Authorship Quotes - Page 6

• Those authors into whose hands nature has placed a magic wand, with which they no sooner touch us than we forget the unhappiness in life, than the darkness leaves our soul, and we are reconciled to existence, should be placed among the benefactors of the human race.

  Denis Diderot

  Race, Hands, Soul

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• Whatever be the motives which induce men to write,--whether avarice or fame,--the country becomes more wise and happy in which they most serve for instructors.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Wise, Country, Writing

  Oliver Goldsmith, David Masson (1869). “The Miscellaneous Works of Oliver Goldsmith”, p.210

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• Twenty to one offend more in writing too much than too little.

  Roger Ascham

  Writing, Twenties, Littles

  Roger Ascham, James Upton, Thomas Master, Sir Henry Savile (1711). “The Schoolmaster: Or, A Plain and Perfect Way of Teaching Children to Underftand, Write, and Speak the Latin Tongue”, p.136

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Strength is not energy; some authors have more muscles than talent.

  Joseph Joubert

  Energy, Talent, Muscles

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• Young authors give their brains much exercise and little food.

  Joseph Joubert

  Exercise, Giving, Brain

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• It is in vain a daring author thinks of attaining to the heights of Parnassus if he does not feel the secret influence of heaven and if his natal star has not formed him to be a poet.

  Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux

  Stars, Thinking, Heaven

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• Professed authors who overestimate their vocation are too full of themselves to be agreeable companions. The demands of their egotism are inveterate. They seem to be incapable of that abandon which is the requisite condition of social pleasure; and bent upon winning a tribute of admiration, or some hint which they can turn to the account of pen-craft, there is seldom in their company any of the delightful unconsciousness which harmonizes a circle.

  Henry Theodore Tuckerman

  Winning, Circles, Hints

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• For popular purposes, at least, the aim of literary artists should be similar to that of Rubens in his landscapes, of which, without neglecting the minor traits or finishing, he was chiefly solicitous to present the leading effect, or what we may call the inspiration.

  William Benton Clulow

  Inspiration, Artist, Finishing

  William Benton Clulow (1843). “Aphorisms and Reflections: A Miscellany of Thought and Opinion”, p.47

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• This is the highest miracle of genius, that things which are not should be as though they were, that the imaginations of one mind should become the personal recollections of another.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Imagination, Miracle, Mind

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• Certain I am that every author who has written a book with earnest forethought and fondly cherished designs will bear testimony to the fact that much which he meant to convey has never been guessed at in any review of his work; and many a delicate beauty of thought, on which he principally valued himself, remains, like the statue of Isis, an image of truth from which no hand lifts the veil.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Book, Isis, Hands

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• if have got my spindle and my distaff ready--my pen and mind--never doubting for an instant that God will send me flax.

  J. G. Holland

  Doubt, Mind, Flax

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