Critics Quotes - Page 2

Wealthy people attract critics like wealthy ships attract pirates.

These reasonings will furnish us with an adequate definition of a true critic: that he is a discoverer and collector of writers’ faults. Which may be farther put beyond dispute by the following demonstration: that whoever will examine the writings in all kinds, wherewith this ancient sect has honoured the world, shall immediately find, from the whole thread and tenor of them, that the ideas of the authors have been altogether conversant and taken up with the faults and blemishes, and oversights, and mistakes of other writers; and let the subject treated on be whatever it will, their imaginations are so entirely possessed and replete with the defects of other pens, that the very quintessence of what is bad does of necessity distil into their own, by which means the whole appears to be nothing else but an abstract of the criticisms themselves have made.

Jonathan Swift

Freedom of Speech has become Freedom of Stupidity on the internet. Some ignominious users should not be given a voice to comment at all.

michael p naughton

A critic must be knowledgeable in several fields, practices, and mediums. Brushing off art that they personally don't understand, is not a critique.

Justin K. McFarlane Beau

If God has given you a mission, you must be tough enough to handle what people say and still not be distracted while doing what you were created to do. Are you tough enough? God and the enemy know the truth about you, and remember even great people doing great things for great causes meet negative criticisms. All criticism is not bad, just like all flattery is not good. Many times people don’t criticize you because they are evil; they do it because they have been trained to think anyone who doesn't perceive and see things in the same manner is an enemy. The critic is a prisoner to his own experiences and perspectives, erroneously believing his limited experiences are the sum of all truth. When you acknowledge your critics, you give them your power and validate their words. They are not important until you respond.

Bishop T.D.Jakes

Negative people will always be there to stain your pure image with their dirty tongues and brushes, but you'll always remain as white as snow, no matter how high the quality of paint they use.

Michael Bassey Johnson

A critic can call any poem 'doggerel.' That is no more than a slur. 'Doggerel' or 'maudlin' or 'sappy' or 'sentimental' is in the ear of the listener. By the by, 'sentimental' is okay as it is defined as 'marked or governed by feeling, sensibility, or emotional idealism.' It is 'sentimentality' that is to be avoided, like the fiddleback spider, being as it is 'the quality or state of being sentimental to excess or in affectation.' Again we are faced with a judgement call and must keep a sharp eye on our outpourings to insure they are not overly gooey.The intellectual elite probably believe that most of the lyrics songwriters create are 'doggerel' of one kind or another--that is to say 'trivial"......the young songwriter has now been warned about the implacable nature of the enemy. Under a rather large umbrella, preferred twentieth-century taste in art of all kinds has been characterized by a kind of detachment, or sangfroid. It is simply not chic to be carried away in one's emotional reaction to a subject. All serious communication or complaint must be carefully wrapped in a protective coating of irony and/or satire.

Jimmy Webb

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

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

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

[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

If you love my work, you are a good critic. If you do not love my work, you are a 'not good' critic.

Roman Payne

It is not my methodology to engage too much with critics for many reasons:- I honestly believe that my ego is not worthy of my having to defend it. There are far more important things in the ummah than me having to respond to critics.- By and large, criticism is a part of human life and nature and we have ourselves to accomplish more than just responding to what people say about us.- The best way to silence the speech of the critics it through the deafening noise of your own actions.- Criticising is the job that requires zero qualifications.

Abu Ammaar Yasir Qadhi

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

Eli Wallach

Now that I think about it, it seems to me that’s what Idiocy is: the ability to be enthusiastic all the time about anything you like, so that a drawing on the wall does not have to be diminished by the memory of the frescoes of Giotto in Padua.

Julio Cortázar

The highest level than can be reached by a mediocre but experienced mind is a talent for uncovering the weaknesses of those greater than itself.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Being a critic is a terrific method for killing your love of art

David Toop

Anyone who finds himself incapable of grasping the complexities of a work hides his withdrawal behind the most superficial pretext because he has not gotten past the surface.

Julio Cortázar

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

Benjamin Disraeli

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

You need a high degree of corruption or a very big heart to love absolutely everything

Gustave Flaubert

That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.

Jonathan Swift

We of this age have discovered a shorter, and more prudent method to become scholars and wits, without the fatigue of reading or of thinking.

Jonathan Swift

When dealing with critics always remember this: Critics judge things based on what is outside of their content of understanding.

Shannon L. Alder

Has anybody ever seen a drama critic in the daytime? Of course not. They come out after dark, up to no good.

P.G. Wodehouse

Before cruelly vilifying them from a great height, the mudslingers at newspapers and journals should bear in mind that all artistic endeavors were by and large a mixture of effort and imagination, the embodiment of a solitary endeavor, of a sometimes long-nurtured dream, when they were not a desperate bid to give life meaning.

Félix J. Palma

The last madness I’ll probably persist in is to believe myself a poet: it will be up to the critics to cure me.

Gérard de Nerval

I am not perfect, but if I looked perfect to everyone I must have been rocking imperfect perfectly to a few imperfect souls that seek imperfection vs. perfection, in an imperfect world where God asks us to seek perfection for our imperfect souls.

Shannon L. Alder

There is nothing worse then being surrounded by a bunch of people telling you to do what is right, when they can't define that definition, without a lot of hatred and judgment behind it.

Shannon L. Alder

Corporate irony not only ridicules the thing it is selling but the very act of selling it. In the process it disarms critics by making anyone who goes against the flow of commerce seem clueless.

David Denby

Of course, if I write a first-person novel about a woman writer, I am inviting every book reviewer to apply the autobiographical label -- to conclude that I am writing about myself. But one must never not write a certain kind of novel out of fear of what the reaction to it will be.

John Irving

On writing, my advice is the same to all. If you want to be a writer, write. Write and write and write. If you stop, start again. Save everything that you write. If you feel blocked, write through it until you feel your creative juices flowing again. Write. Writing is what makes a writer, nothing more and nothing less. — Ignore critics. Critics are a dime a dozen. Anybody can be a critic. Writers are priceless. — Go where the pleasure is in your writing. Go where the pain is. Write the book you would like to read. Write the book you have been trying to find but have not found. But write. And remember, there are no rules for our profession. Ignore rules. Ignore what I say here if it doesn’t help you. Do it your own way. — Every writer knows fear and discouragement. Just write. — The world is crying for new writing. It is crying for fresh and original voices and new characters and new stories. If you won’t write the classics of tomorrow, well, we will not have any. Good luck.

Anne Rice

If you invest in your critics more than you invest in your dreams, you have successfully invested in your failure.

Matshona Dhliwayo

The artist is the only one qualified to criticize his art, because only the artist knows what he was trying to express and how satisfied he is with the attempt.

Ron Brackin

There is, perhaps, no more dangerous man in the world than the man with the sensibilities of an artist but without creative talent. With luck such men make wonderful theatrical impresarios and interior decorators, or else they become mass murderers or critics.

Dame Edna Everage

When they judge you, yawn.When they misunderstand you, smile.When they underestimate you, laugh.When they condemn you, ignore.When they envy you, rejoice.When they oppose you, prevail.

Matshona Dhliwayo

You will never be free until you free yourself from the prison of other people's opinions of you.

Matshona Dhliwayo

Critics! Appalled I ventured on the name.Those cutthroat bandits in the paths of fame.

Robert Burns

A critic is a man created to praise greater men than himself, but he is never able to find them.

Richard Le Gallienne

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

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Smile at your critics for they have yet to see the universe that exists outside the box

Paul Bradley Smith

It is not the fault of the stars that they shine brightly, but the fault of our eyes that they cannot handle light.

Matshona Dhliwayo

If you throw ice at the sun, it will melt; if you throw spears, they will burn; and if you throw bricks, they will crumble. The sun is invincible; all that comes before it is consumed.

Matshona Dhliwayo

When they try to judge you,remember, they themselves are judged.When they try to condemn you,remember, they themselves are condemned.When they try to break you,remember, they themselves are broken.When they try to hurt you,remember, they themselves are hurting.

Matshona Dhliwayo

Never allow carping critics to deter you from success. Instead, silence them with it.

Christian Baloga

Being a critic is easy.But if the critic tries to run the operation, he soon understands that nothing is as easy as his criticisms.Criticism without a solution is merely an inflation of the critic's ego.

Haemin Sunim

Critics are those righteous experts who judge other people's hard earned accomplishmens as they themselves stand on the sidelines of life.

Aaron Lauritsen

Flavour your life in such a way that anyone who thinks he or she is biting or back-biting you, will rather take smiles away unexpectedly and with surprises.

Israelmore Ayivor

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

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

The problem of knowledge is that there are many more books on birds written by ornithologists than books on birds written by birds and books on ornithologists written by birds

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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

To The Critics Suicide has made more than one mediocre author glorious before he's able to achieve that sobering "second edition" making his a suicide that waits until it's justified. But I've taken more precautions against to Suicide which is to survive in the face of failure. Success is mostly editing, that's what makes things nice. To edit is the other great Power; thus this novel started at age 30, continued at 50 and its 73, has finally achieve supremacy: a person of Good Taste as the third author and as a result the editor of all three. In the end I'll be the author of a letter to the critics a sort of "open letter" but for the living: suicide is not something you can edit out.

Macedonio Fernández

The victory is not to change the mind of the critic; it is to evaluate what you can learn and discard, yet still walk away with peace in your heart.

Shannon L. Alder

When you're different, sometimes you don't see the millions of people who accept you for what you are. All you notice is the person who doesn't.

Jodi Picoult

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

When God's favour and Godly flavour is in you, your haters will taste wisdom and the only thing they can do is to regret ever tasting a sweet thing.

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

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Critics Quotes - Page 2

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