A sentence should be read as if its author, had he held a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end.

Henry David Thoreau
A sentence should be read as if its author, had...
A sentence should be read as if its author, had...
A sentence should be read as if its author, had...
A sentence should be read as if its author, had...
About This Quote

This quote from William Strunk, Jr. is a reminder to the writer that every word matters and should be there for a reason. It has been said that we “read to understand” and to “understand to learn.” This means that we want to be able to tell others about what we have read and not be lost in words. We do not want to leave readers feeling like they were confused or that there were holes in the story.

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  2. You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. - Ray Bradbury

  3. The road to hell is paved with adverbs. - Stephen King

  4. Fiction is the truth inside the lie. - Stephen King

  5. The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But... - Stephen King

More Quotes By Henry David Thoreau
  1. The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed...

  2. I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours..

  3. The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

  4. It is not worth the while to let our imperfections disturb us always.

  5. I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

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