Popular quotes about Letters! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
Another thing I like to say to my students is this: "How many Corinthians read Paul's letters?" The answer is none. They couldn't have cared less! There aren't even any Corinthians left, but Paul's letters persist. Paul was not a professional writer. He was called to something, and he sent his letters. That's a good way to look at it. That you might be making something that nobody cares about, but you have to do it. It's not that people should care, but that you should care.
Jamaica KincaidIn a badly designed book, the letters mill and stand like starving horses in a field. In a book designed by rote, they sit like stale bread and mutton on the page. In a well-made book, where designer, compositor and printer have all done their jobs, no matter how many thousands of lines and pages, the letters are alive. They dance in their seats. Sometimes they rise and dance in the margins and aisles.
Robert BringhurstI have always been a writer of letters, and of long ones; so, when I first thought of writing a book in the form of letters, I knew that I could do it quickly and easily.
Laurence HousmanMiracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.
C. S. LewisLetters are like wine; if they are sound they ripen with keeping. A man should lay down letters as he does a cellar of wine.
Samuel ButlerIn a man's letters you know, Madam, his soul lies naked, his letters are only the mirror of his breast, whatever passes within him is shown undisguised in its natural process. Nothing is inverted, nothing distorted, you see systems in their elements, you discover actions in their motives.
Samuel JohnsonI like writing letters and receiving letters. It's a shame that we've lost the art of letter-writing and saving correspondence. I mourn that.
Elizabeth McGovernA natural hierarchy is simply an order of increasing wholeness, such as: particles to atoms to cells to organisms, or letters to words to sentences to paragraphs. The whole of one level becomes part of the whole of the next. In other words, natural hierarchies are composed of holons.
Ken WilberUniversal empire is the prerogative of a writer. His concerns are with all mankind, and though he cannot command their obedience,he can assign them their duty. The Republic of Letters is more ancient than monarchy, and of far higher character in the world than the vassal court of Britain.
Thomas PaineAlgebra messed up one of those divisions between things that help you make sense of the world and keep it tidy. Letters make words; figures make numbers. They had no business getting tangled up together.
Mal PeetMost feminists in France came to feminism after '68 as a result of the hypocrisy they experienced in leftist movements. In these movements, where everyone believed there was going to be true equality, fraternity between men and women, and that together they were going to struggle against this rotten society, even there they noticed that the leftists, the militants, kept them "in their place." Women made the coffee while the others did the talking; they were the ones who typed the letters.
Simone de BeauvoirI read letters and journal entries by [Georgia] O'Keeffe (which were infinitely more useful than any critical analysis of her work).
Liza CampbellSince that deluge of newspaper articles I have been so flooded with questions, invitations, suggestions, that I keep dreaming I am roasting in Hell, and the mailman is the devil eternally yelling at me, showering me with more bundles of letters at my head because I have not answered the old ones.
Albert EinsteinWhat I did, you know, being away from my family, letting so many people down. I let myself down, not being out on the football field, being in a prison bed, in a prison bunk, writing letters home, you know. That wasn't my life.
Michael VickThe only way a ventriloquist speaks differently is that he forgoes using his or her lips, and learns to reproduce sounds using the tongue, upper palate, and teeth only. Those 'difficult' letters are B, F, M, P, V, W, and Y.
Jeff DunhamThis Administration also puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand... That means no more illegal wire-tapping of American citizens. No more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. No more tracking citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. No more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient. That is not who we are.
Barack ObamaI regret exceedingly that the disputes between the protestants and Roman Catholics should be carried to the serious alarming height mentioned in your letters. Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause; and I was not without hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy of the present age would have put an effectual stop to contentions of this kind.
George WashingtonM is for magic. All the letters are, if you put them together properly. You can make magic with them, and dreams, and, I hope, even a few surprises.
Neil GaimanThere's a fake Facebook me. There's a fake me Twittering. Sometimes, when it was at the height of right-wing nonsense picking on me, there would be a fake me writing letters to the editor. Just totally not even something I've ever said, that will then become part of the echo chamber.
Janeane GarofaloI've thought of publishing a book of my hate mail, but I don't own the rights to the letters.
Alan Dershowitz[John Adams] diary, of course, is even more revealing of his feelings. Both his letters to [his wife] Abigail and his diary tell us what he really thinks about people and events.
Gordon S. WoodEvery European goes on the streets and sees medieval churches. Not if you live in Indianapolis. The most exciting letters I received were from people in places like that.
Umberto EcoOver the last couple of years I have gotten an average of 2,000 letters a week from fans.
Davy JonesGansey studied Adam's erratic handwriting. His letters always looked like they were running from something.
Maggie StiefvaterImagination bound us stronger than love. Within its limitless borders we launched ships and love affairs, discovered lost worlds, made buildings and babies, found husbands, wrote letters and Broadway plays. We made ourselves up everyday.
Marita Golden[I began to unload] the pyramid of honors, civic and literary, which had been heaped on me by the headlong process of rewarding a popular success. One day, I sat down and wrote a wholesale lot of letters of resignation. When I finished, I didn't belong to a single authors club or patriotic society. I was myself again, whatever that was.
Mary AntinI just started doing this one-man show, and I wanted to be able to score it, so I bought a guitar, and got a keyboard and got a harmonica. I remember when I started that I didn't understand why a harmonica had different letters on them.
Demetri MartinPredictions that unit cohesion could not survive honesty about sexual orientation were simply wrong. What does threaten morale arethe prolonged investigations, the questioning of friends and co-workers, the searches of barracks for magazines and letters, the witch hunts.
Anna QuindlenThe age of technology has both revived the use of writing and provided ever more reasons for its spiritual solace. Emails are letters, after all, more lasting than phone calls, even if many of them r 2 cursory 4 u.
Anna QuindlenOver the last two years, I have been able to comb through The Prince's archives. I have been free to read his journals, diaries and many thousands of the letters.
Jonathan DimblebyI even got letters form kids in hospitals saying the music is what keeps them going, and that really touched my heart.
Tom CochraneI am asked often about Abraham Lincoln's mistakes and faults; he certainly made some mistakes. I have chapter in President Lincoln about the Powhatan affair that was a royal screw-up in the early days - right alongside the Sumter affair. Lincoln signed letters he should not signed, and the ship was sent to two places at one under two captains etc. Fortunately, no great harm. Lincoln took the blame and did not do anything like that again.
William Lee MillerI have got an iPad, what a joy! Van Gogh would have loved it, and he could have written his letters on it as well.
David HockneyReal writers-that is, capital W Writers-rarely make much money. Their biggest reward is the occasional reader's response.... Commentators-in-print voicing big fat opinions-you might call us small w writers-get considerably more feedback than Writers. The letters I personally find most flattering are not the very rare ones that speak well of my editorials, but the occasional reader who wants to know who writes them. I always happily assume the letter-writers is implying that the editorials are so good that I couldn't have written them myself.
Malcolm ForbesIf a man wishes to truly not be written about, he would do well not to write letters to 18-year-old girls, inviting them into his life.
Joyce MaynardIf I ever saw an amputee getting hanged, I'd probably just start calling out letters.
Demetri MartinThe nation in arms is virtually a communist state: the people must be paid wages and fed and protected and regimented behind the lines as much as on the front. Minds must be kept loyal and at the right pitch of hate, so that successive drafts of fighters are accepted without murmurings. Letters and newspapers must be censored while the propaganda mill grinds on. As for decisions of strategy and overall command, they must please many masters: dissenters in the cabinet, the heads of the allied states and public opinion. Hence failures must be disguised or concealed.
Jacques BarzunIt's interesting, once I have convinced people that, yes, I have a sister with a mental disability, the retard jokes really dry up, so I'm not sure how much retard humor is really going on out there, but I imagine there's a lot because it's a pretty safe group to make fun of. It's not like the Retards of America are gonna rise up and organize a protest. They're not gonna write letters. They only just recently got the Supreme Court to stop executing them.
Bonnie McFarlaneTo aspiring writers, I would tell them that we live in a wonderful time where you're able to make your work visible, easily. If you think about it, even ten years ago or twenty years ago, there was a middle man, there was a publisher, there were studios, there was this world of rejection letters. Now, we're in a place where we have the technology and the ability to go shoot our own movies or to put stuff on YouTube or a blog, if you're a writer, or self-publish.
Diablo CodyLetters of the condemned. Last words scratched on a cellโs wall. To write like that.
Anna KamienskaAmong the letters my readers write me, there is a certain category which is continuously growing, and which I see as a symptom of the increasing intellectualization of the relationship between readers and literature.
Hermann Hessebut paper and ink have conjuring abilities of their own. arrangements of lines and shapes, of letters and words on a series of pages make a world we can dwell and travel in.
Lynda BarryA man who loves his wife will love her letters and her photographs because they speak to him of her. So if we love the Lord Jesus, we shall love the Bible because it speaks to us of him.
John StottHad I not gone through the ordeal, in more than one country, of landing a job, I would he tempted to lose patience over the number of letters pouring in from fellows who want me or someone else to hand them a job on a silver platter with a guarantee that they will receive the wonderful promotion their talents warrant.... But a tragic number of young men and even older men have a notion that it is not up to them to prosecute the bettering process. They look to someone else to perform the trick for them.
B. C. Forbes