Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Updike, John

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

Sontag, Susan

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

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

No degree of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it fascinating.

Harold Rosenberg

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

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

Gourmont, Remy De

10.

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

Moliere

11.

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

12.

There are two insults no human will endure. The assertion that he has no sense of humor and the doubly impertinent assertion that he has never known trouble.

Lewis, Sinclair

13.

You're never s good as everyone tells you when you win, and you're never as bad as they say when you lose.

Holtz, Lou

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.

Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world -- though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst -- the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!

Sterne, Laurence

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Guinon, Albert

19.

Recognize the cunning man not by the corpses he pays homage to but by the living writers he conspires against with the most shameful weapon, Silence, or the briefest review.

Dahlberg, Edward

20.

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

Mizner, Wilson

21.

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

Nolan, Sir Sidney

22.

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.

23.

We have been educated to such a fine -- or dull -- point that we are incapable of enjoying something new, something different, until we are first told what it's all about. We don't trust our five senses; we rely on our critics and educators, all of whom are failures in the realm of creation. In short, the blind lead the blind. It's the democratic way.

Miller, Henry

24.

Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.

Steinbeck, John

25.

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

26.

All the world's a stage, and all the clergymen critics.

Nunn, Gregory

27.

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

Buxton, Charles

28.

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

Native American Proverb

29.

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

Paz, Octavio

30.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

31.

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

32.

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

33.

If what they are saying about you is true, mend your ways. If it isn't true, forget it, and go on and serve the Lord.

Ironside, H. A.

34.

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

Miller, Henry

35.

We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.

Beecher, Henry Ward

36.

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

Williams, Bern

37.

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

38.

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

Helvetius, Claude A.

39.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

40.

People want you to be a crazy, out-of-control teen brat. They want you miserable, just like them. They don't want heroes; what they want is to see you fall.

DiCaprio, Leonardo

41.

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

Wilde, Oscar

42.

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

Cioran, E. M.

43.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

44.

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