Quotes by Writers - Page 2

...it is easy not to believe in monsters, considerably more difficult to escape their dread and loathsome clutches.
Stanisław Lem
One of my roommates, Rafael, he's an expert on monsters. Not that he talks about them. I can just tell. People who have monsters recognize each other. They know each other without even saying a word.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
We just start putting our ideas out there, yet how do we actually attack contemporary problems? We do what some of the most successful American businesses do. We outsource and collaborate
Baratunde R. Thurston
Nowhere in the world, Rud reflected, was journalism anything but a malignant and wanton power. Later on, as the Common-sense Movement grew, he had to think a lot about that. He had to spread a new system of ideas throughout the world, and journalism would neither instruct nor inform nor lend itself consistently to any sustained propaganda.
H.G.Wells
Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.
Samuel Johnson
In the long run I certainly hope information is the cure for fanaticism, but I am afraid information is more the cause than the cure.
Daniel C. Dennett
She had expressed herself, as women will, in a smug broadside of pastel shades. Nothing clashed because nothing had the strength to clash; everything murmured of safety among the hues; all was refinement.
Mervyn Peake
He was a compact, clearcut man, with precise features, a lot of very soft black hair, and thoughtful dark brown eyes. He had a look of wariness, which could change when he felt relaxed or happy, which was not often in these difficult days, into a smile of amused friendliness and pleasure which aroused feelings of warmth, and something more, in many women.
A.S. Byatt
The best way to treat obstacles is to use them as stepping-stones. Laugh at them, tread on them, and let them lead you to something better.
Enid Blyton
A scientist doesn't know all the answers. Nobody does, not even teachers. But a scientist keeps on trying to find the answers.
Oliver Butterworth
Ah, what sights and sounds and pain lie beneath that mist. And we had thought that our hard climb out of that cruel valley led to some cool, green and peaceful, sunlit place---but it's all jungle here, a wild and savage wilderness that's overrun with ruins. But put on your crown, my Queen, and we will build a New City on these ruins.
Eldridge Cleaver
For brick and mortar breed filth and crime,With a pulse of evil that throbs and beats;And men are whithered before their primeBy the curse paved in with the lanes and streets.And lungs are poisoned and shoulders bowed, In the smothering reek of mill and mine;And death stalks in on the struggling crowd—But he shuns the shadow of the oak and pine
George Washington Sears
An age-old city is like a pond. With its colours and reflections. Its chills and murk. Its ferment, its sorcery, its hidden life.A city is like a woman, with a woman’s desires and dislikes. Her abandon and restraint. Her reserve - above all, her reserve.To get to the heart of a city, to learn its most subtle secrets, takes infinite tenderness, and patience sometimes to the point of despair. It calls for an artlessly delicate touch, a more or less unconditional love. Over centuries.Time works for those who place themselves beyond time.You’re no true Parisian, you do not know your city, if you haven’t experienced its ghosts. To become imbued with shades of grey, to blend into the drab obscurity of blind spots, to join the clammy crowd that emerges, or seeps, at certain times of day from the metros, railway stations, cinemas or churches, to feel a silent and distant brotherhood with the lonely wanderer, the dreamer in his shy solitude, the crank, the beggar, even the drunk - all this entails a long and difficult apprenticeship, a knowledge of people and places that only years of patient observation can confer.
Jacques Yonnet
It's a strange city... filled with things that are not obvious.
A.M. Homes
All the world's a mass of folly Youth is gay age melancholy: Youth is spending age is thrifty Mad at twenty cold at fifty Man is nought but folly's slave From the cradle to the grave.
W. H. Ireland
Everyone believes in his youth that the world really began with him and that all merely exists for his sake.
Goethe
Only the young die good.
Oliver Herford
The young always have the same problem - how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another.
Quentin Crisp
Much may be made of a Scotchman if he be caught young.
Samuel Johnson
Writers seldom write the things they think. They simply write the things they think other folks think they think.
Elbert Hubbard
Whom the gods love die young no matter how long they live.
Elbert Hubbard
It is better to suffer wrong than to do it and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.
Samuel Johnson
Your manuscript is both good and original but the parts that are good are not original and the parts that are original are not good.
Samuel Johnson
The remedy for wrongs is to forget them.
Syrus
Just as there is nothing between the admirable omelette and the intolerable so with autobiography.
Hilaire Belloc
The llama is a woolly sort of fleecy hairy goat With an indolent expression and an undulating throat - Like an unsuccessful literary man.
Hilaire Belloc
There is nothing more dangerous to the formation of a prose style than the endeavour to make it poetic.
J. Middleton Murry
Words and sentences are subjects of revision paragraphs and whole compositions are subjects of prevision.
Barrett Wendell
Better to write for yourself and have no public than to write for the public and have no self.
Cyril Connolly
What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
Samuel Johnson
A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.
Karl Kraus
When an author is yet living we estimate his powers by his worst performance and when he is dead we rate them by his best.
Samuel Johnson
The man who is asked by an author what he thinks of his work is put to the torture and is not obliged to speak the truth.
Samuel Johnson
Writers write to influence their readers their preachers their auditors but always at bottom to be more themselves.
Aldous Huxley
When I am dead I hope it may be said: 'His sins were scarlet but his books were read.'
Hilaire Belloc
Read over your compositions and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine strike it out.
Samuel Johnson
The best part of every author is in general to be found in his book I assure you.
Samuel Johnson
If we try to envisage an 'average Canadian writer' we can see him living near a campus teaching at least part-time at university level mingling too much for his work's good with academics doing as much writing as he can for the CBC and always hoping for a Canada Council Fellowship.
George Woodcock
Begin with another's to end with your own.
Baltasar Gracián
An original writer is not one who imitates nobody but one whom nobody can imitate.
Francois Rene De Chateaubriand
Every other author may aspire to praise the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach.
Samuel Johnson
There are three difficulties in authorship: to write anything worth the publishing to find honest men to publish it and to get sensible men to read it.
C. C. Colton
He that has never suffered extreme adversity knows not the full extent of his own depravation.
Charles Caleb Colton
But the fruit that can fall without shaking indeed is too mellow for me.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
There could be no honor in a sure success but much might be wrested from a sure defeat.
T.E. Lawrence
Worry is the cross which we make for ourselves by overanxiety.
Francois de Fenelon
Worry is the only insupportable misfortune of life.
Henry Saint John
Peace of mind is that mental condition in which you have accepted the worst.
Lin Yutang
Anxiety never yet successfully bridged any chasm.
Giovanni Ruffini
No good work is ever done while the heart is hot and anxious and fretted.
Olive Schreiner
Half the world does not know how the other half lives.
François Rabelais
When speculation has done its worst two and two still make four.
Samuel Johnson
Everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.
Voltaire
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
James Howell
Remember the dignity of your womanhood. Do not appeal do not beg do not grovel. Take courage join hands stand beside us fight with us.
Christabel Pankhurst
Fortune is ever seen accompanying industry.
Oliver Goldsmith
When men are rightly occupied their amusement grows out of their work as the color-petals out of a fruitful flower.
John Ruskin
When love and skill work together expect a masterpiece.
John Ruskin
The highest reward for man's toil is not what he gets for it but what he becomes by it.
John Ruskin
We can redeem anyone who strives unceasingly.
Goethe