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

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

Fuller, Margaret

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

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

France, Anatole

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Paz, Octavio

A drama critic is a person who surprises the playwright by informing him what he meant.

Mizner, Wilson

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

Hubbard, Elbert

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

I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.

Pound, Ezra

10.

Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.

Fox, Dr. Emmit

11.

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

Jones, Franklin P.

12.

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

13.

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

14.

You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism.

Maugham, W. Somerset

15.

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

16.

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

Kael, Pauline

17.

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

James, Henry

18.

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

Smith, Sydney

19.

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

Conrad, Joseph

20.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

21.

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

22.

Prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash but constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feeling whatever.

Orwell, George

23.

Hardly a book of human worth, be it heaven's own secret, is honestly placed before the reader; it is either shunned, given a Periclean funeral oration in a hundred and fifty words, or interred in the potter's field of the newspapers back pages.

Dahlberg, Edward

24.

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

25.

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

Buxton, Charles

26.

Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world -- in order to set up a shadow world of meanings.

Sontag, Susan

27.

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

28.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

29.

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

30.

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

Mcclung, Nellie

31.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

32.

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

Burns, Robert

33.

Though by whim, envy, or resentment led, they damn those authors whom they never read.

Churchill, Charles

34.

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

35.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

36.

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

37.

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

Porchia, Antonio

38.

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

Tynan, Kenneth

39.

Unlike other people, our reviewers are powerful because they believe in nothing.

Clurman, Harold

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Miller, Henry

43.

Never make the mistake of assuming the critters will beat a path to your door.

Mascotte, John P.

44.

Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world -- though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst -- the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!

Sterne, Laurence

45.

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

Johnson, Samuel

46.

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

Holtz, Lou

47.

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

Updike, John

48.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

49.

Self-laudation abounds among the unpolished, but nothing can stamp a man more sharply as ill-bred.

Buxton, Charles

50.

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