Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Richard Pryor

Best Quotes about Criticism

Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility.

Sontag, Susan

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.

No sadder proof can be given of a person's own tiny stature, than their disbelief in great people.

Carlyle, Thomas

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

In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable.

Sontag, Susan

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

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

Murdoch, Iris

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

Richard Pryor

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

10.

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

11.

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.

12.

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

Porchia, Antonio

13.

Without the meditative background that is criticism, works become isolated gestures, historical accidents, soon forgotten.

Kundera, Milan

14.

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.

15.

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

Wilde, Oscar

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

19.

Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

20.

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

21.

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

22.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

23.

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

24.

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

James, Clive

25.

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

Hoffman, Dustin

26.

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

27.

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

Conrad, Joseph

28.

All the world's a stage, and all the clergymen critics.

Nunn, Gregory

29.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

30.

Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs.

Picasso, Pablo

31.

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

Buxton, Charles

32.

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

Shenstone, William

33.

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

34.

Let us consider the critic, therefore, as a discoverer of discoveries.

Kundera, Milan

35.

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

Fuller, Margaret

36.

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

Williams, Bern

37.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

38.

Writing prejudicial, off-putting reviews is a precise exercise in applied black magic. The reviewer can draw free-floating disagreeable associations to a book by implying that the book is completely unimportant without saying exactly why, and carefully avoiding any clear images that could capture the reader's full attention.

Burroughs, William S.

39.

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

Smith, Sydney

40.

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

Mcclung, Nellie

41.

The strength of criticism lies in the weakness of the thing criticized.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

42.

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

Pollock, Channing

43.

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

Kael, Pauline

44.

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

Gourmont, Remy De

45.

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

46.

The person of analytic or critical intellect finds something ridiculous in everything. The person of synthetic or constructive intellect, in almost nothing.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

47.

There has never been a statue erected to honor a critic.

Ziglar, Zig

48.

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

Rayburn, Sam

49.

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

Buxton, Charles

50.

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