Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Jean Sibelius

Best Quotes about Criticism

I review novels to make money, because it is easier for a sluggard to write an article a fortnight than a book a year, because the writer is soothed by the opiate of action, the crank by posing as a good journalist, and having an air hole. I dislike it. I do it and I am always resolving to give it up.

Connolly, Cyril

If you burn your neighbors house down, it doesn't make your house look any better.

Holtz, Lou

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

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

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

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

Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.

Miller, Henry

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

Criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters.

Conrad, Joseph

10.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

11.

A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.

Murdoch, Iris

12.

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

Flagg, Fannie

13.

Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.

Fox, Dr. Emmit

14.

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

Ziglar, Zig

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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.

18.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

19.

Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!

Meir, Golda

20.

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

21.

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

Elbert Hubbard

22.

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

23.

The literary critic, or the critic of any other specific form of artistic expression, may detach himself from the world for as long as the work of art he is contemplating appears to do the same.

James, Clive

24.

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

25.

The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.

France, Anatole

26.

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

Gourmont, Remy De

27.

David Lynch came out of it a genius, and I came out of it a fat girl. I'm sorry that the only comment I get about the part is the way I look. [Commenting on the critics' response to her performance in Blue Velvet]

Rossellini, Isabella

28.

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

29.

What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.

Cocteau, Jean

30.

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

Hugo, Victor

31.

If what they are saying about you is true, mend your ways. If it isn't true, forget it, and go on and serve the Lord.

Ironside, H. A.

32.

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

Hill, Napoleon

33.

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

34.

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

Hoffman, Dustin

35.

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

36.

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

Hammarskjold, Dag

37.

I know I'm never as good or bad as one single performance. I've never believed in my critics or my worshippers, and I've always been able to leave the game at the arena.

Barkley, Charles

38.

Social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings.

Paz, Octavio

39.

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture; it's a really stupid thing to want to do.

Costello, Elvis

40.

A man generally has the good or ill qualities he attributes to mankind.

Shenstone, William

41.

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

42.

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

43.

Let me walk three weeks in the footsteps of my enemy, carry the same burden, have the same trials as he, before I say one word to criticize.

44.

The greatest honor that can be paid to the work of art, on its pedestal of ritual display, is to describe it with sensory completeness. We need a science of description. Criticism is ceremonial revivification.

Paglia, Camille

45.

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

Nunn, Gregory

46.

We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which, in all times, with one or another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer without its scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and fall -- which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people.

Carlyle, Thomas

47.

You're never s good as everyone tells you when you win, and you're never as bad as they say when you lose.

Holtz, Lou

48.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

49.

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

Mascotte, John P.

50.

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