Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Kael, Pauline

Best Quotes about Criticism

Be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath.

Bible

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

I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.

Thoreau, Henry David

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

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

Hoffman, Dustin

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

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

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

It is impossible to think of a man of any actual force and originality, universally recognized as having those qualities, who spent his whole life appraising and describing the work of other men.

Mencken, H. L.

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Rostand, Jean

13.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

14.

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

Kundera, Milan

15.

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

Turner, Ted

16.

It is just as hard to do your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shouting at you.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

17.

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

18.

Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

19.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

Eleanor Roosevelt

20.

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

21.

Criticism of others is futile and if you indulge in it often you should be warned that it can be fatal to your career.

Carnegie, Dale

22.

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

23.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

24.

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

Shenstone, William

25.

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

Franklin P. Jones

26.

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

Proverb, Chinese

27.

Harsh counsels have no effect; they are like hammers which are always repulsed by the anvil.

Helvetius, Claude A.

28.

Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works.

Keats, John

29.

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

Wilde, Oscar

30.

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

France, Anatole

31.

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

32.

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

Briton, Crand

33.

Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

34.

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

35.

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

Hugo, Victor

36.

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

37.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

38.

When subjected to the rain of criticism, let?s not curse the rain. Let?s accept it as a part of life. Let?s remember that the more criticism we can successfully handle, the more zest we will experience in our lives.

Sinha, Shall

39.

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

Mcclung, Nellie

40.

Critics! Those cut-throat bandits in the paths of fame.

Burns, Robert

41.

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

42.

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

Holtz, Lou

43.

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

Williams, Bern

44.

Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.

Fox, Dr. Emmit

45.

If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.

Franklin, Benjamin

46.

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

Nunn, Gregory

47.

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

Gourmont, Remy De

48.

People want you to be a crazy, out-of-control teen brat. They want you miserable, just like them. They don't want heroes; what they want is to see you fall.

DiCaprio, Leonardo

49.

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

Dale Carnegie

50.

The author himself is the best judge of his own performance; none has so deeply meditated on the subject; none is so sincerely interested in the event.

Gibbon, Edward