Samuel Johnson Quotes on Writing
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I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary of preparation, and connection, and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made.
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What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
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I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.
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A transition from an author's book to his conversation, is too often like an entrance into a large city, after a distant prospect. Remotely, we see nothing but spires of temples and turrets of palaces, and imagine it the residence of splendour, grandeur and magnificence; but when we have passed the gates, we find it perplexed with narrow passages, disgraced with despicable cottages, embarrassed with obstructions, and clouded with smoke.
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But, perhaps, the excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some obvious and useful truth in few words.
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ESSAY - A loose sally of the mind; an irregular indigested piece; not a regular and orderly composition.
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Those writers who lay on the watch for novelty, could have little hope of greatness; for great things cannot have escaped former observation.
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Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.
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The Churchyard abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo.
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Tom Birch is as brisk as a bee in conversation; but no sooner does he take a pen in his hand than it becomes a torpedo to him, and benumbs all his faculties.
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A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it.
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Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand; so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any high degree; only about as much as is used in the lower kinds of poetry.
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Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.
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No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.
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No man was more foolish when he had not a pen in his hand, or more wise when he had.
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Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.
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My friend was of opinion that when a man of rank appeared in that character [as an author], he deserved to have his merit handsomely allowed.
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A man might write such stuff for ever, if he would abandon his mind to it.
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Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good.