Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

Best Quotes about Criticism

Any jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build it.

Rayburn, Sam

Many great ideas have been lost because the people who had them could not stand being laughed at.

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

Briton, Crand

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

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

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

Jean Sibelius

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

Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

The author himself is the best judge of his own performance; none has so deeply meditated on the subject; none is so sincerely interested in the event.

Gibbon, Edward

10.

Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do criticize him, you'll be a mile away and have his shoes.

11.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

12.

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

Paz, Octavio

13.

It is wrong to be harsh with the New York critics, unless one admits in the same breath that it is a condition of their existence that they should write entertainingly about something which is rarely worth writing about at all.

Chandler, Raymond

14.

No matter how well you perform there's always somebody of intelligent opinion who thinks it's lousy.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

15.

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

16.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.

17.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

18.

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

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

19.

Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than native genius. In the hands of a man who has read widely but lacks judgment, applied to certain subjects it can corrupt both its readers and the writer himself.

Bruyere, Jean De La

20.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

21.

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

Guinon, Albert

22.

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

Updike, John

23.

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

Dale Carnegie

24.

What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.

Cocteau, Jean

25.

It is critical vision alone which can mitigate the unimpeded operation of the automatic.

Mcluhan, Marshall

26.

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

27.

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

Fuller, Margaret

28.

Let me walk three weeks in the footsteps of my enemy, carry the same burden, have the same trials as he, before I say one word to criticize.

29.

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

30.

You know lots of criticism is written by characters who are very academic and think it is a sign you are worthless if you make jokes or kid or even clown. I wouldn't kid Our Lord if he was on the cross. But I would attempt a joke with him if I ran into him chasing the money changers out of the temple.

Hemingway, Ernest

31.

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

32.

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

33.

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

Murdoch, Iris

34.

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

35.

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

36.

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

37.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

38.

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

Mizner, Wilson

39.

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

Epictetus

40.

Praise those of your critics for whom nothing is up to standard.

Hammarskjold, Dag

41.

A good review from the critics is just another stay of execution.

Hoffman, Dustin

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

45.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

46.

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

James, Clive

47.

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

Smith, Sydney

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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

France, Anatole