Circumstances Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson

I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.

— John Steinbeck

It is the glory and merit of some men to write well and of others not to write at all.

— Jean de la Bruyere

Because a man can write great works he is none the less a man.

— W. Somerset Maugham

Next to doing things that deserve to be written, nothing gets a man more credit, or gives him more pleasure than to write things…

— Lord Chesterfield

The whole relationship between a writer's spiritual/emotional condition and the kind of wordstuff and form-making that's going on in his work is an interesting…

— Seamus Heaney

The only reason people write is because they are not wonderful men.

— Anthony J. Carson

When people find a man of the most distinguished abilities as a writer their inferior while he is with them, it must be highly…

— Samuel Johnson

There is some reason to believe that when a man does not write his poetry it escapes by other vents through him, instead of…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

I'm quite sure that most writers would sustain real poetry if they could, but it takes devotion and talent.

— Marguerite Young

The quality which makes man want to write and be read is essentially a desire for self-exposure and masochism. Like one of those guys…

— James Jones

Writing is an expression of the writer's own peculiar personality, could not help being so. Yet in reading great works one feels that the…

— Eudora Welty

A good writer does not write as people write, but as he writes.

— Baron de Montesquieu