Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Holmes, Oliver Wendell

Best Quotes about Criticism

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

W. H. Auden

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

Wilde, Oscar

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

We have been educated to such a fine -- or dull -- point that we are incapable of enjoying something new, something different, until we are first told what it's all about. We don't trust our five senses; we rely on our critics and educators, all of whom are failures in the realm of creation. In short, the blind lead the blind. It's the democratic way.

Miller, Henry

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.

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

Hugo, Victor

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

Collins, Jackie

Take heed of critics even when they are not fair; resist them even when they are.

Rostand, Jean

All my life people have said that I wasn't going to make it.

Turner, Ted

10.

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

11.

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

12.

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

Hill, Napoleon

13.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

Eleanor Roosevelt

14.

Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works.

Keats, John

15.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

16.

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

Steinbeck, John

17.

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

18.

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture; it's a really stupid thing to want to do.

Costello, Elvis

19.

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

20.

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

France, Anatole

21.

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.

22.

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

23.

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

Hammarskjold, Dag

24.

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

Elbert Hubbard

25.

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

Rayburn, Sam

26.

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

27.

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

Conrad, Joseph

28.

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

29.

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

30.

Satire is often the reflection of a kind of moral nausea.

Briton, Crand

31.

A good review from the critics is just another stay of execution.

Hoffman, Dustin

32.

Professional critics are incapable of distinguishing and appreciating either diamonds in the rough or gold in bars. They are traders, and in literature know only the coins that are current. Their critical lab has scales and weights, but neither crucible or touchstone.

Joubert, Joseph

33.

Neither praise or blame is the object of true criticism. Justly to discriminate, firmly to establish, wisely to prescribe, and honestly to award. These are the true aims and duties of criticism.

Simms, William Gilmore

34.

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

35.

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

Flagg, Fannie

36.

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

Mascotte, John P.

37.

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

Buxton, Charles

38.

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

Fuller, Margaret

39.

Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world -- in order to set up a shadow world of meanings.

Sontag, Susan

40.

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

James, Henry

41.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Ziglar, Zig

47.

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

Burns, Robert

48.

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

49.

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

50.

Each generation produces its squad of moderns with peashooters to attack Gibraltar.

Pollock, Channing