Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Hubbard, Elbert

Best Quotes about Criticism

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

I remember when I was in college, people told me I couldn't play in the NBA. There's always somebody saying you can't do it, and those people have to be ignored.

Cartwright, Bill

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

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

Rostand, Jean

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

Pope, Alexander

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

Franklin P. Jones

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

Bible

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

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

Benjamin Disraeli

10.

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

11.

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.

12.

One of the grotesqueries of present-day American life is the amount of reasoning that goes into displaying the wisdom secreted in bad movies while proving that modern art is meaningless. They have put into practice the notion that a bad art work cleverly interpreted according to some obscure Method is more rewarding than a masterpiece wrapped in silence.

Rosenberg, Harold

13.

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

14.

In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable.

Sontag, Susan

15.

The whole effort of a sincere man is to erect his personal impressions into laws.

Gourmont, Remy De

16.

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

17.

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

Clurman, Harold

18.

A critic is a man who knows the way, but can't drive the car.

Tynan, Kenneth

19.

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

Hammarskjold, Dag

20.

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

Nunn, Gregory

21.

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

Buxton, Charles

22.

When everyone is against you, it means you are absolutely wrong -- or you are absolutely right.

Guinon, Albert

23.

We might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds when we read a book and feel an emotion about it, for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism.

Eliot, T. S.

24.

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

25.

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

Fuller, Margaret

26.

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

27.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

28.

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

29.

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

Mizner, Wilson

30.

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

31.

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

32.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right. You'll be criticized anyway.

Roosevelt, Eleanor

33.

Though by whim, envy, or resentment led, they damn those authors whom they never read.

Churchill, Charles

34.

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

35.

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

Briton, Crand

36.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

37.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

38.

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

39.

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

40.

A film is just like a muffin. You make it. You put it on the table. One person might say, Oh, I don't like it. One might say it's the best muffin ever made. One might say it's an awful muffin. It's hard for me to say. It's for me to make the muffin.

Washington, Denzel

41.

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

Turner, Ted

42.

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

43.

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

Wilde, Oscar

44.

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

Helvetius, Claude A.

45.

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

Collins, Jackie

46.

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

Hill, Napoleon

47.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

48.

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.

49.

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

Proverb, Chinese

50.

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