Short Words Quotes

If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.

Vincent Van Gogh

Inspirational, Motivational, Positive

230 Copy quote
When you get into a tight place, and everything goes against you till it seems as if you could n't hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that 's just the place and time that the tide'll turn.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Inspirational, Motivational, Strength

"Old Town Folks". Book by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Chapter 39, p. 507, 1869.

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Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Inspirational, Motivational, Moving On

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1896). “Oldtown folks. Sam Lawson's Oldtown fireside stories”

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No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Inspirational, Motivational, Happiness

Quoted in Vidette-Messenger (Valparaiso, Ind.), 7 June 1941 See Channing 1

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If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined...

Henry David Thoreau

Inspirational, Life, Motivational

"Walden". Book by Henry David Thoreau, 1854.

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The short words are best, and the old words, when short, are the best of all.

Winston Churchill

Shortness

"The Proverbial Winston S. Churchill: An Index to Proverbs in the Works of Sir Winston Churchill".

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The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that’s already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what—these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence. And they usually occur in proportion to the education and rank.

William Zinsser

Writing, Long, Secret

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Prefer the familiar word to the far-fetched. Prefer the concrete word to the abstract. Prefer the single word to the circumlocution. Prefer the short word to the long. Prefer the Saxon word to the Romance.

Henry Watson Fowler

Long, Romance, Abstract

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

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Depending on the inflection, ah bon can express shock, disbelief, indifference, irritation, or joy - a remarkable achievment for two short words.

Peter Mayle

Two, Irritation, Joy

FaceBook post by Peter Mayle from Jun 30, 2013

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To love very much is to love inadequately; we love-that is all. Love cannot be modified without being nullified. Love is a short word but it contains everything. Love means the body, the soul, the life, the entire being. We feel love as we feel the warmth of our blood, we breathe love as we breathe the air, we hold it in ourselves as we hold our thoughts. Nothing more exists for us. Love is not a word; it is a wordless state indicated by four letters.

Guy de Maupassant

Love, Mean, Air

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"On my honor" - what an ennobling phrase! Three short words, nine letters, but the summation of all we call character. From the Boy Scout's Oath.

Ezra Taft Benson

Character, Boys, Honor

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Each life is one short word slowly uttered.

Louise Erdrich

Life, Life Is

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Charity may be a very short word, but with its tremendous meaning of pure love, it sums up man's entire relation to God and to his neighbor.

Aelred of Rievaulx

Love, God, Faith

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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, Language

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Cure" is one of the most precious words in the English language. It's a short word. A clean and simple word. But it isn't so easy a thing as it sounds. There are questions like: How will this affect us in ten years? In twenty? What will it do to our children? Our children's children?

Lauren DeStefano

Children, Simple, Years

Lauren DeStefano (2013). “Sever”, p.328, Simon and Schuster

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[Erwin Rommel] explained why in short words, what the two generals' message and then he explained his position and he gave some reason for his position. And then he said, "The ten minutes are over, and I have to leave now." Then my father said goodbye. He also told that us that in I think twenty or thirty minutes, I don't remember, "You will get a telephone call telling you that I have died of stroke."

Manfred Rommel

Goodbye, Father, Thinking

Source: archives.nbclearn.com

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I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English―it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them―then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.

Mark Twain

Flower, Writing, Mean

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If, as I suspect, my body survives by uttering itself over and over again, then I have some questions. If [I] am one word, so are my daughters, so are all of us in strings and loops. Each life is one short word slowly uttered.

Louise Erdrich

Daughter, Body, Life Is

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To knot a sentence up properly, it has to be thought out carefully, and revised. New phrases have to be put in; sudden changes of subject must be introducted; verbs must be shifted to unsuspected localities; short words must be excised with ruthless hand; archaisms must be sprinkled like sugar-plums upon the concoction; the fatal human tendency to say things straightforwardly must be detected and defeated by adroit reversals; and, if a glimmer of meaning yet remain under close scrutiny, it must be removed by replacing all the principal verbs by paraphrases in some dead language.

Aleister Crowley

Hands, Plums, Verbs

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Long human words (the longer the better) were easy, unmistakable, and rarely changed their meanings . . . but short words were slippery, unpredictable, changing their meanings without any pattern.

Robert A. Heinlein

Long, Patterns, Easy

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So Mo began filling the silence with words. He lured them out of the pages as if they had only been waiting for his voice, words long and short, words sharp and soft, cooing, purring words. They danced through the room, painting stained glass pictures, tickling the skin. Even when Meggie nodded off she could still hear them, although Mo had closed the book long ago. Words that explained the world to her, its dark side and its light side, words that built a wall to keep out bad dreams. And not a single bad dream came over that wall for the rest of the night.

Cornelia Funke

Dream, Wall, Book

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What are letters?” “Kinda like mediaglyphics except they’re all black, and they’re tiny, they don’t move, they’re old and boring and really hard to read. But you can use ’em to make short words for long words.

Neal Stephenson

Moving, Long, Black

Neal Stephenson (2003). “The Diamond Age”, p.46, Spectra

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The long words are not the hard words, it is the short words that are hard. There is much more metaphysical subtlety in the word "damn" than in the word "degeneration."

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Long, Metaphysical, Damn

Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.93, Simon and Schuster

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Even short words of encouragement is enough to enlighten one's darkened minds and make things a little bit easier to handle. You might be searching for short motivational quotes, that's why I'm here to give you a set of the best short inspiring quotes. Try not to become a man of success but a man of value.

Albert Einstein

Encouragement, Giving, Best Short

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I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English - it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in.

Mark Twain

Flower, Writing, Simple

Mark Twain (2016). “The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain”, p.65, Chartwell

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