Quotessence
Home / Topics / Prose Quotes

Prose Quotes

Browse 1129 quotes about Prose.

Related topics

WritingIfsThinkingBookLanguageWayPoetStoriesVersesPoetry IsPeopleFictionNovelReadingWrittenWantPoetryPagesWorldKindLiteratureSentencesReaderFeelsFormKnowsStyleShouldUseDifferentWellsTryingLongNarrativeSeemsI CanMeanLinesMenRealArtEndsFirstsGivingVoiceYearsHas BeensIdeasImportantMadeMayMindPoeticRhythmAgeCharacterHeartLittlesSongTwoAttentionEnoughFactsHumansInterestingMightSometimesBeautifulLooksMatterNeedsPerfectProse And PoetrySaidStillsDoeEyeFeelingsQualityReasonSelfSoundBelieveClearHandsShowsCreativeFallLastsLettersModernMovingMusicalPlayProse PoetryShort StorySpeakStruggleTogetherTurnsmore

Prose Quotes

“People often ask me why my style is so simple. It is, in fact, deceptively simple, for no two sentences are alike. It is clarity that I am striving to attain, not simplicity. Of course, some people want literature to be difficult and there are writers who like to make their readers toil and sweat. They hope to be taken more seriously that way. I have always tried to achieve a prose that is easy and conversational. And those who think this is simple should try it for themselves.”

PeopleThinkingWayWantShouldTryingTwoFactsCoursesAsksLiteratureEasyDifficultSimpleTakenAchieveStyleReaderStriveSimplicitySentencesClarityAsk MeProseSweatToil
Author:Ruskin Bond
Create image

“Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one’s life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down; perhaps it crept to one’s side like an old friend through quiet ways; perhaps it revealed itself in seeming prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages betrayed the rhythm and the music, perhaps . . . perhaps . . . love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from its green sheath.”

WayLoveBeautifulRomanceSidesGayQuietPagesGreenRoseGoldenRhythmProseRidingBetrayedKnightsHeartedIlluminationOld FriendsSeemingSlippingMost RomanticBeautiful FriendshipPerhaps Love
Book:CHRISTMAS & NEW YEAR™S TALES (Holiday Classics Series): Including Anne Shirley Series
Create image

“Most contemporary novels are not really "written." They obtain what reality they have largely from an accurate rendering of the noises that human beings currently make in their daily simple needs of communication; and what part of a novel is not composed of these noises consists of a prose which is no more alive than that of a competent newspaper writer or government official. A prose that is altogether alive demands something of the reader that the ordinary novel-reader is not prepared to give.”

NeedsGivingHumansRealityGovernmentHuman BeingsSimpleNovelAliveWrittenCommunicationReaderDemandOrdinaryPreparedNewspapersContemporaryNoiseOfficialsProseAccurateCompetentRenderingGovernment Officials
Author:T. S. Eliot
Create image

“He was a physicist, more precisely an astrophysicist, diligent and eager but without illusions: the Truth lay beyond, inaccessible to our telescopes, accessible to the initiates. This was a long road which he was traveling with effort, wonderment, and profound joy. Physics was prose: elegant gymnastics for the mind, mirror of Creation, the key to man's dominion over the planet; but what is the stature of Creation, of man and the planet? His road was long and he had barely started up it, but I was his disciple: did I want to follow him?”

MenWantMindLongJoyEffortCreationPlanetsKeysIllusionMirrorsLaysProfoundPhysicsProseDiscipleElegantPhysicistDominionGymnasticsStatureTelescopesDiligentInitiateInaccessibleLong RoadCreation Of Man
Author:Primo Levi
Create image

“OF writing many books there is no end; And I who have written much in prose and verse For others' uses, will write now for mine,- Will write my story for my better self, As when you paint your portrait for a friend, Who keeps it in a drawer and looks at it Long after he has ceased to love you, just To hold together what he was and is.”

WritingLooksLongBookEndsSelfStoriesUseTogetherWrittenLove YouMinesPaintProseVersesPortraitsDrawers
Book:Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Illustrated)
Create image

“Rather, very, little, pretty - these are the leeches that infest the pond of prose, sucking the blood of words. The constant use of the adjective little (except to indicate size) is particularly debilitating; we should all try to do a little better, we should all be very watchful of this rule, for it is a rather important one, and we are pretty sure to violate it now and then.”

ShouldTryingLittlesImportantUseBloodConstantSizeProseNow And ThenPondsAdjectivesLeeches
Author:William Strunk, Jr.
Create image

“She would only point out the salvation that was latent in his own soul, and in the soul of every man. Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.”

MenLoveHumansSoulWholeDiesPassionSalvationEvery ManHeightBeastIsolationProseSermonsFragmentsMonkExaltedLatentHuman LoveHowards End
Author:E. M. Forster
Create image

“Who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame”

HumansMadeSoulTogetherSpacePoorConsciousnessIntelligentShameVisualsProseGapsSensationsTrappedJumpingShakingVerbsHowlNounsElementalsArchangelSpeechlessSyntaxVisual Images
Author:Allen Ginsberg
Create image

“...Mr. Wodehouse is a prose stylist of such startling talent that Frankie nearly skipped around with glee when she first read some of his phrases. Until her discovery of Something Fresh on the top shelf of Ruth's bookshelf one bored summer morning, Frankie's leisure reading had consister primarily of paperback mysteries she found on the spinning racks at the public library down the block from her house, and the short stories of Dorothy Parker. Wodehouse's jubilant wordplay bore itself into her synapses like a worm into a fresh ear of corn.”

FirstsStoriesReadingFoundHouseMorningMysteryTalentSummerDiscoveryEarsLibraryBlockBoredPhrasesProseShort StoryLeisureBoresShelvesWormsCornSpinningGleeRacksPublic LibraryStylistRuthWordplayBookshelvesSynapses
Book:The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
Create image

“As I glanced at the phraseology of the research report, dull and unfathomable to outsiders like me, I thought that if you have the ambition to become a villain, the first thing you should do is learn to be impenetrable. Don’t act like Blofeld—monocled and ostentatious. We journalists love writing about eccentrics. We hate writing about impenetrable, boring people. It makes us look bad: the duller the interviewee, the duller the prose. If you want to get away with wielding true, malevolent power, be boring.”

PeopleIfsWantShouldWritingFirstsLooksHateAmbitionResearchBoringLike MeJournalistDullProseReportsGet AwayVillainOutsidersUnfathomableOstentatious
Book:Jon Ronson's Adventures With Extraordinary People
Create image

“The academic bias against subjectivity not only forces our students to write poorly ("It is believed...," instead of, "I believe..."), it deforms their thinking about themselves and their world. In a single stroke, we delude our students into believing that bad prose turns opinions into facts and we alienate them from their own inner lives.”

ThinkingWorldWritingBelieveHeartFactsTurnsForceI BelieveOpinionStudentsProseAcademicBiasStrokesInner LifeSubjectivity
Book:The Courage to Teach Guide for Reflection and Renewal
Create image

“You know that sickening feeling of inadequacy and over-exposure you feel when you look upon your own empurpled prose? Relax into the awareness that this ghastly sensation will never, ever leave you, no matter how successful and publicly lauded you become. It is intrinsic to the real business of writing and should be cherished.”

KnowsFeelsShouldWritingLooksRealMatterFeelingsSuccessfulAwarenessProseRelaxSensationsExposureInadequacyGhastlyFeelings Of Inadequacy
Author:Will Self
Create image

“How well I know what I mean to do When the long dark Autumn evenings come, And where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue? With the music of all thy voices, dumb In life’s November too! I shall be found by the fire, suppose, O’er a great wise book as beseemeth age, While the shutters flap as the cross-wind blows, And I turn the page, and I turn the page, Not verse now, only prose!”

KnowsWellsMeanLongBookSoulAgeTurnsFoundVoiceDarkFireWiseWindPagesCrossesBlowMy SoulEveningDumbPleasantProseAutumnVersesNovemberHueShutters
Author:Robert Browning
Create image

“When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again.”

GivenLaughingShotsDancingProseShakesAbsurdityClappingExactnessBuoyancyAbsurdity Of Life
Book:Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Create image

“We must never underestimate our power to be wrong when talking about God, when thinking about God, when imagining God, whether in prose or in poetry. A generous orthodoxy, in contrast to the tense, narrow, or controlling orthodoxies of so much of Christian history, doesn't take itself too seriously. It is humble. It doesn't claim too much. It admits it walks with a limp.”

ThinkingGodChristianPoetryWalksTalkingPowerToo MuchImagineClaimsHumbleGenerosityGenerousProseControlledContrastUnderestimateTenseOrthodoxyAdmittingNever UnderestimateChristian HeritageLimping
Author:Brian D. McLaren
Create image

“I now wish that I had spent somewhat more of my life with verse. This is not because I fear having missed out on truths that are incapable of statement in prose. There are no such truths; there is nothing about death that Swinburne and Landor knew but Epicurus and Heidegger failed to grasp. Rather, it is because I would have lived more fully if I had been able to rattle off more old chestnuts — just as I would have if I had made more close friends.”

IfsMadeAbleWishStatementsProseVersesIncapableClose FriendsChestnutsHeidegger
Author:Richard Rorty
Create image