Motivational Quotes

Criticism

As a work of art it has the same status as a long conversation between two not very bright drunks.

- James, Clive

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Baudrillard, Jean

The text is merely one of the contexts of a piece of literature, its lexical or verbal one, no more or less important than the sociological, psychological, historical, anthropological or generic.

Fiedler, Leslie

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins.

Native American Proverb

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

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

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

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

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

Steinbeck, John

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Nolan, Sir Sidney

13.

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.

14.

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.

15.

Literary criticism can be no more than a reasoned account of the feeling produced upon the critic by the book he is criticizing. Criticism can never be a science: it is, in the first place, much too personal, and in the second, it is concerned with values that science ignores. The touchstone is emotion, not reason. We judge a work of art by its effect on our sincere and vital emotion, and nothing else. All the critical twiddle-twaddle about style and form, all this pseudoscientific classifying and analyzing of books in an imitation-botanical fashion, is mere impertinence and mostly dull jargon.

Lawrence, D. H.

16.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

17.

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

Wilde, Oscar

18.

It is critical vision alone which can mitigate the unimpeded operation of the automatic.

Mcluhan, Marshall

19.

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

20.

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

Turner, Ted

21.

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

Rostand, Jean

22.

Abuse if you slight it, will gradually die away; but if you show yourself irritated, you will be thought to have deserved it.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

23.

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

24.

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

Nunn, Gregory

25.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

26.

Most of our censure of others is only oblique praise of self, uttered to show the wisdom and superiority of the speaker. It has all the invidiousness of self-praise, and all the ill-desert of falsehood.

Edwards, Tryon

27.

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

28.

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

29.

The person of analytic or critical intellect finds something ridiculous in everything. The person of synthetic or constructive intellect, in almost nothing.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

30.

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

Pollock, Channing

31.

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

Proverb, Chinese

32.

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

Buxton, Charles

33.

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

34.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

35.

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

36.

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

Updike, John

37.

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

Fuller, Margaret

38.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

39.

He cannot be strict in judging, who does not wish others to be strict judges of himself.

Cicero, Marcus T.

40.

We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.

Beecher, Henry Ward

41.

They will say you are on the wrong road, if it is your own.

Porchia, Antonio

42.

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

43.

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

44.

Let us consider the critic, therefore, as a discoverer of discoveries.

Kundera, Milan

45.

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

46.

What we ask of him is, that he should find out for us more than we can find out for ourselves. He must have the passion of a lover.

Symons, Arthur

47.

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.

48.

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

Kael, Pauline

49.

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

50.

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

Tynan, Kenneth