Quotes About Criticism

One of the stupidest theories of Western life.

Every period of life has its peculiar prejudices; whoever saw old age, that did not applaud the past, and condemn the present times?

The Beatles are not merely awful. I would consider it sacrilegious to say anything less than that they are godawful.

'The Satanic Verses' was denied the ordinary life of a novel. It became something smaller and uglier: an insult.

You can successfully take a jab at your ex without having everyone criticize you for it.

They criticize because they don't have a life. It's easy to criticize another person.

No matter what you do in life, someone important to you isn't going to like it.

I think my favorite fact about myself is that I have never been dismayed by a critic's bilge or bile, and have never once in my life asked or thanked a reviewer for a review.

Suicide is about life, being in fact the sincerest form of criticism life gets.

Even today, you get criticized if you're staying at home, because you're not doing enough with your life, but you get criticized for being a career woman because you're not raising your kids.

The factor in human life provocative of a noble discontent is the gradual emergence of a sense of criticism, founded upon appreciation of beauty, and of intellectual distinction, and of duty.

The facts of life are to the biographer what the text of a novel is to the critic.

Much of the world is jealous of the United States. Many of the religious and political fanatics who ridicule and criticize the U.S., calling Americans "Satanists" and "imperialists," would fall head over heels for a green card, if they don't already have one.

Nobody has the right to say what he really thinks of an author unless they admire his work.

Society is invincible—to a certain degree. But your real life is your own, and nothing can touch it. There is no power on earth that can prevent your criticizing and despising mediocrity—nothing that can stop you retreating into splendour and beauty—into the thoughts and beliefs that make the real life—the real you.

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.

Two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism. Two cheers are quite enough: there is no occasion to give three.

I am a Jane Austenite, and therefore slightly imbecile about Jane Austen . My fatuous expression, and airs of personal immunity—how ill they sit on the face, say, of a Stevensonian! But Jane Austen is so different. She is my favourite author! I read and reread, the mouth open and the mind closed. Shut up in measureless content, I greet her by the name of most kind hostess, while criticism slumbers.

A painting which represents a familiar subject in an unexpected way is often condemned for no better reason than that it does not seem right.

Absolute certainty is no more attainable in metaphysics than it is in any other field of rational inquiry and it is unfair to criticize metaphysics for failing to deliver what no other discipline - not even mathematics - is expected to deliver.

During this Lent term Maurice came out as a theologian. It was not humbug entirely. He believed that he believed, and felt genuine pain when anything he was accustomed to met criticism—the pain that masquerades among the middle classes as Faith. It was not Faith, being inactive. It gave him no support, no wider outlook. It didn't exist till opposition touched it, when it ached like a useless nerve.

That Mrs. Munt should be the first to discover the misfortune was not remarkable, for she was so interested in the flats, that she watched their every mutation with unwearying care. In theory she despised them — they took away that old-world look — they cut off the sun — flats house a flashy type of person.

There was no one even to tell her which, of all the sepulchral slabs that paved the nave and transepts, was the one that was really beautiful, the one that had been most praised by Mr. Ruskin.

She always treated him as a boy, which he was, and as a fool, which he was not, thinking herself so immeasurably superior to him that she neglected opportunity after opportunity of establishing her rule. He was good-looking and indolent; therefore he must be stupid. He was poor; therefore he would never dare to criticize his benefactress. He was passionately in love with her; therefore she could do exactly as she liked.