Letters

(237 votes)   Letter writing is the only device for combining solitude with good company.

Lord Byron
1788-1824, British Poet

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(195 votes)   A short letter to a distant friend is, in my opinion, an insult like that of a slight bow or cursory salutation -- a proof of unwillingness to do much, even where there is a necessity of doing something.

Samuel Johnson
1709-1784, British Author

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(177 votes)   The word that is heard perishes, but the letter that is written remains.

Proverbs

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(162 votes)   A letter does not blush.

Marcus T. Cicero
c. 106-43 BC, Great Roman Orator, Politician

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(149 votes)   Sir, more than kisses, letters mingle souls. For, thus friends absent speak.

John Donne
1572-1632, British Metaphysical Poet

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(139 votes)   A letter is an unannounced visit, the postman the agent of rude surprises. One ought to reserve an hour a week for receiving letters and afterwards take a bath.

Friedrich Nietzsche
1844-1900, German Philosopher

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(135 votes)   In a man's letters you know, Madam, his soul lies naked, his letters are only the mirror of his breast, whatever passes within him is shown undisguised in its natural process. Nothing is inverted, nothing distorted, you see systems in their elements, you discover actions in their motives.

Samuel Johnson
1709-1784, British Author

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(135 votes)   Or don't you like to write letters. I do because it's such a swell way to keep from working and yet feel you've done something.

Ernest Hemingway
1898-1961, American Writer

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(121 votes)   Politeness is as much concerned in answering letters within a reasonable time, as it is in returning a bow, immediately.

Lord Chesterfield
1694-1773, British Statesman, Author

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(118 votes)   A man who publishes his letters becomes a nudist -- nothing shields him from the world's gaze except his bare skin. A writer, writing away, can always fix himself up to make himself more presentable, but a man who has written a letter is stuck with it for all time.

E(lwyn) B(rooks) White
1899-1985, American Author, Editor

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(117 votes)   Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them.

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
1749-1832, German Poet, Dramatist, Novelist

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(115 votes)   How frail and ephemeral is the material substance of letters, which makes their very survival so hazardous. Print has a permanence of its own, though it may not be much worth preserving, but a letter! Conveyed by uncertain transportation, over which the sender has no control; committed to a single individual who may be careless or inappreciative; left to the mercy of future generations, of families maybe anxious to suppress the past, of the accidents of removals and house-cleanings, or of mere ignorance. How often it has been by the veriest chance that they have survived at all.

Elizabeth Drew
1887-1965, Anglo-American Author, Critic

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(110 votes)   I have received no more than one or two letters in my life that were worth the postage.

Henry David Thoreau
1817-1862, American Essayist, Poet, Naturalist

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(109 votes)   I hold that the parentheses are by far the most important parts of a non-business letter.

D. H. Lawrence
1885-1930, British Author

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(98 votes)   Never write a letter if you can help it, and never destroy one!

Sir John A. Macdonald
1815-1891, Canadian First Prime Minister

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