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.
I trade both with the living and the dead for the enrichment of our native language.
Like warmed-up cabbage served at each repast,
The repetition kills the wretch at last.
Advice to writers: Sometimes you just have to stop writing. Even before you begin.
I am coming quickly. Happy is anyone observing the words of the prophecy of this scroll.
Zounds! I was never so bethump'd with words
Since I first call'd my brother's father dad.
I have made this [letter] longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter.
Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise,
Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affectation,
Figures pedantical.
Ornate for the very reason that ornament had been neglected.