Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

The greatest honor that can be paid to the work of art, on its pedestal of ritual display, is to describe it with sensory completeness. We need a science of description. Criticism is ceremonial revivification.

Paglia, Camille

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

In my conscience I believe the baggage loves me, for she never speaks well of me herself, nor suffers any body else to rail at me.

Congreve, William

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

Helvetius, Claude A.

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

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

Hubbard, Elbert

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

10.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

11.

If I care to listen to every criticism, let alone act on them, then this shop may as well be closed for all other businesses. I have learned to do my best, and if the end result is good then I do not care for any criticism, but if the end result is not good, then even the praise of ten angels would not make the difference.

Lincoln, Abraham

12.

Culture is only true when implicitly critical, and the mind which forgets this revenges itself in the critics it breeds. Criticism is an indispensable element of culture.

Adorno, Theodor W.

13.

Most critical writing is drivel and half of it is dishonest. It is a short cut to oblivion, anyway. Thinking in terms of ideas destroys the power to think in terms of emotions and sensations.

Chandler, Raymond

14.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

15.

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

16.

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

Mizner, Wilson

17.

Prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash but constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feeling whatever.

Orwell, George

18.

They will say you are on the wrong road, if it is your own.

Porchia, Antonio

19.

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

Miller, Henry

20.

Those who can -- do. Those who can't -- criticize.

21.

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

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

22.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

23.

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

Pollock, Channing

24.

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

Flagg, Fannie

25.

Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world -- in order to set up a shadow world of meanings.

Sontag, Susan

26.

Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.

Lawrence, D. H.

27.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

28.

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

29.

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

Hugo, Victor

30.

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

Hoffman, Dustin

31.

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

Dale Carnegie

32.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

33.

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

34.

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

Raphael, Frederic

35.

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

Buxton, Charles

36.

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

37.

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

Shenstone, William

38.

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

39.

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

40.

I never met anybody who said when they were a kid, "I wanna grow up and be a critic."

Richard Pryor

41.

Most of our censure of others is only oblique praise of self, uttered to show the wisdom and superiority of the speaker. It has all the invidiousness of self-praise, and all the ill-desert of falsehood.

Edwards, Tryon

42.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

43.

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

W. H. Auden

44.

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

45.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

46.

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

Native American Proverb

47.

I know I'm never as good or bad as one single performance. I've never believed in my critics or my worshippers, and I've always been able to leave the game at the arena.

Barkley, Charles

48.

A louse in the locks of literature.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

49.

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

50.

All my life people have said that I wasn't going to make it.

Turner, Ted