Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Flagg, Fannie

Best Quotes about Criticism

I demand that my books be judged with utmost severity, by knowledgeable people who know the rules of grammar and of logic, and who will seek beneath the footsteps of my commas the lice of my thought in the head of my style.

Aragon, Louis

All the critics who could not make their reputations by discovering you are hoping to make them by predicting hopefully your approaching impotence, failure and general drying up of natural juices. Not a one will wish you luck or hope that you will keep on writing unless you have political affiliations in which case these will rally around and speak of you and Homer, Balzac, Zola and Link Steffens.

Hemingway, Ernest

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

For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.

Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.

Benjamin, Walter

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

Jones, Franklin P.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

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

Updike, John

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

Buxton, Charles

10.

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

James, Henry

11.

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

Flagg, Fannie

12.

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

13.

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

Little, Lynn M.

14.

Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.

Lawrence, D. H.

15.

If I care to listen to every criticism, let alone act on them, then this shop may as well be closed for all other businesses. I have learned to do my best, and if the end result is good then I do not care for any criticism, but if the end result is not good, then even the praise of ten angels would not make the difference.

Lincoln, Abraham

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

19.

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

Helvetius, Claude A.

20.

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

Mizner, Wilson

21.

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

22.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

23.

That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one's own soul. It is more fascinating than history, as it is concerned simply with oneself. It is more delightful than philosophy, as its subject is concrete and not abstract, real and not vague. It is the only civilized form of autobiography.

Wilde, Oscar

24.

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

25.

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

Churchill, Charles

26.

We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.

Beecher, Henry Ward

27.

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

Christopher Hampton

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.

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

Hill, Napoleon

30.

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

31.

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

Kundera, Milan

32.

The literary critic, or the critic of any other specific form of artistic expression, may detach himself from the world for as long as the work of art he is contemplating appears to do the same.

James, Clive

33.

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

Kael, Pauline

34.

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

35.

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

36.

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

37.

No matter how well you perform there's always somebody of intelligent opinion who thinks it's lousy.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

38.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

39.

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

Tynan, Kenneth

40.

Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world -- in order to set up a shadow world of meanings.

Sontag, Susan

41.

A critic is a reader who ruminates. Thus, he should have more than one stomach.

Schlegel, Friedrich

42.

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

43.

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

Fuller, Margaret

44.

Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Smith, Sydney

49.

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

Moliere

50.

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