Authorship Quotes - Page 3

• Ye who write, choose a subject suited to your abilities.
  [Lat., Sumite materiam vestris, qui scribitis, aequam Viribus.]

  Horace

  Writing, Ability, Subjects

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• There are both dull correctness and piquant carelessness; it is needless to say which will command the most readers and have the most influence.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Dull, Influence, Command

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• From the moment one sets up for an author, one must be treated as ceremoniously, that is as unfaithfully, "as a king's favorite or a king.

  Alexander Pope

  Kings, Moments, Treated

  Alexander Pope (1847). “The Works of Alexander Pope, Esq: With Notes and Illustrations”, p.18

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• Yes, I learned long ago that the only satisfaction of authorship lies in finding the very few who understand what we mean. As for outside rewards, there is not one that I have ever discovered.

  Ellen Glasgow

  Lying, Mean, Long Ago

  Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow (1958). “Letters of Ellen Glasgow”

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• Translation is a form of passive aggression. In doing it, a writer chooses to forgo original authorship so as to play havoc with a foreign original in a process of imitation, zigzagging between the foreign and receiving languages but in the last analysis cancelling the first in favor of the second.

  Lawrence Venuti

  Play, Favors, Lasts

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• Authorship is not a trade, it is an inspiration; authorship does not keep an office, its habitation is all out under the sky, and everywhere the winds are blowing and the sun is shining and the creatures of God are free.

  Mark Twain

  Inspiration, Wind, Sky

  Mark Twain (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)”, p.3039, Delphi Classics

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• My teaching, if that is the word you want to use, has no copyright. You are free to reproduce, distribute, interpret, misinterpret, distort, garble, do what you like, even claim authorship, without my consent or the permission of anybody.

  U.G. Krishnamurti

  Teaching, Use, Want

  U. G. Krishnamurti, Rodney Arms (2002). “The Mystique of Enlightenment: The Radical Ideas of U. G. Krishnamurti”, p.2, Sentient Publications

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• Evolution advances, not by a priori design, but by the selection of what works best out of whatever choices offer. We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship.

  George Wald

  Science, Editing, Choices

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• The little mind who loves itself, will wr'te and think with the vulgar; but the great mind will be bravely eccentric, and scorn the beaten road, from universal benevolence.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Thinking, Mind, Eccentric

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• Most people believe that the Creator of the universe wrote (or dictated) one of their books. Unfortunately, there are many books that pretend to divine authorship, and each makes incompatible claims about how we all must live.

  Sam Harris

  Believe, Book, People

  "Science Must Destroy Religion" by Sam Harris, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 2, 2006.

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• Subtract from many modern poets all that may be found in Shakespeare, and trash will remain.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  May, Poet, Modern

  Charles Caleb Colton (1821). “Lacon: or, Many things in few words”, p.214

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• Living authors, therefore, are usually, bad companions. If they have not gained character, they seek to do so by methods often ridiculous, always disgusting; and if they have established a character, they are silent for fear of losing by their tongue what they have acquired by their pen--for many authors converse much more foolishly than Goldsmith, who have never written half so well.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Character, Half, Tongue

  Charles Caleb Colton (1823). “Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan”, p.158

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• For all the practical purposes of life, truth might as well be in a prison as in the folio of a schoolman; and those who release her from her cobwebbed shelf and teach her to live with men have the merit of liberating, if not of discovering, her.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Men, Purpose, Might

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.199

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• Those authors who appear sometimes to forget they are writers, and remember they are men, will be our favorites.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Men, Remember, Sometimes

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• Of all unfortunate men one of the unhappiest is a middling author endowed with too lively a sensibility for criticism.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Men, Criticism, Lively

  Isaac Disraeli, Benjamin Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield) (1861). “Curiosities of literature”, p.81

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• Authors may be divided into falling stars, planets, and fixed stars: the first have a momentary effect; the second have a much longer duration; but the third are unchangeable, possess their own light, and work for all time.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Stars, Fall, Light

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• It is commonly the personal character of a writer which gives him his public significance. It is not imparted by his genius. Napoleon said of Corneille, "Were he living I would make him a king;" but he did not read him. He read Racine, yet he said nothing of the kind of Racine.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Kings, Character, Giving

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• It was among the ruins of the capitol that I first conceived the idea of a work which has amused and exercised nearly twenty years of my life.

  Edward Gibbon

  Years, Ideas, Twenties

  Edward Gibbon (1826). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.433

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• Our favorites are few; since only what rises from the heart reaches it, being caught and carried on the tongues of men wheresoever love and letters journey.

  Amos Bronson Alcott

  Book, Heart, Journey

  Amos Bronson Alcott (1868). “Tablets”

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• Nature I believe in. True art aims to, represent men and women, not as my little self would have them, but as they appear. My heroes and heroines I want not extreme types, all good or all bad; but human, mortal--partly good, partly bad. Realism I need. Pure mental abstractions have no significance for me.

  Ouida

  Art, Hero, Believe

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• A man of letters is often a man with two natures,--one a book nature, the other a human nature. These often clash sadly.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Book, Men, Two

  Edwin Percy Whipple (1871). “Literature and Life”, p.34

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• Sallust is indisputably one of the best historians among the Romans, both for the purity of his language and the elegance of his style.

  Edmund Burke

  Style, Language, Purity

  Edmund Burke, Arthur P.I. Samuels (2014). “The Early Life Correspondence and Writings of The Rt. Hon. Edmund Burke”, p.129, CUP Archive

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• The familiar writer is apt to be his own satirist. Out of his own mouth is he judged.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Mouths, Familiar, Satirist

  Edwin Percy Whipple (1870). “Essays and Reviews”, p.148

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• There is a natural disposition with us to judge an author's personal character by the character of his works. We find it difficult to understand the common antithesis of a good writer and a bad man.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Character, Men, Judging

  Edwin Percy Whipple (1851). “Literature and life, lects”, p.5

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• A writer who attempts to live on the manufacture of his imagination is continually coquetting with starvation.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Imagination, Starvation

  Edwin Percy Whipple (1870). “Essays and Reviews”, p.38

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