Motivational Quotes

Criticism

Social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings.

- Paz, Octavio

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

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

Hugo, Victor

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

Elbert Hubbard

Social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings.

Paz, Octavio

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

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.

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

Rostand, Jean

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

10.

Unless criticism refuses to take itself quite so seriously or at least to permit its readers not to, it will inevitably continue to reflect the finicky canons of the genteel tradition and the depressing pieties of the Culture Religion of Modernism.

Fiedler, Leslie

11.

A good review from the critics is just another stay of execution.

Hoffman, Dustin

12.

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

13.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

14.

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

W. H. Auden

15.

A louse in the locks of literature.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

16.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

17.

The easiest thing a human being can do is to criticize another human being.

Little, Lynn M.

18.

We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which, in all times, with one or another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer without its scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and fall -- which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people.

Carlyle, Thomas

19.

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

Costello, Elvis

20.

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

Tynan, Kenneth

21.

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

22.

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

23.

No matter how well you perform there's always somebody of intelligent opinion who thinks it's lousy.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

24.

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

25.

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

Epictetus

26.

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

Wilde, Oscar

27.

Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world -- though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst -- the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!

Sterne, Laurence

28.

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

29.

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

Benjamin Disraeli

30.

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

Churchill, Charles

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Rayburn, Sam

34.

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

35.

You know lots of criticism is written by characters who are very academic and think it is a sign you are worthless if you make jokes or kid or even clown. I wouldn't kid Our Lord if he was on the cross. But I would attempt a joke with him if I ran into him chasing the money changers out of the temple.

Hemingway, Ernest

36.

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

37.

That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one's own soul. It is more fascinating than history, as it is concerned simply with oneself. It is more delightful than philosophy, as its subject is concrete and not abstract, real and not vague. It is the only civilized form of autobiography.

Wilde, Oscar

38.

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

39.

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

Mcclung, Nellie

40.

In reality, the world have paid too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them men of much greater profundity than they really are.

Fielding, Henry

41.

When everyone is against you, it means you are absolutely wrong -- or you are absolutely right.

Guinon, Albert

42.

If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water's edge