Inarticulate Quotes

• Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.

  George W. Bush

  Inspirational, Funny, Political

  Attributed to George W. Bush in Associated Press interview in Los Angeles Times, October 30, 1988.

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• 

  I have a deeply hidden and inarticulate desire for something beyond the daily life.

  Virginia Woolf

  Desire, Daily Life

  Virginia Woolf (1990). “A moment's liberty: the shorter diary”, Vintage

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• Each venture Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate With shabby equipment always deteriorating In the general mess of imprecision of feeling.

  T. S. Eliot

  New Beginnings, Feelings, Venture

  Four Quartets "East Coker" pt. 5 (1940)

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• What the poor, the weak, and the inarticulate desperately require is power, organization, and a sense of identity and purpose, not rarefied advice of political scientists.

  Paul Wellstone

  Power, Organization, Political

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• Like other parties of the kind, it was first silent, then talky, then argumentative, then disputatious, then unintelligible, then altogether, then inarticulate, and then drunk. When we had reached the last step of this glorious ladder, it was difficult to get down again without stumbling.

  Lord Byron

  Party, Drunk, Firsts

  "'Tis a strange serpent - 10 of the most entertaining drinking bouts in literature" by Mark Forsyth, www.theguardian.com. December 1, 2017.

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• Since I'm inarticulate, I express myself with images.

  Helen Levitt

  Photography, Inspirational Photography, Street Photography

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• Thousands of women are crushed and made inarticulate by that system and never develop as their natures would force them to develop were they in a decent environment.

  Agnes Smedley

  Environment, Made, Force

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• Most men's friendships are too inarticulate.

  William James

  Men

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• Although I was entirely relaxed on camera, if I had to stand up and say something to an assembled group of people, I was rendered all but inarticulate.

  Jessica Savitch

  People, Cameras, Groups

  Jessica Savitch (1983). “Anchorwoman”, Berkley

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• He had to deal all at once with the packed regrets and stifled memories of an inarticulate lifetime.

  Edith Wharton

  Memories, Regret, Lifetime

  Edith Wharton (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Edith Wharton (Illustrated)”, p.2192, Delphi Classics

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• For undemocratic reasons and for motives not of State, they arrive at their conclusions, largely inarticulate. Being void of self-expression they confide their views to none; but sometimes in a smoking room, one learns why things were done.

  Rudyard Kipling

  Science, Self, Views

  Rudyard Kipling, M.M. Kaye (2002). “Rudyard Kipling: The Complete Verse”, Kyle Cathie Limited

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• Simon became inarticulate in his effort to express mankind's essential illness.

  William Golding

  Effort, Essentials, Illness

  William Golding (2016). “Lord of the Flies”, p.63, Hamilton Books

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• If we rely on the Holy Spirit, we shall find that our prayers become more and more inarticulate; and when they are inarticulate, reverence grows deeper and deeper.

  Oswald Chambers

  Prayer, Spirit, Holy

  Oswald Chambers (2010). “If You Will Ask: Reflections on the Power of Prayer”, p.100, Discovery House

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• Music is inarticulate poesy.

  John Dryden

  Music, Music Is

  "Tyrannick Love, or The Royal Martyr". Tragedy by John Dryden (Preface), 1670.

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• Women sometimes seem to share a quiet, unalterable dogma of persecution that endows even the most sophisticated of them with the inarticulate poignancy of the peasant.

  Zelda Fitzgerald

  Quiet, Dogma, Sometimes

  Zelda Fitzgerald (2013). “Save Me the Waltz: A Novel”, p.129, Simon and Schuster

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• Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky: So this winged hour is dropt to us from above. Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower, This close-companioned inarticulate hour When twofold silence was the song of love.

  Dante Gabriel Rossetti

  Song, Heart, Blue

  'The House of Life' (1881) pt. 1 'Silent Noon'

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• Our yearnings are homesicknesses for heaven; our sighings are for God, just as children that cry themselves asleep away from home, and sob in their slumber, know not that they sob for their parents. The soul's inarticulate moanings are the affections yearning for the Infinite, and having no one to tell them what it is that ails them.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Children, Home, Parent

  Henry Ward Beecher (1860). “Life thoughts”, p.67

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• I also try to discipline myself when I get into a situation... and I'm trying to think of an answer, instead of being verbose, which is a tendency that I have, to be concise. Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.

  Dan Quayle

  Thinking, Discipline, Trying

  Los Angeles Times (attributed to an earlier Associated Press interview), October 30, 1988.

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• Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragonfly
  Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky.

  Dante Gabriel Rossetti

  Garden, Sky, Blue

  'The House of Life' (1881) pt. 1 'Silent Noon'

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• It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey.

  Wendell Berry

  Inspirational, Life, Wisdom

  Wendell Berry (2011). “Standing by Words”, p.97, Counterpoint Press

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• He's a man [George W. Bush] who is lucky to be governor of Texas. He is a man who is unusually incurious, abnormally unintelligent, amazingly inarticulate, fantastically uncultured, extraordinarily uneducated, and apparently quite proud of all these things.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Men, Texas, Proud

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• Laughter, n. An interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the features and accompanied by inarticulate noises. It is infectious and, though intermittent, incurable.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Laughter, Noise, Distortion

  Ambrose Bierce (1958). “The Devil's Dictionary: A Selection of the Bitter Definitions of Ambrose Bierce”, p.100, Prabhat Prakashan

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• Everything can be learned, including, to a very large extent, to be what you are not. You can learn to be pretty if you are plain, charming if you are dull, thin if you are fat, youthful if you are aging, how to write though you are inarticulate, how to make money though you are not good with figures.

  Henry Anatole Grunwald

  Writing, Dull, Aging

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• Demosthenes overcame and rendered more distinct his inarticulate and stammering pronunciation by speaking with pebbles in his mouth.

  Plutarch

  Mouths, Speech, Pebbles

  "Parallel Lives". "Life of Demosthenes" by Plutarch,

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• just as violence is the last refuge of the inarticulate, so it is also the first resort of the incompetent, the easy out for the man who is capable of expressing himself only in the most primitive and vulgar of dramatic terms. He leaves us with only the obscenity of violence per se - and the pornographer thereof will always be with us, in film as in any other medium. And so will his audience.

  Judith Crist

  Men, Lasts, Violence

  Judith Crist (1968). “The private eye, the cowboy, and the very naked girl: movies from Cleo to Clyde”

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