Motivational Quotes

Criticism

A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time. A great drama critic also perceives what is not happening.

- Tynan, Kenneth

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Lowell, James Russell

Now, in reality, the world have paid too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them to be men of much greater profundity than they really are.

Henry Fielding

Strike the dog dead, it's but a critic!

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

Kundera, Milan

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

Aikman, Leo

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

Johnson, Samuel

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

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

Hampton, Christopher

In reality, the world have paid too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them men of much greater profundity than they really are.

Fielding, Henry

10.

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

11.

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

Ziglar, Zig

12.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

13.

Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe

14.

If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.

Epictetus

15.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

19.

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

Mascotte, John P.

20.

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

Kael, Pauline

21.

A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time. A great drama critic also perceives what is not happening.

Tynan, Kenneth

22.

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

23.

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

24.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

25.

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

26.

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

27.

Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain - and most fools do.

Dale Carnegie

28.

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

Updike, John

29.

Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as men's judgments of one another.

Erasmus, Desiderius

30.

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

31.

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

Auden, W. H.

32.

If I care to listen to every criticism, let alone act on them, then this shop may as well be closed for all other businesses. I have learned to do my best, and if the end result is good then I do not care for any criticism, but if the end result is not good, then even the praise of ten angels would not make the difference.

Lincoln, Abraham

33.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

37.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

38.

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

Cioran, E. M.

39.

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

Jean Sibelius

40.

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

41.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

42.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

43.

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

Rostand, Jean

44.

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

45.

Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.

Miller, Henry

46.

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

47.

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

Nolan, Sir Sidney

48.

Criticism of others is futile and if you indulge in it often you should be warned that it can be fatal to your career.

Carnegie, Dale

49.

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

Pope, Alexander

50.

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