Life is too precious to be spent in this weaving and unweaving of false impressions, and it is better to live quietly under some degree of misrepresentation than to attempt to remove it by the uncertain process of letter-writing.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist
Grammar is the grave of letters.
—Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American Writer, Publisher, Artist, Philosopher
What a wonderful thing is the mail, capable of conveying across continents a warm human hand-clasp.
—Unknown
A good face they say, is a letter of recommendation. O Nature, Nature, why art thou so dishonest, as ever to send men with these false recommendations into the World!
—Henry Fielding (1707–54) English Novelist, Dramatist
The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters is simplicity: nothing is better than simplicity.
—Walt Whitman (1819–92) American Poet, Essayist, Journalist
A letter from the heart can be read on the face.
—African Proverb
He who writes love letters must have clammy hands.
—German Proverb
To find out your real opinion of someone, judge the impression you have when you first see a letter from them.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German Philosopher
A letter shows the man it is written to as well as the man it is written by.
—Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) English Statesman, Man of Letters
When the spirits sink too low, the best cordial is to read over all the letters of one’s friends.
—William Shenstone (1714–63) British Poet, Landscape Gardener
I consider it a good rule for letter-writing to leave unmentioned what the recipient already knows, and instead tell him something new.
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian Psychiatrist, Psychoanalytic
Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl.
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American Author, Journalist, Short Story Writer
A profusion of fancies and quotations is out of place in a love-letter.—True feeling is always direct, and never deviates into by-ways to cull flowers of rhetoric.
—Christian Nestell Bovee (1820–1904) American Writer, Aphorist
Chain letters are the postal equivalent of intestinal flu: you get it and pass it along to your friends.
—Bob Garfield (b.1955) American Journalist
When a man sends you an impudent letter, sit right down and give it back to him with interest ten times compounded, and then throw both letters in the wastebasket.
—Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American Writer, Publisher, Artist, Philosopher
Never write a letter while you are angry.
—Chinese Proverb
When he wrote a letter, he would put that which was most material in the postscript, as if it had been a by-matter.
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English Philosopher
The one good thing about not seeing you is that I can write you letters.
—Svetlana Alliluyeva (1926–2011) Russian Defector, Memoirist
To send a letter is a good way to go somewhere without moving anything but your heart.
—Phyllis Theroux (b.1939) American Journalist, Author
Mr Witwould: “Pray, madam, do you pin up your hair with all your letters? I find I must keep copies”.
Mrs Millamant: “Only with those in verse…. I never pin up my hair with prose”.
—William Congreve (1670–1729) English Playwright, Poet
It is by the benefit of letters that absent friends are, in a manner, brought together.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
The true character of epistolary style is playfulness and urbanity.
—Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French Writer, Moralist
A letter is an unannounced visit, the postman the agent of rude surprises. One ought to reserve an hour a week for receiving letters and afterwards take a bath.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
A prudent man will read the letter from back to front.
—Turkish Proverb
A dream that is not interpreted is like a letter that has not been opened.
—The Talmud Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith
Letters are those winged messengers that can fly from east to west on embassies of love.
—Jeremiah Brown Howell
If you must reread old love letters, better pick a room without mirrors.
—Mignon McLaughlin (1913–83) American Journalist, Author
Then there’s the joy of getting your desk clean, and knowing that all your letters are answered, and you can see the wood on it again.
—Lady Bird Johnson (1912–2007) First Lady of the United States, Conservationist
In an age like ours, which is not given to letter-writing, we forget what an important part it used to play in people’s lives.
—Anatole Broyard (1920–90) American Literary Critic
Correspondences are like small clothes before the invention of suspenders; it is impossible to keep them up.
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English Clergyman, Essayist, Wit
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