“Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

31 May 1830.
Table Talk (1821–1834)
Context: The Pilgrim's Progress is composed in the lowest style of English, without slang or false grammar. If you were to polish it, you would at once destroy the reality of the vision. For works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge 220

English poet, literary critic and philosopher 1772–1834

Marion L. Starkey (1901–1991) American historian & writer

Source: The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Enquiry into the Salem Witch Trials (1949), Chapter 17, “Eight Firebrands of Hell” (p. 205)

“The selective instinct of the artist tells him when his language should be homely, and when it should be more elevated; and it is precisely in the imperceptible blending of the plain with the ornate that a great writer is distinguished.”

George Henry Lewes (1817–1878) British philosopher

The Principles of Success in Literature (1865)
Context: The selective instinct of the artist tells him when his language should be homely, and when it should be more elevated; and it is precisely in the imperceptible blending of the plain with the ornate that a great writer is distinguished. He uses the simplest phrases without triviality, and the grandest without a suggestion of grandiloquence.

“The plain working truth is that it is not only good for people to be shocked occasionally, but absolutely necessary to the progress of society that they should be shocked pretty often.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Source: The Quintessence of Ibsenism

“Imagination has been the companion of my whole existence – lively, swift, restless, at times timid and balky, most often ready to devour plain upon plain in its course.”

Machado de Assis book Dom Casmurro

A imaginação foi a companheira de toda a minha existência, viva, rápida, inquieta, alguma vez tímida e amiga de empacar, as mais delas capaz de engolir campanhas e campanhas, correndo.
Source: Dom Casmurro (1899), Ch. 40, p. 98.

“Theory should be ever more demanding of our empirical resources. Simultaneously, data should be ever more demanding of the empirical relevance of theory and of the theorist's expertise in working imaginatively on problems of the world, rather than on stylized problems of the imagination.”

Vernon L. Smith (1927) American economist

Source: "Theory, experiment and economics," 1989, p. 168.

“There is no more difficult art to acquire than the art of observation, and for some men it is quite as difficult to record an observation in brief and plain language.”

William Osler (1849–1919) Canadian pathologist, physician, educator, bibliophile, historian, author, cofounder of Johns Hopkins Hospi…

On the Educational Value of the Medical Society (1903), p. 333

“It's embarrassingly plain how inadequate language is.”

Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

“[E]verything is the work of imagination, and… all the faculties of the soul can be correctly reduced to pure imagination…”

Julien Offray de La Mettrie book Man a Machine

p, 125
Man a Machine (1747)

“I have lived as plain Mr. Jinnah and I hope to die as plain Mr. Jinnah. I am very much averse to any title or honours and I will be more than happy if there was no prefix to my name.”

Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1876–1948) Founder and 1st Governor General of Pakistan

As quoted in Plain Mr. Jinnah : Selections from Quaid-e-Azam's Correspondence (1976)

“Lie down among the pines for a while, then get to plain pure white love-work … to help humanity and other mortals and the Lord.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

letter to Mrs. J.D. Hooker http://www.westadamsheritage.org/katharine-putnam-hooker (19 September 1911); published in The Life and Letters of John Muir http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/life/life_and_letters/default.aspx (1924), chapter 17, II; and in John Muir's Last Journey, edited by Michael P. Branch (Island Press, 2001), page 67
1910s

“Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.”

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge 220

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