Do what you feel in your heart to be right—for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American First Lady, Diplomat, Humanitarian
The eyes of critics, whether in commending or carping, are both on one side, like those of a turbot.
—Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) English Writer, Poet
I am sorry to think that you do not get a man’s most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
I have found it advisable not to give too much heed to what people say when I am trying to accomplish something of consequence. Invariably they proclaim it can’t be done. I deem that the very best time to make the effort.
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American Head of State, Lawyer
A critic is a reader who ruminates. Thus, he should have more than one stomach.
—Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German Man of Letters, Critic
Give a critic an inch, he’ll write a play.
—John Steinbeck (1902–68) American Novelist, Short Story Writer, Journalist
Never criticize a man until you’ve walked a mile in his moccasins.
—American Indian Proverb
A critic is a legless man who teaches running.
—Channing Pollock (1880–1946)
American Playwright, Critic
A louse in the locks of literature.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–92) British Poet
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 (1874–1965) British Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Playwright
The whole effort of a sincere man is to erect his personal impressions into laws.
—Remy de Gourmont (1858–1915) French Critic, Novelist
It is wrong to be harsh with the New York critics, unless one admits in the same breath that it is a condition of their existence that they should write entertainingly about something which is rarely worth writing about at all.
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) American Novelist
Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility.
—Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American Writer, Philosopher
People who ask for your criticism want only praise.
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Playwright
Post-modernism has cut off the present from all futures. The daily media add to this by cutting off the past. Which means that critical opinion is often orphaned in the present.
—John Berger (1926–2017) English Art Critic, Novelist
Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do criticize him, you’ll be a mile away and have his shoes.
—Anonymous
What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French Poet, Playwright, Film Director
Did some more sober critics come abroad? If wrong, I smil’d; if right, I kiss’d the rod.
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744) English Poet
The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.
—Anatole France (1844–1924) French Novelist
Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.
—Rebecca West (1892–1983) English Author, Journalist, Literary Critic
Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat.
—Anonymous
Social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings.
—Octavio Paz (1914–98) Mexican Poet, Diplomat
It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English Novelist
It is critical vision alone which can mitigate the unimpeded operation of the automatic.
—Marshall Mcluhan (1911–80) Canadian Writer, Thinker, Educator
In my conscience I believe the baggage loves me, for she never speaks well of me herself, nor suffers any body else to rail at me.
—William Congreve (1670–1729) English Playwright, Poet
Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.
—Emmet Fox (1886–1951) Irish-American New Thought Leader
Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.
—Henry Miller (1891–1980) American Novelist
Reviewers are usually people who would have been, poets, historians, biographer, if they could. They have tried their talents at one thing or another and have failed; therefore they turn critic.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English Poet, Literary Critic, Philosopher
Critics are a kind of freebooters in the republic of letters, who, like deer, goats, and diverse other graminivorous animals, gain subsistence by gorging upon buds and leaves of the young shrubs of the forest, thereby robbing them of their verdure and retarding their progress to maturity.
—Washington Irving (1783–1859) American Essayist, Biographer, Historian
Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge ourselves with railing against it.
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) French Essayist