Style is the dress of thoughts; and let them be ever so just, if your style is homely, coarse, and vulgar, they will appear to as much disadvantage, and be as ill received, as your person, though ever so well-proportioned, would if dressed in rags, dirt, and tatters.
—Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) English Statesman, Man of Letters
Errors of taste are very often the outward sign of a deep fault of sensibility.
—Jonathan Miller (1934–2019) English Theatre Director, Author
Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
Words in prose ought to express the intended meaning; if they attract attention to themselves, it is a fault; in the very best styles you read page after page without noticing the medium.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English Poet, Literary Critic, Philosopher
Obscurity in writing is commonly a proof of darkness in the mind; the greatest learning is to be seen in the greatest plainness.
—John Wilkins (1614–72) English Anglican Clergyman, Author, Administrator
Do not conceive that fine clothes make fine men, any more than fine feathers make fine birds. A plain, genteel dress is more admired, obtains more credit in the eyes of the judicious and sensible.
—George Washington (1732–99) American Head of State, Military Leader
Good taste is the worst vice ever invented.
—Edith Sitwell (1887–1964) British Poet, Literary Critic
I do not much dislike the matter, but the manner of his speech.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
Nothing so much prevents our being natural as the desire of appearing so.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld (1613–80) French Writer
A man is known by the books he reads, by the company he keeps, by the praise he gives, by his dress, by his tastes, by his distastes, by the stories he tells, by his gait, by the motion of his eye, by the look of his house, of his chamber; for nothing on earth is solitary, but everything hath affinities infinite.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
He who would reproach an author for obscurity should look into his own mind to see whether it is quite clear there. In the dusk the plainest writing is illegible.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
There is a certain majesty in plainness; as the proclamation of a prince never frisks it in tropes or fine conceits, in numerous and well-turned periods, but commands in sober natural expressions.
—Robert South (1634–1716) English Theologian, Preacher
For a long time I found the celebrities of modern painting and poetry ridiculous. I loved absurd pictures, fanlights, stage scenery, mountebanks backcloths, inn-signs, cheap colored prints; unfashionable literature, church Latin, pornographic books badly spelt, grandmothers novels, fairy stories, little books for children, old operas, empty refrains, simple rhythms.
—Arthur Rimbaud (1854–91) French Poet, Adventurer
The style shows the man. Whether in speaking or writing, a gentleman is always known by his style.
—Latin Proverb
No good poetry is ever written in a manner twenty years old, for to write in such a manner shows conclusively that the writer thinks from books, convention and cliche, not from real life.
—Ezra Pound (1885-1972) American Poet, Translator, Critic
What is exhilarating in bad taste is the aristocratic pleasure of giving offense.
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–67) French Poet, Art Critic, Essayist, Translator
Long sentences in a short composition are like large rooms in a little house.
—William Shenstone (1714–63) British Poet, Landscape Gardener
The obscurity of a writer is generally in proportion to his incapacity.
—Quintilian (c.35–c.100 CE) Roman Rhetorician, Literary Critic
Style is not something applied. It is something that permeates. It is of the nature of that in which it is found, whether the poem, the manner of a god, the bearing of a man. It is not a dress.
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American Poet
I hate a style that is wholly flat and regular, that slides along like an eel, and never rises to what one can call an inequality.
—William Shenstone (1714–63) British Poet, Landscape Gardener
Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness.
—Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish Painter, Sculptor, Artist
Any style formed in imitation of some model must be affected and straight-laced.
—Edwin Percy Whipple (1819–86) American Literary Critic
Without taste genius is only a sublime kind of folly. That sure touch which the lyre gives back the right note and nothing more, is even a rarer gift than the creative faculty itself.
—Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand (1768–1848) French Writer, Academician, Statesman
The lively phraseology of Montesquieu was the result of long meditation. His words, as light as wings, bear on them grave reflections.
—Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French Writer, Moralist
Intense study of the Bible will keep any writer from being vulgar, in point of style.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English Poet, Literary Critic, Philosopher
Fashions, after all, are only induced epidemics.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
Every good writer has much idiom; it is the life and spirit of language.
—Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) English Writer, Poet
I think “taste” is a social concept and not an artistic one. I’m willing to show good taste, if I can, in somebody else’s living room, but our reading life is too short for a writer to be in any way polite. Since his words enter into another’s brain in silence and intimacy, he should be as honest and explicit as we are with ourselves.
—John Updike (1932–2009) American Novelist, Poet, Short-Story Writer
I might say that what amateurs call a style is usually only the unavoidable awkwardnesses in first trying to make something that has not heretofore been made.
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American Author, Journalist, Short Story Writer
The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the most valuable investment a writer can make with his time. It pays off slowly, your agent will sneer at it, your publisher will misunderstand it, and it will take people you have never heard of to convince them by slow degrees that the writer who puts his individual mark on the way he writes will always pay off.
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) American Novelist
Leave a Reply