“For certainly it is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his reader is sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words, or his reader will certainly misunderstand them.”

—  John Ruskin

A Joy for Ever, note 6 (1857)

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 "For certainly it is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all he has to say in the fewest possibl…" by John Ruskin?
John Ruskin photo
John Ruskin 133
English writer and art critic 1819–1900

Related quotes

John Ruskin photo

“Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

A Joy for Ever, note 6 (1857).
Context: For certainly it is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his reader is sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words, or his reader will certainly misunderstand them.

Clive Staples Lewis photo

“The way for a person to develop a [writing] style is (a) to know exactly what he wants to say, and (b) to be sure he is saying exactly that. The reader, we must remember, does not start by knowing what we mean. If our words are ambiguous, our meaning will escape him. I sometimes think that writing is like driving sheep down a road. If there is any gate open to the left or the right the readers will most certainly go into it.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

As quoted in part 2 of Sherwood Eliot Wirt in "The Final Interview of C. S. Lewis" (1963) http://www1.cbn.com/narnia/the-final-interview-of-c.-s.-lewis

Charles Hamilton (writer) photo

“The business of a boys' author is not to consider political issues, but to entertain the readers, make them as happy as possible.”

Charles Hamilton (writer) (1876–1961) English writer of school stories

Oxford Companion to Children's Literature: "Charles Hamilton" (pages 235-7)

Henry David Thoreau photo

“It is remarkable, that almost all speakers and writers feel it to be incumbent on them, sooner or later, to prove or to acknowledge the personality of God. … In reading a work on agriculture, we have to skip the author's moral reflections, and the words "Providence" and "He" scattered along the page, to come at the profitable level of what he has to say. What he calls his religion is for the most part offensive to the nostrils. … There is more religion in men's science than there is science in their religion.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Sunday

Arthur Miller photo

“Great stones they lay upon his chest until he plead aye or nay. They say he give them but two words. "More weight," he says. And died.”

Arthur Miller The Crucible

Source: The Crucible

“Goethe said, “The author whom a lexicon can keep up with is worth nothing”; Somerset Maugham says that the finest compliment he ever received was a letter in which one of his readers said: “I read your novel without having to look up a single word in the dictionary.””

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

These writers, plainly, lived in different worlds.
"The Obscurity of the Poet", p. 13
No Other Book: Selected Essays (1999)

“A translator has divided loyalties. He has a duty to his author, a duty to his reader and a duty to the text. The three are by no means identical and are often hard to reconcile.”

David Hawkes (sinologist) (1923–2009) British sinologist

Preface to The Story of the Stone, Vol. 2: 'The Crab-Flower Club' (1979), p. 20

Évariste Galois photo

“… an author never does more damage to his readers than when he hides a difficulty.”

Évariste Galois (1811–1832) French mathematician, founder of group theory

... un auteur ne nuit jamais tant à ses lecteurs que quand il dissimule une difficulté.
in the preface of Deux mémoires d'Analyse pure, October 8, 1831, edited by [Jules Tannery, Manuscrits de Évariste Galois, Gauthier-Villars, 1908, 27]

Related topics