Study and practice writing from history's greatest authors. Each passage teaches a specific technique to improve your copywriting and prose.
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Classic Passages
32+
Master Authors
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Writing Techniques
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Improvement Potential
Gettysburg Address
Abraham Lincoln
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived i...
Second Inaugural Address
Abraham Lincoln
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the...
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a qua...
A Farewell to Arms
Ernest Hemingway
The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will no...
The Race Is Not to the Swift
King James Bible
I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, ...
Circles
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this pr...
A Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foo...
Ode on a Grecian Urn
John Keats
Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness, thou foster-child of silence and slow time, sylvan histori...
Song of Myself
Walt Whitman
I celebrate myself, and sing myself, and what I assume you shall assume, for every atom belonging to...
The Man in the Arena
Theodore Roosevelt
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where th...
Nature
Ralph Waldo Emerson
To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solita...
The New Colossus
Emma Lazarus
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of ...
Letter to Mrs. Bixby
Abraham Lincoln
I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the ...
The Penalty of Leadership
Theodore F. MacManus
In every field of human endeavor, he that is first must perpetually live in the white light of publi...
Somewhere West of Laramie
Ned Jordan
Somewhere west of Laramie there's a broncho-busting, steer-roping girl who knows what I'm talking ab...
On the Art of Writing
Mark Twain
The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. It is the ...
Walden: On Simplicity
Henry David Thoreau
Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or...
Self-Reliance
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers ...
The Elements of Style
Strunk & White
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecess...
Meditations
Marcus Aurelius
You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength. If you...
Scientific Advertising
Claude Hopkins
The competent advertising man must understand psychology. The more he knows about it the better. He ...
Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde
The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim....
The Philosophy of Composition
Edgar Allan Poe
Nothing is more clear than that every plot, worth the name, must be elaborated to its denouement bef...
Give Me Liberty Speech
Patrick Henry
They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall ...
The Strenuous Life
Theodore Roosevelt
I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life...
Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat
Winston Churchill
I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat....
On The Raven
Edgar Allan Poe
Of all melancholy topics, what, according to the universal understanding of mankind, is the most mel...
We Shall Fight on the Beaches
Winston Churchill
We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall...
Psalm 23
King James Bible
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want....
Though I Speak with the Tongues of Men
King James Bible
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding ...
If—
Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you; if you can tru...
What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July
Frederick Douglass
What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than ...
The Way to Wealth
Benjamin Franklin
Courteous Reader, I have heard that nothing gives an Author so great Pleasure, as to find his Works ...
The Gospel of Wealth
Andrew Carnegie
The problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth, so that the ties of brotherhood may s...
The Right Word
Mark Twain
A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words in a bo...
They Laughed When I Sat Down at the Piano...
John Caples
"Can he really play?" a girl whispered. "Heavens no!" Arthur exclaimed. "He never played a note in h...
Call Me Ishmael
Herman Melville
Call me Ishmael. Some years ago, never mind how long precisely, having little or no money in my purs...
A Truth Universally Acknowledged
Jane Austen
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be i...
Letters to His Son
Lord Chesterfield
Dear Boy,...
On Writing
Benjamin Franklin
I took great delight in the study of language, and became extremely correct in the use of it. About ...
On Self-Improvement
Benjamin Franklin
I conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection. I wished to live without c...
The Art of Money Getting
P.T. Barnum
Those who really desire to attain an independence, have only to set their minds upon it, and adopt t...
How I Raised Myself from Failure
Andrew Carnegie
I was born in poverty and learned early to shift for myself. My first job was in a cotton factory at...
Advice to Writers
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The writer, like the priest, must be exempted from secular labor. His work needs a frolic health; he...
How Franklin Taught Himself to Write
Benjamin Franklin
About this time I met with an odd volume of the Spectator. I bought it, read it over and over, and w...
Learning to Read
Frederick Douglass
The plan which I adopted, and the one by which I was most successful, was that of making friends of ...
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