Until you start to scheme out plots, you have no idea how much there can be (but often is not!) in this part of an author's business.
Do not regard your writing as a medium for the exhibition of your own cleverness. Never try to show off your own learning or to impress the reader with your own brilliancy.
Early amateur efforts often bristle with quotations, foreign words, stilted phrases, pedantic remarks, or references to classical personages. The reason for this is clear; when the amateur writes he invariably sees himself as the chief object of interest in the foreground, rather than his subject-matter. Almost unconsciously the back of his mind is filled with the thought, "What will the public think of me when they read this?" Consequently he does all in his power to impress the public, and his relations and friends (and by no means forgetting his enemies) with his attainments and unusual knowledge.
We are all of us like this when we start. But as we gain experience—not merely experience in writing, but that wide experience of the world and human nature, which is such a valuable asset to the writer—we come to realise that the public pay very little heed to a writer personally (until he or she becomes over-poweringly famous); it is the subject-matter of a book that they trouble about, and the way that subject-matter is treated. Readers do not care in the least if an author can read Hafiz in the original (unless he is actually writing about Persian poetry, of course); but they do care if he has written a bright, absorbing story that holds their interest from first to last, or a helpful illuminating article on some topic that appeals to them. Therefore, why make a special opportunity to drag in Hafiz, or some one equally irrelevant, when he is but vaguely related to the subject in hand, or possibly is quite superfluous?
Do not think I mean by this that a knowledge of languages and the classics is immaterial or unnecessary for the writer. Quite the reverse. The more knowledge we acquire of everything worth knowing (and standard literature is the great storehouse of knowledge) the better equipped we are for work, and the greater our chance of success.
The Well-Informed Man does not use his Learning for Show Purposes
But remember this: the really well-informed man does not use his learning for show purposes. Knowledge should not be employed for superficial ornamentation. It must be so woven into the strands of our everyday life, that it becomes as much a part of us as the food we eat and the air we breathe. Our reading should not be made to advertise our intellectual standing.
We do not read Plato and Shakespeare and Dante that we may be able to quote them, and thus let others know we are familiar with them. We read them in order to get a wider outlook on life; to see things from more than one point of view; to look into minds that are bigger than our own; to learn great facts and problems of life that might not otherwise come our way, yet are necessary for us to know, if we are to see human nature in right perspective. In short, we study great authors in order to arrive at a better understanding of our neighbour; some take us farther than this, and help us to a better understanding of God and His Universe. If we are reading the classics with any lesser aim, we are missing a great deal.
The knowledge we absorb from such reading should work out to something far greater than a few quotations! It should affect our thoughts and our life itself (which obviously includes our writing), because it has helped us to clearer, altogether larger ideas of this world of ours and the people who are in it.
Such knowledge will make its mark on our writing in every direction, giving it depth and breadth—i.e., we shall see below the surface instead of only recording the obvious; and take big views instead of indulging in puerilities and pettiness.