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

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

Clurman, Harold

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

Collins, Jackie

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

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

Kael, Pauline

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

When everyone is against you, it means you are absolutely wrong -- or you are absolutely right.

Guinon, Albert

Professional critics are incapable of distinguishing and appreciating either diamonds in the rough or gold in bars. They are traders, and in literature know only the coins that are current. Their critical lab has scales and weights, but neither crucible or touchstone.

Joubert, Joseph

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

Smith, Sydney

10.

The strength of criticism lies in the weakness of the thing criticized.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

11.

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

Harold Rosenberg

12.

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

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Wilde, Oscar

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Steinbeck, John

20.

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

Conrad, Joseph

21.

Most of our censure of others is only oblique praise of self, uttered to show the wisdom and superiority of the speaker. It has all the invidiousness of self-praise, and all the ill-desert of falsehood.

Edwards, Tryon

22.

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

23.

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

Shenstone, William

24.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

25.

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

26.

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

Benjamin, Walter

27.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

28.

A man must serve his time to every trade save censure -- critics all are ready made.

Byron, Lord

29.

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

30.

The text is merely one of the contexts of a piece of literature, its lexical or verbal one, no more or less important than the sociological, psychological, historical, anthropological or generic.

Fiedler, Leslie

31.

There are two modes of criticism. One which crushes to earth without mercy all the humble buds of Phantasy, all the plants that, though green and fruitful, are also a prey to insects or have suffered by drought. It weeds well the garden, and cannot believe the weed in its native soil may be a pretty, graceful plant. There is another mode which enters into the natural history of every thing that breathes and lives, which believes no impulse to be entirely in vain, which scrutinizes circumstances, motive and object before it condemns, and believes there is a beauty in natural form, if its law and purpose be understood.

Fuller, Margaret

32.

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

Hill, Napoleon

33.

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

Dale Carnegie

34.

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

Miller, Henry

35.

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

36.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

37.

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

38.

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

39.

A louse in the locks of literature.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

40.

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

Mcluhan, Marshall

41.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

42.

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

Wilde, Oscar

43.

What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.

Cocteau, Jean

44.

A good review from the critics is just another stay of execution.

Hoffman, Dustin

45.

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

46.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Mascotte, John P.

50.

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

Flagg, Fannie