Motivational Quotes

Criticism

Each generation produces its squad of moderns with peashooters to attack Gibraltar.

- Pollock, Channing

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Benjamin, Walter

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

Epictetus

The great critic must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.

Maugham, W. Somerset

The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure.

Wilde, Oscar

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.

Johnson, Samuel

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.

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

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

10.

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

Rostand, Jean

11.

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

Gourmont, Remy De

12.

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

Collins, Jackie

13.

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

Kundera, Milan

14.

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

15.

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

16.

There are two modes of criticism. One which crushes to earth without mercy all the humble buds of Phantasy, all the plants that, though green and fruitful, are also a prey to insects or have suffered by drought. It weeds well the garden, and cannot believe the weed in its native soil may be a pretty, graceful plant. There is another mode which enters into the natural history of every thing that breathes and lives, which believes no impulse to be entirely in vain, which scrutinizes circumstances, motive and object before it condemns, and believes there is a beauty in natural form, if its law and purpose be understood.

Fuller, Margaret

17.

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

18.

No sadder proof can be given of a person's own tiny stature, than their disbelief in great people.

Carlyle, Thomas

19.

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

Paz, Octavio

20.

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

21.

You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism.

Maugham, W. Somerset

22.

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

Elbert Hubbard

23.

In an age of unscrupulous and shameless book-making, it is a duty to give notice of the rubbish that cumbers the ground. There is no credit, no real power required for this task. It is the work of an intellectual scavenger, and far from being specially honorable.

Hutton, R. H.

24.

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

Smith, Sydney

25.

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

Hoffman, Dustin

26.

No man ever got very high by pulling other people down. The intelligent merchant does not knock his competitors. The sensible worker does not work those who work with him. Don't knock your friends. Don't knock your enemies. Don't knock yourself.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

27.

Harsh counsels have no effect; they are like hammers which are always repulsed by the anvil.

Helvetius, Claude A.

28.

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

Updike, John

29.

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

30.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

31.

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

32.

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

Nolan, Sir Sidney

33.

Prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash but constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feeling whatever.

Orwell, George

34.

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

35.

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

Cioran, E. M.

36.

They will say you are on the wrong road, if it is your own.

Porchia, Antonio

37.

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

Little, Lynn M.

38.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

39.

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

40.

I never met anybody who said when they were a kid, "I wanna grow up and be a critic."

Richard Pryor

41.

Critics! Those cut-throat bandits in the paths of fame.

Burns, Robert

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

45.

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.

46.

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

Franklin P. Jones

47.

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

48.

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

Shenstone, William

49.

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

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

50.

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

Fuller, Margaret