Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
I think the job of the artist is to remind people of what they have chosen to forget. — Arthur Miller Copy Share Image
A pipe gives a wise man time to think and a fool something to stick in his mouth. — C. S. Lewis Copy Share Image
Be not ashamed women, ... You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul. — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
Any essayist setting out on a frail apparatus of notings and jottings is a brave person. — Diane Johnson Copy Share Image
If Plutarch is the essayist I want to believe he is, he would want us all to sit in his chair. — John D'Agata Copy Share Image
What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor, but the silence of the bystander. — Elie Wiesel Copy Share Image
The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so they believe they are clever as he. — Karl Kraus Copy Share Image
Every essay - the subject matter of every essay - is ultimately about the essayist; him or herself. That ultimately, every essayist… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
Essayists write at a length that enables them, within a year, to explore a number of topics, whereas in a book, they'll… — Marty Nemko Copy Share Image
Since baseball time is measured only in outs, all you have to do is succeed utterly; keep hitting, keep the rally alive,… — Roger Angell Copy Share Image
I thought that I wasn't an essayist because I just didn't see myself in a lot of the essays that were popular… — John D'Agata Copy Share Image
To laugh often and love much; to win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children; to earn the approbation… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Sometimes I think no matter how one is born, no matter how one acts, there is something out of gear with one… — Jessie Redmon Fauset Copy Share Image
Special qualities are required of the essayist. A poem or a novel may spring from the inner consciousness of an author. Reasoning… — Flora Thompson Copy Share Image
A serious life, by definition, is a life one reflects on, a life one tries to make sense of and bear witness… — Vivian Gornick Copy Share Image
My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just… — C. S. Lewis Copy Share Image
The most offensive egotist is he that fears to say "I" and "me." "It will probably rain" - that is dogmatic. "I… — Ambrose Bierce Copy Share Image
There is more to be pondered in the grain and texture of life than traditional fiction allows. The work of essayists is… — Charles J. Shields Copy Share Image
It's my experience that people don't think of fiction writing as being as intellectually serious as other kinds of writing in academia… — Alexander Chee Copy Share Image
Jane Jacobs work wouldnt have been complete if it hadn't inspired others to carry it on, and evolve Jane's groundbreaking accomplishments so… — Majora Carter Copy Share Image
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in;… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
They are born, put in a box; they go home to live in a box; they study by ticking boxes; they go… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“Unlike uplifting light fiction, narrative nonfiction’s trammeled territory provides no safe room where an unnerved writer can banish their unpleasant memories. Narrative… — Kilroy J. Oldster Copy Share Image
What I think is important about essayists, about the essay as opposed to a lot of personal writing is that the material… — Meghan Daum Copy Share Image
No matter what the cause, even though it be to conquer with tanks and planes and modern artillery some defenseless black population,… — John T. Flynn Copy Share Image
I'm a woofer, not a tweeter; a writer, not a telegrapher; an essayist, not an aphorist. — Richard Turner Copy Share Image
Christopher Hitchens is the greatest living essayist in the English language. — Christopher Buckley Copy Share Image
Not everyone is capable of madness; and of those lucky enough to be capable, not many have the courage for it. — August Strindberg Copy Share Image
It is a curious fact that the word 'essayist' showed up in English before it existed in French. — John Jeremiah Sullivan Copy Share Image
To put your hands in a river is to feel the chords that bind the earth together. — Barry Lopez Copy Share Image
Nothing becomes reality in the political life of a nation that was not present in its literature as spirit. — Hugo von Hofmannsthal Copy Share Image
One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight, for a very long time, of the shore. — Andre Gide Copy Share Image
Willmott, the English essayist, says poetry is the natural religion of literature. — William Rounseville Alger Copy Share Image
You simply cannot invent any conspiracy theory so ridiculous and obviously satirical that some people somewhere don't already believe it. — Robert Anton Wilson Copy Share Image
So all that is said of the wise man by Stoic or Oriental or modern essayist, describes to each reader his own… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
