Motivational Quotes

Criticism

There is an air of last things, a brooding sense of impending annihilation, about so much deconstructive activity, in so many of its guises; it is not merely postmodernist but preapocalyptic.

- Lehman, David

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Ziglar, Zig

Now, in reality, the world have paid too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them to be men of much greater profundity than they really are.

Henry Fielding

Never make the mistake of assuming the critters will beat a path to your door.

Mascotte, John P.

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

Little, Lynn M.

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

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

Byron, Lord

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

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

Steinbeck, John

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

Harold Rosenberg

10.

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

Auden, W. H.

11.

Though by whim, envy, or resentment led, they damn those authors whom they never read.

Churchill, Charles

12.

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

Johnson, Samuel

13.

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

Lowell, James Russell

14.

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

Bible

15.

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

Williams, Bern

16.

On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one's mind. It becomes a pleasure.

Wilde, Oscar

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

22.

The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art -- and, by analogy, our own experience -- more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.

Sontag, Susan

23.

They will say you are on the wrong road, if it is your own.

Porchia, Antonio

24.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

25.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

26.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

27.

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

28.

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

Smith, Sydney

29.

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

30.

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

31.

Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world -- in order to set up a shadow world of meanings.

Sontag, Susan

32.

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

France, Anatole

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.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

35.

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

Nunn, Gregory

36.

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

37.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

38.

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

39.

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.

40.

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

41.

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

42.

Criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters.

Conrad, Joseph

43.

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

44.

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

45.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

46.

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

47.

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

48.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

49.

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

50.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth