Criticism Quotes - Page 4

Everybody makes excuses for themselves they wouldn't be prepared to make for other people.

We pass judgements as to merits in areas we have no competence

The American critic Dale Peck, author of Hatchet Jobs (2004), argues that reviewing finds its true character in critical GBH such as Fischer's [review of Martin Amis's Yellow Dog]. It represents a return to the prehistoric origins of reviewing in Zoilism - a kind of pelting of pretentious literature with dung, lest the writers get above themselves; it is to the novelist what the gown of humiliation was to the Roman politician - a salutary ordeal. Less grandly, bad reviews are fun, so long as you are not the author. There is, it must be admitted, a kind of furtive blood sport pleasure in seeing a novelist suffer. You read on. Whereas most of us stop reading at the first use of the word 'splendid' or 'marvellous' in a review.

John Sutherland

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

Will you read this? I think maybe it sucks. Or maybe it's awesome. It's probably awesome. Tell me it's awesome, okay? Unless it sucks." — Nick

Rainbow Rowell

When I left her office, I felt like she'd gut-punched me, brushed me off, slapped me back and forth, gave me a cool compress to put on my cheeks, cold-cocked me with a stiff uppercut to the jaw, picked me up, brushed me off again, then kicked me in the seat of my pants as she handed me a piece of cake and showed me the door.Being a reporter isn't as easy as it looks.

Christopher Paul Curtis

I’ve often been criticised, but never critically wounded

Johnny Rich

Neither the student nor I would mind in the least fair criticism and correction, but no one will permit himself to suffer criticism and correction from another whose knowledge and understanding of the subject is less than the one criticized and corrected; whose knowledge and understanding of the subject is susceptible to doubt as to its true worth and validity.

Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas

Never talk to waiters like that," Kit said."Can I help it," he said, "if I only went one year to finishing school?""It isn't manners," she said like a sensible schoolteacher quietly disciplining a small boy, "it just isn't smart."I thought of the time I first told him not to say ain't. He took this the same way, a little peeved but making mental notes. I noticed he was never too much of an egotist to take criticism when he knew it would help. It was part of his genius for self-propulsion. I was beginning to see what Kit had for Sammy. Of course she stood for something never within his reach before. But it was more than that. Sammy seemed to know that his career was entering a new cycle where polish paid off. You could almost see him filing off the rough edges against the sharp blade of her mind.

Budd Schulberg

Critical feedback shared in good faith is inherently a constructive dialogue. A “critique,” a term that is both a noun and a verb, represents the systematical application of critical thought, a disciplined method of analysis, expressing of opinions, and rendering judgments.

Kilroy J. Oldster

Turn down the volume of your negative inner voice and create a nurturing inner voice to take it’s place. When you make a mistake, forgive yourself, learn from it, and move on instead of obsessing about it. Equally important, don’t allow anyone else to dwell on your mistakes or shortcomings or to expect perfection from you.

Beverly Engel

I take criticism to heart. The words hit me literally and it hurts. It can take me a long time to recover from it.

Tina J. Richardson

Not much to say except to warn you not to get too serious about all this, if you want to become a writer of fiction in the future. If you intend to become a critic, that is a Whale of another color…Playing around with symbols, even as a critic, can be a kind of kiddish parlor game. A little of it goes a long way. There are other things of greater value in any novel or story…humanity, character analysis, truth on other levels…Good symbolism should be as natural as breathing…and as unobtrusive.

Ray Bradbury

You can’t let praise or criticism get to you. It’s a weakness to get caught up in either one.

John Wooden

To those who suspect that intellect is a subversive force in society, it will not do to reply that intellect is really a safe, bland, and emollient thing. In a certain sense, the suspicious Tories and militant philistines are right: intellect is dangerous. Left free, there is nothing it will not reconsider, analyze, throw into question. "Let us admit the case of the conservative," John Dewey once wrote. "If we once start thinking no one can guarantee what will be the outcome, except that many objects, ends and institutions will be surely doomed. Every thinker puts some portion of an apparently stable world in peril, and no one can wholly predict what will emerge in its place." Further, there is no way of guaranteeing that an intellectual class will be discreet and restrained in the use of its influence; the only assurance that can be given to any community is that it will be far worse off if it denies the free uses of the power of intellect than if it permits them. To be sure, intellectuals, contrary to the fantasies of cultural vigilantes, are hardly ever subversive of a society as a whole. But intellect is always on the move against something: some oppression, fraud, illusion, dogma, or interest is constantly falling under the scrutiny of the intellectual class and becoming the object of exposure, indignation, or ridicule.

Richard Hofstadter

You’re too sensitive’ victims of sexual abuse are told over and over by those whose reality depends on being insensitive. Most adults who have been in the victim role cringe when anyone tells them they are sensitive. In fact, sensitivity is a lovely trait and one to be cherished in any human being.

Renee Fredrickson

Some reviews give pain. This is regrettable, but no author has the right to whine. He was not obliged to be an author. He invited publicity, and he must take the publicity that comes along.

E.M. Forster

Would it not be wiser, then, to remit this part of reading and to allow the critics, the gowned and furred authorities of the library, to decide the question of the book's absolute value for us? Yet how impossible! We may stress the value of sympathy; we may try to sink our identity as we read. But we know that we cannot sympathise wholly or immerse ourselves wholly; there is always a demon in us who whispers, "I hate, I love", and we cannot silence him. Indeed, it is precisely because we hate and we love that our relation with the poets and novelists is so intimate that we find the presence of another person intolerable. And even if the results are abhorrent and our judgments are wrong, still our taste, the nerve of sensation that sends shocks through us, is our chief illuminant; we learn through feeling; we cannot suppress our own idiosyncrasy without impoverishing it.

Virginia Woolf

Wise parents do not criticize each other in front of their children or their friends. Nor do they talk negatively about their children when others are present. That is disloyalty.

Alan Loy McGinnis

Taste is a mystery.

Daniel Mendelsohn

Imitation is criticism.

William Blake

Many people begin their criticism with sincere praise followed by the word "but", which signals that the criticism is about to begin. This may make the listener questions the sincerity of the praise. Use "and" instead, and provide constructive advice rather than criticism. this is possibly the most effective ways to address an issue in written form without seeming false in your praise.

Dale Carnegie

Who is responsible for the incredible mess the present-day generation ofAmericans find themselves in? In this book, I hope to show exactly how thishappened. A series of deadly, inexplicable decisions by our elected leadersand corporate executives have paved the way to the crisis we must deal withnow. Corruption has grown entrenched, like an inoperable disease, in nearlyevery organ of the establishment. We must heed the words of one of America’sgreatest statesmen, Thomas Jefferson: “Single acts of tyranny may be ascribedto the accidental opinion of a day. But a series of oppressions, begun at adistinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change ofministers [administrations], too plainly proves a deliberate systematic planof reducing us to slavery.” The American people have been dealing with justsuch a “series of oppressions” now for well over a century, and there canbe little doubt that it is the result of a “deliberate systematic plan.” The bestword to describe it is conspiracy.

Donald Jeffries

Do not criticize others unless you are willing to accept criticism.

Eraldo Banovac

I don't criticise the free choice of others, and I ask others do the same to me

Bangambiki Habyarimana

It was always the most striking scene, the best work, the most disturbing emotion and unsettling idea that attracts criticism.

Rafael Yglesias

I believe more youths stay out of leadership positions because of the fear of indequacy and criticisms.

Paul Bamikole

What he imagines evokes nothing imaginary, it evokes the reality of the world that experience and reason treat in a confused manner.

René Magritte

Anti-intellectualism is virtually our civic religion. "Critical thinking" may be a ubiquitous educational slogan—a vaguely defined skill we hope our children pick up on the way to adulthood—but the rewards for not using your intelligence are immediate and abundant.

A.O. Scott

For this kind of commodity will not bear exportation, the flesh being of too tender a consistence to admit a long continuance in salt, although perhaps I could name a country which would be glad to eat up our whole nation without it.

Jonathan Swift

...chuck-full of error, masturbation and Jesus.

Thorndike Edward L

Most critics, fond of subservient artstill make the whole depend upon a part.They talk of principles, but notions prizeAnd all to one loved folly sacrifice.

Alexander Pope

And when you are foolish enough to identify yourself as a poet, your interlocutors will often ask: A PUBLISHED Poet? And when you tell them that you are, indeed, a published poet, they seem at least vaguely impressed. Why is that? Its not like they or anybody they know reads poetry journals. And yet there is something deeply right, I think, about this knee-jerk appeal to publicity. It's as if to say: Everybody can write a poem, but has your poetry, the distillation of your innermost being, been found authentic and intelligible by others? Can it circulate among persons, make of its readership, however small, a People in that sense? This accounts for the otherwise bafflingly persistent association of Poetry and fame - baffling since no poets are famous among the general population. To demand proof of fame is to demand proof that your songs made it back intact from the dream in the stable to the social world of the fire, that your song is at once utterly specific to you and exemplary for others.

Ben Lerner

There are braying men in the world as well as braying asses; for what's loud and senseless talking and swearing, any other than braying?

Sir Roger L'Estrange

She swallowed the ridicule & washed it down with criticism, It was far sweeter than the taste of obscurity.

C.E. O'Grady

I know whether of not your statement is true, and you know that I know whether or not it is true, because it is about me. But do you know that your statement is true? This is what I mean by passing judgment.

Daniel Suelo

The main aim of some people is to criticize you to stop, and then they can start what you have stopped! Keep moving on in the right direction when you know deep within you where you are heading towards! Don't give up!

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Shout praise and whisper criticism.

Don Meyer

It is easy to be a Critic when you have nothing to lose by your Criticism and hard to be a whistle blower in the auditorium of the majority.

Chuck Bridges

If you know who you are, it makes you immune to criticism

Sunday Adelaja

Relentless criticism in childhood can internalize a parental scorn that no amount of success will silence.

Bruce Watson

Criticism, upon the right one, surpasses and prevails, nothing since it causes a sign of self-discredit.

Ehsan Sehgal

I only object when any one particular group...gets a stranglehold on American criticism and squeezes out anybody who doesn't conform to its own standards....The ax falls, ecumenically, on the head of anybody...who doesn't share this group's parochial preoccupations.

Truman Capote

Not only is Donald Trump the most despised candidate ever, but many of the people who have made the most scathingly censorious criticisms of him are members of his own party. This is absolutely unprecedented in our history, and it ought to give pause to all Americans, particularly supporters of Donald Trump.

Gizmo

Only a man of knowledge is capable of giving constructive criticism.

Eraldo Banovac

Constantly seek criticism. A well thought out critique of whatever you’re doing is as valuable as gold.

Elon Musk

The purpose of religion is tocontrol yourself, not to criticiseothers.

Dalai Lama XIV

The most successful critics are always scribbling things in their programs, largely because it gives them an important and industrious air. Also, it is interesting to try to figure out what you've written afterward. Last week, for instance, I made a very helpful note during the second act of a drama called "They Walk Alone." "Lanchstr get face stuck 1 these nights awful if," it seemed to say.

Wolcott Gibbs

To listen to critics, pro or con, and take their words to heart is to subcontract your self-esteem to strangers. (from Workbook)

Steven Heighton

Bosch is great because what he imagines in color can be translated into justice.

Edward Dahlberg

If you find yourself criticizing other people, your probably doing it out of Resistance. When we see others beginning to live their authentic selves, it drives us crazy if we have not lived out our own.Individuals who are realized in their own lives almost never criticize others. if they speak at all, it is to offer encouragement. Watch yourself. Of all the manifestations of Resistance, most only harm ourselves. Criticism and cruelty harm others as well.

Stephen Pressfield

Ah, but sir,' said Lascelles, 'it is precisely by passing judgments upon other people's work and pointing out their errors that readers can be made to understand your own opinions better. It is the easiest thing in the world to turn a review to one's own ends. One only need mention the book once or twice and for the rest of the article one may develop one's theme just as one chuses. It is, I assure you, what every body else does.

Susanna Clarke

At that shameful stage in the development of our criticism, literary abuse would overstep all limits of decorum; literature itself was a totally extraneous matter in critical articles: they were pure invective, a vulgar battle of vulgar jokes, double-entendres, the most vicious calumnies and offensive constructions. It goes without saying, that in this inglorious battle, the only winners were those who had nothing to lose as far as their good name was concerned. My friends and I were totally deluded. We imagined ourselves engaged in the subtle philosophical disputes of the portico or the academy, or at least the drawing room. In actual fact we were slumming it.

Vladimir Odoyevsky

...like the emperor striding confidently along without clothes, convinced by them and their inward monitions that their criticism is effecting changes in society.

Samuel F. Pickering Jr.

If, in the Judaic perception, the language of the Adamic was that of love, the grammars of fallen man are those of the legal code.

George Steiner

Critics sometimes appear to be addressing themselves to works other than those I remember writing.

Joyce Carol Oates

Critical voices have to care about history. We have to care about the way in which things get controlled in the past because that's when the damage gets done and if we don't keep that historical memory, we will allow them to do it again next time.

Martin Baker

Domination and critique have always formed an apparatus covertly against a common hostis: the conspirator, who works under cover, who used everything THEY give him and everything THEY attribute to him as a mask. The conspirator is everywhere hated, although THEY will never hate him as much as he enjoys playing his game. No doubt a certain amount of what one usually calls “perversion” accounts for the pleasure, since what he enjoys, among other things, is his opacity. But that isn’t the reason THEY continue to push the conspirator to make himself a critic, to subjectivate himself as critic, nor the reason for the hate THEY so commonly express. The reason is quite simply the danger he represents. The danger, for Empire, is war machines: that one person, that people transform themselves into war machines, ORGANICALLY JOIN THEIR TASTE FOR LIFE AND THEIR TASTE FOR DESTRUCTION.

Tiqqun

[The critic] serves up his erudition in strong doses; he pours out all the knowledge he got up the day before in some library or other, and treats in heathenish fashion people at whose feet he ought to sit, and the most ignorant of whom could give points to much wiser men than he.Authors bear this sort of thing with a magnanimity and a patience that are really incomprehensible. For, after all, who are those critics, who with their trenchant tone, their dicta, might be supposed sons of the gods? They are simply fellows who were at college with us, and who have turned their studies to less account, since they have not produced anything, and can do no more than soil and spoil the works of others, like true stymphalid vampires.

Théophile Gautier

As Henry Dan Piper, one of Fitzgerald's most perceptive critics, has commented, his fiction heroes "are destroyed because they attempt to fulfill themselves through their social relationships. They cannot distinguish between social values like popularity, charm, and success, and the more lasting moral values." Their creator did make that distinction, however, and so was constantly surrounding his characters with a mist of admiration and then blowing it away.

Scott Donaldson

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Criticism Quotes - Page 4

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