- WIST is my personal collection of quotations, curated for thought, amusement, turn of phrase, historical significance, or sometimes just (often-unintentional) irony.
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Popular Quotables
- “Wealth and Poverty,” speech, National… (8,028)
- Agamemnon, ll. 175-183 [tr. Johnston (2007)] (6,082)
- “The Lesson for Today,” A Witness Tree (1942) (5,972)
- “The Triumph of Stupidity” (10 May 1933) (5,154)
- Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962) (4,894)
- “On The Conduct of Life” (1822) (4,377)
- “In Search of a Majority,” Speech,… (3,949)
- “Get a Knife, Get a Dog, but Get Rid of… (3,763)
- Letter to Clara Rilke (1 Jan 1907) (3,634)
- “A Cult of Ignorance,” Newsweek (21 Jan 1980) (3,536)
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Adams, John • Bacon, Francis • Bible • Bierce, Ambrose • Billings, Josh • Butcher, Jim • Chesterfield (Lord) • Chesterton, Gilbert Keith • Churchill, Winston • Cicero, Marcus Tullius • Einstein, Albert • Eisenhower, Dwight David • Emerson, Ralph Waldo • Franklin, Benjamin • Fuller, Thomas (1654) • Gaiman, Neil • Galbraith, John Kenneth • Gandhi, Mohandas • Hazlitt, William • Heinlein, Robert A. • Hoffer, Eric • Huxley, Aldous • Ingersoll, Robert Green • Jefferson, Thomas • Johnson, Lyndon • Johnson, Samuel • Kennedy, John F. • King, Martin Luther • La Rochefoucauld, Francois • Lewis, C.S. • Lincoln, Abraham • Mencken, H.L. • Orwell, George • Pratchett, Terry • Roosevelt, Eleanor • Roosevelt, Theodore • Russell, Bertrand • Seneca the Younger • Shakespeare, William • Shaw, George Bernard • Stevenson, Adlai • Stevenson, Robert Louis • Twain, Mark • Watterson, Bill • Wilde, Oscar- Only the 45 most quoted authors are shown above. Full author list.
Recent Feedback
- 24-Feb-21 - "Mobs and Education," Speech, Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society, Boston (16 Dec 1860) | WIST on “The Boston Mob,” speech, Antislavery Meeting, Boston (21 Oct 1855).
- 22-Feb-21 - Letter (1860) | WIST on Areopagitica: a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing (1644).
- 21-Feb-21 - "What I Believe," Forum and Century (Oct 1930) | WIST on Memoirs of William Miller, quoted in Life (2 May 1955).
- 21-Feb-21 - "What I Believe," Forum and Century (Oct 1930) | WIST on Letter, unsent (1927).
- 20-Feb-21 - "What I Believe," Forum and Century (Oct 1930) | WIST on Remark (Winter 1927).
- 13-Feb-21 - tweet: the case of anti-cytokine therapy for Covid-19 – Med-stat.info on “The Divine Afflatus,” New York Evening Mail (16 Nov 1917).
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- "What I Believe," Forum and Century (Oct 1930) | WIST: Einstein, Albert
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Quotations about editing
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
Don’t get discouraged because there’s a lot of mechanical work to writing. There is, and you can’t get out of it. I rewrote the first part of A Farewell to Arms at least fifty times. You’ve got to work it over. The first draft of anything is shit.
Let the reader find that he cannot afford to omit any line of your writing because you have omitted every word that he can spare.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
Journal VA, p. 154 (Jul-Aug 1862)
(Source)
Novels aren’t written, they’re rewritten. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn’t quite done it.
Michael Crichton (1942-2008) American author, producer, director, and screenwriter
(Attributed)
Crichton was quoted a number of times on the adage, which he in turn claimed was in more general use. However, he seems to have been key in popularizing it. See here for more discussion and specific citations.
Hasten slowly, and without losing heart,
Put your work twenty times upon the anvil.[Hâtez-vous lentement ; et, sans perdre courage,
Vingt fois sur le métier remettez votre ouvrage.]
Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636-1711) French poet and critic
The Art of Poetry [L’Art Poétique], Canto 1, l. 171 (1674)
There’s a great power in words, if you don’t hitch too many of them together.
Josh Billings (1818-1885) American humorist [pseud. of Henry Wheeler Shaw]
(Attributed)
Quoted in Donald Day, Uncle Sam's Uncle Josh (1972 ed., 1st pub. 1953).
Remember that, sooner or later, before it ever reaches perfection, you will have to let it go and move on and start to write the next thing. Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
In “Ten Rules for Writing Fiction,” The Guardian (20 Feb 2010)
(Source)
If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.
Elmore Leonard (1925-2013) American novelist and screenwriter
In Newsweek (22 Apr 1985)
You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. You’ve been backstage. You’ve seen how the rabbits were smuggled into the hat. Therefore ask a reading friend or two to look at it before you give it to anyone in the publishing business. This friend should not be someone with whom you have a romantic relationship, unless you want to break up.
Margaret Atwood (b. 1939) Canadian writer, literary critic, environmental activist
In “Ten Rules for Writing Fiction,” The Guardian (20 Feb 2010)
(Source)
Rewriting is like scrubbing the basement floor with a toothbrush.
Other Authors and Sources
Pete Murphy
You don’t always have to go so far as to murder your darlings — those turns of phrase or images of which you felt extra proud when they appeared on the page — but go back and look at them with a very beady eye. Almost always it turns out that they’d be better dead. (Not every little twinge of satisfaction is suspect — it’s the ones which amount to a sort of smug glee you must watch out for.)
Diana Athill (b. 1917) British literary editor, novelist, memoirist
In “Ten Rules for Writing Fiction,” The Guardian (20 Feb 2010)
(Source)
See Quiller-Couch.
Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very”; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
(Attributed)
A work is perfectly finished only when nothing can be added to it and nothing taken away.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées, #1809 (1838) [tr. Auster (1983)]
I have only made this [letter] longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter.
[Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.]
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) French scientist and philosopher
Lettres provinciales, #16 (1657)
Alt. trans.: "The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter." Sometimes attributed to Ben Franklin or Mark Twain. For more information see here.
