Motivational Quotes

Criticism

When the critics come around it's always too late.

- Nolan, Sir Sidney

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Tynan, Kenneth

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

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

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

France, Anatole

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

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

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

James, Henry

When the critics come around it's always too late.

Nolan, Sir Sidney

10.

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

11.

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

Raphael, Frederic

12.

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

Kurt Vonnegut

13.

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

14.

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

Kael, Pauline

15.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

16.

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

Buxton, Charles

17.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

Eleanor Roosevelt

18.

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

Christopher Hampton

19.

Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world -- in order to set up a shadow world of meanings.

Sontag, Susan

20.

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

21.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

22.

If you burn your neighbors house down, it doesn't make your house look any better.

Holtz, Lou

23.

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

24.

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

Briton, Crand

25.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

26.

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

Miller, Henry

27.

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

28.

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

Smith, Sydney

29.

A man generally has the good or ill qualities he attributes to mankind.

Shenstone, William

30.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right. You'll be criticized anyway.

Roosevelt, Eleanor

31.

People want you to be a crazy, out-of-control teen brat. They want you miserable, just like them. They don't want heroes; what they want is to see you fall.

DiCaprio, Leonardo

32.

What we ask of him is, that he should find out for us more than we can find out for ourselves. He must have the passion of a lover.

Symons, Arthur

33.

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

34.

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

Rostand, Jean

35.

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

36.

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

37.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

38.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

39.

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.

40.

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

Aikman, Leo

41.

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

42.

Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.

Lawrence, D. H.

43.

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

Dale Carnegie

44.

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

Epictetus

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

48.

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.

49.

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

50.

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

Kundera, Milan