Written Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old written quotes, written sayings, and written proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.

Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted. Jules Renard
The picture alone, without the written word, leaves half the story untold. James Lafferty
The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice. Mark Twain
Writing is a delicious agony. Gwendolyn Brooks
Writing, the art of communicating thoughts to the mind through the eye, is the great invention of the world enabling us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn, at all distances of time and space. Abraham Lincoln
There are two good rules which ought to be written on every heart never to believe anything bad about anybody unless you positively know it to be true; never to tell even that unless you feel that it is absolutely necessary and that God is listening while you tell it. Henry Van Dyke
Writing is a mysterious activity. Susan Sontag
If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. Toni Morrison
Writing is like breathing, it's possible to learn to do it well, but the point is to do it no matter what. Julia Cameron
Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon cause and effect in the happenings of a writer's own life. Eudora Welty
Writing means sharing. It's part of the human condition to want to share things thoughts, ideas, opinions. Paulo Coelho
Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do. Stephen Spender
Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works. Virginia Woolf
The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything. Walter Bagehot
Somewhere it is written that parents who are critical of other people's children and publicly admit they can do better are asking for it. Erma Bombeck
Poetry remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art. Jorge Luis Borges
A well written life is almost as rare as a well spent one. Thomas Carlyle
A dream doesn't become a goal until it is written. Edwin Louis Cole
A composer knows that music is written by human beings for human beings and that music is a continuation of life, not something separated from it. Hanns Eisler
It is only what is written upon the soul of man that will survive the wreck of time. Francis J. Grimke
The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible. Vladimir Nabokov
People with clear, written goals, accomplish far more in a shorter period of time than people without them could ever imagine. Brian Tracy
Writing is a very focused form of meditation. Just as good as sitting in a lotus position. Alan Moore
Poetry can be written only because it has been written. Wendell Berry
The secret of good writing is to say an old thing in a new way or a new thing in an old way. Richard Harding Davis
It must essentially remain a novel of adolescence written by a retarded adolescent. John Fowles
Everything written is as good as it is dramatic. It need not declare itself in form, but it is drama or nothing. Robert Frost
A perfect poem is impossible. Once it had been written, the world would end. Robert Graves