Sentences Quotes - Page 33

• He lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glances. He had an odd autobiographical habit which led him to compose in his mind from time to time a short sentence about himself containing a subject in the third person and a verb in the past tense.

  James Joyce

  Life, Distance, Reflection

  James Joyce (2016). “The Complete Works of James Joyce: Novels, Short Stories, Plays, Poetry, Essays & Letters: Ulysses, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Finnegan’s Wake, Dubliners, The Cat and the Devil, Exiles, Chamber Music, Pomes Penyeach, Stephen Hero, Giacomo Joyce, Critical Writings & more”, p.1533, e-artnow

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• The sentence completes its signification only with its last term.

  Jacques Lacan

  Lasts, Term

  Jacques Lacan, Alan Sheridan (1980). “Écrits: a selection”

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• Solely in the world of languages is the amateur of value. Well-intentioned sentences full of mistakes can still build bridges between people.

  Kató Lomb

  Mistake, Bridges, People

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• That would be a glorious life, to addict oneself to perfection; to follow the curve of the sentence wherever it might lead, into deserts, under drifts of sand, regardless of lures, of seductions; to be poor always and unkempt; to be ridiculous in Piccadilly.

  Virginia Woolf

  Glorious Life, Curves, Perfection

  Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Waves”, p.63, Virginia Woolf

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• When the climbers in 1953 planted their flags on the highest mountain, they set them in snow over the skeletons of creatures that had lived in the warm clear ocean that India, moving north, blanked out. Possibly as much as twenty thousand feet below the seafloor, the skeletal remains had turned into rock. This one fact is a treatise in itself on the movements of the surface of the earth. If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose: The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone.

  John McPhee

  Ocean, Moving, Writing

  "Basin and Range". Book by John McPhee, 1981; reprinted in his book "Annals of the Former World", 1998.

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• Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning. Once it does, it becomes the kind of thing that makes you grab your wife around the waist and dance a jig.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Motivational, Business, Hard Work

  "Outliers: The Story of Success". Book by Malcolm Gladwell, 2008.

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• I now find myself looking at every sentence, every image, that purports to tell the West about the Arabs and the Muslims with this question in mind: to what extent does it feed into existing stereotypes and established prejudice?

  Ahdaf Soueif

  Mind, Doe, Prejudice

  Ahdaf Soueif (2012). “Mezzaterra: Fragments from the Common Ground”, p.278, A&C Black

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• But still, it looked completely natural, as if we had been kissing at the ends of sentences for ages, while the rest of the world was still hung up on punctuation.

  Jodi Picoult

  Kissing, Age, World

  Jodi Picoult (2008). “Change of Heart: A Novel”, p.373, Simon and Schuster

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• Know the story before you fall in love with your first sentence. If you don’t know the story before you begin the story, what kind of a storyteller are you? Just an ordinary kind, just a mediocre kind – making it up as you go along, like a common liar.

  John Irving

  Falling In Love, Liars, Ordinary

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• The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of wild, creative delight.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Life, Writing

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt McLaughlin (2010). “The Laws of Nature: Excerpts from the Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.13, North Atlantic Books

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• He would not mind hearing Petrus's story one day. But preferably not reduced to English. More and more he is convinced that English is an unfit medium for the truth of South Africa. Stretches of English code whole sentences long have thickened, lost their articulations, their articulateness, their articulatedness. Like a dinosaur expiring and settling in the mud, the language has stiffened. Pressed into the mold of English, Petrus's story would come out arthritic, bygone"(117).

  J. M. Coetzee

  Long, Mind, One Day

  J M Coetzee (2015). “Disgrace”, p.117, Random House

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• You know, a man always judges himself by the balance he can strike between the needs of his body and the demands of his mind. You're judging yourself now, Mersaut, and you don't like the sentence.

  Albert Camus

  Men, Judging Yourself, Mind

  Albert Camus (2012). “Happy Death”, p.36, Vintage

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• There are so many ways of saying Hi. Hiss it, trill it, bark it, sing it, bellow it, laugh it, cough it. A simple stroll in the hallway calls for paragraphs, sentences in your head, decisions galore.

  Frank McCourt

  Simple, Laughing, Decision

  Frank McCourt (2005). “Teacher Man: A Memoir”, p.245, Simon and Schuster

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• Don't say hit and mountain in the same sentence.

  Nora Roberts

  Mountain

  Nora Roberts (2004). “Northern Lights”, p.117, Penguin

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• Peoples do not judge in the same way as courts of law; they do not hand down sentences, they throw thunderbolts; they do not condemn kings, they drop them back into the void; and this justice is worth just as much as that of the courts.

  Maximilien Robespierre

  Kings, Hands, Law

  Maximilien Robespierre (2007). “Virtue and Terror”, New Left Books

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• It was the building from the drawing in my brain. And if you don’t think that’s a weird sentence, maybe you should reread it.

  James Patterson

  Thinking, Drawing, Brain

  James Patterson (2010). “Maximum Ride Boxed Set #1”, p.195, Hachette UK

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• Every word you add dilutes the sentence.

  Miller Williams

  Add

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• Even at the end of the road, read the first sentence, there is a road. Even at the end of the road, a new road stretches out, endless and open, a road that may lead anywhere. To him who will find it, there is always a road.

  D. J. MacHale

  May, Firsts, Ends

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• Words. I'm surrounding by thousands of words. Maybe millions...Deep within me, words pile up in huge drifts. Mountains of phrases and sentences and connected ideas. Clever expressions. Jokes. Love songs...I have never spoken one single word. I am almost eleven years old.

  Sharon M. Draper

  Song, Clever, Expression

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• There would be a trial and there would be a judge. The only problem was, there could only be one sentence.

  Christopher Pike

  Judging, Would Be, Trials

  Christopher Pike (2009). “Thirst No. 1: The Last Vampire, Black Blood, Red Dice”

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• You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children’s children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.

  Ronald Reagan

  Memorial Day, Children, Patriotic

  Ronald Reagan (2004). “The Greatest Speeches of Ronald Reagan”, p.4, NewsMax Media, Inc.

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• No, what I felt was the torment of waiting, stuck between the end of one sentence and the beginning of the next which might or might not bring a hail storm, plane crash, poetic justice, or a miraculous reversal.

  Nicole Krauss

  Justice, Waiting, Storm

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• Softie was not a word you could use in the same sentence as Eric.

  Charlaine Harris

  Eric, Use

  Charlaine Harris (2006). “Definitely Dead: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel”, p.90, Penguin

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• Prayer or not, I want to believe that, despite all evidence to the contrary, it is possible for anyone to find that one special person. That person to spend Christmas with or grow old with or just to take a nice silly walk in Central Park with. Somebody who wouldn't judge another for the prepositions they dangle, or their run-on sentences, and who in turn wouldn't be judged for the snobbery of their language etymology inclinations.

  Rachel Cohn

  Running, Prayer, Nice

  Rachel Cohn, David Levithan (2010). “Dash & Lily's Book of Dares”, p.72, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• He formed his sentences hesitantly and then threw them at me with such force that I felt as if I were receiving a present each time

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Receiving, Force, Felt

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