Motivational Quotes

Criticism

Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring.

- Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Churchill, Charles

A wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic.

Lowell, James Russell

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

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

Little, Lynn M.

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

James, Henry

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

There are two modes of criticism. One which crushes to earth without mercy all the humble buds of Phantasy, all the plants that, though green and fruitful, are also a prey to insects or have suffered by drought. It weeds well the garden, and cannot believe the weed in its native soil may be a pretty, graceful plant. There is another mode which enters into the natural history of every thing that breathes and lives, which believes no impulse to be entirely in vain, which scrutinizes circumstances, motive and object before it condemns, and believes there is a beauty in natural form, if its law and purpose be understood.

Fuller, Margaret

When subjected to the rain of criticism, let?s not curse the rain. Let?s accept it as a part of life. Let?s remember that the more criticism we can successfully handle, the more zest we will experience in our lives.

Sinha, Shall

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

10.

A good review from the critics is just another stay of execution.

Hoffman, Dustin

11.

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

12.

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

Guinon, Albert

13.

The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most part, they are manifestations of his debate with himself as to what he should do next and what he should avoid.

Auden, W. H.

14.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

15.

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

16.

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

Updike, John

17.

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

18.

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

19.

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

20.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Collins, Jackie

24.

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

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

25.

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

Elbert Hubbard

26.

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

Nunn, Gregory

27.

When I am abroad, I always make it a rule to never criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.

Churchill, Winston

28.

If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.

Franklin, Benjamin

29.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

30.

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.

31.

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

32.

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

33.

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

34.

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

35.

Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as men's judgments of one another.

Erasmus, Desiderius

36.

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

37.

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

38.

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

39.

The rule in carving holds good as to criticism; never cut with a knife what you can cut with a spoon.

Buxton, Charles

40.

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

Mascotte, John P.

41.

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

Bible

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

Moliere

46.

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

47.

There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

48.

They will say you are on the wrong road, if it is your own.

Porchia, Antonio

49.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

50.

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

Kurt Vonnegut