Novelist Quotes

All nature wears one universal grin.

LOVE: A word properly applied to our delight in particular kinds of food; sometimes metaphorically spoken of the favorite objects of all our appetites.

A truly elegant taste is generally accompanied with excellency of heart.

A rich man without charity is a rogue; and perhaps it would be no difficult matter to prove that he is also a fool.

He that can heroically endure adversity will bear prosperity with equal greatness of soul; for the mind that cannot be dejected by the former is not likely to be transported with the later.

If you make money your god, it will plague you like the devil.

Commend a fool for his wit, or a rogue for his honesty and he will receive you into his favor.

Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.

Guilt has very quick ears to an accusation.

Too much good fortune can make you smug and unaware. Happiness should be like an oasis, the greener for the desert that surrounds it.

There was no reality to pain when it left one, thought while it held one fast all other realities failed.

One of the pleasantest things about book writing is that sometimes it brings one in touch with old friends.

I've seen public opinion shift like the wind and put out the very fire it lighted.

I used to think I had ambition... but now I'm not so sure. It may have been only discontent. They're easily confused.

What is a historian, anyway? It is someone who uses facts to record the development of humanity.

There's only a step from the sublime to the ridiculous, but there's no road leading from the ridiculous to the sublime.

Like the philosopher, the author views his task as one of establishing a clear connection between life and history, and of making the past bear fruit for the present and future.

I should add that it is open to debate whether what we call the writing of history these days is truly scientific.

I have always made an effort to render every detail of my reality with the greatest accuracy; but I have never paid attention to whether my presentation of historical facts was an exact one.

From depicting the past, so goes the suspicion, it is a short step to glorifying the past.

Ever since my youth it has disturbed me that of the literary works that survived their own epoch, so many dealt with historical rather than contemporary subjects.

Both the historian and the novelist view history as the struggle of a tiny minority, able and determined to make judgments, which is up against a vast and densely packed majority of the blind, who are led by their instincts and unable to think for themselves.

An author who sets about to depict events of the past that have run their course is suspected of wishing to avoid the problems of the present day, of being, in other words, a reactionary.

After closely examining my conscience, I venture to state that in my historical novels I intended the content to be just as modern and up-to-date as in the contemporary ones.

Asking the author of historical novels to teach you about history is like expecting the composer of a melody to provide answers about radio transmission.

An action doesn't have to be wrong just because it is not logical. It doesn't have to be right just because it has its logic.

Writers should be read but not seen. Rarely are they a winsome sight.

Perhaps too much of everything is as bad as too little.

Life can't defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death.

If American politics are too dirty for women to take part in, there's something wrong with American politics.