Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

Best Quotes about Criticism

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.

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

Shenstone, William

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

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

Williams, Bern

Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.

Lawrence, D. H.

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

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

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

Schlegel, Friedrich

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

Auden, W. H.

10.

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

Updike, John

11.

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

12.

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

Kael, Pauline

13.

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

Holtz, Lou

14.

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

15.

Professional critics are incapable of distinguishing and appreciating either diamonds in the rough or gold in bars. They are traders, and in literature know only the coins that are current. Their critical lab has scales and weights, but neither crucible or touchstone.

Joubert, Joseph

16.

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

17.

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

18.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

19.

Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.

Steinbeck, John

20.

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

21.

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

Hammarskjold, Dag

22.

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

Mizner, Wilson

23.

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

24.

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

Jones, Franklin P.

25.

Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

26.

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

Bible

27.

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

Little, Lynn M.

28.

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

Byron, Lord

29.

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

Briton, Crand

30.

A reader who quarrels with postulates, who dislikes Hamlet because he does not believe that there are ghosts or that people speak in pentameters, clearly has no business in literature. He cannot distinguish fiction from fact, and belongs in the same category as the people who send checks to radio stations for the relief of suffering heroines in soap operas.

Frye, Northrop

31.

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

Gourmont, Remy De

32.

The television critic, whatever his pretensions, does not labor in the same vineyard as those he criticizes; his grapes are all sour.

Raphael, Frederic

33.

One does not lash hat lies at a distance. The foibles that we ridicule must at least be a little bit our own. Only then will the work be a part of our own flesh. The garden must be weeded.

Klee, Paul

34.

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

Mcluhan, Marshall

35.

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

36.

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

37.

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

Epictetus

38.

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.

39.

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

40.

Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.

West, Rebecca

41.

Abuse if you slight it, will gradually die away; but if you show yourself irritated, you will be thought to have deserved it.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

42.

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

43.

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

Elbert Hubbard

44.

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

45.

A louse in the locks of literature.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

46.

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

47.

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

48.

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.

Johnson, Samuel

49.

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

W. H. Auden

50.

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