Sentences Quotes - Page 26

• Her majesty is one verb short of a sentence.

  Jasper Fforde

  Verbs, Majesty

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• I had not seen "Pride and Prejudice," till I read that sentence of yours, and then I got the book. And what did I find? An accurate daguerreotyped portrait of a common-place face; a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright, vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Country, Flower, Book

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• No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— Almost, at times, the Fool.

  T. S. Eliot

  Two, Doubt, Progress

  Prufrock (1917) "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

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• Sweet, crazy conversations full of half sentences, daydreams and misunderstandings more thrilling than understanding could ever be.

  Toni Morrison

  Sister, Sweet, Crazy

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• When a child first catches adults out -- when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just -- his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.

  John Steinbeck

  Wise, Jobs, Children

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• A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

  George Orwell

  Writing, Political Language, Trying

  George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.279, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Thurber was asked by a correspondent: "Why did you have a comma in the sentence, 'After dinner, the men went into the living-room'?" And his answer was probably one of the loveliest things ever said about punctuation. "This particular comma," Thurber explained, "was Ross's way of giving the men time to push back their chairs and stand up.

  Lynne Truss

  Men, Giving, Answers

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• I am trying to say it all in one sentence, between one cap and one period.

  William Faulkner

  Trying, Caps, Periods

  William Faulkner, Joseph Leo Blotner (1978). “Selected letters of William Faulkner”, Vintage

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• Like O'Rielly, we'll grab the most important word of each sentence... 'The' for example. Also, I'll say, 'I'm angry,' and the graphic will read, 'Colbert angry.

  Stephen Colbert

  Important, Example, Graphic

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• Now the standard cure for one who is sunk is to consider those in actual destitution or physical suffering—this is an all-weather beatitude for gloom in general and fairly salutary day-time advice for everyone. But at three o’clock in the morning, a forgotten package has the same tragic importance as a death sentence, and the cure doesn’t work—and in a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Morning, Real, Dark

  "Handle with Care" (1936)

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• I thought Marcus was going to be in my life forever. Then I thought I was wrong. Now he’s back. But this time I know what’s certain: Marcus will be gone again, and back again and again and again because nothing is permanent. Especially people. Strangers become friends. Friends become lovers. Lovers become strangers. Strangers become friends once more, and over and over. Tomorrow, next week, fifty years from now, I know I’ll get another one-word postcard from Marcus, because this one doesn’t have a period signifying the end of the sentence. Or the end of anything at all.

  Megan McCafferty

  Love, Next Week, Years

  Megan McCafferty (2010). “The Complete Jessica Darling Series: Sloppy Firsts, Second Helpings, Charmed Thirds, Fourth Comings, Perfect Fifths”, p.1233, Crown

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• ...sentences swallowed and sung back and swallowed all over again. She was made entirely out of words.

  Emma Donoghue

  Made

  Emma Donoghue (2008). “Landing”, p.100, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Occasionally, in the middle of a conversation her name would be mentioned, and she would run down the steps of a chance sentence, without turning her head.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Running, Names, Would Be

  Vladimir Nabokov (2011). “The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov”, p.424, Vintage

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• When writing, always hook the reader with your first sentence...in love, never settle...value yourself first and this will help you to value others...life is short, so enjoy it to the fullest...everyone in the world is different, and that's ok.

  Spider Robinson

  Writing, Life Is Short, Never Settle

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• No" is a complete sentence.

  Anne Lamott

  Health, Inspire

  Anne Lamott (1994). “Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year”, Fawcett

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• Human reason is beautiful and invincible. No bars, no barbed wire, no pulping of books, No sentence of banishment can prevail against it. It puts what should be above things as they are. It does not know Jew from Greek nor slave from master.

  Czeslaw Milosz

  Beautiful, Book, Greek

  Czeslaw Milosz, “Incantation”

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• It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words, "And this too, shall pass away." How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!

  Abraham Lincoln

  Life, Encouraging, Wise

  Address beforeWisconsin State Agricultural Society, Milwaukee,Wis., 30 Sept. 1859

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• People often ask me why my style is so simple. It is, in fact, deceptively simple, for no two sentences are alike. It is clarity that I am striving to attain, not simplicity. Of course, some people want literature to be difficult and there are writers who like to make their readers toil and sweat. They hope to be taken more seriously that way. I have always tried to achieve a prose that is easy and conversational. And those who think this is simple should try it for themselves.

  Ruskin Bond

  Taken, Simple, Thinking

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• I don't think anybody's necessarily ready for death. You can only hope that when it approaches, you feel like you've said what you wanted to say. Nobody wants to go out in mid-sentence.

  Johnny Depp

  Thinking, Want, Like You

  "What I've Learned: Johnny Depp". Interview with Cal Fussman, www.esquire.com. December 17, 2007.

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• I know all those words, but that sentence makes no sense to me.

  Matt Groening

  Knows

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• All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Truth, Freedom, Writing

  Ernest Hemingway (1992). “Complete Poems”, p.22, U of Nebraska Press

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• I turn sentences around. That's my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and turn it around again.

  Philip Roth

  Writing, Looks, Turns

  FaceBook post by Philip Roth from Aug 27, 2012

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• all that paddling around in the alphabet soup of one's childhood, scooping up letters, hoping to arrange them into enlightening sentences that would explain why things had turned out the way they had. It evoked a certain mutiny in me.

  Sue Monk Kidd

  Childhood, Mutiny, Paddling

  Sue Monk Kidd (2006). “The Mermaid Chair”, p.31, Penguin

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• In periods of rapid personal change, we pass through life as though we are spellcast. We speak in sentences that end before finishing. We sleep heavily because we need to ask so many questions as we dream alone. We bump into others and feel bashful at recognizing souls so similar to ourselves.

  Douglas Coupland

  Dream, Sleep, Soul

  Douglas Coupland (1993). “Shampoo Planet”, p.182, Simon and Schuster

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• How can I teach my boys the value and beauty of language and thus communication when the President himself reads westerns exclusively and cannot put together a simple English sentence? (John Steinbeck, in a private letter written during the Eisenhower administration)

  John Steinbeck

  Communication, Boys, Simple

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