Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Mizner, Wilson

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Let me walk three weeks in the footsteps of my enemy, carry the same burden, have the same trials as he, before I say one word to criticize.

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

Buxton, Charles

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Not even the most powerful organs of the press, including Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times, can discover a new artist or certify his work and make it stick. They can only bring you the scores.

Wolfe, Thomas

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

Nunn, Gregory

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

Aikman, Leo

The biggest critics of my books are people who never read them.

Collins, Jackie

10.

The author himself is the best judge of his own performance; none has so deeply meditated on the subject; none is so sincerely interested in the event.

Gibbon, Edward

11.

A film is just like a muffin. You make it. You put it on the table. One person might say, Oh, I don't like it. One might say it's the best muffin ever made. One might say it's an awful muffin. It's hard for me to say. It's for me to make the muffin.

Washington, Denzel

12.

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

Dale Carnegie

13.

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.

Johnson, Samuel

14.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

15.

Self-laudation abounds among the unpolished, but nothing can stamp a man more sharply as ill-bred.

Buxton, Charles

16.

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

Bible

17.

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

Mascotte, John P.

18.

God knows people who are paid to have attitudes toward things, professional critics, make me sick; camp following eunuchs of literature. They won't even whore. They're all virtuous and sterile. And how well meaning and high minded. But they're all camp followers.

Hemingway, Ernest

19.

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

Tynan, Kenneth

20.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

21.

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

22.

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

Kundera, Milan

23.

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

Smith, Sydney

24.

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

Rostand, Jean

25.

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

26.

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

Cioran, E. M.

27.

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

28.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

29.

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

Native American Proverb

30.

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

James, Henry

31.

David Lynch came out of it a genius, and I came out of it a fat girl. I'm sorry that the only comment I get about the part is the way I look. [Commenting on the critics' response to her performance in Blue Velvet]

Rossellini, Isabella

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.

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

34.

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

Fuller, Margaret

35.

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

Christopher Hampton

36.

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

Costello, Elvis

37.

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

38.

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

Schlegel, Friedrich

39.

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

40.

Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then it will gradually yield to him.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

41.

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

42.

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

Miller, Henry

43.

If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.

Franklin, Benjamin

44.

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

45.

I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.

Thoreau, Henry David

46.

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

47.

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

Hugo, Victor

48.

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

49.

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

Churchill, Charles

50.

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.