Sayings about Style:

I must in the next place observe that, when our thoughts are great and just, they are often obscured by the sounding phrases, hard metaphors, and forced expressions in which they are clothed. Shakspeare is often very faulty in this particular.
Joseph Addison
Sir Francis Bacon observes that a well-written book, compared with its rivals and antagonists, is like Moses’s serpent, that immediately swallowed up and devoured those of the Egyptians.
Joseph Addison
No periodical writer, who always maintains his gravity, and does not sometimes sacrifice to the graces, must expect to be in vogue for any time.
Joseph Addison
Claudius … has run his description into the most wretched fustian.
Joseph Addison
Bring his style from all loose grossness to such firm fastness in Latin, as in Demosthenes.
Roger Ascham
An honest man will never employ an equivocal expression; a confused man may often utter ambiguous ones without any design.
Hugh Blair
I have formerly given the general character of Mr. Addison’s style and manner as natural and unaffected, easy and polite, and full of those graces which a flowery imagination diffuses over writing.
Hugh Blair
I must not step into too spruce a style for serious matters; and yet I approve not the dull insipid way of writing practised by many chymists.
Robert Boyle
Style supposes the reunion and the exercise of all the intellectual faculties. The style is the man.
Comte de Buffon
It is one thing to make an idea clear, and another to make it affecting to the imagination.
Edmund Burke
When substantialness combineth with delightfulness, and correctness with stayedness, how can the language sound otherwise than most full of sweetness?
William Camden
God gave you that gifted tongue of yours, and set it between your teeth, to make known your true meaning to us, not to be rattled like a muffin-man’s bell.
Thomas Carlyle
When I meet with any that write obscurely or converse confusedly, I am apt to suspect two things: first, that such persons do not understand themselves; and secondly, that they are not worthy of being understood by others.
Charles Caleb Colton
Imitation is the sincerest of flattery.
Charles Caleb Colton
Nothing is so difficult as the apparent ease of a clear and flowing style: those graces which, from their presumed facility, encourage all to attempt an imitation of them are usually the most inimitable.
Charles Caleb Colton
I have ventured to give the whole class the appellation of “the magic-lanthorn school” for their writings have the startling effect of that toy, children delight in it, and grown people soon get tired of it.
Bishop Edward Copleston
A simple, clear, harmonious style, which taken as a model may be followed without leading the novitiate either into turgidity or obscurity.
Richard Cumberland
The science of style as an organ of thought, of style in relation to the ideas and feelings, might be called the organology of style.
Thomas De Quincey
Quickness of imagination is seen in the invention, fertility in the fancy, and accuracy in the expression.
John Dryden
If you write in your strength, you stand revealed at first; and should you write under it, you cannot avoid some peculiar graces.
John Dryden
Some men, imagining themselves possessed with a divine fury, often fall into toys and trifles which are only puerilities.
John Dryden
After Chaucer there was a Spenser, a Harrington, Fairfax, before Waller and Denham were in being; and our numbers were in their nonage till these last appeared.
John Dryden
Chaucer, I confess, is a rough diamond, and must be first polished ere he shine.
John Dryden
Chaucer has refined on Boccace, and has mended the stories he has borrowed: though prose allows more liberty of thought, and the expression is more easy when unconfined by numbers. Our countryman carries weight, and yet wins the race at disadvantage.
John Dryden
He is everywhere above conceits of epigrammatic wit and gross hyperboles: he maintains majesty in the midst of plainness; he shines, but glares not; and is stately without ambition, which is the vice of Lucan.
John Dryden
He taxes Lucan, who crowded sentences together and was too full of points.
John Dryden
Lucilius writ not only loosely and muddily, with little art, and much less care, but also in a time which was not yet sufficiently purged from barbarism.
John Dryden
Chaste and modest as [Persius] is esteemed, it cannot be denied that in some places he is broad and fulsome.
John Dryden
Statius, the best versificator next Virgil, knew not how to design after him.
John Dryden
A sentence well couched takes both the sense and the understanding. I love not those cart-rope speeches that are longer than the memory of man can fathom.
Owen Felltham
Images are very sparingly to be introduced: their proper place is in poems and orations, and their use is to move pity or terror, compassion, and resentment.
Henry Felton
Rules and critical observations improve a good genius, where nature leadeth the way, provided he is not too scrupulous: for that will introduce a stiffness and affectation which are utterly abhorrent from all good writing.
Henry Felton
Catullus, though his lines be rough and his numbers inharmonious, I could recommend for the softness and delicacy, but must decline for the looseness of his thoughts.
Henry Felton
Horace hath exposed those trifling poetasters that spend themselves in glaring descriptions and sewing here and there some cloth of gold on their sackcloth.
Henry Felton
There is nothing in words and styles but suitableness that makes them acceptable and effective.
Joseph Glanvill
Sallust’s expression would be shorter and more compact; Cicero’s more gracious and pleasing.
Bishop Richard Hurd
A “barbarism” may be in one word; a solecism must be of more.
Dr. Samuel Johnson
Juice in language is less than blood; for if the words be but becoming and signifying and the sense gentle, there is juice: but where that wanteth, the language is thin, scarce covering the bone.
Ben Jonson
As we should take care that our style in writing be neither dry nor empty, we should look again it be not winding or wanton with far-fetched descriptions: either is a vice.
Ben Jonson
There are words that as much raise a style as others can depress it; superlation and overmuchness amplifies: it may be above faith, but not above a mean.
Ben Jonson
As it is a great point of art, when our matter requires it, to enlarge and veer out all sail; so to take it in and contract it is of no less praise when the argument doth ask it.
Ben Jonson
If elegance consists in the choice and collocation of words, you have a most indubitable title to it.
Sir William Jones
Perspicuity consists in the using of proper terms for the thoughts which a man would have pass from his own mind into that of another.
John Locke
Another of Addison’s favourite companions was Ambrose Phillips, a good whig and a middling poet, who had the honour of bringing into fashion a species of composition which has been called after his name, Namby-Pamby.
Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay
As the mind of Johnson was robust, but neither nimble nor graceful, so his style was void of all grace and ease, and, being the most unlike of all styles to the natural effusion of a cultivated mind, had the least pretensions to the praise of eloquence.
Sir James Mackintosh
Whoever would write elegantly must have regard to the different turn and juncture of every period: there must be proper distances and pauses.
Alexander Pope
Style in painting is the same as in writing,—a power over materials, whether words or colours, by which conceptions or sentiments are conveyed.
Sir Joshua Reynolds
Independently of the defects of language, prolixity is one of the deadly sins of our elder writers.
Henry Rogers
There is a certain majesty in plainness; as the proclamation of a prince never frisks it in tropes or fine conceits, in numerous and well-turned periods, but commands in sober natural expressions.
Robert South
Proper words in proper places make the true definition of a style.
Jonathan Swift
The court, which used to be the standard of propriety and correctness of speech, ever since continued the worst school in England for that accomplishment.
Jonathan Swift
The best English historian, when his style grows antiquated, will be only considered as a tedious relater of facts, and perhaps consulted to furnish materials for some future collector.
Jonathan Swift
Simplicity, without which no human performance can arrive to perfection.
Jonathan Swift
The scholars of Ireland seem not to have the least conception of a style, but run on in a flat phraseology, often mingled with barbarous terms.
Jonathan Swift
Poets, although not insensible how much our language was already over-stocked with monosyllables, yet, to save time and pains, introduced that barbarous custom of abbreviating words to fit them to the measure of their verses.
Jonathan Swift
The glare of puerile declamation that tinsels over the trite essays of the other.
Bishop William Warburton
Let your method be plain, that your hearers may run through it without embarrassment, and take a clear view of the whole.
Dr. Isaac Watts
Some have a violent and turgid manner of talking and thinking: they are always in extremes, and pronounce concerning everything in the superlative.
Dr. Isaac Watts
Some men give more light and knowledge by the bare stating of the question with perspicuity and justness, than others by talking of it in gross confusion for whole hours together.
Dr. Isaac Watts
The first requisite of style, not only in rhetorical but in all compositions, is perspicuity.
Richard Whately
The more power we have of discriminating the nicer shades of meaning, the greater facility we possess of giving force and precision to our expressions.
Richard Whately
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Authors by sayings about style: Joseph Addison, Roger Ascham, Hugh Blair, Robert Boyle, Comte de Buffon, Edmund Burke, William Camden, Thomas Carlyle, Charles Caleb Colton, Bishop Edward Copleston, Richard Cumberland, Thomas De Quincey, John Dryden, Owen Felltham, Henry Felton, Joseph Glanvill, Bishop Richard Hurd, Dr. Samuel Johnson, Ben Jonson, Sir William Jones, John Locke, Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay, Sir James Mackintosh, Alexander Pope, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Henry Rogers, Robert South, Jonathan Swift, Bishop William Warburton, Dr. Isaac Watts, Richard Whately.
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