Quotation Saturday

ON WRITING

***

"Know something, sugar? Stories only happen to people who can tell them."
~Allan Gurganus
 
"A writer lives, at least, in a state of astonishment. Beneath any feeling he has of the good or evil of the world lies a deeper one of wonder at it all. To transmit that feeling, he writes."
~William Sansom
 
"However great a man's natural talent may be, the art of writing cannot be learned all at once."
~Jean Jacques Rousseau
 
Real writers are those who want to write, need to write, have to write."
~Robert Penn Warren

BREVITY

It is with words as with sunbeams. The more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.
~Robert Southey

A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.
~William Strunk, Jr., The Elements of Style, 1918

"In good prose (says Schlegel) every word should be underlined!" that is, every word should be the right one; and then no one would be righter than another. There are no italics in Plato.
~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827

If you can't write your idea on the back of my calling card, you don't have a clear idea.
~David Belasco

SELF-CONTROL         

Self-respect is the root of discipline: The sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself.
~Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Insecurity of Freedom: Essays on Human Existence, 1967

The cyclone derives its powers from a calm center. So does a person.
~Norman Vincent Peale

It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.
~Buddha
 
And so, Reader, (for it is time to have done with guessing) would I bid you conquer in your warfare against your four great enemies, the world, the devil, the flesh, and above all, that obstinate and perverse self-will, unaided by which the other three would be comparatively powerless.
~Augustus William Hare

SIMPLICITY

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction.
~E.F. Schumacher
 
Frugality is one of the most beautiful and joyful words in the English language, and yet one that we are culturally cut off from understanding and enjoying. The consumption society has made us feel that happiness lies in having things, and has failed to teach us the happiness of not having things.
~Elise Boulding

Everything we possess that is not necessary for life or happiness becomes a burden, and scarcely a day passes that we do not add to it.
~Robert Brault,
 
To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter... to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird's nest or a wildflower in spring - these are some of the rewards of the simple life.
~John Burroughs
 
“It is with simplicity, brevity and self-control that I will go on writing. ” ~Joni Zipp

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