
Book III, Ch. 13
Attributed
Source: The Complete Essays
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 532.
Book III, Ch. 13
Attributed
Source: The Complete Essays
"On the Fear of Death"
Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)
“When a thing has been said and well said, have no scruple: take it and copy it.”
Quand une chose a été dite et bien dite, n'ayez aucun scrupule, prenez-la, copiez.
As quoted in Anatole France en pantoufles by Jean-Jacques Brousson (1924); published in English as Anatole France Himself: A Boswellian Record by His Secretary, Jean-Jacques Brousson (1925), trans. John Pollock [Read Books, 2007, ISBN 1-406-75172-3], p. 56
“Well, here you get to be a writer when there's absolutely nothing else you can do.”
"The Art of Fiction No. 11" (1955)
Context: I don't think the isolation of the American writer is a tradition; it's more that geographically he just is isolated, unless he happens to live in New York City. But I don't suppose there's a small town around the country that doesn't have a writer. The thing is that here you get to be a writer differently. I mean, a writer like Sartre decides, like any professional man, when he's fifteen, sixteen years old, that instead of being a doctor he's going to be a writer. And he absorbs the French tradition and proceeds from there. Well, here you get to be a writer when there's absolutely nothing else you can do. I mean, I don't know of any writers here who just started out to be writers, and then became writers. They just happen to fall into it.
“Science when well digested is nothing but good sense and reason.”
No. 43.
Maxims and Moral Sentences