A good writer does not write as people write, but as he writes. [ Montesquieu ]

A wise writer does not reveal himself here and there, but everywhere. [ Lowell ]

That is the best part of each writer which has nothing private in it. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

The obscurity of a writer is generally in proportion to his incapacity. [ Quintilian ]

Every good writer has much idiom; it is the life and spirit of language. [ Landor ]

Altogether the style of a writer is a faithful representative of his ideas. [ Goethe ]

The young writer should remember that bigness is not greatness, nor fury force. [ George William Curtis ]

In every work regard the writer's end, Since none can compass more than they intend. [ Pope ]

The familiar writer is apt to be his own satirist. Out of his own mouth is he judged. [ Whipple ]

We are as much informed of a writer's genius by what he selects as by what he originates. [ Emerson ]

A witty writer is like a porcupine; his quill makes no distinction between friend and foe. [ H. W. Shaw ]

It is commonly the personal character of a writer which gives him his public significance. [ Goethe ]

The commendation of adversaries is the greatest triumph of a writer, because it never comes unless extorted. [ Dryden ]

The highest reach of a news-writer is an empty reasoning on policy, and vain conjectures on the public management. [ La Bruyere ]

An elegant writer has observed, that wit may do very well for a mistress, but that he should prefer reason for a wife. [ Colton ]

Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure; emotion is easily propagated from the writer to the reader. [ Joubert ]

One writer excels at a plan or a title-page; another works away at the body of the book; and a third is a dab hand at an index. [ Goldsmith ]

Multitudes of words are neither an argument of clear ideas in the writer, nor a proper means of conveying clear notions to the reader. [ Adam Clarke ]

The good writer never chooses a word at hazard, or without noting its harmony in sound as well as sense with what precedes and follows. [ Sir Edwin Arnold, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]

The writer, like a priest, must be exempted from secular labor. His work needs a frolic health; he must be at the top of his condition. [ Emerson ]

Every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great or original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished. [ Wordsworth ]

A great writer possesses, so to speak, an individual and unchangeable style, which does not permit him easily to preserve the anonymous. [ Voltaire ]

An old Spanish writer says, To return evil for good is devilish; to return good for good is human; but to return good for evil is godlike. [ Whately ]

The writer of a book, is not he a preacher preaching not to this parish or that, on this day or that, but to all men in all times and places? [ Carlyle ]

What an ornament and safeguard is humor! Far better than wit for a poet and writer. It is a genius itself, and so defends from the insanities. [ Walter Scott ]

The News-writer lies down at Night in great Tranquillity, upon a piece of News which corrupts before Morning, and which he is obliged to throw away as soon as he awakes. [ De La Bruyere ]

The way to acquire lasting esteem is not by the fewness of a writer's faults, but the greatness of his beauties, and our noblest works are generally most replete with both. [ Goldsmith ]

A lady of genius will give a genteel air to her whole dress by a well-fancied suit of knots, as a judicious writer gives a spirit to a whole sentence by a single expression. [ Gay ]

A good reader is nearly as rare as a good writer. People bring their prejudices, whether friendly or adverse. They are lamp and spectacles, lighting and magnifying the page. [ Willmott ]

No good writer was ever long neglected; no great man overlooked by men equally great. Impatience is a proof of inferior strength, and a destroyer of what little there may be. [ Landor ]

A good deal depends upon luck as well as care, and sometimes a writer must wait, or even leave off and return to work again, before he can hit upon the turn of words required. [ Richard D. Blackmore, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]

It is admirably remarked, by a most excellent writer, that zeal can no more hurry a man to act in direct opposition to itself than a rapid stream can carry a boat against its own current. [ Fielding ]

My own firm conviction is that no education can make a writer. The heart must be hot behind the pen. Out of the abundance of life and its manifold experiences comes the power to touch life. [ Amelia E. Barr, The Art of Authorship, 1891 ]

If I were a writer of books, I would compile a register, with the comment of the various deaths of men; and it could not but be useful, for who should teach men to die would at the same time teach them to live. [ Montaigne ]

In composing, think much more of your matter than your manner. To be sure, spirit, grace, and dignity of manner are of great importance, both to the speaker and writer; but of infinitely more importance is the weight and worth of matter. [ Wirt ]

Genius, indeed, melts many ages into one, and thus effects something permanent, yet still with a similarity of office to that of the more ephemeral writer. A work of genius is but the newspaper of a century, or perchance of a hundred centuries. [ Hawthorne ]

Eloquence, to produce her full effect, should start from the head of the orator, as Pallas from the brain of Jove, completely armed and equipped. Diffidence, therefore, which is so able a mentor to the writer, would prove a dangerous counsellor for the orator. [ Colton ]

An era is fast approaching when no writer will be rend by the majority, save and except those than can effect that for bales of manuscript that the hydrostatic screw performs for bales of cotton, by condensing that matter into a period that before occupied a page. [ Cottar ]

We know much of a writer by his style. An open and imperious disposition is shown in short sentences, direct and energetic. A secretive and proud mind is cold and obscure in style. An affectionate and imaginative nature pours out luxuriantly, and blossoms all over with ornament. [ Beecher ]

If you would learn to write, it is in the street you must learn it. Both for the vehicle and for the aims of fine arts, you must frequent the public square. The people, and not the college, is the writer's home. A scholar is a candle which the love and desire of all men will light. [ Emerson ]

The education which has, however, made me a writer has been a living one. I have not only read much, I have seen much, and enjoyed much, and, above all, I have sorrowed much. God has put into my hands every cup of life, sweet and bitter, and the bitter has often become sweet, and the sweet bitter. [ Amelia E. Barr, The Art of Authorship, 1891 ]

A fiction which is designed to inculcate an object wholly alien to the imagination sins against the first law of art; and if a writer of fiction narrow his scope to particulars so positive as polemical controversy in matters ecclesiastical, political or moral, his work may or may not be an able treatise, but it must be a very poor novel. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

Propriety of thought and propriety of diction are commonly found together. Obscurity and affectation are the two great faults of style. Obscurity of expression generally springs from confusion of ideas; and the same wish to dazzle, at any cost, which produces affectation in the manner of a writer, is likely to produce sophistry in his reasoning. [ Macaulay ]

What caricature is in painting, burlesque is in writing; and in the same manner the comic writer and painter correlate to each other; as in the former, the painter seems to have the advantage, so it is in the latter infinitely on the side of the writer. For the monstrous is much easier to paint than describe, and the ridiculous to describe than paint. [ Fielding ]

A clear running brook is the best teacher of style. There is a quick forward movement - but not measured or monotonous movement - while the water is so limpid that everything is seen through the crystal medium. It seems to me that the best style is that which reveals the writer's thoughts so easily, plainly, and musically that the reader becomes engrossed in the thought or story and forgets the writer. [ E P. Roe, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]

The habit of committing our thoughts to writing is a powerful means of expanding the mind, and producing a logical and systematic arrangement of our views and opinions. It is this which gives the writer a vast superiority, as to the accuracy and extent of his conceptions, over the mere talker. No one can ever hope to know the principles of any art or science thoroughly who does not write as well as read upon the subject. [ Blakey ]

I put myself, my experiences, my observations, my heart and soul into my work. I press my soul upon the white paper. The writer who does this may have any style, he or she will find the hearts of their readers. Writing a book involves, not a waste, but a great expenditure of vital force. Yet I can assure you I have written the last lines of most of my stories with tears. The characters of my own creation had become dear to me. I could not bear to bid them good-bye and send them away from me into the wide world. [ Amelia E. Barr, The Art of Authorship, 1891 ]