Motivational Quotes

Criticism

The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art -- and, by analogy, our own experience -- more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.

- Sontag, Susan

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Williams, Bern

When a man spends his time giving his wife criticism and advice instead of compliments, he forgets that it was not his good judgment, but his charming manners, that won her heart.

Rowland, Helen

Sontag, Susan

There is an air of last things, a brooding sense of impending annihilation, about so much deconstructive activity, in so many of its guises; it is not merely postmodernist but preapocalyptic.

Lehman, David

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

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

Nolan, Sir Sidney

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

Holtz, Lou

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

Schlegel, Friedrich

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

10.

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

Paz, Octavio

11.

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

Turner, Ted

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Hammarskjold, Dag

15.

If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.

Franklin, Benjamin

16.

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

17.

When I am abroad, I always make it a rule to never criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.

Churchill, Winston

18.

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

19.

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.

20.

The avocation of assessing the failures of better men can be turned into a comfortable livelihood, providing you back it up with a Ph.D.

Algren, Nelson

21.

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

Sontag, Susan

22.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

23.

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

24.

The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure.

Wilde, Oscar

25.

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

26.

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

Churchill, Charles

27.

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

Mcluhan, Marshall

28.

He cannot be strict in judging, who does not wish others to be strict judges of himself.

Cicero, Marcus T.

29.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

30.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

31.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

32.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Guinon, Albert

37.

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

38.

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

Gourmont, Remy De

39.

Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.

Benjamin, Walter

40.

I demand that my books be judged with utmost severity, by knowledgeable people who know the rules of grammar and of logic, and who will seek beneath the footsteps of my commas the lice of my thought in the head of my style.

Aragon, Louis

41.

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

42.

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

43.

Be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath.

Bible

44.

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

Flagg, Fannie

45.

Criticism of others is futile and if you indulge in it often you should be warned that it can be fatal to your career.

Carnegie, Dale

46.

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

Porchia, Antonio

47.

The author himself is the best judge of his own performance; none has so deeply meditated on the subject; none is so sincerely interested in the event.

Gibbon, Edward

48.

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

49.

On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one's mind. It becomes a pleasure.

Wilde, Oscar

50.

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

Miller, Henry