133 Quotes About Essays

The poet's mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.

Life is too short to be mad for too long.

For the average civilized person to whom, as to Patrick Henry, even death is acceptable in the absence of liberty.

Some one said: "The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did." Precisley, and they are that which we know.

We should be simiarly wary of acceping common opinions; we should judge them by the ways of reason not by popular vote

Orcs were far from invulnerable; they were subject to disease, they could die, they were not immortal, and they "needed food and rest". From The Unnatural History of Tolkiens Orcs

I have not seen anywhere in the world a more obvious malformed person and miracle than myself. Through use and time we become conditioned to anything strange; but the more I become familiar with and know myself, the more my deformity amazes me and the less I understand myself.

The essay is a modest genre. It doesn't mean to change the world. Instead it says: let me tell you what happened to me.

I had an insanely long commute - New York to D.C. - when I worked at 'National Geographic.' I hate to waste time, so I spent my time by writing about my life on the premise that I might be able to pitch those as short essays to magazines. It wasn't until later that I realized that I was writing a book.