The Deacon Preacher

 

"Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out".   - Samuel Johnson 

"Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it's just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it".   - David Sedaris 

"The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning."  - Sir Winston Churchill 

“That is not the best sermon which makes the hearers go away talking to one another, and praising the speaker, but which makes them go away thoughtful and serious, and hastening to be alone” - Gilbert Burnet

“Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow.” - Lawrence Clark Powell 

“The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending, then having the two as close together as possible.” - George Burns

 

About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.  - Josh Billings 

Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.
  - Blaise Pascal 

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.
  - Flannery O'Connor 

"About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment."  - Josh Billings