“It requires more than mere genius to be an author”
92 quotes · page 4 of 5
“It requires more than mere genius to be an author”
“There are certain things in which mediocrity is not to be endured, such as poetry, music, painting, public speaking”
“A mediocre mind thinks it writes divinely; a good mind thinks it writes reasonably”
“Making books is a skilled trade, like making clocks”
“It is the glory and merit of some men to write well, and of others not to write at all”
“When a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble and courageous feelings, seek for no other rule to judge the event by; it is good and made by a good workman”
““Literature - the expression of a nation's mind in writing”
“An artist's flair is sometimes worth a scientist's brains”
“A book ought to be the ax to break the frozen sea within us”
“There is nothing new in art except talent”
“The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese”
“A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author”
“Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.”
“An artist will betray himself by some sort of sincerity”
“As fire kindled by fire, so is the poet's mind kindled by contact with a brother poet.”
“I am fit for nothing but literature”
“The excellency of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeable evaporate”
“Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity, it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance”
“If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree, it had better not come at all”
“Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject”