Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Raphael, Frederic

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Costello, Elvis

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

A friend is a lot of things, but a critic isn't.

Williams, Bern

Hardly a book of human worth, be it heaven's own secret, is honestly placed before the reader; it is either shunned, given a Periclean funeral oration in a hundred and fifty words, or interred in the potter's field of the newspapers back pages.

Dahlberg, Edward

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

Benjamin Disraeli

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

Benjamin, Walter

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

Mcclung, Nellie

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

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

James, Henry

10.

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

Henry Fielding

11.

Doubtless criticism was originally benignant, pointing out the beauties of a work rather that its defects. The passions of men have made it malignant, as a bad heart of Procreates turned the bed, the symbol of repose, into an instrument of torture.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

12.

Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.

Fox, Dr. Emmit

13.

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

Buxton, Charles

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Churchill, Charles

17.

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

W. H. Auden

18.

The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion.

Benjamin, Walter

19.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

20.

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

Collins, Jackie

21.

It is very perplexing how an intrepid frontier people, who fought a wilderness, floods, tornadoes, and the Rockies, cower before criticism, which is regarded as a malignant tumor in the imagination.

Dahlberg, Edward

22.

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

23.

Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility.

Sontag, Susan

24.

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

25.

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

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

26.

A wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic.

Lowell, James Russell

27.

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

Mizner, Wilson

28.

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Bible

32.

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

Hugo, Victor

33.

It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one's children will become than for the children one's mature critics often are.

Walker, Alice

34.

You should not say it is not good. You should say you do not like it; and then, you know, you're perfectly safe.

Whistler, James Mcneill

35.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

36.

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

Raphael, Frederic

37.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

38.

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

Gourmont, Remy De

39.

I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works. An assault upon a town is a bad thing; but starving it is still worse.

Johnson, Samuel

40.

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

41.

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

Nunn, Gregory

42.

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

43.

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

44.

I demand that my books be judged with utmost severity, by knowledgeable people who know the rules of grammar and of logic, and who will seek beneath the footsteps of my commas the lice of my thought in the head of my style.

Aragon, Louis

45.

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

46.

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

47.

Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

48.

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

49.

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

50.

Most of our censure of others is only oblique praise of self, uttered to show the wisdom and superiority of the speaker. It has all the invidiousness of self-praise, and all the ill-desert of falsehood.

Edwards, Tryon