Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

Best Quotes about Criticism

What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.

Cocteau, Jean

Criticism of others is futile and if you indulge in it often you should be warned that it can be fatal to your career.

Carnegie, Dale

He cannot be strict in judging, who does not wish others to be strict judges of himself.

Cicero, Marcus T.

Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than native genius. In the hands of a man who has read widely but lacks judgment, applied to certain subjects it can corrupt both its readers and the writer himself.

Bruyere, Jean De La

Strike the dog dead, it's but a critic!

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Tynan, Kenneth

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

10.

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

Kundera, Milan

11.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

12.

Pay no attention to what the critics say... Remember, a statue has never been set up in honor of a critic!

Jean Sibelius

13.

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

14.

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

Helvetius, Claude A.

15.

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

16.

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

Dale Carnegie

17.

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

Johnson, Samuel

18.

Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.

Fox, Dr. Emmit

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Lowell, James Russell

23.

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

Hoffman, Dustin

24.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

25.

As a work of art it has the same status as a long conversation between two not very bright drunks.

James, Clive

26.

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

27.

Do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend's forehead.

Proverb, Chinese

28.

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

29.

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

Holtz, Lou

30.

We might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds when we read a book and feel an emotion about it, for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism.

Eliot, T. S.

31.

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

32.

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

Raphael, Frederic

33.

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

Mizner, Wilson

34.

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

35.

Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.

West, Rebecca

36.

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

Briton, Crand

37.

The pleasure we feel in criticizing robs us from being moved by very beautiful things.

La Bruyere, Jean De

38.

A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time. A great drama critic also perceives what is not happening.

Tynan, Kenneth

39.

One ought to examine himself for a very long time before thinking of condemning others.

Moliere

40.

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

41.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

42.

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

Nolan, Sir Sidney

43.

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

44.

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

45.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

46.

The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most part, they are manifestations of his debate with himself as to what he should do next and what he should avoid.

Auden, W. H.

47.

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

48.

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

Mascotte, John P.

49.

Unlike other people, our reviewers are powerful because they believe in nothing.

Clurman, Harold

50.

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

Kael, Pauline