“Perhaps there are none more lazy, or more truly ignorant, than your everlasting readers.”
William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist
“To a Father,” letter 5.
Advice to Young Men (1829)
“It is unsafe to take your reader for more of a fool than he is.”
Ten Novels and Their Authors (1954)
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Do you have more details about the quote "It is unsafe to take your reader for more of a fool than he is." by W. Somerset Maugham?
W. Somerset Maugham158
British playwright, novelist, short story writer 1874–1965Related quotes
“… an author never does more damage to his readers than when he hides a difficulty.”
Évariste Galois (1811–1832) French mathematician, founder of group theory
... un auteur ne nuit jamais tant à ses lecteurs que quand il dissimule une difficulté.
in the preface of Deux mémoires d'Analyse pure, October 8, 1831, edited by [Jules Tannery, Manuscrits de Évariste Galois, Gauthier-Villars, 1908, 27]
“So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.”
Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books
George Müller (1805–1898) German-English clergyman
A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Müller Written by Himself, Third Part.
Third Part of Narrative
Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright
Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part I, Book IV, Ch. 4.
“Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise.”
Cato the Elder (-234–-149 BC) politician, writer and economist (0234-0149)
Plutarch's Life of Cato
Variant: Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise.
“There are more fools in the world than there are people.”
Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic
As quoted in One Big Fib : The Incredible Story of the Fraudulent First International Bank of Grenada (2003) by Owen Platt, p. 37
