Motivational Quotes

Criticism

Neither praise or blame is the object of true criticism. Justly to discriminate, firmly to establish, wisely to prescribe, and honestly to award. These are the true aims and duties of criticism.

- Simms, William Gilmore

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

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

Burns, Robert

The literary critic, or the critic of any other specific form of artistic expression, may detach himself from the world for as long as the work of art he is contemplating appears to do the same.

James, Clive

After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them and invent others.

Edith Wharton

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

There has never been a statue erected to honor a critic.

Ziglar, Zig

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

The person of analytic or critical intellect finds something ridiculous in everything. The person of synthetic or constructive intellect, in almost nothing.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

Epictetus

10.

The easiest thing a human being can do is to criticize another human being.

Little, Lynn M.

11.

You should never assume contempt for that which it is not very manifest that you have it in your power to possess, nor does a wit ever make a more contemptible figure than when, in attempting satire, he shows that he does not understand that which he would make the subject of his ridicule.

Melbourne, Lord

12.

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

Briton, Crand

13.

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

14.

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

Christopher Hampton

15.

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

16.

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

Buxton, Charles

17.

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

18.

Praise those of your critics for whom nothing is up to standard.

Hammarskjold, Dag

19.

Remember if people talk behind your back, it only means you're two steps ahead!

Flagg, Fannie

20.

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

21.

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

22.

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

Nolan, Sir Sidney

23.

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

Kael, Pauline

24.

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.

25.

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

Kundera, Milan

26.

All my life people have said that I wasn't going to make it.

Turner, Ted

27.

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

Richard Pryor

28.

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

Schlegel, Friedrich

29.

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

Holtz, Lou

30.

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

Mcluhan, Marshall

31.

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

Paz, Octavio

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Mcclung, Nellie

35.

The critical method which denies literary modernity would appear -- and even, in certain respects, would be -- the most modern of critical movements.

Man, Paul De

36.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

37.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

38.

We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.

Beecher, Henry Ward

39.

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

Shenstone, William

40.

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

West, Rebecca

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.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

43.

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

Proverb, Chinese

44.

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

45.

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.

46.

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

47.

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

48.

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

Fuller, Margaret

49.

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

50.

Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.

Lawrence, D. H.