Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

Best Quotes about Criticism

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.

If what they are saying about you is true, mend your ways. If it isn't true, forget it, and go on and serve the Lord.

Ironside, H. A.

We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which, in all times, with one or another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer without its scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and fall -- which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people.

Carlyle, Thomas

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.

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

Byron, Lord

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

Kundera, Milan

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

Auden, W. H.

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

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

Wilde, Oscar

10.

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

Moliere

11.

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

Dale Carnegie

12.

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

13.

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

Paz, Octavio

14.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

15.

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

Churchill, Charles

16.

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

17.

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

Native American Proverb

18.

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.

Hubbard, Elbert

19.

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.

20.

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

Kael, Pauline

21.

It is very perplexing how an intrepid frontier people, who fought a wilderness, floods, tornadoes, and the Rockies, cower before criticism, which is regarded as a malignant tumor in the imagination.

Dahlberg, Edward

22.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

23.

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

Buxton, Charles

24.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

25.

All the critics who could not make their reputations by discovering you are hoping to make them by predicting hopefully your approaching impotence, failure and general drying up of natural juices. Not a one will wish you luck or hope that you will keep on writing unless you have political affiliations in which case these will rally around and speak of you and Homer, Balzac, Zola and Link Steffens.

Hemingway, Ernest

26.

Unless criticism refuses to take itself quite so seriously or at least to permit its readers not to, it will inevitably continue to reflect the finicky canons of the genteel tradition and the depressing pieties of the Culture Religion of Modernism.

Fiedler, Leslie

27.

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

28.

Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world -- though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst -- the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!

Sterne, Laurence

29.

We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.

Beecher, Henry Ward

30.

A wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic.

Lowell, James Russell

31.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

32.

Without the meditative background that is criticism, works become isolated gestures, historical accidents, soon forgotten.

Kundera, Milan

33.

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

Briton, Crand

34.

Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.

Fox, Dr. Emmit

35.

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

36.

A drama critic is a person who surprises the playwright by informing him what he meant.

Mizner, Wilson

37.

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

38.

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

39.

Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger.

Franklin P. Jones

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

43.

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

Nunn, Gregory

44.

It is critical vision alone which can mitigate the unimpeded operation of the automatic.

Mcluhan, Marshall

45.

Unlike other people, our reviewers are powerful because they believe in nothing.

Clurman, Harold

46.

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

Helvetius, Claude A.

47.

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

48.

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

Costello, Elvis

49.

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

Hoffman, Dustin

50.

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