Motivational Quotes

Criticism

If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, then ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.

- Lincoln, Abraham

Best Quotes about Criticism

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

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

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

The great critic must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.

Maugham, W. Somerset

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

In an age of unscrupulous and shameless book-making, it is a duty to give notice of the rubbish that cumbers the ground. There is no credit, no real power required for this task. It is the work of an intellectual scavenger, and far from being specially honorable.

Hutton, R. H.

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

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

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Guinon, Albert

13.

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

Cioran, E. M.

14.

You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism.

Maugham, W. Somerset

15.

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

Churchill, Charles

16.

The text is merely one of the contexts of a piece of literature, its lexical or verbal one, no more or less important than the sociological, psychological, historical, anthropological or generic.

Fiedler, Leslie

17.

In my conscience I believe the baggage loves me, for she never speaks well of me herself, nor suffers any body else to rail at me.

Congreve, William

18.

Let us consider the critic, therefore, as a discoverer of discoveries.

Kundera, Milan

19.

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

Bible

20.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

21.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

22.

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

Kael, Pauline

23.

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

Hoffman, Dustin

24.

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

Paz, Octavio

25.

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

Conrad, Joseph

26.

It is wrong to be harsh with the New York critics, unless one admits in the same breath that it is a condition of their existence that they should write entertainingly about something which is rarely worth writing about at all.

Chandler, Raymond

27.

A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time. A great drama critic also perceives what is not happening.

Tynan, Kenneth

28.

Some people are always critical of vague statements. I tend rather to be critical of precise statements; they are the only ones which can correctly be labeled wrong.

Smullyan, Raymond

29.

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

Flagg, Fannie

30.

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

Updike, John

31.

It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.

Baudelaire, Charles

32.

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

33.

Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!

Meir, Golda

34.

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

Sontag, Susan

35.

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

36.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

37.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

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.

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

40.

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

Dale Carnegie

41.

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

Buxton, Charles

42.

The critical method which denies literary modernity would appear -- and even, in certain respects, would be -- the most modern of critical movements.

Man, Paul De

43.

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

44.

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

Hugo, Victor

45.

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

46.

If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.

Franklin, Benjamin

47.

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

48.

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

Moliere

49.

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