

47.

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

48.

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

Costello, Elvis

49.

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

50.

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

James, Henry