Charles Spurgeon Quotes

I think the best writers use the language they use every day when they talk to friends. When we talk to each other, we tend to talk in short grabs rather than in long flowing sentences. I think that's not a bad way to write.

Always write as if you are talking to someone. It works. Don't put on any fancy phrases or accents or things you wouldn't say in real life.

I just write like a grown man, because that's what I listen to. I'm not even speaking complicated English... I don't do five-syllable words, I don't do four-syllable words. This is English. Rudimentary English.

I like to write in fairly everyday language - I've always tried to write lyrics that, if people would speak the words, it wouldn't sound like a song.

My style is colloquial storytelling. It's the way we tell stories to one another - it's not writerly, it's not overdone.

He that will write well in any tongue, must follow this counsel of Aristotle, to speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do: and so should every man understand him, and the judgment of wise men allow him.

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.

Don't appear so scholarly, pray. Humanize your talk, and speak to be understood.

I write in quite a simple way because that's just the way I write. The vocab I use is quite wee. That's just the way I talk.

Uncommon things must be said in common words.

The true speech of man is idiomatic, if not of the earth and sky, then at least of the saloon and the bleachers.

Uncommon things must be said in common words, if you would have them to be received in less than a century.

The birds that were singing in the dew-drenched garden seemed to be telling the flowers about her.

Words in prose ought to express the intended meaning; if they attract attention to themselves, it is a fault; in the very best styles you read page after page without noticing the medium. Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are, the more necessary it is to be plain.

Looking at a first assembly is kind of like looking at an overgrown garden. You can't just wade in with a weed whacker; you don't yet know where the stems of the flowers are.

All of us are called by something in this world that attracts us. And it doesn't matter what it is - you can be an engine mechanic or an aviator or you can be someone who loves their flower garden or the world of commerce or sailboats.

Nationalism cannot flower if it does not grow in the garden of internationalism.

Of course the Dharma-body of the Buddha was the hedge at the bottom of the garden. At the same time, and no less obviously, it was these flowers, it was anything that I - or rather the blessed Not-I - cared to look at.

The wind, one brilliant day, called to my soul with an odor of jasmine. "In return for the odor of my jasmine, I'd like all the odor of your roses." "I have no roses; all the flowers in my garden are dead." "Well then, I'll take the withered petals and the yellow leaves and the waters of the fountain." the wind left. And I wept. And I said to myself: "What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?

Dear Diary, Today I tried not to think about Mr. Knightly. I tried not to think about him when I discussed the menu with Cook... I tried not to think about him in the garden where I thrice plucked the petals off a daisy to ascertain his feelings for Harriet. I don't think we should keep daisies in the garden, they really are a drab little flower. And I tried not to think about him when I went to bed, but something had to be done.

Use familiar words-words that your readers will understand, and not words they will have to look up. No advice is more elementary, and no advice is more difficult to accept. When we feel an impulse to use a marvelously exotic word, let us lie down until the impulse goes away.

The understanding between a non-technical writer and his reader is that he shall talk more or less like a human being and not like an Act of Parliament. I take it that the aim of such books must be to convey exact thought in inexact language... he can never succeed without the co-operation of the reader.

Fine declamation does not consist in flowery periods, delicate allusions of musical cadences, but in a plain, open, loose style, where the periods are long and obvious, where the same thought is often exhibited in several points of view.

I hope martial artists are more interested in the root of martial arts and not the different decorative branches, flowers or leaves. It is futile to argue as to which leaf, which design of branches, or which attractive flower you like; when you understand the root, you understand all its blossoming.

Against a dark sky all flowers look like fireworks. There is something strange about them, at once vivid and secret, like flowers traced in fire in the phantasmal garden of a witch.