Criticism Quotes - Page 12

• Nothing is more apt to deceive us than our own judgment of our work. We derive more benefit from having our faults pointed out by our enemies than from hearing the opinions of friends.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Funny, Humor, Enemy

  da Vinci Leonardo, Leonardo (da Vinci) (1990). “Leonardo da Vinci's advice to artists”, Running Press Book Publishers

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Cynical, Doe, Reputation

  W. Somerset Maugham (1930). “Cakes and Ale”

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!

  Golda Meir

  Funny, Humorous, Oil

  Speech at state dinner forWilly Brandt, Jerusalem, 10 June 1973

  94 Copy quote

  Show source

• I do see value in music criticism. Most of the criticism I have received over the years has been very good.

  Van Morrison

  Years, Very Good, Has Beens

  7 Copy quote

• In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable.

  Susan Sontag

  Art, Real, Nervous

  Evergreen Review Dec. 1964

  55 Copy quote

  Show source

• Recognize the cunning man not by the corpses he pays homage to but by the living writers he conspires against with the most shameful weapon, Silence, or the briefest review.

  Edward Dahlberg

  Men, Silence, Cunning Man

  21 Copy quote

• The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure.

  Oscar Wilde

  Dream, Emotional, Ideas

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.690, GENERAL PRESS

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is very perplexing how an intrepid frontier people, who fought a wilderness, floods, tornadoes, and the Rockies, cower before criticism, which is regarded as a malignant tumor in the imagination.

  Edward Dahlberg

  People, Imagination, Tornadoes

  Edward Dahlberg (1967). “Alms for Oblivion”, U of Minnesota Press

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• Most of our censure of others is only oblique praise of self, uttered to show the wisdom and superiority of the speaker. It has all the invidiousness of self-praise, and all the ill-desert of falsehood.

  Tryon Edwards

  Self, Desert, Praise

  Tryon Edwards (2015). “The New Dictionary of Thoughts”, p.173, Ravenio Books

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The attacks of which I have been the object have broken the spring of life in me... People don't realize what it feels like to be constantly insulted.

  Edouard Manet

  Spring, Broken, People

  14 Copy quote

• One of the things that upset me was some of the criticism leveled at Simon and Garfunkel. I always took exception to it, but actually I agree with a lot of it.

  Paul Simon

  Upset, Exception, Agree

  9 Copy quote

• Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility.

  Susan Sontag

  Failure, Lapses, Judgment

  7 Copy quote

• The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art - and, by analogy, our own experience - more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.

  Susan Sontag

  Art, Real, Mean

  Susan Sontag (1983). “A Susan Sontag reader”, Vintage

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Grant me prudently to avoid him that flatters me, and to endure patiently him that contradicts me.

  Thomas a Kempis

  Flattery, Praise, Endure

  10 Copy quote

• Time and time again I was told that I would never make the film on time and never make it on budget. That kind of criticism tends to turn me into a great big motor of efficiency.

  Richard E. Grant

  Kind, Film, Efficiency

  7 Copy quote

• I have never believed that the critic is the rival of the poet, but I do believe that criticism is a genre of literature or it does not exist.

  Harold Bloom

  Believe, Doe, Literature

  8 Copy quote

• Criticism starts - it has to start - with a real passion for reading. It can come in adolescence, even in your twenties, but you must fall in love with poems.

  Harold Bloom

  Falling In Love, Real, Reading

  "Harold Bloom, The Art of Criticism No. 1". Interview with Antonio Weiss in The Paris Review, Issue 118, www.theparisreview.org. Spring 1991.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Dramatic experience is not logical; it may be subdued to the kind of coherence that we indicate when we speak, in criticism, of form.

  Allen Tate

  Experience, May, Coherence

  Allen Tate (1999). “Essays of Four Decades”, Isi Books

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• People always call it luck when you've acted more sensibly than they have.

  Anne Tyler

  Good Luck, People, Luck

  17 Copy quote

• Most people have been brainwashed into believing that their job is to copyedit the world, not to design it.

  Seth Godin

  Jobs, Believe, People

  9 Copy quote

• The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.

  Oscar Wilde

  Book, Reading, Writing

  12 Copy quote

• The artist must scorn all judgment that is not based on an intelligent observation of character. He must beware of the literary spirit which so often causes a painting to deviate from its true path - the concrete study of nature - to lose itself all too long in intangible speculations.

  Paul Cezanne

  Character, Intelligent, Artist

  7 Copy quote

• Each one of us, in his timidity, has a limit beyond which he is outraged. It is inevitable that he who by concentrated application has extended this limit for himself, should arouse the resentment of those who have accepted conventions which, since accepted by all, require no initiative of application. And this resentment generally takes the form of meaningless laughter or of criticism, if not persecution.

  Man Ray

  Laughter, Limits, Resentment

  Man Ray (1934). “Photographs by Man Ray: 105 Works, 1920-1934”, p.11, Courier Corporation

  75 Copy quote

  Show source

• Painting what I experience, translating what I feel, is a great liberation. But it is also work, self-examination, consciousness, criticism, struggle.

  Balthus

  Struggle, Self, Examination

  8 Copy quote

• Criticism is the forerunner of divorce, the cultivator of rebellion, sometimes an agent that leads to failure.

  Gordon B. Hinckley

  Divorce, Agents, Sometimes

  8 Copy quote