C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Of Style

Translation of Thomas Wentworth Higginson

WELL-CHOSEN words are abridged sentences.

Literary style consists in giving a body and a shape to the thought by the phrase.

Attention has a narrow mouth; we must pour into it what we say very carefully, and as it were drop by drop.

Only the temperate style is classic.

It is a great art, that of knowing how to point one’s thought and pierce the attention.

Each author has his own dictionary.

It needs more clearness of intellect and more delicate tact to be a great writer than a great thinker.