Literature and Words

I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time.

The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.

I DOUBT THAT ART NEEDED RUSKIN ANY MORE THAN A MOVING TRAIN NEEDS ONE OF ITS PASSENGERS TO SHOVE IT.

No human being ever spoke of scenery for above two minutes at a time, which makes me suspect that we hear too much of it in literature.

A BOOK IS A MIRROR: IF AN ASS PEERS INTO IT, YOU CAN’T EXPECT AN APOSTLE TO LOOK OUT.

Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very’; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.

WHEN I GET A LITTLE MONEY, I BUY BOOKS; AND IF ANY IS LEFT, I BUY FOOD AND CLOTHES.

All true histories contain instruction; though, in some, the treasure may be hard to find, and when found, so trivial in quantity that the dry, shriveled kernel scarcely compensates for the trouble of cracking the nut.

Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous—to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.

How many of us have been incited to reason, have first learned to think, to draw conclusions, to extract a moral from the follies of life by some dazzling aphorism.

You start a question, and it’s like starting a stone. You sit quietly on top of a hill; and the stone goes, starting others.

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.

The warehouse of that memory is called the library.

An aphorism can never be the whole truth; it is either a half-truth or a truth-and-a-half.

I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven.

All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.

The beautiful word begets the beautiful deed.

There is no doubt that I have lots of words inside me; but at moments, like rush-hour traffic at the mouth of a tunnel, they jam.

Eloquence, when at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection; but addressing itself entirely to the fancy or the affections, captivates the willing hearers, and subdues their understanding.

All I need is a sheet of paper and something to write with, and thenI can turn the world upside down.

A great value of antiquity lies in the fact that its writings are the only ones that modern men still read with exactness.

It is good to express a thing twice right at the outset and so to give it a right foot and also a left one. Truth can surely stand on one leg, but with two it will be able to walk and get around.

Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften .