Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

Best Quotes about Criticism

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

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

Williams, Bern

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

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

Native American Proverb

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

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

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

Schlegel, Friedrich

Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then it will gradually yield to him.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

10.

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

11.

Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.

Miller, Henry

12.

No matter how well you perform there's always somebody of intelligent opinion who thinks it's lousy.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

13.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

14.

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

15.

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

Sontag, Susan

16.

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

17.

The best criticism doesn't trap an employee or child in a dead end. It gives them an escape route.

18.

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

19.

Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as men's judgments of one another.

Erasmus, Desiderius

20.

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

Proverb, Chinese

21.

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

Conrad, Joseph

22.

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.

23.

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

Smith, Sydney

24.

Give me the critic bred in Nature's school, who neither talks by rote, nor thinks by rule; who feeling's honest dictates still obeys, and dares, without a precedent, to praise.

Shee, Sir Martin Archer

25.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

26.

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

Moliere

27.

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

Harold Rosenberg

28.

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

Cocteau, Jean

29.

A wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic.

Lowell, James Russell

30.

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

31.

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

32.

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.

Christopher Hampton

33.

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

34.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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.

38.

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

Hill, Napoleon

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

42.

For if there is anything to one's praise, it is foolish vanity to be gratified at it, and if it is abuse -- why one is always sure to hear of it from one damned good-natured friend or another!

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

43.

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

44.

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

Murdoch, Iris

45.

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

46.

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

47.

There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

48.

There are two insults no human will endure. The assertion that he has no sense of humor and the doubly impertinent assertion that he has never known trouble.

Lewis, Sinclair

49.

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

Hoffman, Dustin

50.

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

Raphael, Frederic