Motivational Quotes

Criticism

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

- W. H. Auden

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

I'd rather be hissed at for a good verse, than applauded for a bad one.

Hugo, Victor

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

Moliere

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

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

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

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

Carlyle, Thomas

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

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

Tynan, Kenneth

10.

The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.

France, Anatole

11.

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

Auden, W. H.

12.

Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

13.

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

14.

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

Kundera, Milan

15.

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.

16.

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

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

17.

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

18.

The rule in carving holds good as to criticism; never cut with a knife what you can cut with a spoon.

Buxton, Charles

19.

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

Shenstone, William

20.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

21.

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

Dale Carnegie

22.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

23.

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

Lowell, James Russell

24.

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

Nolan, Sir Sidney

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.

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

Miller, Henry

27.

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

Kundera, Milan

28.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

29.

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

Churchill, Charles

30.

Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.

Fox, Dr. Emmit

31.

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

Murdoch, Iris

32.

A negative judgment gives you more satisfaction than praise, provided it smacks of jealousy.

Baudrillard, Jean

33.

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

34.

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

Briton, Crand

35.

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

Burns, Robert

36.

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

37.

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

38.

Harsh counsels have no effect; they are like hammers which are always repulsed by the anvil.

Helvetius, Claude A.

39.

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

Pollock, Channing

40.

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

41.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

42.

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

43.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

44.

On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one's mind. It becomes a pleasure.

Wilde, Oscar

45.

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

Paz, Octavio

46.

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

Raphael, Frederic

47.

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

Fuller, Margaret

48.

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

Flagg, Fannie

49.

The text is merely one of the contexts of a piece of literature, its lexical or verbal one, no more or less important than the sociological, psychological, historical, anthropological or generic.

Fiedler, Leslie

50.

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

Updike, John