Style Quotes - Page 5

• We know much of a writer by his style. An open and imperious disposition is shown in short sentences, direct and energetic. A secretive and proud mind is cold and obscure in style. An affectionate and imaginative nature pours out luxuriantly, and blossoms all over with ornament.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Mind, Ornaments, Proud

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• Young people are dazzled by the brilliancy of antithesis, and employ it. Matter-of-fact men, and those who like precision, naturally fall into comparisons and metaphor. Sprightly natures, full of fire, and whom a boundless imagination carries beyond all rules, and even what is reasonable, cannot rest satisfied even with hyperbole. As for the sublime, it is only great geniuses and those of the very highest order that are able to rise to its height.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Fall, Men, Order

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• It is curious for one who studies the action and reaction of national literature on each other, to see the humor of Swift and Sterne and Fielding, after filtering through Richter, reappear in Carlyle with a tinge of Germanism that makes it novel, alien, or even displeasing, as the case may be, to the English mind.

  James Russell Lowell

  Mind, Literature, May

  James Russell Lowell (1857). “Literary essays; Among my books, My study windows, Fireside travels”, p.88

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• The secret of force in writing lies not so much in the pedigree of nouns and adjectives and verbs, as in having something that you believe in to say, and making the parts of speech vividly conscious of it.

  James Russell Lowell

  Lying, Believe, Writing

  James Russell Lowell (1870). “Among my Books, etc”, p.162

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• Sir Francis Bacon observed that a well-written book, compared with its rivals and antagonists, is like Moses' serpent, that immediately swallowed up and devoured those of the Egyptians.

  Joseph Addison

  Book, Rivals, Moses

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1852). “The Spectator”, p.15

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• Any one may mouth out a passage with a theatrical cadence, or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts; but to write or speak with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task. Thus it is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big as the thing you want to express; it is not so easy to pitch upon the very word that exactly fits it.

  William Hazlitt

  Writing, Simplicity, Tasks

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1270, Delphi Classics

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• To write a genuine familiar or truly English style is to write as anyone would speak in common conversation, who had a thorough command and choice of words, or who could discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes.

  William Hazlitt

  Writing, Choices, Ease

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1270, Delphi Classics

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• He who thinks much says but little in proportion to his thoughts. He selects that language which will convey his ideas in the most explicit and direct manner. He tries to compress as much thought as possible into a few words. On the contrary, the man who talks everlastingly and promiscuously, who seems to have an exhaustless magazine of sound, crowds so many words into his thoughts that he always obscures, and very frequently conceals them.

  Washington Irving

  Men, Thinking, Ideas

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• Harmony of period and melody of style have greater weight than is generally imagined in the judgment we pass upon writing and writers. As a proof of this, let us reflect what texts of scripture, what lines in poetry, or what periods we most remember and quote, either in verse or prose, and we shall find them to be only musical ones.

  William Shenstone

  Writing, Musical, Weight

  William Shenstone, Samuel Johnson, Robert Dodsley (1807). “Essays on men and manners; with aphorisms, criticisms, impromptus, fragments, etc”, p.116

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• Submit your sentiments with diffidence. A dictatorial style, though it may carry conviction, is always accompanied with disgust.

  George Washington

  May, Conviction, Disgusting

  George Washington, Jared Sparks (1847). “pt. III. Private letters from the time Washington resigned his commission as commander-in-chief of the Army to that of his inauguration as president of the United States: December, 1783-April, 1789”, p.280

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• As it is a great point of art, when our matter requires it, to enlarge and veer out all sail, so to take it in and contract it is of no less praise when the argument doth ask it.

  Ben Jonson

  Art, Matter, Argument

  Ben Jonson (1756). “Underwoods. Timber; or, Discoveries made upon men and matter. Horace, Of the art of poetry [with an English translation by Jonson]. The English grammar. Leges convivales, rules for the Tavern Academy. The case is altered”, p.133

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• The way to acquire lasting esteem is not by the fewness of a writer's faults, but the greatness of his beauties, and our noblest works are generally most replete with both.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Greatness, Way, Faults

  Oliver Goldsmith, Henry George Bohn (1848). “Works: With a Life and Notes”, p.111

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• Every good writer has much idiom; it is the life and spirit of language.

  Walter Savage Landor

  Spirit, Language, Very Good

  Walter Savage Landor (1853). “Imaginary Conversations of Greeks and Romans”, p.159

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• Wherever you find a sentence musically worded, of true rhythm and melody in the words, there is something deep and good in the meaning too.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Rhythm, Melody, Sentences

  "Expression in speech and writing". Book by Edmund Arnold Greening Lamborn, 1922.

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• Uncommon expressions are a disfigurement rather than an embellishment of discourse.

  David Hume

  Expression, Embellishment, Disfigurement

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• Be not afraid of being called un-fashionable.

  Adolf Loos

  Inspirational, Fashion, Fear

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• Style comes from knowing who you are and who you want to be in the world; it does not come from wanting to be somebody else, or wanting to be thinner, shorter, taller, prettier.

  Nina Garcia

  Knowing Who You Are, Doe, World

  Nina Garcia (2009). “The Little Black Book of Style”, p.3, Harper Collins

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• Elegance is a statement, an attitude. Elegant women are women of character with confidence.

  Elie Saab

  Confidence, Attitude, Women

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• That is the key of this collection, being yourself. Don't be into trends. Don't make fashion own you, but you decide what you are, what you want to express by the way you dress and the way to live.

  Gianni Versace

  Fashion, Being Yourself, Blue Dress

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Style! style! why, all writers will tell you that it is the very thing which can least of all be changed. A man's style is nearly as much a part of him as his physiognomy, his figure, the throbbing of this pulse,--in short, as any part of his being is at least subjected to the action of the will.

  Isaac D'Israeli

  Men, Pulse, Action

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• Simplicity in character, in manners, in style; in all things the supreme excellence is simplicity.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Character, Perfection, Simplicity

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (2012). “Kavanagh (Annotated Edition)”, p.46, Jazzybee Verlag

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• All styles are good except the tiresome kind.

  Voltaire

  Kind, Tiresome

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• Clearness ornaments profound thoughts.

  Luc de Clapiers

  Profound, Ornaments, Clearness

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, Reflexions et Maximes, 4, p. 758-59, 1922.

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• The different styles I have been using in my art must not be seen as an evolution, or as steps towards an unknown ideal of painting. Everything I have ever made was made for the present and with the hope that it would always remain in the present.

  Pablo Picasso

  Art, Different, Steps

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• A good style fits like a good costume.

  Amos Bronson Alcott

  Costumes, Fit

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