#Prose Quotes

“Just as the sentence contains one idea in all its fullness, so the paragraph should embrace a distinct episode; and as sentences should follow one another in harmonious sequence, so paragraphs must fit into another like the automatic couplings of railway carriages.”

“The poet gives us his essence, but prose takes the mould of the body and mind entire.”

“And now more than anything I want beautiful prose. I relish it more and more exquisitely.”

“Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.”

“Many people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honor.”

“What a lumbering poor vehicle prose is for the conveying of a great thought! ... Prose wanders around with a lantern & laboriously schedules & verifies the details & particulars of a valley & its frame of crags & peaks, then Poetry comes, & lays bare the whole landscape with a single splendid flash.”

“Sentences are not different enough to hold the attention unless they are dramatic. No ingenuity of varying structure will do. All that can save them is the speaking tone of voice somehow entangled in the words and fastened to the page for the ear of the imagination. That is all that can save poetry from sing-song, all that can save prose from itself.”

“I would rather write poems than prose, any day, any place. Yet each has its own force.”

“Good prose is written only face to face with poetry.”

“Prose should have a flow, the forward momentum of a certain energized weight; it should feel like a voice tumbling in your ear.”

“Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince.”

“Good prose should be transparent, like a window pane.”

“Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.”