Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Moliere

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

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

Sontag, Susan

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

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

Franklin P. Jones

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

Hubbard, Elbert

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

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

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

Buxton, Charles

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

The author himself is the best judge of his own performance; none has so deeply meditated on the subject; none is so sincerely interested in the event.

Gibbon, Edward

10.

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

11.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

12.

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

13.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

14.

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

15.

I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.

Pound, Ezra

16.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

17.

The easiest thing a human being can do is to criticize another human being.

Little, Lynn M.

18.

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

19.

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

Hoffman, Dustin

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

23.

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

24.

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

25.

Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.

Johnson, Samuel

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.

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

Turner, Ted

28.

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

Buxton, Charles

29.

Some people are always critical of vague statements. I tend rather to be critical of precise statements; they are the only ones which can correctly be labeled wrong.

Smullyan, Raymond

30.

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

Lowell, James Russell

31.

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

32.

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

Williams, Bern

33.

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

34.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

35.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

36.

Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain - and most fools do.

Dale Carnegie

37.

Critics! Those cut-throat bandits in the paths of fame.

Burns, Robert

38.

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.

39.

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

Christopher Hampton

40.

To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession, to establish in fine a relation with the criticized thing and to make it one's own.

James, Henry

41.

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

42.

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.

43.

It is critical vision alone which can mitigate the unimpeded operation of the automatic.

Mcluhan, Marshall

44.

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

Proverb, Chinese

45.

Nothing would improve newspaper criticism so much as the knowledge that it was to be read by men too hardy to acquiesce in the authoritative statement of the reviewer.

Hutton, R. H.

46.

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

Elbert Hubbard

47.

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

Kael, Pauline

48.

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

49.

You're never s good as everyone tells you when you win, and you're never as bad as they say when you lose.

Holtz, Lou

50.

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

Kundera, Milan