Remarks by John Townsend Trowbridge | V2Melody Quotations

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Showing 8 of 8 remarks

“Every year confirms my earliest impression, that no book has approached the power and greatness of this book, since the Lear and Hamlet of Shakespeare.”

A measured admirer's ranking of Leaves of Grass among the highest works he knew · Letter to William D. O'Connor, 1867

“I feel that, if I live frugally sincerely, and do not use up my mental energies in rapid writing I may be able to do something excellent.”

A private vow to slow the pace of work in hope of better writing · Letter to Walt Whitman, 6 January 1865

“I could never forget those bitter experiences, which I trust made me somewhat tender of the feelings of literary aspirants, when in later years it came my turn to exercise a little brief authority in an editorial chair.”

Early rebuffs remembered as a check on later editorial power · Memoir, My Own Story

“Here was life, and I was young!”

Arrival in New York as a nineteen-year-old with no introductions and no plan but hope · Memoir, My Own Story

“Whenever practicable, I have stepped aside and let the people I met speak for themselves.”

A principle of letting witnesses carry the narrative · Preface, The South: A Tour of Its Battlefields and Ruined Cities

“What is now most desirable is not hypothesis or declamation, but the light of plain facts upon the momentous question of the hour, which must be settled upon broad grounds of Truth and Eternal Right.”

A reporter's plea for facts over rhetoric after the Civil War · Preface, The South: A Tour of Its Battlefields and Ruined Cities

“I still go back occasionally to the old Leaves of Grass and find in them the same unfailing freshness and power, which repeated readings in no wise dull to the sense—a test which only master studies in literature can stand.”

Praise of lasting freshness as the mark of a master work · Letter to Walt Whitman, 30 April 1875

“If I had put off using my own name until I was conscious of doing my best work, I might never have used it.”

A late reflection on how waiting for perfect work can keep a writer nameless · Memoir, My Own Story