Quotes About Criticism

Conscience, my dear, is a kind of stick that everyone picks up to thrash his neighbor with, but one he never uses against himself.

one can no more hinder criticism than the use of eyes, tongues, and judgment.

Every reputation founded upon the fashion or the fancy of the hour, or upon the short-lived follies of Paris, produces its Pons. No place in the world is so inexorable in great things; no city of the globe so disdainfully indulgent in small.

Think how much better it is to criticize conventional customs if you yourself live up to them, scrupulously.

To be a satirist, at all events. The venom of Pope is what is needed. The sense of delight -- the expansion and the compassion of Shakespeare is no good at all for that. He is a bad comic.

Gertrude Stein's prose-song is a cold, black suet-pudding.... Cut it at any point, it is the same thing ... all fat, without nerve.

For every successful actor or actress, there are countless numbers who don't make it. The name of the game is rejection. You go to an audition and you're told you're too tall or you're too Irish or your nose is not quite right. You're rejected for your education, you're rejected for this or that and it's really tough.

Once you realize others know, you may be tempted to withdraw from society, suddenly feeling too exposed and vulnerable to others' criticism and stares.

she was remembering what it was like when you broke up with someone. Conversations became so hopelessly tangled. You had to be polite and precise. You couldn't safely criticize anymore, because you didn't have the right. You'd lost your immunity.

Their carefully relaxed demeanors hid a fragile defensiveness, as if they expected to be criticized at any moment and they weren't going to stand for it. They both seemed to cling so hard to their chosen personalities. I am this sort of person and therefore I believe this, I think this, I do this and I am right, I'm right, I'm sure I'm right!

I'd be at work, where people respected my opinions," said Nick. "And then I'd come home and it was like I was the village idiot. I'd pack the dishwasher the wrong way. I'd pick the wrong clothes for the children. I stopped offering to help. It wasn't worth the criticism.

You know, Madison, people are going to say mean things to you all through your life, and if you keep reacting like that, you're going to end up in jail.

If anyone uses the words 'marvelous imagery' or 'narrative arc,' slap them for me.

I cried all the way to the bank [response to negative reviews].

One of the greatest and also the commonest of faults is for men to believe that, because they never hear their shortcomings spoken of, or read about them in cold print, others can have no knowledge of them.

It may occur to you that we had better wait until the Bill is drafted, and can be then criticised in detail and on its merits. But it is, on the other hand, easier to destroy such a creature in the embryonic stage than after birth. Its emergence into print, as a serious legislative proposal, endorsed (unless I am misinformed) by the active or passive concurrence of the entire Episcopate, would of itself be a scandal to our Church of the gravest kind.

Cynicism is an unpleasant way of telling the truth.

A body of work may be reviled -- mostly by those who have no knowledge of its workings -- and yet still carry elements of what can only be considered eternal truths.

Your kids can say some cruel things to you at times. For example, Nicole, Miles and Sofie are standing there in the room and I'm dressed to kill in my own mind. They'll say to me, 'Dad, you're not going out there looking like that are you?' If that doesn't kill a star, I don't know what does!

What did I expect, that you would wrap my rib cage with those enormous hands in which horses must be measured, lifting me overhead with the stern reproach that is every Western woman's sly delight, "You're too thin"?

Please tell me you're not listening to that Shriver woman. She's a hysteric. And so annoyingly smug, as if she wants civilization to collapse, just so she can be proved right. I can't bear the sound of her voice.

Insanity is a direct and appropriate response to the coercive inauthenticity of society ... it is an act, expressing the intention of the insane person to meet and overcome to coercive situation; and whether or not it succeed in this intention, it is at least an act of criticism which exposes the true nature of society

It is hard to believe that the declaration of antifascism is nowadays any more a mark of sufficient grace in a writer than a declaration against disease would be in a physician or a declaration against accidents would be in a locomotive engineer. The admirable intention in itself is not enough and criticism begins and does not end when the intention is declared.

if you feel you must criticize your daughter's friends—and sometimes you must—use your words and your tone to communicate that the girls are in a tricky situation, not that they are bad people.