Motivational Quotes

Criticism

If I care to listen to every criticism, let alone act on them, then this shop may as well be closed for all other businesses. I have learned to do my best, and if the end result is good then I do not care for any criticism, but if the end result is not good, then even the praise of ten angels would not make the difference.

- Lincoln, Abraham

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

The literary critic, or the critic of any other specific form of artistic expression, may detach himself from the world for as long as the work of art he is contemplating appears to do the same.

James, Clive

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

Hugo, Victor

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

Briton, Crand

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

Little, Lynn M.

Not even the most powerful organs of the press, including Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times, can discover a new artist or certify his work and make it stick. They can only bring you the scores.

Wolfe, Thomas

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

Benjamin, Walter

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

10.

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

11.

Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.

Fox, Dr. Emmit

12.

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

Tynan, Kenneth

13.

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

Wilde, Oscar

14.

We have been educated to such a fine -- or dull -- point that we are incapable of enjoying something new, something different, until we are first told what it's all about. We don't trust our five senses; we rely on our critics and educators, all of whom are failures in the realm of creation. In short, the blind lead the blind. It's the democratic way.

Miller, Henry

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Bible

18.

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

Mcclung, Nellie

19.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

20.

Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe

21.

Remember if people talk behind your back, it only means you're two steps ahead!

Flagg, Fannie

22.

We might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds when we read a book and feel an emotion about it, for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism.

Eliot, T. S.

23.

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

Smith, Sydney

24.

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

25.

Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do criticize him, you'll be a mile away and have his shoes.

26.

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

Mascotte, John P.

27.

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

28.

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

Burns, Robert

29.

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

Updike, John

30.

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

31.

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

W. H. Auden

32.

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

Dale Carnegie

33.

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

Rostand, Jean

34.

Lincoln, Abraham

35.

Writing prejudicial, off-putting reviews is a precise exercise in applied black magic. The reviewer can draw free-floating disagreeable associations to a book by implying that the book is completely unimportant without saying exactly why, and carefully avoiding any clear images that could capture the reader's full attention.

Burroughs, William S.

36.

It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

Woolf, Virginia

37.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

38.

Those who can -- do. Those who can't -- criticize.

39.

Neither praise or blame is the object of true criticism. Justly to discriminate, firmly to establish, wisely to prescribe, and honestly to award. These are the true aims and duties of criticism.

Simms, William Gilmore

40.

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

41.

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

42.

One ought to examine himself for a very long time before thinking of condemning others.

Moliere

43.

Hardly a book of human worth, be it heaven's own secret, is honestly placed before the reader; it is either shunned, given a Periclean funeral oration in a hundred and fifty words, or interred in the potter's field of the newspapers back pages.

Dahlberg, Edward

44.

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

45.

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

Proverb, Chinese

46.

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

47.

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

Paz, Octavio

48.

There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

49.

Reviewers are usually people who would have been, poets, historians, biographer, if they could. They have tried their talents at one thing or another and have failed; therefore they turn critic.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

50.

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

Jean Sibelius