Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Little, Lynn M.

Best Quotes about Criticism

The person of analytic or critical intellect finds something ridiculous in everything. The person of synthetic or constructive intellect, in almost nothing.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

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

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

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

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

Updike, John

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

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

Kael, Pauline

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

10.

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

Gourmont, Remy De

11.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

12.

Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as men's judgments of one another.

Erasmus, Desiderius

13.

Harsh counsels have no effect; they are like hammers which are always repulsed by the anvil.

Helvetius, Claude A.

14.

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

15.

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

16.

When a man spends his time giving his wife criticism and advice instead of compliments, he forgets that it was not his good judgment, but his charming manners, that won her heart.

Rowland, Helen

17.

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

18.

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

Moliere

19.

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

20.

God knows people who are paid to have attitudes toward things, professional critics, make me sick; camp following eunuchs of literature. They won't even whore. They're all virtuous and sterile. And how well meaning and high minded. But they're all camp followers.

Hemingway, Ernest

21.

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

Paz, Octavio

22.

The pleasure we feel in criticizing robs us from being moved by very beautiful things.

La Bruyere, Jean De

23.

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

24.

Any jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build it.

Rayburn, Sam

25.

You're never s good as everyone tells you when you win, and you're never as bad as they say when you lose.

Holtz, Lou

26.

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

27.

Of course you're always at liberty to judge the critic. Judge people as critics, however, and you'll condemn them all!

James, Henry

28.

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

29.

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

Cioran, E. M.

30.

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

Nunn, Gregory

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Churchill, Charles

35.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

36.

As a work of art it has the same status as a long conversation between two not very bright drunks.

James, Clive

37.

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.

38.

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

Johnson, Samuel

39.

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

40.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

41.

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.

42.

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

Guinon, Albert

43.

When subjected to the rain of criticism, let?s not curse the rain. Let?s accept it as a part of life. Let?s remember that the more criticism we can successfully handle, the more zest we will experience in our lives.

Sinha, Shall

44.

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

45.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

46.

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

Mascotte, John P.

47.

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

Steinbeck, John

48.

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

49.

Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much cherished aspect of academic freedom.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

50.

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

Hammarskjold, Dag