“For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.”

—  Arthur Schopenhauer, book Parerga and Paralipomena

The Art of Literature
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this giv…" by Arthur Schopenhauer?
Arthur Schopenhauer photo
Arthur Schopenhauer261
German philosopher 1788–1860

Related quotes

Ernest Hemingway photo

“A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Nobel Prize Speech (1954)

Alberto Manguel photo

“The listeners who buy books after a reading multiply that reading; the author who realizes that he or she may be writing on a blank page but is at least not speaking to a blank wall may be encouraged by the experience, and write more.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

The Author As Reader, p. 259.
A History of Reading (1996)

Samuel Beckett photo

“For the only way one can speak of nothing is to speak of it as though it were something, just as the only way one can speak of God is to speak of him as though he were a man, which to be sure he was, in a sense, for a time, and as the only way one can speak of man, even our anthropologists have realized that, is to speak of him as though he were a termite.”

Samuel Beckett book Watt

Part II, p. 77
Watt (1943)

Joseph Joubert photo

“When we speak, we write what we are saying in the air.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

“An author frequently chooses solemn or overwhelming subjects to write about; he is so impressed at writing about Life and Death that he does not notice that he is saying nothing of the slightest importance about either.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

"Ten Books," The Southern Review (Autumn 1935) [p. 9]
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

Billy Corgan photo

“…What people miss about (Marilyn) Manson is that he is just reflecting, he's an artist, people want to focus that energy on him, but it's not really him, it's really about you. So for every guy sitting there with a beer and a.45 in his belt, Manson is just speaking to that end of society. He's speaking as an artist. He's not speaking as himself, and that's where people get really lost with Manson.”

Billy Corgan (1967) American musician, songwriter, producer, and author

Corgan, William. Interview. 1998 Pre-Grammy Show. MTV. 25 February 1998.

Raymond Chandler photo

“The dilemma of the critic has always been that if he knows enough to speak with authority, he knows too much to speak with detachment.”

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Novelist, screenwriter

"A Qualified Farewell" (essay, early 1950's), published in The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler (1976)

Alexis De Tocqueville photo

“In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Source: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter XV-IXX, Chapter XV.

Thomas Carlyle photo

“With his sharp power of vision, resolute power of action, I doubt not he could have learned to write Books withal, and speak fluently enough;—he did harder things than writing of Books. This kind of man is precisely he who is fit for doing manfully all things you will set him on doing.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero As King

Jacques Derrida photo

“In writing what he does not speak, what he would never say and, in truth, would probably never even think, the author of the written speech is already entrenched in the posture of the sophist; the man of non-presence and non-truth. Writing is thus already on the scene. The incompatibility between written and the trueis clearly announced at the moment Socrates starts to recount the way in which men are carried out themselves by pleasure, become absent from themselves, forget themselves and die in the thrill of song.”

Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) French philosopher (1930-2004)

Plato's Pharmacy, Pharmacia
Dissemination (1972)

Related topics