Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Tynan, Kenneth

Best Quotes about Criticism

If I make a move, like raise my eyebrows, some critic says I'm doing Nicholson. What am I supposed to do, cut off my eyebrows?

Slater, Christian

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.

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

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

Mascotte, John P.

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

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

The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most part, they are manifestations of his debate with himself as to what he should do next and what he should avoid.

Auden, W. H.

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

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

10.

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

11.

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

Clurman, Harold

12.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

13.

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

Hoffman, Dustin

14.

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

Auden, W. H.

15.

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

16.

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

17.

Culture is only true when implicitly critical, and the mind which forgets this revenges itself in the critics it breeds. Criticism is an indispensable element of culture.

Adorno, Theodor W.

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Gourmont, Remy De

22.

Writing prejudicial, off-putting reviews is a precise exercise in applied black magic. The reviewer can draw free-floating disagreeable associations to a book by implying that the book is completely unimportant without saying exactly why, and carefully avoiding any clear images that could capture the reader's full attention.

Burroughs, William S.

23.

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

24.

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.

25.

Those who can -- do. Those who can't -- criticize.

26.

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

Pope, Alexander

27.

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

28.

A man generally has the good or ill qualities he attributes to mankind.

Shenstone, William

29.

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

Porchia, Antonio

30.

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

31.

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

32.

A drama critic is a person who surprises the playwright by informing him what he meant.

Mizner, Wilson

33.

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

34.

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

35.

No matter how well you perform there's always somebody of intelligent opinion who thinks it's lousy.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

36.

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

Mcluhan, Marshall

37.

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

Lowell, James Russell

38.

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

39.

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

Churchill, Charles

40.

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

41.

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

Benjamin, Walter

42.

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

Updike, John

43.

The biggest critics of my books are people who never read them.

Collins, Jackie

44.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

45.

I never met anybody who said when they were a kid, "I wanna grow up and be a critic."

Richard Pryor

46.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

47.

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

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.

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

Rayburn, Sam

50.

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