A Quote by Brander Matthews

To be clear is the first duty of a writer; to charm and to please are graces to be acquired later.

Brander Matthews

Quote Topics

Acquired Charm Clear Duty First Graces Later Please Writer

Quote Author

Brander Matthews
American - Writer
February 21, 1852 - March 31, 1929

Your first duty as a writer is to write to please yourself. And you have no duty towards anyone else.

Iris Chang

The whole duty of a writer is to please and satisfy himself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one.

E. B. White

a writer's first duty is to be clear. Clarity is an excellent virtue. Like all virtues it can be pursued at ruinous cost. Paid, so far as I am concerned, joyfully.

Storm Jameson

If you’re a writer, your first duty, a duty you owe to yourself and your readers, and to your writing itself, is to become wonderful. To become the best writer you can possibly be.

Theodora Goss

When I was first writing, my little prayers were, 'Please, please, please. Let something be published someday.' Then it went to, 'Please, please, please. Let somebody read this.'

Judy Blume

I also maintain that clear knowledge of natural science must be acquired, in the first instance, through mastery of medicine alone.

Hippocrates

[the impression of the first time I heard Webern's music in a concert performance] was the same as I was to experience a few years later when I first laid eyes on a Mondriaan canvas...: those things, of which I had acquired an extremely intimate knowledge, came across as crude and unfinished when seen in reality

Anton Webern

Please do as I requested, only if you can do so with the joy of a little child feeding a hungry duck. Please do not do as I request if there is any taint of fear of punishment if you don't. Please do not do as I request to buy my love, that, is hoping that I will love you more if you do. Please do not do as I request if you will feel guilty if you don't. Please do not do as I request if you will feel shameful. And certainly do not do as I request out of any sense of duty or obligation.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

I please myself with the graces of the winter scenery, and believe that we are as much touched by it as by the genial influences of summer.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Mine to the core of the heart, my beauty! Mine, all mine, and for love, not duty: Love given willingly, full and free, Love for love's sake - as mine to thee. Duty's a slave that keeps the keys, But Love, the master, goes in and out Of his goodly chambers with song and shout, Just as he please - just as he please.

Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

There is all the difference in the world between the nonviolence that the ordinary Christian should embrace and the duty of civic authorities to police their communities. The end of Romans 12 is quite clear about the first; the start of Romans 13 is quite clear about the second.

N. T. Wright

It's rare to find someone excited over jury duty. If they're out there, I've never met them. Not a one. When the summons for jury duty arrives in the mail, how many people scream, 'Yes!' and run to clear the calendar? None. Our first and only reaction is, 'Oh, no,' quickly followed by, 'How can I get out of this?'

Regina Brett

The Graces sought some holy ground, Whose sight should ever please; And in their search the soul they found Of Aristophanes.

Plato

I have always hated biography, and more especially, autobiography. If biography, the writer invariably finds it necessary to plaster the subject with praises, flattery and adulation and to invest him with all the Christian graces. If autobiography, the same plan is followed, but the writer apologizes for it.

Carolyn Wells

If you wish to fault the administration, it is that we didn't have a clear picture and we probably didn't do as clear a job explaining that we did not have a clear picture until days later.