"Write to the mind and heart, and let the earGlean after what it can."

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“I like the idea of a literary patchwork, novel by novel, poem by poem, by different writers, mapping out an era, 'a continent' more and more thoroughly. No one writer can do it.”

“Les sots font le texte, et les hommes d'esprit les commentaires.”

“An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere. (9 December 1852)”

“All I knew then was what I couldn't do. All I knew then was what I wasn't, and it took me some years to discover what I was.Which was a writer.By which I mean not a “good” writer or a “bad” writer but simply a writer, a person whose most absorbed and passionate hours are spent arranging words on pieces of paper.”

“And hold up to the sun my little taper.”

“But every fool describes, in these bright days,His wondrous journey to some foreign court,And spawns his quarto, and demands your praise,—Death to his publisher, to him 'tis sport.”

Resonant Thoughts

"The listeners who buy books after a reading multiply that reading; the author who realizes that he or she may be writing on a blank page but is at least not speaking to a blank wall may be encouraged …"

— Alberto Manguel

Literature1948

#books

"What he dreads is that, during a lull in the conversation, someone will come up with what he calls The Question—“What led you, Mrs. Costello, to become a vegetarian?”—and that she will then get on her…"

— J. M. Coetzee

Literature1940

#writing

"Simplicity is the loving inclination of the soul elevated by God, Who efficaciously drawn it into His own heart. There He reduces all its faculties to unity of spirit, that it may live there, in a n a…"

— John of St. Samson

Medicine1571–1636

#religion

"I thank your Excellency for your generous and obliging offer. Most certain, my inclination leads me to a resignation. My reputation I value more than any advantages of gain; and I consider it in great…"

— Nathanael Greene

Military1742–1786

#time