Writing Quotes
The page is led by Shakespeare, then William Zinsser, the author of On Writing Well, followed by Horace and Orwell. Three old sources are worth knowing: Bacon’s Meditationes Sacræ (1597) says reading makes a full man, conference a ready man and writing an exact man; Thoreau’s journal for 1838 says it is vain to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live; and Horace’s Ars Poetica is the source for the idea that the writer wins by mixing profit with pleasure.
“Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then for your friends, then for money” is credited to Virginia Woolf and flagged misattributed. The notes quote an anecdote from a Tyrol coffee-house in which someone else says something similar. Two more flagged lines are credited to Cicero and to Menander.
Speaking words of endearment where words of comfort availed not.
How many honest words have suffered corruption since Chaucer's days!
Words repeated again have as another sound, so another sense.
Don’t force your powers unduly, if you aim at a graceful effect.
Unpack my heart with words
And fall a-cursing, like a very drab.
I know thou'rt full of love and honesty,
And weigh'st thy words before thou givest them breath.
A writer is like God. He can destroy empires, create new universes.