Quotes
Quotes about Letters
Humor is not a postscript or an incidental afterthought; it is a serious and weighty part of the world's economy. One feels increasingly the height of the faculty in which it arises, the nobility of things associated with it, and the greatness of services it renders. - Oscar Firkins: Memoirs and Letters.
Sir, more than kisses, letters mingle souls. For, thus friends absent speak.
Letters are useful as a means of expressing the ideal self. . . . In letters we can reform without practice, beg without humiliation, snip and shape embarrassing experiences to the measure of our own desires. . . .
Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them.
The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.
Letters are expectation packaged in an envelope.
Chain letters are the postal equivalent of intestinal flu: you get it and pass it along to your friends.
When a man sends you an impudent letter, sit right down and give it back to him with interest ten times compounded, and then throw both letters in the wastebasket.
There are certain people whom one feels almost inclined to urge to hurry up and die so that their letters can be published.
I have received no more than one or two letters in my life that were worth the postage.
Republic of letters.
The death of Dr. Hudson is a loss to the republick of letters.
. . . A man of the world amongst men of letters, a man of letters amongst men of the world.
The republic of letters. [Fr., La republique des lettres.]
All men love peace in their armchairs after dinner; but they disbelieve the other nations's professions, rightly measuring its sincerity by their own. - Oscar Firkins: Memoirs and Letters.
Always when I see a man fond of praise I always think it is because he is an affectionate man craving for affection. - Letters to His Son, W. B. Yeats and Others.
But then peace, peace! I am so mistrustful of it: so much afraid that it means a sort of weakness and giving in. - Selected Letters of D. H. Lawrence.
No letters after your name are ever going to be a total guarantee of competence any more than they are a guarantee against fraud. Improving competence involves continuing professional development ... That is the really crucial thing, not just passing an examination.
Personality is born out of pain. It is the fire shut up in the flint. - Letters to His Son, W. B. Yeats and Others.
I am sure it is one's duty as a teacher to try to show boys that no opinions, no tastes, no emotions are worth much unless they are one's own. I suffered acutely as a boy from the lack of being shown this. - The Upton Letters.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est." Latin: "A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer's hand. - Letters to Lucilius.
And he wrote in the king Ahasuerus' name, and sealed it with the king's ring, and sent letters by posts on horseback, and riders on mules, camels, and young dromedaries: . . . . So the posts that rode upon mules and camels went out, being hastened and pressed on by the king's commandment. And the decrees was given at Shushan the palace.
Letters, from absent friends, extinguish fear, Unite division, and draw distance near; Their magic force each silent wish conveys, And wafts embodied though, a thousand ways: Could souls to bodies write, death's pow'r were mean, For minds could then meet minds with heav'n between.
Kind messages, that pass from land to land; Kind letters, that betray the heart's deep history, In which we feel the pressure of a hand,-- One touch of fire,--and all the rest is mystery!
Soon as thy letters trembling I unclose, That well-known name awakens all my woes.
