Books Quote by Guy de Maupassant

Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Consultation and compliance can conduce little to the perfection of any literary performance; for whoever is so doubtful of his own abilities as to…

— Samuel Johnson

A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

If an author be supposed to involve his thoughts in voluntary obscurity, and to obstruct, by unnecessary difficulties, a mind eager in the pursuit…

— Samuel Johnson

When I begin to doubt my ability to work the word, I simply read another writer and know I have nothing to worry about.…

— Charles Bukowski

Let not a man do what his sense of right bids him not to do, nor desire what it forbids him to desire. This…

— Mencius

A writer is unfair to himself when he is unable to be hard on himself.

— Marianne Moore

Every limited mind demands a certain freedom of expression, and the man who cannot express himself satisfactorily without the stimulation derived from the spirited…

— H. P. Lovecraft

That choice to be ready to reject all other purposes, in favor of the possibilities of language freed from utility, is when the writer…

— Matthew Zapruder

People generally will soon understand that writers should be judged, not according to rules and species, which are contrary to nature and art, but…

— Victor Hugo

“In many ways an artistic nature unfits a man for a practical existence.”

— Robert Louis Stevenson

“Just as the creative artist is not allowed to choose, neither is he permitted to turn his back on anything: a single refusal, and…

— Rainer Maria Rilke