Motivational Quotes

Criticism

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

- Mayor, Federico

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

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

Clurman, Harold

A louse in the locks of literature.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

Did some more sober critics come abroad? If wrong, I smil'd; if right, I kiss'd the rod.

Pope, Alexander

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

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

Cioran, E. M.

10.

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

11.

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

12.

A friend is a lot of things, but a critic isn't.

Williams, Bern

13.

Give me the critic bred in Nature's school, who neither talks by rote, nor thinks by rule; who feeling's honest dictates still obeys, and dares, without a precedent, to praise.

Shee, Sir Martin Archer

14.

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

15.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

16.

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

17.

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

Briton, Crand

18.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

19.

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

20.

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

21.

They will say you are on the wrong road, if it is your own.

Porchia, Antonio

22.

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

Tynan, Kenneth

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

27.

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

Smith, Sydney

28.

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

29.

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

30.

Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works.

Keats, John

31.

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

Kael, Pauline

32.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

33.

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

Miller, Henry

34.

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

James, Clive

35.

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

Auden, W. H.

36.

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

37.

Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.

West, Rebecca

38.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

39.

Most critical writing is drivel and half of it is dishonest. It is a short cut to oblivion, anyway. Thinking in terms of ideas destroys the power to think in terms of emotions and sensations.

Chandler, Raymond

40.

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

Flagg, Fannie

41.

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

Conrad, Joseph

42.

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

Bible

43.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

44.

Most of us are umpires at heart; we like to call balls and strikes on somebody else.

Aikman, Leo

45.

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

46.

On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one's mind. It becomes a pleasure.

Wilde, Oscar

47.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

48.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

49.

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