Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Nunn, Gregory

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

In my conscience I believe the baggage loves me, for she never speaks well of me herself, nor suffers any body else to rail at me.

Congreve, William

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

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

Abuse if you slight it, will gradually die away; but if you show yourself irritated, you will be thought to have deserved it.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

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

Sontag, Susan

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

Shenstone, William

I'd rather be hissed at for a good verse, than applauded for a bad one.

Hugo, Victor

Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.

Steinbeck, John

10.

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

11.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

12.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

13.

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

Mizner, Wilson

14.

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

Cioran, E. M.

15.

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

16.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right. You'll be criticized anyway.

Roosevelt, Eleanor

17.

There are two modes of criticism. One which crushes to earth without mercy all the humble buds of Phantasy, all the plants that, though green and fruitful, are also a prey to insects or have suffered by drought. It weeds well the garden, and cannot believe the weed in its native soil may be a pretty, graceful plant. There is another mode which enters into the natural history of every thing that breathes and lives, which believes no impulse to be entirely in vain, which scrutinizes circumstances, motive and object before it condemns, and believes there is a beauty in natural form, if its law and purpose be understood.

Fuller, Margaret

18.

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

19.

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

James, Clive

20.

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

21.

I review novels to make money, because it is easier for a sluggard to write an article a fortnight than a book a year, because the writer is soothed by the opiate of action, the crank by posing as a good journalist, and having an air hole. I dislike it. I do it and I am always resolving to give it up.

Connolly, Cyril

22.

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

23.

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

James, Henry

24.

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

25.

Social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings.

Paz, Octavio

26.

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

27.

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.

28.

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

29.

When the critics come around it's always too late.

Nolan, Sir Sidney

30.

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

31.

Remember if people talk behind your back, it only means you're two steps ahead!

Flagg, Fannie

32.

If you burn your neighbors house down, it doesn't make your house look any better.

Holtz, Lou

33.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

34.

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

Benjamin Disraeli

35.

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

Proverb, Chinese

36.

Never make the mistake of assuming the critters will beat a path to your door.

Mascotte, John P.

37.

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

38.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

39.

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

Kundera, Milan

40.

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.

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.

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

43.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

44.

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

45.

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord