Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

Best Quotes about Criticism

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

Benjamin Disraeli

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.

Steinbeck, John

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

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

Moliere

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.

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

Culture is only true when implicitly critical, and the mind which forgets this revenges itself in the critics it breeds. Criticism is an indispensable element of culture.

Adorno, Theodor W.

Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves.

Cioran, E. M.

10.

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

11.

If you burn your neighbors house down, it doesn't make your house look any better.

Holtz, Lou

12.

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

13.

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

14.

He cannot be strict in judging, who does not wish others to be strict judges of himself.

Cicero, Marcus T.

15.

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

Conrad, Joseph

16.

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

Bible

17.

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.

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Sontag, Susan

21.

Each generation produces its squad of moderns with peashooters to attack Gibraltar.

Pollock, Channing

22.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

23.

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

Wilde, Oscar

24.

Some people are always critical of vague statements. I tend rather to be critical of precise statements; they are the only ones which can correctly be labeled wrong.

Smullyan, Raymond

25.

It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one's children will become than for the children one's mature critics often are.

Walker, Alice

26.

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

Wilde, Oscar

27.

Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than native genius. In the hands of a man who has read widely but lacks judgment, applied to certain subjects it can corrupt both its readers and the writer himself.

Bruyere, Jean De La

28.

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

Smith, Sydney

29.

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

Churchill, Charles

30.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

31.

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

Shenstone, William

32.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

33.

In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable.

Sontag, Susan

34.

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture; it's a really stupid thing to want to do.

Costello, Elvis

35.

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

36.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

37.

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

W. H. Auden

38.

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

Mcluhan, Marshall

39.

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

Little, Lynn M.

40.

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

41.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

42.

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

43.

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

Miller, Henry

44.

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

Dale Carnegie

45.

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

Kael, Pauline

46.

If what they are saying about you is true, mend your ways. If it isn't true, forget it, and go on and serve the Lord.

Ironside, H. A.

47.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

48.

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

Fuller, Margaret

49.

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

Helvetius, Claude A.

50.

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