Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Elbert Hubbard

Best Quotes about Criticism

Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge ourselves with railing against it.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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

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

Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.

Steinbeck, John

Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much cherished aspect of academic freedom.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

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

Mascotte, John P.

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

James, Clive

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

No sadder proof can be given of a person's own tiny stature, than their disbelief in great people.

Carlyle, Thomas

10.

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

Moliere

11.

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

Mcclung, Nellie

12.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Mizner, Wilson

16.

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

17.

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

18.

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

19.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

20.

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

Byron, Lord

21.

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

Wilde, Oscar

22.

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

23.

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

Rayburn, Sam

24.

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

25.

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

26.

Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.

Steinbeck, John

27.

I never met anybody who said when they were a kid, "I wanna grow up and be a critic."

Richard Pryor

28.

Now, in reality, the world have paid too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them to be men of much greater profundity than they really are.

Henry Fielding

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.

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

Nolan, Sir Sidney

31.

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

Holtz, Lou

32.

The best criticism doesn't trap an employee or child in a dead end. It gives them an escape route.

33.

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

Johnson, Samuel

34.

What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.

Cocteau, Jean

35.

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

36.

What we ask of him is, that he should find out for us more than we can find out for ourselves. He must have the passion of a lover.

Symons, Arthur

37.

No man ever got very high by pulling other people down. The intelligent merchant does not knock his competitors. The sensible worker does not work those who work with him. Don't knock your friends. Don't knock your enemies. Don't knock yourself.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

38.

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

39.

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

Hammarskjold, Dag

40.

The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure.

Wilde, Oscar

41.

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

Tynan, Kenneth

42.

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

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

43.

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

44.

Strike the dog dead, it's but a critic!

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

45.

A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time. A great drama critic also perceives what is not happening.

Tynan, Kenneth

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Churchill, Charles

49.

Abuse if you slight it, will gradually die away; but if you show yourself irritated, you will be thought to have deserved it.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

50.

You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism.

Maugham, W. Somerset