Writ

“ Who chose to read or spell or write!
Through all the centuries marching down,
For others we have won renown,
Nor broken ranks, nor—heed it well!—
From spelling had one breathing-spell!
With all the world it is not thus! ”

“ Excellent reader, never write letters in a hurry—cruel letters, that is. Love-letters you may pour out red-hot and post before the ink is dry. But not cruel letters. Give yourself a day or two for reflection. Life is a rum thing. ”

“ Writing winna do it—a letter canna look, and pray, and beg, and beseech, as the human voice can do to the human heart. A letter's like the music that the ladies have for their spinets—naething but black scores, compared to the same tune played or sung. ”

“ Nor if a man shall write, like me, things nigh to prose akin, Shall he, however well he write, the name of poet win? To genius, to the man-whose soul is touched with fire divine, Whose voice speaks like a trumpet-note, that honoured name assign. 'Tis not enough that you compose your verse In diction irreproachable, pure, scholarly, and terse, Which, dislocate its cadence, by anybody may Be spoken like the language of the father in the play. ”

“ Let us keep in mind value, selection, subordination, proportion, emphasis, as a second group of terms for principles involved in writing. We may also wish to give our subject further elements of appeal through what may be suggested beyond the telling, through the melody and rhythm of the words, or through a quickening of the sense of the beautiful. Suggestion, melody, rhythm, beauty, are to be included, then, in a third group of qualities that may contribute to the effectiveness of what we write. ”

“ Were it not for the words 'prosecute to conclusion,' we doubt if any court would hold that the act applied to an appeal or writ of error in a civil cause. The applicant, by the statute, must declare the nature of his cause of action. Surely an erroneous ruling by the trial court cannot be held to furnish a 'cause of action,' as that phrase is commonly understood. The statute, by that term, in our judgment, refers to a legal demand by one against another, not to the rulings of a trial court. ”

“ "Look, then, into thine heart, and write! ”

“ When they write their books, they write the history of their inner life. You open a book and you read twenty lines, and in the tone and character of those twenty lines you seem to feel the beating of the writer’s pulse. ”

“ The little girl and boy are writing letters—can you guess to whom they are writing?—and the mother is knitting, and the father is reading his newspaper; as you will see in a moment for yourselves. So be very quiet, for now it is going to begin. ”

“ Fortunately for us, letters have been written in every age, and countless private journals. From these sources come the anecdotes, the jests, the bits of gossip which recall the past more vividly, and make these old rulers seem life-like even yet. ”

“ Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume
Do not write verse until you fail to express yourself in prose. Verse should glide full-winged over the surface of the waters where the spirit of God lies sleeping. It should deal carelessly with poor things like prepositions and pronouns. They are but the spray-bubbles beaten back by its wings. Your smaller words are staffs falling as regularly and heavily as a tread on a board walk. Your phrases march; they do not fly. ”

“ I assure you I feel this, so do not misinterpret anything I say to you as being written in a flippant or critical spirit. One always feels the want of the voice and eyes to accompany a letter and give it the right tone. ”

“ If a letter is to be written to a friend, a report to an employer, a communication to a newspaper, see that it has a beginning, a middle and an end. The majority of writings are without these pleasing adornments. Only the great pieces possess them. ”

“ Then, again, we have discovered that often we are made to feel most deeply, not by detailed statement, but by suggestion: in the case of a speaker, perhaps by a momentary gesture, or play of features, by a sudden inflection of the voice, or a pause in speech, and the occasional accent of a word or sentence; in the case of a writer, often as much by what he leaves unsaid, by the thought that is veiled behind the statement, by the choice and emphasis of certain features of his record. Further, we may have learned to find occasional value even in uncertainty or indecision. ”

“ In writing, each letter is formed by its peculiar motions, yet we make them so unconsciously that a skillful penman will describe beautiful curves while thinking only of the idea that the sentence is to express. ”

“ Whatever hath been written shall remain, Nor be erased nor written o'er again; The unwritten only still belongs to thee: Take heed, and ponder well what that shall be." ”

“ In prose, therefore, we are of opinion that the usual forms of prose may occasionally, and to a certain extent, be departed from, without giving any great offence to the reader.
Not so, however, in rhyming poetry—and, above all, not so in that species of it we are now writing about, the rhymed drama. ”

“ Every language, by counter-change, replies to the writer’s touch or breath his own intention, articulate: this is his note. Much has always been said, many things to the purpose have been thought, of the power and the responsibility of the note. ”

“ No; our object is, by indicating thus the number of sorts, to elucidate the importance of letters, and to prove that, if their writing be not, like that of poetry, ranked among the fine arts, it well deserves to be. For what more admirable accomplishment can there be—what is of more importance often than the proper composing of letters? Many a reputation is made or marred by a single epistle. ”

“ For some years I wrote in a desultory sort of fashion, and it was not until after my mother's death, about fourteen years ago, that feeling lonely—for my four brothers all died young—I adopted writing as a profession. ”

“ Among many frank utterances of an opinion early formed, that whatever my potentialities as a writer of prose, I had but small vocation as a writer of poetry, I preserve one such utterance, which will, I trust, be found not less interesting to other readers from affording a glimpse of the writer’s attitude towards the old controversy touching the several and distinguishing elements that contribute to make good prose on the one hand and good verse on the other. ”

“ But the true art of letter-writing rests with you—and your own personality. We would suggest that you read carefully each letter you receive, noting and remembering those expressions that most appeal to you. A good appeal is generally universal; what appeals to you in a letter you receive will appeal to others. ”

“ We think it abominable to receive and to have to answer letters about nothing, epistles that make one ask "Why were they written?" We are certainly privileged to be in touch with so many superior minds. ”

“ And this is but another proof that the Written Word is a Fairy, as mocking and elusive as Willy Wisp, speaking lying words to us in a feigned voice. So let all readers of books take warning! ”

“ Henceforth letter-writing had to take the place of all the affection that could not be lived. ”

“ Thus the paper was handed round till it was filled. It was then unrolled, and each player was required to write a copy of verses in which these words were to be introduced as rhymes in the order in which they stood in the list. ”

“ Every book is, in an intimate sense, a circular letter to the friends of him who writes it. ”

“ But the writer of a letter, if he wish his words to prevail with the reader, should send them out as written by himself, by his own hand, with his own marks, his own punctuation, correct or incorrect, with the evidence upon them that they have come out from his own mind. ”

“ Letters which none know how to write save those who, despising the control of time and space, have learnt to lean over the edge of the world, and claim a part in some far-off life. Letters which, without one word of sentiment from beginning to end, leave both the writer's and reader's hearts full of a great kindliness and peace. ”

“ They write epics, they write lyrics, they write riddles and marching songs and drinking songs and rhetoric, and chronicles, and elegies, and pathetic memories; and in everything that they write they reveal things greater than they know. ”

“ Do you remember writing in your diary, ‘I understand how: I do not understand why’? ”

“ It must be owned, you have fallen upon a manner of writing, in a series of Letters, which is very affecting, and capable of great improvements. It preserves a great probability in the narration, and makes every thing appear animated and impassioned. ”

“ But there may be times when you find that you can say what you mean better in a few words of verse than in many of ordinary prose, that you can express some aspect of out of doors, or some sensation, more vividly in verse than in any other way. You will notice that words seem often to have a greater force and life in poetry than in prose, and if you make use of this quality, you will be writing real poetry. ”

“ Walk through the world with your eyes and ears closed, and embody the negative results in a story or a poem. As to Poetry, with a fine instinct we generally begin by writing verse, because verse is the last thing that the public want to read. ”

“ Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. ”

“ It often happens that a mental preparation [Pg 136] unconsciously takes place in us for events about to happen. A letter is on its way to us, and we think of the writer, sometimes expressing a solicitude the letter's contents justify. ”

“ He is an old-fashioned letter-writer, the essence of the old fashion of letter-writing lying, as with true essay-writing, in the dexterous availing oneself of accident and circumstance, in the prosecution of deeper lines of observation ”

“ Almost any topic will serve to arouse the argumentative zeal of the average reader, who rushes to the fray with that joyous alacrity which is so exhilarating to the peaceful looker-on. The disputed pronunciation or spelling of a word, if ventilated with spirit in a literary journal, will call forth dozens of letters, all written in the most serious and urgent manner, and all apparently emanating from people of rigorous views and limitless leisure. ”

“ For my own part, I am but just set up in the business, so know little about it—but, in my opinion, to write a book is for all the world like humming a song—be but in tune with yourself, madam, 'tis no matter how high or how low you take it. ”

“ Letter writing, a delightful branch of literature, attained its highest excellence in the eighteenth century. It is an art which gains most, if the paradox may be allowed, by being artless. The carefully studied epistle, written [Pg 199] with a view to publication, may have its value, but it cannot have the charm of a letter written in the familiar intercourse of friendship. It is the correspondence prompted by the heart which reaches the heart of the reader. ”

“ The close of a less intimate letter, like taking leave of a visitor in your drawing-room, is necessarily more ceremonious. And the "ceremonious close" presents to most people the greatest difficulty in letter-writing. ”

“ The writing will therefore be upon an enlarged scale, loose, sprawling, and can have little, if any, characteristic resemblance to the natural and habitual style of the controlling writer, and of course none of the person's whose hand is passive. ”

“ In such Letters the Souls of Men should appear undress’d: And in that negligent habit, they may be fit to be seen by one or two in a Chamber, but not to go abroad into the Streets.’ So we have lost the letters of a man whom we can easily believe to have been the best letter-writer of his century and country. ”

“ If you desire to become a good letter writer, improve your penmanship, improve your language and grammar, re-writing once or twice every letter that you have occasion to write, whether on social or business subjects. ”

“ We should write a myriad or two love letters, before we are [72] ready to write for the world.... By writing and dreaming and travelling and living toward the one, we learn how to focalise our forces. ”

“ I have now attained the true art of letter-writing, which we are always told is to express on paper exactly what one would say to the same person by word of mouth. ”

“ She has written much more poetry than prose. The history of her mind in this respect is sketched with much beauty and simplicity in the following extract from a letter in reply to one making inquiries on this point. ”