The faults of the calligrapher

As regards the common faults, there is not so much a great variety of these as a wide prevalence of two or three. Some writers indulge in a running hand because they do not know how to linger; others favor a lingering one because they cannot trust themselves to move at the right speed if they try one of the flowing styles. Ideally, speed is the flash of inspiration, slowness the prolonging of pleasure. To hurry only over intervals is the secret of perfection; but to be slow on every occasion is to renounce all possibility of achieving the extraordinary.

—Sun Ta-Yü, quoted by Chiang Yee in Chinese Calligraphy