Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Mcclung, Nellie

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Many great ideas have been lost because the people who had them could not stand being laughed at.

I'd rather be hissed at for a good verse, than applauded for a bad one.

Hugo, Victor

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.

Take heed of critics even when they are not fair; resist them even when they are.

Rostand, Jean

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

It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.

Baudelaire, Charles

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

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

10.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.

11.

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

Churchill, Charles

12.

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

13.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

14.

There is an air of last things, a brooding sense of impending annihilation, about so much deconstructive activity, in so many of its guises; it is not merely postmodernist but preapocalyptic.

Lehman, David

15.

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

16.

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

17.

There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

18.

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

19.

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

Dale Carnegie

20.

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

Conrad, Joseph

21.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

22.

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

Epictetus

23.

One of the grotesqueries of present-day American life is the amount of reasoning that goes into displaying the wisdom secreted in bad movies while proving that modern art is meaningless. They have put into practice the notion that a bad art work cleverly interpreted according to some obscure Method is more rewarding than a masterpiece wrapped in silence.

Rosenberg, Harold

24.

He cannot be strict in judging, who does not wish others to be strict judges of himself.

Cicero, Marcus T.

25.

I remember when I was in college, people told me I couldn't play in the NBA. There's always somebody saying you can't do it, and those people have to be ignored.

Cartwright, Bill

26.

Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.

Benjamin, Walter

27.

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

Miller, Henry

28.

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

Nunn, Gregory

29.

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

30.

Strike the dog dead, it's but a critic!

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

31.

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

32.

Every writer is necessarily a critic -- that is, each sentence is a skeleton accompanied by enormous activity of rejection; and each selection is governed by general principles concerning truth, force, beauty, and so on. The critic that is in every fabulist is like the iceberg -- nine-tenths of him is under water.

Wilder, Thornton

33.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

34.

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

Wilde, Oscar

35.

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

Auden, W. H.

36.

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

Briton, Crand

37.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

38.

I know I'm never as good or bad as one single performance. I've never believed in my critics or my worshippers, and I've always been able to leave the game at the arena.

Barkley, Charles

39.

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

40.

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

Steinbeck, John

41.

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

42.

I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works. An assault upon a town is a bad thing; but starving it is still worse.

Johnson, Samuel

43.

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

Flagg, Fannie

44.

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

Bible

45.

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

46.

I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.

Pound, Ezra

47.

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

48.

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

Franklin P. Jones

49.

Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than native genius. In the hands of a man who has read widely but lacks judgment, applied to certain subjects it can corrupt both its readers and the writer himself.

Bruyere, Jean De La

50.

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

Native American Proverb