Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Kael, Pauline

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

James, Henry

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

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

Dale Carnegie

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

Smith, Sydney

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

Moliere

There are two insults no human will endure. The assertion that he has no sense of humor and the doubly impertinent assertion that he has never known trouble.

Lewis, Sinclair

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

10.

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

Gourmont, Remy De

11.

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

Hampton, Christopher

12.

One of the grotesqueries of present-day American life is the amount of reasoning that goes into displaying the wisdom secreted in bad movies while proving that modern art is meaningless. They have put into practice the notion that a bad art work cleverly interpreted according to some obscure Method is more rewarding than a masterpiece wrapped in silence.

Rosenberg, Harold

13.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

14.

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

Updike, John

15.

If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, then ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.

Lincoln, Abraham

16.

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

Williams, Bern

17.

Without the meditative background that is criticism, works become isolated gestures, historical accidents, soon forgotten.

Kundera, Milan

18.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

19.

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

Shenstone, William

20.

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

Wilde, Oscar

21.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

22.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

23.

Professional critics are incapable of distinguishing and appreciating either diamonds in the rough or gold in bars. They are traders, and in literature know only the coins that are current. Their critical lab has scales and weights, but neither crucible or touchstone.

Joubert, Joseph

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.

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

26.

The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.

France, Anatole

27.

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

W. H. Auden

28.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

29.

A critic is a reader who ruminates. Thus, he should have more than one stomach.

Schlegel, Friedrich

30.

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

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.

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

33.

Writing prejudicial, off-putting reviews is a precise exercise in applied black magic. The reviewer can draw free-floating disagreeable associations to a book by implying that the book is completely unimportant without saying exactly why, and carefully avoiding any clear images that could capture the reader's full attention.

Burroughs, William S.

34.

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

Burns, Robert

35.

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

Cocteau, Jean

36.

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

37.

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

Epictetus

38.

No degree of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it fascinating.

Harold Rosenberg

39.

If what they are saying about you is true, mend your ways. If it isn't true, forget it, and go on and serve the Lord.

Ironside, H. A.

40.

There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

41.

Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject; bad critical writing by the necessity of maintaining the professional standing of the critic.

Chandler, Raymond

42.

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

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

43.

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

Fuller, Margaret

44.

Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much cherished aspect of academic freedom.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

45.

It is critical vision alone which can mitigate the unimpeded operation of the automatic.

Mcluhan, Marshall

46.

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.

47.

For if there is anything to one's praise, it is foolish vanity to be gratified at it, and if it is abuse -- why one is always sure to hear of it from one damned good-natured friend or another!

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

48.

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

Cioran, E. M.

49.

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

50.

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

Kundera, Milan