Motivational Quotes

Criticism

Of course you're always at liberty to judge the critic. Judge people as critics, however, and you'll condemn them all!

- James, Henry

Best Quotes about Criticism

All the critics who could not make their reputations by discovering you are hoping to make them by predicting hopefully your approaching impotence, failure and general drying up of natural juices. Not a one will wish you luck or hope that you will keep on writing unless you have political affiliations in which case these will rally around and speak of you and Homer, Balzac, Zola and Link Steffens.

Hemingway, Ernest

There are two insults no human will endure. The assertion that he has no sense of humor and the doubly impertinent assertion that he has never known trouble.

Lewis, Sinclair

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

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

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

Wilde, Oscar

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

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

Nunn, Gregory

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

Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.

Steinbeck, John

10.

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

Byron, Lord

11.

The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most part, they are manifestations of his debate with himself as to what he should do next and what he should avoid.

Auden, W. H.

12.

No degree of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it fascinating.

Harold Rosenberg

13.

There has never been a statue erected to honor a critic.

Ziglar, Zig

14.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

15.

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

16.

Every writer is necessarily a critic -- that is, each sentence is a skeleton accompanied by enormous activity of rejection; and each selection is governed by general principles concerning truth, force, beauty, and so on. The critic that is in every fabulist is like the iceberg -- nine-tenths of him is under water.

Wilder, Thornton

17.

Doubtless criticism was originally benignant, pointing out the beauties of a work rather that its defects. The passions of men have made it malignant, as a bad heart of Procreates turned the bed, the symbol of repose, into an instrument of torture.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

18.

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

Smith, Sydney

19.

Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs.

Picasso, Pablo

20.

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

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

21.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

22.

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

23.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

24.

Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.

West, Rebecca

25.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

26.

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

27.

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

28.

It is wrong to be harsh with the New York critics, unless one admits in the same breath that it is a condition of their existence that they should write entertainingly about something which is rarely worth writing about at all.

Chandler, Raymond

29.

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

Gourmont, Remy De

30.

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

Porchia, Antonio

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.

The best criticism doesn't trap an employee or child in a dead end. It gives them an escape route.

33.

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

Hill, Napoleon

34.

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

35.

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

Hugo, Victor

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.

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

Kael, Pauline

39.

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

40.

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

Raphael, Frederic

41.

A good review from the critics is just another stay of execution.

Hoffman, Dustin

42.

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

Epictetus

43.

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

44.

The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art -- and, by analogy, our own experience -- more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.

Sontag, Susan

45.

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

46.

Some people are always critical of vague statements. I tend rather to be critical of precise statements; they are the only ones which can correctly be labeled wrong.

Smullyan, Raymond

47.

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

48.

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

49.

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

50.

No sadder proof can be given of a person's own tiny stature, than their disbelief in great people.

Carlyle, Thomas