Quotes About Phrases

Her new friends especially liked the southern phrases she recalled from her childhood, such as her father's remark that 'if I hadn't sold that Coca Cola stock I could just sit and pat my foot.

I didn't ask any questions. Everything I wanted to know was written in tortured phrases across the desolation of her face.

Imagination?' said Holmes with some annoyance. 'And are the mere facts not sufficient in themselves? Must they be dressed up with French phrases dimly remembered from one's distant schooldays and hurriedly – though all too often inadequately – checked with an elementary grammar before dispatch to the publisher?

the alchemy of grief transforms the most awkward phrases into sentiments of purest gold..

Lovely phrases had lit candles in her mind, one after the other, till she felt intoxicated with the brightness.

Don't trust a writer who gives out advice. Writers are suckers for pretty turns of phrase with only the ring of truth.

It bothered Veblen's mother that most people were lazy and had given up original thought a long time ago, stealing stale phrases from the media like magpies.

Good phrases are surely, and ever were, very commendable. —Justice Shallow.

George: 'Ringo would always say grammmatically incorrect phrases and we'd all laugh. I remember when we were driving back to Liverpool from Luton up the M1 motorway in Ringo's Zephyr, and the car's bonnet hadn't been latched properly. The wind got under it and blew it up in front of the windscreen. We were all shouting, 'Aaaargh!' and Ringo calmly said, 'Don't worry, I'll soon have you back in your safely-beds.

Unfortunately, science cannot be reduced to short, catchy phrases. And if this is all that the general public can comprehend, it's no wonder that we spend so much of our time in the interminable debate about belief in God, or lack thereof.

Ideas improve. The meaning of words participates in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author's phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea.

I mangle phrases constantly. The other day I was chatting with my boyfriend and I said to him, 'He really sold him under the bus.' And he said, 'I think you meant 'threw him under the bus,' or 'sold him up the river.'

All of the Antilles, every island, is an effort of memory: every mind, every racial biography culminating in amnesia and fog. Pieces of sunlight through the fog and sudden rainbows, arcs-en-ciel. That is the effort, the labour of the Antillean imagination, rebuilding its gods from bamboo frames, phrase by phrase.

What did John have in mind in referring to that "great city"? Tonight's broadcast news will use phrases like this: "Washington strongly reacted today to Moscow's invasion of Georgia…," or "London today took sharp exception to the bombing in Jerusalem…" Nations are frequently referred to, particularly by other countries, by the name of their capital city or a leading prominent city.

La cuestión es, supongo, que me volví adicto a leer, si se puede llamar leer a esa forma rara y acelerada de experimentar los libros, demasiada rápida para entender lo que se estaba contando o lo que significaban las frases.

Political writing in our time consists almost entirely of prefabricated phrases bolted together like the pieces of a child's Meccano set. It is the unavoidable result of self-censorship. To write in plain, vigorous language one has to think fearlessly, and if one thinks fearlessly one cannot be politically orthodox.

Prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.

This invasion of one's mind by ready-made phrases (lay the foundations, achieve a radical transformation) can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard against then, and every such phrase anesthetizes a portion of one's brain.

It is easier – even quicker, once you have the habit – to say In my opinion it is a not unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think. If you use ready-made phrases, you not only don't have to hunt about for words; you also don't have to bother with the rhythms of your sentences, since these phrases are generally so arranged as to be more or less euphonious.

A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better. The debased language that I have been discussing is in some ways very convenient. Phrases like a not unjustifiable assumption, leaves much to be desired, would serve no good purpose, a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind, are a continuous temptation, a packet of aspirins always at one's elbow.

Taisez-vous, sotte et impertinente créature ; vos phrases de roman nous ennuient.

When it comes to love, the English language bears no shortage of cliches.

People have a good time with all the catch phrases.

and when he finally did break, he would take with him his contagious restlessness and dissatisfaction and guilt, his little gestures and phrases and attitudes that stank of their parents and the past, and Scott would relax again and prove to himself that he had settled all that, left if far below him.