Motivational Quotes

Criticism

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

- H. L. Mencken

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time. A great drama critic also perceives what is not happening.

Tynan, Kenneth

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

Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Steinbeck, John

If I care to listen to every criticism, let alone act on them, then this shop may as well be closed for all other businesses. I have learned to do my best, and if the end result is good then I do not care for any criticism, but if the end result is not good, then even the praise of ten angels would not make the difference.

Lincoln, Abraham

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

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

Buxton, Charles

Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs.

Picasso, Pablo

10.

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

Auden, W. H.

11.

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

12.

Many great ideas have been lost because the people who had them could not stand being laughed at.

13.

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

Rayburn, Sam

14.

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

Gourmont, Remy De

15.

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

Harold Rosenberg

16.

The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art -- and, by analogy, our own experience -- more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.

Sontag, Susan

17.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

18.

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

19.

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

Epictetus

20.

The avocation of assessing the failures of better men can be turned into a comfortable livelihood, providing you back it up with a Ph.D.

Algren, Nelson

21.

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

22.

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.

23.

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

Fuller, Margaret

24.

Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world -- though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst -- the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!

Sterne, Laurence

25.

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

Bible

26.

Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge ourselves with railing against it.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

30.

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

Williams, Bern

31.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

32.

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

33.

Abuse if you slight it, will gradually die away; but if you show yourself irritated, you will be thought to have deserved it.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

34.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

35.

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

36.

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

Lowell, James Russell

37.

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

Johnson, Samuel

38.

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

Updike, John

39.

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.

40.

I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works. An assault upon a town is a bad thing; but starving it is still worse.

Johnson, Samuel

41.

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

42.

All the critics who could not make their reputations by discovering you are hoping to make them by predicting hopefully your approaching impotence, failure and general drying up of natural juices. Not a one will wish you luck or hope that you will keep on writing unless you have political affiliations in which case these will rally around and speak of you and Homer, Balzac, Zola and Link Steffens.

Hemingway, Ernest

43.

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

Kael, Pauline

44.

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

Ziglar, Zig

45.

Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.

Fox, Dr. Emmit

46.

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

Aikman, Leo

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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