Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Hugo, Victor

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

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

Rayburn, Sam

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

When a man spends his time giving his wife criticism and advice instead of compliments, he forgets that it was not his good judgment, but his charming manners, that won her heart.

Rowland, Helen

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

Updike, John

Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.

Johnson, Samuel

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

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

Rostand, Jean

10.

In an age of unscrupulous and shameless book-making, it is a duty to give notice of the rubbish that cumbers the ground. There is no credit, no real power required for this task. It is the work of an intellectual scavenger, and far from being specially honorable.

Hutton, R. H.

11.

If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.

Epictetus

12.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

13.

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

14.

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

15.

Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.

Benjamin, Walter

16.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

17.

It is very perplexing how an intrepid frontier people, who fought a wilderness, floods, tornadoes, and the Rockies, cower before criticism, which is regarded as a malignant tumor in the imagination.

Dahlberg, Edward

18.

A reader who quarrels with postulates, who dislikes Hamlet because he does not believe that there are ghosts or that people speak in pentameters, clearly has no business in literature. He cannot distinguish fiction from fact, and belongs in the same category as the people who send checks to radio stations for the relief of suffering heroines in soap operas.

Frye, Northrop

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Hampton, Christopher

22.

Nothing would improve newspaper criticism so much as the knowledge that it was to be read by men too hardy to acquiesce in the authoritative statement of the reviewer.

Hutton, R. H.

23.

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

Guinon, Albert

24.

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

25.

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

26.

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

Byron, Lord

27.

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

Dale Carnegie

28.

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

29.

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

Flagg, Fannie

30.

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

31.

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

32.

Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge ourselves with railing against it.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

33.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

34.

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

35.

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

36.

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

Jean Sibelius

37.

Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world -- though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst -- the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!

Sterne, Laurence

38.

I never met anybody who said when they were a kid, "I wanna grow up and be a critic."

Richard Pryor

39.

After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them and invent others.

Edith Wharton

40.

Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do criticize him, you'll be a mile away and have his shoes.

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Mascotte, John P.

44.

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

Nolan, Sir Sidney

45.

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

46.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

47.

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

48.

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

49.

Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much cherished aspect of academic freedom.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

50.

Never retract, never explain, never apologize; get things done and let them howl.

Mcclung, Nellie