Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Smith, Sydney

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

Mizner, Wilson

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

Murdoch, Iris

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

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

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

Hill, Napoleon

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

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

Jean Sibelius

10.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

11.

Most of our censure of others is only oblique praise of self, uttered to show the wisdom and superiority of the speaker. It has all the invidiousness of self-praise, and all the ill-desert of falsehood.

Edwards, Tryon

12.

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

13.

The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure.

Wilde, Oscar

14.

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

Benjamin, Walter

15.

Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins.

Native American Proverb

16.

Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.

Fox, Dr. Emmit

17.

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.

Disraeli, Benjamin

18.

Essays, entitled critical, are epistles addressed to the public, through which the mind of the recluse relieves itself of its impressions.

Fuller, Margaret

19.

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

20.

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

Cocteau, Jean

21.

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

Harold Rosenberg

22.

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

Benjamin Disraeli

23.

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

24.

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

25.

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

26.

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

Hoffman, Dustin

27.

No man ever got very high by pulling other people down. The intelligent merchant does not knock his competitors. The sensible worker does not work those who work with him. Don't knock your friends. Don't knock your enemies. Don't knock yourself.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

28.

What we ask of him is, that he should find out for us more than we can find out for ourselves. He must have the passion of a lover.

Symons, Arthur

29.

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.

30.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

31.

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

Paz, Octavio

32.

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

33.

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

34.

To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession, to establish in fine a relation with the criticized thing and to make it one's own.

James, Henry

35.

Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge ourselves with railing against it.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

36.

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

37.

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

Byron, Lord

38.

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

Jones, Franklin P.

39.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

40.

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

41.

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

Little, Lynn M.

42.

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

Nunn, Gregory

43.

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.

44.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.

45.

There are two modes of criticism. One which crushes to earth without mercy all the humble buds of Phantasy, all the plants that, though green and fruitful, are also a prey to insects or have suffered by drought. It weeds well the garden, and cannot believe the weed in its native soil may be a pretty, graceful plant. There is another mode which enters into the natural history of every thing that breathes and lives, which believes no impulse to be entirely in vain, which scrutinizes circumstances, motive and object before it condemns, and believes there is a beauty in natural form, if its law and purpose be understood.

Fuller, Margaret

46.

Post-modernism has cut off the present from all futures. The daily media add to this by cutting off the past. Which means that critical opinion is often orphaned in the present.

Berger, John

47.

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

Buxton, Charles

48.

Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.

Steinbeck, John

49.

If I make a move, like raise my eyebrows, some critic says I'm doing Nicholson. What am I supposed to do, cut off my eyebrows?

Slater, Christian

50.

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