Quotes About Clarity

Ah. In my experience, when people say they don't know whether they love someone, they usually mean no.

When I was seventeen, I don't think I even knew what love was. But when it's right, it's right, and you just know it.

There are a thousand 'greatest' melodies, just as there are a thousand 'greatest' poems and a thousand 'greatest' pictures, because there are a thousand moods in the mind of man when a certain note rings with the most clarity--when a certain design is most sharply silhouetted against the changing curtain of his mind.

Why, no, I guess not

We have only thermal sensors to guide us, which is why when you sit down on a wet spot, you can't generally tell whether it really is wet or just cold.

future. As an adjective, the word is often used unnecessarily: 'He refused to say what his future plans were' (Daily Telegraph); 'The parties are prepared to say little about how they see their future prospects' (The Times). In both sentences, and nearly all others like them, future adds nothing and should be deleted.

needless to say is a harmless enough expression, but it often draws attention to the fact that you really didn't need to say it.

explanations, like dreams, only make sense while they're happening.

Perhaps for our last words on the subject of usage we should turn to the last words of the venerable French grammarian Dominique Bonhours, who proved on his deathbed that a grammarian's work is never done when he turned to those gathered loyally around him and whispered: "I am about to—or I am going to—die; either expression is used.

In short, the remarkable position in which we find ourselves is that we don't actually know what we actually know. In

very should be made to pay its way in sentences. Too often it is used where it adds nothing to sense ('It was a very tragic death'), or is inserted in a futile effort to prop up a weak word that would be better replaced by something with more punch ('The play was very good').

person says to you, "How do you do?" he will be taken aback if you reply, with impeccable logic, "How do I do what?" The complexities of the English language are

hanged. 'It was disclosed that a young white official had been found hanged to death in his cell …' (The New York Times). 'Hanged to death' is redundant. So too, for that matter, are 'starved to death' and 'strangled to death'. The writer was correct, however, in saying that the official had been found hanged and not hung. People are hanged; pictures and the like are hung.

In the first few days, I failed to distinguish between collar and color, khaki and car key, letters and lettuce, bed and bared, karma and calmer. Needing

I didn't ask for twenty quarter-pound cheeseburgers, I asked for four quarter-pound cheeseburgers five times." "Same thing," he said. "It's not the same thing at all. You can't be this stupid." Two

But astronomy is, quite genuinely, far simpler than the human sciences.

second largest and other similar comparisons often lead writers astray: 'Japan is the second largest drugs market in the world after the United States' (The Times). Not quite. It is the largest drugs market in the world after the United States or it is the second largest drugs market in the world. The sentence above could be fixed by placing a comma after 'world'.

English also has a commendable tendency toward conciseness, in contrast to many languages

Too often for such people the notion of good English has less to do with expressing ideas clearly than with making words conform to some arbitrary pattern.

That depends on what your definition of 'is' is.

It depends on what the meaning of the words 'is' is.

Well, I went back to see about it once Went back to straighten it out Everybody that I talked to had seen us there Said they didn't know who I was talking about —Bob Dylan, "Red River Shore" Most

But giving people more information can help them make better choices.

Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice.