Edmund Wilson (1895–1972) American writer, literary and social critic, and noted man of letters
The Triple Thinkers (1938) [Oxford University Press, 1948], Preface, p. ix
The value of these thoughts lies either in the matter about which he has thought, or in the form in which he develops his matter — that is to say, what he has thought about it.
Essays, On Authorship and Style
Edmund Wilson (1895–1972) American writer, literary and social critic, and noted man of letters
The Triple Thinkers (1938) [Oxford University Press, 1948], Preface, p. ix
Fisher Ames (1758–1808) American politician
Published in Palladium (January 1801), reported in Fisher Ames, John Thornton Kirkland, Works of Fisher Ames (1809), p. 134-35.
Dwight Macdonald (1906–1982) journalist
Review of God and Man at Yale by William F. Buckley, Jr., quoted in Grace Elizabeth Hale, A Nation of Outsiders:How the White Middle Class Fell in Love With Rebellion in Postwar America. Oxford University Press, 2011.
“Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.”
Jean de La Bruyère book Les Caractères
C'est un métier que de faire un livre, comme de faire une pendule: il faut plus que de l'esprit pour être auteur.
Aphorism 3; Variant translation: It requires more than mere genius to be an author.
Les Caractères (1688), Des Ouvrages de l'Esprit
“You can’t study human nature in books. Books is a hindrance more than anything else. p. 25”
George Washington Plunkitt (1842–1924) New York State Senator
Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Chapter 6, To Hold Your District: Study Human Nature and Act Accordin’
Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) British writer
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 33.