Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Smith, Sydney

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

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

Helvetius, Claude A.

In an age of unscrupulous and shameless book-making, it is a duty to give notice of the rubbish that cumbers the ground. There is no credit, no real power required for this task. It is the work of an intellectual scavenger, and far from being specially honorable.

Hutton, R. H.

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

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

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

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

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

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

10.

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

Epictetus

11.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

12.

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

Hill, Napoleon

13.

A critic is a reader who ruminates. Thus, he should have more than one stomach.

Schlegel, Friedrich

14.

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

15.

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

16.

I review novels to make money, because it is easier for a sluggard to write an article a fortnight than a book a year, because the writer is soothed by the opiate of action, the crank by posing as a good journalist, and having an air hole. I dislike it. I do it and I am always resolving to give it up.

Connolly, Cyril

17.

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

Cioran, E. M.

18.

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

19.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

20.

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

Porchia, Antonio

21.

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.

22.

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

23.

A film is just like a muffin. You make it. You put it on the table. One person might say, Oh, I don't like it. One might say it's the best muffin ever made. One might say it's an awful muffin. It's hard for me to say. It's for me to make the muffin.

Washington, Denzel

24.

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

25.

When I am abroad, I always make it a rule to never criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.

Churchill, Winston

26.

The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most part, they are manifestations of his debate with himself as to what he should do next and what he should avoid.

Auden, W. H.

27.

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

Rayburn, Sam

28.

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

Harold Rosenberg

29.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

30.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

31.

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.

Johnson, Samuel

32.

The biggest critics of my books are people who never read them.

Collins, Jackie

33.

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

Kurt Vonnegut

34.

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

Paz, Octavio

35.

Of course you're always at liberty to judge the critic. Judge people as critics, however, and you'll condemn them all!

James, Henry

36.

It is impossible to think of a man of any actual force and originality, universally recognized as having those qualities, who spent his whole life appraising and describing the work of other men.

Mencken, H. L.

37.

I remember when I was in college, people told me I couldn't play in the NBA. There's always somebody saying you can't do it, and those people have to be ignored.

Cartwright, Bill

38.

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

Pollock, Channing

39.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

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.

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

Proverb, Chinese

42.

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

Byron, Lord

43.

One does not lash hat lies at a distance. The foibles that we ridicule must at least be a little bit our own. Only then will the work be a part of our own flesh. The garden must be weeded.

Klee, Paul

44.

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

Hammarskjold, Dag

45.

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

Jones, Franklin P.

46.

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

47.

Self-laudation abounds among the unpolished, but nothing can stamp a man more sharply as ill-bred.

Buxton, Charles

48.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

49.

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.

50.

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