Quotes from Joseph Devlin

Don't imagine that a college education is necessary to success as a writer. Far from it. Some of our college men are dead-heads, drones, parasites on the body social, not alone useless to the world but to themselves.

In the works of Shakespeare, the most wonderful genius the world has ever known, there is the enormous number of 15,000 different words, but almost 10,000 of them are obsolete or meaningless today.

your grandfather called it. It has stood the test of time, and

In other fields of endeavor poverty has been the spur to action. Napoleon was born in obscurity, the son of a hand-to-mouth scrivener in the backward island of Corsica. Abraham Lincoln, the boast and pride of America, the man who made this land too hot for the feet of slaves, came from a log cabin in the Ohio backwoods. So did James A. Garfield. Ulysses Grant came from a tanyard to become the world's greatest general. Thomas A. Edison commenced as a newsboy on a railway train.

In life's earnest battle they only prevail Who daily march onward and never say fail.

Never commence a sentence with And, But, Since, Because, and other similar weak words and never end it with prepositions, small, weak adverbs or pronouns.

There are four simple moods,—the Infinitive, the Indicative, the Imperative and the Subjunctive.

To use a big word or a foreign word when a small one and a familiar one will answer the same purpose, is a sign of ignorance.

Shakespeare gathered the fruitage of all who went before him, he has sown the seeds for all who shall ever come after him. He was the great intellectual ocean whose waves touch the continents of all thought.

A man may be able, educated, refined, of unblemished character, nevertheless if he lack the power to express himself, put forth his views in good and appropriate speech he has to take a back seat, while some one with much less ability gets the opportunity to come to the front because he can clothe his ideas in ready words and talk effectively.

that. Who refers only to persons; which only to things; as, The boy who was drowned, The umbrella which I lost. The relative that may refer to both persons and things; as, The man that I saw. The hat that I bought.

If you use slang use the refined kind and use it like a gentleman, that it will not hurt or give offense to any one. Cardinal Newman defined a gentleman as he who never inflicts pain. Be a gentleman in your slang—never inflict pain.

The greatest scholar alive hasn't more than four thousand different words at his command, and he never has occasion to use half the number. In

Perspicuity demands the clearest expression of thought conveyed in unequivocal language, so that there may be no misunderstanding whatever of the thought or idea the speaker or writer wishes to convey.

Not like Homer would I write, Not like Dante if I might, Not like Shakespeare at his best, Not like Goethe or the rest, Like myself, however small, Like myself, or not at all.

An Article is a word placed before a noun to show whether the noun is used in a particular or general sense. There are two articles, a or an and the.

subjects. Directions. CHAPTER XIII CHOICE OF WORDS

REQUIREMENTS OF SPEECH

but almost 10,000 of them are obsolete or meaningless today.

consideration, whether by discourse or correspondence.

A complex sentence consists of two or more simple sentences so combined that one depends on the other to complete its meaning; as; When he returns, I shall go on my vacation. Here the words, when he returns are dependent on the rest of the sentence for their meaning. A clause is a separate part of a complex sentence, as when he returns in the last example. A phrase consists of two or more words without a finite verb.

The three essentials of the English language are: Purity, Perspicuity and Precision.

Money is the most universal incitement of human misery.—Gibbon's Decline and Fall.

The parts of a sentence which are most closely connected with one another in meaning should be closely connected in order also.