Prose Quotes

473 Prose quotes by 367 unique authors

My prose style at this time was a stomach-twisting blend of the Bible, Carl Sandburg, H.L. Mencken, Jeffrey Farnol, Christopher Morley, Samuel Pepys, and Franklin… — Elwyn Brooks White
I'm a failed poet. Reading poetry helps me to see the world differently, and I try to infuse my prose with figurative language, which goes… — Jesmyn Ward
Except by name, Jean Paul Friedrich Richter is little known out of Germany. The only thing connected with him, we think, that has reached this… — Thomas Carlyle
The flesh of prose gets its shape and strength from the bones of grammar. — Constance Hale
My heavens! I've been talking prose for the last forty years without knowing it. — Moliere
Everything that's prose isn't verse and everything that isn't verse is prose. Now you see what it is to be a scholar! — Moliere
Poetry makes its own pertinence, and a single stanza outweighs a book of prose. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Despots play their part in the works of thinkers. Fettered words are terrible words. The writer doubles and trebles the power of his writing when… — Victor Hugo
I complain a lot. That's one way of coping. But I'm in a profession where nobody tells you to quit. No board of other partners… — John Updike
Prose is when all the lines except the last go on to the end. Poetry is when some of them fall short of it. — Jeremy Bentham
We speak of memorizing as getting something 'by heart,' which really means 'by head.' But getting a poem or prose passage truly 'by heart' implies… — John Hollander
It has been said that good prose should resemble the conversation of a well-bred man. — W. Somerset Maugham
You know that fiction, prose rather, is possibly the roughest trade of all in writing. You do not have the reference, the old important reference.… — Ernest Hemingway
Poetry is halfway between prose and music: it is sometimes like an intimate conversation, in words and phrases which need not be fully uttered, and… — Gilbert Highet
Who among us has not, in moments of ambition, dreamt of the miracle of a form of poetic prose, musical but without rhythm and rhyme,… — Charles Baudelaire
I write novellas because I don't like loose sprawling prose. — Jim Harrison
I used to write sonnets and various things, and moved from there into writing prose, which, incidentally, is a lot more interesting than poetry, including… — Shelby Foote
There is a strong tendency in explanatory prose to invoke quantities of tension, energy, and whatnot to explain the genesis of pattern. I believe that… — Gregory Bateson
A prose writer never sees a reader walk out of a book; for a playwright, it's another matter. An audience is an invaluable education. In… — John Lahr
Poetry has the virtue of being able to say twice as much as prose in half the time, and the drawback, if you do not… — Christopher Fry
Prose-it might be speculated-is discourse; poetry ellipsis. Prose is spoken aloud; poetry overheard. — Joyce Carol Oates
Lincoln, steeped in the Bible and Shakespeare, set an impossibly high bar for presidential prose. — Jonathan Raban
Poetry is its own medium; it's very different than writing prose. Poetry can talk in an imagistic sense, it has particular ways of catching an… — Story Musgrave
I guess I find the boundaries between poetry and prose to be somewhat permeable. — Kevin Powers
Poetry and prose are of equal importance to me as a reader, and there doesn't seem to be much difference in my own writing. — Kevin Powers

Who Wrote These Prose Quotes

367 authors contributed a total of 473 Prose Quotes, led by these top contributors: