Motivational Quotes

Criticism

Doubtless criticism was originally benignant, pointing out the beauties of a work rather that its defects. The passions of men have made it malignant, as a bad heart of Procreates turned the bed, the symbol of repose, into an instrument of torture.

- Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Steinbeck, John

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

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

Byron, Lord

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

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

Wilde, Oscar

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs.

Hampton, Christopher

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

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

10.

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

Jean Sibelius

11.

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

Ziglar, Zig

12.

If I make a move, like raise my eyebrows, some critic says I'm doing Nicholson. What am I supposed to do, cut off my eyebrows?

Slater, Christian

13.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

14.

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

15.

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

16.

No sadder proof can be given of a person's own tiny stature, than their disbelief in great people.

Carlyle, Thomas

17.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

18.

A film is just like a muffin. You make it. You put it on the table. One person might say, Oh, I don't like it. One might say it's the best muffin ever made. One might say it's an awful muffin. It's hard for me to say. It's for me to make the muffin.

Washington, Denzel

19.

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

20.

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.

21.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

22.

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

Guinon, Albert

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.

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

25.

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

26.

Critics are usually kinder to cheaper movies than to those they perceive to be big Hollywood releases. They cut you a lot more slack if you spend less money, which makes no sense.

Coen, Ethan

27.

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

Mcclung, Nellie

28.

I demand that my books be judged with utmost severity, by knowledgeable people who know the rules of grammar and of logic, and who will seek beneath the footsteps of my commas the lice of my thought in the head of my style.

Aragon, Louis

29.

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

Smith, Sydney

30.

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

31.

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

Shenstone, William

32.

A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.

Murdoch, Iris

33.

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

34.

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

35.

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture; it's a really stupid thing to want to do.

Costello, Elvis

36.

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

Dale Carnegie

37.

Recognize the cunning man not by the corpses he pays homage to but by the living writers he conspires against with the most shameful weapon, Silence, or the briefest review.

Dahlberg, Edward

38.

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

Burns, Robert

39.

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

40.

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

Epictetus

41.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right. You'll be criticized anyway.

Roosevelt, Eleanor

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.

All my life people have said that I wasn't going to make it.

Turner, Ted

44.

Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Gourmont, Remy De

48.

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

Little, Lynn M.

49.

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

50.

Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.

Miller, Henry