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

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

Pope, Alexander

Recognize the cunning man not by the corpses he pays homage to but by the living writers he conspires against with the most shameful weapon, Silence, or the briefest review.

Dahlberg, Edward

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

Paz, Octavio

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

Byron, Lord

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

Costello, Elvis

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

Proverb, Chinese

The biggest critics of my books are people who never read them.

Collins, Jackie

In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable.

Sontag, Susan

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

Epictetus

10.

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

Aikman, Leo

11.

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

Shenstone, William

12.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

13.

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

Buxton, Charles

14.

That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one's own soul. It is more fascinating than history, as it is concerned simply with oneself. It is more delightful than philosophy, as its subject is concrete and not abstract, real and not vague. It is the only civilized form of autobiography.

Wilde, Oscar

15.

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

Williams, Bern

16.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

17.

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

18.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

19.

The easiest thing a human being can do is to criticize another human being.

Little, Lynn M.

20.

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

21.

Strike the dog dead, it's but a critic!

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

22.

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

23.

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

Ziglar, Zig

24.

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

Tynan, Kenneth

25.

Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then it will gradually yield to him.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

26.

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

Wilde, Oscar

27.

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.

28.

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.

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Kael, Pauline

32.

When everyone is against you, it means you are absolutely wrong -- or you are absolutely right.

Guinon, Albert

33.

You should not say it is not good. You should say you do not like it; and then, you know, you're perfectly safe.

Whistler, James Mcneill

34.

Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.

Benjamin, Walter

35.

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

36.

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

37.

Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility.

Sontag, Susan

38.

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

39.

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

40.

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

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.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

43.

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

Briton, Crand

44.

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.

45.

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

Cioran, E. M.

46.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right. You'll be criticized anyway.

Roosevelt, Eleanor

47.

I remember when I was in college, people told me I couldn't play in the NBA. There's always somebody saying you can't do it, and those people have to be ignored.

Cartwright, Bill

48.

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

Burns, Robert

49.

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

50.

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

Hill, Napoleon