“To the man with an ear for verbal delicacies — the man who searches painfully for the perfect word, and puts the way of saying a thing above the thing said — there is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.”

— H.L. Mencken

Source: 1910s, A Book of Prefaces (1917), Ch. 2

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 "To the man with an ear for verbal delicacies — the man who searches painfully for the perfect word, and puts the way of…" by H.L. Mencken?

H.L. Mencken 281

American journalist and writer 1880–1956

Related quotes

“An intellectual is a man who says a simple thing in a difficult way; an artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way.”

Charles Bukowski book Notes of a Dirty Old Man

Notes of a Dirty Old Man (1969)

“Helped are those who are content to be themselves; they will never lack mystery in their lives and the joys of self-discovery will be constant.”

Alice Walker book The Temple of My Familiar

Source: The Temple of My Familiar

“First, I say, that woman in her greatest perfection was made to serve and obey man, not to rule and command him. As St. Paul does reason in these words: "Man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man. And man was not created for the cause of the woman, but the woman for the cause of man; and therefore ought the woman to have a power upon her head" [1 Cor. 11:8-10] (that is, a cover in sign of subjection). Of which words it is plain that the apostle means, that woman in her greatest perfection should have known that man was lord above her; and therefore that she should never have pretended any kind of superiority above him, no more than do the angels above God the Creator, or above Christ their head. [38] So I say, that in her greatest perfection, woman was created to be subject to man.”

John Knox (1514–1572) Scottish clergyman, writer and historian

“It may be a very little thing for you to say to a young man the few words that turn him from the way of ruin, and win him back to life and hope. It may be a very little thing to you; but it is every thing to the young man.”

John Bartholomew Gough (1817–1886) Anglo-American temperance orator

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 561.

“The surprising thing about this paper is that a man who could write it--would.”

John Edensor Littlewood (1885–1977) English Mathematician

Note quotation marks: Littlewood is repeating a joke without attribution. "Cross-purposes, Unconscious Assumptions, Howlers, Misprints, etc.", p. 59.
Littlewood's Miscellany (1986)

“Happy will they be who lend ear to the words of the Dead.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XX Humorous Writings

“There's no such thing as perfect writing, just like there's no such thing as perfect despair.”

Haruki Murakami book Hear the Wind Sing

Source: Hear the Wind Sing

“The man of action is not the headstrong fool who rushes into danger with no thought for himself, but the man who puts into practice the things he knows.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

“Man’s greatest joy is to revere other men, or to put it less extravagantly, to recognize other men above himself, and to love and be loved by these men.”

Paul de Lagarde (1827–1891) German polymath, biblical scholar and orientalist

Es ist das höchste Glück des Menschen, anzubeten, oder, milder gesagt, andre Menschen über sich anzuerkennen, die er liebt und die ihn lieben.
Paul de Lagarde: Erinnerungen aus seinem Leben für die Freunde zusammengestellt (1894), S. 40
as cited in The Politics of Cultural Despair (1961), p. 29

“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not of building bridges, is not Christian. This is not the gospel. … I say only that this man is not Christian if he has said things like that. We must see if he said things in that way and I will give him the benefit of the doubt.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

As quoted in "Pope Francis: Donald Trump 'is not Christian'", by Rebecca Kaplan, CBS News (18 February 2016) http://www.cbsnews.com/news/pope-francis-trump-is-not-christian/
2010s, 2016, Visit to Mexico (February 2016)

“To the man with an ear for verbal delicacies — the man who searches painfully for the perfect word, and puts the way of saying a thing above the thing said — there is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

H.L. Mencken 281

Related quotes

Related topics