Dylan O’Sullivan posts some really great classic work into his X feed (I believe he runs the Infinite Books one as well). Here are some that have been rattling around my brain:
No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in.
Q: What is the best training for writing? Courses, experience, or what?
FAULKNER: Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, on success:
To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded!
I feel absolutely impotent every time I sit down to write. Writing is hard work. It’s the hardest work in the world. It is the world’s toughest racket. If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. All they’d have to do would be to sit down and write a story and send it off and get a check back. The only reason they pay good money is there aren’t many people who can do it.
Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there.
There’s definitely an opportunity for him (or someone else) to compile these quotes together at a more permanent home—more searchable and shareable than an ephemeral post at X, like The Marginalian.