Best common & writing Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

Source: The works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Together with his life, and notes on his Lives of the poets, by Sir John Hawkins, Knt. In eleven volumes ...

“Too much nicety of detail disgusts the greatest part of readers, and to throw a multitude of particulars under general heads, and lay down rules of extensive comprehension, is to common understandings of little use.”

Writing Littles Use Understanding Common Too Much Reader Lays Details Disgusting Multitudes Comprehension Niceties

Book:The Rambler: In Four Volumes..

Source: The Rambler: In Four Volumes..

“He that writes may be considered as a kind of general challenger, whom every one has a right to attack; since he quits the common rank of life, steps forward beyond the lists, and offers his merit to the public judgement. To commence author is to claim praise, and no man can justly aspire to honour, but at the hazard of disgrace.”

Men Writing Kind May Common Steps Offers Claims Praise Lists Quitting Judgement Merit Honour Aspire Disgrace Hazards Steps Forward

Book:The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.: D., with an Essay on His Life and Genius

Source: The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.: D., with an Essay on His Life and Genius

“As every writer has his use, every writer ought to have his patrons; and since no man, however high he may now stand, can be certain that he shall not be soon thrown down from his elevation by criticism or caprice, the common interest of learning requires that her sons should cease from intestine hostilities, and, instead of sacrificing each other to malice and contempt, endeavour to avert persecution from the meanest of their fraternity.”

Source: The works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Together with his life, and notes on his Lives of the poets, by Sir John Hawkins, Knt. In eleven volumes ...

“To write is, indeed, no unpleasing employment, when one sentiment readily produces another, and both ideas and expressions present themselves at the first summons; but such happiness, the greatest genius does not always obtain; and common writers know it only to such a degree, as to credit its possibility. Composition is, for the most part, an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.”

Source: The Works of Samuel Johnson: The Adventurer and Idler

“To write a genuine familiar or truly English style is to write as anyone would speak in common conversation, who had a thorough command and choice of words, or who could discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes.”

Writing Choices Speak Force Common Style Conversation Genuine Setting Familiar Command Settings Ease Discourse Thorough Pedantic

Book:Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)

“But we should ask the question: Why should a writer be more than a writer? Why should a writer be a guru? Why are we supposed to be psychiatrists? Isn't it enough to write and tell the truth? It's not like telling the truth is common. Writers are the earthworms of society. We aerate the soil. That's enough.”

Should Writing Enough Asks Common Truth Is Supposed To Be Soil Telling The Truth Guru Psychiatrist

Author:Erica Jong

“We waste a lot of time and a lot of talent trying to write for the common reader, whom we will never meet. Instead we should be writing for our ideal reader.”

Should Writing Trying Common Talent Reader Waste Ideals

Author:Julia Cameron

“I write to reach people's common sense and intelligence, to show them that if they unite they can make a different world possible.”

People Ifs World Writing Different Shows Common Common Sense Different Worlds

Author:Katharine Susannah Prichard

“In America there's a tendency to write the same book over and over because that's what sells. So in a way, my success in America has come at the expense of what I do. I haven't sold out, and I haven't taken the popular road to writing a best-selling book. I've really bucked the system. So it was necessary for me not to go and find the easy fans, the ones who want something digestible and fast with a happy ending that they can read over and over again no matter how many different books it is. I had to find fans who really wanted to think. Worldwide they all have that in common.”

“When I started writing, I didn't have the common sense to use a pseudonym, so I write under my own name. If I did have a pen name, though, it would be something very historical - something that sounds very sort of Regency... Sophia something.”

Ifs Writing Use Would Be Names Sound My Own Common Historical Common Sense Pens Sophia Pseudonyms

Author:Nicola Cornick

“So much of the humor on new sitcoms plays to the lowest common denominator. Wit isn't nearly given as much attention as slipping on a banana peel. So much of the writing is so coarse, so obvious that it doesn't provide a shock, never mind a laugh. What makes something funny is alluding to it without laying it out explicitly. You let the audiences fill in the gaps and that's where the laughs come.”

Writing Mind Play Given Common Attention Audience Laughing Obvious Wit Shock Gaps Lowest Bananas Sitcom Slipping Coarse Common Denominator Lowest Common Denominator

Author:Betty White

“The biggest pitfall to avoid is not writing. Not writing is really, really easy to do, especially if you're a young writer. The hope that elves will come in the night and finish it for you, is a very common one to have. That is my main recommendation - you have to write, and you have to finish what you write and beyond that, it's all detail.”

Ifs Writing Young Night Easy Common Details Recommendations Pitfalls Young Writers

Author:Neil Gaiman

“What was it that obliged Jerome to write his book, Concerning Illustrious Men? It was the common reproach of old cast upon Christians, 'That they were all poor, weak, unlearned men.' The sort of men sometime called 'Puritans' in the English nation have been reproached with the same character. . . But when truth shall have liberty to speak, it will be known that Christianity never was more expressed unto the life than in the lives of the persons that have been thus reproached.”

Men Writing Persons Has Beens Book Character Christian Speak Nations Poor Common Known Liberty Christianity Weak Casts Obliged Reproach Puritan

Author:Cotton Mather

“I usually write on a computer - unless I get stuck, at which point I switch to write by hand. I think that's common among writers if they get cornered on something.”

Ifs Thinking Writing Hands Common Computer Stuck Cornered

Author:David Nicholls

“I have always heard that uber-successful people who write books about how to become uber-successful all have one thing in common: They all meditate every day. I consider yoga my meditation.”

People Writing Book Common Successful Meditation One Thing Heard Yoga Successful People Uber

Author:Kristian Bush

“If unbridled licence of speech and writing be granted to all, nothing will remain sacred and inviolate; even the highest and truest mandates of nature, justly held to be the common and noblest heritage of the human race, will not be spared. Thus, truth being gradually obscured by darkness, pernicious and manifold error, as too often happens, will easily prevail.”

Source: A Light in the Heavens: Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII

“The Romans believed that what no man controls, no man can own. Justinian, writing in the sixth century AD, said that the air, flowing water, the sea and the seashore were common to all.”

Men Writing Said Water Common Air Sea Century Rivers Fishes Boat Lakes Fishing Ads Seashore Flowing Water Justinian

Book:The End of the Line: How Overfishing is Changing the World and what We Eat

Source: The End of the Line: How Overfishing is Changing the World and what We Eat

“I shall always feel respect for every one who has written a book, let it be what it may, for I had no idea of the trouble which trying to write common English could cost one—And alas there yet remains the worst part of all correcting the press.”

Feels Writing Trying May Book Ideas Common Written Trouble Worst Cost Remains Presses No Idea Alas Correcting

Book:The Correspondence of Charles Darwin: 1837-1843

Source: The Correspondence of Charles Darwin: 1837-1843

“Perhaps basketball and poetry have just a few things in common, but the most important is the possibility of transcendence. The opposite is labor. In writing, every writer knows when he or she is laboring to achieve an effect. You want to get from here to there, but find yourself willing it, forcing it. The equivalent in basketball is aiming your shot, a kind of strained and usually ineffective purposefulness. What you want is to be in some kind of flow, each next moment a discovery.”

“"Who are we to say what is right and what is wrong?" is the common refrain under the doctrine of pure pluralism. Clearly, society cannot long survive if this principle is pushed to its logical conclusion and everyone is free to write his own laws.”

Ifs Writing Long Christian Law Religious Common Principles Pure Doctrine Conclusion Logical Refrain Pluralism

Book:Faith & Freedom: The Christian Roots of American Liberty

Source: Faith & Freedom: The Christian Roots of American Liberty

“When the whole world is writing letters, it's easy to lap into the quiet within, tell the story of an hour, keep alive the narrating inner life. To be alone in the presence of one's thought is not a value, only a common practice.”

Thinking World Writing Whole Stories Values Easy Hours Common Practice Alive Solitude Quiet Letters Whole World Thoughtful Lap Inner Life

Author:Vivian Gornick

“It is hard to write a simple definition of something as varied as hacking, but I think what these activities have in common is playfulness, cleverness, and exploration. Thus, hacking means exploring the limits of what is possible, in a spirit of playful cleverness. Activities that display playful cleverness have "hack value".”

Thinking Writing Mean Hard Spirit Values Simple Common Activity Limits Definitions Exploration Display Exploring Cleverness Hacks Hacking Playfulness

Author:Richard Stallman

“The vulgar and common esteem is seldom happy in hitting right; and I am much mistaken if, amongst the writings of my time, the worst are not those which have most gained the popular applause.”

Ifs Writing Common Worst Esteem My Time Hitting Popularity Mistaken Vulgar Applause

Book:Montaigne's Essays in Three Books: With Notes and Quotations. And an Account of the Author's Life. With a Short Character of the Author and Translator

Source: Montaigne's Essays in Three Books: With Notes and Quotations. And an Account of the Author's Life. With a Short Character of the Author and Translator

“The few existing writings against Kantian philosophy are the most important documents in the case history of sound common sense.”

Writing Important Philosophy Sound Common Cases Common Sense Documents

Author:Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

“When one is grateful for something too good for common thanks, writing is less unsatisfactory than speech-one does not, at least, hear how inadequate the words are.”

Writing Doe Common Speech Grateful Thanks Inadequate

Book:Wit and Wisdom of George Eliot

Source: Wit and Wisdom of George Eliot

“The one thing fiction and non-fiction writing have in common for me is that sense of trying to get the sentences to be minimal but at the same time be a little overfull - to encourage them to do a kind of poetic work.”

Writing Trying Kind Littles Common Fiction One Thing Sentences Poetic Non Fiction Fiction Writing

Author:George Saunders

“None of us older writers had gone through such a school. We are all self-taught. And, of course, there is always, in such a school, the danger of goose-stepping, uniformed ranks. But the Serapion Brethren have already, it seems to me, outgrown this danger. Each of them has his own individuality and his own handwriting. The common thing they have derived from the studio is the art of writing with ninety-proof ink, the art of eliminating everything that is superfluous, which is, perhaps, more difficult than writing.”