People will not bear it when advice is violently given, even if it is well founded. Hearts are flowers; they remain open to the softly falling dew, but shut up in the violent downpour of rain.
~ John Paul Richter
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RELATED CONTENT
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If you can’t annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.
~ Kingsley Amis
I have cultivated my hysteria with joy and terror.
~Charles Baudelaire
When I am dead, I hope it may be said:
“His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.”
~ Hilaire Belloc
It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.
~ Robert Benchley
Nice writing isn’t enough. It isn’t enough to have smooth and pretty language. You have to surprise the reader frequently, you can’t just be nice all the time. Provoke the reader. Astonish the reader. Writing that has no surprises is as bland as oatmeal. Surprise the reader with the unexpected verb or adjective. Use one startling adjective per page.
~ Anne Bernays
About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.
~ Josh Billings
It is by sitting down to write every morning that one becomes a writer. Those who do not do this remain amateurs.
~ Gerald Brenan
Medicine is my lawful wife. Literature is my mistress.
~ Anton Chekhov
Literary people are forever judging the quality of the mind by the turn of expression.
~ Frank Moore Colby
Writers are too self-centered to be lonely.
~ Richard Condon
The secret of good writing is to say an old thin in new way or to say a new thing an old way.
~ Richard Harding Davis
Nothing is new except arrangement.
~ Will Durant
It is the little writer rather than the great writer who seems never to quote, and the reason is that he is never really doing anything else.
~ Havelock Ellis
If you would be a reader, read; if a writer, write.
~ Epictetus
The desire to write grows with writing.
~ Erasmus
Writing is easy; all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead.
~ Gene Fowler
Writing is a struggle against silence.
~ Carlos Fuentes
In order to write about life, first you must live it!
~ Ernest Hemingway
Originality is undetected plagiarism.
~ William Inge
You can write about anything, and if you write well enough, even the reader with no intrinsic interest in the subject will become involved.
~ Tracy Kidder
I’ve experienced t he pain and joy of hte birth of babies and the birth of books and there’s nothing like it: when a child who has been conceived in love is born to a man and woman, the joy of that birth sings throughout the universe. The joy of writing or composing or painting is much the same, and the insemination comes not from the artist himself but from his relationshiip with those he loves, with the whole world.
~ Madeleine L’Engle, in A Circle of Quiet
Though old the thought and oft exprest,
‘Tis his at last who says it best.
~ James Russell Lowell
Usage is the only test. I prefer a phrase that is easy and unaffected to a phrase that is grammatical.
~ W. Somerset Maugham
Taking something from one man and making it worse is plagiarism.
~ George Moore
Literature, the most seductive, the most deceiving, the most dangerous of professions.
~ John Morley
Empty your knapsack of all adjectives, adverbs and clauses that slo your stride and weaken your pace. Travel light. Remember the most memorable sentences in the English language are also the shortest: “The King is dead” and “Jesus wept.”
~ Bill Moyers
A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.
~ Vladimir Nabokov
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.
~ George Orwell
There is nothing like literature: I lose a cow, I write about her death, and my writing pays me enough to buy another cow.
~ Jules Renard
Words are loaded pistols.
~ Jean-Paul Sartre
Originality is not saying something new, originality is taking the mundane and remaking it afresh.
~ Kevin Stilley
A best-seller is the gilded tomb of a mediocre talent.
~ Logan Pearsall Smith
There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.
~ Red Smith
Writing is a form of self-flagellation.
~ William Styron
Word has somehow got around that the split infinitive is always wrong. That is a piece with the outworn notion that it is always wrong to strike a lady.
~ James Thurber
Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.
~ Lionel Trilling
The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.
~ Mark Twain
Adam was the only man who, when he said a good thing, knew that nobody had said it before him.
~ Mark Twain
As to the adjective: when in doubt, strike it out.
~ Mark Twain
Originality is nothing but judicious imitation.
~ Voltaire
Be obscure clearly.
~ E. B. White
I write to understand as much as to be understood.
~ Elie Wiesel
It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything.
~ Virginia Woolf
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- When Did You Become A Writer
- A Passage For My Writer Friends
- How To Write With Style, by Kurt Vonnegut
- The Deer On A Bicycle, by Patrick McManus
- Master List of Great Quotes
If a dog was the teacher you would learn stuff like:
- When loved ones come home, always run to greet them.
- Never pass up the opportunity to go for a joyride.
- Allow the experience of fresh air and the wind in your face to be pure ecstasy.
- When it’s in your best interest, practice obedience.
- Let others know when they’ve invaded your territory
- Take naps.
- Stretch before rising.
- Run, romp, and play daily.
- Thrive on attention and let people touch you.
- Avoid biting when a simple growl will do.
- On warm days, stop to lie on your back in the grass.
- On hot days, drink lots of water and lie under a shady tree.
- When you’re happy, dance around and wag your entire body.
- No matter how often you’re scolded, don’t buy into the guilt thing and pout … run right back and make friends.
- Delight in the simple joy of a long walk.
- Eat with gusto and enthusiasm. Stop when you have had enough.
- Be loyal. Never pretend to be something you’re not.
- If what you want lies buried, dig until you find it.
- When someone is having a bad day, be silent, sit close by and nuzzle them gently.
SILENCE when your words would hurt.
PATIENCE when your neighbor’s curt.
DEAFNESS when the scandal flows.
THOUGHTFULNESS for other’s woes.
PROMPTNESS when stern duty calls.
COURAGE when misfortune falls.
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1. Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.
2. Never trouble another with what you can do yourself.
3. Never spend your money before you have it.
4. Never buy what you do not want, because it is cheap; it will be dear to you.
5. Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold.
6. We never repent for having eaten too little.
7. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.
8. How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.
9. Take things always by their smooth handle.
10. When angry, count ten before you speak. If very angry count one hundred.
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Thomas Jefferson – Select Quotes
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What is the greatest spiritual advice you ever received?
Share your answers in the comments below.
Tony Dungy shared some great advice today while addressing Indiana Wesleyan University students. Dungy said that his parents instilled in him three important lessons:
“They told me, ‘Whatever path you take, do it with gusto and fire, representing the Lord; treat everyone you come across with respect; and, wherever you settle down, make your neighborhood a better place to live.’”
Tony Dungy, head coach of the 2007 Super Bowl Champion Indianapolis Colts, was there to be inducted into the school’s Society of World Changers. The Society of World Changers was launched by Indiana Wesleyan University “to honor exemplary individuals who are impacting their professions with a vibrant religious faith, who embody the mission and vision of the university, and whose lives demonstrate ways students can become world changers.”
I congratulate IWU for selecting such a worthy inductee.
