William Strunk Jr. Quotes

The weight of an argument may often be multiplied by making it specific

Literary gentlemen, editors, and critics think that they know how to write, because they have studied grammar and rhetoric; but they are egregiously mistaken. The art of composition is as simple as the discharge of a bullet from a rifle, and its masterpieces imply an infinitely greater force behind them.

One of my life's principles is to develop myself to the maximum of my potential in all ways and to help others do the same.

Gather knowledge about the craft of writing. Immerse yourself in the art of it. Then write. Write yourself silly. Write yourself mad. Write yourself blind. Trust the excitement that builds within you when the idea is good and the writing is superb. You can do it, but that's the hell of it as well as the exultation of it. You have to do it.

Every art, like our own, has in its composition fluctuating as well as fixed principles. It is an attentive inquiry into their difference that will enable us to determine how far we are influenced by custom and habit, and what is fixed in the nature of things.

I hope always to earn my living by my art without having ever deviated by even a hair's breadth from my principles... to please anyone or to sell more easily.

The principles applied in economic processes are general social principles.

The basic principle, and the principles of chiropractic which have been developed from it are not new. They are as old as the vertebrae... I am not the first person to replace subluxated vertebra, for this art has been practiced for thousands of years.

I think good art, if I could be pretentious enough to say, I think good art deals with the micro to explain the macro.

The cause of all human evils is the not being able to apply general principles to special cases.

Beauty is at once the ultimate principle and the highest aim of art.

Socialist thought owes its appeal to the young largely to its visionary character; the very courage to indulge in Utopian thought is in this respect a source of strength for socialism which traditional liberalism sadly lacks. Speculation about general principles provides an opportunity for the play of the imagination of those who are unencumbered by much knowledge of the facts of present-day life. Their ideas suffer from inherent contradictions, and any attempt to put them into practice must produce something utterly different from what they expect.

The only principle in art is to copy what you see. Dealers in aesthetics to the contrary, every other method is fatal.

It's always a challenge to discover the most effective first sentence, and the most effective final sentence, in a chapter for instance, and in the book as a whole.

my credo is very short. Its first article is art - and its second is art - and its third is art!

No matter what you write, it's a matter of putting words in a certain order so that the reader will be interested in what you're writing.

My girlfriend's packed her bags and moved out to another town, she couldn't stand the boredom when the video broke down.

Alec Wilkinson is a spare, clear, and lucid writer who works in stylistic simplicity with material that is not simple at all.

First of all, principles should be general. That is, it must be possible to formulate them without use of what would be intuitively recognized as proper names, or rigged definite descriptions.

Come what may, I am bound to think that all things are ordered for the best; though when the good is a furlong off, and we with our beetle eyes can only see three inches, it takes some confidence in general principles to pull us through.

To invoke solely the weaker arguments and yet triumph is an art worth more than a hundred thousand drachmae.

You can recognize in your own reading habits what writers are doing that works and what doesn't. I'm becoming much more aware of that after reading a decade of student stories.

Don't waste time looking for a better pencil: learn to write better.

People think of art and science as being fundamentally opposed to each other, because art is about celebrating individual human creativity, and science is about discovering general principles, not about individual people. But in fact, the two have a lot in common, and the creative spirit is similar in both.

Ministers who threaten death and destruction employ weapons of weakness. Argument and kindness are alone effectual, flavored by the principles of Divine love.