Written Quotes - Page 33

• Tacitus has written an entire work on the manners of the Germans. This work is short, but it comes from the pen of Tacitus, who was always concise, because he saw everything at a glance.

  Tacitus

  Saws, Manners, Glances

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• Everything I have written is the result of reading or of interest in people.

  Marianne Moore

  Reading, People, Results

  "Marianne Moore, Poet of Affection". Book by Pamela White Hadas, p. 6, 1977.

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• Equity is that idea of justice which contravenes the written law.

  Aristotle

  Law, Ideas, Justice

  Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes (1833). “Aristotle's Treatise on Rhetoric”, p.91

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• A dead language is not only one no longer spoken or written, it is unyielding language content to admire its own paralysis. Like statist language, censored and censoring. Ruthless in its policing duties, it has no desire or purpose other than maintaining the free range of its own narcotic narcissism, its own exclusivity and dominance. However moribund, it is not without effect for it actively thwarts the intellect, stalls conscience, suppresses human potential. Unreceptive to interrogation, it cannot form or tolerate new ideas, shape other thoughts, tell another story, fill baffling silences.

  Toni Morrison

  Ideas, Silence, Desire

  Nobel Prize for Literature Lecture, delivered 7 December 1993

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• No action, whether foul or fair, Is ever done, but it leaves somewhere A record, written by fingers ghostly, As a blessing or a curse, and mostly In the greater weakness or greater strength Of the acts which follow it.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Blessing, Weakness, Done

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1867). “The Poetical Works of H. W. Longfellow. Complete Edition”, p.160

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• This was 1990, the year that communism died in Europe and it seemed strange to me that in all the words that were written about the fall of the iron curtain, nobody anywhere lamented that it was the end of a noble experiment. I know that communism never worked and I would have disliked living under it myself but none the less it seems that there was a kind of sadness in the thought that the only economic system that appeared to work was one based on self interest and greed.

  Bill Bryson

  Fall, Sadness, Self

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• I write poems, have always written them, to transcend the painfully personal and reach the universal.

  May Sarton

  Writing, Universal

  Quoted in Encore: A Journal of the 80thYear (1993).

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• Passing away" is written on the world and all the world contains.

  Felicia Hemans

  Death, Passing Away, World

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations". Book by J.K. Hoyt & K.L. Roberts, 1922.

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• In the old times, women did not get their lives written, though I don't doubt many of them were much better worth writing than the men's.

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Writing, Men, History

  Harriet Beecher Stowe (1873). “The Pearl of Orr's Island: A Story of the Coast of Maine”, p.165

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• I discovered that I had, in the past two decades, written a far greater amount in the essay form than I remembered. Certainly I have written enough of it to demonstrate that I harbor no disdain for literary journalism or just plain journalism, under whose sponsorship I have been able to express much that has fascinated me, or alarmed me, or amused me, or otherwise engaged my attention when I was not writing a book.

  William Styron

  Book, Writing, Past

  William Styron (1993). “This Quiet Dust and Other Writings”, Vintage

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• It is of the nature of idea to be communicated: written, spoken, done. The idea is like grass. It craves light, likes crowds, thrives on crossbreeding, grows better for being stepped on.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Light, Ideas, Done

  Ursula K. LeGuin (2015). “The Dispossessed”, p.35, Hachette UK

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• When people cannot write good literature it is perhaps natural that they should lay down rules how good literature should be written.

  George Saintsbury

  Writing, People, Literature

  George Saintsbury (1950). “A Last Vintage: Essays and Papers”

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• Well, my father Kingsley Amis was a writer and it seemed natural to start writing in my late teens. I think it was good that I began when I was young and bold and foolish, otherwise I'd have become too self-conscious and aware of the weight of not having written anything yet.

  Martin Amis

  Father, Writing, Thinking

  "Martin Amis: I wasn’t trying to impress my father". Interview with Jane Graham, www.salon.com. July 24, 2013.

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• So we have a choice to make. We can once again let Washington's bad habits stand in the way of progress. Or we can pull together and say that in America, our destiny isn't written for us but by us. We can place good ideas ahead of old ideological battles, and a sense of purpose above the same narrow partisanship. We can act boldly to turn crisis into opportunity and, together, write the next great chapter in our history and meet the test of our time.

  Barack Obama

  Writing, Destiny, Opportunity

  "The Action Americans Need". www.washingtonpost.com. February 5, 2009.

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• Kafka could never have written as he did had he lived in a house. His writing is that of someone whose whole life was spent in apartments, with lifts, stairwells, muffled voices behind closed doors, and sounds through walls. Put him in a nice detached villa and he'd never have written a word.

  Alan Bennett

  Wall, Nice, Writing

  Alan Bennett (2008). “Writing Home”, p.193, Faber & Faber

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• It is no small comfort that God hath written some Scriptures to you which He hath not to others. Read these, and think God is like a friend who sendeth a letter to a whole house and family, but who speaketh in His letter to some by name that are dearest to Him in the house.

  Samuel Rutherford

  Thinking, Names, House

  Samuel Rutherford (1863). “Letters of Samuel Rutherford: With a Sketch of His Life”, p.68

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• With films, I just scribble a couple of notes for a scene. You don't have to do any writing at all, you just have your notes for the scene, which are written with the actors and the camera in mind. The actual script is a necessity for casting and budgeting, but the end product often doesn't bear much resemblance to the script--at least in my case.

  Woody Allen

  Couple, Writing, Mind

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• Before one is successful that is before any one is ready to pay money for anything you do then you are certain that every word you have written is an important word to have written and that any word you have written is as important as any other word and you keep everything you have written with great care.

  Gertrude Stein

  Successful, Important, Care

  Gertrude Stein (2013). “Everybody's Autobiography”, p.44, Vintage

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• After you have written a thing and you reread it, there is always the temptation to fix it up, to improve it, to remove its poison, blunt its sting.

  Jean Cocteau

  Writing, Temptation, Poison

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• For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.

  Anne Lamott

  Writing, Way, Firsts

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.22, Anchor

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• My work consists of two parts: of the one which is here, and of everything which I have not written. And precisely this second part is the important one.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Two, Important

  "Wittgenstein : Sources and Perspectives". Book by C. Grant Luckhard, 1979.

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• I have something to say about the difference between American and European cities, but I forgot what it was. I have it written down at home somewhere.

  David Byrne

  Home, Cities, Differences

  "Fictional character: Narrator". "True Stories", www.imdb.com. 1986.

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• In the end all books are written for your friends. The problem after writing One Hundred Years of Solitude was that now I no longer know whom of the millions of readers I am writing for; this upsets and inhibits me. It's like a million eyes are looking at you and you don't really know what they think.

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Book, Eye, Writing

  "Gabriel García Márquez, The Art of Fiction No. 69". Interviewed with Peter H. Stone. Issue 82, p. 322, www.theparisreview.org. Winter 1981.

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• I don't think I've ever written about me. I'm not a character in any of my plays, except that boy, that silent boy that turns up in Three Tall Women.

  Edward Albee

  Character, Boys, Thinking

  Edward Albee (2009). “Stretching My Mind: The Collected Essays of Edward Albee”, p.280, Da Capo Press

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• In this world laws are written for the lofty aim of "the common good" and then acted out in life on the basis of the common greed. In this world irrationality clings to man like his shadow so that the right things get done for the wrong reasons - afterwards, we dredge up the right reasons for justification. It is a world not of angels but of angles, where men speak of moral principles but act on power principles; a world where we are always moral and our enemies always immoral; a world where "reconciliation" means that when one side gets the power and the other side gets reconciled to it.

  Saul Alinsky

  Mean, Angel, Men

  "Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals". Book by Saul Alinsky, p. 13, archive.org. 1971.

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