Literature and Words

Literature is the orchestration of platitudes.

You should study the Peerage, Gerald … It is the best thing in fiction the English have ever done.

The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.

The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.

The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

I always say, keep a diary and some day it’ll keep you.

‘Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole’ … ‘Yes,’ said the Managing Editor. ‘That must be good style.’

News is what a chap who doesn’t care much about anything wants to read. And it’s only news until he’s read it. After that it’s dead.

Up to a point, Lord Copper.

No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.

As to the Adjective: when in doubt, strike it out.

What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before.

They spell it Vinci and pronounce it Vinchy; foreigners always spell better than they pronounce.

Three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write.

History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.

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.

Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.

Books that told me everything about the wasp, except why.

Everything I have written seems like straw by comparison with what I have seen and what has been revealed to me.

Proper words in proper places, make the true definition of a style.

Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose, is a rose.

Remarks are not literature.

You write with ease, to show your breeding,