Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Wilde, Oscar

Best Quotes about Criticism

Do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend's forehead.

Proverb, Chinese

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

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

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

Gourmont, Remy De

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

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

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

Benjamin, Walter

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

Smith, Sydney

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

Flagg, Fannie

10.

A man must serve his time to every trade save censure -- critics all are ready made.

Byron, Lord

11.

The great critic must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.

Maugham, W. Somerset

12.

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

13.

Every writer is necessarily a critic -- that is, each sentence is a skeleton accompanied by enormous activity of rejection; and each selection is governed by general principles concerning truth, force, beauty, and so on. The critic that is in every fabulist is like the iceberg -- nine-tenths of him is under water.

Wilder, Thornton

14.

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

15.

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

Burns, Robert

16.

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

17.

The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art -- and, by analogy, our own experience -- more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.

Sontag, Susan

18.

Temperament is the primary requisite for the critic -- a temperament exquisitely susceptible to beauty, and to the various impressions that beauty gives us.

Wilde, Oscar

19.

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

Kael, Pauline

20.

Professional critics are incapable of distinguishing and appreciating either diamonds in the rough or gold in bars. They are traders, and in literature know only the coins that are current. Their critical lab has scales and weights, but neither crucible or touchstone.

Joubert, Joseph

21.

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

Guinon, Albert

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.

It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.

Baudelaire, Charles

24.

It is very perplexing how an intrepid frontier people, who fought a wilderness, floods, tornadoes, and the Rockies, cower before criticism, which is regarded as a malignant tumor in the imagination.

Dahlberg, Edward

25.

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

Aikman, Leo

26.

Honest criticism is hard to take, especially from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger.

Jones, Franklin P.

27.

Be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath.

Bible

28.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

29.

If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water's edge

Hill, Napoleon

30.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

31.

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

32.

The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure.

Wilde, Oscar

33.

Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works.

Keats, John

34.

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

Buxton, Charles

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

38.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

Eleanor Roosevelt

39.

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

40.

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

41.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

42.

What we ask of him is, that he should find out for us more than we can find out for ourselves. He must have the passion of a lover.

Symons, Arthur

43.

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

France, Anatole

44.

Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge ourselves with railing against it.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

45.

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

Fuller, Margaret

46.

The critical method which denies literary modernity would appear -- and even, in certain respects, would be -- the most modern of critical movements.

Man, Paul De

47.

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

48.

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

49.

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

50.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von