Motivational Quotes

Criticism

I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.

- Thoreau, Henry David

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

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

Take heed of critics even when they are not fair; resist them even when they are.

Rostand, Jean

Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves.

Cioran, E. M.

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

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

One ought to examine himself for a very long time before thinking of condemning others.

Moliere

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

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

Flagg, Fannie

10.

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.

11.

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

Clurman, Harold

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Ziglar, Zig

15.

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

Franklin P. Jones

16.

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

Hampton, Christopher

17.

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

Tynan, Kenneth

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Schlegel, Friedrich

21.

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

Hugo, Victor

22.

A film is just like a muffin. You make it. You put it on the table. One person might say, Oh, I don't like it. One might say it's the best muffin ever made. One might say it's an awful muffin. It's hard for me to say. It's for me to make the muffin.

Washington, Denzel

23.

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

24.

Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge ourselves with railing against it.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

25.

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

Burns, Robert

26.

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

27.

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

Mascotte, John P.

28.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

29.

Give me the critic bred in Nature's school, who neither talks by rote, nor thinks by rule; who feeling's honest dictates still obeys, and dares, without a precedent, to praise.

Shee, Sir Martin Archer

30.

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

31.

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

West, Rebecca

32.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

33.

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

34.

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

35.

Without the meditative background that is criticism, works become isolated gestures, historical accidents, soon forgotten.

Kundera, Milan

36.

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

37.

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

38.

All the critics who could not make their reputations by discovering you are hoping to make them by predicting hopefully your approaching impotence, failure and general drying up of natural juices. Not a one will wish you luck or hope that you will keep on writing unless you have political affiliations in which case these will rally around and speak of you and Homer, Balzac, Zola and Link Steffens.

Hemingway, Ernest

39.

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

Cocteau, Jean

40.

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

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.

Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much cherished aspect of academic freedom.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

43.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right. You'll be criticized anyway.

Roosevelt, Eleanor

44.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

45.

All the world's a stage, and all the clergymen critics.

Nunn, Gregory

46.

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

47.

A good review from the critics is just another stay of execution.

Hoffman, Dustin

48.

The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion.

Benjamin, Walter

49.

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

50.

Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left.