Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Tynan, Kenneth

Best Quotes about Criticism

Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.

Lawrence, D. H.

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!

Meir, Golda

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

Sontag, Susan

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

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

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

Carlyle, Thomas

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

10.

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

W. H. Auden

11.

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

Kael, Pauline

12.

Pay no attention to what the critics say... Remember, a statue has never been set up in honor of a critic!

Jean Sibelius

13.

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

Bible

14.

Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins.

Native American Proverb

15.

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

16.

Reviewers are usually people who would have been, poets, historians, biographer, if they could. They have tried their talents at one thing or another and have failed; therefore they turn critic.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

17.

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

Rostand, Jean

18.

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.

Johnson, Samuel

19.

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

20.

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

Aikman, Leo

21.

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

Fuller, Margaret

22.

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.

23.

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

24.

It is just as hard to do your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shouting at you.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

25.

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

Guinon, Albert

26.

The greatest honor that can be paid to the work of art, on its pedestal of ritual display, is to describe it with sensory completeness. We need a science of description. Criticism is ceremonial revivification.

Paglia, Camille

27.

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

Smith, Sydney

28.

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

Hammarskjold, Dag

29.

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

30.

It is impossible to think of a man of any actual force and originality, universally recognized as having those qualities, who spent his whole life appraising and describing the work of other men.

Mencken, H. L.

31.

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

32.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

33.

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

Williams, Bern

34.

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

35.

Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.

Fox, Dr. Emmit

36.

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

Clurman, Harold

37.

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

James, Henry

38.

If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water's edge

Hill, Napoleon

39.

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

Nolan, Sir Sidney

40.

The easiest thing a human being can do is to criticize another human being.

Little, Lynn M.

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.

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

Moliere

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

46.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

47.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

48.

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

49.

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

Cocteau, Jean

50.

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