A Quote by Mary Wortley Montagu

Miserable is the fate of writers: if they are agreeable, they are offensive; and if dull, they starve.

Mary Wortley Montagu

Quote Topics

Agreeable Dull Fate Miserable Offensive Starve Writers

Quote Author

Mary Wortley Montagu
English - Writer
May 26, 1689 - August 21, 1762

Peter was dull; he was at first Dull; - Oh, so dull - so very dull! Whether he talked, wrote, or rehearsed - Still with his dulness was he cursed - Dull -beyond all conception - dull.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers.

H. L. Mencken

A full Belly makes a dull Brain: The Muses starve in a Cook's Shop.

Benjamin Franklin

All deaths are hateful to miserable mortals, but the most pitiable death of all is to starve.

Homer

I'm not going to starve just to be thin... I want to enjoy life and I can't if I'm not eating and miserable.

Kate Upton

Happiness is often presented as being very dull but, he thought, lying awake, that is because dull people are sometimes very happy and intelligent people can and do go around making themselves and everyone else miserable. He had never found happiness dull. It always seemed more exciting than any other thing and capable of as great intensity as sorrow to those people who were capable of having it.

Ernest Hemingway

Work is a dull thing; you cannot get away from that. The only agreeable existence is one of idleness, and that is not, unfortunately, always compatible with continuing to exist at all.

Rose Macaulay

The English may not always be the best writers in the world, but they are incomparably the best dull writers.

Raymond Chandler

Everyone acknowledges that dinner parties are equally dull in London and Paris, in Calcutta and in New York, unless the next neighbour happens to be peculiarly agreeable.

Isabella Bird

Those who make their living by collecting taxes cause the people to starve; when the people starve, the tax collectors, having no one to tax, starve also

Laozi

That's the trouble with you sad-city types: a place has to be miserable and dull as ditchwater before you believe it's real.

Salman Rushdie

There's a personality trait known as agreeableness. Agreeable people are compassionate and polite. And agreeable people get paid less than disagreeable people for the same job. Women are more agreeable than men.

Jordan Peterson

Writers quite often starve. And I'm mainly just writing critical prose and poetry, that's a formula for starvation.

Clive James

I can't get upset about 'offensive to women' or 'offensive to blacks' or 'offensive to Native Americans' or 'offensive to Jews' ... Offend! I can't get worked up about it. Offend!