True wit is everlasting, like the sun; describing all men, but described by none. [ Buckingham ]

In describing things, I always try to see the whole scene before beginning to write it, and specially to realise the colour of everything. [ Ada Ellen Bayly, a.k.a. Edna Lyall, English novelist and early feminist, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]

I met a brother who, describing a friend of his, said he was like a man who had dropped a bottle and broken it and put all the pieces in his bosom where they were cutting him perpetually. [ H. W. Beecher ]

The whole genius of an author consists in describing well, and delineating character well. Homer, Plato, Virgil, Horace only excel other writers by their expressions and images: we must indicate what is true if we mean to write naturally, forcibly and delicately. [ La Bruyere ]