He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes a book.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
A wise man should so write (though in words understood by all men) that wise men only should be able to commend him.
Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method. Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.
The writer studies literature, not the world. He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write.
Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.
No writer, no matter how gifted, immortalizes himself unless he has crystallized into expressive and original phrase the eternal sentiments and yearnings of the human heart.
If modesty and candor are necessary to an author in his judgment of his own works, no less are they in his reader.
Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.
He that will write well in any tongue, must follow this counsel of Aristotle, to speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do: and so should every man understand him, and the judgment of wise men allow him.
One man is as good as another until he has written a book.
The wise man reads both books and life itself.