Authors alone, with more than savage rage,
Unnatural war with brother authors wage. [ Churchill ]

Shelved around us lie the mummied authors. [ Bayard Taylor ]

All authors to their own defects are blind. [ Dryden ]

Authors, like coins, grow dear as they grow old. [ Pope ]

The only impeccable authors are those that never wrote. [ Hazlitt ]

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors. [ Sam'l John ]

Authors are martyrs, witnesses to the truth, or else nothing. [ Carlyle ]

Young authors give their brains much exercise and little food. [ Joubert ]

Strength is not energy; some authors have more muscles than talent. [ Joubert ]

Men possessing small souls are generally the authors of great evils. [ Goethe ]

There are authors in whose hand the pen becomes a magic wand: but they are few. [ Lady Montagu ]

Authors now find, as once Achilles found, the whole is mortal if a part's unsound. [ Young ]

Old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read. [ Bacon ]

Authors and lovers always suffer some infatuation, from which only absence can set them free. [ Dr. Johnson ]

Style seems to depend on three things:
1. a mental attitude and character,
2. a familiarity with the best authors,
3. dexterity in the use of words, acquired by constant practice.
So we must learn to speak by speaking, as we learn to walk by walking, or to dance by dancing. [ John Stuart Blackie, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]

Many books owe their success to the good memories of their authors and the bad memories of their readers. [ Colton ]

Those authors who appear sometimes to forget they are writers, and remember they are men, will be our favorites. [ Disraeli ]

Why aren't more gems from our great authors scattered over the country? Great books aren't within everybody's reach. [ S. T. Coleridge ]

For such kind of borrowing as this, if it be not bettered by the borrower, among good authors is accounted Plagiary. [ Milton ]

It is impossible for authors to discover beauties in one another's works: they have eyes only for spots and blemishes. [ Addison ]

I have a shelf in my study for tried authors; one in my mind for tried principles; and one in my heart for tried friends. [ Sir Richard Cecil ]

Those who relish the study of character may profit by the reading of good works of fiction, the product of well established authors. [ Whately ]

The most lucrative commerce has ever been that of hope, pleasure, and happiness: it is the commerce of authors, women, priests, and kings. [ Mme. Roland ]

Most books fail, not so much from a want of ability in their authors, as from an absence in their productions of a thorough development of their ability. [ Bovee ]

A large library is apt to distract rather than to instruct the learner: it is much better to be confined to a few authors than to wander at random over many. [ Seneca ]

Read the best authors attentively - Bacon, Locke, Hume, Berkeley, Jeremy Taylor, and of moderns, Walter Scott, Bulwer, Thackeray, Ruskin, Froude; and practice constantly. [ George Rawlinson, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]

When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies: Yes, he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them to life. [ Emerson ]

Millions of people are provided with their thoughts as with their clothes; authors, printers, booksellers, and newsmen stand, in relation to their minds, simply as shoemakers and tailors stand to their bodies. [ G. A. Sala ]

Abstracts, abridgments, summaries, etc., have the same use with burning glasses - to collect the diffused rays of wit and learning in authors, and make them point with warmth and quickness upon the reader's imagination. [ Swift ]

Authors have a greater right than any copyright, though it is generally unacknowledged or disregarded. They have a right to the reader's civility. There are favorable hours for reading a book, as for writing it, and to these the author has a claim. Yet many people think that when they buy a book, they buy with it the right to abuse the author. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

Founders and senators of states and cities, lawgivers, extirpers of tyrants, fathers of the people, and other eminent persons in civil government, were honored but with titles of worthies or demigods; whereas such as were inventors and authors of new arts, endowments, and commodities towards man's life, were ever consecrated among the gods themselves. [ Bacon ]

Living authors, therefore, are usually bad companions. If they have not gained character, they seek to do so by methods often ridiculous, always disgusting; and if they have established a character, they are silent for fear of losing by their tongue what they have acquired by their pen - for many authors converse much more foolishly than Goldsmith, who have never written half so well. [ Colton ]

I suppose as long as novels last, and authors aim at interesting their public, there must always be in the story a virtuous and gallant hero; a wicked monster, his opposite; and a pretty girl, who finds a champion. Bravery and virtue conquer beauty; and vice, after seeming to triumph through a certain number of pages, is sure to be discomfited in the last volume, when justice overtakes him, and honest folks come by their own. [ Thackeray ]

Whatever we may say against such collections which present authors in a disjointed form, they nevertheless bring about many excellent results. We are not always so composed, so full of wisdom, that we are able to take in at once the whole scope of a work according to its merits. Do we not mark in a book passages which seem, to have a direct reference to ourselves? Young people especially, who have failed in acquiring a complete cultivation of the mind, are roused in a praiseworthy way by brilliant quotations." [ Goethe ]

Some authors write nonsense in a clear style, and others sense in an obscure one; some can reason without being able to persuade, others can persuade without being able to reason; some dive so deep that they descend into darkness, and others soar so high that they give us no light; and some, in a vain attempt to be cutting and dry, give us only that which is cut and dried. We should labor, therefore, to treat with ease of things that are difficult; with familiarity, of things that are novel; and with perspicuity, of things that are profound. [ Colton ]