A help to the composition of classic poetry.
Pity it is that no vanity should be put into the composition of women-kind. [ Proverb ]
Long sentences in a short composition are like large rooms in a little house. [ Shenstone ]
No great composition was ever produced but with the same heavenly involuntariness in which a bird builds her nest. [ John Ruskin ]
The finest composition of human nature, as well as the finest china, may have a flaw in it, and this in either case is equally incurable. [ Fielding ]
The chief ingredients in the composition of those qualities that gain esteem and praise are good nature, truth, good sense, and good breeding. [ Addison ]
Make yourself thoroughly acquainted with your subject before writing, write without special attention to composition, and prune afterwards what you have written
. [ Sir Austen Henry Layard, The Art of Authorship, 1891 ]
Eloquence is relative. One can no more pronounce on the eloquence of any composition than the wholesomeness of a medicine, without knowing for whom it is intended. [ Whately ]
As the air and manner of a gentleman can be acquired only by living habitually in the best society, so grace in composition must be attained by an habitual acquaintance with classical writers. [ Dugald Stewart ]
D'Alembert tells us that Voltaire had always lying on his table the Petit Careme
of Massillon and the Tragedies
of Racine; the former to fix his taste in prose composition, and the latter in poetry. [ Dugald Stewart ]
The richest endowments of the mind are temperance, prudence, and fortitude. Prudence is a universal virtue, which enters into the composition of all the rest; and where she is not, fortitude loses its name and nature. [ Voltaire ]
Of all the species of literary composition, perhaps biography is the most delightful. The attention concentrated on one individual gives a unity to the materials of which it is composed, which is wanting in general history. [ Robert Hall ]
I believe that everyone, sometime or other, dreams that he is reading papers, books, or letters; in which case the invention prompts so readily that the mind is imposed upon, and mistakes its own suggestions for the composition of another. [ Addison ]
If there is excellence in my composition, set it down, first of all things and last, to the general fact that I have no method. Modes of expression in writing, like modes of expression in speech, are referable purely to feeling, not studied, but of the moment. [ Gen. Lew Wallace, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]
A few words worthy to be remembered suffice to give an idea of a great mind. There are single thoughts that contain the essence of a whole volume, single sentences that have the beauties of a large work, a simplicity so finished and so perfect that it equals in merit and in excellence a large and glorious composition. [ Joubert ]
In some exquisite critical hints on Eurythmy.
Goethe remarks, that the best composition in pictures is that which, observing the most delicate laws of harmony, so arranges the objects that they by their position tell their own story.
And the rule thus applied to composition in painting applies no less to composition in literature. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
A composition which dazzles at first sight by gaudy epithets, or brilliant turns of expression, or glittering trains of imagery, may fade gradually from the mind, leaving no enduring impression. Words which flow fresh and warm from a full heart, and which are instinct with the life and breath of human feeling, pass into household memories, and partake of the immortality of the affections from which they spring. [ Whipple ]