A Quote by Amos Bronson Alcott
An author who sets his reader on sounding the depths of his own thoughts serves him best.
Related Quotes
The analytical writer observes the reader as he is; accordingly, he makes his calculation, sets his machine to make the appropriate effect on him. The synthetic writer constructs and creates his own reader; he does not imagine him as resting and dead, but lively and advancing toward him. He makes that which he had invented gradually take shape before the reader's eyes, or he tempts him to do the inventing for himself. He does not want to make a particular effect on him, but rather enters into a solemn relationship of innermost symphilosophy or sympoetry.
From the root, the sap rises up into the artist, flows through him, flows to his eye. Overwhelmed and activated by the force of the current, he conveys his vision into his work. And yet, standing at his appointed place as the trunk of the tree, he does nothing other than gather and pass on what rises from the depths. He neither serves nor commands he transmits. His position is humble. And the beauty at the crown is not his own; it has merely passed through him.
There's a contract that I make between myself, the author, and the reader. I have to figure out how to give the reader certain powers of recognition, or his own knowledge, his own feelings, but I provide them, so we're working together.
If modesty and candor are necessary to an author in his judgment of his own works, no less are they in his reader.
The author always loads his dice, but he must never let the reader see that he has done so, and by the manipulation of his plot, he can engage the reader's attention so that he does not perceive the violence that has been done to him.
I love a serious preacher, who speaks for my sake and not for his own; who seeks my salvation, and not his own vain glory. He best deserves to be heard who uses speech only to clothe his thoughts, and his thoughts only to promote truth and virtue.
He that speaketh against his own reason speaks against his own conscience, and therefore it is certain that no man serves God with a good conscience who serves him against his reason.
Each must discover his own way in life, and that way lies in his heart. Let him delve deeply into the depths of his being; his true centre is not far from there.
The President of the United States should strive to be always mindful of the fact that he serves his party best who serves his country best.
While an author is yet living, we estimate his powers by his worst performance; and when he is dead, we rate him by his best.
If a reader likes a particular author, they keep reading all his books, and if the supply is not kept up, then the reader shifts his loyalties.
Every reader, if he has a strong mind, reads himself into the book, and amalgamates his thoughts with those of the author.
The greatest misfortune that can come to a human being is to lose his inner peace. No outer force can rob him of it. It is his own thoughts, his own actions, that rob him of it.
A reader is doubly guilty of bad manners against an author when he praises his second book at the expense of his first (or vice versa) and then expects the author to be grateful for what he has done.
That man loves God who puts his own life in harmony with him, and who serves his fellow men as though his life depends upon it, as indeed it does.
He who indulges his sense in any excesses renders himself obnoxious to his own reason; and, to gratify the brute in him, displeases the man, and sets his two natures at variance.
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