Hello there everybody. Today I bring you my new post about quotations from famous writers about life and their work to help you in your journey.
“All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.” –Leo Tolstoy
You may know some of these writers, others are guys you have never heard of, but you will like what they have to say about life and their craft.
So, without further ado, let’s begin:
50- “To be nobody but yourself in a world that's doing its best to make you somebody else, is to fight the hardest battle you are ever going to fight. Never stop fighting.” –E.E. Cummings
(Via: Pixabay)
49-“Be regular and orderly in your life… so that you may be violent and original in your work." –Gustave Flaubert
Gustave Flaubert photographed by Etienne Carjat, 1860 (Via: Wikimedia Commons)
48-“Tolerance is a proof of distrust in one’s own ideals.” –Friedrich Nietzsche
Nietzsche (Via: Pixabay)
47-“A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.” –Wallace Stevens
Stevens in 1948 (Via: Wikimedia Commons)
46-“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson, circa 1857 (Via: Wikimedia Commons)
45-“A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.” –Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound (Via: lithub.com)
44-“Give homage and allegiance to a hero, and you become yourself heroic, it is the law of man.” –D.H. Lawrence
A 1960 front cover of Lady Chatterley’s Lover (Via: https://abarbararich.medium.com)
43-“We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.” –Aesop
Aesop by Diego Velázquez (circa 1638) (Via: Wikimedia Commons)
42-“What a joy it must be to be a truly great writer, even if it means a shotgun at the finish.” –Charles Bukowski
Bukowski (Via: lithub.com)
41-“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” –George Orwell
A still of 1984 (Via: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/movie-reviews/1984)
40-“People who think well, write well.” –David Ogilvy
Jon Hamm as Don Draper in Mad Men (where Ogilvy was mentioned several times) (Via: groomingartist.com)
39-“Art is not to be taught in Academies. It is what one looks at, not what one listens to, that makes the artist. The real schools should be the streets." – Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde (Via: Pixabay)
38-“Try never get drunk outside your own house.” –Jack Kerouac
On the Road, USA Edition (1958) (Via: https://dangerousminds.net)
37-“Judge of a man by his questions rather than by his answers.” –Voltaire
Jean-Antoine Houdon. Bust of Voltaire with wig (1778) (Via: Wikimedia Commons)
36-“As soon as I get an idea, I write a short story, or I start a novel, or I do a poem.” –Ray Bradbury
A Dutch edition of Fahrenheit 451 (1960) (Via: Slate.com)
35-“You can be young without money, but you can’t be old without it.” –Tennessee Williams
Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) (Via: art.com)
34-“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.” –Rudyard Kipling
Kipling’s study, preserved almost exactly as it was, at Bateman’s House. (Via: https://davidince.wordpress.com)
33-“Lack of money is the root of all evil.” –George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw on Time magazine cover (1923). (Via: Wikimedia Commons)
32-“In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore they had better aim at something high.” –Henry David Thoreau
(Via: pixabay)
31-“Put your left hand on the table. Put your right hand in the air. If you stay that way long enough, you’ll get a plot.” –Margaret Atwood
(Via: Collider)
30-“When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.” –Mark Twain
Mark Twain in a billiard room (circa 1900) (Via: Wikimedia Commons)
29-“All men would be tyrants if they could.” –Daniel Defoe
A movie poster of Robinson Crusoe (1954) (Via: cinecedad.blogspot.com)
28-“Always mind what you pretend to be… since you “are” what you pretend to be.” –Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
A cover of Slaughterhouse-Five from 1991(Via: lithubcom)
27-“My pleasures are the most intense known to man: writing and butterfly hunting.” –Vladimir Nabokov
Nabokov, circa 1975 by Horst Tappe (Via: nautil.us)
26-“How can a man come to know himself? Never by thinking, but by doing. Try to do your duty, and you will know at once what you are worth”. – Goethe
Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein. Goethe in the Roman Campagna (1787)
25-“The truth is not for all men, but only for those who seek it.” –Ayn Rand
Gary Cooper as Howard Roark in The Fountainhead (1949) (Via: archdaily.com)
24-“The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.” –Paul Valery
(Via: pixabay)
23-“Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for kindness.” –Seneca
(Via: pixabay)
22-“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” –Maya Angelou
(Via: pixabay)
21-“To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves.” –Federico García Lorca
Statue of García Lorca in Madrid (Via: Wikimedia Commons)
20-“All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.” –Leo Tolstoy
Tolstoy in 1848, at the age of 20 (Via: Wikimedia Commons)
19-“Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition.” –W.H. Auden
(Via: pixabay)
18-“If you are using dialogue – say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.” –John Steinbeck
First-edition cover of The Grapes of Wrath (1939) (Via: Wikimedia Commons)
17-“Sometimes things become possible if we want them bad enough.” ― T.S. Eliot
(Via: pixabay)
16- “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better”. –Samuel Beckett
Waiting for Godot, staging by Otomar Krejca, Avignon Festival (1978) (Via: Wikimedia Commons)
15-"We must believe in free will — we have no choice." –Isaac Bashevis Singer
Isaac Bashevis Singer (c. 1980–90). Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (Via: www.britannica.com)
14-"Only in solitude do we find ourselves.” ―Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno (circa 1925) (Via: Wikimedia Commons)
13-“Be curious not judgmental.” –Walt Whitman
(Via: pixabay)
12-“A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.” – J.R.R. Tolkien
(Via: wallpapercave.com)
11- “A man can’t go out the way he came in…a man has got to add up to something.” – Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller (circa 1997) (Via: Wikimedia Commons)
10-“The most important thing we learn at school is the fact that the most important things can't be learned at school.” – Haruki Murakami
Copies of Murakami’s novels (Via: jw-webmagazine.com)
9-“To me, being an intellectual doesn’t mean knowing about intellectual issues; it means taking pleasure in them.” –Chinua Achebe
(Via: pixabay)
8-“If I could I would always work in silence and obscurity, and let my efforts be known by their results.” –Emily Bronte
(Via: azquotes.com)
7-“To me there is nothing higher than fiction. Nothing.” –Arundhati Roy
(Via: pixabay)
6-“Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded.” –Virginia Woolf
Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf in The Hours (2002) (Via: thingsworthdescribing.com)
5-“In fine, I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time.” –Thucydides
A bust of Thucydides (Via: Wikimedia Commons)
4-“Beneath the blanket is no way to fame. You can’t accomplish anything curled up under the covers.” –Dante
Portrait of Dante by Sandro Botticelli (1495) (Via: Wikimedia Commons)
3-“War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.” – Ambrose Bierce
U.S. Army soldiers return home from a nine-month deployment to Afghanistan on Dec. 10, 2020. | John Moore/Getty Images (Via: politico.com)
2-“The writer’s only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one… If a writer has to rob his mother he will not hesitate; the ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ is worth any number of old ladies”. – William Faulkner
William Faulkner in 1954 by Carl Van Vechten (Via: Wikimedia Commons)
1-“An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Cover for The Great Gatsby (1925) (Via: Wikimedia Commons)
Bonus quote:
“Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.” ― William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare by John Taylor (1610) (Via: Wikimedia Commons)
CULTURE MAKES YOU FREE!
So, what do you think of these quotes? Which one is for favorite? Did I miss a quotation from your favorite writer? Is there a quote you would like to add? If so, leave it in the comment section.
Check my last collection of quotes here:
@thereadingman/25-cool-quotes-from-the
(Image at the beginning: via pixabay)
Thank you so much for stopping by. Please, share this post and don’t forget to upvote!
Until next time.
Take care.
Orlando.