"We like that a sentence should 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.

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












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

More Henry David Thoreau quotes
"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...
"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.
"How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
"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.
"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...
"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...
"The modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity.
"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...
"We have the St. Vitus' dance, and cannot possibly keep our heads still