Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Miller, Henry

Best Quotes about Criticism

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

We have been educated to such a fine -- or dull -- point that we are incapable of enjoying something new, something different, until we are first told what it's all about. We don't trust our five senses; we rely on our critics and educators, all of whom are failures in the realm of creation. In short, the blind lead the blind. It's the democratic way.

Miller, Henry

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

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

James, Clive

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

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

Nothing would improve newspaper criticism so much as the knowledge that it was to be read by men too hardy to acquiesce in the authoritative statement of the reviewer.

Hutton, R. H.

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

10.

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

Native American Proverb

11.

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

12.

The television critic, whatever his pretensions, does not labor in the same vineyard as those he criticizes; his grapes are all sour.

Raphael, Frederic

13.

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

Gourmont, Remy De

14.

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

15.

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.

16.

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

Tynan, Kenneth

17.

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

18.

In judging others, folks will work overtime for no pay.

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

19.

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

W. H. Auden

20.

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

Miller, Henry

21.

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.

22.

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

Hammarskjold, Dag

23.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

24.

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

25.

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

26.

The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.

France, Anatole

27.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

28.

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

29.

It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

Woolf, Virginia

30.

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

Culture is only true when implicitly critical, and the mind which forgets this revenges itself in the critics it breeds. Criticism is an indispensable element of culture.

Adorno, Theodor W.

35.

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

36.

Any jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build it.

Rayburn, Sam

37.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

38.

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

Ziglar, Zig

39.

Literary criticism can be no more than a reasoned account of the feeling produced upon the critic by the book he is criticizing. Criticism can never be a science: it is, in the first place, much too personal, and in the second, it is concerned with values that science ignores. The touchstone is emotion, not reason. We judge a work of art by its effect on our sincere and vital emotion, and nothing else. All the critical twiddle-twaddle about style and form, all this pseudoscientific classifying and analyzing of books in an imitation-botanical fashion, is mere impertinence and mostly dull jargon.

Lawrence, D. H.

40.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

41.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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 dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

44.

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

Schlegel, Friedrich

45.

To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession, to establish in fine a relation with the criticized thing and to make it one's own.

James, Henry

46.

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

47.

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

Auden, W. H.

48.

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

Jean Sibelius

49.

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

Byron, Lord