Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Pope, Alexander

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

Kael, Pauline

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

Writing prejudicial, off-putting reviews is a precise exercise in applied black magic. The reviewer can draw free-floating disagreeable associations to a book by implying that the book is completely unimportant without saying exactly why, and carefully avoiding any clear images that could capture the reader's full attention.

Burroughs, William S.

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

Richard Pryor

A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.

Murdoch, Iris

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

Williams, Bern

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

Buxton, Charles

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

10.

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

Franklin P. Jones

11.

Let me walk three weeks in the footsteps of my enemy, carry the same burden, have the same trials as he, before I say one word to criticize.

12.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

13.

The television critic, whatever his pretensions, does not labor in the same vineyard as those he criticizes; his grapes are all sour.

Raphael, Frederic

14.

Those who can -- do. Those who can't -- criticize.

15.

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.

Disraeli, Benjamin

16.

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

17.

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

Helvetius, Claude A.

18.

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

Shenstone, William

19.

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

Kundera, Milan

20.

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.

21.

It is critical vision alone which can mitigate the unimpeded operation of the automatic.

Mcluhan, Marshall

22.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

23.

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

Nunn, Gregory

24.

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

25.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

26.

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

27.

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

Moliere

28.

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

29.

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

Clurman, Harold

30.

David Lynch came out of it a genius, and I came out of it a fat girl. I'm sorry that the only comment I get about the part is the way I look. [Commenting on the critics' response to her performance in Blue Velvet]

Rossellini, Isabella

31.

Take heed of critics even when they are not fair; resist them even when they are.

Rostand, Jean

32.

Not even the most powerful organs of the press, including Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times, can discover a new artist or certify his work and make it stick. They can only bring you the scores.

Wolfe, Thomas

33.

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

Bible

34.

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

Schlegel, Friedrich

35.

I'd rather be hissed at for a good verse, than applauded for a bad one.

Hugo, Victor

36.

In my conscience I believe the baggage loves me, for she never speaks well of me herself, nor suffers any body else to rail at me.

Congreve, William

37.

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

38.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

39.

Doubtless criticism was originally benignant, pointing out the beauties of a work rather that its defects. The passions of men have made it malignant, as a bad heart of Procreates turned the bed, the symbol of repose, into an instrument of torture.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

40.

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

41.

The whole effort of a sincere man is to erect his personal impressions into laws.

Gourmont, Remy De

42.

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

Mascotte, John P.

43.

The person of analytic or critical intellect finds something ridiculous in everything. The person of synthetic or constructive intellect, in almost nothing.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

44.

Satire is often the reflection of a kind of moral nausea.

Briton, Crand

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

48.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

49.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

50.

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

Carruthers, Charles Edwin