Bad Grammar Quotes

• Grammar is a piano I play by ear. All I know about grammar is its power.

  Joan Didion

  Music, Power, English Grammar

  FaceBook post by Joan Didion from Jul 16, 2011

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• Bad grammar is the leading cause of slow, painful death in North America.

  Dave Barry

  Painful Death, America, Causes

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• I will not go down to posterity talking bad grammar.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Talking, Luck, Grammar

  Said while correcting proofs of his last Parliamentary speech, 31 March 1881, in Robert Blake 'Disraeli' (1966) ch. 32

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• This was bad grammar of course, but that is how beavers talk when they are excited; I mean, in Narnia--in our world they usually don't talk at all. - The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

  C. S. Lewis

  Mean, Our World, Lions

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• What believer sees a disturbing omission or infelicity? The text, whether of prophet or of poet, expands for whatever we can put into it, and even his bad grammar is sublime.

  George Eliot

  Omission, Sublime, Poet

  George Eliot (2015). “Middlemarch: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.42, Penguin

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• Illiteracy at the poverty level (mainly a matter of bad grammar) does not alarm me nearly as much as the illiteracy of the well-to-do.

  Mary McCarthy

  Alarms, Doe, Levels

  Mary McCarthy (1985). “Occasional prose”, Harcourt

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• He constructed a vast labyrinthine of periods, made impassable by the piling-up of clauses upon clauses-clauses in which oversight and bad grammar seemed manifestations of disdain.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Made, Grammar, Periods

  Jorge Luis Borges, Andrew Hurley (2004). “Aleph and other stories”, Penguin Classics

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• What a crock. I could easily overemphasize the importance of good grammar. For example, I could say: Bad grammar is the leading cause of slow, painful death in North America, or Without good grammar, the United States would have lost World War II.

  Dave Barry

  War, Humorous, Painful Death

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• We hurt most who we love the most. Bad grammar, painful truth.

  Andy Stanley

  Hurt, Painful, Grammar

  Andy Stanley (2011). “Enemies of the Heart: Breaking Free from the Four Emotions That Control You”, p.24, Multnomah

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