Category: Authors
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Georg Brandes
He who possesses talent should also possess courage. He must dare trust his inspiration, he must be convinced that the fancy which flashes through his brain is a healthy one, that the form which comes natural to him, even if it be a new one, has a right to assert its claims; he must have […]
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Jean Baptiste Poquelin Moliere
PREFACE TO ‘TARTUFFE’ Here is a comedy about which much noise has been made; which was persecuted for years, while the persons it ridicules proved that they were much stronger in France than those I had hitherto laughed at. The marquises, the learned women, the luckless husbands, and the doctors had meekly borne their representation; […]
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Henrik Ibsen
To Peter Hansen Dresden, 28th October, 1870 But it is really more the story of my intellectual development that you want. Here it is, then. Everything which I have created as a poet has had its origin in a frame of mind and a situation in life; I never wrote because I had, as they […]
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Writing And Michel De Montaigne
Language gains in value not so much by being handled and used by vigorous minds, not so much from innovations, as by being put to more forcible and various service, stretching it and bending it; they do not bring words to it but they enrich those they use; they give weight and force to their […]
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August Strindberg
THE LAST ACT The final act is the most important one in a drama, and a dramatist generally begins his work at the end. We sit out a long evening at the theatre in order to see the last act or `how it will go.’ But in the significant lives of certain men people like […]
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Jean Baptiste Racine
You seem by your letter-to envy Mad. C. because she has read more plays and romances than you have. I will give you my sentiments on that head, with the sincerity which it is my duty to use towards you. I am very sorry you lay so much stress on such trifles, which at best […]
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William Dean Howells
From my own long experience as a magazine editor, I may say that the editor is more doubtful of failure in one who has once done well than of a second success. After all, the writer who can do but one good thing is rarer than people are apt to think in their love of […]
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Jean Jacques Rousseau
I have entered upon a performance which is without example, whose accomplishment will have no imitator. I mean to present my fellow-mortals with a man in all the integrity of nature; and this man shall be myself. I know my heart, and have studied mankind; I am not made like any one I have been […]
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Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky
One thing is a pity: he (Pissemsky) writes too fast. He writes much too fast, and much too much. A man should have more ambition, more respect for his talent and his craft, and more love for art. When one’s young, ideas come crowding incredibly into one’s head; but one should not capture each and […]
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Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
WHAT IS A CLASSIC? A delicate question, to which somewhat diverse solutions might be given according to times and seasons. An intelligent man suggests it to me, and I intend to try, if not to solve it, at least to examine and discuss it face to face with my readers, were it only to persuade […]