Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Helvetius, Claude A.

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

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

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

Moliere

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

Let me walk three weeks in the footsteps of my enemy, carry the same burden, have the same trials as he, before I say one word to criticize.

Critics! Those cut-throat bandits in the paths of fame.

Burns, Robert

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

Churchill, Charles

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

Mcluhan, Marshall

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.

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

11.

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

Buxton, Charles

12.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

13.

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

Paz, Octavio

14.

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

Helvetius, Claude A.

15.

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

W. H. Auden

16.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

17.

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

18.

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.

19.

The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.

France, Anatole

20.

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

21.

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

22.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

23.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

24.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

25.

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

26.

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

Dale Carnegie

27.

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.

28.

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

Shenstone, William

29.

God knows people who are paid to have attitudes toward things, professional critics, make me sick; camp following eunuchs of literature. They won't even whore. They're all virtuous and sterile. And how well meaning and high minded. But they're all camp followers.

Hemingway, Ernest

30.

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

31.

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

Hill, Napoleon

32.

Do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend's forehead.

Proverb, Chinese

33.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

34.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

35.

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

Gourmont, Remy De

36.

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

Flagg, Fannie

37.

Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject; bad critical writing by the necessity of maintaining the professional standing of the critic.

Chandler, Raymond

38.

You should never assume contempt for that which it is not very manifest that you have it in your power to possess, nor does a wit ever make a more contemptible figure than when, in attempting satire, he shows that he does not understand that which he would make the subject of his ridicule.

Melbourne, Lord

39.

There is an air of last things, a brooding sense of impending annihilation, about so much deconstructive activity, in so many of its guises; it is not merely postmodernist but preapocalyptic.

Lehman, David

40.

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

Harold Rosenberg

41.

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

42.

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.

43.

We might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds when we read a book and feel an emotion about it, for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism.

Eliot, T. S.

44.

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

45.

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

Cocteau, Jean

46.

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

47.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

48.

Critics are already made.