“When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing.”
Enrique Jardiel Poncela (1902–1952) Spanish dramatist
First attributed to Johnson 15 years posthumously in a footnote in William Seward's Biographiana (1799), but written in slightly different form in 1764, in a profile in The Scots Magazine of Charles Churchill. The Scots Magazine, Volume 26 https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=y14AAAAAYAAJ&q=%22without+effort%22&redir_esc=y&hl=en#v=snippet&q=%22without%20effort%22&f=false <br class="br"> Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/11/08/without-effort/, retrieved 17 May 2016 <br class="br">Misattributed <br class="br">Source: Johnsonian Miscellanies - Vol II
“When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing.”
Enrique Jardiel Poncela (1902–1952) Spanish dramatist
Pierce Brown book Morning Star
Romulus thumps his chest. "Honor is what you do."
Source: Morning Star (2016), Ch. 42: The Poet
“Crowds without company, and dissipation without pleasure.”
Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) English historian and Member of Parliament
Referring to London.
Memoirs (1796)
Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) British academic historian and Marxist historiographer
Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries http://books.google.com/books?id=sCK8AAAAIAAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PA60#v=onepage&q=&f=false (1971), p. 60.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
Source: The Anti-Christ/Ecce Homo/Twilight of the Idols/Other Writings
Baldassarre Castiglione (1478–1529) Italian Renaissance author (1478-1529)
Usar in ogni cosa una certa sprezzatura, che nasconda l'arte e dimostri ciò che si fa e dice venir fatto senza fatica e quasi senza pensarvi.
Bk. 1, ch. 26; p. 35.
Souced, Il Libro del Cortegiano (1528)