Discernment
What makes for good writing? As a writer, you should be able to critically look at your own writing to see if it passes muster. One way to practice this skill is to look at the writing of others and make critical judgments about its quality.
Who Said it Better
Directions: These are exercises in making judgments about writing. For each example, consider the quotes and decide which one is the best. You should be able to explain your reasoning. In order to make your decision, make sure that you understand what each writer is trying to convey.
It is also worth noting that these are not random quotes. Each was carefully chosen and exposes you, the student, to some of the greatest minds of the Western world. This is no accident. A good writer has a broad understanding of history and culture.
Example 1: All three quotes deal with the idea of love. Your task is to read each quote and decide which is the best.
“The wounds invisible,
That love’s keen arrows make.”
William Shakespeare, As You Like It
“Who can give law to lovers? Love is a greater law to itself.”
Boethius, Philosophiae
“To be loved, be lovable.”
Ovid, Ars Amatoria
Who said it better — Shakespeare, Boethius, or Ovid?
Click here to see my answer.
Example 2: All three quotes deal with the idea of war. Your task is to read each quote and decide which is the best.
“The legitimate object of war is a more perfect peace.”
William Tecumseh Sherman
“It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.”
Robert E. Lee
“They were going to look at war, the red animal — war, the blood-swollen god.”
Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage
Who said it better — Sherman, Lee, or Crane?
Click here to see my answer.
Example 3: Both quotes deal with the idea of being civilized. Your task is to read each quote and decide which is the best.
“Civilization is the lamb’s skin in which barbarism masquerades.”
T.B. (Thomas Bailey) Aldrich, from Ponkapog Papers
“The civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage.”
Henry David Thoreau, from Walden
Who said it better – Aldrich or Thoreau?
Click here to see my answer.
Example 4: Both quotes deal with the idea of truth. Your task is to read each quote and decide which is the best.
“For truth itself does not have the privilege to be employed at any time and in every way; its use, noble as it is, has its circumscriptions and limits.”
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, from his Essays
“Humanly speaking, let us define truth, while waiting for a better definition, as—’a statement of the facts as they are’.”
Voltaire, from his Dictionnaire Philosophique
Who said it better – de Montaigne or Voltaire?
Click here to see my answer.
Example 5: Both quotes deal with the idea of reading/education/learning. Your task is to read each quote and decide which is the best.
“A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.”
from James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson
“Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.”
Plato, Republic
Who said it better – Boswell/Johnson or Plato?
Click here to see my answer.
Example 6: All three quotes deal with the idea of hope. Your task is to read each quote and decide which is the best.
“Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords: but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain; and expectations improperly indulged must end in disappointment.”
Samuel Johnson, from James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson
“True hope is swift, and flies with swallow’s wings:
Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings.”
William Shakespeare, Richard III
“Hope, deceitful though it be, is at least of this good use to us — that while we are traveling through this life, it conducts us by an easier and more pleasant way to our journey’s end.”
François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld, Moral Maxims and Reflections
Who said it better – Johnson, Shakespeare, or Rochefoucauld?
Click here to see my answer.
Example 7: Both quotes deal with the idea of freedom (of thought). Your task is to read each quote and decide which is the best.
“Of all the tyrannies on human kind
The worst is that which persecutes the mind.”
John Dryden, The Hind and the Panther
“Liberty of thought is the life of the soul.”
Voltaire, Essay on Epic Poetry
Who said it better – Dryden or Voltaire?
Click here to see my answer.
Example 8: All three quotes deal with the idea of law and wealth. Your task is to read each quote and decide which is the best.
“Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.”
Oliver Goldsmith
“Anacharsis laughed at him (Solon) for imagining the dishonesty and covetousness of his countrymen could be restrained by written laws, which were like spiders’ webs, and would catch, it is true, the weak and poor, but easily be broken by the mighty and rich.”
Anacharsis
“Lawsuit, n. a machine which you go in as a pig and come out as a sausage.”
Ambrose Bierce
Who said it better – Goldsmith, Anacharsis, or Bierce?
Click here to see my answer.
Example 9: All three quotes deal with the idea of honor. Your task is to read each quote and decide which is the best.
“The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, from The Conduct of Life
“As material fortune is associated with the prosperity of the body, so honor belongs to those of the soul.”
Ptolemy, from Tetrabiblos
“Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.”
Marcus Aurelius
Who said it better – Emerson, Ptolemy or Marcus Aurelius?
Click here to see my answer.
Example 10: In both quotes, the speaker/writer insults another person. Your task is to read each quote and decide which is the best.
“The atrocious crime of being a young man, which the honorable gentleman (Warpole) has with such spirit and decency charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny; but content myself with wishing that I may be one of those whose follies may cease with their youth, and not of that number who are ignorant in spite of experience.”
William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, Speech in the House of Commons, March 6, 1741.
“Sherry (Thomas Sheridan) is dull, naturally dull; but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an excess of stupidity, sir, is not in Nature.”
Samuel Johnson, from Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson
Who said it better – Pitt or Johnson?
Click here to see my answer.
Example 11: In both quotes, the speaker/writer insults another person. Your task is to read each quote and decide which is the best.
“The atrocious crime of being a young man, which the honorable gentleman (Warpole) has with such spirit and decency charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny; but content myself with wishing that I may be one of those whose follies may cease with their youth, and not of that number who are ignorant in spite of experience.”
William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, Speech in the House of Commons, March 6, 1741.
“Sherry (Thomas Sheridan) is dull, naturally dull; but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an excess of stupidity, sir, is not in Nature.”
Samuel Johnson, from Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson
Who said it better – Pitt or Johnson?
Click here to see my answer.
Example 12: Both quotes deal with the idea of faith. Your task is to read each quote and decide which is the best.
“The only faith that wears well and holds its color in all weathers, is that which is woven of conviction and set with the sharp mordant of experience.”
James Russell Lowell
“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
New Testament, Hebrews
Who said it better – Lowell or the New Testament?
Click here to see my answer.
Example 13: All three quotes deal with the idea of democracy. Your task is to read each quote and decide which is the best.
“Democracy will prevail when men believe the vote of Judas as good as that of Jesus Christ.”
Thomas Carlyle
“Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
Winston Churchill
“Democracy, which is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.”
Plato
Who said it better – Carlyle, Churchill, or Plato?
Click here to see my answer.
Example 14: Both quotes deal with the idea of dishonesty. Your task is to read each quote and decide which is the best.
“Men use thought only to justify their wrongdoings, and speech only to conceal their thoughts.”
Voltaire, Dialogue 14. Le Chapon et la Poularde
“And thus I clothe my naked villany
With odd old ends stol’n forth of holy writ,
And seem a saint when most I play the devil.”
William Shakespeare, King Richard III
Who said it better – Voltaire or Shakespeare?
Click here to see my answer.
Example 15: All three quotes deal with the ideas of freedom and economics. Your task is to read each quote and decide which is the best.
“Freedom in economic arrangements is itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so economic freedom is an end in itself…Economic freedom is also an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom.”
Milton Friedman
“The system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not.”
Friedrich August von Hayek
“Everybody thinks of economics whether he is aware of it or not. In joining a political party and in casting his ballot, the citizen implicitly takes a stand upon essential economic theories.”
Lugwig von Mises
Who said it better – Friedman, Hayek, or Mises?
Click here to see my answer.
Example 16: Both quotes deal with the idea of faith and morality. Your task is to read each quote and decide which is the best.
“Of moral purpose I see no trace in Nature. That is an article of exclusively human manufacture — and very much to our credit.”
Thomas Henry Huxley, Aphorisms and Reflections
“Faith: You can do very little with it, but you can do nothing without it.”
Samuel Butler
Who said it better – Huxley or Butler?
Click here to see my answer.
Example 17: All three quotes deal with the idea of politics and politicians. Your task is to read each quote and decide which is the best.
“An honest politician is one who when he’s bought stays bought.”
Simon Cameron
“Politicians (are) a set of men who have interests aside from the interests of the people, and who, to say the most of them, are, taken as a mass, at least one long step removed from honest men. I say this with greater freedom because, being a politician myself, none can regard it as personal.”
Abraham Lincoln
“It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.”
Mark Twain
Who said it better – Cameron, Lincoln, or Twain?
Click here to see my answer.
Example 18: Both quotes deal with the idea of evil. Your task is to read each quote and decide which is the best.
“No one becomes depraved in a moment.”
Decimus Junius Juvenalis, Satires
“Lady Macbeth: I am in blood
Stepp’d in so far, that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o’er.”
William Shakespeare, Macbeth
Who said it better – Juvenalis or Shakespeare?
Click here to see my answer.
Example 19: Both quotes deal with the idea of law(s) and human nature. Your task is to read each quote and decide which is the best.
“Whoever desires to found a state and give it laws, must start with assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature, whenever they may find occasion for it.”
Niccolo Machiavelli, Discourse Upon the First Ten Books of Livy
“No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober.”
Samuel Smiles
Who said it better – Machiavelli or Smiles?
Click here to see my answer.
Example 14: In both quotes, the authors offer a critique of another’s writing. Your task is to read each quote and decide which is the best.
“His imagination resembled the wings of an ostrich. It enabled him to run, though not to soar.”
Thomas Babington
“He delighted to tread upon the brink of meaning.”
Samuel Johnson, The Lives of Poets
Who said it better – Babington or Johnson?
Click here to see my answer.
Example 15: Both quotes deal with the idea of freedom. Your task is to read each quote and decide which is the best.
“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.”
William Pitt, speech in the House of Commons, 1783
“The best government is that where there are the fewest useless men.”
Voltaire
Who said it better – Pitt or Voltaire?
Click here to see my answer.