Quotes About Criticism

It is easy for a man who sits idle at home, and has nobody to please but himself, to ridicule or censure the common practices of mankind.

It is quite cruel that a poet cannot wander through his regions of enchantment without having a critic, forever, like the old man of the sea, upon his back.

He, who survives his reputation, lives out of despite himself, like a man listening to his own reproach.

A nickname is the hardest stone that the devil can throw at a man.

France is a dog-hole, and it no more merits the tread of a man's foot.

The last man in the world who should have been criticized was the American soldier. They should have criticized me.

Statues to great men are made of the stones thrown at them in their lifetime.

Ah! Sir, a boy's being flogged is not so severe as a man's having the hiss of the world against him.

Whenever a man reaches the top of the political ladder, his enemies unite to pull him down. His friends become critical and exacting.

If ridicule were employed to laugh men out of vice and folly, it might be of some use.

I find myself increasingly shocked at the unthinking and automatic rubbishing of men which is now so part of our culture that it is hardly even noticed.

Britney Spears has shoulders like a man.

In other men we faults can spy,/ And blame the mote that dims their eye;/ Each little speck and blemish find;/ To our own stronger errors blind.

God! How men of letters are stupid.

Nothing would improve newspaper criticism so much as the knowledge that it was to be read by men too hardy to acquiesce in the authoritative statement of the reviewer.

The man who acts the least, upbraids the most.

All censure of a man's self is oblique praise.

There is no readier way for a man to bring his own worth into question than by endeavoring to detract from the worth of other men.

A fine world in which man reproaches woman with fulfilling his heart's desire!

I never approved either the errors of his book, or the trivial truths he so vigorously laid down. I have, however, stoutly taken his side when absurd men have condemned him for these same truths.

Every man has a bag hanging before him, in which he puts his neighbour's faults, and another behind him in which he stows his own.

While the censorious man is most severe in judging others, he is invariably the most ready to repel any animadversions made upon himself...

In my mind, the men and women of NASA are history's modern pioneers. They attempt the impossible, accept failure, and then back to the drawing board while the rest of us stand back and criticize.

Perhaps Samuel Johnson was a great man; he was certainly a drumbling one.