Quotes about criticism

"A man must serve his time to every trade save censure -- critics all are ready made."

Byron, Lord on criticism   

"Critics are already made."

Byron, Lord on criticism   

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

Carlyle, Thomas on criticism   

"Criticism of others is futile and if you indulge in it often you should be warned that it can be fatal to your career."

Carnegie, Dale on criticism
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"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."

Carnegie, Dale on criticism
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"In judging others, folks will work overtime for no pay."

Carruthers, Charles Edwin on criticism   

"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 on criticism   

"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 on criticism   

"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."

Chandler, Raymond on criticism   

"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 on criticism   

"Though by whim, envy, or resentment led, they damn those authors whom they never read."

Churchill, Charles on criticism   

"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."

Churchill, Winston on criticism   

"They condemn what they do not understand."

Cicero, Marcus T. on criticism
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"He cannot be strict in judging, who does not wish others to be strict judges of himself."

Cicero, Marcus T. on criticism
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"Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves."

Cioran, E. M. on criticism   

"Unlike other people, our reviewers are powerful because they believe in nothing."

Clurman, Harold on criticism   

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

Cocteau, Jean on criticism
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"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."

Coen, Ethan on criticism   

"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."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on criticism   

"The biggest critics of my books are people who never read them."

Collins, Jackie on criticism   

"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 on criticism   

"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 on criticism   

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

Conrad, Joseph on criticism   

"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."

Coolidge, Calvin on criticism   

"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture; it's a really stupid thing to want to do."

Costello, Elvis on 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 on criticism   

"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."

Dahlberg, Edward on criticism   

"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 on criticism   

"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 on criticism
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"It is much easier to be critical than to be correct."

Disraeli, Benjamin on criticism
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"Critics are those who have failed in literature and art."

Disraeli, Benjamin on criticism   

"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."

Dyke, Henry Van on criticism   

"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."

Edwards, Tryon on criticism   

"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."

Eliot, T. S. on criticism   

"Blame is safer than praise."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on criticism
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"Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on criticism   

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on criticism   

"If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it."

Epictetus on criticism
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"Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as men's judgments of one another."

Erasmus, Desiderius on criticism   

"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."

Faulkner, William on criticism
3 fans of this quote