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.
A felicitous thought is as clearly exprest,
And true words are not wanting in which it is drest.
With high words, that bore
Semblance of worth, not substance.
They say * * *
That, putting all his words together,
'Tis three blue beans in one blue bladder.
For diff’rent styles with diff’rent subjects sort,
As sev’ral garbs with country, town, and court.
The surest way of wearying your readers is to say everything that can be said on the subject.
His words ... like so many nimble and airy servitors trip about him at command.
The trick is not becoming a writer. The trick is staying a writer.
SCRIBBLER, n. A professional writer whose views are antagonistic to one's own.
If you steal from one author, it's plagiarism. If you steal from two, it's research.