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

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

Aikman, Leo

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

Moliere

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

Hubbard, Elbert

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

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

Briton, Crand

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

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

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

13.

Criticism of others is futile and if you indulge in it often you should be warned that it can be fatal to your career.

Carnegie, Dale

14.

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

Collins, Jackie

15.

A drama critic is a person who surprises the playwright by informing him what he meant.

Mizner, Wilson

16.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

17.

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs.

Hampton, Christopher

18.

It is impossible to think of a man of any actual force and originality, universally recognized as having those qualities, who spent his whole life appraising and describing the work of other men.

Mencken, H. L.

19.

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

Wilde, Oscar

20.

A man must serve his time to every trade save censure -- critics all are ready made.

Byron, Lord

21.

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

Helvetius, Claude A.

22.

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

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

23.

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

24.

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

Hugo, Victor

25.

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

26.

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

27.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

28.

The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion.

Benjamin, Walter

29.

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.

30.

If I make a move, like raise my eyebrows, some critic says I'm doing Nicholson. What am I supposed to do, cut off my eyebrows?

Slater, Christian

31.

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

Rayburn, Sam

32.

When subjected to the rain of criticism, let?s not curse the rain. Let?s accept it as a part of life. Let?s remember that the more criticism we can successfully handle, the more zest we will experience in our lives.

Sinha, Shall

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

36.

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

Auden, W. H.

37.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Hammarskjold, Dag

41.

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

42.

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.

43.

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

44.

Strike the dog dead, it's but a critic!

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

45.

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

Kael, Pauline

46.

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

47.

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

48.

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

Pollock, Channing

49.

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

50.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De