Letters (writing)

And none will hear the postmans knock
Without a quickening of the heart.
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten? – W. H. Auden

Letters are like wine; if they are sound they ripen with keeping. A man should lay down letters as he does a cellar of wine. – Samuel Butler

A Letter always seemed to me like Immortality, for is it not the Mind alone, without corporeal friend? – Emily Dickinson

SIR, more than kisses, letters mingle souls,
For thus, friends absent speak. – John Donne

A womans best love letters are always written to the man she is betraying. – Lawrence Durrell

Life is too precious to be spent in this weaving and unweaving of false impressions, and it is better to live quietly under some degree of misrepresentation than to attempt to remove it by the uncertain process of letter-writing. – George Eliot

Letters have to pass two tests before they can be classed as good: they must express the personality both of the writer and of the recipient. – E. M. Forster

Please write again soon. Though my own life is filled with activity, letters encourage momentary escape into others lives and I come back to my own with greater contentment. – Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey

Or dont you like to write letters. I do because its such a swell way to keep from working and yet feel youve done something. – Ernest Hemingway

In a mans 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

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

It does me good to write a letter which is not a response to a demand, a gratuitous letter, so to speak, which has accumulated in me like the waters of a reservoir. – Henry Miller

I have made this letter longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter. – Blaise Pascal

Letters to absence can a voice impart,
And lend a tongue when distance gags the heart. – Horace Walpole