Quotes About Clarity

Thurber was asked by a correspondent: "Why did you have a comma in the sentence, 'After dinner, the men went into the living-room'?" And his answer was probably one of the loveliest things ever said about punctuation. "This particular comma," Thurber explained, "was Ross's way of giving the men time to push back their chairs and stand up.

The rule is: don't use commas like a stupid person. I mean it.

Proper punctuation is both the sign and the cause of clear thinking.

The reason it's worth standing up for punctuation is not that it's an arbitrary system of notation known only to an over-sensitive elite who have attacks of the vapours when they see it misapplied. The reason to stand up for punctuation is that without it there is no reliable way of communicating meaning.

If you still persist in writing, "Good food at it's best", you deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave.

We have a language that is full of ambiguities; we have a way of expressing ourselves that is often complex and elusive, poetic and modulated; all our thoughts can be rendered with absolute clarity if we bother to put the right dots and squiggles between the words in the right places. Proper punctuation is both the sign and the cause of clear thinking. If it goes, the degree of intellectual impoverishment we face is unimaginable.

punctuation marks are the traffic signals of language: they tell us to slow down, notice this, take a detour, and stop.

We may curse our bad luck that it's sounds like its; who's sounds like whose; they're sounds like their (and their); there's sounds like theirs; and you're sounds like your. But if we are grown-ups who have been through full-time education, we have no excuse for muddling them up.

Rarely in our life is money a place of genuine freedom, joy, or clarity, yet we routinely allow it to dictate the terms of our lives and often to be the single most important factor in the decisions we make about work, love, family, and friendship.

We have to put our hearts and our minds in places where wisdom gathers, not scatters.

Truth has a powerful way of interrupting our runaway feelings if only we'll get it in front of us.

My counselor says, "Adults inform, children explain." I will state my boundaries with compassion and clarity. But I will not negotiate excuses or navigate exceptions with lengthy explanations that wear me down emotionally.

What we need is boundaries, not barriers.

Boundaries are simply clearly stated parameters that provide a safe structure for communication and the health of a relationship.

Though I've been saved for a long time, I want to recapture the essence of this "no other" reality.

When we set our minds on the things of God, we will have direct and immediate access to the peace of God.

We need to keep a gauge on our hearts so we can process, clarify, and understand our lives and relationships more deeply.

I'm completely sane except when I'm the opposite of that.

Yes and No the two most powerful words.

What's a decision you are in the midst of making? Chase it down. If you do this, where will it most likely lead? And then what? And then? Keep going until you walk it all the way out.

Another act of forgiveness means even more healing and clarity. Another intentional brushstroke of beauty slowly replacing the darkness with hues of healing light.

Honesty is a suitor with piercing vision who isn't swayed by pretending and positioning.

And honestly, I'm tired of knowing I have issues but having no clue how to rein them in on a given day. I need something simple. A quick reality check I can remember in the midst of the everyday messies.

satisfied by daily doses of truth, otherwise we will be prone to snack on deception.