Great Author Quotes

• Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.

  Mark Twain

  Writing, Confusing, Easy

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• A great book should leave you with many experiences.

  William Styron

  Book, Should, Inspirational Reading

  William Styron, James L. W. West (1985). “Conversations with William Styron”, p.12, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

  Albert Einstein

  Funny, Hilarious, Education

  Albert Einstein (2015). “Bite-Size Einstein: Quotations on Just About Everything from the Greatest Mind of the Twentieth Century”, p.32, St. Martin's Press

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• Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Goodbye, Art, Business

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow “The Complete Poems of Longfellow”, Library of Alexandria

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• Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.

  Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

  Writing, Judging, Down And

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• I can’t write five words but that I change seven.

  Dorothy Parker

  Writing, Revision, Seven

  Dorothy Parker, Stuart Y. Silverstein (2009). “Not Much Fun: The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker”, p.47, Simon and Schuster

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• Seán Manchester is, unsurprisingly, very well read in both classical and more recent sources on vampires and vampirism, and cites them with great authority while taking the reader through a brief tour of vampire lore and mythology. This is a book I'd recommend to anybody with an interest in the author or vampires. The parts which deal with vampires are obviously based on years of substantial research and personal experience.

  Joe McNally

  Book, Years, Vampire

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• You should not put too much trust in any unproved conjecture, even if it has been propounded by a great authority, even if it has been propounded by yourself. You should try to prove it or disprove it.

  George Polya

  Trying, Too Much, Authority

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• Easter is reflecting upon suffering for one thing, but it also reflects upon Jesus and his non-compliance in the face of great authority where he holds to his truth - so there's two stories there.

  Michael Leunig

  Jesus, Easter, Reflecting Upon

  "Michael Leunig Finds Modern Meaning in the Easter Story". Interview with Annette Marner, www.abc.net.au. March 28, 2013.

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• The great authors were great readers, and one way to understand them is to read the books they read.

  Mortimer Adler

  Book, Way, Reader

  Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren (2014). “How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading”, p.171, Simon and Schuster

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• Well, great authors are great people - but I believe that they are best seen at a distance.

  Mary Russell Mitford

  Distance, Believe, People

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• There's as much great authorship in the filmmaker community as in the literary community, and I'd love to welcome more filmmakers into the fold.

  Nina Jacobson

  Community, Welcome, Authorship

  "'Hunger Games' Producer Nina Jacobson on Movie Backstory; Firing from Disney (Q&A)". Interview with Jay A. Fernandez, www.hollywoodreporter.com. March 15, 2012.

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• The humblest peasant is as free in the sight of God as the proudest monarch that ever swayed a sceptre. Liberty is a spirit sent from God and like its great Author is no respecter of persons.

  Henry Highland Garnet

  Sight, Liberty, Spirit

  Henry Highland Garnet (1865). “A Memorial Discourse”, p.48, Gale Cengage Learning

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• The meanest authors have at least this similarity with the great author of heaven and earth, that they usually say after a completed day of work: "And behold, what he had done was good.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Creativity, Heaven, Done

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• Many great authors of the 19th century wrote under conditions of strict censorship. The great thing about the art of writing a novel, is that you can write about anything. All you have to say is that it's fiction.

  Orhan Pamuk

  Art, Writing, Fiction

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• You can always speak with great authority on how well you played today, but never on how you'll play tomorrow.

  Gary Player

  Golf, Play, Today

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• One of my ambitions has been to go back to what those great authors were doing then ... to bridge that sensibility of old Victorian Gothic tales and reconstruct them in a modern way.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Ambition, Bridges, Way

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• The only people I have ever seen paint successfully, consistently, with great authority, unselfconsciously and without fear of failing were about four years old.

  Brian Johnson

  Years, People, Four

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• The custom of the Church has very great authority and ought to be jealously observed in all things.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Church, Authority, Jealously

  Saint Thomas Aquinas, Catholic Way Publishing (2014). “The Summa Theologica: Complete Edition”, p.5138, Catholic Way Publishing

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• Great authors, when they write about causes, adduce not only those they think are true but also those they do not believe in, provided they have some originality and beauty. They speak truly and usefully enough if they speak ingeniously.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Beauty, Truth, Believe

  Michel de Montaigne (1976). “The Complete Essays of Montaigne”

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• To state a lie firmly, categorically and with great authority, undeterred by the fact that all concerned know it to be a lie, is one of the principal activities defined by the term practising law.

  Stephen Vizinczey

  Lying, Law, Facts

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• An evil nature wielding great authority brings misfortune upon the community.

  Aeschines

  Evil, Community, Authority

  "Dictionary of Quotations (classical)" by Thomas Benfield Harbottle. Ctesiphontem, 147, 1897.

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• A man who has any relish for fine writing either discovers new beauties or receives stronger impressions from the masterly strokes of a great author every time he peruses him; besides that he naturally wears himself into the same manner of speaking and thinking.

  Joseph Addison

  Reading, Writing, Men

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1832). “The British Essayists: Containing the Spectator, with Notes and General Index, and the Tatler and Guardian, with Notes and General Index”

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• Mann and Joyce are very different, and yet their fiction often appeals to the same people: Harry Levin taught a famous course on Joyce, Proust, and Mann, and Joseph Campbell singled out Joyce and Mann as special favorites. To see them as offering "possibilities for living", as I do, isn't to identify any distinctive commonality. After all, many great authors would fall under that rubric.

  Philip Kitcher

  Fall, Offering, People

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Over the years, my books have been given a lot more credence than they should. I don't think people should take them quite that seriously. They're not a theological treatise; they were never intended to be. I find myself in awkward situations sometimes because people think I'm some great authority on spiritual warfare, but I'm not. I never have been.

  Dannah Gresh

  Spiritual, Book, Thinking

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