Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

West, Rebecca

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

Gourmont, Remy De

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.

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.

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

Auden, W. H.

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

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

No degree of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it fascinating.

Harold Rosenberg

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

10.

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

11.

Literary criticism can be no more than a reasoned account of the feeling produced upon the critic by the book he is criticizing. Criticism can never be a science: it is, in the first place, much too personal, and in the second, it is concerned with values that science ignores. The touchstone is emotion, not reason. We judge a work of art by its effect on our sincere and vital emotion, and nothing else. All the critical twiddle-twaddle about style and form, all this pseudoscientific classifying and analyzing of books in an imitation-botanical fashion, is mere impertinence and mostly dull jargon.

Lawrence, D. H.

12.

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

13.

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

14.

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

15.

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

Johnson, Samuel

16.

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

Updike, John

17.

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

Sontag, Susan

18.

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

Wilde, Oscar

19.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

20.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.

21.

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Schlegel, Friedrich

25.

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

26.

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.

27.

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

Kundera, Milan

28.

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

W. H. Auden

29.

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

Guinon, Albert

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Conrad, Joseph

33.

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

Smith, Sydney

34.

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

35.

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

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

36.

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

Hammarskjold, Dag

37.

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

Cocteau, Jean

38.

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

Turner, Ted

39.

Any jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build it.

Rayburn, Sam

40.

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

41.

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

42.

Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than native genius. In the hands of a man who has read widely but lacks judgment, applied to certain subjects it can corrupt both its readers and the writer himself.

Bruyere, Jean De La

43.

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

44.

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

Hugo, Victor

45.

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

Buxton, Charles

46.

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

Aikman, Leo

47.

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

48.

Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews, to challenge every new author.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

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.

As a work of art it has the same status as a long conversation between two not very bright drunks.

James, Clive