Category: Authors

  • Nikolai Vasilievitch Gogol

    Thankless is the task of the writer who dares reproduce what is constantly passing before the eyes of all, unnoticed by our distracted gaze: all the disgusting little annoyances and trials of our every-day lives; the ordinary, indifferent characters we must constantly meet and put up with. How they hinder and weary us ! Such […]

  • Alexander Pushkin

    Yield thee not, poet, to the popular cry; Full soon doth perish the world’s noisy praise; The fool’s contempt, the cold crowd’s sneer, thine eye Doth surely mark. Be thou then firm, and gaze Unmoved. Thou’rt king. In thy calm royalty Go freely ‘mid thy solitary ways, Whose genius shall bear fruit in future days, […]

  • Leo Tolstoi

    April 7th, 8 A.M. 1847. — Until recently I never kept a diary, for I never could see the use of one; but, now, that I am developing my faculties, a diary will help me to judge of that development’s progress. Hence the diary must contain a table of rules. Also, it must define my […]

  • Ivan Turgeniev

    I feel in the vein for work, and this notwithstanding that I have left the enthusiasm of youth far behind me. I write with a calmness which astonishes me. Let us hope that the work will not suffer therefrom. Coldness generally implies mediocrity. You [Flaubert] must not forget, moreover, that men are measured according to […]

  • Washington Irving

    THE AUTHOR’S ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF I was always fond of visiting new scenes, and observing strange characters and manners. Even when a mere child I began my travels, and made many tours of discovery into foreign parts and unknown regions of my native city, to the frequent alarm of my parents, and the emolument of […]

  • Friedrich Nietzsche

    Has any one at the end of the nineteenth century any distinct notion of what poets of a stronger age under-stood by the word inspiration? If not, I will describe it. If one had the smallest vestige of superstition in one, it would hardly be possible to set aside completely the idea that one is […]

  • Johann Christoph Friedrich Von Schiller

    But how can the artist protect himself from the corruptions of his age, which on all sides surround him? By despising its judgment. Let him look upwards to his dignity and the law, not downwards to his prosperity and his wants. Alike free from the vain activity, that would fain leave its traces on the […]

  • Arthur Schopenhauer

    Metaphors and similes are of great value, in so far as they explain an unknown relation by a known one. Even the more detailed simile which grows into a parable or an allegory, is nothing more than the exhibition of some relation in its simplest, most visible and palpable form. The growth of ideas rests, […]

  • Dante Alighieri

    For some words are childish, some feminine, some manly: and of these last some are sylvan, others urban; and of those we call urban we feel that some are combed-out and glossy, some shaggy and rumpled. Now, among these urban words, the combed-out and the shaggy are those we call grand; whilst we call the […]

  • Pierre Loti

    I have written pages, many and long, about Tahiti; in them there are endless details, even as to the appearance of the tiniest plants — the physiognomy of its mosses. You may read it all with the best will in the world, — well, and then — do you understand? No — not in the […]