Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Mcluhan, Marshall

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

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

Baudrillard, Jean

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

Elbert Hubbard

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

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

Neither praise or blame is the object of true criticism. Justly to discriminate, firmly to establish, wisely to prescribe, and honestly to award. These are the true aims and duties of criticism.

Simms, William Gilmore

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

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

10.

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

Richard Pryor

11.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

12.

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

Mascotte, John P.

13.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

14.

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs.

Hampton, Christopher

15.

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

16.

On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one's mind. It becomes a pleasure.

Wilde, Oscar

17.

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

Mizner, Wilson

18.

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

Flagg, Fannie

19.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

20.

Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.

Steinbeck, John

21.

Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

22.

Recognize the cunning man not by the corpses he pays homage to but by the living writers he conspires against with the most shameful weapon, Silence, or the briefest review.

Dahlberg, Edward

23.

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

24.

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.

25.

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

Hill, Napoleon

26.

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

Buxton, Charles

27.

The strength of criticism lies in the weakness of the thing criticized.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

28.

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

29.

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

30.

It is just as hard to do your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shouting at you.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

31.

Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much cherished aspect of academic freedom.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

32.

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

33.

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

Cocteau, Jean

34.

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

Williams, Bern

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

Schlegel, Friedrich

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

42.

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

Cioran, E. M.

43.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

44.

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

W. H. Auden

45.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

46.

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

47.

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.

48.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

49.

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

50.

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