Language Quotes - Page 17

• Prune what is turgid, elevate what is commonplace, arrange what is disorderly, introduce rhythm where the language is harsh, modify where it is too absolute.

  Quintilian

  Writing, Introducing, Harsh

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• His Majesty the King requires that the Royal Chancellery in all written documents endeavor to write in clear, plain Swedish.

  Charles XII of Sweden

  Kings, Writing, Majesty

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• Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge. Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words when short are best of all.

  Winston Churchill

  Writing, Simplicity, Intense

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• Any one who wishes to become a good writer should endeavour, before he allows himself to be tempted by the more showy qualities, to be direct, simple, brief, vigorous, and lucid.

  Henry Watson Fowler

  Writing, Simple, Wish

  Henry Watson Fowler, Francis George Fowler (1931). “The King's English”, Oxford University Press

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• The finest words in the world are only vain sounds if you can't understand them. The best sentence? The shortest.

  Anatole France

  Writing, Sound, World

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• Use familiar words-words that your readers will understand, and not words they will have to look up. No advice is more elementary, and no advice is more difficult to accept. When we feel an impulse to use a marvelously exotic word, let us lie down until the impulse goes away.

  James J. Kilpatrick

  Lying, Writing, Advice

  James J. Kilpatrick (2010). “The Writer's Art”, p.39, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• There are no easy words for the insights of the spirit, and approximate language used in good faith can cause approximate truths to spread like a disease.

  Densey Clyne

  Wisdom, Disease, Causes

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• Many a poem is marred by a superfluous verse.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Writing, Superfluous

  "The Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow".

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• The secret of play-writing can be given in two maxims: stick to the point, and, whenever you can, cut.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Writing, Cutting, Play

  W. Somerset Maugham (1954). “Mr. Maugham Himself”

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• It behooves us to avoid archaisms. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.

  William Safire

  Writing, Long, Use

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• No compulsion in the world is stronger than the urge to edit someone else's document.

  H. G. Wells

  Writing, Stronger, World

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• He that uses many words for explaining any subject, doth, like the cuttlefish, hide himself for the most part in his own ink.

  John Ray

  Writing, Use, Using Words

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• I think my prose reads as if English were my second language. By the time I get to the end of a paragraph, I'm dodging bullets and gasping for breath.

  Lynn Abbey

  Writing, Thinking, Literature

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• Questions that pertain to the foundations of mathematics, although treated by many in recent times, still lack a satisfactory solution. Ambiguity of language is philosophy's main source of problems. That is why it is of the utmost importance to examine attentively the very words we use.

  Giuseppe Peano

  Philosophy, Science, Foundation

  "The Principles of Arithmetic, presented by a new method". Book by Giuseppe Peano, 1889.

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• Unless the chemist learns the language of mathematics, he will become a provincial and the higher branches of chemical work, that require reason as well as skill, will gradually pass out of his hands.

  Alexander Crum Brown

  Hands, Skills, Branches

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• Let us have but one end in view, the welfare of humanity; and let us put aside all selfishness in consideration of language, nationality, or religion.

  John Amos Comenius

  Views, Diversity, Humanity

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• When a language creates - as it does - a community within the present, it does so only by courtesy of a community between the present and the past.

  Christopher Ricks

  Communication, Past, Community

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• Language is the amber in which a thousand precious and subtle thoughts have been safely embedded and preserved. It has arrested ten thousand lightning flashes of genius, which, unless thus fixed and arrested, might have been as bright, but would have also been as quickly passing and perishing, as the lightning.

  Richard Chenevix Trench

  Communication, Lightning, Genius

  Richard Chenevix Trench (1867). “On the Study of Words Lectures Addressed (originally) to the Pupils at the Diocesan Training-school, Winchester by Richard Chenevix Trench”, p.24

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• I cannot find language of sufficient energy to convey my sense of the sacredness of private integrity.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Integrity, Energy, Sacredness

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1972). “Early Lectures: 1838-1842”, p.266, Harvard University Press

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• The world is not the most pleasant place. Eventually, your parents leave you and nobody is going to go out of their way to protect you unconditionally. You need to learn to stand up for yourself and what you believe and sometimes, pardon my language, kick some ass.

  Queen Elizabeth II

  Motivation, Believe, Philosophical

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• Philosophy attempts, not to discover new truths about the world, but to gain a clear view of what we already know and believe about it. That depends upon attaining a more explicit grasp of the structure of our thoughts; and that in turn on discovering how to give a systematic account of the working of language, the medium in which we express our thoughts.

  Michael Dummett

  Philosophy, Believe, Philosophical

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• Common sense doesn't have the last word in ethics or anywhere else, but it has, as J. L. Austin said about ordinary language, the first word: it should be examined before it is discarded.

  Thomas Nagel

  Common Sense, Psychology, Ordinary

  Thomas Nagel (1989). “The View From Nowhere”, p.166, Oxford University Press

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• Compassion is for the very strong. Compassion does not come to the weak. People who are unkind, bullies, use rude language, are not strong people. They are very weak people.

  Harbhajan Singh Yogi

  Spiritual, Strong, Compassion

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• If (early humans) weren't using and refining language I would like to know what they were doing with their autocatalytically increasing brains.

  Dean Falk

  Brain, Evolution, Humans

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• The Second Amendment's language and historical and philosophical background demonstrated that it was designed to guarantee individuals the possession of certain kinds of arms for three purposes: (1) crime prevention or what we would today describe as self-defense; (2) national defense; and (3) preservation of individual liberty.

  Don Kates

  Philosophical, Gun, Self

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