A Voice from the Attic (1960)
Context: I feel that what is wrong with scores of modern novels which show literary quality, but which are repellent and depressing to the spirit is not that the writers have rejected a morality, but that they have one which is unexamined, trivial, and lopsided. They have a base concept of life; they bring immense gusto to their portrayals of what is perverse, shabby, and sordid, but they have no clear notion of what is Evil; the idea of Good is unattractive to them, and when they have to deal with it, they do so in terms of the sentimental or the merely pathetic. Briefly, some of them write very well, but they write from base minds that have been unimproved by thought or instruction. They feel, but they do not think. And the readers to whom they appeal are the products of our modern universal literacy, whose feeling is confused and muddled by just such reading, and who have been deluded that their mental processes are indeed a kind of thought.
“Furthermore, since I have observed that our citizens are distracted with public affairs and private business, I have thought it best to write briefly, so that my readers, whose intervals of leisure are small, may be able to comprehend in a short time.”
Introduction, Sec. 3
De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book V
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Vitruvius 203
Roman writer, architect and engineer -80–-15 BCRelated quotes

1790s, Farewell Address (1796)
Context: Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.

Binelli, Mark. "Teenager of the Year" http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5940065/teenager_of_the_year. Rolling Stone. August 27 2003. Retrieved October 25 2006.
On Metamorphosis (2003).

“I may be biased, but I think I have the best readers ever.”
About That Allegiant Leak, Roth, Veronica, Veronica Roth, September 25, 2013, November 4, 2013 http://veronicarothbooks.blogspot.com/2013/09/about-that-allegiant-leak.html,

Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982)

Variant translation by Pearl S. Buck: "Alas, I was born to die! How can I know what those who come after me and read my book will think of it? I cannot even know what I myself, born into another incarnation, will think of it. I do not even know if I myself afterwards can even read this book. Why therefore should I care?" (All Men are Brothers, 1933; p. xiii)
Preface to Water Margin

Source: Quoted in California congressman has a “jobs for all” plan to unite both wings of the Democratic Party, By A.P. Joyce, Mic https://mic.com/articles/189491/california-congressman-has-a-jobs-for-all-plan-to-unite-both-wings-of-the-democratic-party# (28 May 2018)

Letter to John Page (15 July 1763); published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson (1905) http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=800&chapter=85791&layout=html&Itemid=27
1760s
Context: To begin an affair of that kind now, and carry it on so long a time in form, is by no means a proper plan … whatever assurances I may give her in private of my esteem for her, or whatever assurances I may ask in return from her, depend on it — they must be kept in private. Necessity will oblige me to proceed in a method which is not generally thought fair; that of treating with a ward before obtaining the approbation of her guardian. I say necessity will oblige me to it, because I never can bear to remain in suspense so long a time. If I am to succeed, the sooner I know it, the less uneasiness I shall have to go through. If I am to meet with a disappointment, the sooner I know it, the more of life I shall have to wear it off: and if I do meet with one, I hope in God, and verily believe; it will be the last.