Quotes about criticism

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

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

— Lou Holtz

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

— Lou Holtz

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

— Elbert Hubbard

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

— Victor Hugo

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.

— R. H. Hutton

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.

— R. H. Hutton

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.

— H. A. Ironside

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

— Clive James

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.

— Henry James

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

— Henry James

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.

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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.

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Franklin P. Jones

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.

— Joseph Joubert

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

— Pauline Kael

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.

— Immanuel Kant

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.

— John Keats

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.

— Paul Klee

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

— Milan Kundera

Let us consider the critic, therefore, as a discoverer of discoveries.

— Milan Kundera

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

— Jean De La Bruyere

Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.

— D. H. Lawrence

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.

— Sinclair Lewis

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.

— Abraham Lincoln

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.

— Abraham Lincoln

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

— Lynn M. Little

Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews, to challenge every new author.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

— James Russell Lowell

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

— James Russell Lowell

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

— John P. Mascotte

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

— W. Somerset Maugham

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.

— W. Somerset Maugham

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

— Federico Mayor

Never retract, never explain, never apologize; get things done and let them howl.

— Nellie Mcclung

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

— Marshall Mcluhan

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!

— Golda Meir

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.

— Lord Melbourne

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.

— H. L. Mencken

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

— H. L. Mencken

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.

— Henry Miller

Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.

— Henry Miller

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

— Wilson Mizner

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

— Moliere

Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge ourselves with railing against it.

— Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

We are suffering from too much sarcasm.

— Marianne Moore

A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.

— Iris Murdoch

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

— Jose Narosky

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

— Sir Sidney Nolan

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

— Gregory Nunn

No matter how well you perform there's always somebody of intelligent opinion who thinks it's lousy.

— Sir Lawrence Olivier

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.

— George Orwell

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.

— Camille Paglia

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

— Dorothy Parker

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

— Octavio Paz

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.

— Pablo Picasso

In criticism I will be bold, and as sternly, absolutely just with friend and foe. From this purpose nothing shall turn me.

— Edgar Allan Poe

A critic is a legless man who teaches running.

— Channing Pollock

Each generation produces its squad of moderns with peashooters to attack Gibraltar.

— Channing Pollock

Did some more sober critics come abroad? If wrong, I smil'd; if right, I kiss'd the rod.

— Alexander Pope

They will say you are on the wrong road, if it is your own.

— Antonio Porchia

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.

— Ezra Pound

Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins.

— American Indian Proverb

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

— Chinese Proverb

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

— Chinese Proverb

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

— German Proverb

The television critic, whatever his pretensions, does not labor in the same vineyard as those he criticizes; his grapes are all sour.

— Frederic Raphael

Any jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build it.

— Sam Rayburn

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

— Eleanor Roosevelt

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.

— Harold Rosenberg

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]

— Isabella Rossellini

Take heed of critics even when they are not fair; resist them even when they are.

— Jean Rostand

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.

— Helen Rowland

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

— Friedrich Schlegel

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.

— Charles M. Schwab

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

— Hans Selye

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.

— Sir Martin Archer Shee

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.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— William Shenstone

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!

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

— William Gilmore Simms

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.

— William Gilmore Simms

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.

— Shall Sinha

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?

— Christian Slater

I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so.

— Sydney Smith

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.

— Raymond Smullyan

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.

— Susan Sontag

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.

— Susan Sontag

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

— Susan Sontag

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

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

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!

— Laurence Sterne

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.

— Arthur Symons

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

— Publius Cornelius Tacitus

A louse in the locks of literature.

— Lord Alfred Tennyson

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.

— Lord Alfred Tennyson

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.

— Henry David Thoreau