Sentences Quotes - Page 5

• I must make a choice every time I speak a sentence in English. I try to choose the happier way of saying things, so that my own words will not weigh me down like stones.

  Tad Williams

  Choices, Trying, Stones

  Tad Williams (1998). “Otherland: City of Golden Shadow”, p.467, Penguin

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• You keep working on your piece over and over, trying to get the sections and paragraphs and sentences and the whole just right, but there's a point at which you can tell you've begun hurting the work with your perfectionism. Then you have to release the work to new eyes.

  Anne Lamott

  Hurt, Writing, Eye

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• We all often feel like we are pulling teeth, even those writers whose prose ends up being the most natural and fluid. The right words and sentences just do not come pouring out like ticker tape most of the time.

  Anne Lamott

  Teeth, Tape, Pouring

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.22, Anchor

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• The sentences in the book of providence are sometimes long, and you must read a great way before you understand their meaning.

  Matthew Henry

  Book, Long, Way

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, (p. 280), 1895.

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• Writing is not "the establishment of a professional reputation" as if one were a doctor or lawyer; it is not properly in the sentence with creation of a family and the purchase of a home.

  Elizabeth Hardwick

  Home, Writing, Doctors

  Elizabeth Hardwick (1998). “Sight-readings: American Fictions”, Random House Incorporated

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• We have a priori reasons for believing that in every sentence there is some one order of words more effective than any other; and that this order is the one which presents the elements of the proposition in the succession in which they may be most readily put together.

  Herbert Spencer

  Believe, Order, Together

  Herbert Spencer (1858). “Essays: Scientific, Political and Speculative”, p.234

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• Like all great theologies, Bill [O'Reilly]'s can be boiled down to one sentence: There must be a god, because I don't know how things work.

  Stephen Colbert

  Religion, Bills, Bill O Reilly

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• I would say that the writers I like and trust have at the base of their prose something called the English sentence. An awful lot of modern writing seems to me to be a depressed use of language. Once, I called it "vow-of-poverty prose." No, give me the king in his countinghouse. Give me Updike.

  Martin Amis

  Kings, Writing, Giving

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• For all laws are general judgements, or sentences of the legislator; as also every particular judgement is a law to him whose case is judged.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Law, Judgement, Cases

  Thomas Hobbes (2005). “Leviathan, Parts I and II”, p.212, Broadview Press

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• What is or is not the jargon is determined by whether the word is written in an intonation which places it transcendently in opposition to its own meaning; by whether the individual words are loaded at the expense of the sentence, its propositional force, and the thought content.

  Theodor Adorno

  Jargon, Determined, Individual

  Theodor W. Adorno (2003). “Adorno”, p.5, Psychology Press

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• Religious law is like the grammar of language. Any language isgoverned by such rules; otherwise it ceases to be a language. But within them, you can say many different sentences and write many different books.

  Jonathan Sacks

  Religious, Book, Writing

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• Then let every one of us, being warned by this sentence of the angel, acknowledge that he as yet cleaves to first principles, or, at least, does not comprehend all those things which are necessary to be known; and that therefore progress is to be made to the very end of life: for this is our wisdom, to be learners to the end.

  John Calvin

  Angel, Progress, Firsts

  John Calvin (2012). “John Calvin's Commentaries On Zechariah And Malachi (Annotated Edition)”, p.114, Jazzybee Verlag

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• In Islam there is a line between let's say freedom and the line which is then transgressed into immorality and irresponsibility and I think as far as this writer is concerned, unfortunately, he has been irresponsible with his freedom of speech. Salman Rushdie or indeed any writer who abuses the prophet, or indeed any prophet, under Islamic law, the sentence for that is actually death. It's got to be seen as a deterrent, so that other people should not commit the same mistake again.

  Cat Stevens

  Mistake, Islamic, Thinking

  "Yussuf Islam, Formerly Cat Stevens, Expresses Support For Rushdie Death Sentence". The Christian Science Monitor, 1989.

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• A man convicted of murder is twenty times more likely than a woman convicted of murder to receive the death penalty. Since the 1976 reinstatement of the death penalty, 120 men and only 1 woman have actually been executed. The woman, from North Carolina, said she preferred to be executed. In North Carolina, a man who commits second-degree murder receives a sentence on average of 12.6 years longer than a woman who commits second-degree murder.

  Warren Farrell

  Men, Average, Years

  "The Myth of Male Power". Book by Warren Farrell, 1993.

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• I think I became a better writer after I started writing for the New Yorker. Well, I know I did. And part of it was having my New Yorker editor and part of it is that was when I started really going on tour and reading things in front of an audience 30 times and then going back in the room and rewriting it and reading it and rewriting it. So you really get the rhythm of the sentences down and you really get the flow down and you get rid of stuff that's not important.

  David Sedaris

  Reading, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.usatoday.com

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• I feel that in the past, my style has shown itself to be capable of handling dark and light in the same paragraph, or even in the same sentence. That's something I almost take for granted. I think it was more a concern to get the details right and persuasively recreate the world I was trying to write about.

  Michael Chabon

  Writing, Dark, Thinking

  Interview with Scott Tobias, www.avclub.com. November 22, 2000.

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• Writing on a computer feels like a recipe for writer's block. I can type so fast that I run out of thoughts, and then I sit there and look at the words on the screen, and move them around, and never get anywhere. Whereas in a notebook I just keep plodding along, slowly, accumulating sentences, sometimes even surprising myself.

  Chad Harbach

  Notebook, Running, Block

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• No sentence can end with because because, because is a conjunction

  C. N. Annadurai

  Ends, Conjunctions

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• No is a complete sentence and so often we forget that.
  When we don't want to do something we can simply smile and say no.
  We don't have to explain ourselves, we can just say 'No.'

  Susan Gregg

  Want, Forget, Just Say No

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• The script of 'Shogun' was so tight that you could not take a word out of a sentence, you could not take a sentence out of a scene, and you certainly couldn't take out a scene without putting ripples right through the back or the front of the overall story.

  John Rhys-Davies

  Stories, Scripts, Scene

  "John Rhys-davies on Indiana Jones and Almost Passing on Lord of the Rings". Interview with Will Harris, www.avclub.com. September 18, 2012.

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• The word 'career' and 'actor' really don't fit in the same paragraph, let alone sentence. There is no career structure for actors.

  John Rhys-Davies

  Careers, Actors, Fit

  Intervie with Ken P., www.ign.com. January 22, 2004.

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• One thing I'd do was put a great writer's book beside the typewriter and... type out a beautiful and moving paragraph... and see those sentences rising up... and... think, 'Someday maybe I can write like that....' It was like a dream of possibilities for my own self. And maybe I began to know that there was no other way for the sentence... to... arouse the same feeling. The someone writing whose words were rising from the typewriter became like a mentor for me.... You shouldn't do it more than a few times because you must get on with your own work.

  Gina Berriault

  Beautiful, Dream, Moving

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• The past is a life sentence, a blunt instrument aimed at tomorrow.

  Claudia Rankine

  Past, Tomorrow, Blunt

  Claudia Rankine (2014). “Citizen: An American Lyric”, p.65, Macmillan

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• One tires of a page of which every sentence sparkles with points, of a sentimentalist who is always pumping the tears from his eyes or your own.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Eye, Style, Tears

  William Makepeace Thackeray (1853). “The English humourists of the eighteenth century: a series of lectures”, p.276

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• All systems of morality are fine. The gospel alone has exhibited a complete assemblage of the principles of morality, divested of all absurdity. It is not composed, like your creed, of a few common-place sentences put into bad verse. Do you wish to see that which is really sublime? Repeat the Lord's Prayer.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Bible, Prayer, Sublime

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, (p. 419), 1895.

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