Written Quotes - Page 36

• My diaries were written primarily, I think, not to preserve the experience but to savor it, to make it even more real, more visible and palpable, than in actual life. For in our family an experience was not finished, not truly experienced, unless written down or shared with another.

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

  Real, Thinking, Diaries

  ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH (1973). “BRING ME A UNICORN”

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• Historical investigation and literary criticism have taken the magic out of the Bible and have made it a composite human book, written by many hands in different ages.

  Bill Vaughan

  Bible, Book, Taken

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• Strange as it may seem, the most ludicrous lines I ever wrote have been written in the saddest mood.

  William Cowper

  Lines, May, Strange

  William Cowper, Robert Southey, William Harvey (1836). “The Works of William Cowper: Life and works of Cowper, by R. Southey”, p.39

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• being a member of the court is a lot like walking through fresh concrete. Do you remember doing that as a child and leaving a footprint and it hardens after you? I'm afraid that's what we do and we look back and we see those opinions we've written and they've sort of hardened after us.

  Sandra Day O'Connor

  Children, Law, Leaving

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• Preaching, in the first sense of the word, ceased as soon as ever the gospel was written.

  John Selden

  Firsts, Preaching

  John Selden, Samuel Weller Singer, Edward FitzGerald (1860). “Table Talk: With a Biographical Pref. and Notes”, p.224

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• I am a political recidivist. An incorrigible, repeat voter. A career lever-pusher. My electoral rap sheet is as long as your arm. Over the course of three decades, I have voted for presidents and school board members. I have voted in high hopes and high dudgeon. I have voted in favor of candidates and merely against their opponents. I have voted for propositions written with such complexity that I needed Noam Chomsky to deconstruct their meaning. I have been a single-issue voter and a marginal voter. I have even voted for people who ran unopposed. Hold an election and I'll be there.

  Ellen Goodman

  Rap, School, Careers

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• God will forgive me the foolish remarks I have made about Him just as I will forgive my opponents the foolish things they have written about me, even though they are spiritually as inferior to me as I to thee, O God!

  Heinrich Heine

  Forgiveness, Forgive Me, Forgiving

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• My age is my own private business and I intend to keep it so - if I can. I am not so old that I am ashamed of my age and I am not so young that I couldn't have written my book and that is all the public needs to know about my age.

  Margaret Mitchell

  Book, Age, Needs

  Margaret Mitchell (1986). “Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the wind letters, 1936-1949”, Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers

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• I have never seen an adequate description anywhere of the amazement, the uncomprehending horror of the bulk of the American people which preceded the firing of that gun at Sumter. Politicians or far-sighted leaders on both sides knew what was coming. And it is they who have written histories of the war. But to the easy-going millions, busied with their farms or shops, the onrushing disaster was as inexplicable as an earthquake. Their protest arose from sea to sea like the clamor of a gigantic hive of frightened bees.

  Rebecca Harding Davis

  War, Gun, Sea

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• If you want to be a writer, you should go into the largest library you can find and stand there contemplating the books that have been written. Then you should ask yourself, 'Do I really have anything to add?' If you have the arrogance or the humility to say yes, you will know you have the vocation.

  Margaret Atwood

  Book, Humility, Arrogance

  Margaret Atwood (1984). “Second words: selected critical prose”, Beacon Press, 1984

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• The history of things that didn't happen has never been written.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Happens

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• Before things are written down they don't exist in quite the same way. The act of fixing them in words gives them a kind of currency that can be traded.

  Erica Jong

  Giving, Fixing, Way

  FaceBook post by Erica Jong from May 02, 2016

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• I am never so calm as after I have written. And the next morning I will feel the familiar anxiety and I will have to begin the process all over again.

  Erica Jong

  Morning, Anxiety, Next

  Erica Jong (2007). “Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life”, p.30, Penguin

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• My theory is that poems are written because of a state of emotional irritation. It may be present for some time before the poet is conscious of what is tormenting him. The emotional irritation springs, probably, from subconscious combinations of partly forgotten thoughts and feelings. Coming together, like electrical currents in a thunder storm, they produce a poem. ... the poem is written to free the poet from an emotional burden.

  Sara Teasdale

  Spring, Emotional, Irritation

  Sara Teasdale, William Drake (1984). “Mirror of the Heart: Poems of Sara Teasdale”, MacMillan Publishing Company

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• In a letter (no matter how quickly it is written or honestly or freely or lovingly) it is more possible to be loving and lovable, more possible to reach out and to take in ... I feel I have somehow deceived you into thinking this is really a human relationship. It is a letter relationship between humans.

  Anne Sexton

  Thinking, Letters, Matter

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• I keep feeling that there isn't one poem being written by any one of us - or a book or anything like that. The whole life of us writers, the whole product I guess I mean, is the one long poem - a community effort if you will. It's all the same poem. It doesn't belong to any one writer - it's God's poem perhaps. Or God's people's poem.

  Anne Sexton

  Book, Mean, Long

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• It's a little mad, but I believe I am many people. When I am writing a poem, I feel I am the person who should have written it.

  Anne Sexton

  Believe, Writing, Self

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• A novel is what you dream in your night sleep. A novel is not waking thoughts although it is written and thought with waking thoughts.

  Gertrude Stein

  Dream, Sleep, Night

  Gertrude Stein, Richard Kostelanetz (2002). “The Gertrude Stein Reader: The Great American Pioneer of Avant-garde Letters”, p.84, Rowman & Littlefield

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• I don't know why so much nonsense about age is written - although I can certainly understand that no one really wants to read anything that says aging sucks.

  Nora Ephron

  Age, Want, Aging

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• There is a secret and wholesome conviction in the heart of every man or woman who has written a book that it should be no easy matter for an intelligent reader to lay down that book unfinished. There is a pardonable impression among reviewers that half an hour in its company is sufficient.

  Agnes Repplier

  Book, Heart, Men

  Agnes Repplier (1894). “In the Dozy Hours, and Other Papers”

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• History is not written in the interests of morality.

  Agnes Repplier

  History, Morality, Interest

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• It would appear, from the best examples, that the proper way of beginning a preface to one's work is with a humble apology for having written at all.

  Ellen Glasgow

  Humble, Apology, Example

  Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow (1938). “Works”

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• I have written chiefly because, though I have often dreaded the necessity, I have found it more painful, in the end, not to write.

  Ellen Glasgow

  Writing, Painful, Ends

  Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow (1938). “Works”

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• In a well-written book we are presented with the maturest reflections, or the happiest flights of a mind of uncommon excellence. It is impossible that we can be much accustomed to such companions without attaining some resemblance to them.

  William Godwin

  Book, Reflection, Mind

  William Godwin (1823). “The enquirer. Reflections on education, manners, and literature. In a series of essays”, p.29

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• Some of my youthful readers are developing wonderful imaginations. This pleases me. When I was young I longed to write a great novel that should win me fame. Now that I am getting old my first book is written to amuse children. For aside from my evident inability to do anything "great," I have learned to regard fame as a will-o-the-wisp which, when caught, is not worth the possession; but to please a child is a sweet and lovely thing that warms one's heart and brings its own reward.

  L. Frank Baum

  Sweet, Children, Book

  Introduction to "The Lost Princess of Oz", 1917.

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