Critics Quotes - Page 2

• If I care to listen to every criticism, let alone act on them, then this shop may as well be closed for all other businesses. I have learned to do my best, and if the end result is good then I do not care for any criticism, but if the end result is not good, then even the praise of ten angels would not make the difference.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Angel, Not Caring, Differences

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• He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Love, Inspirational, Life

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• Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain - and most fools do. But it takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving.

  Dale Carnegie

  Gratitude, Character, Self

  Dale Carnegie (2016). “How to win friends & influence people”, p.21, Diamond Pocket Books Pvt Ltd

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• 

  Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Confidence, Dream, Mistake

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Joel Porte (1982). “Emerson in His Journals”, p.206, Harvard University Press

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• A critic is a man who knows the way but can't drive the car.

  Kenneth Tynan

  Inspirational, Life, Beautiful

  N.Y. Times, 1 Dec. 1963

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

  Joseph Addison

  House, Imperfection, Literature

  'The Spectator' no. 291, 2 February 1712.

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• Writers are lampposts and critics are dogs. Ask lampposts what they think about dogs. Does the dog hurt the lamppost?

  Paulo Coelho

  Dog, Hurt, Thinking

  "Question time". Interview with Hannah Pool, www.theguardian.com. March 18, 2009.

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• Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

  H. L. Mencken

  Witty, Powerful, Humorous

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• A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.

  Iris Murdoch

  Rain, Criticism, Important

  The Times, July 6, 1989.

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• There has never been a statue erected to honor a critic.

  Zig Ziglar

  Inspirational, Motivational, Leadership

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• You write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower - and I don't.

  Georgia O'Keeffe

  Flower, Writing, Thinking

  Dennis Abrams, Georgia O'Keeffe (2009). “Georgia O'Keeffe”, p.76, Infobase Publishing

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• The reproach that superficial people formulate against Manet, that whereas once he painted ugliness, now he paints vulgarity, falls harmlessly to the ground, when we recognize the fact that he paints the truth.

  Stephane Mallarme

  Fall, People, Facts

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• Slyly, banteringly, but also overbearingly, the critic - the one who does not swallow anything whole, who waits until posterity has consecrated it before... howling - is among those who howl their admiration the way they howl their insults: don't be afraid, don't tremble - the beast doesn't have any nails or teeth, or even brain: it is stuffed.

  Paul Gauguin

  Waiting, Brain, Way

  Paul Gauguin (1978). “The writings of a savage”, Viking Adult

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• I despise the opinion of the press and the so-called critics.

  Claude Monet

  Opinion, Despise, Presses

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• The media builds you up, and then it tears you down.

  Thomas Keller

  Media, Tears

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• In the critics' vocabulary, the work 'precursor' is indispensable, but it should be cleansed of all connotations of polemics or rivalry.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Vocabulary, Rivalry, Connotation

  "Kafka and His Precursors" (1951) (translation by James E. Irby)

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• Why can't fellows be allowed to do what they like when they like and as they like, instead of other fellows sitting on banks and watching them all the time and making remarks and poetry and things about them?

  Kenneth Grahame

  Sitting, Remarks, Fellows

  Kenneth Grahame (1908). “The Wind in the Willows”, p.26

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• As an artist you're looking for universal triggers. You want it both ways. You want it to have an immediate impact, and you want it to have deep meanings as well. I'm striving for both. But I hate it when people write things that sound like they've swallowed a f... dictionary.

  Damien Hirst

  Hate, Writing, Artist

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• They are quite hopeless - drooling, driveling, doleful, depressing, dropsical drips.

  Thomas Beecham

  Depressing, Hopeless, Doleful

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• I am a critic - as essential to the theatre as ants to a picnic.

  Joseph L. Mankiewicz

  Theatre, Essentials, Picnics

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• I intensely dislike the word 'critic,' because it puts you in an antagonistic position to artists. I've learned everything that I know about art from artists... I see myself as an advocate and an activist and a writer.

  Lucy R. Lippard

  Art, I've Learned, Activist

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• The Canadian voice is still too rustic.

  Charles Olson

  Voice, Rustic, Stills

  Charles Olson (1979). “Muthologos: the collected lectures & interviews”

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• Monet's work would have been even greater if he had not abandoned figure-painting.

  Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

  Painting, Abandoned, Monet

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• One way to cope with the provocations of novel art is to rest firm and maintain solid standards... set by the critic's long-practiced taste and by his conviction that only those innovations will be significant which promote the established direction of advanced art.

  Leo Steinberg

  Art, Standards Set, Long

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• The critic interested in a novel manifestation holds his criteria and taste in reserve. Since they were formed upon yesterday's art, he does not assume that they are ready-made for today.

  Leo Steinberg

  Art, Yesterday, Doe

  Leo Steinberg (1975). “Other criteria: confrontations with twentieth-century art”, Oxford University Press, USA

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