[M]y eyes moistened yesterday with your dear, dear letter in my hand. Was it foolish to kiss the senseless paper, to clasp it with the involuntary laugh of uncontrollable emotion? Don’t you think one could go mad of pure longing?… ~Byron Caldwell Smith, letter to Kate StephensTPVgb, Smith b.1849-d.1877, Stephens b.1853-d.1938; Smith was Professor of Greek Language and Literature at the University of Kansas from 1872-1875

A woman’s best love letters are always written to the man she is betraying.  ~Lawrence Durrell

Grammar is the grave of letters.  ~Elbert Hubbard

I am tired, Beloved,
of chafing my heart against
the want of you;
of squeezing it into little inkdrops,
And posting it.
~Amy Lowell, "The Letter"

One of the pleasures of reading old letters is the knowledge that they need no answer.  ~Lord Byron

What a lot we lost when we stopped writing letters.  You can’t reread a phone call.  ~Liz Carpenter

In an age like ours, which is not given to letter-writing, we forget what an important part it used to play in people’s lives.  ~Anatole BroyardCUL

And none will hear the postman’s knock
Without a quickening of the heart.
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?
~W.H. Auden

If you must reread old love letters, better pick a room without mirrors.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966CSN

I have received no more than one or two letters in my life that were worth the postage.  ~Henry David Thoreau, WaldenMCTO

A friendship can weather most things and thrive in thin soil; but it needs a little mulch of letters and phone calls and small, silly presents every so often – just to save it from drying out completely.  ~Pam Brown

A Letter is a Joy of Earth –
It is denied the Gods
~Emily Dickinson, 1885

A woman seldom writes her Mind, but in her Postscript.  ~Richard Steele, SpectatorMCTO

We lay aside letters never to read them again, and at last we destroy them out of discretion, and so disappears the most beautiful, the most immediate breath of life, irrecoverable for ourselves and for others.  ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A letter is an unannounced visit, the postman the agent of rude surprises.  One ought to reserve an hour a week for receiving letters and afterwards take a bath.  ~Friedrich Nietzsche

Never write a letter while you are angry.  ~Chinese Proverb

What a wonderful thing is the mail, capable of conveying across continents a warm human hand-clasp.  ~Author Unknownquoted by Ranjan Bakshi

Letters are above all useful as a means of expressing the ideal self; and no other method of communication is quite so good for this purpose.  In letters we can reform without practice, beg without humiliation, snip and shape embarrassing experiences to the measure of our own desires… ~Elizabeth Hardwick

Politeness is as much concerned in answering letters within a reasonable time, as it is in returning a bow, immediately.  ~Lord Chesterfield

Or don’t you like to write letters.  I do because it’s such a swell way to keep from working and yet feel you’ve done something.  ~Ernest Hemingway

The talent of writing agreeable letters is peculiarly female.  ~Henry Tilney

My songs are just little letters to me.  ~Ani Difranco

Mr Witwould:  "Pray, madam, do you pin up your hair with all your letters?  I find I must keep copies."
Mrs Millamant:  "Only with those in verse…. I never pin up my hair with prose."
~William Congreve, The Way of the World

In a man’s letters you know, Madam, his soul lies naked, his letters are only the mirror of his breast, whatever passes within him is shown undisguised in its natural process.  Nothing is inverted, nothing distorted, you see systems in their elements, you discover actions in their motives.  ~Samuel Johnson

His sayings are generally like women’s letters; all the pith is in the postscript.  ~William Hazlitt

[Y]our letter?your dear, warm, true-hearted letter ? was put in my hand. I kissed it how many times before breaking its envelope! ~Byron Caldwell Smith, letter to Kate StephensTPVgb, Smith b.1849-d.1877, Stephens b.1853-d.1938; Smith was Professor of Greek Language and Literature at the University of Kansas from 1872-1875

I hold that the parentheses are by far the most important parts of a non-business letter.  ~D.H. Lawrence

I consider it a good rule for letter-writing to leave unmentioned what the recipient already knows, and instead tell him something new.  ~Sigmund FreudCUL