Letters Quotes - Page 8

• The profession of letters is, after all, the only one in which one can make no money without being ridiculous.

  Jules Renard

  Ridiculous, Poor, No Money

  Jules Renard, Louise Bogan, Elizabeth Roget (2008). “The Journal of Jules Renard”, p.245, Tin House Books

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• When I was quite young I fondly imagined that all foreign languages were codes for English. I thought that "hat," say, was the real and actual name of the thing, but that people in other countries, who obstinately persisted in speaking the code of their forefathers, might use the word "ibu," say, to designate not merely the concept hat, but the English word "hat." I knew only one foreign word, "oui," and since it had three letters as did the word for which it was a code, it seemed, touchingly enough, to confirm my theory.

  Annie Dillard

  Country, Real, Names

  Annie Dillard (1988). “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, Harpercollins

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• [Mark Twain] is still the rough, awkward, good-natured boy who swore at the deck hands when he was three years old. Thoroughly likeable as a good fellow, but impossible as a man of letters.

  Willa Cather

  Boys, Men, Hands

  Willa Cather (1970). “The World and the Parish: Willa Cather's Articles and Reviews, 1893-1902”, p.151, U of Nebraska Press

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• Real orgies are never so exciting as pornographic books. In a volume by Pierre Louys all the girls are young and their figures perfect; there's no hiccoughing or bad breath, no fatigue or boredom, no sudden recollections of unpaid bills or business letters unanswered, to interrupt the raptures. Art gives you the sensation, the thought, the feeling quite pure--chemically pure, I mean,... not morally.

  Aldous Huxley

  Girl, Art, Real

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• I received a letter from a lad asking me for an easy berth. To this I replied: You cannot be an editor; do not try the law; do not think of the ministry; let alone all ships and merchandise; abhor politics; don't practice medicine; be not a farmer or a soldier or a sailor; don't study, don't think. None of these are easy. O, my son, you have come into a hard world. I know of only one easy place in it, and that is the grave!

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Jobs, Son, Thinking

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• Letter-writing too often degenerates into a communicating of facts, and not of truths; of other men's deeds and not our thoughts.What are the convulsions of a planet, compared with the emotions of the soul? or the rising of a thousand suns, if that is not enlightened by a ray?

  Henry David Thoreau

  Communication, Writing, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “Thoreau's Book of Quotations”, p.56, Courier Corporation

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• There are geniuses in trade as well as in war, or the state, or letters; and the reason why this or that man is fortunate is not to be told. It lies in the man: that is all anybody can tell you about it.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  War, Lying, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.207

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• Personal & Confidential. Letters so marked should be. When the contents are only printed matter, though, the minifrauder succeeds in sowing illwill & ire.

  Malcolm Forbes

  Writing, Sowing, Matter

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• Real writers-that is, capital W Writers-rarely make much money. Their biggest reward is the occasional reader's response.... Commentators-in-print voicing big fat opinions-you might call us small w writers-get considerably more feedback than Writers. The letters I personally find most flattering are not the very rare ones that speak well of my editorials, but the occasional reader who wants to know who writes them. I always happily assume the letter-writers is implying that the editorials are so good that I couldn't have written them myself.

  Malcolm Forbes

  Real, Writing, Want

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• There's one post-Christmas chore I love-writing thank-you letters.... Lots of companies for many reasonable reasons, I guess, have a policy against sending even Christmas cards, never mind things, at Christmastime. But our clan gets a big kick out of opening the Warner-Lambert box containing an assortment of their wares; we argue over which of the boys is to get the Union Oil Co. necktie [and] all the holiday long we play the marvelous Christmas music sent by Goodyear.... None of these things means that Forbes or Forbeses have been had. But all of us like being thought of.

  Malcolm Forbes

  Writing, Holiday, Mean

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• Do not write me studied letters but ramble as you please.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Writing, Please

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• If your letters are as long as the bible, they will appear short to me. Only let them be brim full of affection.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Long, Affection, Ifs

  Thomas Jefferson (1830). “Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies, from the Papers of Thomas Jefferson”, p.55

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• If doubtful whether to end with "yours faithfully," or "yours truly," or "yours most truly," &c. (there are at least a dozen varieties, before you reach "yours affectionately"), refer to your correspondent's last letter, and make your winding-up at least as friendly as his: in fact, even if a shade more friendly, it will do no harm!

  Lewis Carroll

  Friendly, Dozen, Shade

  Lewis Carroll (1908). “Eight or Nine Wise Words About Letter-Writing”, p.11, Library of Alexandria

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• Magnitudes are algebraically represented by letter, men by men of letters, and so on.

  Lewis Carroll

  Men, Magnitude, Representation

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• I have never injured anybody with a mordant poem; my
  verse contains charges against nobody. Ingenuous, I have
  shunned wit steeped in venom--not a letter of mine is dipped
  in poisonous jest.

  Ovid

  Poetry, Jest, Wit

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• Bolkenstein, a Minister, was speaking on the Dutch programme from London, and he said that they ought to make a collection of diaries and letters after the war. Of course, they all made a rush at my diary immediately. Just imagine how interesting it would be if I were to publish a romance of the "Secret Annexe." The title alone would be enough to make people think it was a detective story.

  Anne Frank

  War, Thinking, People

  Anne Frank (1954). “The Diary of Anne Frank”, Pan

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• The entire merit of a man can never be made known; nor the sum of his demerits, if he have them. We are only known by our names; as letters sealed up, we but read each other's superscriptions.

  Herman Melville

  Character, Men, Names

  Herman Melville (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)”, p.874, Delphi Classics

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• In America one of the first things done in a new State is to make the post go there; in the forests of Michigan there is no cabin so isolated, no valley so wild, but that letters and newspapers arrive at least once a week.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  America, Cabins, Valleys

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• European society has always been divided into classes in a way that American society never has been. A European writer considers himself to be part of an old and honorable tradition--of intellectual activity, of letters--and his choice of a vocation does not cause him any uneasy wonder as to whether or not it will cost him all his friends. But this tradition does not exist in America.

  James A. Baldwin

  Class, America, Choices

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• Universal empire is the prerogative of a writer. His concerns are with all mankind, and though he cannot command their obedience,he can assign them their duty. The Republic of Letters is more ancient than monarchy, and of far higher character in the world than the vassal court of Britain.

  Thomas Paine

  Character, Empires, World

  Thomas Paine (1819). “The American Crisis”, p.19

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• If you are one of the hewers of wood and drawers of small weekly paychecks, your letters will have to contain some few items of news or they will be accounted dry stuff.... But if you happen to be of a literary turn of mind, or are, in any way, likely to become famous, you may settle down to an afternoon of letter-writing on nothing more sprightly in the way of news than the shifting of the wind from south to south-east.

  Robert Benchley

  Writing, Wind, Mind

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• Most personal correspondence of today consists of letters the first half of which are given over to an indexed statement of why the writer hasn't written before, followed by one paragraph of small talk, with the remainder devoted to reasons why it is imperative that the letter be brought to a close.

  Robert Benchley

  Half, Today, Firsts

  Robert Benchley (1943). “Benchley beside himself”

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• I was
  the girl of the chain letter,
  the girl full of talk of coffins and keyholes,
  the one of the telephone bills,
  the wrinkled photo and the lost connections.

  Anne Sexton

  Girl, Connections, Coffins

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• Of all injustice, that is the greatest which goes under the name of law, and of all sorts of tyranny the forcing of the letter of the law against the equity, is the most insupportable.

  Roger L'Estrange

  Law, Names, Injustice

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• Apart from letters, it is the vulgar custom of the moment to deride the thinkers of the Victorian and Edwardian eras; yet there has not been, in all history, another agewhen so much sheer mental energy was directed toward creating a fairer social order.

  Ellen Glasgow

  Thoughtful, Thinking, Order

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