Jean-Jacques Rousseau on writing

A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue.

What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?

It is in man’s heart that the life of nature’s spectacle exists; to see it, one must feel it.

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

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

G. K. Chesterton1874–1936Heretics (1905)