Explore "On the Pleasure of Taking up One's Pen" by Hilaire Belloc on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Among the sadder and smaller pleasures of this world I count this pleasure: the pleasure of taking up one's pen.
It has been said by very many people that there is a tangible pleasure in the mere act of writing: in choosing and arranging words. It has been denied by many. It is affirmed and denied in the life of Doctor Johnson, and for my part I would say that it is very true in some rare moods and wholly false in most others. However, of writing and the pleasure in it I am not writing here (with pleasure), but of the pleasure of taking up one's pen, which is quite another matter.