Motivational Quotes

Criticism

Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility.

- Sontag, Susan

Best Quotes about Criticism

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

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

Hampton, Christopher

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.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

Kurt Vonnegut

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

Elbert Hubbard

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

Proverb, Chinese

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

Briton, Crand

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

10.

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

Tynan, Kenneth

11.

When everyone is against you, it means you are absolutely wrong -- or you are absolutely right.

Guinon, Albert

12.

Post-modernism has cut off the present from all futures. The daily media add to this by cutting off the past. Which means that critical opinion is often orphaned in the present.

Berger, John

13.

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

14.

Abuse if you slight it, will gradually die away; but if you show yourself irritated, you will be thought to have deserved it.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

15.

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

Wilde, Oscar

16.

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

Richard Pryor

17.

Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins.

Native American Proverb

18.

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.

19.

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

Kundera, Milan

20.

Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!

Meir, Golda

21.

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

22.

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

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

23.

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

Paz, Octavio

24.

Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility.

Sontag, Susan

25.

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

26.

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

27.

I'd rather be hissed at for a good verse, than applauded for a bad one.

Hugo, Victor

28.

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

29.

Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.

Steinbeck, John

30.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

31.

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

Hammarskjold, Dag

32.

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

Burns, Robert

33.

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

Cocteau, Jean

34.

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

Murdoch, Iris

35.

Let me walk three weeks in the footsteps of my enemy, carry the same burden, have the same trials as he, before I say one word to criticize.

36.

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

37.

If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water's edge

Hill, Napoleon

38.

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

39.

No matter how well you perform there's always somebody of intelligent opinion who thinks it's lousy.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

40.

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.

41.

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

42.

You're never s good as everyone tells you when you win, and you're never as bad as they say when you lose.

Holtz, Lou

43.

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

Epictetus

44.

Most of us are umpires at heart; we like to call balls and strikes on somebody else.

Aikman, Leo

45.

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

46.

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

Johnson, Samuel

47.

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.

48.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

49.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

50.

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

Benjamin Disraeli