Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Smith, Sydney

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

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

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

I review novels to make money, because it is easier for a sluggard to write an article a fortnight than a book a year, because the writer is soothed by the opiate of action, the crank by posing as a good journalist, and having an air hole. I dislike it. I do it and I am always resolving to give it up.

Connolly, Cyril

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

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

Rostand, Jean

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

Benjamin Disraeli

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

Hubbard, Elbert

10.

One does not lash hat lies at a distance. The foibles that we ridicule must at least be a little bit our own. Only then will the work be a part of our own flesh. The garden must be weeded.

Klee, Paul

11.

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

Porchia, Antonio

12.

Criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters.

Conrad, Joseph

13.

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

14.

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

Mcclung, Nellie

15.

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.

16.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

17.

A reader who quarrels with postulates, who dislikes Hamlet because he does not believe that there are ghosts or that people speak in pentameters, clearly has no business in literature. He cannot distinguish fiction from fact, and belongs in the same category as the people who send checks to radio stations for the relief of suffering heroines in soap operas.

Frye, Northrop

18.

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

19.

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

Nunn, Gregory

20.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

21.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

22.

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.

Christopher Hampton

23.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

27.

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.

28.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

29.

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

Briton, Crand

30.

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

31.

The strength of criticism lies in the weakness of the thing criticized.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

32.

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

Nolan, Sir Sidney

33.

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

Williams, Bern

34.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

35.

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.

36.

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

Costello, Elvis

37.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

38.

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

Fuller, Margaret

39.

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.

Johnson, Samuel

40.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

41.

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.

42.

Unless criticism refuses to take itself quite so seriously or at least to permit its readers not to, it will inevitably continue to reflect the finicky canons of the genteel tradition and the depressing pieties of the Culture Religion of Modernism.

Fiedler, Leslie

43.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

44.

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

Burns, Robert

45.

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

Dale Carnegie

46.

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

47.

What we ask of him is, that he should find out for us more than we can find out for ourselves. He must have the passion of a lover.

Symons, Arthur

48.

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.

49.

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

50.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset