Motivational Quotes

Criticism

Now, in reality, the world have paid too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them to be men of much greater profundity than they really are.

- Henry Fielding

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

The greatest honor that can be paid to the work of art, on its pedestal of ritual display, is to describe it with sensory completeness. We need a science of description. Criticism is ceremonial revivification.

Paglia, Camille

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

James, Henry

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

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

Let us consider the critic, therefore, as a discoverer of discoveries.

Kundera, Milan

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

As a work of art it has the same status as a long conversation between two not very bright drunks.

James, Clive

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

10.

People want you to be a crazy, out-of-control teen brat. They want you miserable, just like them. They don't want heroes; what they want is to see you fall.

DiCaprio, Leonardo

11.

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

Williams, Bern

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Steinbeck, John

15.

The best criticism doesn't trap an employee or child in a dead end. It gives them an escape route.

16.

Pay no attention to what the critics say... Remember, a statue has never been set up in honor of a critic!

Jean Sibelius

17.

We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which, in all times, with one or another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer without its scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and fall -- which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people.

Carlyle, Thomas

18.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

19.

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

Burns, Robert

20.

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

Christopher Hampton

21.

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

22.

Recognize the cunning man not by the corpses he pays homage to but by the living writers he conspires against with the most shameful weapon, Silence, or the briefest review.

Dahlberg, Edward

23.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

24.

Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.

West, Rebecca

25.

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

26.

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

Elbert Hubbard

27.

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

Harold Rosenberg

28.

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

Wilde, Oscar

29.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

30.

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

Aikman, Leo

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.

Baudelaire, Charles

35.

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

36.

No man ever got very high by pulling other people down. The intelligent merchant does not knock his competitors. The sensible worker does not work those who work with him. Don't knock your friends. Don't knock your enemies. Don't knock yourself.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

37.

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

Fuller, Margaret

38.

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

39.

Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then it will gradually yield to him.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

40.

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

Rayburn, Sam

41.

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

Helvetius, Claude A.

42.

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

43.

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

Cocteau, Jean

44.

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

Mascotte, John P.

45.

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

46.

Now, in reality, the world have paid too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them to be men of much greater profundity than they really are.

Henry Fielding

47.

The great critic must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.

Maugham, W. Somerset

48.

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

49.

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

Porchia, Antonio

50.

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