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

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

Flagg, Fannie

Hardly a book of human worth, be it heaven's own secret, is honestly placed before the reader; it is either shunned, given a Periclean funeral oration in a hundred and fifty words, or interred in the potter's field of the newspapers back pages.

Dahlberg, Edward

Abuse if you slight it, will gradually die away; but if you show yourself irritated, you will be thought to have deserved it.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, then ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.

Lincoln, Abraham

One of the grotesqueries of present-day American life is the amount of reasoning that goes into displaying the wisdom secreted in bad movies while proving that modern art is meaningless. They have put into practice the notion that a bad art work cleverly interpreted according to some obscure Method is more rewarding than a masterpiece wrapped in silence.

Rosenberg, Harold

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

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

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

Lowell, James Russell

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

Mizner, Wilson

10.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

11.

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

12.

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

Miller, Henry

13.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

14.

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

15.

Satire is often the reflection of a kind of moral nausea.

Briton, Crand

16.

As a work of art it has the same status as a long conversation between two not very bright drunks.

James, Clive

17.

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

Pollock, Channing

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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.

21.

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

22.

If you burn your neighbors house down, it doesn't make your house look any better.

Holtz, Lou

23.

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

24.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

25.

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

Steinbeck, John

26.

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

27.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

28.

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

29.

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture; it's a really stupid thing to want to do.

Costello, Elvis

30.

You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism.

Maugham, W. Somerset

31.

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

Nolan, Sir Sidney

32.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

33.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

34.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

35.

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

36.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

37.

A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.

Murdoch, Iris

38.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Burns, Robert

42.

Social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings.

Paz, Octavio

43.

Critics are usually kinder to cheaper movies than to those they perceive to be big Hollywood releases. They cut you a lot more slack if you spend less money, which makes no sense.

Coen, Ethan

44.

It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one's children will become than for the children one's mature critics often are.

Walker, Alice

45.

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

Elbert Hubbard

46.

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

Cioran, E. M.

47.

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

48.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

49.

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

Hampton, Christopher

50.

No man ever got very high by pulling other people down. The intelligent merchant does not knock his competitors. The sensible worker does not work those who work with him. Don't knock your friends. Don't knock your enemies. Don't knock yourself.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred