Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Best Quotes about Criticism

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

Auden, W. H.

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

James, Henry

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

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

Murdoch, Iris

When the critics come around it's always too late.

Nolan, Sir Sidney

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

James, Clive

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

Moliere

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

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

10.

Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins.

Native American Proverb

11.

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

12.

Essays, entitled critical, are epistles addressed to the public, through which the mind of the recluse relieves itself of its impressions.

Fuller, Margaret

13.

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

14.

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

15.

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

Conrad, Joseph

16.

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

Tynan, Kenneth

17.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

18.

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

Shenstone, William

19.

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

Hammarskjold, Dag

20.

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

Churchill, Charles

21.

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

22.

When I am abroad, I always make it a rule to never criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.

Churchill, Winston

23.

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.

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

27.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

28.

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.

Christopher Hampton

29.

For if there is anything to one's praise, it is foolish vanity to be gratified at it, and if it is abuse -- why one is always sure to hear of it from one damned good-natured friend or another!

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

30.

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

Gourmont, Remy De

31.

I never met anybody who said when they were a kid, "I wanna grow up and be a critic."

Richard Pryor

32.

A reader who quarrels with postulates, who dislikes Hamlet because he does not believe that there are ghosts or that people speak in pentameters, clearly has no business in literature. He cannot distinguish fiction from fact, and belongs in the same category as the people who send checks to radio stations for the relief of suffering heroines in soap operas.

Frye, Northrop

33.

The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most part, they are manifestations of his debate with himself as to what he should do next and what he should avoid.

Auden, W. H.

34.

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

Ziglar, Zig

35.

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

Harold Rosenberg

36.

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

37.

A critic is a reader who ruminates. Thus, he should have more than one stomach.

Schlegel, Friedrich

38.

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

39.

You should never assume contempt for that which it is not very manifest that you have it in your power to possess, nor does a wit ever make a more contemptible figure than when, in attempting satire, he shows that he does not understand that which he would make the subject of his ridicule.

Melbourne, Lord

40.

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

Mascotte, John P.

41.

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

Cioran, E. M.

42.

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

Buxton, Charles

43.

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

44.

Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs.

Picasso, Pablo

45.

Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge ourselves with railing against it.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

46.

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

47.

Each generation produces its squad of moderns with peashooters to attack Gibraltar.

Pollock, Channing

48.

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

49.

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

Flagg, Fannie

50.

Prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash but constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feeling whatever.

Orwell, George