Music and literature, the two temporal arts, contrive their pattern of sounds in time; or, in other words, of sounds and pauses.  Communication may be made in broken words, the business of life be carried on with substantives alone; but that is not what we call literature; and the true business of the literary artist is to plait or weave his meaning, involving it around itself; so that each sentence, by successive phrases, shall first come into a kind of knot, and then, after a moment of suspended meaning, solve and clear itself.- O N SOME TECHNICAL ELEMENTS OF STYLE IN LITERATURE . Robert Louis Stevenson
About This Quote

In this quote, the author is talking about the different ways that people communicate their ideas. Communication can be done in broken words or in substantives alone. These are both examples of communication and can both be considered to be literature. This quote explains how a literary artist should communicate their ideas and what they should be doing to communicate it in a way that compels readers to understand their meaning.

Source: Essays In The Art Of Writing

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More Quotes By Robert Louis Stevenson
  1. So long as we love we serve; so long as we are loved by others, I would almost say that we are indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend.

  2. You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving.

  3. Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.

  4. Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.

  5. I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.

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