Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Turner, Ted

Best Quotes about Criticism

The television critic, whatever his pretensions, does not labor in the same vineyard as those he criticizes; his grapes are all sour.

Raphael, Frederic

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

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable.

Sontag, Susan

Unless criticism refuses to take itself quite so seriously or at least to permit its readers not to, it will inevitably continue to reflect the finicky canons of the genteel tradition and the depressing pieties of the Culture Religion of Modernism.

Fiedler, Leslie

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

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

Ziglar, Zig

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

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

Bible

10.

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

11.

It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

Woolf, Virginia

12.

The best criticism doesn't trap an employee or child in a dead end. It gives them an escape route.

13.

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

14.

Did some more sober critics come abroad? If wrong, I smil'd; if right, I kiss'd the rod.

Pope, Alexander

15.

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

Hoffman, Dustin

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Moliere

21.

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

22.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

23.

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

Fuller, Margaret

24.

When subjected to the rain of criticism, let?s not curse the rain. Let?s accept it as a part of life. Let?s remember that the more criticism we can successfully handle, the more zest we will experience in our lives.

Sinha, Shall

25.

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

26.

I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works. An assault upon a town is a bad thing; but starving it is still worse.

Johnson, Samuel

27.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

28.

A wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic.

Lowell, James Russell

29.

Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.

Steinbeck, John

30.

No sadder proof can be given of a person's own tiny stature, than their disbelief in great people.

Carlyle, Thomas

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.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Tynan, Kenneth

36.

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

37.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

38.

Some people are always critical of vague statements. I tend rather to be critical of precise statements; they are the only ones which can correctly be labeled wrong.

Smullyan, Raymond

39.

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

Smith, Sydney

40.

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

Franklin P. Jones

41.

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

42.

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

43.

A louse in the locks of literature.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

44.

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

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

45.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

46.

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

47.

Each generation produces its squad of moderns with peashooters to attack Gibraltar.

Pollock, Channing

48.

Temperament is the primary requisite for the critic -- a temperament exquisitely susceptible to beauty, and to the various impressions that beauty gives us.

Wilde, Oscar

49.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

50.

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

Nunn, Gregory