“There can be little question that good composition is far less dependent upon acquaintance with its laws, than upon practice and natural aptitude.”

Pt. I, sec. 1, "The Principle of Economy"
The Philosophy of Style (1852)
Context: There can be little question that good composition is far less dependent upon acquaintance with its laws, than upon practice and natural aptitude. A clear head, a quick imagination, and a sensitive ear, will go far towards making all rhetorical precepts needless.

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Herbert Spencer 81
English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent … 1820–1903

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