Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Cioran, E. M.

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.

Baudelaire, Charles

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.

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

Kael, Pauline

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

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

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

Proverb, Chinese

A critic is a man who knows the way, but can't drive the car.

Tynan, Kenneth

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

10.

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

11.

It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one's children will become than for the children one's mature critics often are.

Walker, Alice

12.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

13.

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

Clurman, Harold

14.

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

15.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

16.

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

17.

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

Pope, Alexander

18.

Satire is often the reflection of a kind of moral nausea.

Briton, Crand

19.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

Eleanor Roosevelt

20.

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.

21.

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

22.

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

Nunn, Gregory

23.

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

24.

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

25.

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

26.

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

Mizner, Wilson

27.

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

Moliere

28.

Unless criticism refuses to take itself quite so seriously or at least to permit its readers not to, it will inevitably continue to reflect the finicky canons of the genteel tradition and the depressing pieties of the Culture Religion of Modernism.

Fiedler, Leslie

29.

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

30.

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

Mcclung, Nellie

31.

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

32.

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

Porchia, Antonio

33.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

34.

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

Hammarskjold, Dag

35.

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

36.

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

Smith, Sydney

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

40.

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

Franklin P. Jones

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Buxton, Charles

44.

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

45.

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

Harold Rosenberg

46.

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

France, Anatole

47.

If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, then ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.

Lincoln, Abraham

48.

Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge ourselves with railing against it.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

49.

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.

50.

No man ever got very high by pulling other people down. The intelligent merchant does not knock his competitors. The sensible worker does not work those who work with him. Don't knock your friends. Don't knock your enemies. Don't knock yourself.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred