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A sentence should be read as if its author, had he held a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end.

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How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

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As for style of writing if one has anything to say it drops from him simply and directly as a stone falls to the ground.

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Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot in...more

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

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In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference. We commonly do no...more

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The modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity.

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The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob, before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more...more

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We have the St. Vitus' dance, and cannot possibly keep our heads still

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A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfi...more