Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Best Quotes about Criticism

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

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

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

Helvetius, Claude A.

To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession, to establish in fine a relation with the criticized thing and to make it one's own.

James, Henry

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.

Unlike other people, our reviewers are powerful because they believe in nothing.

Clurman, Harold

It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

Woolf, Virginia

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

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

Richard Pryor

10.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

11.

In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable.

Sontag, Susan

12.

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

Jones, Franklin P.

13.

Hardly a book of human worth, be it heaven's own secret, is honestly placed before the reader; it is either shunned, given a Periclean funeral oration in a hundred and fifty words, or interred in the potter's field of the newspapers back pages.

Dahlberg, Edward

14.

I remember when I was in college, people told me I couldn't play in the NBA. There's always somebody saying you can't do it, and those people have to be ignored.

Cartwright, Bill

15.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

16.

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

17.

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

Hill, Napoleon

18.

Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins.

Native American Proverb

19.

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

Wilde, Oscar

20.

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

Porchia, Antonio

21.

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

22.

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

Mascotte, John P.

23.

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

24.

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

Dale Carnegie

25.

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

26.

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

27.

Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility.

Sontag, Susan

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.

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

Harold Rosenberg

30.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

31.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

32.

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

33.

Social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings.

Paz, Octavio

34.

If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, then ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.

Lincoln, Abraham

35.

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

Smith, Sydney

36.

Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves.

Cioran, E. M.

37.

Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.

West, Rebecca

38.

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

Pope, Alexander

39.

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

Steinbeck, John

40.

It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.

Baudelaire, Charles

41.

Critics are usually kinder to cheaper movies than to those they perceive to be big Hollywood releases. They cut you a lot more slack if you spend less money, which makes no sense.

Coen, Ethan

42.

Critics! Those cut-throat bandits in the paths of fame.

Burns, Robert

43.

Temperament is the primary requisite for the critic -- a temperament exquisitely susceptible to beauty, and to the various impressions that beauty gives us.

Wilde, Oscar

44.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

45.

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

46.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

47.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

48.

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

Mcclung, Nellie

49.

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs.

Hampton, Christopher

50.

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