Critics and Criticism Quotes
There s a fine line between participation and mockery.Critics and Criticism
Adams, Scott
American Cartoonist Dilbert
Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.
Critics and Criticism
Addison, Joseph
1672-1719 British Essayist Poet Statesman
Culture is only true when implicitly critical, and the mind which forgets this revenges itself in the critics it breeds. Criticism is an indispensable element of culture.
Critics and Criticism
Adorno, Theodor W.
1903-1969 German Philosopher Sociologist Music Critic
Most of us are umpires at heart; we like to call balls and strikes on somebody else.
Critics and Criticism
Aikman, Leo
The avocation of assessing the failures of better men can be turned into a comfortable livelihood, providing you back it up with a Ph.D.
Critics and Criticism
Algren, Nelson
1909-1981 American Author
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.
Critics and Criticism
Auden, W. H.
1907-1973 Anglo-American Poet
Criticism should be a casual conversation.
Critics and Criticism
Auden, W. H.
1907-1973 Anglo-American Poet
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.
Critics and Criticism
Barkley, Charles
American Basketball Player
To be just, that is to say, to justify its existence, criticism should be partial, passionate and political, that is to say, written from an exclusive point of view, but a point of view that opens up the widest horizons.
Critics and Criticism
Baudelaire, Charles
1821-1867 French Poet
It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.
Critics and Criticism
Baudelaire, Charles
1821-1867 French Poet
A negative judgment gives you more satisfaction than praise, provided it smacks of jealousy.
Critics and Criticism
Baudrillard, Jean
French Postmodern Philosopher Writer
We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.
Critics and Criticism
Beecher, Henry Ward
1813-1887 American Preacher Orator Writer
The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion.
Critics and Criticism
Benjamin, Walter
1982-1940 German Critic Philosopher
Post-modernism has cut off the present from all futures. The daily media add to this by cutting off the past. Which means that critical opinion is often orphaned in the present.
Critics and Criticism
Berger, John
1926 British Actor Critic
Be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath.
Critics and Criticism
Bible
Sacred Scriptures of Christians and Judaism
The covers of this book are too far apart.
Critics and Criticism
Bierce, Ambrose
1842-1914 American Author Editor Journalist The Devil's Dictionary
A good writer is not necessarily a good book critic. No more so than a good drunk is automatically a good bartender.
Critics and Criticism
Bishop, Jim
Satire is often the reflection of a kind of moral nausea.
Critics and Criticism
Briton, Crand
Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than native genius. In the hands of a man who has read widely but lacks judgment, applied to certain subjects it can corrupt both its readers and the writer himself.
Critics and Criticism
Bruyere, Jean De La
1645-1696 French Classical Writer
Critics! Those cut-throat bandits in the paths of fame.
Critics and Criticism
Burns, Robert
1759-1796 Scottish Poet
Writing prejudicial, off-putting reviews is a precise exercise in applied black magic. The reviewer can draw free-floating disagreeable associations to a book by implying that the book is completely unimportant without saying exactly why, and carefully avoiding any clear images that could capture the reader s full attention.
Critics and Criticism
Burroughs, William S.
1914-1997 American Writer
The rule in carving holds good as to criticism; never cut with a knife what you can cut with a spoon.
Critics and Criticism
Buxton, Charles
1823-1871 British Author
Self-laudation abounds among the unpolished, but nothing can stamp a man more sharply as ill-bred.
Critics and Criticism
Buxton, Charles
1823-1871 British Author
A man must serve his time to every trade save censure -- critics all are ready made.
Critics and Criticism
Byron, Lord
1788-1824 British Poet
Critics are already made.
Critics and Criticism
Byron, Lord
1788-1824 British Poet
No sadder proof can be given of a person s own tiny stature, than their disbelief in great people.
Critics and Criticism
Carlyle, Thomas
1795-1881 Scottish Philosopher Author
Criticism of others is futile and if you indulge in it often you should be warned that it can be fatal to your career.
Critics and Criticism
Carnegie, Dale
1888-1955 American Author Trainer
If you believe in what you are doing, then let nothing hold you up in your work. Much of the best work of the world has been done against seeming impossibilities. The thing is to get the work done.
Critics and Criticism
Carnegie, Dale
1888-1955 American Author Trainer
In judging others, folks will work overtime for no pay.
Critics and Criticism
Carruthers, Charles Edwin
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.
Critics and Criticism
Cartwright, Bill
American Basketball Player
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.
Critics and Criticism
Chandler, Raymond
1888-1959 American Author
Most critical writing is drivel and half of it is dishonest. It is a short cut to oblivion, anyway. Thinking in terms of ideas destroys the power to think in terms of emotions and sensations.
Critics and Criticism
Chandler, Raymond
1888-1959 American Author
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.
Critics and Criticism
Chandler, Raymond
1888-1959 American Author
Though by whim, envy, or resentment led, they damn those authors whom they never read.
Critics and Criticism
Churchill, Charles
1731-1764 British Poet Satirist
When I am abroad, I always make it a rule to never criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.
Critics and Criticism
Churchill, Winston
1874-1965 British Statesman Prime Minister
They condemn what they do not understand.
Critics and Criticism
Cicero, Marcus T.
c 106-43 BC Great Roman Orator Politician
He cannot be strict in judging, who does not wish others to be strict judges of himself.
Critics and Criticism
Cicero, Marcus T.
c 106-43 BC Great Roman Orator Politician
Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves.
Critics and Criticism
Cioran, E. M.
1911 Rumanian-born French Philosopher
Unlike other people, our reviewers are powerful because they believe in nothing.
Critics and Criticism
Clurman, Harold
What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.
Critics and Criticism
Cocteau, Jean
1889-1963 French Author Filmmaker
Critics are usually kinder to cheaper movies than to those they perceive to be big Hollywood releases. They cut you a lot more slack if you spend less money, which makes no sense.
Critics and Criticism
Coen, Ethan
1957 American Director Screenwriter Editor Producer
Reviewers are usually people who would have been, poets, historians, biographer, if they could. They have tried their talents at one thing or another and have failed; therefore they turn critic.
Critics and Criticism
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
1772-1834 British Poet Critic Philosopher
The biggest critics of my books are people who never read them.
Critics and Criticism
Collins, Jackie
American Author Sister of Joan Collins
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.
Critics and Criticism
Congreve, William
1670-1729 British Dramatist
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.
Critics and Criticism
Connolly, Cyril
1903-1974 British Critic
Criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters.
Critics and Criticism
Conrad, Joseph
1857-1924 Polish-born British Novelist
I have found it advisable not to give too much heed to what people say when I am trying to accomplish something of consequence. Invariably they proclaim it can t be done. I deem that the very best time to make the effort.
Critics and Criticism
Coolidge, Calvin
1872-1933 Thirtieth President of the USA
Writing about music is like dancing about architecture; it s a really stupid thing to want to do.
Critics and Criticism
Costello, Elvis
1955 British-born American Musician Singer Songwriter
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.
Critics and Criticism
Dahlberg, Edward
1900-1977 American Author Critic
It is very perplexing how an intrepid frontier people, who fought a wilderness, floods, tornadoes, and the Rockies, cower before criticism, which is regarded as a malignant tumor in the imagination.
Critics and Criticism
Dahlberg, Edward
1900-1977 American Author Critic
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.
Critics and Criticism
Dahlberg, Edward
1900-1977 American Author Critic
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.
Critics and Criticism
DiCaprio, Leonardo
1974 American Actor
It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.
Critics and Criticism
Disraeli, Benjamin
1804-1881 British Statesman Prime Minister
Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.
Critics and Criticism
Disraeli, Benjamin
1804-1881 British Statesman Prime Minister
Half of the secular unrest and dismal, profane sadness of modern society comes from the vain ideas that every man is bound to be a critic for life.
Critics and Criticism
Dyke, Henry Van
1852--1933 American Protestant Clergyman and Writer
Most of our censure of others is only oblique praise of self, uttered to show the wisdom and superiority of the speaker. It has all the invidiousness of self-praise, and all the ill-desert of falsehood.
Critics and Criticism
Edwards, Tryon
1809-1894 American Theologian
We might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds when we read a book and feel an emotion about it, for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism.
Critics and Criticism
Eliot, T. S.
1888-1965 American-born British Poet Critic
Blame is safer than praise.
Critics and Criticism
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
1803-1882 American Poet Essayist
Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring.
Critics and Criticism
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
1803-1882 American Poet Essayist
Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.
Critics and Criticism
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
1803-1882 American Poet Essayist
If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.
Critics and Criticism
Epictetus
50-120 Stoic Philosopher
Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as men s judgments of one another.
Critics and Criticism
Erasmus, Desiderius
c1466-1536 Dutch Humanist
The artist doesn t have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don t have the time to read reviews.
Critics and Criticism
Faulkner, William
1897-1962 American Novelist
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.
Critics and Criticism
Fielding, Henry
1707-1754 British Novelist Dramatist
Remember if people talk behind your back, it only means you re two steps ahead!
Critics and Criticism
Flagg, Fannie
Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.
Critics and Criticism
Fox, Dr. Emmit
The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.
Critics and Criticism
France, Anatole
1844-1924 French Writer
If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.
Critics and Criticism
Franklin, Benjamin
1706-1790 American Scientist Publisher Diplomat
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.
Critics and Criticism
Fuller, Margaret
1810-1850 American Writer Lecturer
Essays, entitled critical, are epistles addressed to the public, through which the mind of the recluse relieves itself of its impressions.
Critics and Criticism
Fuller, Margaret
1810-1850 American Writer Lecturer
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.
Critics and Criticism
Gibbon, Edward
1737-1794 British Historian
The person of analytic or critical intellect finds something ridiculous in everything. The person of synthetic or constructive intellect, in almost nothing.
Critics and Criticism
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von
1749-1832 German Poet Dramatist Novelist
Strike the dog dead, it s but a critic!
Critics and Criticism
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von
1749-1832 German Poet Dramatist Novelist
Write how you want, the critic shall show the world you could have written better.
Critics and Criticism
Goldsmith, Oliver
1728-1774 Anglo-Irish Author Poet Playwright
The whole effort of a sincere man is to erect his personal impressions into laws.
Critics and Criticism
Gourmont, Remy De
1858-1915 French Novelist Philosopher Poet Playwright
It is a barren kind of criticism which tells you what a thing is not.
Critics and Criticism
Griswold, Alfred Whitney
1906-1963 American President of Yale University
Praise those of your critics for whom nothing is up to standard.
Critics and Criticism
Hammarskjold, Dag
1905-1961 Swedish Statesman Secretary-general of UN
Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs.
Critics and Criticism
Hampton, Christopher
1946 British Playwright
Harsh counsels have no effect; they are like hammers which are always repulsed by the anvil.
Critics and Criticism
Helvetius, Claude A.
1715-1771 French Philosopher
God knows people who are paid to have attitudes toward things, professional critics, make me sick; camp following eunuchs of literature. They won t even whore. They re all virtuous and sterile. And how well meaning and high minded. But they re all camp followers.
Critics and Criticism
Hemingway, Ernest
1898-1961 American Writer
All the critics who could not make their reputations by discovering you are hoping to make them by predicting hopefully your approaching impotence, failure and general drying up of natural juices. Not a one will wish you luck or hope that you will keep on writing unless you have political affiliations in which case these will rally around and speak of you and Homer, Balzac, Zola and Link Steffens.
Critics and Criticism
Hemingway, Ernest
1898-1961 American Writer
If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water s edge
Critics and Criticism
Hill, Napoleon
1883-1970 American Speaker Motivational Writer Think and Grow Rich
A good review from the critics is just another stay of execution.
Critics and Criticism
Hoffman, Dustin
1937 American Actor
Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left.
Critics and Criticism
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
1809-1894 American Author Wit Poet
You re never s good as everyone tells you when you win, and you re never as bad as they say when you lose.
Critics and Criticism
Holtz, Lou
1937 American Football Coach
If you burn your neighbors house down, it doesn t make your house look any better.
Critics and Criticism
Holtz, Lou
1937 American Football Coach
To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.
Critics and Criticism
Hubbard, Elbert
1859-1915 American Author Publisher
I d rather be hissed at for a good verse, than applauded for a bad one.
Critics and Criticism
Hugo, Victor
1802-1885 French Poet Dramatist Novelist
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.
Critics and Criticism
Hutton, R. H.
In an age of unscrupulous and shameless book-making, it is a duty to give notice of the rubbish that cumbers the ground. There is no credit, no real power required for this task. It is the work of an intellectual scavenger, and far from being specially honorable.
Critics and Criticism
Hutton, R. H.
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.
Critics and Criticism
Ironside, H. A.
As a work of art it has the same status as a long conversation between two not very bright drunks.
Critics and Criticism
James, Clive
1939 Australian-Born Writer Satirist Broadcaster and Critic
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.
Critics and Criticism
James, Henry
1843-1916 American Author
Of course you re always at liberty to judge the critic. Judge people as critics, however, and you ll condemn them all!
Critics and Criticism
James, Henry
1843-1916 American Author
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.
Critics and Criticism
Johnson, Samuel
1709-1784 British Author
Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.
Critics and Criticism
Johnson, Samuel
1709-1784 British Author
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.
Critics and Criticism
Johnson, Samuel
1709-1784 British Author
Honest criticism is hard to take, especially from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger.
Critics and Criticism
Jones, Franklin P.
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.
Critics and Criticism
Joubert, Joseph
1754-1824 French Moralist
In the arts, the critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising.
Critics and Criticism
Kael, Pauline
1919 American Film Critic
Ours is an age of criticism, to which everything must be subjected. The sacredness of religion, and the authority of legislation, are by many regarded as grounds for exemption from the examination by this tribunal, But, if they are exempted, and cannot lay claim to sincere respect, which reason accords only to that which has stood the test of a free and public examination.
Critics and Criticism
Kant, Immanuel
1724-1804 German Philosopher
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.
Critics and Criticism
Keats, John
1795-1821 British Poet
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.
Critics and Criticism
Klee, Paul
1879-1940 Swiss Artist
Without the meditative background that is criticism, works become isolated gestures, historical accidents, soon forgotten.
Critics and Criticism
Kundera, Milan
1929 Czech Author Critic
Let us consider the critic, therefore, as a discoverer of discoveries.
Critics and Criticism
Kundera, Milan
1929 Czech Author Critic
The pleasure we feel in criticizing robs us from being moved by very beautiful things.
Critics and Criticism
La Bruyere, Jean De
1645-1696 French Writer
Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.
Critics and Criticism
Lawrence, D. H.
1885-1930 British Author
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.
Critics and Criticism
Lewis, Sinclair
1885-1951 First American Novelist to win the Nobel Prize for literature
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.
Critics and Criticism
Lincoln, Abraham
1809-1865 Sixteenth President of the USA
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.
Critics and Criticism
Lincoln, Abraham
1809-1865 Sixteenth President of the USA
The easiest thing a human being can do is to criticize another human being.
Critics and Criticism
Little, Lynn M.
Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews, to challenge every new author.
Critics and Criticism
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
1819-1892 American Poet
Doubtless criticism was originally benignant, pointing out the beauties of a work rather that its defects. The passions of men have made it malignant, as a bad heart of Procreates turned the bed, the symbol of repose, into an instrument of torture.
Critics and Criticism
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
1819-1892 American Poet
The strength of criticism lies in the weakness of the thing criticized.
Critics and Criticism
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
1819-1892 American Poet
A wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic.
Critics and Criticism
Lowell, James Russell
1819-1891 American Poet Critic Editor
A sneer is the weapon of the weak.
Critics and Criticism
Lowell, James Russell
1819-1891 American Poet Critic Editor
Never make the mistake of assuming the critters will beat a path to your door.
Critics and Criticism
Mascotte, John P.
People who ask for your criticism want only praise.
Critics and Criticism
Maugham, W. Somerset
1874-1965 British Novelist Playwright
You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you re cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism.
Critics and Criticism
Maugham, W. Somerset
1874-1965 British Novelist Playwright
Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.
Critics and Criticism
Mayor, Federico
Never retract, never explain, never apologize; get things done and let them howl.
Critics and Criticism
Mcclung, Nellie
1873-1951 Canadian Suffragist Writer Speaker
It is critical vision alone which can mitigate the unimpeded operation of the automatic.
Critics and Criticism
Mcluhan, Marshall
1911-1980 Canadian Communications Theorist
Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!
Critics and Criticism
Meir, Golda
1898-1978 Prime Minister of Israel 1969-74
You should never assume contempt for that which it is not very manifest that you have it in your power to possess, nor does a wit ever make a more contemptible figure than when, in attempting satire, he shows that he does not understand that which he would make the subject of his ridicule.
Critics and Criticism
Melbourne, Lord
1779-1848 British Statesman Prime Minister
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.
Critics and Criticism
Mencken, H. L.
1880-1956 American Editor Author Critic Humorist
Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
Critics and Criticism
Mencken, H. L.
1880-1956 American Editor Author Critic Humorist
We have been educated to such a fine -- or dull -- point that we are incapable of enjoying something new, something different, until we are first told what it s all about. We don t trust our five senses; we rely on our critics and educators, all of whom are failures in the realm of creation. In short, the blind lead the blind. It s the democratic way.
Critics and Criticism
Miller, Henry
1891-1980 American Author
Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.
Critics and Criticism
Miller, Henry
1891-1980 American Author
A drama critic is a person who surprises the playwright by informing him what he meant.
Critics and Criticism
Mizner, Wilson
1876-1933 American Author
One ought to examine himself for a very long time before thinking of condemning others.
Critics and Criticism
Moliere
1622-1673 French Playwright
Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge ourselves with railing against it.
Critics and Criticism
Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De
1533-1592 French Philosopher Essayist
We are suffering from too much sarcasm.
Critics and Criticism
Moore, Marianne
1887-1972 American Poet
A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.
Critics and Criticism
Murdoch, Iris
1919 British Novelist Philosopher
We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.
Critics and Criticism
Narosky, Jose
When the critics come around it s always too late.
Critics and Criticism
Nolan, Sir Sidney
All the world s a stage, and all the clergymen critics.
Critics and Criticism
Nunn, Gregory
1955 American Golfer
No matter how well you perform there s always somebody of intelligent opinion who thinks it s lousy.
Critics and Criticism
Olivier, Sir Lawrence
1907-1989 British Actor Producer Director
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.
Critics and Criticism
Orwell, George
1903-1950 British Author Animal Farm
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.
Critics and Criticism
Paglia, Camille
1947 American Author Critic Educator
This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.
Critics and Criticism
Parker, Dorothy
1893-1967 American Humorous Writer
Social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings.
Critics and Criticism
Paz, Octavio
1914 Mexican Poet Essayist
Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don t start measuring her limbs.
Critics and Criticism
Picasso, Pablo
1881-1973 Spanish Artist
In criticism I will be bold, and as sternly, absolutely just with friend and foe. From this purpose nothing shall turn me.
Critics and Criticism
Poe, Edgar Allan
1809-1845 American Poet Critic short-story Writer
A critic is a legless man who teaches running.
Critics and Criticism
Pollock, Channing
American Actor
Each generation produces its squad of moderns with peashooters to attack Gibraltar.
Critics and Criticism
Pollock, Channing
American Actor
Did some more sober critics come abroad? If wrong, I smil d; if right, I kiss d the rod.
Critics and Criticism
Pope, Alexander
1688-1744 British Poet Critic Translator
They will say you are on the wrong road, if it is your own.
Critics and Criticism
Porchia, Antonio
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.
Critics and Criticism
Pound, Ezra
1885-1972 American Poet Critic
Never criticize a man until you ve walked a mile in his moccasins.
Critics and Criticism
Proverb, American Indian
Sayings of American Indian Origin
Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.
Critics and Criticism
Proverb, Chinese
Sayings of Chinese Origin
Do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend s forehead.
Critics and Criticism
Proverb, Chinese
Sayings of Chinese Origin
Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.
Critics and Criticism
Proverb, German
Sayings of German Origin
The television critic, whatever his pretensions, does not labor in the same vineyard as those he criticizes; his grapes are all sour.
Critics and Criticism
Raphael, Frederic
1931 British Author Critic
Any jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build it.
Critics and Criticism
Rayburn, Sam
1882-1961 American Representative
Do what you feel in your heart to be right. You ll be criticized anyway.
Critics and Criticism
Roosevelt, Eleanor
1884-1962 American First Lady Columnist Lecturer Humanitarian
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.
Critics and Criticism
Rosenberg, Harold
1906-1978 American Art Critic Author
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]
Critics and Criticism
Rossellini, Isabella
1952 Italian Actress Model
Take heed of critics even when they are not fair; resist them even when they are.
Critics and Criticism
Rostand, Jean
1894-1977 French Biologist Writer
When a man spends his time giving his wife criticism and advice instead of compliments, he forgets that it was not his good judgment, but his charming manners, that won her heart.
Critics and Criticism
Rowland, Helen
1875-1950 American Journalist
A critic is a reader who ruminates. Thus, he should have more than one stomach.
Critics and Criticism
Schlegel, Friedrich
1772-1829 German Philosopher Critic Writer
In my wide association in life, meeting with many and great men in various parts of the world, I have yet to find the man, however great or exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than he would ever do under a spirit of criticism.
Critics and Criticism
Schwab, Charles M.
1862-1939 American Industrialist Businessman
As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.
Critics and Criticism
Selye, Hans
1907-1982 Canadian Physician Born In Austria Research On Stress
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.
Critics and Criticism
Shee, Sir Martin Archer
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.
Critics and Criticism
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
1792-1822 British Poet
A man generally has the good or ill qualities he attributes to mankind.
Critics and Criticism
Shenstone, William
1714-1763 British Poet
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!
Critics and Criticism
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley
1751-1816 Anglo-Irish Dramatist
The dread of criticism is the death of genius.
Critics and Criticism
Simms, William Gilmore
1806-1870 American Author
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.
Critics and Criticism
Simms, William Gilmore
1806-1870 American Author
When subjected to the rain of criticism, let’s not curse the rain. Let’s accept it as a part of life. Let’s remember that the more criticism we can successfully handle, the more zest we will experience in our lives.
Critics and Criticism
Sinha, Shall
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?
Critics and Criticism
Slater, Christian
1969 American Actor
I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so.
Critics and Criticism
Smith, Sydney
1771-1845 British Writer Clergyman
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.
Critics and Criticism
Smullyan, Raymond
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.
Critics and Criticism
Sontag, Susan
1933 American Essayist
In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable.
Critics and Criticism
Sontag, Susan
1933 American Essayist
Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility.
Critics and Criticism
Sontag, Susan
1933 American Essayist
Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.
Critics and Criticism
Steinbeck, John
1902-1968 American Author
Give a critic an inch, he ll write a play.
Critics and Criticism
Steinbeck, John
1902-1968 American Author
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!
Critics and Criticism
Sterne, Laurence
1713-1768 British Author
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.
Critics and Criticism
Symons, Arthur
Abuse if you slight it, will gradually die away; but if you show yourself irritated, you will be thought to have deserved it.
Critics and Criticism
Tacitus, Publius Cornelius
55-117 AD Roman Historian
A louse in the locks of literature.
Critics and Criticism
Tennyson, Lord Alfred
1809-1892 British Poet
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.
Critics and Criticism
Tennyson, Lord Alfred
1809-1892 British Poet
I am sorry to think that you do not get a man s most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.
Critics and Criticism
Thoreau, Henry David
1817-1862 American Essayist Poet Naturalist
All my life people have said that I wasn t going to make it.
Critics and Criticism
Turner, Ted
1938 American Businessman Founder of CNN
The public is the only critic whose opinion is worth anything at all.
Critics and Criticism
Twain, Mark
1835-1910 American Humorist Writer
A critic is a man who knows the way, but can t drive the car.
Critics and Criticism
Tynan, Kenneth
1927-1980 British Critic
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.
Critics and Criticism
Tynan, Kenneth
1927-1980 British Critic
Those who can -- do. Those who can t -- criticize.
Critics and Criticism
Unknown, Source
He who throws dirt always loses ground.
Critics and Criticism
Unknown, Source
For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
Critics and Criticism
Unknown, Source
There is one way to handle the ignorant and malicious critic. Ignore him.
Critics and Criticism
Unknown, Source
Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat
Critics and Criticism
Unknown, Source
It is strange that we do not temper our resentment of criticism with a thought for our many faults which have escaped us.
Critics and Criticism
Unknown, Source
It is usually best to be generous with praise, but cautious with criticism.
Critics and Criticism
Unknown, Source
Many great ideas have been lost because the people who had them could not stand being laughed at.
Critics and Criticism
Unknown, Source
The best criticism doesn t trap an employee or child in a dead end. It gives them an escape route.
Critics and Criticism
Unknown, Source
Don t mind criticism. If it is untrue, disregard it; if unfair, keep from irritation; if it is ignorant, smile; if it is justified it is not criticism, learn from it.
Critics and Criticism
Unknown, Source
All of us could take a lesson from the weather, it pays no attention to criticism.
Critics and Criticism
Unknown, Source
Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do criticize him, you ll be a mile away and have his shoes.
Critics and Criticism
Unknown, Source
Brilliant people talk about ideas. Average people talk about things. Small people talk about other people.
Critics and Criticism
Unknown, Source
Criticism is the disapproval of people, not for having faults, but having faults different from your own.
Critics and Criticism
Unknown, Source
Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.
Critics and Criticism
Updike, John
1932 American Novelist Critic
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.
Critics and Criticism
Walker, Alice
1944 American Author Critic
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.
Critics and Criticism
Washington, Denzel
1954 American Actor
Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.
Critics and Criticism
West, Rebecca
1892-1983 British Author
After all, one knows one s weak points so well, that it s rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them and invent others.
Critics and Criticism
Wharton, Edith
1862-1937 American Author
You should not say it is not good. You should say you do not like it; and then, you know, you re perfectly safe.
Critics and Criticism
Whistler, James Mcneill
1834-1903 American Artist
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.
Critics and Criticism
Wilde, Oscar
1856-1900 British Author Wit
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.
Critics and Criticism
Wilde, Oscar
1856-1900 British Author Wit
Temperament is the primary requisite for the critic -- a temperament exquisitely susceptible to beauty, and to the various impressions that beauty gives us.
Critics and Criticism
Wilde, Oscar
1856-1900 British Author Wit
On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one s mind. It becomes a pleasure.
Critics and Criticism
Wilde, Oscar
1856-1900 British Author Wit
The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.
Critics and Criticism
Wilde, Oscar
1856-1900 British Author Wit
Every writer is necessarily a critic -- that is, each sentence is a skeleton accompanied by enormous activity of rejection; and each selection is governed by general principles concerning truth, force, beauty, and so on. The critic that is in every fabulist is like the iceberg -- nine-tenths of him is under water.
Critics and Criticism
Wilder, Thornton
1897-1975 American Novelist Playwright
A friend is a lot of things, but a critic isn t.
Critics and Criticism
Williams, Bern
It is just as hard to do your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shouting at you.
Critics and Criticism
Wilson, Woodrow T.
1856-1924 Twenty-eighth President of the USA
Remember that nobody will ever get ahead of you as long as he is kicking you in the seat of the pants.
Critics and Criticism
Winchell, Walter
1897-1972 American Journalist
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.
Critics and Criticism
Wolfe, Thomas
1931 American Author Journalist
It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.
Critics and Criticism
Woolf, Virginia
1882-1941 British Novelist Essayist
There has never been a statue erected to honor a critic.
Critics and Criticism
Ziglar, Zig
American Sales Trainer Author Motivational Speaker