Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Erasmus, Desiderius

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Little, Lynn M.

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

Mascotte, John P.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

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

Steinbeck, John

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

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

Helvetius, Claude A.

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

Native American Proverb

Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then it will gradually yield to him.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

10.

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

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.

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.

13.

Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.

Miller, Henry

14.

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

Williams, Bern

15.

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

James, Henry

16.

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

Tynan, Kenneth

17.

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

18.

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

West, Rebecca

19.

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

20.

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

Collins, Jackie

21.

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

22.

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

Updike, John

23.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

24.

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.

Christopher Hampton

25.

People want you to be a crazy, out-of-control teen brat. They want you miserable, just like them. They don't want heroes; what they want is to see you fall.

DiCaprio, Leonardo

26.

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

Smith, Sydney

27.

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

Nolan, Sir Sidney

28.

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

Auden, W. H.

29.

It is just as hard to do your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shouting at you.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

30.

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

31.

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

Ziglar, Zig

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Fielding, Henry

35.

When a man spends his time giving his wife criticism and advice instead of compliments, he forgets that it was not his good judgment, but his charming manners, that won her heart.

Rowland, Helen

36.

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

Wilde, Oscar

37.

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

38.

Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do criticize him, you'll be a mile away and have his shoes.

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Elbert Hubbard

42.

Nothing would improve newspaper criticism so much as the knowledge that it was to be read by men too hardy to acquiesce in the authoritative statement of the reviewer.

Hutton, R. H.

43.

Criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters.

Conrad, Joseph

44.

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

45.

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

Costello, Elvis

46.

Recognize the cunning man not by the corpses he pays homage to but by the living writers he conspires against with the most shameful weapon, Silence, or the briefest review.

Dahlberg, Edward

47.

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

48.

Many great ideas have been lost because the people who had them could not stand being laughed at.

49.

There is an air of last things, a brooding sense of impending annihilation, about so much deconstructive activity, in so many of its guises; it is not merely postmodernist but preapocalyptic.

Lehman, David

50.

Essays, entitled critical, are epistles addressed to the public, through which the mind of the recluse relieves itself of its impressions.

Fuller, Margaret