Advice from Famous Writers: 30 Inspiring Quotes

Words of Wisdom from Famous Writers

“Writing is always only an expedition towards truth”. ~ Franz Kafka

“Only a great soul dares to adopt a simple style”. ~ Stendhal

“We write not with our fingers, but with our whole person”. ~ Virginia Woolf

“The end crowns the work”. ~ Ovid

“It seems to me that, as a writer, I have already made every possible mistake, which is, after all, the only path to true writing”. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read”. ~ Mark Twain

“We keep other people’s faults before our eyes, and our own behind our backs”. ~ Seneca the Younger

“A writer’s work is so interesting because a writer has never written his best work”. ~ William Faulkner

“It is not enough to speak; one must speak to the point”. ~ William Shakespeare

“Modern poets put too much water in their ink”. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?” ~ Henry James

“The hallmarks of a good story are hints and things left unsaid, which the listener fills in from personal experience”. ~ John Steinbeck

“As is the word you speak, so is the word you will hear”. ~ Homer

“There is nothing wrong with modelling yourself on other established writers; it is the best way I know to develop your own talent and find your own path”. ~ Walt Whitman

“To speak without thinking is to shoot without aiming”. ~ Miguel de Cervantes

“There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts”. ~ Charles Dickens

“In everything, one must know how to seize the right moment”. ~ James Joyce

“If freedom of speech means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”. ~ George Orwell

“Too little is as much as too much”. ~ Gertrude Stein

“Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness”. ~ Samuel Beckett

“I know more than I can express in words, and the little I can express would not have been expressed, had I not known more”. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

“My words do not match my thoughts, and this demeans my thoughts”. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky

“You must draw wisdom from within yourself through your own efforts”. ~ Adam Mickiewicz

“Arguments (evidence) should be weighed, not counted”. ~ Cicero

“Yet though there is little true knowledge, there are plenty of books”. ~ Herman Melville

“The language of truth is naturally simple”. ~ Euripides

“All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”. ~ William Wordsworth

“Make haste slowly, and you will avoid mistakes”. ~ Sophocles

“You cannot drive away a bad thought once it enters your mind, but you can recognise that it is bad”. ~ Leo Tolstoy

“The author in his work should be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere”. ~ Gustave Flaubert

And you, dear reader—would you share another quote that deserves a place on this list? 🙂

Source: Wikiquote, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.