Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Williams, Bern

Best Quotes about Criticism

Never retract, never explain, never apologize; get things done and let them howl.

Mcclung, Nellie

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

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

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

Cocteau, Jean

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

Auden, W. H.

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

We might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds when we read a book and feel an emotion about it, for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism.

Eliot, T. S.

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

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

Updike, John

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

10.

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

11.

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

Moliere

12.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

13.

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

Native American Proverb

14.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

15.

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

16.

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

17.

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

18.

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

19.

A louse in the locks of literature.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

20.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

21.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

22.

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

23.

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

Mcluhan, Marshall

24.

The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion.

Benjamin, Walter

25.

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

Churchill, Charles

26.

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

27.

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

Richard Pryor

28.

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

Rayburn, Sam

29.

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

France, Anatole

30.

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

31.

David Lynch came out of it a genius, and I came out of it a fat girl. I'm sorry that the only comment I get about the part is the way I look. [Commenting on the critics' response to her performance in Blue Velvet]

Rossellini, Isabella

32.

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

Nolan, Sir Sidney

33.

Criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters.

Conrad, Joseph

34.

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

W. H. Auden

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

James, Clive

38.

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

39.

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs.

Hampton, Christopher

40.

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

Porchia, Antonio

41.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

42.

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

43.

Nothing would improve newspaper criticism so much as the knowledge that it was to be read by men too hardy to acquiesce in the authoritative statement of the reviewer.

Hutton, R. H.

44.

Unlike other people, our reviewers are powerful because they believe in nothing.

Clurman, Harold

45.

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

Proverb, Chinese

46.

If I make a move, like raise my eyebrows, some critic says I'm doing Nicholson. What am I supposed to do, cut off my eyebrows?

Slater, Christian

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Wilde, Oscar

50.

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