Logo - Feel The Words

Essayist Quotes

Sayings on essays, ideas, and the writers behind them.

These essayist quotes suggest the form is a calling rather than a skill anyone can learn, insisting true essayists are Born and not made.

Men there have been who have done the essayist's part so well as to have earned an immortality in the doing; but we have had not many of them, and they make but a poor figure on our shelves. It...

Quotes by William Ernest Henley

Essayists, like poets, are born and not made, and for one worth remembering, the world is confronted with a hundred not worth reading. Your true essayist is, in a literary sense, the friend of everybody.

Quotes by William Ernest Henley

If you rely on a more conventional understanding of the term 'left-wing' as being associated with gradations of socialism in the emancipation of the working class, the Leap Manifesto looks something more along the lines of what the great British...

Quotes by Terry Glavin

A young female essayist saying they're influenced by Joan Didion is like a young female singer-songwriter saying they're influenced by Joni Mitchell.

Quotes by Meghan Daum

Ale Quotes

It was a challenge for me to do a plot because I'd been an essayist and a journalist. I had to be vigilant about moving things along and being entertaining.

Quotes by Meghan Daum

The essayist has to follow a certain intellectual pattern. The novelist has the advantage of using fantasy, of being subjective.

Quotes by Manuel Puig

As both an essayist and science fiction and fantasy novelist, I write about and for the future. I talk about the past to remind us that what we believe has always been true - that men and women are somehow...

Quotes by Kameron Hurley

Any responsible essayist or memoir writer who's writing about herself is not just saying, 'Here's what happened,' and opening up her diary. There needs to be consideration of other people's feelings.

Quotes by Faith Salie

Christopher Hitchens, the late essayist and sot, was a man who purposefully cultivated a lot of friends of a certain type - rich, self-important, generally dim-witted and hence easy for a well-spoken Oxbridge debater to impress - and he electrified...

Quotes by Alex Pareene

Frequently Asked Questions

Are essayists described as trained or naturally gifted here?
These quotes lean toward the latter, with one stating essayists, like poets, are born rather than made, and that few are truly worth remembering.
How does one quote describe the essayist's relationship to readers?
It calls the true essayist a friend to nearly everyone who reads them, suggesting the form creates an unusually personal connection with an audience.
Do any quotes connect essay writing to other genres?
Yes, one speaker describes writing as both an essayist and a science fiction and fantasy novelist, using the past to inform reflections on the future.
Is political commentary part of this collection?
Yes, one quote discusses how a manifesto's ideas relate to conventional definitions of left-wing politics and working-class emancipation.
What related quote pages fit the essayist theme?
You may also enjoy quotes about Being or facing a Challenge, both of which echo the reflective tone found in these essayist quotes.

Others describe essay writing as a way of engaging with today's political Challenges by drawing lessons from history. Together they treat the essayist as both craftsman and social observer.