“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 … 1820–1903Related quotes

"Gauss's Abstract of the Disquisitiones Generales circa Superficies Curvas presented to the Royal Society of Gottingen" (1827) Tr. James Caddall Morehead & Adam Miller Hiltebeitel in General Investigations of Curved Surfaces of 1827 and 1825 (1902)

My Day (1935–1962)
Context: Little by little it dawned upon me that this law was not making people drink any less, but it was making hypocrites and law breakers of a great number of people. It seemed to me best to go back to the old situation in which, if a man or woman drank to excess, they were injuring themselves and their immediate family and friends and the act was a violation against their own sense of morality and no violation against the law of the land. (14 July 1939)

Privy Purse case Madhav Rao Jivaji Rao Scindia vs Union of India, (1971) 1 SCC 85 http://www.indiankanoon.org/doc/660275/

“There is no merit in a settlement: it depends upon positive law.”
Rex v. Corporation of Carmarthen (1759), 2 Burr. Part IV. 873.

“The nature of technology depends very much upon what the public can be induced to put up with.”
Source: Economic Heresies (1971), Chapter VIII, Growth Models, p. 140

An Address on Abraham Lincoln before the Republican Club of New York City (12 February 1909)

The Edinburgh Review, vol. 21 (1813), pp. 217-18