Critics / Criticisms - Quotes

A critic is a man who knows the way but can’t drive the car. - Kenneth Tynan

A critic is an old maid that writes instructions to you concerning the rearing of your own children. - Austin O’Malley

A man who can't take a word of criticism hears it the most. - Ken Alstad

A smile in giving honest criticism can make the difference between resentment and reform. - Philip Steinmetz

A true critic ought to dwell rather upon excellencies than imperfections, to discover the concealed beauties of a writer, and communicate to the world such things as are worth their observation. - Joseph Addison

A poet that fails in writing, becomes often a morose critic. The weak and insipid white wine makes at length excellent vinegar. - William Shenstone

A true critic ought to dwell rather upon excellencies than imperfections. - Joseph Addison

A young critic is like a boy with a gun; he fires at every living thing he sees. He thinks only of his own skill, not of the pain he is giving. - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then criticism will gradually yield to him. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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. - Ernest Hemingway

All you’ll get from strangers is surface pleasantry or indifference. Only someone who loves you will criticize you. - Judith Crist

An author, whether good or bad, or between both, is an animal whom everybody is privileged to attack: for though all are not able to write books, all conceive themselves able to judge them. - Matthew Gregory Lewis

Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain but it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving. - Dale Carnegie

As a matter of fact, we are none of us above criticism; so let us bear with each other's faults. - L. Frank Baum

Be an encourager. The world has plenty of critics already. - Dave Willis

Before you go and criticize the younger generation, just remember who raised them. - Unknown

Being a critic is a terrific method for killing your love of art. - David Toop

Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting. - Emmet Fox

Criticism is easier to take when you realize that the only people who aren't criticized are those who don't take risks. - Donald Trump

Criticism is futile because it puts a man on the defensive, and usually makes him strive to justify himself. Criticism is dangerous because it wounds a man’s precious pride, hurts his sense of importance and arouses his resentment. - Unknown

Criticism is just someone else’s opinion. Even people who are experts in their fields are sometimes wrong. It is up to you to choose whether to believe some of it, none of it, or all of it. What you think is what counts. - Rodolfo Costa

Criticism is most effective when it sounds like praise. - Arnold H Glasow

Criticism is now become mere hangman's work, and meddles only with the faults of authors; nay, the critic is disgusted less with their absurdities than excellence; and you cannot displease him more than in leaving him little room for his malice. - John Dryen

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. - Jean de La Bruyere

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. - Winston Churchill

Criticism of others is thus an oblique form of self-commendation. We think we make the picture hang straight on our wall by telling our neighbours that all his pictures are crooked. - Fulton J. Sheen

Criticism of ourselves and others is rarely justified, and should cause us to consider seriously any thought about other people and ourselves before we speak and send forth our criticism. - Unknown

Criticism should awaken our attention, not inflame our anger. We should listen to, and not flee from, those who contradict us. Truth should be our cause, no matter in what manner it comes to us. - Magdeleine Sable

Criticism should be a casual conversation. - W.H Auden

Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, but guiding, instructive, inspiring. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Criticism very often consists of measuring the learning and the wisdom of others, either by our own ignorance, or by our little technical and pedantic partialities and prejudices. - Horace Smith

Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man’s growth without destroying his roots. - Frank A. Clark

Criticism: It is folly for an eminent person to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected by it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age, have passed through this fiery persecution. There is no defense against reproach but obscurity; it is a kind of concomitant to greatness, as satires and invectives were an essential part of a Roman triumph. - Joseph Addison

Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it’s done, they’ve seen it done every day, but they’re unable to do it themselves. - Brendan Behan

Critics! Those cut-throat bandits in the paths of fame. - Robert Burns

Do not seek praise. Seek criticism. - Paul Arden

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

Don’t be distracted criticism. Remember, the only taste of success some people have is when they take a bit out of you. - Zig Ziglar

Don't criticize what you can't understand. - Bob Dylan

Don’t let the critics get you down. - Unknown

Give a critic an inch, he’ll write a play. - John Steinbeck

Having the critics praise you is like having the hangman say you’ve got a pretty neck. - Eli Wallace

He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help. - Abraham Lincoln

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct. - Benjamin Disraeli

I am more afraid of deserving criticism than of receiving it. - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses. - Johannes Kepler

I think it’s unfortunate to have critics for friends. Suppose you write something that stinks, what are they going to say in a review? Say it stinks? So, if they’re honest, they do, and if you were friends you’re still friends, but the knowledge of your lousy writing and their articulate admission of it will be always something between the two of you, like the knowledge between a man and his wife of some shady adultery. - William Styron

If criticism had any real power to harm, the skunk would have been extinct by now. - Fred Allen

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

In literary criticism the critic has no choice but to make over the victim of his attention into something the size and shape of himself. - John Steinbeck

In the creative state a man is taken out of himself. He lets down as it were a bucket into his subconscious, and draws up something which is normally beyond his reach. He mixes this thing with his normal experiences and out of the mixture he makes a work of art. - E. M. Forster

It is easier to criticize than to do better. - Swiss Proverb

It is easy to criticize an author, but it is difficult to appreciate him. - Vauvenargues 

Many critics are like woodpeckers, who, instead of enjoying the fruit and shadow of a tree, hop incessantly around the trunk, pecking holes in the bark to discover some little worm or other. - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

Nothing is complete and thus nothing is exempt from criticism. - James Luther Adams

On the whole, however, the critic is far less of a professional faultfinder than is sometimes imagined. He is first of all a virtue-finder, a singer of praise. He is not concerned with getting rid of dross except in so far as it hides the gold. In other words, the destructive side of criticism is purely a subsidiary affair. None of the best critics have been men of destructive minds. They are like gardeners whose business is more with the flowers than with the weeds. - Robert Wilson Lynd

Often the people who criticize your life are usually the same people that don’t know the price you paid to get where you are today. - Unknown

Often those that criticise others reveal what he himself lacks. - Shannon L. Alder

One becomes a critic when one cannot be an artist, just as a man becomes a stool pigeon when he cannot be a soldier. - Gustave Flaubert

Pay no attention to what the critics say; no statue has ever been erected to a critic. - Jean Sibelius

People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise. - William Somerset Maugham

Read as little as possible of literary criticism – such things are either partisan opinions, which have become petrified and meaningless, hardened and empty of life, or else they are just clever word-games, in which one view wins today, and tomorrow the opposite view. Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism. - Rainer Maria Rilke

Sandwich every bit of criticism between two layers of praise. - Mary Kay Ash

Some people have self-esteem issues of their own, they use criticism of others as a defence mechanism to make themselves better. - Unknown

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

The dread of criticism is the death of genius. - William Gilmore Simms

The exercise of criticism always destroys, for a time, our sensibility to beauty by leading us to regard the work in relation to certain laws of creation. The eye turns from the charms of nature to fix itself upon the servile dexterity of art. - Alison

The final proof of greatness lies in being able to endure criticism without resentment. - Elbert Hubbard

The finer house you build the sharper will be the criticism. - Lewis F. Korns 

The method of the critic is to balance praises with censure, and thus to do justice to the subject and – his own discrimination. - Christian Nestell Bovee

The most accomplished literary work would be reduced to nothing by carping criticism, if the author would listen to all critics and allow everyone to erase the passage which pleases him the least. - Jean de La Bruyere

The pleasure of criticism takes away from us the pleasure of being deeply moved by very fine things. - Jean de La Bruyere

The pleasure we feel in criticizing robs us from being moved by very beautiful things. - Jean de la Bruyere

The right to criticize must be earned, even if the advice is constructive in nature. Before you are entitled to tinker with another person’s self-esteem, you are obligated first to demonstrate your respect for him as a person. When a relationship of confidence has been carefully constructed, you will have earned the right to discuss a potentially threatening topic. Your motives will have been thereby clarified. - Unknown

The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism. - Norman Vincent Peale

There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is no defence against criticism except obscurity. - Joseph Addison

Time is the best critic. - Amos Bronson Alcott

To escape criticism – do nothing, say nothing, be nothing. - Elbert Hubbard

Unjust criticism is usually disguised compliment. It often means that you have aroused jealously and envy. Remember that no one ever kicks a dead log. - Dale Carnegie

When a critic sets himself up as an arbiter of morality, a judge of the matter and not the manner of a work, he is no longer a critic; he is a censor. - Edward Albee

When we judge or criticize another person, it says nothing about that person; it merely says something about our own need to be critical. - Unknown 

Whenever you feel like criticizing any one… just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had. - F. Scott Fitzgerald

You find very few critics who approach their job with a combination of information and enthusiasm and humility that makes for a good critic. But there is nothing wrong with critics as long as people don't pay any attention to them. I mean, nobody wants to put them out of a job and a good critic is not necessarily a dead critic. It's just that people take what a critic says as a fact rather than an opinion, and you have to know whether the opinion of the critic is informed or uninformed, intelligent of stupid – but most people don't take the trouble. - Edward Albee

You have one of two choices. Either you can panic and start making frantic attempts to reform under the glare of these awful critical eyes, or you can just say, "The hell with you! I know what I'm doing. If you don't yet, it's because you haven't given me an attentive reading. - Saul Bellow 

You worthy critics, or whatever you may call yourselves, are ashamed or afraid of the momentary and passing madness which is found in all real creators, the longer or shorter duration of which distinguishes the thinking artist from the dreamer. Hence your complaints of unfruitfulness, for you reject too soon and discriminate too severely. - Friedrich von Schiller