Motivational Quotes

Criticism

Critics are already made.

- Byron, Lord

Best Quotes about Criticism

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

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

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

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

Raphael, Frederic

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

Guinon, Albert

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.

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

Now, in reality, the world have paid too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them to be men of much greater profundity than they really are.

Henry Fielding

A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time. A great drama critic also perceives what is not happening.

Tynan, Kenneth

10.

Not even the most powerful organs of the press, including Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times, can discover a new artist or certify his work and make it stick. They can only bring you the scores.

Wolfe, Thomas

11.

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

Mcclung, Nellie

12.

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

13.

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

Turner, Ted

14.

The text is merely one of the contexts of a piece of literature, its lexical or verbal one, no more or less important than the sociological, psychological, historical, anthropological or generic.

Fiedler, Leslie

15.

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

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

16.

Did some more sober critics come abroad? If wrong, I smil'd; if right, I kiss'd the rod.

Pope, Alexander

17.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

18.

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

19.

Criticism of others is futile and if you indulge in it often you should be warned that it can be fatal to your career.

Carnegie, Dale

20.

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

21.

Temperament is the primary requisite for the critic -- a temperament exquisitely susceptible to beauty, and to the various impressions that beauty gives us.

Wilde, Oscar

22.

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

Collins, Jackie

23.

A louse in the locks of literature.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

24.

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

25.

If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.

Franklin, Benjamin

26.

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

27.

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

Hill, Napoleon

28.

Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world -- though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst -- the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!

Sterne, Laurence

29.

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.

30.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

31.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

32.

After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them and invent others.

Edith Wharton

33.

We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which, in all times, with one or another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer without its scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and fall -- which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people.

Carlyle, Thomas

34.

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

35.

Be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath.

Bible

36.

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

James, Henry

37.

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

Sontag, Susan

38.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

39.

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

Churchill, Charles

40.

A reader who quarrels with postulates, who dislikes Hamlet because he does not believe that there are ghosts or that people speak in pentameters, clearly has no business in literature. He cannot distinguish fiction from fact, and belongs in the same category as the people who send checks to radio stations for the relief of suffering heroines in soap operas.

Frye, Northrop

41.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

42.

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

Hammarskjold, Dag

43.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

44.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

45.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

46.

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

47.

Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.

Benjamin, Walter

48.

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

Smith, Sydney

49.

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

Richard Pryor

50.

One of the grotesqueries of present-day American life is the amount of reasoning that goes into displaying the wisdom secreted in bad movies while proving that modern art is meaningless. They have put into practice the notion that a bad art work cleverly interpreted according to some obscure Method is more rewarding than a masterpiece wrapped in silence.

Rosenberg, Harold