Criticism Quotes - Page 8

The trouble with most of us is that we'd rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.

Why do they [Americans] quarrel, why do they hate Negroes, Indians, even Germans, why do they not have science and poetry commensurate with themselves, why are there so many frauds and so much nonsense? I cannot soon give a solution to these questions ... It was clear that in the United States there was a development not of the best, but of the middle and worst sides of European civilization; the notorious general voting, the tendency to politics... all the same as in Europe. A new dawn is not to be seen on this side of the ocean.

Dmitri Mendeleev

Richard Wright, a Mississippi-born negro, has written a blinding and corrosive study in hate. It is a novel entitled "Native Son".

David L. Cohn

Hard to remember these days that there was a time you had to wait for the ink and paper reviews to see your work excoriated. With the invention of the internet, any subliterate cretin can be Michiko Kakutani.

Robert Galbraith

In flight from intellectual heaviness, [he] arrives at intelligent weightlessness. Every notion is flipped this way and that; the answer to every question is yes and no; the proliferating examples from all the arts...overwhelm the observations that they are designed to illustrate; the general impression in one of uncontrollable articulateness. [He] does not think his thoughts; he convenes them. There is not a sign of struggle anywhere.

Leon Wieseltier

Intelligent people, as some say, in their openness, are indeed slow to criticize, but conversely, in their openness to the concerns of others, the genuine are slow to fret about being criticized.

Criss Jami

There is always something behind what is wrong and to change what is wrong, mind the things behind what is wrong! So many people are quick enough to see what is wrong only, and they criticize so blindly! When you see what is wrong, see why, who and what is behind what is wrong.

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

So in this Hemisphere when the moon goes down, I sit in one of those all-night-into-mornings cafes, watching short short skies below the skyscrapers and low-rises and sense the big turntables turning and the roadies setting up from stadium to stadium from L.A. to New York and all north and south and east and west and in between – and i know there must be a lot of kids who aren't sleeping but listening to their muse – iPad-ing and YouTubing...and the final shore ain't no shore at all but a long ether cable cyperspacing us together – cutting the continent in half.

Joseph Maviglia

deluded or not, supporters of superstition and pseudoscience are human beings with real feelings, who, like the skeptics, are trying to figure out how the world works and what our role in it might be. Their motives are in many cases consonant with science. If their culture has not given them all the tools they need to pursue this great quest, let us temper our criticism with kindness. None of us comes fully equipped.

Carl Sagan

Those who seek to listen to their own inner voice forget to listen to the judgment of others.

Vironika Tugaleva

It [speaking with words that bring about harmony] consists of speaking of what is good about people, instead of what is wrong with them. For some people this is an almost impossible exercise, for they have become totally habituated to speaking critically. We all seem to have a special talent for finding critical things to say about the world, about others, and about ourselves! (117)

Jean-Yves Leloup

its badness is so potent that it seems to undermine the very idea of literature, to expose the whole endeavour of making art out of language as essentially and irredeemably fraudulent

Mark O'Connell

The trouble with today's snarky pipsqueaks who break off a sentence or two, or who write a couple of mean paragraphs, is that they don't go far enough; they don't have a coherent view of life. Spinning around in the media from moment to moment, they don't stand for anything, push for anything; they're mere opportunists without dedication, and they don't win any victories.

David Denby

When the same lessons of life that taught them teaches you, you get a good understanding of what made them become who and what they became; you appreciate them better and you uphold the dignity of their integrity in high esteem!

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Write it as easy as you think about the difficulty

Cucuk Espe

Do not fear criticism, accept it as an inspiration for boldness and action

Debasish Mridha

Many reviews are useless because, while purporting to condemn the book, they only reveal the reviewer's dislike of the kind to which it belongs. Let bad tragedies be censured by those who love tragedy, and bad detective stories by those who love the detective story. Then we shall learn their real faults. Otherwise we shall find epics blamed for not being novels, farces for not being high comedies, novels by James for lacking the swift action of Smollett. Who wants to hear a particular claret abused by a fanatical teetotaller, or a particular woman by a confirmed misogynist?

C.S. Lewis

The Machine is the friend of ideas and the enemy of superstition: the Machine is omnipotent, eternal; blessed is the Machine.

E.M. Forster

One of the bigger mistakes of our time, I suppose, was preaching the demonization of all judgment without teaching how to judge righteously. We now live in an age where, apart from the inability to bear even good judgment when it so passes by, still everyone, inevitably, has a viral opinion (judgment) about everything and everyone, but little skill in good judgment as its verification or harness.

Criss Jami

You must be able to say "I understand," before you can say "I agree," or "I disagree," or "I suspend judgment.

Mortimer J. Adler

When it comes to the crusty behavior of some people, give them the benefit of the doubt. They may be drowning right before your eyes, but you can't see it. And you would never ask someone to drown with a smile on his face.

Richelle E. Goodrich

The critical spirit rises up against itself and consumes its form. But instead of coming out of this process greater and purified, it devours itself in a kind of self-cannibalism and takes a morose pleasure in annihilating itself. Hyper-criticism eventuates in self-hatred, leaving behind it only ruins. A new dogma of demolition is born out of the rejection of dogmas. Thus we euro-americans are supposed to have only one obligation: endlessly atoning for what we have inflicted on other parts of humanity. How can we fail to see that this leads us to live off self-denunciation while taking a strange pride in being the worst? Self-denigration is all too clearly a form of indirect self-glorification. Evil can come only from us; other people are motivated by sympathy, good will, candor. This is the paternalism of the guilty conscience: seeing ourselves as the kings of infamy is still a way of staying on the crest of history.

Pascal Bruckner

The most tragic consequence of our criticism of a man is to block his way to humiliation and grace, precisely to drive him into the mechanisms of self justification and into his faults instead of freeing him from them. For him, our voice drowns the voice of God.

Paul Tournier

Guard your tongue, and use it for good instead of evil. How many marriages or friendships have been destroyed because of criticism that spiraled out of control? How many relationships have broken down because of a word spoken thoughtlessly or in anger? A harsh word can’t be taken back; no apology can fully repair its damage.

Billy Graham

A common fallacy in much of the adverse criticism to which science is subjected today is that it claims certainty, infallibility and complete emotional objectivity. It would be more nearly true to say that it is based upon wonder, adventure and hope.

Cyril Norman Hinshelwood

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?

Jason Lutes

If you criticize what you’re doing too early you’ll never write the first li

Max Frisch

True ability is undisturbed by pretentious criticism.

Joyce Rachelle

Surely it is the one who fears he is wrong who avoids criticism. The one who is sure he is right invites it. It only illuminates the strength of beliefs and makes them more available to others.

David L. Wolfe

If everybody likes you, you are doing it wrong.

Ben Michaelis

When this low self-worth is hidden, one can understand why the person becomes hypersensitive to the opinions of others and has a great deal of difficulty accepting criticism no matter how warranted or gently said.

David W. Earle

Attachment to praise and avoidance of criticism keeps us from doing innovative, controversial work and--more simply--from following the paths we feel called toward, whether or not those around s understand or approve.

Tara Mohr

When virtues are pointed out first, flaws seem less insurmountable.

Judith Martin

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

Criss Jami

I have learned to be kinder to myself, to imagine that I am my own best friend, whispering comforting words in my ear and drowning out the voices of Self-Doubt and Self-Criticism. I have learned to acknowledge and appreciate the 98% that I have achieved instead of the 2% that I didn’t.

Roz Savage

If someone criticizes you, give them a compliment.

Debasish Mridha M.D.

When someone is cruel, harsh, mean, to not take their words personally is one thing, but to hear the silent cry within those words is another. This sort of perspective can not only liberate us from crippling self-doubt in the face of criticism, it can also liberate us from automatically becoming blind participants in the interaction patterns that the cruel person has become accustomed to—a favour we do for the other person as much as for ourselves.

Vironika Tugaleva

It seemed that it was not only live magicians which Mr. Norrell despised. He had taken the measure of all the dead ones too and found them wanting.

Susanna Clarke

Criticism of others. Criticism of 'self'.Criticism is the lack of compassion, insecurity of 'self' there a self defense mechanism is to put others down to feel superior EVEN IF you disagree with their lifestyle. Let go of your 'Self'.And if you have acted wrongly according to your own self-standard. Let go of your 'self'.Recognize when others are criticizing and 'choose' not to conform to the unconscious acts of others. Be aware, let go.

Matthew Donnelly

Everyone else believes in you. The major problem is that not all can let you know as in the way you may wish. Some will only let you know through their tests of criticism!

Israelmore Ayivor

Without self-discipline, your streams of grace become a flood of disgrace. Never let indiscipline weigh you down for critics to pick mockeries on.

Israelmore Ayivor

The dreams you have that may meet mockeries from the lips of negative people will yield the success that will squeeze tears from their eyes later! Dare to resist every negative criticism and persist to make it happen!

Israelmore Ayivor

You can cease to be influenced by people who tease you... Just neglect their helps and elevate your steps... You can do it!

Israelmore Ayivor

If it's painful for you to criticize your friends, you're safe in doing it; if you take the slightest pleasure in it, that's the time to hold your tongue.

Alice Duer Miller

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

L. Frank Baum

Authors are far closer to the truths enfolded in mystery than ordinary people, because of that very audacity of imagination which irritates their plodding critics. As only those who dare to make mistakes succeed greatly, only those who shake free the wings of their imagination brush, once in a way, the secrets of the great pale world. If such writers go wrong, it is not for the mere brains to tell them so

Gertrude Atherton

Our job on earth isn't to criticize, reject, or judge. Our purpose is to offer a helping hand, compassion, and mercy. We are to do unto others as we hope they would do unto us.

Dana Arcuri

After all, how many of our todays and of our tomorrows do we want to give our yesterdays? It is one thing to be victimized by another. It is quite another to victimize ourselves because we cannot learn from the past or forgive. Those who choose to live in the past, to live in the land of regret and complaint, do so at the sacrifice of their todays and their tomorrows.

John Lewis Lund

Fear cannot capture us, criticism cannot harm us, and pride cannot make us fall.

Donna Goddard

The words with which a child's heart is poisoned, whether through malice or through ignorance, remain branded in his memory, and sooner or later they burn his soul.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón

There was no sense to life, to the structure of things. D.H. Lawrence had known that. You needed love, but not the kind of love most people used and were used up by. Old D.H. had known something. His buddy Huxley was just an intellectual fidget, but what a marvelous one. Better than G.B. Shaw with that hard keel of a mind always scraping bottom, his labored wit finally only a task, a burden on himself, preventing him from really feeling anything, his brilliant speech finally a bore, scraping the mind and the sensibilities. It was good to read them all though. It made you realize that thoughts and words could be fascinating, if finally useless.

Charles Bukowski

If you cannot judge a book by its cover, surely we should not judge an author by one book alone?

E.A. Bucchianeri

The first demand any work of art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way. (There is no good asking first whether the work before you deserves such a surrender, for until you have surrendered you cannot possibly find out.)

C.S. Lewis

Outside of the dreary rubbish that is churned out by god knows how many hacks of varying degrees of talent, the novel is, it seems to me, a very special and rarefied kind of literary form, and was, for a brief moment only, wide-ranging in its sociocultural influence. For the most part, it has always been an acquired taste and it asks a good deal from its audience. Our great contemporary problem is in separating that which is really serious from that which is either frivolously and fashionably "radical" and that which is a kind of literary analogy to the Letterman show. It's not that there is pop culture around, it's that so few people can see the difference between it and high culture, if you will. Morton Feldman is not Stephen Sondheim. The latter is a wonderful what-he-is, but he is not what-he-is-not. To pretend that he is is to insult Feldman and embarrass Sondheim, to enact a process of homogenization that is something like pretending that David Mamet, say, breathes the same air as Samuel Beckett. People used to understand that there is, at any given time, a handful of superb writers or painters or whatever--and then there are all the rest. Nothing wrong with that. But it now makes people very uncomfortable, very edgy, as if the very idea of a Matisse or a Charles Ives or a Thelonious Monk is an affront to the notion of "ain't everything just great!" We have the spectacle of perfectly nice, respectable, harmless writers, etc., being accorded the status of important artists...Essentially the serious novelist should do what s/he can do and simply forgo the idea of a substantial audience.

Gilbert Sorrentino

The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things. The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Oscar Wilde

Analysis goes a step farther still, and assures us that those impressions of the individual mind to which, for each one of us, experience dwindles down, are in perpetual flight; that each of them is limited by time, and that as time is infinitely divisible, each of them is infinitely divisible also; all that is actual in it being a single moment, gone while we try to apprehend it, of which it may ever be more truly said that it has ceased to be than that it is. To such a tremulous wisp constantly reforming itself on the stream, to a single sharp impression, with a sense in it, a relic more or less fleeting, of such moments gone by, what is real in our life fines itself down.

Walter Pater

The danger in reviewing and teaching literature for a living (is) you can develop a kind of knee-jerk superiority to the material you're "decoding

Maureen Corrigan

A Christian message or moral cannot redeem a text marred by shoddy workmanship.

Susan Gallagher

The trade of critic, in literature, music, and the drama, is the most degraded of all trades.

Mark Twain

The literary text seems like "a fortified medieval town –foreigners and outsiders are repelled, or allowed in only after rigorous checks, but within all is bustling life; exchange, mutual interdependence and influence are the rule.

Jeremy Hawthorn

Previous 1 … 6 7 8 9 10 … 13 Next

Criticism Quotes - Page 8

Related Topics