Choices Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is true that the discerning intellect of the world is always much in advance of the creative, so that there are competent judges…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

It requires more than mere genius to be an author.

— Jean de la Bruyere

Strange mystery of our nature, that those in whom genius develops itself in imagination, thus taking its most ethereal form, should yet be the…

— Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The real geniuses know where their writing has to be good and where they can get away with some mediocrity.

— Dmitri Shostakovich

A popular author is one who writes what the people think. Genius invites them to think something else.

— Ambrose Bierce

Many an author will speak of writing, in his best work, more than he actually knows.

— Nancy Hale

“If a writer is any good, what he makes will have its source in a realm much larger than that which his conscious mind…

— Flannery O'Connor

There is ... scarcely any species of writing of which we can tell what is its essence, and what are its constituents; every new…

— Samuel Johnson

We don't genuinely need more literary geniuses. One can only read so many books in a lifetime.

— Bill James

The more intelligent a man is, the more originality he discovers in others.

— Blaise Pascal

Every great or even every very good writer makes the world over according to his own specifications.

— Raymond Carver

Great novels are always a little more intelligent than their authors.

— Milan Kundera