“Most men are rather stupid, and most of those who are not stupid are, consequently, rather vain.”
A.E. Housman, “The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism”
Archives for August 2017
Lookback: how to write short pieces
From 2007:
Having spent a good deal of my life writing short pieces on serious subjects for newspapers and magazines, I’ve learned from experience to write organically short—that is, to write a five-hundred-word draft of a five-hundred-word piece instead of writing a thousand-word draft and cutting it in half. Not only does this reduce waste motion, but the finished product is almost always better….
Read the whole thing here.
Almanac: Justice Holmes on giving advice to the young
“The advice of the elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., “The Path of the Law”