Motivational Quotes

Criticism

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs.

- Hampton, Christopher

Best Quotes about Criticism

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

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

Hubbard, Elbert

Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

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

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

Guinon, Albert

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

Mcclung, Nellie

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Clurman, Harold

You should not say it is not good. You should say you do not like it; and then, you know, you're perfectly safe.

Whistler, James Mcneill

10.

The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure.

Wilde, Oscar

11.

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

Benjamin, Walter

12.

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.

13.

Social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings.

Paz, Octavio

14.

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

Sontag, Susan

15.

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

16.

A drama critic is a person who surprises the playwright by informing him what he meant.

Mizner, Wilson

17.

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

Smith, Sydney

18.

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

Wilde, Oscar

19.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

20.

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

21.

I review novels to make money, because it is easier for a sluggard to write an article a fortnight than a book a year, because the writer is soothed by the opiate of action, the crank by posing as a good journalist, and having an air hole. I dislike it. I do it and I am always resolving to give it up.

Connolly, Cyril

22.

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.

23.

Of course you're always at liberty to judge the critic. Judge people as critics, however, and you'll condemn them all!

James, Henry

24.

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

Lowell, James Russell

25.

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

26.

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

Schlegel, Friedrich

27.

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.

28.

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

Elbert Hubbard

29.

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

30.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

31.

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

Conrad, Joseph

32.

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

33.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

34.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

35.

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

Mascotte, John P.

36.

Prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash but constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feeling whatever.

Orwell, George

37.

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

Johnson, Samuel

38.

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

39.

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

40.

They will say you are on the wrong road, if it is your own.

Porchia, Antonio

41.

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

42.

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

Jones, Franklin P.

43.

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

Harold Rosenberg

44.

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

45.

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

Christopher Hampton

46.

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

47.

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

Churchill, Charles

48.

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

49.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

50.

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

Epictetus