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

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

Nolan, Sir Sidney

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

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

All the world's a stage, and all the clergymen critics.

Nunn, Gregory

Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.

Fox, Dr. Emmit

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

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

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

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.

I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works. An assault upon a town is a bad thing; but starving it is still worse.

Johnson, Samuel

10.

The television critic, whatever his pretensions, does not labor in the same vineyard as those he criticizes; his grapes are all sour.

Raphael, Frederic

11.

In the arts, the critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising.

Kael, Pauline

12.

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

13.

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

Dale Carnegie

14.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

15.

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

Williams, Bern

16.

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

Proverb, Chinese

17.

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

18.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

19.

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

Franklin P. Jones

20.

Be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath.

Bible

21.

David Lynch came out of it a genius, and I came out of it a fat girl. I'm sorry that the only comment I get about the part is the way I look. [Commenting on the critics' response to her performance in Blue Velvet]

Rossellini, Isabella

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Briton, Crand

25.

Post-modernism has cut off the present from all futures. The daily media add to this by cutting off the past. Which means that critical opinion is often orphaned in the present.

Berger, John

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

29.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

30.

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

31.

A louse in the locks of literature.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

32.

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

Auden, W. H.

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Helvetius, Claude A.

36.

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

Cocteau, Jean

37.

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

38.

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

39.

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

40.

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

41.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

42.

In judging others, folks will work overtime for no pay.

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

43.

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

44.

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

45.

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

Smith, Sydney

46.

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

Flagg, Fannie

47.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

48.

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

49.

When I am abroad, I always make it a rule to never criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.

Churchill, Winston

50.

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