The Principles of Success in Literature (1865)
Context: Except in the rare cases of great dynamic thinkers whose thoughts are as turning-points in the history of our race, it is by Style that writers gain distinction, by Style they secure their immortality. In a lower sphere many are remarked as writers although they may lay no claim to distinction as thinkers, if they have the faculty of felicitously expressing the ideas of others; and many who are really remarkable as thinkers gain but slight recognition from the public, simply because in them the faculty of expression is feeble. In proportion as the work passes from the sphere of passionless intelligence to that of impassioned intelligence, from the region of demonstration to the region of emotion, the art of Style becomes more complex, its necessity more imperious.
Source: Reading Architectural History (2002), Ch. 3 : On classical ground : Histories of style
“Intense study of the Bible will keep any writer from being vulgar, in point of style.”
Specimens of the table talk of the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge, June 14, 1830, (1835) p. 177
Source: The Mind Parasites (1967), p. 79
Ce sera la noblesse de leur style qui, dans quarante ans, rendra illisibles nos écrivains de 1840.
Marginalia note, first edition of La Chartreuse de Parme (1840)
Source: Enemies of Promise (1938), Part 1: Predicament, Ch. 2: The Mandarin Dialect (p. 13)
Thomas Warton The History of English Poetry (1774-81) vol. 2, pp. 52-3.
Criticism
“All styles are good except the boring kind.”
Tous les genres sont bons, hors le genre ennuyeux.
L'Enfant prodigue: comédie en vers dissillabes (1736), Preface
Citas
“Style is the dress of thoughts.”
24 November 1749
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)
“Style… the very hall-mark of great art… there is little use in trying to define style.”
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)
