Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Elbert Hubbard

Best Quotes about Criticism

Every writer is necessarily a critic -- that is, each sentence is a skeleton accompanied by enormous activity of rejection; and each selection is governed by general principles concerning truth, force, beauty, and so on. The critic that is in every fabulist is like the iceberg -- nine-tenths of him is under water.

Wilder, Thornton

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

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

Most of us are umpires at heart; we like to call balls and strikes on somebody else.

Aikman, Leo

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

Mcclung, Nellie

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

Murdoch, Iris

Most of our censure of others is only oblique praise of self, uttered to show the wisdom and superiority of the speaker. It has all the invidiousness of self-praise, and all the ill-desert of falsehood.

Edwards, Tryon

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

Elbert Hubbard

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

Flagg, Fannie

10.

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

11.

Without the meditative background that is criticism, works become isolated gestures, historical accidents, soon forgotten.

Kundera, Milan

12.

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

13.

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

14.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

15.

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

16.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

17.

Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than native genius. In the hands of a man who has read widely but lacks judgment, applied to certain subjects it can corrupt both its readers and the writer himself.

Bruyere, Jean De La

18.

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

Johnson, Samuel

19.

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

France, Anatole

20.

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.

Disraeli, Benjamin

21.

Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works.

Keats, John

22.

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

Shenstone, William

23.

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

Mizner, Wilson

24.

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.

25.

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

26.

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

27.

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

28.

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

Little, Lynn M.

29.

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

30.

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

31.

A louse in the locks of literature.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

32.

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

33.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

34.

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

Wilde, Oscar

35.

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

36.

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

Byron, Lord

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

We have been educated to such a fine -- or dull -- point that we are incapable of enjoying something new, something different, until we are first told what it's all about. We don't trust our five senses; we rely on our critics and educators, all of whom are failures in the realm of creation. In short, the blind lead the blind. It's the democratic way.

Miller, Henry

42.

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

Kael, Pauline

43.

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

Smith, Sydney

44.

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

Turner, Ted

45.

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.

46.

The avocation of assessing the failures of better men can be turned into a comfortable livelihood, providing you back it up with a Ph.D.

Algren, Nelson

47.

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

Jones, Franklin P.

48.

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

49.

The pleasure we feel in criticizing robs us from being moved by very beautiful things.

La Bruyere, Jean De

50.

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

Williams, Bern