Syllables Quotes - Page 6

• When people want to sound smart, they add syllables to words, words to sentences, sentences to paragraphs, paragraphs to books. They try to make up in quantity and complexity what they lack in quality. That's bullshit! They're just hiding their bullshit!

  Robert McKee

  Smart, Book, People

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• I often think of the space of a page as a stage, with words, letters, syllable characters moving across.

  Susan Howe

  Moving, Character, Thinking

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• People don't talk like this, theytalklikethis. Syllables, words, sentences run together like a watercolour left in the rain. To understand what anyone is saying to us we must separate these noises into words and the words into sentences so that we might in our turn issue a stream of mixed sounds in response.

  Bill Bryson

  Running, Rain, Issues

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• The states have authority to interpret the Constitution, enforce it, and protect the people from violations of it by the federal government In the first place, there is not a syllable in the plan under consideration which directly empowers the national courts to construe the laws according to the spirit of the Constitution, or which gives them any greater latitude in this respect than may be claimed by the courts of every State.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Law, Government, Giving

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• You must get into the habit of looking intensely at words, and assuring yourself of their meaning, syllable by syllable-nay, letter by letter... you might read all the books in the British Museum (if you could live long enough) and remain an utterly "illiterate," undeducated person; but if you read ten pages of a good book, letter by letter, - that is to say, with real accuracy- you are for evermore in some measure an educated person.

  John Ruskin

  Real, Book, Museums

  John Ruskin, John D. Rosenberg (1964). “The Genius of John Ruskin: Selections from His Writings”, p.297, University of Virginia Press

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• It seems to me that the contrast between adjacent syllables has lessened and the result is an over-reliance on enjambment. Now enjambment is a fine, intellectually strong aid, but like all such things it becomes tiresome and calls too much attention to itself.

  Christopher Logue

  Strong, Attention, Too Much

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• I sympathize with politicians who have to watch every syllable they utter for fear it will be misused by somebody with an agenda.

  Richard Dawkins

  Watches, Agendas, Politician

  "Richard Dawkins is not an accommodationist" by Jerry Coyne, whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com. October 4, 2009.

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• Just get the right syllable in the proper place.

  Jonathan Swift

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• For a sentence is not complete unless each word, once its syllables have been pronounced, gives way to make room for the next.

  Saint Augustine

  Writing, Giving, Zenith

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• A lot of things appearing under my byline were written in one draft. But when I started to write poetry, I started getting fussy about every syllable. I wouldn't allow the work to be seen unless it felt perfect. Not clunky at all, no clunky syllables. So, really, for the printed page, it had to have a feeling of rhythmic and syntactic verisimilitude or something.

  Richard Meltzer

  Writing, Perfect, Feelings

  Source: therumpus.net

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• To write poetry is to be very alone, but you always have the company of your influences. But you also have the company of the form itself, which has a kind of consciousness. I mean, the sonnet will simply tell you, that's too many syllables or that's too many lines or that's the wrong place. So, instead of being alone, you're in dialogue with the form.

  Billy Collins

  Writing, Mean, Lines

  "Poet Billy Collins discusses humor, authenticity and ‘Aimless Love’". Interview with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. October 29, 2013.

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• From 1940 to about 1960, I had been writing just regular comics, the way my publishers wanted me too. He didn't want me to use words of more than two syllables if I could help it. He didn't want me to waste time on worrying about good dialogue or characterization. Just give me a lot of action, lot of fight scenes.

  Stan Lee

  Writing, Fighting, Two

  Source: www.npr.org

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• Everyone's taste is different. But I think the best way to defend against regrets after opening night is to try your best to tell the story you want to tell. In terms of smaller changes over time, I think good plays are like poems. Every syllable counts.

  Stephen Karam

  Regret, Night, Thinking

  Source: www.broadwayworld.com

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• My parents said I'd always been attracted to music from an early age. The classic story is I started singing before I talked. My Mom would play me tapes, and I'd be able to sing them back perfectly. She said my pitch was dead on, but I'd fill in nonsense syllables for all the rest of it. The words would be all garbled, because I didn't know how to talk yet.

  Vienna Teng

  Mom, Play, Parent

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• Sometimes I just start humming something, find a melody I like a lot, and if it sticks around for a couple days, a few words will lock themselves into place. I might just get the first line. Then words just keep falling into the syllables. The choruses kind of write themselves and verses I have to work at a little bit.

  Jack Johnson

  Couple, Fall, Writing

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• Though the words Canada East on the map stretch over many rivers and lakes and unexplored wildernesses, the actual Canada, which might be the colored portion of the map, is but a little clearing on the banks of the river, which one of those syllables would more than cover.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Rivers, Lakes, Might

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Yankee in Canada”, p.32, Graphic Arts Books

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• DNA is an abbreviation for deoxyribonucleicantidisestablishmentarianism, a complex string of syllables.

  Dave Barry

  Dna, Abbreviations, Strings

  Dave Barry (2009). “Dave Barry Is from Mars and Venus”, p.146, Ballantine Books

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• Of calling shapes, and beck'ning shadows dire,
  And airy tongues that syllable men's names.

  John Milton

  Halloween, Men, Names

  John Milton (1824). “The Poetical Works of John Milton: With Notes of Various Authors, Principally from the Editions of Thomas Newton, Charles Dunster and Thomas Warton ; to which is Prefixed Newton's Life of Milton”, p.40

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• We've got the emPHAsis on the wrong sylLAble when it comes to crime in this country. The FBI says burglary and robbery cost U.S. taxpayers $3.8 billion annually. Securities fraud alone costs four times that. And securities fraud is nothing to the cost of oil spills, price-fixing, and dangerous or defective products. Fraud by health-care corporations alone costs us between $100 billion and $400 billion a year. No three-strikes-and-you're-out for these guys. Remember the S&L scandal? $500 billion.

  Molly Ivins

  Country, Years, Oil

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• Children who hear acquire language without any particular effort; the words that fall from others' lips they catch on the wing, as it were, delightedly, while the little deaf child must trap them by a slow and often painful process. But whatever the process, the result is wonderful. Gradually from naming an object we advance step by step until we have traversed the vast distance between our first stammered syllable and the sweep of thought in a line of Shakespeare.

  Helen Keller

  Children, Distance, Fall

  Helen Keller (2003). “The Story of My Life: The Restored Edition”, p.81, Modern Library

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• A thousand fantasies Begin to throng into my memory, Of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows dire, And airy tongues that syllable men's names On sands and shores and desert wildernesses

  John Milton

  Memories, Men, Names

  1634 Comus, A Mask, l.204-8.

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• FINANCE, n. The art or science of managing revenues and resources for the best advantage of the manager. The pronunciation of this word with the i long and the accent on the first syllable is one of America's most precious discoveries and possessions.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Art, Discovery, America

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.67, 谷月社

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• I tried to make sense of the Four Books,
  until love arrived,
  and it all became a single syllable.

  Yunus Emre

  Book, Four, Make Sense

  Yunus Emre (1989). “The Drop that Became the Sea: Lyric Poems of Yunus Emre”, Shambhala Publications

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• When you're expecting bad news you have to be prepared for it a long time ahead so that when the telegram comes you can already pronounce the syllables in your mouth before opening it.

  Robert Pinget

  Long, News, Mouths

  Robert Pinget (1966). “Mahu: Or, The Material: a Novel”, Riverrun Press

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• From the body of the unborn essence arises the sphere of light, and from that sphere of light arises wisdom. From the wisdom arises the seed syllable and from the seed syllable arises the complete Mandala, the deity and the retinue.

  Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

  Light, Essence, Spheres

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