"A sentence should be read as if..." - Quote by Henry David Thoreau
A sentence should be read as if its author, had he held a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end.
More by Henry David Thoreau
“Thus the State never intentionally confronts a man's sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion.”
“To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.”
“The fibers of all things have their tension and are strained like the strings of an instrument.”
More on Writing
“After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love.”
“Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible, and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer.”
“I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life. I wrote that way too.”
More on Communication
“All the raves were just words. You don't want to let words confuse you. Words come cheap.”
“Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.”
“If a woman conceals her affection with the same skill from the object of it, she may lose the opportunity of fixing him; and it will then be but poor consolation to believe the world equally in the dark. There is so much of gratitude or vanity in almost any attachment, that it is not safe to leave any to itself. We can all begin ‘freely’- as light preference is natural enough; but there are very few of us who have a heart enough to be really in love without encouragement.”