Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

Best Quotes about Criticism

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs.

Hampton, Christopher

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

Nolan, Sir Sidney

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

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

Richard Pryor

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.

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

Costello, Elvis

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

Hubbard, Elbert

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

Holtz, Lou

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

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

10.

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

11.

A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.

Murdoch, Iris

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Mcclung, Nellie

15.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

16.

The author himself is the best judge of his own performance; none has so deeply meditated on the subject; none is so sincerely interested in the event.

Gibbon, Edward

17.

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

Bible

18.

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

19.

The text is merely one of the contexts of a piece of literature, its lexical or verbal one, no more or less important than the sociological, psychological, historical, anthropological or generic.

Fiedler, Leslie

20.

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

Miller, Henry

21.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

22.

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

Jones, Franklin P.

23.

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

Wilde, Oscar

24.

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

25.

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.

26.

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

Elbert Hubbard

27.

Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.

Fox, Dr. Emmit

28.

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.

29.

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

Jean Sibelius

30.

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

31.

Those who can -- do. Those who can't -- criticize.

32.

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

33.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

34.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

35.

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

Paz, Octavio

36.

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

37.

A negative judgment gives you more satisfaction than praise, provided it smacks of jealousy.

Baudrillard, Jean

38.

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

West, Rebecca

39.

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

Cocteau, Jean

40.

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

Updike, John

41.

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

42.

In my conscience I believe the baggage loves me, for she never speaks well of me herself, nor suffers any body else to rail at me.

Congreve, William

43.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

44.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

45.

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

Raphael, Frederic

46.

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.

47.

Some people are always critical of vague statements. I tend rather to be critical of precise statements; they are the only ones which can correctly be labeled wrong.

Smullyan, Raymond

48.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

49.

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

50.

Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo