Murasaki Shikibu on writing

More about writing

• To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say and to finish without knowing what you have written.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau1712–1778

  • Love

• Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say ‘infinitely’ when you mean ‘very’; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

  C. S. Lewis1898–1963

• Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

  Benjamin Franklin1706–1790

  • Reading

All 377 quotes about writing

Popular quotes

• No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent.

  John Donne1572–1631No Man Is an Island (1624), Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624), Meditation 17In context

• I came, I saw, I conquered.

  Julius Caesar100–44 BCInscription on the triumphal wagon reported in The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius, as translated by Robert Graves (1957).

  • Success

• The unexamined life is not worth living.

  Socrates470–399 BCThe Apology of Socrates (399 BC)

  • Philosophy