“Strength is not energy. Some writers have more muscles than talent.”

— Joseph Joubert

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 "Strength is not energy. Some writers have more muscles than talent." by Joseph Joubert?

Joseph Joubert 253

French moralist and essayist 1754–1824

Related quotes

“Assurance of hope is more than life. It is health, strength, power, vigor, activity, energy, manliness, beauty.”

J.C. Ryle (1816–1900) Anglican bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 16.

“You will perhaps say that the sinews and muscles of a bird are incomparably more powerful than those of a man… But the reply to this is that such great strength gives it a reserve of power beyond what it ordinarily uses…”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XVII Flight

“Have a purpose in life, and having it, throw into your work such strength of mind and muscle as God has given you.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

“All writers have concealed more than they revealed.”

Anaïs Nin book The Diary of Anaïs Nin

The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 5
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)
Context: One handles truths like dynamite. Literature is one vast hypocrisy, a giant deception, treachery. All writers have concealed more than they revealed.

“People talk about talent as though it were some neutral substance that can be applied to anything. But talent is narrow and only functions with a very few subjects, which it is up to the writer to find.”

Wilfrid Sheed (1930–2011) English-American novelist and essayist

"Howe's Complaint" (1973), p. 15
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)

“Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than native genius. In the hands of a man who has read widely but lacks judgment, applied to certain subjects it can corrupt both its readers and the writer himself.”

Jean de La Bruyère book Les Caractères

La critique souvent n'est pas une science; c'est un métier, où il faut plus de santé que d'esprit, plus de travail que de capacité, plus d'habitude que de génie. Si elle vient d'un homme qui ait moins de discernement que de lecture, et qu'elle s'exerce sur de certains chapitres, elle corrompt et les lecteurs et l'écrivain.
Aphorism 63
Les Caractères (1688), Des Ouvrages de l'Esprit