Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

Best Quotes about Criticism

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

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

If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.

Franklin, Benjamin

Self-laudation abounds among the unpolished, but nothing can stamp a man more sharply as ill-bred.

Buxton, Charles

No matter how well you perform there's always somebody of intelligent opinion who thinks it's lousy.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

You know lots of criticism is written by characters who are very academic and think it is a sign you are worthless if you make jokes or kid or even clown. I wouldn't kid Our Lord if he was on the cross. But I would attempt a joke with him if I ran into him chasing the money changers out of the temple.

Hemingway, Ernest

Did some more sober critics come abroad? If wrong, I smil'd; if right, I kiss'd the rod.

Pope, Alexander

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

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

10.

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

Hill, Napoleon

11.

I'd rather be hissed at for a good verse, than applauded for a bad one.

Hugo, Victor

12.

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

13.

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.

Disraeli, Benjamin

14.

I know I'm never as good or bad as one single performance. I've never believed in my critics or my worshippers, and I've always been able to leave the game at the arena.

Barkley, Charles

15.

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

16.

The biggest critics of my books are people who never read them.

Collins, Jackie

17.

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

18.

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

19.

Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews, to challenge every new author.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

20.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

21.

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

Mascotte, John P.

22.

Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

23.

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.

24.

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

Proverb, Chinese

25.

In my conscience I believe the baggage loves me, for she never speaks well of me herself, nor suffers any body else to rail at me.

Congreve, William

26.

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

Cioran, E. M.

27.

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

Clurman, Harold

28.

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

Sontag, Susan

29.

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.

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

33.

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

Nolan, Sir Sidney

34.

The critical method which denies literary modernity would appear -- and even, in certain respects, would be -- the most modern of critical movements.

Man, Paul De

35.

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

36.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

37.

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

38.

Unless criticism refuses to take itself quite so seriously or at least to permit its readers not to, it will inevitably continue to reflect the finicky canons of the genteel tradition and the depressing pieties of the Culture Religion of Modernism.

Fiedler, Leslie

39.

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

40.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

41.

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

42.

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.

43.

Praise those of your critics for whom nothing is up to standard.

Hammarskjold, Dag

44.

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

Lowell, James Russell

45.

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

Elbert Hubbard

46.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

47.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

48.

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

Paz, Octavio

49.

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

Cocteau, Jean

50.

Nothing would improve newspaper criticism so much as the knowledge that it was to be read by men too hardy to acquiesce in the authoritative statement of the reviewer.

Hutton, R. H.