When we see a natural style we are quite amazed and delighted, because we expected to see an author and find a man. РBlaise Pascal, Pens̩es, 1670

The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes. РAndr̩ Gide, Journals, 1894

So often is the virgin sheet of paper more real than what one has to say, and so often one regrets having marred it. – Harold Acton, Memoirs of an Aesthete, 1948

It is not my sentence that I polish, but my thought. I pause until the drop of light that I need is formed and falls from my pen. – Joseph Joubert (1754–1824), translated from French by George H. Calvert, 1