Timeless thoughts from the past: on dealing with Criticism

by Henrik Edberg

It starts with just a few words coming out of someone else’s mouth. But as they pour out you may start to feel stupid or perhaps rejected, and feel like you’re getting smaller. Being criticised can be a tough thing to handle (even though it sometimes can be very useful to help you grow or improve something you do).

So I thought I would share some of my favourite timeless thoughts from the past 2500 years about how to not only receive criticism but also what to think about once or twice before deciding to give it.

“Any fool can criticise, condemn, and complain but it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.”
– Dale Carnegie

“The pleasure of criticising takes away from us the pleasure of being moved by some very fine things.”
– Jean de La Bruyère

“Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.”
– Aristotle

“You can’t let praise or criticism get to you. It’s a weakness to get caught up in either one.”
– John Wooden

“Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.”
– Emmet Fox

“When virtues are pointed out first, flaws seem less insurmountable.”
– Judith Martin

“Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.”
– Neil Gaiman

“The trouble with most of us is that we’d rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.”
– Norman Vincent Peale

“When we judge or criticise another person, it says nothing about that person; it merely says something about our own need to be critical.”
– Unknown

“It is much more valuable to look for the strength in others. You can gain nothing by criticizing their imperfections.”
– Daisaku Ikeda

“The artist doesn’t have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews; the ones who want to write don’t have the time to read reviews.”
– William Faulkner

“If we judge ourselves only by our aspirations and everyone else only their conduct we shall soon reach a very false conclusion.”
– Calvin Coolidge

“I have yet to find the man, however exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than under a spirit of criticism.”
– Charles Schwab

“I criticise by creation, not by finding fault.”
– Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Don’t criticise what you don’t understand, son. You never walked in that man’s shoes.”
– Elvis Presley

“Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man’s growth without destroying his roots.”
– Frank A. Clark

“People tend to criticise their spouse most loudly in the area where they themselves have the deepest emotional need.”
– Gary Chapman

“Criticism is the disapproval of people, not for having faults, but having faults different from your own.”
– Unknown

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly.

So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
– Theodore Roosevelt

“Before you go and criticise the younger generation, just remember who raised them.”
– Unknown

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.”
– Winston Churchill

“He has a right to criticise, who has a heart to help.”
– Abraham Lincoln

“I have no right, by anything I do or say, to demean a human being in his own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him; it is what he thinks of himself. To undermine a man’s self-respect is a sin.”
– Antoine de Saint-Exupery

“Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticised anyway. You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt

“One mustn’t criticise other people on grounds where he can’t stand perpendicular himself”
– Mark Twain

“That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.”
– Jonathan Swift

“Any fool can criticise, condemn and complain and most fools do.”
– Benjamin Franklin

“Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Criticise me, and I may not like you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you. Encourage me, and I will not forget you. Love me and I may be forced to love you.”
– William Arthur Ward

“A man interrupted one of the Buddha’s lectures with a flood of abuse.

Buddha waited until he had finished and then asked him:

If a man offered a gift to another but the gift was declined, to whom would the gift belong?

To the one who offered it, said the man.

Then, said the Buddha, I decline to accept your abuse and request you to keep it for yourself.”

“Children need models rather than critics.”

– Joseph Joubert

“Don’t criticise them; they are just what we would be under similar circumstances.”
– Abraham Lincoln

“We need very strong ears to hear ourselves judged frankly, and because there are few who can endure frank criticism without being stung by it, those who venture to criticise us perform a remarkable act of friendship, for to undertake to wound or offend a man for his own good is to have a healthy love for him.”
– Michel de Montaigne

(The writer is a 34-year -old journalism major from Sweden, who has dived into the topic of personal development, which has seen him learning from his own experiments and experience and figuring out how to build a better life. This article is one of his building a better life experiences)