Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Johnson, Samuel

Best Quotes about Criticism

Hardly a book of human worth, be it heaven's own secret, is honestly placed before the reader; it is either shunned, given a Periclean funeral oration in a hundred and fifty words, or interred in the potter's field of the newspapers back pages.

Dahlberg, Edward

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

Most of us are umpires at heart; we like to call balls and strikes on somebody else.

Aikman, Leo

A friend is a lot of things, but a critic isn't.

Williams, Bern

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

Jones, Franklin P.

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

Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves.

Cioran, E. M.

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

Rostand, Jean

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.

10.

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

11.

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

Dale Carnegie

12.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

13.

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

14.

Unless criticism refuses to take itself quite so seriously or at least to permit its readers not to, it will inevitably continue to reflect the finicky canons of the genteel tradition and the depressing pieties of the Culture Religion of Modernism.

Fiedler, Leslie

15.

I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.

Pound, Ezra

16.

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

17.

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

Wilde, Oscar

18.

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

Kael, Pauline

19.

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

Pope, Alexander

20.

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

21.

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

Murdoch, Iris

22.

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

23.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

24.

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

25.

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

26.

Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe

27.

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

Rayburn, Sam

28.

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

29.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

30.

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.

31.

A wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic.

Lowell, James Russell

32.

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

Cocteau, Jean

33.

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

Briton, Crand

34.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

35.

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

Buxton, Charles

36.

One ought to examine himself for a very long time before thinking of condemning others.

Moliere

37.

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

Mizner, Wilson

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Smith, Sydney

41.

Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews, to challenge every new author.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

42.

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

43.

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

44.

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

Mcluhan, Marshall

45.

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

Franklin P. Jones

46.

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

Miller, Henry

47.

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

48.

A critic is a reader who ruminates. Thus, he should have more than one stomach.

Schlegel, Friedrich

49.

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

Ziglar, Zig

50.

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.