"Rewrite" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... message of twenty words, containing three numerals at the same rate. Two errors to be allowed. Scouts may have someone take message down in writing as they read it, and five minutes in which to rewrite ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... Stevenson side. They were a race of men of sterling metal, who lit our Northern Lights, and from the besieging sea wrung footholds for harbours. From them Robert Louis Stevenson inherited that tenacity of purpose which made him write and rewrite chapters till his phrases concisely expressed his meaning, and toilsomely labour till his work was perfected. His minister grandfather he etched with the "Old Manse." All his mother's people, the Balfours, were of a sanguine, hopeful strain, retaining an elasticity of spirit which never lessened ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • E. Blantyre Simpson
... rewrite these themes if you want to," Henley went on. "I haven't graded them, and I'll reserve the grades for the rewritten themes; and if I find that you have made a real effort, I'll discuss them in detail with you. ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... Newspapers have no other use—except the one I began on." When St. George entered the city room, Crass, of the goblin's blood cravats, had vacated his old place, and Provin was just uncovering his typewriter and banging the tin cover upon everything within reach, and Bennietod was writhing over a rewrite, and Chillingworth was discharging an office boy in a fashion that warmed ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... about. His novel was written intermittently between 1872 and 1884 when he abandoned it. In the twenty remaining years of his life he did nothing to it, and we have Mr Streatfeild's word for it that 'he professed himself dissatisfied with it as a whole, and always intended to rewrite, or at any rate, to revise it.' We could have deduced as much from his refusal to publish the book. The certainty of commercial failure never deterred Butler from publication; he was in the happy situation of being able to publish ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... ask why he did not throw Siegfried into the waste paper basket and rewrite The Ring from The Valkyries onwards, one must reply that the time had not come for such a feat. Neither Wagner nor anyone else then living knew enough to achieve it. Besides, what he had already done had reached the limit of even his immense energy and perseverance and so he did the best he could ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... certain points in its favor. If you have time and leisure, it is possible to polish and rewrite your ideas until they are expressed in clear, concise terms. Pope sometimes spent a whole day in perfecting one couplet. Gibbon consumed twenty years gathering material for and rewriting the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." Although you cannot ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... indeed I did, and so did the whole civilized world, and that within twelve months of the time of speaking; but there is no need to rewrite in this place the history ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... The tendency seems odd but it can be paralleled in India where it is not uncommon to rewrite vernacular works in Sanskrit. See Grierson, J.R.A.S. 1913, p. 133. Even in England in the seventeenth century Bacon seems to have been doubtful of the immortality of his works in English and prepared a ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... could bequeath. Several years before he had talked it over with Madison, with whom he was then on very friendly terms, and Madison had drafted a good deal of it. Now he turned to Hamilton, giving him the topics as far as they had been outlined, and bidding him to rewrite it if he thought it desirable. In September, 1796, Washington read the "Address" before the ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... Shakespeare were too prone to follow the impetuous example of the first rather than the severe example of the second. There is perhaps not one of them—and Middleton assuredly is not one—whom we can reasonably imagine capable of the patience and self-respect which induced Shakespeare to rewrite the triumphantly popular parts of Romeo, of Falstaff, and of Hamlet with an eye to the literary perfection and permanence of work which in its first light outline had won the crowning suffrage ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... It will be better to go on, I think, trying to recapture the more serious style, until the whole book it at least in some form. Then you will know exactly where you are and what is necessary to harmonize the whole. You can then rewrite the 'off' chapters, bringing them into line. This is a ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... iambics, if it were only that it discriminates it from those alternate ten-syllable and eight-syllable iambics into which it would be natural to render many of the Epodes. At the same time, it did not appear worth while to rewrite the two Odes already translated, merely for the sake of uniformity, as the principle of correspondence to the Latin, the alternation of longer and shorter lines, is really the same in all three cases. Nay, so tentative has been my treatment of ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... dramatic literature I have adopted is that, unlike the loose Elizabethan form, it continually forces one by its rigour of logic away from one's capacities, experiences, and desires, until, if one have not patience to wait for the mood, or to rewrite again and again till it comes, there is rhetoric and logic and dry circumstance ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... returned for another interview with Pepe; this time the latter found the first act somewhat slow, and advised him at any cost to put more action into it and make it somewhat shorter. It took the poet a month to rewrite the first act. When he once more presented himself, the director, while expressing great admiration for the excellence of the verse and for some of the ideas, manifested some doubt as to whether the play was ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... actor, will have a capital effect. For example, after the strophe, "Sei la citta del pianto, e questa reggia quella del duol," comes a slight glimmering of hope, and then, "Madman that I am! whither does my grief lead me?" "Ah! Creta tutta io vedo." The Abbato Varesco is not obliged to rewrite the act on account of these things, for they can easily be interpolated. I have also written that both I and others think the oracle's subterranean speech too long to make a good effect. Reflect on ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... announced. It is a pretty heavy, emphatic piece of pedantry; but I don't care; the public, I verily believe, will like it. I have excised all you proposed and more on my own movement. But I have not yet been able to rewrite the two special pieces which, as you said, so badly wanted it; it is hard work to rewrite passages in proof; and the easiest work is still hard to me. But I am certainly recovering fast; a ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... story it ought to be good, but all I got was a high powered bawling out. He said that he would talk to you or no one and would just as soon talk to no one as to me any longer. Then he hung up. You'd better take a run out to Calvada and see what he has to say. I can have a good man rewrite your drivel when ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... favourite battle-ground where flap and circular, antero-posterior and lateral, long and short flaps, double, triple, and conical incisions, have striven with each other; so were I to attempt to describe one quarter of the various methods employed, I should need to rewrite the history of Amputation. ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... asked to rewrite this article of international law, in the midst of a great war on sea and land? Shall the government at Washington be seduced by cajolery, or compelled by threats, to rob the merchantmen of the poor protection of a single gun in order that they may fall absolutely helpless into the black hands ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... others—what matter?" said Vallensolle. "Faith! My citation is made, and like the Abbe Vertot, who wouldn't rewrite his siege, I'll ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... fire in his little back parlor; and with a sigh sat down to rewrite his memorial and to try and recover, if he could, the exact words, and save the next post ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... and so did the servant, but it was all in vain. At last they gave up the task as a useless one, and Beethoven, mad with despair, and pouring the very opposite to blessings upon the head of her who, he believed, was the author of the mischief, sat down with the conclusion that he must rewrite the missing part. He had no sooner commenced a new Kyrie—for this was the movement which was not to be found—than some loose sheets of score paper were discovered in the kitchen! Upon examination they proved to be the identical pages that Beethoven so much desired, ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... meters in which poetry is written. In iambic poetry each foot contains two syllables, the second of which is accented. There is another kind of foot composed of two syllables. In this the accent falls on the first syllable. Bannockburn gives examples of this. To illustrate, we will rewrite the first stanza, using the words in their English form, and mark off the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... advised against it on the ground that it would make Edgar conceited,—a fault from which he was already suffering. As soon as he was free to do as he pleased, therefore, it was natural that he should rewrite his poems and ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... of my 'Twenty Years in Congress,' which is just going to the printer, and destroyed it. I dictated the whole of it, but I find that accuracy and elegance can only be had at the end of a pen. I shall rewrite the memoirs in ink. In these days composition by the typewriter or through the stenographer is so common." There will be many who ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... "concealed poet" of high social standing, with a strange fancy for rewriting the plays of contemporary playwrights, might obtain the manuscript copies from their owners, the Lord Chamberlain's Company, through that knowledgeable, witty, and venal member of the company, Will Shakspere. He might then rewrite and improve them, more or less, as it was his whim to do. The actor might make fair copies in his own hand, give them to his company, and say that the improved works were from his own pen and genius. The lie might pass, but only if the actor, in his life and witty ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... {Usenet} posting by Alan Hastings and Steve Tarr spoofing the "Star Wars" movies in hackish terms. Some years later, ESR (disappointed by Hastings and Tarr's failure to exploit a great premise more thoroughly) posted a 3-times-longer complete rewrite called "Unix WARS"; the two are ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... me considerably over a month, and they are still beneath pity. This I cannot continue, time not sufficing; and the next will just have to be worse. All the good I can express is just this; some day, when style revisits me, they will be excellent matter to rewrite. Of course, my old cure of a change of work would probably answer, but I cannot take it now. The treadmill turns; and, with a kind of desperate cheerfulness, I mount the idle stair. I haven't the least anxiety about the book; unless I die, I shall find the time ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... book as "a marvel of epitomized research," I must confess, to my shame, that I was not aware that Burton had devoted two hundred pages to what he calls Love-Melancholy, until I had finished the first sketch of my manuscript and commenced to rewrite it. My experience thus furnished a striking verification of the witty epitaph which Burton wrote for himself and his book: "Known to few, unknown to fewer still." However, after reading Burton, I was surprised that any reader of Burton should have found ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... photograph hustler in the office. Scott said it was because no living human being could resist the personal triumph it was to hand his picture over to Vesey. Vesey always wrote his own news stories, except the big ones, which were sent to the rewrite men. Add to this fact that among all the inhabitants, temples, and groves of the earth nothing existed that could abash Vesey, and his dim ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... the rich passage work of the new school, appeared to him old-fashioned. Mendelssohn, who in his letters repeatedly alludes to his sterility in the matter of new pianoforte passages, allowed himself to be persuaded by Hiller to rewrite the pianoforte part, and was pleased with the result. It is clear from the above that if Mendelssohn failed to give Chopin his due, Chopin did more than ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... their plays. If the company you select is one that features a woman in most of its picture-stories, and yours is a photoplay with a strong male lead, you would be unwise to submit it there. True, it might be accepted and one of the studio writers commissioned to rewrite it in order to give the "fat" part to the leading woman, but your check would be proportionately smaller to compensate for the rewriting—you would, in fact, be paid little more than if you had sold the ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... days, nothing fresh for me to tell, no discovery that can be made. Yet in thinking out what I have to say about the religion of the Burmese, I have found that I must tell again some of the life of the Buddha, I must rewrite this ten-times-told tale, of which I know nothing new. And the reason is this: that although I know nothing that previous writers have not known, although I cannot bring to the task anything like ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... is to handle news from outside the State; (2) a State editor, who directs as best he may a horde of local correspondents who represent the paper in the rural and semi-rural districts; (3) one or more "rewrite men" or copy-readers, whose business it is to write out the news sent in by telephone, to correct the errors of illiterate reporters, and to rewrite articles when necessary; ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... to rewrite the whole blamed mess for fifteen hundred dollars, that's what I'm going to do," announced Mr. Howard with both belligerence and excitement in his voice and in the flash ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... for but to bring forward the character of his hero; but they are all individualized while he employs them. The scene he has fixed upon; this is present to his mind's eye; and as he cannot afterwards alter it without making his characters talk incongruously and being compelled to rewrite the whole, he writes it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... second writing was better than the first; that he probably left out what was unessential, and made a more condensed narrative,—a more complete picture, for his memory was singularly retentive. I do not believe that any man can do his best at the first heat. See how the great poets revise and rewrite. Brougham rewrote his celebrated peroration on the trial of Queen Caroline seventeen times. Carlyle had to rewrite his book, but his materials remained; his great pictures were all in his mind. In this second ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... attempts which are made to rewrite history on the base of moral convictions and philosophical conclusion. History very often has been, and no doubt often again will be, rewritten, with good effect and in the service of truth, on the finding of new facts. Records have been brought ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... replied Dick, with a weary smile, "and I rely on you, old fellow, not to do anything to it. It would only give me all the pain over again if I had to rewrite it." ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... for "falling into the briers of Antipedobaptism" until now, the same spirit is shown in all such attempts. In each we have generally, on one side, a body of older theologians, who since their youth have learned nothing and forgotten nothing, sundry professors who do not wish to rewrite their lectures, and a mass of unthinking ecclesiastical persons of little or no importance save in making up a retrograde majority in an ecclesiastical tribunal; on the other side we have as generally the thinking, open-minded, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... to Peter that to sit in this old room and rewrite the wordy meanderings of the old gentleman's book was the very height of emptiness. How utterly futile, when all around him, on every hand, girls like Cissie Dildine were being indentured to corruption! And, as far as Peter knew, ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... new being to its complex conditions of life. The term "selection," I see, deceives many persons, though I see no more reason why it should than elective affinity, as used by the old chemists. If I had to rewrite my book, I would use "natural preservation" or "naturally preserved." I should think you would as soon take an emetic as re-read any part of my book; but if you did, and were to erase selection and selected, and insert preservation and preserved, possibly the subject would ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... same period in thought—beyond this there is no clue to their date—belong AESOPUS and GLYCON, each the author of a single epigram in the Palatine Anthology. They belong to the age of the Byzantine metaphrasts, when infinite pains were taken to rewrite well-known poems or passages in different metres, by turning Homer into elegiacs or iambics, and recasting pieces of Euripides ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... spoke, she would try during whole hours to write in the air the letters which formed the boy's name. She would trace them slowly before the fire, imagining that she really saw them; then believing that her eyes had deceived her, she would rewrite the capital P again, her arm trembling with fatigue, forcing herself to trace the name to the end; then when she had finished it she would begin over again. At last she could not write it any more. She would muddle everything—form other words, and exhaust ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... hours at your theme. You write and rewrite; and when it is at length complete and out of your hands, you are harassed by a thousand doubts. At times, as you recall your hours of toil, you question if so much has been spent upon any other; you feel almost certain ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... elements of epigram and antithesis, there is a vast wealth of illustration, brought from the stores of a memory which never seemed to forget anything. He studied every sentence with the greatest care and minuteness, and would often rewrite paragraphs and even whole chapters, until he was satisfied with the variety and clearness of the expression. "He could not rest," it was said, "until the punctuation was correct to a comma; until every paragraph ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... prefer the new Moore to the old Moore, the author of the later and better written books to the author of the earlier ones. 'Evelyn Innes' was many times rewritten. Moore has said that he could never get it to suit him, but he has also said, recently, that he would never rewrite another book (a resolution he has not kept). 'Memoirs of My Dead Life' and 'Hail and Farewell' do not need rewriting. They are written to stand. 'The Brook Kerith,' perhaps, you will find equally to your taste. It will be the ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... absorbed young anchorites, who mortified themselves beneath the roof of Doctor Blimber, Paul was an object of general interest; a fragile little plaything that they all liked, and that no one would have thought of treating roughly. But he could not change his nature, or rewrite the analysis; and so they all agreed that ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... still dreaming of foreign wars. He had drawn up a letter of instruction to our Minister to Great Britain which would have provoked an armed conflict. When the backwoodsman from Southern Illinois read this document he was compelled to lay aside his other duties and practically rewrite it. His work showed a freedom of mind, a balance of judicial temperament, an insight into foreign affairs, a skill in the use of language, a delicacy of criticism, a mastery of the arts of diplomacy ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... bad one. I suppose I'll have a hard time placing it, because I don't believe it will be bad enough at the outset for them to accept it on sight. I understand it is a theory among managers that if a play is unspeakably bad they can hire some one else to rewrite it from beginning to end, and make a success of it. Adversely, if it should happen to be a good play, they don't know what it's all about and will have nothing to ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... presented a composition on this subject. The thoughts were good, but, as might be expected, the expression was somewhat crude, and of course the teacher found errors to correct and suggestions to make. These Harry eagerly welcomed and voluntarily proposed to rewrite the composition. The result was a very much improved draft. He sent a copy home and received in reply a letter from his father, expressing surprise and gratification at the excellence of ...
— Bound to Rise • Horatio Alger
... rewrite these," he said, handing the clippings to John. "Keep 'em short. Twenty-five words each. Remember that always. Keep everything short. Keep your eyes and ears open and read the papers. Read everything in them. Now get over there and start writing ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... had a good deal of time on his hands; and, to occupy this time he returned to his old love, composition. He began to rewrite his romance; and one day Kitty discovered him pegging away at it. He rose from ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... a vicious crackle as the last of the other reporters hurried out. He thought he caught a gleam of merry pity in the reporter's eye. Never mind. Let 'em laugh. Let 'em wait. One of these days he'll be the one getting the real stuff and putting it through, too, from tip to type, without a rewrite man or a copy reader ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... saturated with the spirit of his age. The chapters as they came to Raynal's hands are not in existence so far as is known, and posterity can never judge how monumental their author's assurance was. The abbe's reply was kindly, but he advised the novice to complete his researches, and then to rewrite his pieces. Buonaparte was not unwilling to profit by the counsels he received: soon after, in July, 1786, he gave two orders to a Genevese bookseller, one for books concerning Corsica, another for the memoirs of Mme. de Warens and her servant Claude Anet, which are a sort ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane |
