Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.
—Confucius (551–479 BCE) Chinese Philosopher
Fool! said my Muse to me, “look in thy heart and write.”
—Philip Sidney (1554–86) English Soldier Poet, Courtier
When all things are equal, translucence in writing is more effective than transparency, just as glow is more revealing than glare.
—James Thurber
Publication – is the auction of the Mind of Man.
—Emily Dickinson (1830–86) American Poet
What things there are to write, if one could only write them! My mind is full of gleaming thought; gay moods and mysterious, moth-like meditations hover in my imagination, fanning their painted wings. But always the rarest, those streaked with azure and the deepest crimson, flutter away beyond my reach.
—Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) American-British Essayist, Bibliophile
The most poignantly personal autobiography of a biographer is the biography he has written of another man.
—George Jean Nathan (1882–1958) American Critic, Editor, Writer
Every great writer is a writer of history, let him treat on what subjects he may.—He carries with him, for thousands of years, a portion of his times.
—Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) English Writer, Poet
Everyone seems to assume that the unscrupulous parts of journalism will be the frivolous or jocular parts. This is against all ethical experience. Jokes are generally honest. Complete solemnity is almost always dishonest. The writer of the snippet merely refers to a frivolous and fugitive fact in a frivolous and fugitive way. The writer of the leading article has to write about a fact he has known for 20 minutes as though he has studied it for 20 years.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
A pathological business, writing, don’t you think? Just look what a writer actually does: all that unnatural tense squatting and hunching, all those rituals: pathological!
—Hans Magnus Enzensberger (1929–2022) German Author, Poet, Translator
A synonym is a word you use when you can’t spell the other one.
—Baltasar Gracian (1601–58) Spanish Scholar, Prose Writer
Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Poet
When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence.
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902) British Victorian Novelist, Essayist, Critic
There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American Author, Journalist, Short Story Writer
One reason writers write is out of revenge. Life hurts; certain ideas and experiences hurt; one wants to clarify, to set out illuminations, to replay the old bad scenes and get the Treppenworte said—the words one didn’t have the strength or ripeness to say when those words were necessary for one’s dignity or survival.
—Cynthia Ozick (b.1928) American Novelist, Short-story Writer, Essayist
There is a great discovery still to be made in literature—that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
Writers are a little below the clowns and a little above the trained seals.
—John Steinbeck (1902–68) American Novelist, Short Story Writer, Journalist
There are men that will make you books, and turn them loose into the world, with as much dispatch as they would do a dish of fritters.
—Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish Novelist
You must often make erasures if you mean to write what is worthy of being read a second time; and don’t labor for the admiration of the crowd, but be content with a few choice readers.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) (65–8 BCE) Roman Poet
All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American Author, Journalist, Short Story Writer
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
Journalism justifies its own existence by the great Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarist.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
I was sorry to hear my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I am not feeling very well myself.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education; dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen?
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.
—Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian Poet
And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.
—Sylvia Plath (1932–63) American Poet, Novelist
Mark Twain was so good with crowds that he became, in competition with singers and dancers and actors and acrobats, one of the most popular performers of his time. It is so unusual, and so psychologically unlikely, too, for a great writer to be a great performer, too. … .
—Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
It is the little writer rather than the great writer who seems never to quote, and the reason is that he is never really doing anything else.
—Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) British Essayist, Physician
Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one’s luck.
—Iris Murdoch (1919–99) British Novelist, Playwright, Philosopher
A good writer is basically a story-teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.
—Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–91) Polish-born American Writer, Novelist, Short Story Writer
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