Critic Quotes

The critic leaves at curtain fall To find, in starting to review it, He scarcely saw the play at all For starting to review it.

E B White

Psychoanalysis has suffered the accusation of being “unscientific” from its very beginnings (Schwartz, 1999). In recent years, the Berkeley literary critic Frederick Crews has renewed the assault on the talking cure in verbose, unreadable articles in the New York Review of Books (Crews, 1990), inevitably concluding, because nothing else really persuades, that psychoanalysis fails because it is unscientific. The chorus was joined by philosopher of science, Adolf Grunbaum (1985), who played both ends against the middle: to the philosophers he professed specialist knowledge of psychoanalysis; to the psychoanalysts he professed specialist knowledge of science, particularly physics. Neither was true (Schwartz, 1995a,b, 1996a,b, 2000). The problem that mental health clinicians always face is that we deal with human subjectivity in a culture that is deeply invested in denying the importance of human subjectivity. Freud’s great invention of the analytic hour allows us to explore, with our clients, their inner worlds. Can such a subjective instrument be trusted? Not by very many. It is so dangerously close to women’s intuition. Socalled objectivity is the name of the game in our culture. Nevertheless, 100 years of clinical practice have shown psychoanalysis and psychotherapy not only to be effective, but to yield real understandings of the dynamics of human relationships, particularly the reality of transference–countertransference re-enactments now reformulated by our neuroscientists as right brain to right brain communication (Schore, 1999).

Joseph Schwartz

Imitations produce pain or pleasure, not because they are mistaken for realities, but because they bring realities to mind.

The composition of Shakespeare is a forest, in which oaks extend in the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds and brambles, and sometimes giving shelting to myrtles and to roses; filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying the mind with endless diversity.

Shakespeare opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in unexhaustible plenty, though clouded by incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of meaner minerales.

Unless you are a restaurant critic... nobody cares what you had for lunch.

Perhaps he even needs to have been a critic and a sceptic and a dogmatist and an historian, and in addition a poet and collector and traveller and puzzle-solver and moralist and seer and ‘free spirit’ and nearly all things, so that he can traverse the range of human values and value-feelings and be able to look with many kinds of eyes and consciences from the heights into every distance, from the depths into every height, from the corners into every wide expanse.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Discernment is the son of good judgment and the father of self-control. When mixed with an already clear conscience, the ability to read the true motives of a critic keeps one's conscience both clear and at ease.

CRITIC OR CITRIC?Anagram of ordinary passing judgement on talentedKamil Ali

Kamil Ali

Hem,' he said, and I knew he was a critic now, since, in conversation, they put your name at the beginning of a sentence rather than at the end.

Ernest Hemingway

A cowardly critique starts with a compliment.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

For obvious reasons, the relationship between novelists, the reviewing establishment and critics in general is chronically, and often acutely, edgy. A kind of low-intensity warfare prevails, with outbreaks of savagery. It is partly an ownership issue. Who, other than its creator, is to say what a work of fiction means or is worth? It can take years to write a novel and only a few hours for a critic, or a reviewer rushing for a tight deadline, to trash it.

John Sutherland

I’ve often been criticised, but never critically wounded

Making judgments on films is in many ways so peculiarly vaporous an occupation that the only question is why, beyond the obvious opportunities for a few lectures fees and a little careerism at a dispiritingly self-limiting level, anyone does it in the first place.

These questions of taste, of feeling, of inheritance, need no settlement. Everyone carries his own inch-rule of taste, and amuses himself by applying it, triumphantly, wherever he travels.

No-one ever built a statue of a critic.

It's always funny that you can try and try again to steal all your critics' ammo, predict their responses, but no matter what, they'll still have a water gun stashed somewhere.

Plenty of people will think you're crazy, no matter what you do. Don't let that stop you from finding the people who think you're incredible—the ones who need to hear your voice, because it reminds them of their own. Your tribe. They're out there. Don’t let your critics interfere with your search for them.

Vironika Tugaleva

He who frowns when they say that he sucks shouldn’t smile when they say that he rocks.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

The proper function of the critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.

As we passed his table, I saw that the device that imprisoned the book was clever but wicked-looking, as though the critic were holding the work - and it's author - in bondage.

A good judge is not one who is impartial, but one who has prejudice for good.

Those who are critical don’t like being criticized, and those who are insensitive have a deficiency in their senses.

Make no mistake. You are your most important critic and your conscience your most important judge of character.

To be a critical reader means for me: (1) to affirm the enduring power of the Bible in my culture and in my own life and yet (2) to remain open enough to dare to ask any question and to risk any critical judgement. Nothing less than both of these points, together, can suffice for me. I was a reader of the Bible before I was a critic of it, but I found becoming a critic to be liberating and satisfying, and therefore I judge criticism to be a high calling of inestimable value. Yet, I recognize the prior claim of the text and the preeminence of reading over criticism; accordingly, I see and occasionally am apprehended by moments in which the text wields its indubitable power. The critic's ego says this could be a taste of the cherished post-critical naivete; the reader's proper humility before the text says that a reader should not judge such things.

Robert M. Fowler

If your success is not amazing to your critics, it disturbs, infuriates, and frustrates them, and if they're not careful; may go hang themselves and go to hell.

Michael Bassey Johnson

An ad for cigars appears in 100,000 newspapers; sales of that brand increase by 3% for a short time thereafter. A new play receives a viciously negative review in a theatrical journal that prints 500 copies; the playwright shoots himself. Who’s the better writer?

I'm the biggest critic of my own work, but sometimes you nail a chapter so good that you have to take a step back and admire that bitch.

The older you get, the more you understand how your conscience works. The biggest and only critic lives in your perception of people's perception of you rather than people's perception of you.

If one should criticize one should always have a meaningful explanation to accompany.

My friend is my friend, even if he wears rag, even if he wasn't born with a silver spoon, even if nobody wants to be his friend, i will hurt his critics by remaining his friend.

Michael Bassey Johnson

There is an easy way to silence your critics; just try to do what they say you can't do. If they are still not content, do more of it! Keep doing it until you become a master. Then look around, and you will see fewer critics and many compliments!

Israelmore Ayivor

The truth may roar, but it's roaring does not terrify the blameless. Guilty conscience needs neither a critic nor an accuser. Remember, the truth has no aiding crutches; once it is limping, its name is "a lie'.

Israelmore Ayivor

I am not stopping till my critics become my fans.

I am not stopping till my enemies become my friends.

What the critic as a teacher of language tries to teach is not an elegant accomplishment, but the means of conscious life. Literary education should lead not merely to the admiration of great literature, but to some possession of its power of utterance. The ultimate aim is an ethical and participating aim, not an aesthetic or contemplative one, even though the latter may be the means of achieving the former.

One who enjoys finding errors will then start creating errors to find.

Every book is worth reading. If it cannot make you wiser it will make you a critic

Bangambiki Habyarimana

If you are afraid of the critics you will never write a word

Bangambiki Habyarimana

The self-centered man will always expect nothing but praise. He will hope and expect all incoming criticism to be mere self-projection from the critic because when you're self-centered, self-projection is all you can imagine one can do.

We grow old judging othersAnd ourselvesUntil life humbles usAnd makes scared children of usLonging to hold another’s handTo hear their kind words And witness their kind deeds done on our behalf.But like children,We sabotage everythingFor nothing satisfies usUntil life crumbles usAnd we are no more.

The critic is to art what the limp penis is to sex.

I don’t want to be a critic of the world. I want to encourage it.

Charlotte Eriksson

They fired arrows at me, but I did not fire back. I picked them up instead to build my castle.

Matshona Dhliwayo

The best incentive for an artist are the harshest criticism

Válgame

The simplest way to silence your critics as a leader is to do what they claim you can’t do. However, be careful they don’t set you up to take fatal risks to please their criticisms.

Israelmore Ayivor

Leaders look out for people who can criticize them constructively and rebuke them reasonably.

Israelmore Ayivor

A bitter critic is the sweetest corrector.

Michael Bassey Johnson

You should praise, criticize and flirt with people right to their face, only then it will make a difference.

You should praise, criticize and flirt with people right to their face, only then it will make a difference.

I'm open to everything. When you start to criticize the times you live in, your time is over.

Pick a leader who will make their citizens proud. One who will stir the hearts of the people, so that the sons and daughters of a given nation strive to emulate their leader's greatness. Only then will a nation be truly great, when a leader inspires and produces citizens worthy of becoming future leaders, honorable decision makers and peacemakers. And in these times, a great leader must be extremely brave. Their leadership must be steered only by their conscience, not a bribe.

A critic is a legless man who teaches other people to run

Channing Pollock

Your life experience is a moving picture, of which you are writer, director, performer, producer and critic.

I am my own biggest critic. Before anyone else has criticized me, I have already criticized myself. But for the rest of my life, I am going to be with me and I don't want to spend my life with someone who is always critical. So I am going to stop being my own critic. It's high time that I accept all the great things about me.

In moments of prayer, people tend to pose as a critic and point out percieved flaws in God's art.

The cruelest thing you can do to an artist is tell them their work is flawless when it isn't

Yahtzee Croshaw