Motivational Quotes

Criticism

Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.

- Fox, Dr. Emmit

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

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

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

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

Kael, Pauline

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.

We might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds when we read a book and feel an emotion about it, for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism.

Eliot, T. S.

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

Miller, Henry

10.

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

11.

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

Clurman, Harold

12.

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

13.

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

14.

Give me the critic bred in Nature's school, who neither talks by rote, nor thinks by rule; who feeling's honest dictates still obeys, and dares, without a precedent, to praise.

Shee, Sir Martin Archer

15.

Most of us are umpires at heart; we like to call balls and strikes on somebody else.

Aikman, Leo

16.

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

Christopher Hampton

17.

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

Wilde, Oscar

18.

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

19.

One does not lash hat lies at a distance. The foibles that we ridicule must at least be a little bit our own. Only then will the work be a part of our own flesh. The garden must be weeded.

Klee, Paul

20.

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

21.

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

22.

A negative judgment gives you more satisfaction than praise, provided it smacks of jealousy.

Baudrillard, Jean

23.

You should not say it is not good. You should say you do not like it; and then, you know, you're perfectly safe.

Whistler, James Mcneill

24.

Pay no attention to what the critics say... Remember, a statue has never been set up in honor of a critic!

Jean Sibelius

25.

A man generally has the good or ill qualities he attributes to mankind.

Shenstone, William

26.

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

27.

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

Schlegel, Friedrich

28.

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

29.

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

Sontag, Susan

30.

If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.

Epictetus

31.

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

Fuller, Margaret

32.

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

33.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

34.

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

Lowell, James Russell

35.

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

Ziglar, Zig

36.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

37.

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

Helvetius, Claude A.

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Mcclung, Nellie

43.

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

44.

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

Dale Carnegie

45.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

46.

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

Native American Proverb

47.

You're never s good as everyone tells you when you win, and you're never as bad as they say when you lose.