Quotations and Literature Forum

The quote is: 'Thoughts can not bear any real substance until they are written down, as it is only then that they can stand up to objective analysis and scrutiny.'

I got this quote off the internet over 5 years ago, from either this site or a similar one. I've written the author's name as Jonathan Miller.

No matter how hard I've looked on the internet today, and I've looked for hours, I cannot find this quote again. I urgently need to quote it in a university essay that I'm writing and need to be sure I attribute the quote to the right author.

Can anyone help.. please.

This sure sounds familiar, but that fact did not help me to find it.

Writing,the art of communicating thoughts to the mind through the eye, is the great invention of the world...enabling us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn, at all distances of time and space.
~ Lincoln, from a lecture before the Springfield Library Association, 22 February 1860.

"Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away."
~ Dinah Craik (aka: Dinah Maria Mulock Craik) (1826 - 1887) English novelist.

"Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away."

Some ascribe that quote to Mary Ann Evans and she, of course, wrote under the pen name George Elliot. Where does this Dinah Craik stir into this mix? Who should get credit as the first to provide the quote?

It is absolutely, definitely from "A Life For A Life" by Craik. If you do some research, you will discover that this is one of those quotations that gets "mis-attributed" to another person. This happens with many other quotes to many other people. Thanks for pointing out this one.
http://books.google.com/books?id=UZLlO5CwMKYC&dq=dinah+%22A+Life+for+a+Life+%22&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=OtDdhUxOKL&sig=hTZn_aKZm6RxiaOIAzCxYpJ6KSE&hl=en&ei=HrptSrzoKoOyNruPtfkG&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8