I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.
Interpretation
An author prefers recognition, even negative, over being ignored.
This quote by Samuel Johnson highlights the importance of acknowledgment in the creative arts. It suggests that an author values the response to their work—be it criticism or praise—more than the absence of a response, as silence can signify that their efforts are not valued or appreciated. This reflects a broader truth about human nature: we crave recognition and validation for our contributions and creativity.
In practice
A writer might use this quote in a workshop to emphasize the importance of feedback on their work.
To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.
He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.
To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of the weary pilgrimage.
Fly-fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.
When any anxiety or gloom of the mind takes hold of you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaining; but exert yourselves to hide it, and by endeavoring to hide it you drive it away.
A fishing rod is a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other.
I am seeking that dance which might be the divine expression of the human spirit through the medium of the body's movement.
When we talk to somebody and we want to be nice or polite or show our more beautiful side, we try to use the best words that we know. This is what poets are doing. They are cleaning the words, they are inventing the sentiments, they are giving us a way to communicate.
I do not know what the spirit of a philosopher could more wish to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his fine art, finally also the only kind of piety he knows, his 'divine service.'
and the sad notes floated out to the patio and hung in the trees like birds too tired to fly
In the theater, while you recognized that you were looking at a house, it was a house in quotation marks. On screen, the quotation marks tend to be blotted out by the camera.
A world turned into a stereotype, a society converted into a regiment, a life translated into a routine, make it difficult for either art or artists to survive. Crush individuality in society and you crush art as well. Nourish the conditions of a free life and you nourish the arts, too.
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