“Great books write themselves, only bad books have to be written.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter
Book II, Ch. 10. Of Books
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“Great books write themselves, only bad books have to be written.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter
“Those who can command themselves, command others.”
William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer
No. 407
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)
“History is written by the victors, but it's victims who write the memoirs.”
Carol Tavris (1944) American psychologist
Source: Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts
Charles Hamilton (writer) (1876–1961) English writer of school stories
Explaining why he used many different pseudonyms.
Oxford Companion to Children's Literature: "Charles Hamilton" (pages 235-7)
“Ah, who will write the history of what might have been?”
José Saramago (1922–2010) Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature
Fernando Pessoa (as Álvaro de Campos), quoted by José Saramago in The Stone Raft (1986), p. 9
Misattributed
Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991) Polish-born Jewish-American author
The New York Times (30 June 1985)
Joachim Peiper (1915–1976) SS officer
Parker, Hitler's Warrior, chapter 19, citing Peiper to Karl Wortmann, November 28, 1974 in note 27.
Alexis De Tocqueville (1805–1859) French political thinker and historian
Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville, p. 80 http://books.google.com/books?id=3gtoAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA80&dq=%22come+across+men+of+letters+who+have+written+history+without+taking+part+in+public+affairs%22 <br class="br">1850s and later