Motivational Quotes

Criticism

The author himself is the best judge of his own performance; none has so deeply meditated on the subject; none is so sincerely interested in the event.

- Gibbon, Edward

Best Quotes about Criticism

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

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

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

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

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

Mcclung, Nellie

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession, to establish in fine a relation with the criticized thing and to make it one's own.

James, Henry

There are two insults no human will endure. The assertion that he has no sense of humor and the doubly impertinent assertion that he has never known trouble.

Lewis, Sinclair

10.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

11.

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

12.

For if there is anything to one's praise, it is foolish vanity to be gratified at it, and if it is abuse -- why one is always sure to hear of it from one damned good-natured friend or another!

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

13.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

14.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

15.

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

16.

Literary criticism can be no more than a reasoned account of the feeling produced upon the critic by the book he is criticizing. Criticism can never be a science: it is, in the first place, much too personal, and in the second, it is concerned with values that science ignores. The touchstone is emotion, not reason. We judge a work of art by its effect on our sincere and vital emotion, and nothing else. All the critical twiddle-twaddle about style and form, all this pseudoscientific classifying and analyzing of books in an imitation-botanical fashion, is mere impertinence and mostly dull jargon.

Lawrence, D. H.

17.

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

Ziglar, Zig

18.

Most critical writing is drivel and half of it is dishonest. It is a short cut to oblivion, anyway. Thinking in terms of ideas destroys the power to think in terms of emotions and sensations.

Chandler, Raymond

19.

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

Wilde, Oscar

20.

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

21.

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

Kael, Pauline

22.

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

Benjamin, Walter

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

26.

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

27.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

28.

As a work of art it has the same status as a long conversation between two not very bright drunks.

James, Clive

29.

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

Dale Carnegie

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Holtz, Lou

33.

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

Auden, W. H.

34.

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

Gourmont, Remy De

35.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

36.

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

Nunn, Gregory

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Rostand, Jean

40.

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.

41.

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

Christopher Hampton

42.

Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.

Johnson, Samuel

43.

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

Mascotte, John P.

44.

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.

45.

Any jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build it.

Rayburn, Sam

46.

One of the grotesqueries of present-day American life is the amount of reasoning that goes into displaying the wisdom secreted in bad movies while proving that modern art is meaningless. They have put into practice the notion that a bad art work cleverly interpreted according to some obscure Method is more rewarding than a masterpiece wrapped in silence.

Rosenberg, Harold

47.

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

Nolan, Sir Sidney

48.

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.

49.

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

50.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.